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John Gray: prediction

29 Nov 2023 Conversations with Tyler John Gray on Pessimism, Liberalism, and Theism

“We might never be in significant contact with these other intelligences if they exist. But it doesn’t really matter much to me one way or the other because I think we’ve actually done a rather good job making ourselves more alone already, actually, by crudifying the biosphere through mass extinctions and so on.”

— John Gray

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Everything needed to verify it.

Speaker
John Gray
Attribution
Verified speaker
Claim type
prediction
Recorded
29 Nov 2023
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

Transcript context

…That’s a good thing. It is if you think they would otherwise kill us, but maybe they wouldn’t. I think it’s a wonderful idea because it means that from their point of view . . . They might be, by our standards, more intelligent than we are. I don’t know. If they’ve lasted longer than we had or are likely to last, then they might be more intelligent, or wiser at least. But they’re simply not interested in us. They come and leave some litter like human picnickers do and then leave. To me, although I’m open to the idea of UFOs, which, of course, is a spinoff from the idea, “Can there be intelligent life forms in other planetary systems or other parts of the universe?” I can’t actually imagine that we are the only living, certainly, or even the only sentient — I find that hard to imagine. But the distances are so vast that unless technology in other places has developed to extraordinary extents, we might be the only one that ever . . . We might be alone apart from, of course, other intelligent species on the planet — like gorillas and possibly octopuses — that exist alongside us. We might never be in significant contact with these other intelligences if they exist. But it doesn’t really matter much to me one way or the other because I think we’ve actually done a rather good job making ourselves more alone already, actually, by crudifying the biosphere through mass extinctions and so on. Should the UK work toward having the two Irelands reunite?…

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