Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…Well, isn’t that kind of appalling? I mean, just take that statement. We’ve only been around for a couple hundred thousand years, tops. That is not very long and we’re at a 50/50. I mean, that’s unbelievable. I mean, it’s indisputable that we have created the means, at least potentially, for our own destruction. Will we learn from our mistakes? Will we avert course and save ourselves? One hopes so. Right? But even the concept that it’s conceivable. Whales have not invented a way to kill themselves; to wipe out all whales and earth and life on earth. That’s one way to see it. But I actually see it as a feature, not a bug. When you look at the entirety of the universe, because it does seem that the mechanism of evolution constantly creates. You want to operate on the verge of destruction, it seems like. I mean the predator and prey dynamic is really effective at accelerating evolution and development. It seems like us being able to destroy ourselves is a really powerful way to give us a chance to really get our shit together and to flourish, to develop, to innovate, to go out amongst the stars, or 50/50 destroy ourselves, which I think me as a human is a horrible thing. But if there’s a lot of other alien civilizations, that’s a pretty cool thing. You want to give everybody nuclear weapons. Half of them will figure it out, half of them won’t. The ones that figure it out- You mean everyone? All these civilizations.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.