If You Could Live Forever Would You? (Ben Goertzel) | AI Podcast Clips with Lex Fridman

00:00:00.000 | So if you could live forever, would you live forever?

00:00:05.320 | Forever.

00:00:07.740 | My goal with longevity research is to abolish the plague of involuntary death.

00:00:14.600 | I don't think people should die unless they choose to die.

00:00:18.640 | If I had to choose forced immortality versus dying, I would choose forced immortality.

00:00:26.480 | On the other hand, if I had the choice of immortality with the choice of suicide whenever

00:00:32.020 | I felt like it, of course I would take that instead.

00:00:34.540 | And that's the more realistic choice.

00:00:36.800 | There's no reason you should have forced immortality.

00:00:38.880 | You should be able to live until you get sick of living.

00:00:44.240 | And that will seem insanely obvious to everyone 50 years from now.

00:00:50.960 | People who thought death gives meaning to life so we should all die, they will look

00:00:55.220 | at that 50 years from now the way we now look at the Anabaptists in the year 1000 who gave

00:01:01.240 | away all their positions, went on top of the mountain for Jesus to come and bring them

00:01:05.640 | to the ascension.

00:01:08.400 | It's ridiculous that people think death is good because you gain more wisdom as you approach

00:01:17.120 | dying.

00:01:18.120 | I mean, of course it's true.

00:01:19.120 | I mean, I'm 53 and the fact that I might have only a few more decades left, it does make

00:01:25.920 | me reflect on things differently.

00:01:29.540 | It does give me a deeper understanding of many things.

00:01:33.060 | But I mean, so what?

00:01:35.320 | You could get a deep understanding in a lot of different ways.

00:01:38.340 | Pain is the same way.

00:01:39.340 | We're going to abolish pain and that's even more amazing than abolishing death.

00:01:45.460 | Once we get a little better at neuroscience, we'll be able to go in and adjust the brain

00:01:49.680 | so that pain doesn't hurt anymore.

00:01:52.040 | And people will say that's bad because there's so much beauty in overcoming pain and suffering.

00:01:58.560 | Well, sure, and there's beauty in overcoming torture too.

00:02:02.480 | And some people like to cut themselves, but not many.

00:02:05.160 | That's an interesting, but to push back again, this is the Russian side of me, I do romanticize

00:02:11.320 | suffering.

00:02:12.320 | It's not obvious, I mean, the way you put it, it seems very logical.

00:02:16.680 | It's almost absurd to romanticize suffering or pain or death.

00:02:21.200 | But to me, a world without suffering, without pain, without death, it's not obvious what

00:02:27.840 | that world looks like.

00:02:28.840 | Well, then you can stay in the people zoo with the people torturing each other.

00:02:32.680 | No, but what I'm saying is, I guess what I'm trying to say, I don't know if I was presented

00:02:39.320 | with that choice, what I would choose, because to me--

00:02:42.440 | No, this is a subtler, it's a subtler matter, and I've posed it in this conversation in

00:02:51.200 | an unnecessarily extreme way.

00:02:54.320 | So I think the way you should think about it is what if there's a little dial on the

00:02:59.880 | side of your head, and you could turn how much pain hurt.

00:03:05.480 | Turn it down to zero.

00:03:07.040 | Turn it up to 11, like in spinal tap if it wants, maybe through an actual spinal tap,

00:03:11.000 | right?

00:03:12.000 | So I mean, would you opt to have that dial there or not?

00:03:16.240 | That's the question.

00:03:17.240 | The question isn't whether you would turn the pain down to zero all the time.

00:03:22.520 | Would you opt to have the dial or not?

00:03:24.400 | My guess is that in some dark moment of your life, you would choose to have the dial implanted,

00:03:29.360 | and then it would be there.

00:03:30.680 | Just to confess a small thing, don't ask me why, but I'm doing this physical challenge

00:03:36.920 | currently where I'm doing 680 push-ups and pull-ups a day, and my shoulder is currently,

00:03:45.440 | as we sit here, in a lot of pain.

00:03:50.120 | I don't know.

00:03:51.560 | I would certainly right now, if you gave me a dial, I would turn that sucker to zero as

00:03:56.080 | quickly as possible.

00:03:57.080 | Good.

00:03:58.080 | But I think the whole point of this journey is, I don't know.

00:04:04.720 | Because you're a twisted human being.

00:04:06.680 | I'm a twisted.

00:04:07.680 | So the question is, am I somehow twisted because I created some kind of narrative for myself

00:04:14.560 | so that I can deal with the injustice and the suffering in the world?

00:04:21.040 | Or is this actually going to be a source of happiness for me?

00:04:24.160 | Well, this is, to an extent, is a research question that humanity will undertake, right?

00:04:29.520 | Exactly.

00:04:30.960 | Human beings do have a particular biological makeup, which sort of implies a certain probability

00:04:39.920 | distribution over motivational systems, right?

00:04:43.120 | So I mean, we--

00:04:44.120 | Yeah.

00:04:45.120 | Well put.

00:04:46.120 | And that is there.

00:04:47.120 | Now, the question is, how flexibly can that morph as society and technology change, right?

00:04:56.240 | So if we're given that dial, and we're given a society in which, say, we don't have to

00:05:03.240 | work for a living, and in which there's an ambient, decentralized, benevolent AI network

00:05:08.880 | that will warn us when we're about to hurt ourself, if we're in a different context,

00:05:14.400 | can we consistently, with being genuinely and fully human, can we consistently get into

00:05:21.120 | a state of consciousness where we just want to keep the pain dial turned all the way down,

00:05:27.960 | and yet we're leading very rewarding and fulfilling lives, right?

00:05:31.440 | Now, I suspect the answer is yes, we can do that, but I don't know that--

00:05:36.720 | It's a research question, like you said.

00:05:37.720 | I don't know that for certain.

00:05:38.720 | Yeah, no.

00:05:39.720 | I'm more confident that we could create a non-human AGI system which just didn't need

00:05:47.600 | an analog of feeling pain.

00:05:50.360 | And I think that AGI system will be fundamentally healthier and more benevolent than human beings.

00:05:57.000 | So I think it might or might not be true that humans need a certain element of suffering

00:06:02.400 | to be satisfied humans, consistent with the human physiology.

00:06:06.680 | If it is true, that's one of the things that makes us fucked and disqualified to be the

00:06:14.120 | super AGI, right?

00:06:16.840 | This is the nature of the human motivational system is that we seem to gravitate towards

00:06:24.760 | situations where the best thing in the large scale is not the best thing in the small scale,

00:06:32.920 | according to our subjective value system.

00:06:35.320 | So we gravitate towards subjective value judgments where to gratify ourselves in the large, we

00:06:40.120 | have to ungratify ourselves in the small.

00:06:42.960 | And we do that in-- you see that in music.

00:06:46.560 | There's a theory of music which says the key to musical aesthetics is the surprising fulfillment

00:06:52.560 | of expectations.

00:06:54.620 | You want something that will fulfill the expectations enlisted in the prior part of the music, but

00:06:59.080 | in a way with a bit of a twist that surprises you.

00:07:02.280 | And that's true not only in outdoor music like my own or that of Zappa or Steve Vai

00:07:08.800 | or Buckethead or Christoph Penderecki or something.

00:07:12.720 | It's even there in Mozart or something.

00:07:15.240 | It's not there in elevator music too much, but that's why it's boring, right?

00:07:20.260 | But wrapped up in there is we want to hurt a little bit so that we can feel the pain

00:07:27.920 | go away.

00:07:28.920 | We want to be a little confused by what's coming next.

00:07:32.980 | So then when the thing that comes next actually makes sense, it's so satisfying, right?

00:07:37.000 | It's the surprising fulfillment of expectations, is that what you said?

00:07:40.200 | Yeah, yeah.

00:07:41.200 | So beautifully put.

00:07:42.200 | I know we've been skirting around a little bit, but if I were to ask you the most ridiculous

00:07:45.680 | big question of what is the meaning of life, what would your answer be?

00:07:54.680 | Three values, joy, growth, and choice.

00:08:00.680 | I think you need joy.

00:08:03.520 | I mean, that's the basis of everything if you want the number one value.

00:08:06.920 | On the other hand, I'm unsatisfied with a static joy that doesn't progress, perhaps

00:08:13.720 | because of some elemental element of human perversity.

00:08:17.380 | But the idea of something that grows and becomes more and more and better and better in some

00:08:22.240 | sense appeals to me.

00:08:24.160 | But I also sort of like the idea of individuality, that as a distinct system, I have some agency.

00:08:31.720 | So there's some nexus of causality within this system rather than the causality being

00:08:37.640 | wholly evenly distributed over the joyous growing mass.

00:08:41.120 | So you start with joy, growth, and choice as three basic values.

00:08:46.120 | Those three things could continue indefinitely.

00:08:49.920 | That's something that could last forever.

00:08:52.920 | Is there some aspect of something you called, which I like, super longevity that you find

00:09:00.480 | exciting, research-wise, is there ideas in that space?

00:09:05.760 | I think, yeah, in terms of the meaning of life, this really ties into that.

00:09:11.920 | Because for us as humans, probably the way to get the most joy, growth, and choice is

00:09:19.920 | transhumanism and to go beyond the human form that we have right now.

00:09:25.760 | And I think human body is great, and by no means do any of us maximize the potential

00:09:32.200 | for joy, growth, and choice imminent in our human bodies.

00:09:35.760 | On the other hand, it's clear that other configurations of matter could manifest even greater amounts

00:09:42.320 | of joy, growth, and choice than humans do, maybe even finding ways to go beyond the realm

00:09:49.160 | of matter as we understand it right now.

00:09:52.200 | So I think in a practical sense, much of the meaning I see in human life is to create something

00:09:58.880 | better than humans and go beyond human life.

00:10:02.800 | But certainly that's not all of it for me in a practical sense.

00:10:06.440 | I have four kids and a granddaughter and many friends and parents and family and just enjoying

00:10:14.280 | everyday human social existence.

00:10:16.680 | But we can do even better.

00:10:18.200 | Yeah, yeah.

00:10:19.200 | I mean, I love, I've always, when I could live near nature, I spend a bunch of time

00:10:24.480 | out in nature in the forest and on the water every day and so forth.

00:10:28.160 | So I mean, enjoying the pleasant moment is part of it.

00:10:32.320 | But the growth and choice aspect are severely limited by our human biology.

00:10:39.200 | In particular, dying seems to inhibit your potential for personal growth considerably

00:10:44.760 | as far as we know.

00:10:46.680 | I mean, there's some element of life after death perhaps, but even if there is, why not

00:10:52.480 | also continue going in this biological realm, right?

00:10:57.280 | In super longevity, I mean, we haven't yet cured aging.

00:11:02.800 | We haven't yet cured death.

00:11:05.640 | Certainly there's very interesting progress all around.

00:11:09.000 | I mean, CRISPR and gene editing can be an incredible tool.

00:11:14.680 | And I mean, right now, stem cells could potentially prolong life a lot.

00:11:20.440 | Like if you got stem cell injections of just stem cells for every tissue of your body injected

00:11:26.680 | into every tissue, and you can just have replacement of your old cells with new cells produced

00:11:33.360 | by those stem cells, I mean, that could be highly impactful at prolonging life.

00:11:38.440 | Now we just need slightly better technology for having them grow, right?

00:11:42.600 | So using machine learning to guide procedures for stem cell differentiation and trans differentiation,

00:11:49.960 | it's kind of nitty gritty, but I mean, that's quite interesting.

00:11:53.920 | So I think there's a lot of different things being done to help with prolongation of human

00:12:00.960 | life, but we could do a lot better.

00:12:04.800 | So for example, the extracellular matrix, which is the bunch of proteins in between

00:12:10.160 | the cells in your body, they get stiffer and stiffer as you get older.

00:12:14.680 | And the extracellular matrix transmits information both electrically, mechanically, and to some

00:12:21.040 | extent biophotonically.

00:12:22.640 | So there's all this transmission through the parts of the body, but the stiffer the

00:12:27.040 | extracellular matrix gets, the less the transmission happens, which makes your body get worse coordinated

00:12:32.740 | between the different organs as you get older.

00:12:34.680 | So my friend Christian Schaffmeister at my alumnus organization, my alma mater, the great

00:12:40.600 | Temple University, Christian Schaffmeister has a potential solution to this, where he

00:12:45.920 | has these novel molecules called spiral ligamers, which are like polymers that are not organic.

00:12:51.640 | They're specially designed polymers so that you can algorithmically predict exactly how

00:12:57.000 | they'll fold very simply.

00:12:58.780 | So he designed the molecular scissors that have spiral ligamers that you could eat and

00:13:03.800 | then cut through all the glucosamine and other cross-linked proteins in your extracellular

00:13:08.720 | matrix, right?

00:13:10.040 | But to make that technology really work and be mature is several years of work.

00:13:13.960 | As far as I know, no one's funding it at the moment.

00:13:17.320 | So there's so many different ways that technology could be used to prolong longevity.

00:13:22.420 | What we really need, we need an integrated database of all biological knowledge about

00:13:26.840 | human beings and model organisms, like hopefully a massively distributed open-cog bioatom space,

00:13:33.160 | but it can exist in other forms too.

00:13:35.480 | We need that data to be opened up in a suitably privacy-protecting way.

00:13:40.500 | We need massive funding into machine learning, AGI, proto-AGI, statistical research aimed

00:13:46.600 | at solving biology, both molecular biology and human biology, based on this massive,

00:13:52.480 | massive dataset, right?

00:13:54.400 | And then we need regulators not to stop people from trying radical therapies on themselves

00:14:00.840 | if they so wish to, as well as better cloud-based platforms for automated experimentation on

00:14:08.400 | microorganisms, flies and mice and so forth.

00:14:12.120 | We could do all this.

00:14:13.120 | You look, after the last financial crisis, Obama, who I generally like pretty well, but

00:14:18.560 | he gave $4 trillion to large banks and insurance companies.

00:14:22.840 | Now in this COVID crisis, trillions are being spent to help everyday people and small businesses.

00:14:29.460 | In the end, we'll probably will find many more trillions are being given to large banks

00:14:32.800 | and insurance companies anyway.

00:14:35.840 | Could the world put $10 trillion into making a massive holistic bio-AI and bio-simulation

00:14:42.540 | and experimental biology infrastructure?

00:14:45.000 | We could.

00:14:46.000 | We could put $10 trillion into that without even screwing us up too badly, just as in

00:14:49.880 | the end COVID and the last financial crisis won't screw up the world economy so badly.

00:14:55.120 | We're not putting $10 trillion into that.

00:14:57.480 | Instead, all this research is siloed inside a few big companies and government agencies.

00:15:05.200 | Most of the data that comes from our individual bodies, personally, that could feed this AI

00:15:10.600 | to solve aging and death, most of that data is sitting in some hospital's database doing

00:15:16.280 | nothing.

00:15:17.200 | [laughs]

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If You Could Live Forever Would You? (Ben Goertzel) | AI Podcast Clips with Lex Fridman

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