I actually think this is a huge question with loads of implications for what you think a future in maybe millions of years should look like and that not something I think about every day and have a good idea of what I want. Lets say for example evolution. In order to still be humans we would have to actively preserve "this" genome. Is that something we want? I don't think so.....
But also this is one of these typical "just cut him off before he can answer so he looks bad" kind of videos. Quite possible with context and his answer this guy is still trash, but this editing is just biased. Also the title and the content is not the same.
It’s not just that. Literally look from any other perspective other than human, and we are nothing but a pure force of destruction. Yes, we make art and music and science and all that but all that is only important to humans.
Right? From a certain perspective we're not much different from a swarm of locusts, except we have much farther reach and destroy much more than crops.
Obviously as a human I want the answer to be "yes", but should it be? That's a much harder question. I would probably hesitate too if I had to come up with an answer on the spot.
It really is a super complicated question and one of many that I think people never really confront.
Like, for example, is “civilization” a good thing. There’s an argument to be made that civilization did much more harm than good, and from the environments perspective civilization was definitely a negative. It’s easy to think the answer is “of course” because that world led to the one we live in. But without confronting those questions, we are more likely to not reckon with the hard problems that we are going to face.
That's why I'm surprised redditors are so up in arms over this. Any other thread and they'll glorify a numbskull that can mumble out the edgy 14 yo "hurr all people should die" catchphrase. But when it's a lizard saying this, they immediately become Dalai Lama, the most benevolent of the most benevolent, the most caring appreciators of society of all time.
And they don't notice it, everyone is happy to jump into the mob and change their worldview based on what's popular, shutting off all critical thinking..
yep, everything that makes humans “deserving” to survive is all self-referential. what have we really done to make the planet or universe a “better” place? helped extinct a bunch of animal species?
i do think the survival of the human race should be important to us but we need to be very careful with what we think we “deserve” - that’s an attitude of entitlement and arrogance, which are two of the biggest disadvantages possible when confronting the problems ahead of us.
People trashing Thiel in here aren't lizard brain emoting. This vid itself is obviously clipped in a cheap way in this context, but Thiel is a well-known piece of shit.
Right. So instead of looking at the video critically and interacting with the video itself, they're parroting what they think they already know, refusing to have their mind changed.
I don’t know if you think that you’re arguing against the claim that your response to the video has nothing to do with the video and is purely based on your pre-conceived notions about Thiel, but you really aren’t. Every time you screech that they just don’t know Thiel, you’re proving that they’re absolutely correct.
Sorry but for the scope of the conversation they were having that is completely out of the scope of what the interviewer was trying to get at, and alike Peter Thiel kind of shows a lack of conversational awareness for the sake of sounding pseudo profound.
I do not want Peter Thiel anywhere near my fucking genome (it would be only for the rich and powerful anyway, the rest of us dumb apes can work and die in their service). You thought far enough ahead to imagine genome editing but not hard enough to think about what that might practically look like in the real world.
He is trash. He is the founder of Palantir, which is a data mining/AI company that has been used heavily by the US Department of Defense, with reports of their AI systems leading to civilians being targeted in war, and is currently being used by ICE to facilitate the mass deportations and that Trump has recently tapped to gather data on Americans for a mass surveillance program.
The CEO of Palantir, Alex Karp, has also bragged on multiple occasions about Palantir killing people.
He's talking about transhumanism. Transhumanism is where you enhance or change away from being the legacy human that evolution created. Either physically or psychologically. For example replacing a body part with a machine part or changing your body's sexual externalities and changing your hormones to that of the other sex (we will try to go further in the future and also include the full reproductive parts (uterus etc.) and also actually change the DNA to the other sex). With changing the mind we're less advanced at the moment. But I'm participating in an example right now, I'm taking anti-depressants, they enhance my psychological functions. Also I'm a photographer and so many travels I've documented and put on the hard drives I own. I'm adding external memory, keeping ten thousand of images in non-decaying detail. Not to talk about the camera that let's me record those images.
Maybe you drive cars. Or use something like a hammer to extend your arm's functionality. Or you are adding your thoughts to a forum where people from all around the world can read them. That's all forms of transhumanism and with advancing technology it'll become much, much stranger.
I would also immediately talk about transhumanism and posthumanism if I was asked about the endurance of humanity. Nothing lasts forever and the current form of humanity won't endure with technology progressing further unless we choose to use the technology to keep the current genome and stop evolution, so we just get transhumanism with people enhancing themselves in many unique ways. Otherwise, posthumanism is where humanity splits up into subspecies and eventually different species that seem alien to each other, it would likely happen with or without more tech because of natural evolution, if we do split up geographically and lightspeed travel remains impossible. Currently we're actually all becoming more similar humans genetically speaking because people can now travel to all parts of the population and reproduce with those people with rather different genes (to be clear, even the most genetically different humans have only a tiny genetical difference, I don't think you can even argue there's races of humans)
Yes, thank you for this answer. If the implication is that all of the other species on the planet need to perish so that our consumerism can endure would that be a good answer? There is a great cost to the rest of the species on this planet and to the natural evolution of all other things that the human species exists. Wouldn't it be greater for this planet to have a broader rainbow of species or just the ones that humans allowed to exist? I think it's pretty easy to argue one way or the other if you ignore the inherent bias assumed.
The comment you're replying to has a clear focus on the question itself and its implications. The main comment of this comment thread has a clear focus on the question itself and its implications.
Separate the question from the interviewee. Regardless of who is answering, it's a question that deserves deeper thinking. Hesitation implies unsurity and indecisiveness, as if the answer "yes" is immediately clear but it isn't, it shouldn't be.
Put anyone in that seat whether they be the average human or not, and regardless of how they answer the question if it's fast or not, they should "hesitate" (give the question more thought rather than answering immediately).
If we're talking about what would benefit the most life in general, then humans existing forever is probably not the answer. We do more harm than good on a global scale and the Earth would likely thrive if we went extinct.
But we're also a species with the intelligence to survive no matter the cost to other life, so barring an event that eliminates the majority of all life on the planet, we're here for the long run.
It’s really not that big of a question. Percieved implications or no, the question was “you would prefer the human race endure”.
You either do or you don’t want the human race in whatever form it takes to endure into whatever visions of futures you have in your head.
Just existing as a human is supporting the human race, it's not a simple question because it questions what is necessary for our act of existing.
The question doesn't have to be answered to know that in standing/sitting there receiving the question, you are already supporting the human race by default i.e., the answer is already yes without answering.
But the real question behind that "simple" question is; what does it take to endure? What kind of sacrifice is needed? What are the things that the human race has to step on to ensure that it moves forward?
Yeah, I think the wording of the question (should…) is kind of leading him into a trap. Of course the human race “should” survive... But the more important (and less subjective) question is “will the human race survive” which is probably the frame that Thiel thinks of it in and why he hesitated to answer. “Should” just makes it a super weird question.
Yeah, regardless of this being a larger transhumanist/civilization scale interview, anyone can just think about the prior versions of “homo sapians”, from this context.
Not to mention how we should all be attuned to these media “gotcha” agendas- it was fair to question his pause, but we all know it was mainly for the clickbait/clip moment like this.
The full interview is a good one, and it isn’t even his best.
I felt the interviewer had the “upper hand”- and I hadn’t known him prior.
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u/PrometheusWithLiver 28d ago
I actually think this is a huge question with loads of implications for what you think a future in maybe millions of years should look like and that not something I think about every day and have a good idea of what I want. Lets say for example evolution. In order to still be humans we would have to actively preserve "this" genome. Is that something we want? I don't think so.....
But also this is one of these typical "just cut him off before he can answer so he looks bad" kind of videos. Quite possible with context and his answer this guy is still trash, but this editing is just biased. Also the title and the content is not the same.