Ricky Gervais calls Sam to ask if AI will replace comedians. They also discuss the implications of not having free will and if a chimp has ever asked, "what does it all mean?" They agree that bears are dangerous. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Hey. | |
| Hi. | |
| How's it going? | |
| Yeah, good. | |
| A bit, uh, sweating. | |
| I just had a hot bath. | |
| I was already in. | |
| It was too late. | |
| I couldn't back out. | |
| But yeah, good. | |
| Judging from Twitter, you're a bath man more than a shower man. | |
| I love it. | |
| I have two, either two baths a day in the winter or a bath and a shower or two showers in the summer. | |
| Sometimes I do it because I'm bored. | |
| There's something, I think it's from my upbringing where, you know, we could only have one bath a week when I was little. | |
| Wow. | |
| Sometimes secondhand water. | |
| Oh, I've had it hard. | |
| It's like a Dickens novel. | |
| That is hard. | |
| You joke, but that is deprivation. | |
| One bath a week. | |
| I mean, that's 17th century stuff. | |
| Well, I remember in the winter in our house, we had... This is absolutely true. | |
| This sounds like a joke. | |
| This sounds like a Monty Python sketch. | |
| But we had ice on the inside of the windows when I woke up. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I used to dream I'd got up and got dressed and then I'd wake up and go, oh fuck, I haven't got dressed. | |
| Oh. | |
| I know. | |
| Anyway, I've been, um, uh, have you got a minute? | |
| I've got a question for you. | |
| Another question. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I'm just, uh, I'm just nodding the bath. | |
| No way. | |
| Um, I've been thinking a lot about the brain or rather, My brain has. | |
| That's sort of a point. | |
| Now, this is quite a long question. | |
| It would stop me at any point if I've made some sort of fallacious leap. | |
| But the brain, I get, I totally understand evolution by natural selection. | |
| It's a no brainer. | |
| And that, you know, the brain is just an organ like anything else. | |
| Okay. | |
| It came from three billion years from a blob of reproductive Protein to this most complex computer, right? | |
| But it is just physical. | |
| It's, you know, it goes by all the laws, the contingent laws of the universe, chemistry, physics, you know, energy, electricity, all that, right? | |
| But obviously, We've talked about this, it has the epiphenomenon of consciousness, we feel like we've got a self, we feel like we've got free will, even though that's an illusion, and this leads to imagination, invention of philosophy, art, gods. | |
| So, two-part question here. | |
| One, are chimps going through that, do you think? | |
| They've got all the rudimentary tools to invent their gods or have spirituality or You know, all you need is imagination and, you know, a decent brain or even a sense of self. | |
| And two, if that is true, if the brain is purely physical, it can be reproduced. | |
| So in the future, will a computer, will we have paranoid computers? | |
| Will we have computers that are nice and nasty and don't want to die and want to murder someone? | |
| Shoot. | |
| Yeah, so that's a great question, and there's so many questions contained in it. | |
| Here's what's not controversial. | |
| There are many places where one can try to find a foothold or a handhold to debate some materialist assumptions. | |
| And then, you know, try to open the door to something that many people in science and philosophy at the moment would consider spooky or theological or just unwarranted. | |
| So, the central drift of your question is fairly uncontroversial in science, which is to say, it's safe to assume that everything we know and notice about the mind from the first-person side, as a matter of experience, You know, what it's like to be us, all of that is a product of what our brains as physical information processing systems are doing, right? | |
| So, our brains are essentially computers made of meat, although they're not computers that are all that similar to the computers we currently call computers. | |
| I mean, they're different in important ways. | |
| many people will point out that science has been repeatedly confounded by bad analogies that we you know, we used to make analogies to water pumps and steam engines and Now we no longer do that because now we have a much better analogy a computer But many people would will be tempted to argue that it's still not a perfect analogy or not even a good one but no, but it but but the the important thing is that intelligence is basically the ability to | |
| Problem solved. | |
| Negotiate the world. | |
| And obviously those things, if they work, they're favoured and they're passed on. | |
| And it gets better and better or it doesn't work or a dead end or whatever. | |
| So, yeah, I get that. | |
| And, you know, it starts worrying me. | |
| I came from a science background. | |
| And I went to do philosophy. | |
| So all the things like determinism and materialism, all those things, I sucked them up. | |
| Anything that felt a little bit new agey nonsense, mumbo jumbo magic, I sort of rejected. | |
| But I kept an open mind. | |
| I said, well, prove it to me, you know. | |
| And so I am this Sort of this hard-wired contingent, I need proof, I need physical proof. | |
| And so even consciousness freaks me out, because... Yeah, well it should, because really we don't understand it physically. | |
| And there are impressive impediments to doing that, I think. | |
| I mean, the so-called hard problem of consciousness is genuinely hard because it's not clear why anything we do as minds, you know, all of our behavior, all of our mental behavior, everything, including our intelligence, needs to be associated with | |
| We could build robots, and we undoubtedly will build robots eventually, that pass the Turing test, that are indistinguishable from humans, and in fact only become distinguishable from humans by their superhuman capacities. | |
| They will be as intelligent as we are in every respect, They'll be conversant with our emotions and display emotions of their own, because we will program them that way very likely, or at least some of them that way. | |
| And I think it's true to say they're already as good, they might even be better at facial recognition than humans are now, and that will eventually include detecting and responding to our emotions. | |
| I mean, just so much of what makes us effective social beings You know, millions of years of evolution as social primates, and, you know, 300,000 years or so of finishing school as homo sapiens. | |
| We're very good at this, and there's no question we're going to build machines that are better than we are. | |
| And then literally everything we do, cognitively, will be like chess, where it will be true to say that the best mind at that is now a computer mind, not a human one. | |
| Yeah. | |
| We will never be the best at chess ever again, right? | |
| Yeah. | |
| And that's going to be true of looking at a person's face and deciding how they feel. | |
| Will there be a robot, right, that's bigger and taller and stronger than me, right, made of steel, that can see in the dark, and is a better stand-up? | |
| The robots are coming for your job. | |
| I'll always have that. | |
| I'll go out, I'll fall over. | |
| And the crowd will go wild. | |
| They'll go look at him. | |
| They'll go look at that fat bloke, he's dying! | |
| And the robot will go, I can't, I can't compete with that. | |
| I'd never thought of that. | |
| Ricky and the steam engine. | |
| But Nelly, I think it's true if, ultimately, something like that has to be true, if intelligence and even comedic intelligence and comedic timing and everything that gets built into that, empathy... Yeah, well, I learned it. | |
| I learned it. | |
| Still my brain. | |
| Yeah, exactly. | |
| If that's just information processing, there's no reason why a human has to be the best at that forever. | |
| And, in fact, there's no way one will be if we just keep making progress building intelligent machines. | |
| I totally accept that. | |
| I suppose my question is, then, what it comes down to is, why in this You know, this illusion of free will, is it the same as if it wasn't an illusion? | |
| What's the difference? | |
| That's my question. | |
| I totally accept it. | |
| But so what? | |
| We are what we are. | |
| What does it matter? | |
| What does it matter that there isn't free will? | |
| I mean, the reason why it's important is that so much of our psychological suffering, personally, and so much of our social suffering, in terms of the ethical and legal decisions we make, is anchored to this illusion. | |
| The feeling that you are you and really responsible for you, it's not that it's never useful, it's useful in certain cases, but the fact that we put people in prison for the rest of their lives, or even give them the death penalty in certain states in my country, and feel totally justified in doing it as a matter of punishment, not as a matter of social necessity that we have to just keep certain dangerous people off the streets, which obviously we do. | |
| And I think that's quite different. | |
| Yeah, it is different. | |
| And I'd say, what I'd say with them, I think to, and I know you're not saying this, but to say no one has free will, so no one should be punished, is a nonsense. | |
| Rather like, if a machine breaks down in a factory, you don't go, we didn't mean to break down, we keep it on. | |
| You get rid of it and get a new one. | |
| It's not a punishment. | |
| It's, well, we've got to still protect the innocent. | |
| And I get that. | |
| And I think, Yeah, definitely something else. | |
| There's loads of... Punishment certainly makes sense, still, in many cases, but retribution doesn't, or the vengeance part of it doesn't, morally. | |
| It doesn't, no. | |
| Once you swallow this pill of free will being an illusion. | |
| What are the three reasons for retribution, rehabilitation, and what's the... Restitution? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Have you read Ted Hondrik's book on punishment? | |
| No. | |
| I think it's called... I think it might be called Eye for an Eye. | |
| No, I think it's just called Punishment. | |
| It's got a picture of an eye and a tooth on it. | |
| It was my professor. | |
| Oh yeah? | |
| He told me about... four years ago I was sold on it as he spoke about it. | |
| And yeah, he breaks down why that sort of punishment for retribution doesn't work and, you know, we totally agree with... and with a death penalty, you can't go back and say, we were wrong. | |
| We know the worries about that. | |
| My point is, even if everyone understood free will is an illusion, we're hard to work, I don't think it should make any difference because we're not saying, oh, he came from a tough background or it was a crime of passion. | |
| We're just saying we're all robots. | |
| Let's do what we like, which we know isn't acceptable. | |
| That's why I mean that it doesn't make a difference. | |
| All the other caveats would still be in place, you know. | |
| A sympathetic, you know, judicial system and act utilitarian as opposed to rule utilitarianism. | |
| All those things would still be in place. | |
| But what I can never accept is that the people that say if hard determinism is true, No one is responsible for their actions on a societal level. | |
| That's the difference I'm making. | |
| Once you view people in this vein as akin to malfunctioning robots, right? | |
| So evil people, if we built an evil robot, it would reliably produce evil. | |
| You know, nature has built evil robots for us as, you know, psychopaths and other people who just reliably create a lot of harm for everyone else. | |
| The question is, how should we feel about that and whether hatred is the right emotional response? | |
| Now, it's a totally natural response, certainly if you've been victimized by such a person, but... I think we should treat it like any other force that isn't our fault. | |
| You don't go into morality of An angry bear trying to attack you in the woods. | |
| Right, so you might shoot the bear. | |
| He came from a tough background. | |
| I love animals, but if a bear's attacking me, I don't care about his home problems. | |
| But he did come from a tough background. | |
| He came from the background of being a bear, right? | |
| What else was he going to do? | |
| And I don't care when it's whether, should I rehabilitate this bear? | |
| If I can't get out of there, I try and stop it. | |
| It's not a moral issue, it's the fact that I don't deserve to die by a bear yet. | |
| That's what it comes down to. | |
| I love bears. | |
| I love bears. | |
| I've never hurt a bear. | |
| I absolutely love them and good luck to them and they've got to do what they've got to do. | |
| But as I say, if he's in my apartment, I've got other word. | |
| I don't care. | |
| Yeah, I don't know where that analogy goes. | |
| What I'm saying is, the psychopath is part of nature like the bear. | |
| I know it's not his fault he's a psychopath, just like it's his fault that he's a hungry bear, but that's no reason for me not to try and stop things. | |
| We've got to do something. | |
| But you don't have to hate it, and you wouldn't hate it in the same way you'd hate a person. | |
| And this is the crucial piece for me. | |
| Ah, that's a very good point. | |
| Ethically. | |
| You're right. | |
| Even if it harmed you. | |
| I don't know if you got to that part in my... I know you heard some of the audio from Waking Up where I talk about free will. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Just imagine the two cases, you know, one case you're attacked by a bear and, you know, let's say you lose a hand, right? | |
| So you really are, you've had a terrifying encounter with near death, but you're saved and the bear gets tranquilized and let's say it gets put in the zoo, right? | |
| Yeah. | |
| That's one case. | |
| The other case is you're attacked by an evil person and suffer the same injury, right? | |
| Yeah. | |
| But then the question is, what is your subsequent mental state for the rest of your life? | |
| No, you're right. | |
| You're absolutely right. | |
| I mean, you could be hating the person and fantasizing over killing that person with your bare hands, or hand. | |
| Yeah. | |
| But with the bear, you might... | |
| Especially if he laughed in court. | |
| Yeah, and he could just play upon your hominid emotions so that you would really hate him, you know, and want to kill him and fantasize about it. | |
| Yeah, that's totally true. | |
| Because we've got a sense of self and morality and we feel what's right and wrong, we impose that on another human where we wouldn't do it on the bear. | |
| Rather, in a way, if I walk If I walk into a tree and I sprayed my nose, I do not hate that tree. | |
| You hate yourself? | |
| I hate myself, and I'd try and... Why didn't the council put a fence around it? | |
| I would want someone to blame. | |
| I want someone to blame with the weather. | |
| If it rains, I go, well, who didn't tell me to bring out... Whose job was it? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah, that's true. | |
| That's a very good point. | |
| And it's hard to forgive another human who hurts you for fun, for supposed fun, even though In a naturalistic framework, they can't help it. | |
| I'm putting quote marks around help it, but we mean it literally as well, don't we, if we're determinists? | |
| And honestly, that does help me now a fair amount psychologically. | |
| I mean, there's so many people out there on social media in particular, and this is where I tend to see it, I don't see it in my life, Who just maliciously attack me and attack people who are associated with me in any way. | |
| And it's... Why am I talking to you then? | |
| Good luck on social media after this. | |
| I don't know anything about... I thought you were super popular. | |
| Fuck's sake. | |
| Anyone listening... I don't like Sam. | |
| I'm asking him to... I'm using him, if anything. | |
| That's all, guys. | |
| Just if you're listening. | |
| Yeah, yeah, that's a very, very good point. | |
| It's much easier to process when you actually recognize that certain people are doing what they do because that's what they do. | |
| They're like bears. | |
| Yeah, yeah, exactly. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And there's lots of other factors on social media, getting noticed, wanting to be a part of someone else's cause of wear, heckling. | |
| They're not like that in real life. | |
| They'll ask you for an autograph, all these things. | |
| They're bots. | |
| There's a, you know, if someone, I get it rarely, but if someone sends a nasty tweet, I think I've told you this before, but I thought, why have they said that? | |
| And I look back, and they've sent 20 nice ones, but I didn't notice them. | |
| And I think, fuck me, why would... I put this line in Afterlife as well. | |
| Why would people rather want to be famous for being an arsehole than not famous? | |
| What is the attraction of being famous, saying, I was here? | |
| Because cavemen used to put their hand on the wall and blow woad over it, and, you know, I was here. | |
| Now it's obviously got out of hand, but there seems to be, I think it's some sort of cachet for eternal life. | |
| I think that's a very human worry and quest. | |
| What's the point? | |
| What will happen after I die? | |
| Will people remember me? | |
| Will I, will myself carry on? | |
| Will I come back as a spirit? | |
| Is there a heaven? | |
| Have I led a good life? | |
| Was it worth it? | |
| Will I come back as a cow? | |
| I think all those things, as irrational as they all are, They are very human, and I don't know why. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I don't know. | |
| Again, they could be upshots, but yeah. | |
| All right. | |
| Well, we can work that out after you've had your third bath of the day. | |
| I'm going to have my tea now. | |
| So, in conclusion, yes, robots, computers will soon be indistinguishable from humans. | |
| Final question, is there a chimp somewhere? | |
| that sat down and looked up and thought, where did we come from? | |
| Who did all this? | |
| Where are we going? | |
| Has that happened yet? | |
| As a chimp thought, what the fuck is going on here? | |
| I would highly doubt that, but the interesting thing is that there are certain things we do that are really crucial to our being smart, like working memory. | |
| Which chimps are better at, which is pretty—and you can see this display, we can find this video on YouTube, where given a memory task where there's a keyboard, like a keyboard on a screen, and many numbers and letters suddenly get illuminated, and then you have to recapitulate. | |
| Sure. | |
| You have to press all the right keys. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Chimps are so fast and so much better at it than humans that it really is, it's kind of terrifying. | |
| Have you seen that experiment that shows it's not just the arbitrary test, it's the reward that has a sense of it? | |
| So they did a thing with a chimp with beads. | |
| So if it chose the small pile of beads, it got a jelly bean. | |
| Got it right every time. | |
| Choose the smallest pile, get a jelly bean. | |
| When they gave it the choice to choose the smallest pile of jelly beans, it didn't. | |
| It chose the big pile of jelly beans because it wanted all the jelly beans. | |
| The experiment was out the window, it just went, fuck that, that's the big pile of jelly beans. | |
| That's hilarious. | |
| Isn't that great? | |
| That's fantastic. | |
| That chimp is a genius. | |
| Anyway, now I don't have a sense of self and I want to be a chimp. | |
| Brilliant. | |
| Cheers, man. | |
| Cheers. |