Simple Swedish Podcast - #241 - Topp 5 existentiella hot (svår)

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

I det här avsnittet går jag igenom en lista med de fem värsta hoten mot mänskligheten. Listan har jag hittat på 80000hours.org, ett väldigt intressant projekt som jag kan rekommendera att kolla in. Speciellt om du är intresserad av mänsklighetens framtid, och hur vi alla kan verka för att göra gott och ha en positiv inverkan på världen. Läs mer om Language Gym här. För att stödja podden och få transkript till avsnitten - bli patron för bara 5€ per månad – klicka här! ------------------- Instagram: swedish.linguist YouTube: Swedish Linguist Website: www.swedishlinguist.com Language Lock-in: https://www.languagelockin.com/ ------------------- Ett smakprov (sample) på transkriptet:   Hej där! Välkommen till Simple Swedish Podcast. Idag pratar jag i lite mer normal hastighet. Så om du har svårt att förstå, då rekommenderar jag att bli patron så att du får transcript till alla de här avsnitten. Några som har blivit patron är Alla 55, Sujata, Shahram och Etezadpour. Tack till er för att ni stödjer den här podden. För dig som vill bli patron, gå till www.patreon.com/swedishlinguist. Idag ska vi prata om existentiella hot. Topp 5 existentiella hot mot mänskligheten. Den här listan har jag hittat på en hemsida som heter www.80000hours.org. Det är ett väldigt spännande projekt det här, 80,000 hours. Det är en del av den så kallade effective altruism-rörelsen. Effektiv Altruism skulle det bli på svenska. Det är ett väldigt intressant koncept. De försöker alltså hitta det mest effektiva sättet att göra så mycket gott för världen och för mänskligheten som möjligt. Deras uppgift är, hur gör vi så mycket bra för världen så effektivt som möjligt? Och så försöker de ge tips på hur man själv kan ha en sån här positiv inverkan på världen. Genom till exempel att välja sin karriär. Det finns massa olika saker där. Jag har vetat om det här länge och har tyckt att det varit ett väldigt häftigt projekt länge. Så kolla gärna in det, www.80000hours.org.   Jag tänkte gå igenom den här listan, inte för att skrämmas och skapa någon slags panik, utan mer för att informera, och för att se vad man faktiskt kan göra. De här topp fem existentiella hoten, de är rankade efter hur stor påverkan en extra person som jobbar med det kan ha. Det finns olika kriterier. Inte bara hur destruktivt det här är, utan också andra saker, som till exempel hur negligerat någonting är. Så om det är en miljon människor som jobbar med ett problem och det är jättemycket pengar som är tillsatt för det problemet, okej, det kan vara ett väldigt allvarligt problem.. ..men det kan finnas ett annat problem som kanske är lite mindre allvarligt, men om det bara är hundra personer som jobbar med det, då kan det faktiskt vara ett större hot. Inte för att det utfallet skulle bli värre, utan för att det är mycket mer negligerat. Alltså mycket färre människor som jobbar med det, mycket mindre pengar som är tillsatt och så.   Så det är lite så den här listan fungerar.   ....för att läsa hela transkriptet till detta och alla andra avsnitt, klicka här!

Welcome to Simpon Swedish Podcast! Today I'm going to speak in a more normal way, so if you have trouble understanding, I recommend you become a patron so you can get a transcript for all these episodes. And some who have become a patron are all 55 Sojata, Shahram and Etesad Bur Thank you for supporting this podcast and yes, for you who want to be a patron go to patreon.com slash Swedish Linguist and today we are going to talk about existential threats, yes so we are going to talk

about top 5 existential threats against humanity actually and this. I have found this list on a website called 800, 80,000 hours. It is part of the so-called Effective Altruism movement. Effective Altruism, that's what it would be in Swedish. It's a very interesting concept. They try to find the most effective way to do as much good for the world and for humanity as possible. Their task is to do as much good for the world as effectively as possible. They try to give tips on how to have a positive impact on the world. By choosing your career, for example. There are a lot of things I've known about for a long time

and have thought it was a cool project for a long time. So please check it out, 80.000hours.org I thought I would go through this list not to be scared and create some kind of panic but more to inform and to see what you can actually do So these top 5 existential threats are ranked after how much influence an extra person who works with it can have. There are different criteria, not only how destructive

this is, but also other things, such as how neglected something is. So if there are a million people who work with a problem, and there is a lot of money that is invested in that problem, okay, it can be a very serious problem, but there can be another problem that is a little less serious. But if it's just 100 people who work with it, then it can actually be a bigger threat. Not because the outcome would be worse, but because it is much more neglected. So much fewer people who work with it, much less money that is added and so on. So that's how this list works. And I thought we would go through this one,

point by point, and we'll start with number five, and then we'll end with number one, the biggest threat according to this list. And the threat number five, the fifth most serious existential threat against humanity, is according to this list, climate change. So they say that... First we talk about what research says. Because there are a lot of different... People say a lot of different things about climate change. Some think that it's the worst thing that can happen and that we are on our way to hell. Others think that there is no danger at all, everything is just fake. And on this website they talk about IPCC and their research.

According to them, it is the most credible and most over-the-top source. And according to IPCC, climate change has the potential to be very destructive. It's about floods, floods, fires, droughts and so on. And it's probably the poorest people who are most affected by climate change. However, there is nothing in their report, in IPCC's report, that indicates that civilization's end, for example. There is nothing that indicates that all of humanity would go under. Going under means disappearing,, to be exploited, to be destroyed. So the end of civilization, you could say, is the destruction of civilization.

Or whatever you want to call it. So it's pretty serious, but it is not serious at that level, so it threatens the existence of civilization. And it is also the least neglected by these top 5 threats. There are many people who work with this, people are very aware of this. They write that it is $640 billion that is set aside to be used for climate change. It is still a big threat, but the biggest threat is not the climate change itself, but that they are speeding up the other, or what should I say, they are confusing the other existential threat. So these four points that I'm going to talk about, these four are maybe a bigger threat, but climate change, it's climate change that can worsen these threats. And that is also

something that must have to take seriously. But they also say that your personal carbon emissions are perhaps less important than some other things. For example, if you spend your career on finding new technologies that can remove carbon dioxide from the air in the future, then that would be much more important than having a very low carbon dioxide emission. So that was point number 5, climate change. Then, the next point is war between powers. A power is a country that has a lot of power,

such as the US, China, and so on. And it is a big risk for a war between the world's powers. And of course it can be very destructive. We have technologies like nuclear weapons, for example atomic bombs. We have biological weapons, autonomous weapons and a lot of other destructive technologies that can come, that are under development, for example nanorobots and such. And such a war can absolutely become the most destructive war in human history and it can absolutely threaten our existence.

And it has actually been very close to happening once. And that was the Cuban crisis in the 60s. And people have called it the most dangerous moment in human history. It was just one human mistake that was close to starting the Third World War between the USA and the Soviet Union. It was very close that a nuclear war started there and the risk of this, that the risk is like uncomfortable big and combined with how destructive it would be, it does this to one of the most acute issues, the problem to solve. So if you dedicate your life to this, and your career to this, then it is one of the best ways to improve the future of mankind, one of the best things you can do for humanity.

There are more important problems, and that there are more important problems is not because this is less serious, but because this problem is not very neglected. There are many people who work with this. And it is something that people are very aware of. But still, that was number four. War between the great powers. War between three... What was it? Point number three is very related to this. Point number three is nuclear weapons. So nuclear weapons, that is, atomic bombs and such. Since 1945, people have had access to technology that is capable of destroying our entire civilization. To destroy is to do nothing. To destroy, destroy, destroy, destroy.

And now we see a new armor with a nuclear weapon. I started to use the weapon to fight in battles, and you started to use it to fight in battles too, because you feel threatened, and I feel more threatened, and I use the weapon even more. It's a cap armor, you use the weapon to fight in battles with each other. You build more and more weapons. And that's how it is. We've started to get a new cap armor with the nuclear weapons. Because that happened during the Cold War, but after the Cold War we have managed to de-weak a lot of the nuclear weapons of the world. But now it is not that long, now we are entering a period where there is more cap armor again. It is absolutely conceivable that we will get a nuclear war in this century.

This century is from 2000 to 2100. Or well, within the coming 100 years, I guess you could say. And they set the risk to between 20 and 50 percent, which is a crazy high risk. Between 20 and 50 percent. It's a crazy high risk. It's a very high risk. And if it becomes a nuclear war, we are facing a huge catastrophe all over the world with nuclear winter. Nuclear winter is this so-called nuclear winter.

This period of cold and... Well, not really. It's like the worst that can happen. And billions of people would die. During the Cold War, there were many people who worked to prevent a nuclear war. And there are not as many people are working on that today. So here you have a very big chance

to positively influence the development. So if you dedicate your career, your life to this, you have a very big chance to influence, to do something good for humanity. You can work within the state, you can research key issues, or you can work with communication to work for different changes.

This is more neglected than the earlier points we have had. This is an important point, and it is important that people work to prevent nuclear weapons war. The second, the next worst existential threat to humanity are catastrophic pandemics. Pandemics have been some of the most deadly events in the world's history. We have had the plague, the Diger death, the Spanish disease and so on. And we had COVID-19 quite recently and that showed that we are very vulnerable. And fortunately, there was a sick pandemic, many people died, but the virus itself did not have a very high degree of mortality. It is not difficult to imagine a virus that is as contagious or even more contagious as COVID-19, but much more deadly. And that is absolutely theoretically possible.

And this technology is also developing very quickly with biological weapons. and that you can design a virus, you can edit the humanity. And that can be with the intention that, for example, a terrorist group or a state develops a pathogen, or it can be a mistake that it just happens to come out. So they believe that the risk of it leading to the end of humanity, that it would root out humanity, seems to be quite low. But that it risks being very destructive, that risk is very high. And it is also relatively neglected.

And even though we have had a pandemic recently, it's relatively neglected. But at the same time, there's a lot you can do. There are many different solutions, many different ways to work on this. So if you want to dedicate your career to this, you have a lot of different opportunities to do that and to do something good for humanity and our future. So that was number two are catastrophic pandemics. And then we have come to point number one, which is, according to this list, the biggest existential threat to humanity. And what is this? Well, it is actually artificial intelligence. Because the development within AI is very fast, explosive. And it's incredible that AI will get better than the human being on most things,

and maybe even get better at everything. And that's relatively soon, within the coming years, it's likely. And regardless of exactly what happens, it's also very likely that AI's influence will be very, very big on humanity. And that is of course very big potential advantages, but also very big potential risks. Because what happens when we are no longer the most intelligent on Earth. When AI becomes more intelligent than us, in all different areas, what happens then?

Will AI have its own goals? And what goals would that be? And will its goals be in line with our goals? Or are we risk losing control and risking our entire existence. And nobody knows the answers to these questions. But we can't just stand and watch and be passive. AI has the potential to change everything in the first place. The most important thing we can do is to make sure that we develop AI in a safe way.

It's very different from what experts think. If we ask experts, they think that we will have an existential catastrophe because of AI before the year 2100. Some think that it's 0.5% risk risk, others think it's a 50% risk. And that AI can lead to the end of humanity. Most people think the risk is quite small, but it's big enough to be taken seriously. And also this is very, very neglected. And that is also why this has the first place among these existential threats.

A damn difficult word to say. Existential threat. That it's so neglected, that's why it's in the first place. Because it is one of the biggest threats, but it's worked specifically on AI security. I personally take AI on the most serious level. AI will save us and make a fantastic future that is so crazy that we can't even imagine it. We can explore the space and I don't know, anything. Either that or it will be our end. So I personally think that it will be either one of these. I hope it will be the first one.

But yeah. So I think it is extremely important that we work a lot with AI security. And as I said, this is not to scare people. I wanted to make this episode to inform and maybe inspire and see that all this is important to take seriously and that you can do things to solve these problems and because you can do things to do something for the future of humanity. That's cool. So check out 80,000 hours.org or effective altruism if you want to know more about this. and they also have a lot of information about how to use your career to maximize your career to do the most for humanity and for civilization. So that was what I was going to say. And then I also wanted to to ask you some questions. So, do you want to have discussions in Swedish, for example about these topics?

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very fun to see people's development there. So check it out and otherwise I hope you have liked this episode, so we'll hear you soon again. Have a good one!