What seems like forever ago, I had lunch with Yudkowsky during Manifest 2023. He told me that he thought there was a 99% chance that AI would cause human extinction. That was the beginning of a year-long hiatus from the rationalist community. It simply brought too much anxiety. The cruel march of time continues nonetheless, and I have been forced to accept that existential risk is a topic that I must engage with, at my peril.
It is bittersweet to be human. Our cognition allows us to experience beauty, find love, make friends; yet, it also brings us awareness of our own mortality. Over the past months, I've been exploring what happens to a person's psychology when they are faced with "the end", especially on a civilizational level. This is indeed a deeply personal journey for me, but the topic is universal, so I hope that my findings are meaningful to you. AI risk is what specifically motivated this journey, but the lessons are nonetheless applicable to any form of civilizational-scale risk.
There is indeed no "correct" emotional response to existential risk. Neither is there a correct motivation: some people are more concerned with their own end than that of civilization, and vice versa.
Yudkowsky has indeed written about his take on how he copes with the end of the world. I think his take is perfectly valid. My name is also not Yudkowsky, and I think that he and I have very different minds. What brought me back to engaging with existential risk was not reading rationalist theory, but rather consuming media, finding love, and making friends. I have more doom and more hope than I have ever had before.
My goal here is to provide a list of sources in media that are relevant to this subject, providing different perspectives in order to inform you on your own emotional thinking. There are plenty of intelligent, competent people working on practical and logical ways to reduce existential risk, so you won't find any discussion of that here. My work aims to cover the emotional gap that I often find at the rationalist spaces I attend.
You are Hardly Alone
Do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways...
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
“But,” you will reply, “it is not death — not even painful and premature death — that we are bothering about. Of course the chance of that is not new. What is new is that the atomic bomb may finally and totally destroy civilization itself. The lights may be put out for ever.”
This brings us much nearer to the real point; but let me try to make clear exactly what I think that point is... The real answer is known to almost everyone who has even a smattering of science; yet, oddly enough, it is hard ever mentioned. And the real answer (almost beyond doubt) is that, with or without atomic bombs, the whole story is going to end in NOTHING. The astronomers hold out no hope that this planet is going to be permanently inhabitable. The physicists hold out no hope that organic life is going to be a permanent possibility in any part of the material universe... Nature is a sinking ship... Nature does not, in the long run, favour life... It will have been an accidental flicker, and there will be no one even to remember it. No doubt atomic bombs may cut its duration on this present planet shorter that it might have been; but the whole thing, even if it lasted for billions of years, must be so infinitesimally short in relation to the oceans of dead time which preceded and follow it that I cannot feel excited about its curtailment.
On Living in Atomic Age by C. S. Lewis
Lewis, the great Christian apologist, originally concluded this essay by using the absurdity of this situation to argue that "Nature is not all" and that one should believe in God. But if you, like me, do not believe in a Christian god, the first part of the essay still functions as a great reminder to us that we are not the first people to face an existential crisis. We live in a bubble; I assume most of the audience lives a relatively wealthy, healthy, and comfortable life by historical standards. Most human lives have been "poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (thanks Hobbes); even today, life continues to be precarious in many parts of the world. If we can recognize our situation, we realize that we are not on this journey alone. Much art and discourse has been produced about the great apocalyptic end of civilization. 93% of all humans are dead, and excepting sudden and unexpected deaths, they either accepted what was coming or struggled until the very end. Every great empire has fallen. In nature, nothing is permanent.
Cultures have created concepts like "heaven", "hell", "the afterlife", and "the apocalypse" as ways of dealing with the inevitable end of people and civilizations; as ways of coping with the psychological struggle that occurs when thinking about the end.
The other takeaway I get from this piece is to do things that make you more human. If this is all going to end anyways, we should take some time to engage in the things that interest us and keep us happy. It's possible that one is totally obsessed with reducing x-risk but at the same time is so dominated by anxiety over the end of civilization that he is paralyzed from actually taking any action (this is at least partly self-confessional). Going for a walk, making new friends, and seeing live music are ways of reducing such anxiety and could also give you space to think about new ideas. Having a (mostly) balanced lifestyle will make you a more effective person, and we need lots of effective people working on these issues.
The End is... Liberating?
Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011) is a science fiction film in which a rogue planet (Melancholia) collides with Earth. The film is primarily a character study, following a family as they are stuck in a remote castle, and focusing on how each person reacts to the situation.
(spoilers follow)
Justine, one of the two protagonist sisters, has severe and profound depression. She is a fascinating character to me—she begins the film in an almost catatonic state, being barely able to eat, walk, or bathe due to her depression. She feels misunderstood and out of sync with the people around her, who are there to attend her wedding and are telling her to simply "be happy" (projection, in my view; they'd like her to be happy to ease their own anxieties). Yet as the movie progresses and the collision of Melancholia with Earth becomes inevitable, she becomes liberated and empowered (sexually and philosophically). Justine possesses an utterly nihilistic worldview: she believes (in her words, knows) that humans are alone in the universe, and that humans are a force for evil. The ending of the movie in which Melancholia destroys Earth is ultimately vindicating for her worldview, as humanity is destroyed. She accepts their fate with a cool, nonchalant demeanour, as the people around her struggle to find meaning and ways to deny the inevitable.
Claire, the other sister, represents a neurotic response to the world ending. She is not cool and accepting like Justine, but rather desperately clings on to any facts and people that bring her comfort, even if they contradict what she knows deep down to be true. Her husband John, representing science and rationality, says that his scientists have calculated that Melancholia would fly by Earth and disappear forever. Later into the day as he realizes that he was wrong, he kills himself, leaving Claire and their son without so much as a goodbye.
Claire desperately wants Justine to participate in rituals together (such as sitting together on the balcony and smoking cigarettes) but Justine sees her sister's reaction for what it is (coping, an irrational way to find agency in the face of the inevitable) and quickly dismisses the plan as "shit" (Humans indeed try to find comfort through small things, like making sure a funeral looks nice, as a way to find agency when faced with difficult realities, like a loved one passing. However I find this to be a positive fact and personally disagree with Justine's nihilistic view). The movie ends with Justine building a "magic cave" with Leo (Claire's son) out of sticks, as a way to comfort. We see Melancholia obliterating Earth as Justine, Claire, and Leo sit in this stick hut as Claire has a nervous breakdown while Justine stares cooly ahead.
The tent, as well as John's suicide, captures the movie's message that emotions ultimately triumph over rationality. Justine's depression is so severe, so profound, that through sheer force of will she creates a planet that destroys Earth (in my reading); it is also Justine's magic cave, not rationality, that provides comfort to Leo in their final moments.
Do I agree with the message of this movie? Well, I see it for what it is—more of a metaphor for major depression than saying we should be like Claire. A comparison to reality would be a forced one, or at least inaccurate. We are facing large-scale societal challenges, and I do ultimately think a level-headed acceptance of the facts is what is required to find our way out. But this level-headedness should come from a place of wanting to be maximally effective to overcome the challenge, rather than lying down and waiting for the end to happen. Most humans want civilization to continue existing, rather than viewing civilization as deeply evil and unable to be redeemed, as Claire does. The polycrisis—AI, climate change, and fraying institutions—can indeed be framed as a planet hurtling at vast speeds towards Earth, but we should not forget that these are all human institutions. AI labs and governments are composed of humans that can be influenced to make different decisions. Humans got us into this situation, and humans can get us out. The future is not inevitable.
Slavoj Žižek likens Claire to Greta Thunberg. From her famous speech at the UN: "You come to us young people for hope... how dare you?... We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money." Greta is the antithesis of the coping strategies that people have. Young people are supposed to represent hope for the future. "It's bad, but at least we're doing something about it". "It's bad, but it gives me hope that at least we have bright young minds working on it", you may tell yourself. Greta collapses that narrative. Here is a 16-year-old that provides us no comfort and no message beyond "the situation is bad and people are going to die".
Hamsters
Here's an anecdote that I've been thinking about a lot lately.
In psychiatric circles, there is a story told about a man whose wife was diagnosed with acute breast cancer and who died three months later; the husband survived her death unscathed, being able to talk coolly about his traumatic last moments with her —how? Was he a cold, distant, and unfeeling monster? Soon, his friends noticed that, while talking about his deceased wife, he always held a hamster in his hands, her pet object and now his fetish, the embodied disavowal of her death. No wonder that, when, a couple of months later, the hamster died, the man broke down and had to be hospitalized for a long period, treated for acute depression. So, when we are bombarded by claims that in our post-ideological cynical era nobody believes in the proclaimed ideals, when we encounter a person who claims he has been cured of any beliefs, accepting social reality the way it really is, one should always counter such claims with the question: OK, but where is your hamster — the fetish which enabled you to (pretend to) accept reality ‘the way it is?’
Slavoj Žižek
Zizek's point here is that when faced with a difficult fact, we may find comfort in certain things (objects, activities; even, say, working on x-risk) as a way to continue existing "as normal" without needing to acknowledge the reality. This works up until the object or activity becomes unavailable, which truly triggers the proper grieving process (grief for humanity, loss, etc.).
Furthermore, Zizek points out that humans continue to believe in illusions, or at least act as if they do, even if they know that they are indeed illusions. He tells the story of Niels Bohr hanging a horseshoe above his door for luck: "a fellow scientist exclaimed that he did not share the superstitious belief that horse-shoes kept evil spirits away, to which Bohr snapped back, ‘I don’t believe in it either. I have it there because I was told that it works even when one doesn’t believe in it’."
So, I ask you, where is your hamster? I certainly have many, probably enough to open a pet store.
Parting Words
I have presented different reactions and analysis on how people react to "the end", whether it means their own death or civilization-level existential risk. As you can tell, there are myriad possibilities, some of which are even contradictory; I do not mean to point to one and say, "this is the correct way", as I am not in charge of your emotions and can't tell you how to feel. I can only hope to provide a clearer understanding of these possibilities, and say that in the ideal case, we keep a cool head and work on reducing existential risk. As CS Lewis (and Melancholia) points out, this whole project of civilization was always going to end in extinction; but between then and now, hopefully we are able to maintain a sense of humanity and dignity until the end.
A final note on engaging with "humanness". The largest misconception in our online age is to assume that people will become empowered and "do the right thing" when given access to the right facts and information: an autistic, Kantian view of the nature of the human subject. History has shown us that this is wrong. You need not look any further than the ubiquity of short-form video and consumerism to understand that humans would rather engage with distractions than the difficult realities of their lives (I am indeed critiquing myself here). This is the critical point I want to make clear to the rationalist community: you cannot convince society to get on your side if you simply shout "we are all going to die" from the rooftops. This is fine, but we must do more. You must participate in the generation of culture. The good news is that this will be nothing new, and there are established practices (in some cases going back millennia): the production of tragedies, movies, writing, songs, and poetry. Cultural artifacts that one can point at and discuss, while avoiding the short-circuiting, thought-terminating, mind-killing realization that you, specifically, will die.
We simply must engage in what it means to be human. Otherwise, we are no better than machines.
What seems like forever ago, I had lunch with Yudkowsky during Manifest 2023. He told me that he thought there was a 99% chance that AI would cause human extinction. That was the beginning of a year-long hiatus from the rationalist community. It simply brought too much anxiety. The cruel march of time continues nonetheless, and I have been forced to accept that existential risk is a topic that I must engage with, at my peril.
It is bittersweet to be human. Our cognition allows us to experience beauty, find love, make friends; yet, it also brings us awareness of our own mortality. Over the past months, I've been exploring what happens to a person's psychology when they are faced with "the end", especially on a civilizational level. This is indeed a deeply personal journey for me, but the topic is universal, so I hope that my findings are meaningful to you. AI risk is what specifically motivated this journey, but the lessons are nonetheless applicable to any form of civilizational-scale risk.
There is indeed no "correct" emotional response to existential risk. Neither is there a correct motivation: some people are more concerned with their own end than that of civilization, and vice versa.
Yudkowsky has indeed written about his take on how he copes with the end of the world. I think his take is perfectly valid. My name is also not Yudkowsky, and I think that he and I have very different minds. What brought me back to engaging with existential risk was not reading rationalist theory, but rather consuming media, finding love, and making friends. I have more doom and more hope than I have ever had before.
My goal here is to provide a list of sources in media that are relevant to this subject, providing different perspectives in order to inform you on your own emotional thinking. There are plenty of intelligent, competent people working on practical and logical ways to reduce existential risk, so you won't find any discussion of that here. My work aims to cover the emotional gap that I often find at the rationalist spaces I attend.
You are Hardly Alone
Lewis, the great Christian apologist, originally concluded this essay by using the absurdity of this situation to argue that "Nature is not all" and that one should believe in God. But if you, like me, do not believe in a Christian god, the first part of the essay still functions as a great reminder to us that we are not the first people to face an existential crisis. We live in a bubble; I assume most of the audience lives a relatively wealthy, healthy, and comfortable life by historical standards. Most human lives have been "poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (thanks Hobbes); even today, life continues to be precarious in many parts of the world. If we can recognize our situation, we realize that we are not on this journey alone. Much art and discourse has been produced about the great apocalyptic end of civilization. 93% of all humans are dead, and excepting sudden and unexpected deaths, they either accepted what was coming or struggled until the very end. Every great empire has fallen. In nature, nothing is permanent.
Cultures have created concepts like "heaven", "hell", "the afterlife", and "the apocalypse" as ways of dealing with the inevitable end of people and civilizations; as ways of coping with the psychological struggle that occurs when thinking about the end.
The other takeaway I get from this piece is to do things that make you more human. If this is all going to end anyways, we should take some time to engage in the things that interest us and keep us happy. It's possible that one is totally obsessed with reducing x-risk but at the same time is so dominated by anxiety over the end of civilization that he is paralyzed from actually taking any action (this is at least partly self-confessional). Going for a walk, making new friends, and seeing live music are ways of reducing such anxiety and could also give you space to think about new ideas. Having a (mostly) balanced lifestyle will make you a more effective person, and we need lots of effective people working on these issues.
The End is... Liberating?
Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011) is a science fiction film in which a rogue planet (Melancholia) collides with Earth. The film is primarily a character study, following a family as they are stuck in a remote castle, and focusing on how each person reacts to the situation.
(spoilers follow)
Justine, one of the two protagonist sisters, has severe and profound depression. She is a fascinating character to me—she begins the film in an almost catatonic state, being barely able to eat, walk, or bathe due to her depression. She feels misunderstood and out of sync with the people around her, who are there to attend her wedding and are telling her to simply "be happy" (projection, in my view; they'd like her to be happy to ease their own anxieties). Yet as the movie progresses and the collision of Melancholia with Earth becomes inevitable, she becomes liberated and empowered (sexually and philosophically). Justine possesses an utterly nihilistic worldview: she believes (in her words, knows) that humans are alone in the universe, and that humans are a force for evil. The ending of the movie in which Melancholia destroys Earth is ultimately vindicating for her worldview, as humanity is destroyed. She accepts their fate with a cool, nonchalant demeanour, as the people around her struggle to find meaning and ways to deny the inevitable.
Claire, the other sister, represents a neurotic response to the world ending. She is not cool and accepting like Justine, but rather desperately clings on to any facts and people that bring her comfort, even if they contradict what she knows deep down to be true. Her husband John, representing science and rationality, says that his scientists have calculated that Melancholia would fly by Earth and disappear forever. Later into the day as he realizes that he was wrong, he kills himself, leaving Claire and their son without so much as a goodbye.
Claire desperately wants Justine to participate in rituals together (such as sitting together on the balcony and smoking cigarettes) but Justine sees her sister's reaction for what it is (coping, an irrational way to find agency in the face of the inevitable) and quickly dismisses the plan as "shit" (Humans indeed try to find comfort through small things, like making sure a funeral looks nice, as a way to find agency when faced with difficult realities, like a loved one passing. However I find this to be a positive fact and personally disagree with Justine's nihilistic view). The movie ends with Justine building a "magic cave" with Leo (Claire's son) out of sticks, as a way to comfort. We see Melancholia obliterating Earth as Justine, Claire, and Leo sit in this stick hut as Claire has a nervous breakdown while Justine stares cooly ahead.
The tent, as well as John's suicide, captures the movie's message that emotions ultimately triumph over rationality. Justine's depression is so severe, so profound, that through sheer force of will she creates a planet that destroys Earth (in my reading); it is also Justine's magic cave, not rationality, that provides comfort to Leo in their final moments.
Do I agree with the message of this movie? Well, I see it for what it is—more of a metaphor for major depression than saying we should be like Claire. A comparison to reality would be a forced one, or at least inaccurate. We are facing large-scale societal challenges, and I do ultimately think a level-headed acceptance of the facts is what is required to find our way out. But this level-headedness should come from a place of wanting to be maximally effective to overcome the challenge, rather than lying down and waiting for the end to happen. Most humans want civilization to continue existing, rather than viewing civilization as deeply evil and unable to be redeemed, as Claire does. The polycrisis—AI, climate change, and fraying institutions—can indeed be framed as a planet hurtling at vast speeds towards Earth, but we should not forget that these are all human institutions. AI labs and governments are composed of humans that can be influenced to make different decisions. Humans got us into this situation, and humans can get us out. The future is not inevitable.
Slavoj Žižek likens Claire to Greta Thunberg. From her famous speech at the UN: "You come to us young people for hope... how dare you?... We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money." Greta is the antithesis of the coping strategies that people have. Young people are supposed to represent hope for the future. "It's bad, but at least we're doing something about it". "It's bad, but it gives me hope that at least we have bright young minds working on it", you may tell yourself. Greta collapses that narrative. Here is a 16-year-old that provides us no comfort and no message beyond "the situation is bad and people are going to die".
Hamsters
Here's an anecdote that I've been thinking about a lot lately.
Zizek's point here is that when faced with a difficult fact, we may find comfort in certain things (objects, activities; even, say, working on x-risk) as a way to continue existing "as normal" without needing to acknowledge the reality. This works up until the object or activity becomes unavailable, which truly triggers the proper grieving process (grief for humanity, loss, etc.).
Furthermore, Zizek points out that humans continue to believe in illusions, or at least act as if they do, even if they know that they are indeed illusions. He tells the story of Niels Bohr hanging a horseshoe above his door for luck: "a fellow scientist exclaimed that he did not share the superstitious belief that horse-shoes kept evil spirits away, to which Bohr snapped back, ‘I don’t believe in it either. I have it there because I was told that it works even when one doesn’t believe in it’."
So, I ask you, where is your hamster? I certainly have many, probably enough to open a pet store.
Parting Words
I have presented different reactions and analysis on how people react to "the end", whether it means their own death or civilization-level existential risk. As you can tell, there are myriad possibilities, some of which are even contradictory; I do not mean to point to one and say, "this is the correct way", as I am not in charge of your emotions and can't tell you how to feel. I can only hope to provide a clearer understanding of these possibilities, and say that in the ideal case, we keep a cool head and work on reducing existential risk. As CS Lewis (and Melancholia) points out, this whole project of civilization was always going to end in extinction; but between then and now, hopefully we are able to maintain a sense of humanity and dignity until the end.
A final note on engaging with "humanness". The largest misconception in our online age is to assume that people will become empowered and "do the right thing" when given access to the right facts and information: an autistic, Kantian view of the nature of the human subject. History has shown us that this is wrong. You need not look any further than the ubiquity of short-form video and consumerism to understand that humans would rather engage with distractions than the difficult realities of their lives (I am indeed critiquing myself here). This is the critical point I want to make clear to the rationalist community: you cannot convince society to get on your side if you simply shout "we are all going to die" from the rooftops. This is fine, but we must do more. You must participate in the generation of culture. The good news is that this will be nothing new, and there are established practices (in some cases going back millennia): the production of tragedies, movies, writing, songs, and poetry. Cultural artifacts that one can point at and discuss, while avoiding the short-circuiting, thought-terminating, mind-killing realization that you, specifically, will die.
We simply must engage in what it means to be human. Otherwise, we are no better than machines.