Thank you for a most thought provoking debate on our future, something I’ve done a lot of for the past 3 decades...

Thank you for another great upload and time well spent with you.

I know this is an old video, but when i'm bored i like to watch great debates, i love your work. On that i would like to add a little something to the part where you talk about what makes us different / what's the difference between us and other species i.e. how did we go from pray to predator. I think the best answer i could come with is this: we're the only ones, in the course of millions of years of evolution (or so we know), that said "it's enough" and actually managed to succeed to overcome our predators through what we call today: logical thinking. Then what made it so we actually COULD think like that, no idea of course.But i bet our brain physiology has a lot to do with it. Keep up the great debates, it's....refreshing, i guess is the word i'm looking for. :)

Great panel and discussion. Brilliant people.

Enjoyed, thank you more more

I could have watched 10 more hours of this ...

I think the answer to the question of which came first, language use or abstract thought, is: both. Because they are the same thing. The ability to symbolically represent concepts. I also think that the human version of super-sociability is a direct result of adding abstract thinking to the instinctual tribalism that social species possess. Without abstractions, the answer to the question "who is in my tribe?" has to be something like: "those that I live with" or "the ones that smell right". With abstraction, it can be something like: "anyone who has the same accent as me, and aren't faking it" or "the people who pierce and decorate their bodies in our style".

No matter how it appears from the outside, a computerized robot is as conscious as a rock or a corpse. My apologies if any rocks or corpses are offended.

'The defence industry understands what's happening and they're looking into this very deeply, yet the legislature can't take action and they're still in denial.' -Lindy Elkins-Tanton. If the DEFENCE INDUSTRY understands what's happening how is it possible for millions to think it's a hoax?

The mammoth de-extinction project is also one in which adaptation is more important than "resurrection." we know that isolated human populations varied immunologically, some resistant to certain parasites while others existed in denser populations and were thus able to live with communicable diseases. Any adaptive new mammoth will be largely in great part the Indian or south Asian elephant. megafauna turn out to be important parts of the flow of complex ecosystems, and the taiga and tundra is predicted to be more resilient from such a presence. Extinctions always have non-single causation and nonlinear causes and effects.. Polar bears have hollow, rather than white, fur, and have black skin. This structure was then one highly useful for insulation, harvesting sun's warmth, and to some extent, flotation. Having looked at organs, genes, some epigenetic switching, and other developmental and periodic mechanisms in living beings, one can understand that even in ourselves old and original uses of traits remain, if nearly latent. that's the beauty of evolution - it is never wasteful. Isolation from nature is inherently emotiocognitive isolation. Our emotions are adaptations to necessity, and the social womb which seems to be desired by all (both inordinately wealthy and those who are caught in the devastation of urban aberrance) very obviously is leading toward a dissociation far wider than what is regarded by most as empathic diminution. Killing at a distance is merely one facet of this trend toward a psychopathic solipsism. Our killing is unfortunately still related with pride or hubris when we were tiny mobile fragmented small groups (to which we remain adapted). Any population ecologist can tell you than humans are in NO danger of extinction, unless and until pretty much all other large, intelligent animals are extinguished by us. without discussing genetics and ecology, here, you can easily learn why not with just a few classes and creative attention. the world certainly needs LESS of us, as system signals of our excess have been clear at least since our population was 1/6 or less of the present number.

E-motions, are the persistence of feelings in memory linked to survival reactions, and if the "awareness waves", brain EEG operation frequencies are any indication, we operate in response-resonance with the environment and each other, to whom we are most "tuned". Machine emotion is digitally restricted to finite programming, so far, intermittently projecting the programme assumptions.

How do we get TED talks of this calibre onto media such as free to air TV (every channel simultaneously!) as well as the new media. It feels very sad that our species has so much knowledge and it is not getting to the people who should be made aware and spurred into action.

I think Crow's point that "...our thinking is inadequate to our present role as a dominant species" could have been the TL;DR of this entire discussion. Humans have not handled this blade with due caution, which is understandable, to a point. Perhaps we are such an effective virus due to our particular mix of advanced intellect and base instinct of individual self-preservation. In light of the 100,000 years we've been around, to have a front row seat to the potential knockout rounds of the fight between the intellect of the dominant species and the instincts we've always possessed is pretty wild, however it may turn out.

Svante Paabo has an extremely soothing voice.

I totally agree with the statement made at 13:50 about language being a key element in human's development. As i often say, the idea is making the word and the words are making the ideas. That is why it is sooooooo important to learn syntax and to develop proper language skills... Semantics is fundamental to the human experience and thinking is intimately linked in our daily lives. Education is fundamental and is important in these days of pseudo-science, techno-babbles and political unrests if we, as a specie, are to get our act together and grow up and stop messing our environment and each others, let alone slowing down the destruction of life on earth. Ignorance is a dumb luxury we can't afford.

Dr. Ian Malcolm: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't think about whether they should." Dr. Alan Grant: "..you have a *neanderthal?*"

where are the great debates 2016,2017,2018,2019??????????? why did it stop? if not show me links

The problem 2 me about projecting force 2 kill the bad at 30:00 is that it could go the other way could b at the service of the bad 2 kill the good

every single idea expressed by any of these speakers is an entire philosophy unto itself

The uncertainty is why we need to look to the past extinctions.

Where does the value of c come in. First we have to understand the value of c is some kind of ratio. Usually we associate distance to time but it is a ratio and that's why it is a constant rater than some kind of viable variable. But varying the ratio is what it says about matter and space. That's why it is called space time. Geometric pattern ratio. What geometry is the one producing that to get the value. If something is embedded in ice for eons and resurrected. What is life then extinction.

24:00 how do we get these nerds outside?

The planet is endangered , we have to be worried , and we should be ..The question is , can we adapt with any circumstances that could occur when the time comes to a great event that would endanger the planet and the existence of all its inhabitants ?

I would worry about “projecting force/ killing at the distance” these days. We know that we are the species that kills their own kind. We know we can project excessive amounts of force now, over great distances. We should be aware that more often than not, the force is applied not with careful consideration but on the basis of lies. On the “artificial intelligence”. I disagree highly, even on label “smart”. When was the last time your smart phone or smart TV asked you: “Why”? I am sure some of you would enjoy a pet project and tweaking it, but by large, people do not want to explain themselves, they want an obedient slave to do work for them. The notion of a machine having different opinion and disobeying would spell disaster for such device. Even if we were to succeed in creating such machines, with or without emotions, how would you expect it to react in coexistence with irrational creatures (us) posing constant eminent threat to those machines, itself and the rest of the species? I have a lot of respect for the people that raised valid questions here and for what I observed answered correctly, but...consider yourselves endangered species, particularly in USA. You know you go against the government stated policies, you know that media is not under your control and therefore you are unlikely to have massive support and that dissenting can have hard if not lethal consequences. The science, machinery, weapons, spying and surveillance apparatus is not in your control, not even in the hands of average people. Paranoid, sadistic, murderous, financially motivated subspecies are wielding the power currently. Education would be the way, but as you mentioned here, empathy is on downward trend , human element and potential has long ago been subjugated and shackled, amidst technological progress, more then ever majority is fighting for mere survival and existence. Progress is evident, but in which direction? I doubt our own intelligence and with that, chances of bright future. I am not sure we have enough time to educate sufficient numbers to derail the train accelerating towards the cliff. I expect your leaders know that too, which would explain ludicrous increases to military budgets amazing for pending resource wars. In a free, intelligent society, discussions like this would be on prime time TV. Look where I found you?

so where was the debate???

I'm afraid if we cloned a Neaderthal, we'll elect him President

"I don't think we're optimized to be any particular kind of creature..." Yeesh.

One phrase I've always thrown out there "teachers should not ask how intelligent are you?" but rather "how are you intelligent" I think some of these would get what I mean :)

Discriminating what is right or wrong is as much a human nature as doing right or wrong. Isn't consciously biasing towards only right or wrong against going Nature. Wouldn't that therefore be manipulating Nature resulting in unknown impact?

And theeeeere we go to commercials

How can one compare biological and synthetic organisms, we have no examples of what the Apex of ither one look like.

If there were self-programming AI machines why on earth would they develop emotions... emotions are ineffective and unpractical...

I'm watching this 10 days before COP26. An interesting data point that went entirely unreported is that our atmosphere reached 500 ppm CO2e in May 2021.

Mine (product etc.) safety did not come from legislation. It came from technology and the wealth to have the luxury of making it a priority over marginal production in developed countries. The legislation came afterward so that politicians could claim credit.

Lawrence, Why should we even think that machines do not have emotions right now? If it is all a matter of the combinations of the parts to make up the "qualia" of being a machine, then any machine has its qualia and therefore can be experiencing its own sort of emotion. Maybe this is in the form of friction of the machine, and how well the parts go together is part of its emotional content. But to only ascribe emotion to some far off machine (robot) in the future is a fallacious statement. If it was true then some sort of quantum jump in machine qualia would have to happen to make this new breed of machine (robot) become MORE machine emotional. The whole reason the panel is "discussing" emotion is BECAUSE it is reference to human emotion. When will or if robots will ever have emotion...who says any machine does not have it right now? We just are looking for a machine that can reflect THEIR emotion in terms that humans can perceive. You are going down a rabbit hole catch-22 scenario.

I've watched too many hours of Lawrence Krauss to be counted and have never found anything he said, be it to do with physics or atheism, that I woud disagree with. In this discussion however, at the very end, I find his 'shit happens' attitude to the imminent extinction of the polar bears, mostly by our hand, very sad.

Polar bear extinction? Presumably a loss of a species to the natural world itself may not be significant. This is also something else about species, more than just objects for scientific study - their cultural significance. There are numerous animals popular in culture (Western?) such as tigers, lions, dolphins, elephants, giraffes and many others we grew up with. Anthropomorphised in animations and life histories explored in nature documentaries. Surely the loss of even one of these cultural icons would be devastating. Neanderthal and proud!

Our effectiveness of killing at a distance, has been the key stone of how we got here.

the upside of "not being exposed to nature" is that people will be more adapted to an enclosed ecosystem such as space or lunar stations. Funny that no one on the panel would speak of that evolution and as an escape hatch from extinction.

Short answer no and no. Indeed, we should not dabble in resurrection or extinction prevention unless it is absolutely necessary. Too many people have the naive approach of taking it as some sort of principle. In the confines of a laboratory its perfectly fine.

I'm not sure humans became predators only in recent times. Our closest relatives the chimps are formidable hunters and I think it is possible that humans have been omnivores for at least the common ancestor of humans and the other apes.

It is interesting that most of the critics could not make it to part two, lol.

Enjoyed this, but a discussion about extinction without the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is insane. Dawkins would of murdered on this discussion.

Can artificial intelligence be truly possible? I think the real question is -can humans fully understand intelligence . Can a machine truly understand and replicate itself.. I think not

With all due respect, there are 2 kinds of extinction. 1] Is like a person dying with no children and no other living relative either. 2]The other is like a person dying with a large number of children. So, at least 1 species of dinosaur did not go totally extinct, it became a bird and its descendants are still alive. So, did Homo Erectus go extinct, or did it become Homo Sapiens.

29:12 wth is that word? Foocoian? Phauxcoian? I cant google it.

On my thought on robots as dogs, it easily could be switched that humans become the dog to robots.

What if we clone a Neanderthal and it turns out to be a lot smarter than us ?

The polarbears population is growing.

It's funny when they so strongly downplay the current predicament even when the extinction event we have set off is closest to the PT extinction boundary (and that is the "big one" of the known extinctions, worse than the asteroid by a long shot). One of the guests said "It's faster" but she didn't mention how fast, which is an increase in atmospheric CO2 levels at a rate that is 10 times faster than back then. In other words, we have practically set off an environmental bomb that could well destroy us. We just cannot know since there is no perfect analogy to our current predicament in the fossil record - it's just too rapid. Also, I noticed that not one of them talked about the core problem of modern civilization - overpopulation and consumption. It's as if the topic is so taboo that when you get together a panel of very obviously brilliant people talking about extinctions and our future they won't even speak of it. That's a very powerful degree of denial, and I guess it's no wonder it's the elephant in the room in almost every discussion about humanity's future (gotta spray those babies out after all! We must always grow and consume more - like cancer).

Lets fix what meteors cause. Brilliant

22:00 same response as ASIMOV......Caves of Steel ... i don't want to explain ...who knows , knows....the rest read the Book..!!

Mr Krauss is a giant!

extinction, does not mean annihilation, but extinction is evolution of species by natural selection. our human specie will evolve to another form of species and the planet will be probably a better place to live in

Awesome, but how about a realist on the stage, I'm not interested in optimistic or pessimistic viewpoints, only realist, that reflect reality.projectiles led to the ultimate projectile, the nuclear weapon. Knowing the record on close calls, moments away from nuclear winter several times, knowing the reality of low quality, unintelligent leaders, with the ability to launch nuclear weapons, I come to the opposite conclusion as the optimist. Don't think climate change is complicated at all, it's all about losing habitat, if enough animals and plants we depend on can't adapt and go extinct, so will we. Recreating the conditions of 65 million years ago at a much faster rate, it would truly be a miracle if we survive. Quite focusing on the greatness of humans and dwell on our shortcomings if you don't want humans to go extinct. We possess the potential to be great creatures, but so far have failed miserably, if you take an honest look at the world around you, and an honest look at our history. Should be a discussion about how to rally the world to do battle to save humanity from these very real threats, about how to change a political system that doesn't care about anything other than greed and power, if we don't shed and destroy this immoral political system we are 100% doomed=reality. And we don't have a lot of time, the clock is ticking. Tick-Tock.

How come all these great speakers are not in CONGRESS or SENATE or UNO

I hope that robots become the new dog to humans. The robots that will progress will only be those that can live happily within the human condition and provide utility to humans. Extend senses, extend body capability, extend our realm in the world.

if polar bears go extinct and you clone 100 polar bears from cells saved from 100 different polar bears, who will teach the first polar bear how to be a polar bear? a polar bear needs polar bear parenting.

All animals are sentient and want to live. The ability to figure out our origins has nothing to do with sentience.

Paabo always has something meaningful to say. I wouldn't have tuned in if Paabo wasn't on the panel. Class act, ALWAYS. The rest? Good lord! I mean, to date the MANY species that have gone extinct in very recent history were not victims of climate change, and "WE" didn't kill them. Humans did kill them to extinction, yes. That and there is the problem. If you can't talk about human behavior intelligently and honestly, don't talk about it at all. I mean, "the legislature doesn't take action"????? The last potus condoned the murder of whales. And, you jumped up pseudo intellects - the murders of elephants and many other fellow creatures in multiple African countries IS illegal (i.e., it was "legislated" as illegal by those governments). YET, humans are poaching them at an alarming rate. Again, if you can't honestly and intelligently discuss human behaviors, then don't bother.

Emotions are caused by incorrect assumptions rather than simply on facts. Machines will never know emotions

is not a debate when everyone involved share the same potion, this is not healthy information in most part.

12:50 or the fake lady bugs that killed all the real ones. Now we’ve got these orange ones that bite. All the red real ones are gone in Canada.

Clone it, play with it, learn from it, false senses of piety do nothing for us. A few animals brought back from extinction or created as a new species are not immoral they just would be as we are.

I can answer to the question they pose: "In which way robots won't have the same emotions?" Well...they won't experience human emotions the same way as we do because our bodies are made of emotions. There is a spiritual map, formed of flow of energy and chakras, your liver has emotions in it...the way you feel is imprinted in your body. Every cell is a reflection of you. Therefore, robots not having the same physical morphology, they will maybe experience emotions "out of their body", or conceptualized, through circuits, but they won't have any cells which would carry the emotion. They won't get sick as we do. Wish I could have been there to answer to this question which is so easy for an artist, a fan of esoterism or a dominant right brain person. Thank you.

The polar bear is not going extinct. The population is growing. And the polar bear is just a variant breed of black bear anyway. It's a recessive gene. It's just like the thing about human redheads going "extinct".

Sweaty Ball Sac has a partner,his name is little weeny. Both of these men are great philosophers,and both reside in the white house.

Will AI created androids/robotic have empathy...?

Polar bears are not going extinct! The Eskimos say there are double the number from 30 years ago. 😇

Basically there are humans with mutations that are better than the common human but the question is does it make them better survivors as the neanderthal story stated. Seriously, there are races now that are so superior than the rest that let say climate change would find hard to make extinct 🏋️‍♀️

I like Lawrence Krauss but this event was too much all over the place. Only the volcano lady talked about extinctions. Everyone else was improvising rather incompetently.

@36 min mark they need Guy McPherson to detail what is about to happen in a relativistic short time period that will kill perhaps all of man kind and the planet.

Polar bear extinct? Are you kidding!

How can these people not see the forest Because of the trees? So sad! I have time to kill so why not? I always learn something no matter what I watch.. these are really good people that mean well..they are just to stationary and generic in their so called quest for advancement!! Beam me up Scotty!!

Lol he said polar bears are not sentient 🤡

There are only two possibilities: either God made everything or you are a product of chance, a random conglomeration of chemicals. Personally, I believe what it says in Romans, that people are willingly ignorant of God, as He is obvious from the genius of creation. Five fingers on each hand and you are an atheist? God does not believe in atheists and neither do I. Yet, Jesus Christ is the light of the world.