TLDW: Big Youtube channel Kurzgesagt released a video on the potential of humanity’s future that’s I think my favorite videos of theirs yet.
I have a pretty high bar for posting video content to LessWrong, but this video seemed better than most other videos in terms of capturing some of the things that make me interested in a lot of things on LessWrong.
Having skimmed their further reading section for this video, I’m happy to see how seriously this channel takes its research. And as became apparent from the video itself, it was supported by Open Philanthropy and FHI.
Other random things I learned about the channel:
The channel is headquartered in Munich.
“In 2013 an average video took about 150 hours. In 2015 it was about 250 hours. Now in 2021 we spend around 1200 hours per video.” (From their Patreon.)
Besides their free “kurzgesagt” videos, they also do commercial animation projects, and it’s a bizarre experience to see an ad (e.g. one for “Macorva”) with the same animation and narration as their “kurzgesagt” videos.
Watched this last night. Kurzgesagt is one of the greatest achievements YouTube has enabled, in my opinion.
As a LessWrong reader I had heard a lot of these ideas before, but part that surprised me was Scenario 1: Even if we “only” thrive about as long as other Earth mammals, the 200,000 years modern humans have been around is still only about 1/5th of the way through our story.
Inspiring and convincing long term thinking perspective.
Really enjoyed the population growth visualization that made concrete the “7% of all humans ever born are alive right now.” That means that 7% of all our genetic diversity as a species is available to us now. Of course this deweights compounding of mutations over multiple generations so it’s a different kind of diversity. But 7% of all the kinds of humans that are viable (can survive) are alive now. Same goes for cultures and organization structures and religions or belief frameworks. That’s a hopeful thought for me, inspired by this video, that the best ideas and systems of cooperating (economic systems) are likely alive and being tested right now.
I would say this is based on the Matt Ridley book The Rational Optimist? Rational Optimist Book | Matt Ridley
The count of “How many humans will be born” is a pretty useful number to engage in moral reasoning about how our actions today relate to the future. If we neglect carbon induced climate change because we wont be around for the worst of it, we are dooming potentially trillions of future humans to a lousy existance because of our lack of action. If we assume that their lives will have the same value as our own (We do have to be careful with this line of reasoning, it can have intolerable implications on a currently hot topic in the courts when taken to its logical ends), then the immorality of ignoring their plight is legion. Bad news.
Putting a number on it, lets us factor that into a utilitarian calculus. Good stuff. Kurzgesagt really do science communications the right way.
Nice! This seems very similar to the first[1] chapter of Ord—The Precipice. I wonder if they’ll follow with related content from that book or similar.
I don’t have the book to hand, may be a different chapter
It seems that the video was made in partnership with OpenPhil, so probably yes! Good initiative.