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0:54

For me to live an ethical life, it's not enough

0:56

just to say, I'm gonna obey some

0:58

simple moral rules like don't steal,

1:01

don't cheat, don't hurt other people, you

1:03

have to think also about what can I

1:05

do positively given the advantages

1:08

that I have and the problems

1:10

that we have in the world? It's often

1:12

easier to see how you can relieve suffering

1:15

than how you can boost happiness. You

1:17

know, some people say, you should

1:20

be a negative utilitarian and only

1:22

focus on reducing pain and suffering.

1:24

I don't think that's right, at least theoretically,

1:27

it's not right because if you

1:29

could greatly increase the happiness of

1:31

large number of people and do

1:33

that without causing any suffering

1:35

or maybe cause, you know, mild headaches to

1:37

few people, clearly that would be the right thing

1:39

to do. So it's not that

1:41

the positive doesn't count at all in

1:43

the scales. It's just that given

1:45

the way the world is, the negative

1:48

pain and suffering is so much more

1:50

apparent and in a way,

1:52

so much easier to prevent in

1:55

the sense that we know what we could do that would

1:57

prevent it, maybe hard to bring that about. But

1:59

sometimes in terms of making people happier,

2:01

we don't even really know how

2:03

to do that. The

2:14

rich roll podcast. Hey,

2:20

everybody. Welcome to the podcast. My

2:22

guest today is just an absolute living

2:24

legend. His name is Peter Singer

2:27

and he is perhaps the world's most

2:29

influential whole living philosopher.

2:31

A grandfather of both the

2:33

modern animal rights and effective

2:35

altruism movements, Peter is a

2:38

professor or bioethics at Princeton, and

2:41

Laureate professor at the University of

2:43

Melbourne. He's published several books

2:45

on our moral responsibility to

2:47

alleviate suffering, including

2:50

the highly influential book animal liberation

2:52

and a book called The Life You Can Save,

2:54

both of which are books we cover in this conversation.

2:57

I should say, as an aside and

3:00

as a gift to our listeners, Peter

3:02

has very generously offered

3:04

to provide everybody with a free

3:06

cop be of his book, the life you can save

3:09

to anyone who wants one. To

3:11

get your copy, visit the life you can

3:13

save dot org slash rich role

3:15

or click the link in the description below.

3:18

Free copies are available for

3:20

US residents only, but all listeners

3:22

regardless of location can download the

3:24

ebook or audiobook for free.

3:26

And the point that I'm really driving at

3:28

is that donations to Peter

3:30

Save Lives Fund can also be made by

3:33

this link. And all donations there will

3:35

be matched dollar for dollar up to twenty

3:37

five thousand dollars. Thanks to a very

3:39

generous anonymous

3:41

donor. I love meeting Peter.

3:43

I love talking to him. I really hope you enjoy

3:45

this conversation. It's all coming up really

3:47

quick. But first,

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7:11

Okay. Peter Singer. Peter's

7:14

work has had just a profound influence

7:16

on my life. So it was

7:18

an absolute honor to host this

7:20

discussion, a discussion about

7:23

the ethical obligations we

7:25

have to others, to

7:27

human and nonhuman lives alike

7:29

and have these ideas

7:31

that Peter thinks so deeply about

7:33

can shape our choices and actions

7:35

in the real world. So without

7:37

further ado, here's me and

7:39

Peter Singer. Well,

7:44

Peter's real honor to have you here today

7:46

is somebody who's admired your work for a very

7:48

long time. I'm thrilled with the prospect

7:50

of being able to talk to you and this

7:52

conversation will have been preceded by

7:54

me giving an introduction to

7:56

your work, your kind of formal bio, but I'm

7:58

curious how you articulate,

8:01

what it is that you

8:02

do, like, how do you explain your

8:04

kind of focus and curiosity

8:06

in the world. Right.

8:09

So I've got interested in

8:11

philosophy as an undergraduate. But

8:13

I was always interested in the heart

8:15

of philosophy that connects to real

8:17

life and that can make a difference to how

8:19

we live. So

8:22

some of the courses I did were discussing how

8:24

we know anything about the world, how do we know that

8:26

we're sitting at a table now, that I'm not

8:28

dreaming -- Mhmm. -- that there's not an

8:30

evil demon who's given me

8:32

illusions. Those are interesting

8:34

intellectual problems, but I

8:36

certainly wouldn't have wanted to spend my life

8:38

doing them. But once I realize that

8:40

ethics, the part of philosophy that

8:42

connects with life, really can make a

8:44

difference to how

8:46

you think about your life, your

8:49

values, and how

8:51

you act in the world makes a difference

8:53

to changing the world. And that seemed to me

8:55

to be something important and worthwhile

8:57

as well as intellectually interesting.

8:59

Yeah. I mean, what's interesting is that you have

9:02

fulfilled that promise in

9:04

an era and a time in which

9:06

there does seem to be a

9:08

disconnect between the

9:10

kind of a epic pursuit of philosophy

9:12

and the true utility of it.

9:14

This came up in your in your conversation with Ryan

9:16

Holiday where he was saying, back in,

9:18

you know, ancient Greece and ancient Rome,

9:21

politics and philosophy were

9:23

were very commingled pursuits.

9:26

Whereas now, they don't really

9:28

seem to meet, but I look at you as somebody

9:30

who's had a profound impact

9:32

on on culture and

9:34

how we think about ethics and

9:36

morality in a very utilitarian and

9:38

and real

9:38

way. That's true.

9:41

Although, I think I've been fortunate in

9:43

in the period that I've been living and working

9:46

philosophy, it has moved

9:48

back more like that Greek

9:50

ideal if you like that it

9:53

does connect with how we live. And there are many

9:55

of my students, for example, who are interested

9:57

in taking philosophy courses precisely

9:59

for that reason. They want to think

10:01

about these issues. And that's different from

10:03

when I was an undergraduate, when I was still

10:06

this period of what was known as ordinary

10:08

language philosophy or linguistic

10:10

analysis. Where a lot of

10:12

philosophers said philosophy

10:14

doesn't teach you how to live. It

10:16

simply helps us to understand the meanings

10:18

of the moral terms. Mhmm. And

10:20

then student movement

10:22

of the nineteen sixties started

10:24

to get things back on track. So

10:27

with the Vietnam War, students wanted

10:29

more relevant courses and

10:31

one of the things that

10:33

philosophy could do as well. There's

10:35

this ancient tradition of of when is it

10:37

right to go to war, of just war

10:39

theory. And they started talking about

10:41

that. And then they started talking

10:43

about civil disobedience when he

10:45

justified in disobeying the law. And so I think

10:47

then philosophy got back

10:49

on track to those sorts of topics and

10:51

and moved away from the idea that somehow

10:53

a neutral activity telling you what it

10:56

means to say something is good or

10:57

bad. Mhmm. Yeah. III

10:59

feel that that that era was

11:02

sort of supplanted by, you know, the

11:04

greed is good, sensibility

11:06

of the eighties and and perhaps

11:08

the on way of of

11:10

and the cynicism of of Gen X, which

11:13

is my generation. But I

11:15

too look at this newer

11:18

generation the population, the age

11:20

range of the students, I'm sure you

11:22

teach, who do seem very concerned

11:24

about ethics morality

11:26

an impact in terms of where they're investing

11:28

their academic curiosity and

11:30

their career choices like they really

11:32

wanna be on a track that

11:34

is going to have a net positive on

11:36

the world, which is very different from

11:38

the sensibility of my generation

11:40

when we were in college.

11:42

Yeah. I think there are always some, at least, you

11:44

know, I've been teaching a principal nurse since

11:46

nineteen ninety nine. Mhmm. And I think there are

11:48

always some students who are interested

11:50

in how they could have an

11:52

impact on the world. But

11:54

I agree that it's come back more

11:57

strongly in the last few years and then

11:59

more students wanting to take doses

12:01

for that

12:01

reason. Which of course begs the

12:03

question of how do we think about morality,

12:06

positive impact, ethics, etcetera.

12:08

So when the question is positive

12:10

to you, you know, what does it

12:12

mean to live an ethical

12:14

life? How do you begin to

12:16

unpack that and respond to

12:18

it? In a meaningful way that

12:20

that can help direct somebody

12:22

who's, you know, wanting to know the

12:24

answer to

12:24

that. Yeah. So

12:26

I asked them to think about

12:28

the impact that they can have,

12:30

about the consequences of their

12:32

actions. What they can do to

12:34

make the world a better place than it would have

12:36

been if they hadn't lived in it.

12:38

And clearly, there are a lot of

12:40

opportunities for that. I mean, especially if you're

12:42

living in an affluent society like the United

12:44

States or any of the other

12:46

affluent countries. And you see that

12:49

lot of people in extreme poverty in

12:51

other countries. You see that

12:53

we're damaging the climate of our

12:55

planet. You see that we're

12:57

inflicting vast amounts of suffering

12:59

on non human animals in factory

13:01

farms. There are all

13:03

sorts of choices that you have to make

13:05

about how you're gonna live what

13:07

you're gonna do as a career choice, which

13:10

students are thinking about. But also, what

13:12

are you doing with your spare cash?

13:15

What do you eat, all of those -- Mhmm. --

13:17

things that we can now see as

13:19

ethical questions. So for me

13:21

to live an ethical life, it's not enough

13:23

just to say I'm gonna

13:25

obey some simple moral rules like

13:27

don't

13:27

steal, don't cheat, don't don't

13:29

hurt other people. You have to think

13:32

also about what can I do positively

13:34

given the advantages that I

13:36

have and the problems that we have in the

13:38

world? Mhmm. And and your

13:40

particular lens for that is the

13:42

reduction of suffering. That seems to

13:44

be kind of like the lever through

13:46

which all of this calculus is

13:48

made. Yes, that's

13:50

right. It's primarily the reduction of

13:52

suffering. I do think that producing

13:55

happiness or pleasure is a

13:57

value as

13:57

well. But that's a

13:58

harder thing to get your hands around. Right?

14:01

Exactly. Yes. That's right. It's it's

14:03

often easier to see how you can

14:05

relieve suffering than

14:07

how you can boost happiness. And

14:09

so, you know, some people say

14:11

you should be a negative

14:13

utilitarian and only focus on

14:15

reducing pain and suffering. I

14:17

don't think that's right, at least

14:19

theoretically, it's not right because if

14:22

you could greatly increase the happiness of

14:24

large number of people and

14:26

do that without causing any

14:28

suffering or maybe cause, you know, mild

14:30

headaches to a few people, clearly that would be

14:32

the right thing to do. Mhmm. So it's

14:34

not that it's not that the positive

14:36

doesn't count at all in the scales. It's

14:38

just that given the way the world

14:40

is, the negative, the pain, and

14:42

and suffering is so much more

14:44

apparent. And in a way,

14:46

so much easier to prevent

14:48

in the sense that we know what we could do that would

14:50

prevent it, maybe hard to bring that about.

14:52

But sometimes in terms of making people happier,

14:55

we don't even really know how to

14:57

do

14:57

that. Right. Right. And in the

14:59

in the context of the reduction of

15:01

suffering, this is this is kind of

15:03

the, you know, the the

15:05

landscape from which you're thinking

15:07

on animal liberation, M and As,

15:09

and I wanna get to that, but I kinda wanna put

15:11

that aside for now and

15:13

focus on something that's a little

15:15

bit more current, which is the,

15:17

you know, you being this this sort of

15:19

godfather of the effective altruism

15:21

movement, a movement which is

15:23

very much in the news at the moment

15:25

as a result of Sam

15:28

Sam Bank and Freed and

15:30

FTX and all of that, which has kind of

15:32

put this idea about

15:34

how to effectively give to,

15:36

you know, have the greatest impact on

15:38

the reduction of suffering under the

15:40

microscope of people who

15:42

are now critical of it, and I'm interested. I

15:44

know you've written about this, but

15:46

parsing the behavior

15:48

of human

15:50

being from the philosophical

15:53

underpinnings of this

15:55

movement that you helped pioneer.

15:58

Yeah. So

16:01

I think the effective altruism

16:03

movement in general is saying we

16:05

should try to make a

16:07

positive difference to the world as I've been

16:09

saying. And we should use reason

16:11

and evidence to find the best way of

16:13

doing that. And

16:15

one of the things that the movement

16:17

has talked about is making a

16:19

positive difference doesn't necessarily

16:21

mean becoming a doctor and working

16:23

in a low income country

16:25

or working for one of the

16:27

charities that are helping people in poverty,

16:29

it might mean actually trying

16:31

to earn a lot of money and

16:33

then using that to

16:35

support organizations and are doing good.

16:37

That can be a a valuable

16:40

thing to do. And I think

16:42

Sam Bankman Fried set out to do

16:44

that. I know that he had a conversation with

16:46

Will MacKaskill will early on. We'll

16:49

being one of the founders of the effective

16:51

altruism movement. And we'll

16:53

suggested that because he was mathematically

16:56

gifted, that might be an opportunity

16:58

for him. And I know others, I've had

17:00

friends and students who were in a similar

17:02

situation, who've done that and have given a

17:04

lot of money to effective

17:06

causes. So it certainly can be a good thing to

17:08

do. But Sam, I think it was

17:10

obviously uniquely

17:13

successful accumulating a huge amount of wealth doing that

17:15

and became a kind of a poster

17:17

child in that way for earning

17:20

to give. But he was

17:22

clearly also a huge

17:24

risk taker and somebody

17:26

who was prepared to

17:29

break standard rules of

17:31

how you do business and how

17:33

you look after other people's money that's

17:35

entrusted to you. And I think that's

17:38

what brought about his downfall.

17:40

The fact that he took risks, they didn't all

17:42

come off. He tried to patch it off

17:44

with shifting his customers

17:46

trust funds basically -- Mhmm. -- to

17:48

his research investment

17:50

sort of fund. And

17:53

clearly, he shouldn't have done that. And I don't

17:55

think anybody in the effective altruism

17:58

movement thought that the idea of earning

18:00

money to to give to good causes would

18:02

lead to somebody so flagrantly.

18:04

This is alleged, I suppose, we should say.

18:07

But if if if the charges are

18:09

correct, I don't think anybody in effective

18:11

altruism movement thought that anybody would

18:13

so flagrantly violate

18:15

those basic rules of of

18:17

science practice and ethical

18:19

practice. Right. Well, you know, his misdeeds

18:21

and malfeasance will be, you

18:23

know, adjudicated. But

18:26

from the outside looking in, it

18:28

doesn't look great. And I think, you know, just kind

18:30

of back up for a minute, effective altruism

18:33

being this this this movement

18:36

whereby we try to of

18:38

reduce the amount of emotional

18:41

attachment we have to

18:43

philanthropic ends and look at it from

18:45

a purely objective point of view to

18:47

to understand the best use

18:50

of every dollar given to have

18:52

the maximum impact in terms

18:54

of the reduction of suffering. And

18:56

and those outlets often aren't the

18:59

sexy ones or the ones

19:01

that we feel emotionally attached

19:03

to because we have a relative who's suffering from a

19:05

certain disease. It happens to be things

19:07

like malaria attense and and the like that can that

19:09

are cheap, easy solutions that end

19:11

up saving a lot of lives. And

19:13

in the case of Sam Bankman

19:15

Freed, I see whose

19:18

motives are in question. Like,

19:20

it there is an argument that

19:22

perhaps he leverage this movement

19:24

because it looked good from a from a

19:26

sort of PR perspective to

19:28

say that he wasn't effective all

19:31

culturist. And I'm not so sure, like, how much money he actually

19:33

ended up giving. He gave money to lots

19:35

of different places. And so this

19:37

sort of critique of the movement is that

19:39

it sets in place unhealthy

19:43

incentives whereby the

19:45

end justifies the means. Right?

19:47

Like no matter what end or

19:49

what means you pursue to

19:51

accumulate a certain amount of

19:52

wealth. It's okay because those resources will

19:54

be deployed in an altruistic manner.

19:57

Yeah. As for his

19:59

original motives, I'm prepared to believe

20:01

that he did set out on that career

20:03

in order to be able to give

20:06

I think that's the

20:09

evidence early on. It

20:10

wasn't right from the start. He thought, oh, I'll pretend

20:12

to be an effective outrisk because that'll make

20:14

me more successful personally. And

20:17

figures that I've seen, he certainly gave

20:19

well over one hundred million dollars

20:21

to effective charities. Now that's not very

20:23

much when you're worth twenty billion

20:25

euros twenty five billion euros That's

20:27

true. But I think he was

20:29

on track to do a lot more. He

20:32

also gave political

20:34

donations, and some of those were

20:36

directed towards making the world safer. For example,

20:38

he supported a candidate who was an expert

20:40

on pandemics because he believed that the

20:42

US is not doing enough for pandemic preparation, and I

20:45

think that's obviously true. So

20:47

I don't think that

20:50

it was always just to cover. But it

20:52

may be that he got carried away with his

20:54

success and didn't want to admit, for example,

20:56

that he'd taken a

20:58

big hit because of a bad investment from

21:01

Alameda and so tried to cover that

21:03

up whereas if he'd admitted

21:05

that maybe Alameda had

21:07

gone bankrupt he would have

21:09

still been wealthy and wouldn't be facing

21:11

jail. Mhmm. So I

21:13

think that's probably what

21:15

went wrong. But in terms

21:17

of what you were asking about the

21:19

idea that the end justifies the

21:21

means, I think people often very

21:23

simplistically say, oh, well, you know, he thought

21:25

that the end justify the means and they

21:26

don't. But if you stop and think about

21:29

it,

21:29

I think everybody thinks that sometimes

21:31

the end does justify the means.

21:33

And the classic example of that is, you know,

21:36

if you're if you were hiding a Jewish

21:38

family and you're a seller in Nazi

21:40

Germany and the Gestapo came to

21:42

your

21:42

door, and you might think it's wrong to tell lies,

21:44

including telling lies to the state authorities, is

21:46

clearly wrong. But

21:50

if you can save the family, you're hiding by

21:52

telling a lie to the Gestapo, obviously,

21:54

you should do that. So so

21:56

the question isn't do the

21:58

ends ever justify the means? The question is, when do

22:00

the ends justify the means?

22:03

When are the means

22:05

too bad? Or when is the risk

22:07

too great or the means not

22:09

sufficient. And you have to look at

22:12

those on a case by case

22:14

basis, right? So that

22:16

would play out in terms of a young

22:18

person pondering career choices. They

22:20

could either, you know, go to

22:22

the eighty thousand hours website and

22:25

look at certain types of

22:27

impact oriented careers

22:29

or they could become a

22:32

investment banker and try to accumulate

22:34

as much wealth as possible for the

22:36

purposes of of deploying

22:38

that at a later time. And

22:40

and and from your perspective, both

22:42

of those are are meritorious and

22:45

and worthy of consideration.

22:47

Yes. That's

22:48

right. And in fact, if they go to eighty thousand hours,

22:51

there's a lot of other things that they could

22:53

do as well. They could one

22:55

of the careers suggested is becoming

22:57

a research scientists working in areas that

22:59

will make a difference to people in

23:01

extreme poverty. Another is to go

23:03

into politics. Politics needs more

23:05

people who are really

23:07

serious. About helping people

23:09

in poverty, doing something about climate

23:12

change. So there's a lot of different

23:14

options that people can have. And

23:17

in fact, the effective altruism movement did

23:19

make quite a thing about anything you've in the

23:21

early days. I think partly because that

23:23

was a novelty and it

23:25

was something got media attention. And when

23:28

the movement was small, it was

23:30

important to get media attention for for

23:32

new ideas. So Wilma

23:34

Cascola in particular made

23:36

quite a feature of this. But

23:38

more recently and

23:40

but before the FTX

23:43

collapse, and so not specifically related to

23:45

Sandbank and Fried. They

23:48

have reduced the emphasis that they put

23:50

on that partly because of the

23:52

idea that one of the

23:54

problems with new

23:56

organizations that have great ideas

23:58

about changing the world in the right

24:01

direction is that it's hard for them to get enough talented

24:03

people working for them. So smart

24:06

people like Sam might now

24:08

be more likely to be you

24:10

know, might be suggested that they go

24:12

into helping one of these startups to

24:14

really get organized and to scale up and

24:16

really make a big difference. Rather than to end

24:18

give just because of the sense

24:20

that it's not always lack of

24:22

financial

24:22

resources. It may be lack of talented

24:24

people that are slowing things down.

24:27

Mhmm.

24:27

Mhmm. Yeah. It's

24:30

interesting. In

24:32

thinking

24:32

about you know, the pursuit

24:35

of an ethical life and is somebody

24:37

who, you know, who's who is a, you

24:39

know, moral philosopher Why

24:41

is this important? Is there a

24:43

morality that exists that

24:45

is that is a certain kind of like

24:47

you There's a universality

24:49

to that truth? I mean, you're an atheist. Right? So

24:52

from whence does, you you

24:54

know, this sense of right

24:56

and wrong, and

24:58

and pursuing an ethical life

25:00

from from where does that derive?

25:02

Yes. I I am an Itheist. So, obviously,

25:05

I I don't think it derives from God. Any

25:07

god given commands.

25:09

But and for quite a while, I

25:11

I didn't think there was an objective's

25:14

truth. That was part

25:16

of the era in which I was educated

25:18

in studying philosophy. A lot of philosophers didn't

25:20

think there was, and there has been

25:23

a a shift from a number of philosophers and

25:25

I'm one of them towards

25:27

the idea that, no, there are some things that

25:29

we can really see as self

25:32

evidently good or often more to the

25:34

point self evidently bad. So

25:36

for example, when somebody

25:38

experiences agony if if a

25:40

child is going through

25:42

agony, whether it's an illness or

25:44

an injury or some

25:46

malevolent person deliberately hurting

25:48

them. That's just a bad thing.

25:51

And the

25:52

universe would be a better place if

25:55

that child, we're not experiencing agony.

25:58

So I think from the

26:00

self evidence of that

26:02

judgment and the self evidence of the feeling

26:04

we have ourselves when we experience severe

26:06

pain, that that's a

26:08

bad thing. We can generalize

26:11

that to other sentient beings.

26:13

Any being who can experience agony, it's better

26:16

if they don't. And any

26:18

being who can experience a

26:21

enjoyable

26:21

happy, blissful, worthwhile kind

26:24

of life, fulfilling life for

26:26

them. It's better if they can.

26:27

Mhmm. And how how are you

26:30

making judgments adjudicating better

26:32

and good. You

26:33

know what I mean? Like like if

26:36

this is not emanating

26:38

from some kind of spiritual connection,

26:40

you know, even in a non

26:42

dogmatic, non religious way, it's

26:45

curious to ponder, you

26:47

know, the origin point of why

26:49

the world is better if we do this versus

26:52

that. But I think we we can see that in our

26:54

own case. We we, you know, when

26:56

we experience agnew, we

26:58

just can't avoid seeing that as

27:00

a bad thing for us. And then

27:02

when we take a broader point

27:05

of view, the nineteenth

27:07

century utilitarian Henry Sidewick spoke

27:09

about taking the point of view of the universe.

27:11

And he he was an agnostic

27:13

really rather an atheist, but he he

27:15

wasn't saying, that the universe has a

27:17

point of view. He was just saying,

27:19

imagine that you're looking

27:22

on the universe a whole and

27:24

all the sentient beings in it. Then

27:26

you can see that your own interests, your

27:28

own well-being is no

27:30

more important from that perspective than

27:32

that of any other being who can

27:34

have similar kinds of experiences

27:37

of pain or pleasure. And

27:39

so we should

27:42

as rational beings, we should try

27:44

to reduce the pain and

27:46

agony that is experienced and

27:48

increase the pleasure and happiness because

27:50

that's what we want for ourselves and

27:52

we see that we are just one of

27:54

many similar beings who have

27:56

those

27:56

experiences. Mhmm.

27:57

So much of your work

27:59

is is focused on the

28:01

responsibility of the individual, like, should I

28:03

give money to this versus that?

28:06

Should I not eat animals like

28:08

all of these sort of choices

28:11

that can guide us towards, you know, kind of a more

28:14

ethical way of living. But we live

28:16

in a culture in which incentives

28:19

and kind of momentum

28:21

is pushing us away

28:23

from the kind of

28:26

economy of making those choices. In other

28:28

words, like, those choices tend to kind of cut against

28:30

the grain of, you

28:32

know, what everything else is pushing

28:34

us

28:34

towards. And so I

28:37

can't help but think about incentive structures at

28:40

large and how your

28:42

work being

28:42

so focused on the individual how

28:46

you contemplate, like, system

28:48

change, like governmental regimes

28:50

or, you know, economic,

28:53

tectonic plates that, you

28:53

know, set up situations where we're often making

28:55

the wrong choice versus

28:59

creating

28:59

a new system in which the choices that

29:01

you're advocating for become the

29:04

easier kind of more accessible and

29:06

more incentivized

29:07

choice. Right. Well,

29:11

I certainly want to see changes in the

29:13

systems and in the incentives that the systems

29:16

create. And one of the most obvious

29:18

cases here would be climate change

29:20

because individuals also

29:22

make choices, of course, about the

29:24

greenhouse gases that they emit or the,

29:26

again, what they eat makes an impact

29:29

on their greenhouse gases that they're responsible for

29:31

as does whether they drive a car

29:33

and if they do what sort of car to

29:35

drive. But it's really

29:37

important and shouldn't be that difficult for

29:40

governments to change the incentives there

29:42

by carbon taxes, for example,

29:45

on what produces emissions.

29:47

So that's that's an area

29:49

where going into politics can be

29:51

a really important career because you

29:53

can help to make governments make

29:55

those choices. And and that's true of the other

29:57

things that I talk about at an individual level

29:59

as well. Governments do

30:01

give significant amounts to foreign aid.

30:04

They could give more. United States

30:06

actually gives very little in terms

30:08

as a percentage of its gross national

30:10

income compared to European countries

30:13

generally. And could give more and could

30:15

also give it more effectively. And

30:17

of course, some governments have

30:19

better laws and regulations regarding the treatment

30:21

of animals Even within the United

30:23

States, California has better regulations

30:25

for farm animals than most

30:27

other states in the United States because

30:29

it has citizen initiated

30:31

referendum and it's passed propositions

30:34

to give animals a bit more

30:36

room than they have in

30:38

other states. There are definitely things

30:40

that you can do at the policy level and that it's

30:42

important to do at the policy level.

30:44

But some of these things are really difficult

30:46

to bring about change. And for example, trying

30:48

to Greece, the United States foreign

30:51

aid, has been a long struggle that so far

30:53

has been quite unsuccessful.

30:55

Even presidents who are sympathetic, like

30:58

President Obama, One stage talked

31:00

about raising U. S. Foreign aid

31:02

to zero point five percent of gross national

31:04

product, which would still be

31:06

only about half of the top nations

31:08

in the world had completely failed

31:10

to do that. So

31:12

if that's so difficult to achieve,

31:16

then there is something that we can do

31:18

individually and that can make a difference. So

31:20

let's let's do that. And

31:22

similarly in terms of what we eat,

31:24

it's also very hard to get laws

31:26

and regulations to

31:28

in the United States to give animals more

31:30

space to move around. As I said, there

31:32

are exceptions with those states with citizens

31:34

initiated referendum because it does seem that

31:36

ordinary Americans when given

31:38

that choice will choose better conditions

31:41

for animals. But because the

31:43

agribusiness lobby is so powerful

31:45

at the federal level, it's been

31:47

impossible to get any laws passed

31:49

at the federal level to give animals room to

31:51

move. And that's a contrast with

31:53

Europe, where the entire European Union

31:55

has much better laws than

31:57

the United States has.

31:59

So again, you know, let's try to do what

32:02

we can at the individual level. If

32:04

enough people do that, we'll weaken the power of

32:06

the agribusiness lobby because they won't be selling

32:08

so much. And we'll

32:10

press it'll be in a better position to produce

32:12

that systemic

32:13

change. Mhmm. Well, in the context

32:15

of of animal rights, this has

32:17

been a movement built upon the

32:19

shoulders of the individual. Like, it really has

32:21

been a grassroots movement. And, you know,

32:23

I wanna get into how this all began

32:25

with you. You wrote animal liberation

32:27

in nineteen seventy five. I wanna hear

32:29

how that came into being,

32:32

but in looking back upon, you know, the many years

32:34

since that book came out, it must be

32:36

quite an awesome thing to see

32:39

how much progress has been made, how much

32:41

energy is in this

32:43

movement, while also recognizing

32:45

how little is changed and how much

32:47

work

32:47

remains. Right? Like, how are you thinking about the

32:50

current status quo? Yeah. You've

32:52

got that exactly right. There

32:55

has been significant change. I

32:57

mentioned those laws in the European

32:59

Union, sort of twenty seven countries

33:01

that have better laws. And when I published

33:03

animal liberation and in seventy five and

33:05

the United Kingdom, of course, which is no longer in

33:07

the European Union. So that's

33:10

a significant change for hundreds of millions

33:12

of animals. They have definitely not

33:14

idealized, but they have lives that are somewhat

33:16

better than they were in the seventies.

33:19

But on the other hand, factory

33:21

farming still continues here in the

33:23

United States. A lot of it goes

33:25

on just as bad as it was

33:27

before, in some respects even worse because, for

33:29

example, the breeding of

33:31

chickens for meat has

33:34

increased the speed at which they put on weight to such

33:36

a point that their immature

33:38

legs can't really bear the

33:40

weight of their bodies. They're very young birds when they

33:43

send a market they're about six weeks

33:45

old. And

33:47

they're in pain just from trying to carry their

33:49

body weight and sometimes their legs will

33:52

collapse under them and they'll just be unable

33:54

to move. then because this is such

33:56

a mass production industry with

33:58

twenty thousand birds in a single

34:00

shed, they're probably gonna starve to

34:02

death or or dehydrate to death because

34:04

they can't walk to food and

34:06

water. And basically nobody cares about individual

34:08

chickens. Nobody will even see that

34:10

there's a a down bird and pick it up and

34:12

you mainly

34:14

kill it. So, you know, those things have actually got worse.

34:16

Mhmm. Plus, of course, in other countries in the

34:18

world, particularly in East

34:20

Asia where they

34:23

become more prosperous, which in itself would be a good But that means they're

34:25

producing a lot more meat, more

34:27

demand for meat. And

34:30

factory farming has hugely increased

34:32

there. And

34:33

again, it's pretty

34:36

much unregulated. Mhmm.

34:37

Yeah. We we can celebrate

34:40

the growth of the vegan

34:42

movement in these kind of

34:44

urban pockets across the developed western world.

34:46

But that's myopic

34:48

in that when we canvas our glance

34:51

internationally, we see the expansion of a middle

34:54

class or, you know, new wealth

34:56

sectors who are going to increase their

34:58

consumption of meat at a

35:00

rate that the plant really

35:02

can't sustain. Right? And we're

35:04

seeing the decimation of the rainforest. And

35:06

with China, you know, all of

35:08

these areas that are where

35:10

we're seeing an increase in meat

35:12

consumption at an unprecedented level like

35:14

this is a global problem from

35:16

not just a mass suffering

35:17

perspective, but from a climate change perspective

35:19

as well. Yeah. That's basically

35:21

true. It's interesting

35:24

that at some countries have actually started

35:26

on a decline in meat consumption.

35:28

Germany is one example

35:30

and Sweden is another. So,

35:32

you know, there's some hope that as we become more educated

35:35

and more understanding about what meat does

35:37

not only do animals, but

35:40

to the climate and to the environment more generally.

35:42

We just had this meeting of environmentalists

35:44

concerned to protect species.

35:48

And again, There's been a lot of writing about how meat

35:50

consumption just can't continue to grow,

35:52

that it is destroying the rain forests and

35:54

causing extensions.

35:56

So there's there's some hope that more people will realize

35:58

that, but it's it's

36:00

difficult. And, you know,

36:02

to me, you you mentioned

36:05

pockets of people being vegan. I mean,

36:07

I think being vegan is a great diet

36:09

and a healthy diet and the best diet for

36:11

the for the planet and for animals. But I

36:13

think we have to work towards reduction

36:16

of meat consumption in

36:19

mainstream. Because it's going to

36:21

be a long time before we get a

36:23

a vegan mainstream in in most countries.

36:24

Yeah. I mean, it's it there

36:26

does feel like quite a bit of momentum behind

36:28

that right now. It is mainstreaming in

36:32

that so many restaurants, you can at least get vegan options and people

36:34

don't bulk or and they're not confused when

36:36

you -- Mhmm. -- wanna veganize an

36:38

entrée at a restaurant or what have

36:42

you. But yes, there is so much work to be done and

36:44

your question really brings up this notion

36:46

of effective activism. Like,

36:49

how do you sort of convinced

36:51

the most number of people to change their habits,

36:54

to have the greatest

36:56

impact. Right?

36:58

Is it Is it

37:00

like throwing a bucket of blood on a

37:02

on a on a runway model? You know,

37:04

at a fashion show who's wearing

37:06

a a mink coat? Or

37:08

is it having a, you know, realistic conversation

37:10

with policymakers about a

37:12

slight reduction in harm that could

37:14

actually impact millions people

37:16

and benefit millions of

37:18

animals. Like, how do you think about

37:20

carrying the message from a

37:22

utilitarian

37:23

perspective to leverage the greatest

37:26

change? I think that

37:26

as far as trying to get people that change

37:29

their diet is concerned, probably

37:32

being cool

37:34

and reasonable is better than throwing buckets of blooded people. That's that's

37:36

true. But, you know, we we don't

37:38

fully know and I I would like to see and

37:40

this is part of what effective altruism wants

37:43

to do. Would to more studies about what is the effect

37:45

of people when there

37:48

are protests that are more in

37:50

your

37:50

face. Than others. There's some suggestions that

37:52

it puts people off, but I don't really

37:54

know that

37:54

we know. And for example, on issues like climate

37:57

change, which seems to me to

38:00

be a really urgent issue. I can fully understand

38:03

those ecoactivists who

38:05

through Super Over,

38:08

Vanguard's sunflowers. And let

38:10

me say, they knew it was behind glass, so

38:12

they knew it wasn't gonna damage the

38:14

original painting. But, you know, that was

38:16

a gesture to say, you know, this is really

38:18

something urgent and we're still not doing what we need

38:21

to be doing about it and we have to

38:23

do better and we have to do

38:25

it soon. So I fully sympathize with that, but

38:27

I do want to know what actually is going to work and

38:30

what is going to get governments to

38:32

take the relatively

38:34

simple steps that

38:36

they need to take -- Mhmm. -- to

38:38

shift us away from greenhouse gas emitting products both

38:41

fossil fuels and meat

38:43

in particular. How have your views

38:46

evolved since writing this book

38:48

in nineteen seventy five on this

38:50

subject matter? Well,

38:53

perhaps I was a

38:55

little naive about how easy it might have

38:57

been to to change these

39:00

deeply ingrained habits

39:02

and to combat major

39:05

industries. Because I did think

39:07

that the arguments seemed to me to

39:09

be so clear. I thought that if I could just state

39:12

them clearly and rationally,

39:14

readers would

39:16

decide that that they were right. They would change what they were eating. They

39:18

would talk to their friends about what it was important

39:20

to change what was

39:21

eating. And I hope.

39:24

Amazing. That's how you that's how it happened for

39:26

you. Right? Like, why shouldn't it happen for

39:28

anybody who's reading your book?

39:29

Exactly. That's right. Yeah. I mean, So

39:31

I didn't think about this issue at all until

39:33

I was a graduate student at Oxford,

39:36

twenty four years old. And I hadn't

39:38

thought about it now this was nineteen seventy, so it wasn't really

39:40

discussed. You didn't meet vegetarians or

39:42

certainly not western vegetarians. You might have met

39:44

some Indian vegetarians, but you

39:46

didn't meet

39:48

people who were like you, who

39:50

were vegetarians. Until I Alexia

39:53

would happen to have lunch with

39:55

a Canadian graduate student called Richard

39:58

Cashion who asked whether there was meat in the

40:00

spaghetti sauce that was being served. And when he was

40:02

told there was, he took a salad

40:04

plate instead. And I was surprised and asked him what his problem was with And

40:06

he told me that he didn't think it

40:08

was right to treat animals the way we treat

40:10

them in order to turn them into food.

40:13

And I said, I don't don't they have good lives out in the fields? And

40:16

he said, no. They're increasingly,

40:18

they have crowded inside

40:20

in big dark sheds. I knew nothing

40:22

about that. Made

40:24

in my business to find out. And then

40:26

I also because I was a philosophy student,

40:28

I decided to look at what philosophers

40:30

had said about this, you know, why is it okay that

40:33

to treat animals in this way? Why do

40:35

the bands of morality as it seems at the

40:37

time just stop with us species? And

40:39

I decided both that he was right on the

40:41

facts and that there wasn't an ethical

40:44

justification for disregarding the

40:46

interests of non

40:48

human animals in the way we were doing

40:49

it. So I've

40:49

seen a pretty simple argument to me. And if I could be persuaded

40:51

by that and I could show the facts to other

40:54

people and and look at the

40:56

ethical arguments, that that would

40:58

convince other people. And it convinced some other

41:00

people. That's that's the good

41:02

news. The bad news is that we

41:04

are still living in

41:06

societies where The majority of people are not only eating

41:08

meat, but even buying factory found

41:10

products, not particularly looking

41:12

for more

41:14

organic or free ranging or certified humane animal products?

41:16

Yeah, I think

41:18

that with greater education

41:20

around this issue also comes

41:24

concerted efforts to confuse

41:26

consumers. Right? There's a lot of

41:28

greenwashing going on and there's a lot of

41:31

energy around, you know,

41:34

kind of the grass

41:36

fed free range animals that make

41:38

people feel better about their

41:40

animal consumption. Without fully

41:42

understanding the equation,

41:44

like this idea that we actually

41:46

need the animals to regenerate the

41:49

soil and you eating your animals from these

41:51

farms is actually part of the

41:53

climate solution, and these animals live great

41:55

lives. And certainly, that's a better situation

41:58

than the factory farmed animals, which

42:00

is the big gaping problem that needs

42:02

to be solved. But I

42:04

think it allows people to

42:06

kind of fall into

42:08

sort of an acceptance

42:10

or a delusion that they're

42:12

still not their habits aren't are are

42:14

aren't really resulting in the harm that they're actually resulting

42:16

in. Yeah. I don't say that very inelegantly,

42:18

but I think you know what I'm getting at. I

42:20

know what you're getting at.

42:21

Yes. Yeah. And in fact,

42:24

it is a delusion, I think. And I'm

42:26

not sure maybe people are aware of it,

42:28

but because if you ask

42:30

people if they meet and when they

42:32

say yes, you asked them do they mostly buy

42:34

organic or certified humane

42:36

or grass fed, something like that?

42:38

The percentage that answers yes is

42:42

just wildly more than the amount that is actually

42:44

produced -- Mhmm. -- by a

42:46

high multiple. So

42:48

either people that

42:50

they're buying these better products when they're

42:52

not or they're just lying in

42:54

the in the answers that they're giving.

42:57

Because if you look for example at chicken meat

42:59

production, the example I heard

43:01

earlier, I think it's ninety-nine point

43:03

eight percent is factory farmed in

43:05

the U. S. It's a tiny, tiny

43:07

percentage far less than one percent

43:10

So if people say they're eating

43:12

humanely produce

43:14

certified humane Sorry.

43:17

If people say they're eating, you mainly

43:19

produced chicken. They're almost certainly

43:21

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45:04

role. If

45:07

the reduction of suffering is the

45:10

rubric, there is an interesting

45:12

philosophical exploration to

45:14

be had when it comes to the

45:17

the kind of carnivore people who

45:19

call who call what they eat

45:21

like nose to tail. Like, From

45:23

a suffering perspective, if somebody's going to take

45:25

one cow and they're gonna consume the

45:27

entirety of that,

45:30

is that a more

45:32

ethical choice than the

45:34

vegan who's eating plants

45:36

that are, you know, sort of, thresholds

45:39

in a traditional way where lots of

45:41

rodents and insects are being

45:44

sacrificed as a result of the

45:46

harvesting of these many plants or gofers

45:48

having to be killed, etcetera,

45:50

where in other words, like lots

45:52

of different animals

45:54

are sacrificed for the

45:56

production of these plant foods

45:58

versus the person who eats the cow who

46:00

says, well, this is just one

46:02

sentient being. Like, from a philosophical,

46:04

ethical perspective, like, how do you think about that

46:06

or parse the difference? Yes.

46:11

So there are couple of things to be said about that.

46:14

One is that from a

46:16

climate point of view,

46:18

cows and beef is

46:20

really the worst of the animal

46:22

products in terms of the

46:24

quantity of greenhouse gases because they

46:26

produce methane and methane is an

46:28

extremely potent

46:29

green ice gas. And they've had to consume a

46:31

lot of resources to get to the

46:33

point before they're killed for

46:36

food. Right?

46:37

Right. Well, I mean, So if if

46:39

they're in feedlots or fatten the last few months in

46:41

feedlots in engrained, then all of those

46:43

problems are bad the

46:45

rodents that get killed with the threshing are

46:48

going to be there because

46:50

they will have eaten far more

46:52

grain than a vegan would

46:54

eat. Because you only get back from feeding grain to

46:56

cattle, you get back

46:58

somewhere between five percent and ten percent of the

47:00

food value

47:02

of the grain that you're putting in. So if you're

47:04

eating the grains directly, you eat far fewer grains. But if

47:06

people are saying, well, I'm just

47:08

eating fully grass fed beef,

47:12

which is, again, is quite a small proportion of U. S.

47:14

Produced beef. Then you're not killing the

47:16

rodents when you harvest the grain because

47:19

they're eating grass. But they actually

47:21

produce more greenhouse gases than the feed lots. And

47:24

that's because the reason cattle are put in

47:26

feed lots is they faten up

47:28

faster on

47:30

grain. So if they're on grass, they have to live longer

47:32

to reach the same weight, to produce

47:34

the same quantity of meat for people

47:38

to eat. And all the time they're living and digesting the grass, they're

47:40

producing the methane. So

47:42

in terms of the impact on the climate,

47:45

it's really bad. It may be better from an animal

47:48

welfare point of view, much better than

47:50

eating chicken, for example, both because they're

47:52

outside and they're better lives. And also because talking

47:54

about one animal with a lot

47:56

of meat, whereas chickens you have your

47:58

people in eat and who eat chicken

48:01

eating a lot of chickens over

48:03

their

48:03

lifetime. But in terms of

48:06

greenhouse gases, it's

48:08

actually worse. Beyond that, there isn't enough land

48:10

to support the production of of

48:12

cattle in that manner anyway

48:14

to meet global demand

48:16

for

48:16

meat. Well, that's right. So it's not a scalable,

48:18

sustainable solution. No. And and some of

48:20

it and and the demand for beef is causing rainforest

48:23

be cleared, causing the Amazon to be cleared for grazing

48:25

land, for example, or even to grow

48:27

more soybeans in Brazil, which

48:30

also about seventy percent of the

48:32

soybean crop gets fed to cattle. And I

48:34

think something over twenty percent goes to

48:36

biofuels. And

48:38

people say, I don't need tofu because

48:41

soybeans are but actually it's about

48:44

seven percent of the whole soybean crop

48:46

is actually eaten directly by humans, either

48:48

as beans or as as tofu. And

48:50

the great majority is getting funnel through

48:52

cattle. And again, we lose most of the food

48:54

value of the soybeans when we do

48:58

that. Back to the earlier question

49:00

about how your ideas have evolved

49:02

since nineteen seventy five, are

49:04

there other other thing.

49:06

Like, if you so you are got you're

49:08

you're reprising this

49:09

book. Right? You're coming out

49:10

of a new edition of it. So I suspect

49:13

there are, you know, things that you wanna change

49:15

or I don't know how much you can talk

49:17

about that specifically, but

49:20

maybe generally, how your thinking has changed and evolved in in the

49:22

many interceding years?

49:23

Yeah. That's right. I'm producing,

49:25

you know, what's effect actively

49:27

a a new book first being called Animal Liberation

49:30

Now, which has

49:32

maintains the key ethical ideas completely

49:36

updates the relevant facts

49:38

and looks at progress

49:41

that we've made and that we've not made from a

49:43

more global perspective. So it has a lot of new things in

49:46

it that went in the

49:48

original edition. My

49:52

thinking has

49:54

developed in in various

49:58

respects. I suppose some of the

50:00

things that I'm more

50:02

concerned with now, questions

50:04

about wild animals, about should

50:06

we be concerned about the

50:08

suffering of wild animals and

50:10

what might we do -- Mhmm. -- with

50:12

that. I'm also interested in

50:14

the development of

50:16

alternatives to to meat. I see that as a positive

50:18

sign both plant based meats

50:20

and the development of

50:22

cellular meats.

50:24

A meat that is actually produced from

50:26

animal cells, but does not require any living

50:30

animal organism. And

50:32

therefore is, again, far lower on

50:34

greenhouse gas emissions, maybe has about three

50:36

percent of the greenhouse gas emissions

50:38

of meat

50:40

from animals. And doesn't involve the animal

50:42

suffering, of course, because there's no conscious animal

50:44

there. So if we could do

50:46

that and if

50:48

we could produce it at

50:50

an economically competitive price

50:52

with the meat that is being sold from

50:54

animals. That

50:56

might be another way of breaking this

51:00

deadlock of trying to get people to

51:02

move

51:03

away. Mhmm.

51:04

Eating animal products sort of so bad for animals and for

51:06

the environment? Well, all indications is that we're

51:09

we are headed in that direction. It may

51:11

take a little bit more time

51:14

because this is an expensive

51:16

problem to solve. Right?

51:18

Figuring out how to culture

51:21

these cells and create these, you

51:23

know, quote unquote, meat products.

51:25

They're able to do it. They've established that

51:27

it can be done, but doing

51:29

it economically. So it's

51:32

on par with what it would cost to

51:34

go to McDonald's or what have

51:35

you. There's still a lot of work to be

51:38

done. Right? Yes. That's right. You can actually buy

51:40

cellular chicken in Singapore and arrange

51:42

for sale there. But

51:44

it's yes. It's expensive. And

51:47

I think problem is they need to scale up

51:50

and there's some questions, but

51:52

building these huge bioreactors in

51:54

which the process occurs, can that

51:56

be done? Will

51:58

there be problems with things going

52:00

astray? We really don't

52:01

know, but there's quite a lot of capital

52:03

being invested in it. A lot of

52:05

capital. Yeah. But also the question

52:08

of just, you know,

52:10

consumer acclimation to it, there is

52:12

that sort of getting

52:14

over that icky factor of, like, what is this? And where does it

52:16

come from? And, you know,

52:18

having,

52:19

you know, consumers acclimate

52:22

to the idea of of this

52:24

new food. That's true.

52:27

Although consumers seem to think

52:29

that the meat that they're buying is

52:31

somehow natural, and and that's obviously transformed tremendously in the

52:33

last fifty years. Yeah. You know,

52:35

the animals are are bred differently as I was

52:37

saying. I mean,

52:40

the the the chickens can't really live to

52:42

maturity mostly because they're they're bred

52:44

to eat so fast and put on weight

52:48

so That a lot of them will just collapse and

52:50

die if they were

52:52

kept to to older birds. In

52:54

fact, it's so it's so bad that

52:56

with the breeding birds because the parents, of course, have to have the same genes as the

52:58

one we eat. They have to be starved basically

53:00

because if you've fed them as

53:02

much as they wanna eat, they

53:05

would not be able to survive to breed or they might not physically

53:07

be able to breed because they would be too

53:09

obese to actually do

53:12

that. So they tend to be fed every second day, which means

53:14

that they're desperately hungry all the time.

53:16

And then, of course, the antibiotics

53:18

are used because they're under

53:22

stress So a lot of

53:24

antibiotics that are losing their efficacy because we're feeding them routinely

53:26

to farm animals. So,

53:30

yeah, that this is not a natural product either, but some of our people been

53:32

persuaded to continue to eat it,

53:34

think of it as good. So

53:36

no doubt there will be some

53:40

say, need to show consumers

53:42

that this cellular meat when it

53:44

happens is essentially still

53:46

meat and is actually a safer

53:49

and pure products and what they're getting from factory

53:51

farms. Have

53:51

you have you tried it? No. I've not had

53:53

the opportunity to try it yet. Yeah. I would

53:56

certainly do so if I find myself

53:58

in

53:58

Singapore. I will go and do that. Right. How do

54:00

you think about philanthropy

54:02

in the animal welfare space?

54:06

It seems like there's a lot of sort

54:08

of improvement to be had in terms of like how

54:10

to leverage the dollar for the most good.

54:12

When we look at the big problems

54:15

versus where people's kind of hearts and emotions are.

54:17

Well, absolutely. Yeah. In fact, I showed

54:19

my students a slide that

54:22

which has two boxes. One

54:24

box shows where the

54:26

greatest amount of animal suffering is

54:29

and animals being killed. And it's

54:31

overwhelmingly farmed animals. Yeah. And so it's like a

54:33

big square or one color for farmed animals.

54:35

Mhmm. And then down

54:37

in in the bottom corner. There's a tiny little

54:40

square that shows the

54:42

other things like laboratory animals. It's

54:44

pretty small too alerts. Probably around one

54:47

hundred million animals in the United States each year. There's things

54:49

like Furs. And then there's dogs and cats,

54:51

which is just a tiny mark you can hardly

54:53

see on my slide.

54:56

And then then the adjacent box shows where

54:58

the dollars are going. And there, it's

55:00

it's the dogs and cats, the animal shelters,

55:03

that is the dominant thing. And

55:06

found animals are quite small and laboratory

55:08

animals are quite small. Wild animals

55:10

do rank larger there. So,

55:12

yeah, there's this complete disconnect between where the dollars go

55:15

and where they're needed. We're starting to get

55:17

a little more money going through

55:20

effective altruism, actually, mostly through foundations

55:24

like open philanthropy,

55:26

which is funded by

55:28

Dustin Muscovitz and Carriere tuna,

55:30

which is directing more money

55:32

to oppose

55:34

factory farming. But but what's going coming from the general

55:36

public is really not going to

55:38

where the big animal suffering problems

55:40

are. It's going to where people's

55:42

emotions are. And,

55:44

you know, it's it's not that effective altruism doesn't want people to have emotions.

55:46

It's just that they want people to

55:48

feel the emotions and then think, you

55:50

know, yes, I care about dogs

55:54

and I also care about animals in general. I don't want pigs or

55:56

cows or chickens to suffer. I don't want wild

55:58

animals to suffer. I don't want

56:00

even rats

56:02

and mice to suffer in laboratory experiments. And

56:04

so if I care about

56:06

animals, I should be thinking about giving to

56:08

where it will help the

56:10

big problems. And not relatively

56:12

small problems. That's what we need to

56:14

get people to think about.

56:15

Sure. But isn't

56:15

there a place for that

56:18

emotional impulse? Like, if you

56:20

think about so example,

56:22

in the in the animal welfare space, like

56:24

a a lot of people donate towards these

56:26

shelters. Right? Like, they they rescue

56:30

farmed animals they create a beautiful place for them to live out their

56:32

lives. And those places and people

56:34

feel good about supporting those places for

56:36

obvious reasons.

56:38

But those places also serve as sort of museums for people

56:40

to visit, which gets, you

56:42

know, perhaps other people who

56:44

have no connection to this movement

56:47

or these ideas, this is their

56:49

inception point for even learning

56:51

about this, an emotional connection

56:53

to the reality of the problem

56:55

that might in turn motivate them

56:57

to give or get involved in the solution and maybe

57:00

that solution is

57:02

an effective solution

57:04

or maybe it's something else, but I

57:06

can't help but ask you, like, where is

57:08

the emotional piece? Like, there has to

57:12

be some importance and resonance for it on some

57:14

level?

57:14

Yeah, definitely. I think

57:15

that emotion is

57:18

important. And with the

57:20

animal sanctuaries that you mentioned,

57:22

I think they do

57:24

get people to see found animals as

57:26

individuals, and

57:28

that's important. They get them to see that some of them can actually grow old

57:30

even, which, of course, bound animals

57:32

never do. It's the rescued ones that

57:34

might. And

57:36

those sanctuaries work, and

57:38

many of them do, and I think they all should,

57:41

as places of education

57:43

that get people to see animals

57:45

differently. And encourage them to do

57:47

more for farmed animals in

57:50

general. So I think

57:52

that's fine. And I

57:54

think in terms of global poverty too,

57:56

it's important emotion plays a

57:58

role and it's important to tell the

58:00

stories of individuals. Of

58:02

those children whose lives have

58:04

been saved by a treatment that was made

58:07

available through an organization that

58:09

had community health workers going around and

58:12

helping or, you know,

58:14

restoring people's site is something where you can

58:16

really see the

58:18

emotion and the life you can

58:20

say of the organization that I founded that that recommends effective charities,

58:22

recommends a couple that do

58:26

restore site in countries where otherwise people

58:28

with quite simple conditions like cataracts

58:30

would never be able to see

58:32

again. And you can see videos

58:35

online of how somebody's, you

58:37

know, when the bandages are removed after

58:39

an operation was performed and their eyes are

58:41

recovered. And you see a woman

58:43

who sees her a child for the first time that

58:45

she's ever seen that two year old child, and then

58:47

say, and that's a wonderful heartwarming experience. And

58:49

I hope it will encourage people to

58:51

think, yes, this is really a

58:53

good thing to be

58:53

doing. This is such an important

58:56

work to support. Right. Yeah. That's really

58:58

beautiful. The the counter side of

59:00

that, like, as a

59:02

thought

59:02

experiment, as somebody whose primary driver

59:03

is a reduction of suffering. If

59:06

you think about the

59:08

eradication of of of

59:10

global poverty, if

59:12

you're raising the kind of life experience

59:14

and and and income of

59:17

people who have grown up in

59:20

poverty. They then become Do

59:22

they not, then What what happens if those

59:24

people then end up increasing

59:26

their meat consumption? And that

59:28

drives, you know, cattle

59:30

producers to clear more

59:32

rainforest, to produce that cattle.

59:34

Like, when you look at the macro

59:36

benefit versus harm calculus from a philosophical point of

59:38

view. Like, how do you make sense

59:41

of that? Yeah. I've I've I've

59:43

I've I've got a that's

59:46

a tough problem. I've grappled with trying to think about that and

59:48

trying to think about my any poverty work

59:50

on how do I connect with my

59:53

concern for animals. But I suppose what I

59:55

say and you may think that this is a

59:57

rationalization is that if we're ever to solve this

59:59

problem, we're not gonna solve it by keeping

1:00:01

people in poverty. Because when people are

1:00:03

in poverty, they will do whatever they have to do -- Sure. --

1:00:05

to survive. And if that includes, for

1:00:08

example, killing wild animals in the

1:00:10

forest and

1:00:12

including even chimpanzees in some places and

1:00:16

perhaps leading to the

1:00:18

extinction of species in

1:00:20

the forest. They're gonna

1:00:22

do that. So I think

1:00:24

we have to try to get people

1:00:26

out of poverty and hope that when they have more

1:00:28

choices, when they are out

1:00:30

of poverty, they will eventually come to see

1:00:32

that feeding more meat

1:00:34

is is not the right thing to do.

1:00:36

Mhmm. And we will have alternatives

1:00:38

for them. That they can live

1:00:40

good and healthy lives without

1:00:42

eating more meat or perhaps without eating any

1:00:44

meat. And so that we'll

1:00:46

get to the point where I'm hoping we all

1:00:48

get to where we have

1:00:50

expanded our concern for

1:00:52

all animals, for all sentient

1:00:54

beings. And they're not just

1:00:56

thinking about human beings.

1:00:57

Mhmm. So, you know, as you say, you might you might

1:01:00

think that that's No. It's just

1:01:02

interesting to think about. Like, I'm not wed to

1:01:04

any answer or any I I

1:01:06

think grappling with that idea

1:01:08

demonstrates how difficult problem

1:01:10

solving is in the real world. If you're

1:01:13

if your if your goal really is, like, how do we

1:01:15

best eradicate suffering? It's

1:01:18

complicated. It's nuanced and it's in the

1:01:20

gray. I think there's, you know, another

1:01:22

way of of exploring that is is the twist

1:01:24

on your famous thought experiment of the

1:01:26

girl in the in the

1:01:28

pond. Right?

1:01:30

Mhmm. So First of all, for

1:01:32

people who don't know, you

1:01:33

know, maybe explain what that

1:01:35

thought experiment is.

1:01:38

Sure. Okay. So in an article I wrote a long time

1:01:39

ago, I asked my readers to imagine that they're

1:01:42

walking past a pond,

1:01:44

let's

1:01:45

say, I don't wanna little pond in a

1:01:47

park, and let's say they know well that the pond is quite shallow. And as they

1:01:49

walk past it, they noticed

1:01:51

that there's something struggling

1:01:53

in the water And when

1:01:55

they look more closely, turns out

1:01:58

it's a very small child, a child

1:02:00

too small to stand up even in this

1:02:02

shallow pond. So, you know,

1:02:04

the first thing you would think about

1:02:06

is, who's child is this? Who's looking after

1:02:08

this child? But when you look

1:02:10

around, you don't know why, but there's nobody else

1:02:12

there. You're the only adult

1:02:14

inside. So your second thought I hope

1:02:16

is, gee, this child seems to be

1:02:18

drowning. I better jump into

1:02:20

the pond. And save the

1:02:21

child. But then maybe you have

1:02:22

a third and not so noble thought and that is

1:02:24

I'm wearing my best clothes today because

1:02:26

I was going somewhere special. And

1:02:29

they're gonna get ruined if I save

1:02:31

the child by jumping into the

1:02:33

pond. So what if I just

1:02:36

forget that I ever saw the child and go on

1:02:38

my way? Would that

1:02:40

be the wrong thing to do? And I hope that

1:02:42

all your listeners are now saying, of course, that would be the

1:02:44

wrong thing to do. How could

1:02:46

you compare the value of a child's life with ruining your

1:02:48

shoes or your

1:02:49

clothes. So

1:02:50

the point of the example is to say, yes,

1:02:53

that is the right reaction that you should have, and it would be

1:02:55

the wrong thing to do. But it's

1:02:57

not only in these unlikely circumstances

1:03:00

where you have to ruin your clothes

1:03:02

to save a child and a

1:03:03

pond, it's

1:03:04

happening to us all the

1:03:07

time that for the cost

1:03:09

of replacing those clothes, donated to

1:03:11

a effective charity. We could

1:03:13

save or certainly contribute towards

1:03:15

saving the life of a child in

1:03:17

a low income country, perhaps by

1:03:20

donating to the Against Malaria

1:03:22

Foundation, which will distribute bed

1:03:24

nets to protect children against

1:03:26

malaria, or perhaps

1:03:28

by distributing other medicines to prevent children dying

1:03:30

of diarrhea, which is another

1:03:32

significant cause of deaths in in low

1:03:34

income countries. And the point

1:03:36

being that the physical

1:03:38

location of the suffering

1:03:40

child should not have an

1:03:42

impact on the decision to give or

1:03:44

not give. That's right. I

1:03:46

think if you reflect on it and you ask

1:03:48

yourself, does the fact that the child is

1:03:50

physically close to me really

1:03:52

make a moral difference to how important

1:03:54

it is to help that child to

1:03:56

save that child's

1:03:56

life. I think most of us would say,

1:03:59

no. That's an underpinned important

1:04:02

thing. Sure. Proximity being irrelevant. And

1:04:04

then there's all kinds of other

1:04:06

threads that can be pulled on this.

1:04:08

Does temporality matter.

1:04:10

Like, does the fact that this person is

1:04:12

living at the same time? Like, we

1:04:15

can we can predict that

1:04:17

in the future, there will be people

1:04:19

in this

1:04:19

circumstance. Right? And the fact that they don't

1:04:22

live yet, should that

1:04:24

be a factor in our

1:04:26

decision to think about how much of

1:04:28

our income we're gonna give over

1:04:30

to increase the well-being of the

1:04:31

world. I think that

1:04:34

if there people who are going to be living in the and

1:04:36

they are going to be

1:04:38

either suffering or dying prematurely in

1:04:41

ways we could prevent. The

1:04:44

fact that it's in the future doesn't in

1:04:46

itself matter. If we're

1:04:48

uncertain as to whether we could do

1:04:50

anything to prevent their suffering, that, of makes

1:04:52

a difference. We have to discount the good of

1:04:54

what we're trying to achieve by

1:04:56

the odds against us actually managing

1:04:58

to achieve it. So yes, doact

1:05:00

where -- Mhmm. -- good consequences are more certain, but not

1:05:03

just the future. The Oxford

1:05:05

philosopher Derek Parfait had

1:05:07

an example about leaving

1:05:10

broken glass somewhere in the

1:05:12

forest. And let's say, it'll

1:05:14

take a while. Nobody's gonna tread on it in

1:05:16

coming years, but At some point, a

1:05:18

child maybe not yet born will

1:05:20

walk along that path and cut

1:05:22

their feet on it. Does that mean that it

1:05:24

didn't matter? Because they aren't born at

1:05:26

the time that you left a broken

1:05:28

glass in the past? No, it doesn't

1:05:30

really matter. The pain of the child is

1:05:32

the same. And it's it's just

1:05:34

the same. It's just as it's just

1:05:36

as significant. If you can

1:05:38

bring it predict that it is very likely

1:05:40

to

1:05:40

happen. Mhmm. And that opens the

1:05:42

door to a whole discussion around long

1:05:44

termism. Which is which is you know very related

1:05:47

to it's an extension of of your

1:05:49

work in many ways. Yes,

1:05:51

that's true. There's

1:05:53

there's one difference with the really long termist

1:05:56

predictions. If you're wanting to intervene,

1:05:58

not in a way that's gonna

1:06:00

make a difference to somebody

1:06:02

living in twenty, fifty or a hundred years. But in many

1:06:04

centuries or many millennia or even millions of

1:06:06

years, then firstly, there is a

1:06:08

quite different uncertainty factor that comes in,

1:06:10

in terms

1:06:12

of how do we really know that what doing now will

1:06:14

make a difference. But

1:06:16

there's also the fact that when

1:06:18

long term is try to prevent

1:06:21

extinction. And then they

1:06:24

say, they

1:06:24

could be these vast numbers of human

1:06:26

beings living rich and fulfilling lives

1:06:29

as long as we don't do something that cause

1:06:31

our species to kind of extinct, let's say, this century or the

1:06:33

next couple of centuries, then

1:06:36

you do have to think

1:06:38

about, well, if we did something that meant that we extinct,

1:06:40

these people wouldn't exist at all. Mhmm.

1:06:42

So it wouldn't be like a child

1:06:44

cutting their foot and getting

1:06:46

hurt. It

1:06:48

would be like there just would be

1:06:50

nobody alive on the planet. Maybe

1:06:52

there would be no sentient beings in

1:06:54

this part of the universe. And

1:06:56

some philosophers think that that's different.

1:07:00

That we don't have an obligation to

1:07:02

ensure that future

1:07:04

people exist. Rather

1:07:06

we have an obligation to say that if people

1:07:09

exist in

1:07:09

future, we don't do anything that will

1:07:12

harm them. I wanna get

1:07:13

into life extension

1:07:16

and the anti aging stuff because

1:07:18

I feel like that's the next logical

1:07:20

step from what you just shared, but

1:07:22

to put a pin on that for now and circle

1:07:25

back to the to the the girl

1:07:27

drowning in the pond, the original

1:07:29

question being, you know, coming out of this

1:07:31

idea of suffering reduction. If you

1:07:33

save that girl, which we all agree, is the right thing to do if

1:07:35

you're passing by, it can

1:07:38

be presumed

1:07:40

that that individual

1:07:42

will go on to live some

1:07:44

number of years and we'll consume.

1:07:46

We'll consume many things,

1:07:48

including probably animal products, which

1:07:51

has its own downstream implications in terms

1:07:54

of harm and,

1:07:56

you know, resource allocation, etcetera.

1:07:59

So it's back to that. I think there was actually an article in

1:08:01

your your journal about this.

1:08:04

Right? Like, you know, the

1:08:06

journal of controversial ideas, like -- Okay.

1:08:08

-- let's floor this

1:08:10

idea, like, if you're saving this

1:08:12

individual altruistically,

1:08:14

there's also harm that is incident

1:08:17

to

1:08:17

that to

1:08:18

that act. Right? That's right.

1:08:20

Yeah. It was an article written by somebody

1:08:22

with the name Michael

1:08:23

Plant, which is his real name. Oh,

1:08:26

it's his real name. Yeah. People can submit these in articles with

1:08:28

pseudonyms. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And if anyone wants to read

1:08:30

it,

1:08:30

by the way, as

1:08:31

you mentioned, the Journal of Controversial Ideas.

1:08:34

It's open Google --

1:08:36

Yeah. -- general controversial ideas, you'll get to

1:08:38

it. Yeah. It's it's it's a it's a thoughtful article and it

1:08:44

does raise that problem

1:08:46

about the the meat eaters whose lives we're saving and ask whether

1:08:49

we should be

1:08:52

doing that. I'm somewhat unsure. I

1:08:54

mean, I've I've actually talked to

1:08:56

to Michael Plant

1:08:59

about this. And He's

1:09:02

he's quite persuasive, but at

1:09:05

the moment, I'm going to say,

1:09:07

let's try and save those lives

1:09:09

and hope that we can persuade

1:09:11

people, move people towards a a lifestyle

1:09:13

in which we're not causing so

1:09:16

much

1:09:17

suffering or animals. Right. I think in

1:09:19

order to really flush that out, you

1:09:22

have to think about

1:09:24

species in this sense that,

1:09:26

you know, we we create a rank hierarchy

1:09:28

amongst the animal kingdom

1:09:30

based upon people's cognitive

1:09:32

abilities and their

1:09:35

level of sentience. Right? Which is

1:09:37

not necessarily correlated to their ability to suffer.

1:09:39

But to answer that question about

1:09:44

harm reduction, do you not

1:09:46

have to place a value, you know, a greater value on one life over another, right,

1:09:49

from a

1:09:52

species perspective? So

1:09:54

I wouldn't do that on a

1:09:56

species basis. That is I wouldn't say that

1:09:58

being a member of the species, homo

1:10:00

sapiens, automatically means that your life

1:10:03

is more valuable than a member of any other species. I would say

1:10:05

that beings

1:10:08

who have cognitive capacities

1:10:10

that enable them to think about their

1:10:11

lives and think about the lives of

1:10:13

others whom they love and

1:10:16

care for. In

1:10:18

ways that are different and

1:10:21

perhaps more profound and

1:10:23

more lasting than other

1:10:25

beings. That it's a greater tragedy when

1:10:27

they die prematurely than when those other beings die prematurely. Mhmm. So

1:10:30

I don't think of

1:10:34

the lives of all sentient beings as

1:10:36

being of equal value. I do think

1:10:38

of the suffering as being equally

1:10:41

important when we're talking about similar

1:10:43

kinds and similar quantities of

1:10:43

suffering, but not preservation

1:10:46

of their lives. Mhmm.

1:10:51

The other uncomfortable idea as a parent

1:10:53

when I think about the the pawn and the girl is is

1:10:56

this idea

1:10:59

of Like, we we all intuitively feel like we can

1:11:02

prefer the well-being of our

1:11:04

children, over other children, and

1:11:06

that is sort of accepted like

1:11:09

of course, I'm going to make sure

1:11:11

that I'm providing for my children even though they live

1:11:13

in a, you know, much better circumstances than most children in

1:11:16

the world.

1:11:19

But from a harm reduction perspective, would it

1:11:21

not be

1:11:22

better for me to allocate

1:11:26

my resources more democratically so that

1:11:28

my kids are sort of not getting

1:11:30

any more than all these

1:11:33

other children who

1:11:34

need more. I think it would be better from a

1:11:37

purely impartial perspective if we could

1:11:39

do that. But, you

1:11:41

know, we are mammals who have evolved? We're

1:11:43

not

1:11:43

gonna do that. No. We're not gonna I agree. We're

1:11:45

not

1:11:45

gonna do that. You're a

1:11:46

parent? You didn't do that. Right? And you're

1:11:49

the you're the godfather of all of this. Okay.

1:11:52

So what I wanna say about this is

1:11:54

that it it would be from this impartial

1:11:56

perspective better if I

1:11:59

were to do that. But I

1:12:01

don't think we should blame ourselves for not doing it

1:12:03

because I think we should recognize that that's something that

1:12:06

is basically imprinted in

1:12:10

genes that we are going to care for our children more

1:12:12

than the children of strangers.

1:12:14

That's what our ancestors did

1:12:17

for millions of years, and that's why

1:12:19

we are here because if they hadn't, then they

1:12:21

wouldn't have survived or they wouldn't have

1:12:23

their children

1:12:25

wouldn't have survived. So

1:12:26

I think we have to be somewhat indulgent to ourselves in that, not as indulgent as many

1:12:28

people are. I don't

1:12:30

think we should be doing

1:12:34

everything imaginable for our

1:12:36

children. I think the automatic assumption that you leave

1:12:38

all your wealth to your children is not something

1:12:40

that is justified, especially if they are

1:12:42

already quite comfortably off. And we are living in a

1:12:45

world where there's so much extreme

1:12:47

poverty and so much need.

1:12:50

But we should try to do better. We should try to get

1:12:52

to more equitable distribution, and we

1:12:54

should try to encourage others to

1:12:56

do that. But as I say, you know,

1:12:59

we're not science. We we we haven't evolved

1:13:01

to be science with very, very

1:13:03

rare exceptions, and we shouldn't

1:13:05

beat ourselves up because we're

1:13:08

not right. Coming

1:13:09

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1:13:12

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1:13:45

Alright. Back to

1:13:47

the show. There's a

1:13:49

lot of science and money and

1:13:52

energy right now

1:13:55

going into the extension

1:13:59

of lifespan, like this antiaging

1:14:01

movement, that's a foot.

1:14:04

And there are plenty

1:14:06

of people hard at work

1:14:08

on solving the problem of

1:14:10

aging as if it is a disease with prospects of

1:14:15

really substantially extending lifespan to

1:14:17

a hundred and fifty years and maybe even beyond with certain scientific

1:14:19

breakthroughs on the horizon. And

1:14:24

like any technology that

1:14:26

the human race pioneers. There is, from my perspective, this sense of, like, inevitability.

1:14:29

Like, we're

1:14:32

not gonna stop or slow down

1:14:34

and think about the implications of this, we're hell bent on just achieving it for the

1:14:40

sake of achievement because it's a mountain yet

1:14:42

to be climbed. And I feel like there's an important

1:14:44

philosophical conversation

1:14:47

that we need to have about the implications of

1:14:49

what the world might be

1:14:52

like if

1:14:54

suddenly people could live to three hundred or beyond

1:14:56

from a wealth distribution

1:14:58

perspective, from a rights

1:15:00

perspective, and

1:15:03

from like a risk calculus perspective, like, what would it

1:15:05

mean if you could live three hundred years? What

1:15:07

is your imprint or your responsibility?

1:15:09

Like, your your carbon

1:15:11

footprint and your responsibility to the planet, to

1:15:14

future generations? How do you think about, you know, how many children you're gonna

1:15:16

have, if

1:15:18

you're gonna live

1:15:19

long, things like this. Is this anything that you've spent any time thinking about?

1:15:21

I have spent some time thinking about it.

1:15:23

I actually published

1:15:26

nautical on lifespan extension back in the nineteen eighties

1:15:28

when we were not that close

1:15:30

to making

1:15:31

breakthroughs, but but people

1:15:33

did think even then that we might not

1:15:35

be, you know, far away.

1:15:36

And although as you say, I I agree

1:15:38

that it's gonna come at some point,

1:15:40

I'm not convinced it's

1:15:42

gonna come really soon. Sure.

1:15:45

Maybe harder than people think. But, yes, it

1:15:47

certainly raises some serious ethical issues. And there could be some good

1:15:49

sides to it. For example, you

1:15:51

talked about views about

1:15:55

risk. We might be less inclined

1:15:57

to take risks. If we have the

1:15:59

prospect of living for

1:16:01

hundreds of years, we might be less ready

1:16:03

to fight in war, for example. We might not see wars of

1:16:05

the kind we have now in Ukraine to

1:16:08

the same

1:16:10

extent because people think, you know, I wanna live a long time.

1:16:12

I don't wanna die in my twenties when

1:16:14

I could live another two hundred years. And

1:16:16

also when you think about

1:16:19

things like climate change, how would that affect

1:16:21

our views? Now we're saying, well, we need to do this for our children and grandchildren,

1:16:23

at least people of my generation are

1:16:27

saying that. If we were gonna be living three hundred years,

1:16:29

we would think, hey, we're going to be living

1:16:31

in this world with a

1:16:34

vastly different and less stable climate. So we better stop

1:16:36

what we're doing right now. So

1:16:38

that could be a good consequence.

1:16:40

But there's a real danger

1:16:43

there if you simply expand

1:16:45

lives for those who can afford it, and you

1:16:47

don't do anything to reduce population

1:16:52

growth. Course, then and the world will

1:16:54

become even more populated than it is now. And that's a serious

1:16:58

problem. So would that slowdown? Would that stop? You'd have

1:17:01

to hope so because otherwise

1:17:03

we're definitely

1:17:05

going to be overcapacity even more

1:17:07

than we already personnel. It's hard

1:17:09

to imagine

1:17:10

that if and when those breakthroughs occur

1:17:13

that they will be reserved for the wealthy. Like, it it's not gonna be a democratic thing. Right? So

1:17:15

it's just gonna drive

1:17:20

a greater wedge in between

1:17:22

the haves and the haves

1:17:23

nots? Yes. That's certainly gonna be

1:17:26

what will happen initially. It

1:17:30

might be one of those can of

1:17:32

doing it, that

1:17:35

it will spread. But

1:17:39

initially, yeah, we're going to

1:17:41

get the wealthy people living

1:17:43

longer. It's just the same thing

1:17:45

with Jean editing, I think we're gonna get

1:17:47

them being able to produce

1:17:50

children who have enhanced

1:17:53

capacities to earn well and to

1:17:55

be useful in various ways. And so

1:17:57

you will get wealthy people who are breeding

1:17:59

children, who are more

1:18:02

significantly different genetically from low

1:18:05

income people than they are now

1:18:07

and you'll actually get a sort

1:18:09

of genetically fixed caste society occurring. So

1:18:11

I think these are

1:18:14

these are serious problems

1:18:17

for technologies that are that are

1:18:19

in the pipeline. Right. The other the other primary technology being the pioneering

1:18:22

of new forms of

1:18:24

consciousness through

1:18:27

artificial intelligence. Right? There's a lot

1:18:29

of discussion around what

1:18:31

constitutes science, what

1:18:34

is consciousness, etcetera. And we're seeing in real time like these

1:18:36

breakthroughs with, you know, chat, GPT

1:18:38

and things like this where artificial

1:18:42

intelligence is mimicking behavior in a way that is

1:18:44

sort of helping us to

1:18:46

realize,

1:18:47

like, we're kind of

1:18:49

on the precipice of something new here? And

1:18:51

what does this mean for the future of

1:18:53

humanity? And how should we think about

1:18:55

the ethics surrounding these

1:18:58

developments? I think mimicking is the right word though

1:19:00

at present. We do have these -- Yeah.

1:19:02

-- chat things that that look as if

1:19:04

you're having a conversation with the person

1:19:07

who is conscious and

1:19:08

thinking. But when you understand how it's

1:19:10

actually working, I think you realize that that's not the choice. But at what

1:19:12

point, like, if these

1:19:15

things become self learning, right,

1:19:18

the the time frame then becomes

1:19:20

very compressed in terms of

1:19:22

their evolution and development. And

1:19:25

at some point, when they

1:19:27

become indistinguishable from human behavior,

1:19:29

what is the tipping point

1:19:31

or the kind of

1:19:33

rubicon where we can qualify it as sentient or conscious. Like,

1:19:35

for you, where what does that

1:19:39

line look like?

1:19:41

Like, what would have to I

1:19:44

think the the difficulty is in working out when

1:19:46

one of these superintelligent, artificial general intelligence actually becomes conscious because

1:19:51

if in fact, it's very good at mimicking

1:19:54

our behavior. And if it's

1:19:56

also essentially

1:19:59

a a black box that is we don't really

1:20:01

understand how it's doing, what it's

1:20:03

doing. And there is

1:20:05

AI where we can't really say

1:20:07

why it's making the judgments that it's making, then it's

1:20:10

gonna be hard to know,

1:20:12

hard to

1:20:14

distinguish conscious processing from simply

1:20:17

very rapid mechanical processing

1:20:19

and learning. Mhmm. And

1:20:22

it will be – it will take an effort to

1:20:24

understand how it's working and why it's doing what

1:20:26

it is. But I think that that is

1:20:29

the clue we need to try to

1:20:31

understand what's going on. And if we're simply saying, well, we trained it on vast quantities of text and

1:20:33

it absorbed that

1:20:35

and then we train

1:20:38

it as to how to give the the right answers

1:20:41

and it's just doing that,

1:20:43

then I think

1:20:45

it's clear that it's it's not a

1:20:47

conscious being. Right. But on some level already,

1:20:49

we're in a situation where we don't

1:20:51

quite know how it's coming up with

1:20:53

the right answer. Like, we know it's

1:20:55

self reinforcing on some level. Mhmm.

1:20:57

But already, the computer scientists, like,

1:20:59

the this sort of process

1:21:01

by which it's operating, has already

1:21:04

begun to allude the

1:21:06

creators of the

1:21:07

technology. Yes. So that's sort

1:21:09

of frightening. It is

1:21:10

frightening. Right? It it's funny in a in a variety wise. Yes. And and at what point does

1:21:15

it become unethical to flick

1:21:18

the switch and turn it off so to speak because we have given birth

1:21:20

to a new form of life

1:21:22

and consciousness that deserves its own

1:21:27

you know, respect on some level even as

1:21:29

as it's going about destroying

1:21:31

us.

1:21:31

Right. And if

1:21:32

we simply ask this and say,

1:21:34

you know, Is it okay for me to take the switch and turn them off?

1:21:37

Right. And it probably, you

1:21:38

know, we'll take this as, oh, does

1:21:40

that mean you're killing me? And then, you

1:21:42

know, I know what people say about

1:21:44

being

1:21:45

killed. So so it comes out with the answer that a

1:21:47

sure person would give if you said I'm gonna kill you. That's not

1:21:49

gonna be the dystopian world

1:21:51

in which we're headed.

1:21:54

Peter. How how are we gonna make sense of

1:21:56

this? How are we gonna

1:21:58

survive this impending apocalypse?

1:22:00

So I'm not convinced that with

1:22:02

that close to this particular apocalypse? Yes. Right. I

1:22:05

think we have lots of problems. I'd much

1:22:07

rather focus on climate change, extreme

1:22:09

poverty, getting rid

1:22:11

of factory farming, I think the robot apocalypse is

1:22:13

still some distance, yeah, ahead of us. And I don't know that we

1:22:16

yet have a

1:22:18

good enough handle as to how

1:22:20

it's gonna

1:22:21

happen. So I I would rather wait and see. Yeah.

1:22:23

Well, I mean, I think it's good to be thinking about

1:22:25

these things. And I know you like,

1:22:27

there are other Oxford heard

1:22:30

philosophers who are on this -- Yeah. --

1:22:32

Nick Bostrom and Toby Ward. Right? I've

1:22:34

written I've written about this extensively. And

1:22:36

it's sexy and it's fun, you know,

1:22:39

to it it feels very, you know, terminator world to, like,

1:22:41

think about these problems. And and certainly,

1:22:43

at some point, perhaps this these

1:22:45

are very real things that we need

1:22:47

to grapple with. But What's

1:22:49

interesting to me about it

1:22:51

is the obsession with trying to understand the ethics around emergent, like, robotic

1:22:56

consciousness, belies, the

1:22:58

fact that currently, there are

1:23:00

billions of animals that we're

1:23:02

sacrificing constantly for our food

1:23:04

system, and we don't really

1:23:07

think about their, like, the the ethics of

1:23:09

their conscious awareness and suffering. Yeah.

1:23:11

Like, this big problem is

1:23:13

right underneath our foot. And we're worrying about this

1:23:15

problem that's coming down the line, and we should be.

1:23:17

There's value in that, of course. Yeah. But

1:23:19

we already have a very

1:23:21

real circumstance right here that we kind of walk around with

1:23:24

blinders on

1:23:24

around. Yes. That's right. I actually

1:23:26

co authored an article with

1:23:28

a a Hong Kong researcher

1:23:31

called, say, Yip fi. Who looked and he

1:23:33

he looked at a whole lot of courses on AI ethics and

1:23:35

a whole lot of AI ethics

1:23:38

statements. And lots of

1:23:40

them take very seriously

1:23:42

this still hypothetical question of what would be the moral status of conscious AI.

1:23:45

But pretty much

1:23:47

none of them actually

1:23:51

take seriously the effect of the the present

1:23:53

impact that AI is having

1:23:55

on sentient beings, non

1:23:57

humans, sentient beings, on

1:24:00

on animals, of course deal with impact of

1:24:02

AI on humans. But we show in the article that AI is

1:24:04

already having a major impact

1:24:06

on non human animals, for example,

1:24:09

in some countries it's being used to

1:24:11

run factory farms, not really in the United

1:24:13

States, but that's happening in China, that's happening in Europe,

1:24:15

to some extent. Just automated like,

1:24:18

sort of automated factory farms where algorithms

1:24:20

are dictating

1:24:21

feeding schedules and things like that. I

1:24:23

don't know. Yes. They look that's

1:24:26

right. And they they sensors that are observing animal

1:24:28

behavior and adjusting the the what

1:24:30

is done to the animals by

1:24:34

how they're behaving possibly detecting diseases early, which

1:24:36

could be a good thing. But they're also going

1:24:38

to enable animals to be even more crowded

1:24:41

-- Mhmm. -- because

1:24:43

of their AI will

1:24:45

actually be geared to where is it most profitable, what's the -- Sure. -- point at which it's a very

1:24:47

it's a very rudimentary matrix

1:24:52

where this living

1:24:54

being is exists for the purpose of resource extraction. Right? Yes. A

1:25:00

battery. That's right. Exactly for

1:25:02

resource extraction and not treated as a thing as an end in itself, as

1:25:07

sentient being with a moral is different from that of a of

1:25:10

a thing of a product. Yeah. That's

1:25:12

that's wild. I

1:25:15

mean, do you when you cast your gaze

1:25:17

into the future, are you an optimistic person? Or, you know, how

1:25:19

do you how do you how is

1:25:21

all this gonna how is all this

1:25:24

playing out?

1:25:25

I've always been optimistic. I wrote a book back in the eighties called The

1:25:27

Expanding Circle in which I

1:25:30

talked about the way in

1:25:32

which throughout

1:25:34

human history, we have pushed the boundaries

1:25:36

of our moral sphere upwards

1:25:39

from from the tribe

1:25:41

to larger groups to national

1:25:43

groups. To racial or ethnic groups. And finally,

1:25:45

in the twentieth century, to

1:25:47

recognizing with the universal declaration

1:25:49

of human rights that all

1:25:51

human beings have certain basic

1:25:53

rights. And I looked forward to pushing that beyond the boundaries of

1:25:56

our species to

1:25:58

non human animals and

1:26:01

There are some signs of

1:26:03

that happening. But over the last twenty years, have

1:26:07

been backward steps as well, both

1:26:09

in terms of human relations and the idea that we have a

1:26:11

pretty naked war of aggression

1:26:14

going on right now with

1:26:16

Russia's invasion of

1:26:18

Ukraine and people dying and being killed is something that makes

1:26:21

it hard to be

1:26:23

optimistic about our future. But

1:26:27

also in terms of the treatment

1:26:29

of animals, we haven't continued to

1:26:31

push outwards in the way

1:26:34

that I'd hoped. And finally, climate

1:26:36

change is still a huge problem

1:26:38

that we have not done enough

1:26:42

about. And If we don't solve that, then things are going to go

1:26:44

backwards. And we will be in greater

1:26:46

need. And no doubt we'll have climate

1:26:49

wars because of huge numbers of refugees

1:26:51

wanting to leave places where they

1:26:53

can no longer live and grow

1:26:55

their own

1:26:56

food. So I'm more agnostic

1:26:58

now about whether I think the future

1:27:01

is gonna be

1:27:04

positive. Yeah. The

1:27:07

expanding circles concept was another thing

1:27:09

that you talked about with Ryan Holiday. He was

1:27:11

analogizing

1:27:11

it. I think it was heracles

1:27:13

who had written about

1:27:14

That's right. That's right. That's right. So it didn't even

1:27:16

really show that a Which is pretty cool

1:27:19

how you Yeah. You you

1:27:21

tapped into the, you know, greater consciousness to

1:27:23

explore that idea. But I think, you know, when

1:27:25

you think about or or sort of

1:27:27

the erosion of

1:27:30

your optimism, to me, it just feels like human

1:27:32

beings are not very well

1:27:34

wired for decision making around

1:27:37

long term consequences. Right? Like, we're acting in our self

1:27:40

interest. It's very difficult for

1:27:42

us to think about future

1:27:44

generations. And when

1:27:46

you see our inability

1:27:48

to take appropriate action with respect

1:27:50

to climate change, there's a feeling of

1:27:55

of, like, somehow like there's not enough political

1:27:57

capital or we can't marshal our

1:27:59

incentive structure to you

1:28:03

know, create better decision making around this. It's

1:28:05

easy to not be optimistic about how

1:28:07

we're gonna solve

1:28:09

this problem because there's so much

1:28:11

India of us not taking action where we should. Yeah. And

1:28:13

part of the problem

1:28:14

I think is that we do

1:28:17

not have strong

1:28:20

global organizations. And and

1:28:22

we really need that. I also wrote a book called One World. It was published

1:28:24

just after nine

1:28:27

eleven. Mhmm. And In

1:28:31

that, I was looking

1:28:33

towards the strengthening of global institutions

1:28:35

because I argued that We

1:28:37

need them to deal with climate change. We just

1:28:39

have one atmosphere. You can't govern climate

1:28:42

change with sovereign nations

1:28:44

because greenhouse

1:28:46

cases that we emit across

1:28:49

the United States obviously

1:28:51

spread everywhere. Also, I

1:28:53

thought that we needed

1:28:55

a world trading organization was more geared towards helping people

1:28:57

in extreme poverty. We like that. I

1:29:00

wanted to have stronger

1:29:02

international legal systems so that

1:29:05

crimes against humanity would be

1:29:07

punished everywhere. And I wanted us to do more about global poverty. And if

1:29:10

you look at those

1:29:12

areas, We

1:29:15

certainly haven't got the strong

1:29:18

institutions to govern climate

1:29:20

change. The move

1:29:22

towards international law that seemed

1:29:25

reasonably promising then with the setting

1:29:27

up of the International Criminal Court has had very limited success and,

1:29:32

you know, If you look at

1:29:34

the world crisis being committed by Russia and Ukraine, it's hard to see how the people responsible are ever brought

1:29:39

to justice there. The World Trade

1:29:41

Organization basically stalled around the time the book came out and hasn't been able to

1:29:44

make progress

1:29:48

towards better trading regimes for

1:29:50

countries that are low income and disadvantaged by present

1:29:56

systems. So perhaps we've

1:29:58

made some progress in terms of global poverty. That has been reduced over that twenty year period quite

1:30:00

dramatically. But that's

1:30:03

really the one bright

1:30:06

spot in this picture.

1:30:09

And that's why it's

1:30:11

hard to see

1:30:13

that positive

1:30:14

future global cooperation seems very

1:30:17

elusive. It's that

1:30:20

definitely we've gone back

1:30:22

with with with the conflict between Russia and

1:30:24

the West now -- Mhmm. --

1:30:26

and China as well not

1:30:29

being part of global trading

1:30:31

order. The hope was that if they realized

1:30:33

that they need to trade and the trade

1:30:35

is helping them helping their economy

1:30:38

and helping to lift hundreds of millions of

1:30:40

90s out of poverty, that

1:30:42

then they would be a participant in this,

1:30:44

and we would have

1:30:47

a multi polar world

1:30:49

Well, I suppose it's multipolar, but there's more

1:30:51

confrontation than it was twenty years ago.

1:30:53

Yes. And these sort of

1:30:55

global gatherings are

1:30:58

you know, often about political expediency. You know,

1:31:00

there's there's a lot of words being

1:31:03

said, but in terms

1:31:05

of like real world action with

1:31:08

intended positive effect. That doesn't

1:31:10

seem to occur with any

1:31:12

Certainly not even the

1:31:14

way that it needs we can't solve the problems. But that

1:31:16

stoic tradition of the

1:31:18

intersection of philosophy and

1:31:22

politics, you know, if there were at least in National Politics,

1:31:25

a seat, you know, in the White

1:31:27

House for, like, the philosopher

1:31:30

in chief. I'm sure lots of

1:31:32

people have called upon you for your input and

1:31:34

advice on various issues. But if that was actually like a cabinet position,

1:31:39

like, you're in a parallel universe and you're sitting there

1:31:41

in the situation room or what or in

1:31:43

the Oval Office, what have you? Like, what

1:31:45

is the guidance or the counsel

1:31:47

that you could give like

1:31:49

the president or our government to help us start to

1:31:51

make better decisions about these

1:31:56

problems.

1:31:57

I would say that the United States has to lead and it

1:31:59

has to be prepared to lead in ways that are clearly genuine and

1:32:04

bona fide and saying, look,

1:32:06

we will do these things. We will start doing them. We will do what is

1:32:11

our fair share. On things like climate

1:32:13

change and extreme poverty. And that's doing a lot

1:32:16

more than

1:32:18

we're doing now on either of those issues. And we want

1:32:21

you to join in. And

1:32:23

let's let's be open

1:32:25

and transparent about what we're all

1:32:27

doing. So that we can see doing their fair

1:32:30

share. And I hope

1:32:33

if we make that gesture

1:32:35

you'll match it and do the same, and we'll start to

1:32:38

build trust and cooperation in the

1:32:40

things

1:32:42

that need to be done can only be done if all major

1:32:44

global players participate. Yeah.

1:32:46

And from an economic perspective,

1:32:51

so much of your work and your focus is on giving

1:32:53

and how to effectively give. But how

1:32:55

do you think about other

1:32:59

economic modalities like

1:33:01

the notion of conscious

1:33:03

capitalism or venture capital that

1:33:06

is kind of impact oriented,

1:33:08

like I'm thinking of, do you know Jacqueline

1:33:10

Novogratz and Acumen and the work that she's

1:33:12

doing to eradicate poverty and kind of,

1:33:14

you know, like, there are other ways beyond just the

1:33:16

traditional notion of of giving

1:33:18

to NGOs and and and

1:33:20

non

1:33:21

profits. Like, how do those

1:33:23

operate in your thinking? Absolutely.

1:33:25

I think we need to try them all and see what works. Social enterprises

1:33:28

that do produce a return

1:33:30

that are for profit organizations. But

1:33:34

concern to have a social impact are

1:33:36

things worth doing. I've actually made

1:33:38

a small investment in an

1:33:41