Bryan Johnson argues that humans are addicted to self-destructive behavior and create false narratives to avoid seeing it. We blame external factors instead of changing ourselves, a dangerous habit as we build artificial intelligence. Real progress requires honest self-reflection first.
It's hard to be human. And I think if we can all be honest just for a minute and to confess that we are helplessly and hopelessly engaged in self destruction all the time as a starting point and not try to spin up these pretty little stories about that's what it means to live or this is what brings me happiness. They're lies, but we've done such a phenomenal job of making them pretty stories and protecting them because we don't want to face this uncomfortable reality. But we are a species addicted, addicted to self destructive behavior. And I don't think this is the form of intelligence that we want to be walking in. As we engineer AI again, we have this tendency to point our finger at everything in the world except for ourselves as the thing that needs to change.
