“I think it would be sort of presumptuous for us to think that now we have achieved the level of enlightenment where all possible values are transparent to us… Think of a big cathedral of possible modes of being, ways of experience, seeing the world, relating, thinking. And I think we have basically explored a janitor's closet.”

think, yeah, that in part, it might be a lack of imagination to really internalize how good the future could become if it does go well. It's kind of easier to have a concrete picture of how things could go badly, like a disaster is like not easy to paint in a way that everybody would agree that if that happens, then it's really horrible. And for some of the positives, also, one can do the same, like benefits in medicine and so forth. Everybody agree that if you could find a way to cure Alzheimer or something, that would be hugely beneficial. But a large chunk of the potential upside is more of the way of sort of unlocking new ways to be human, new possible modes of being. And there, I think it does put a larger demand on the imagination to sort of conceive that something like that could be both possible and desirable. I sometimes compare it to like if you imagine some great ape ancestors of Homo sapiens deliberating whether they should continue to evolve and one day become human. And they would think about the pros and cons. And, you know, maybe they would realize some of the benefits, like, oh, we could have…