Bestselling author and science philosopher Peter GodfreySmith discusses his new book, Living on Earth: Forests, Corals, Consciousness, and the Making of the World.

Peter and host Luisa Rodriguez cover:
• Why octopuses and dolphins haven’t developed complex civilisation despite their intelligence.
• How the role of culture has been crucial in enabling human technological progress.
• Why Peter thinks the evolutionary transition from sea to land was key to enabling humanlike intelligence — and why we should expect to see that in extraterrestrial life too.
• Whether Peter thinks wild animals’ lives are, on balance, good or bad, and when, if ever, we should intervene in their lives.
• Whether we can and should avoid death by uploading human minds.
• And plenty more.

Learn more and see the full transcript on the 80,000 Hours website: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episod...

Chapters:
• Cold open (00:00:00)
• Luisa's intro (00:00:57)
• The interview begins (00:02:12)
• Wild animal suffering and rewilding (00:04:09)
• Thinking about death (00:32:50)
• Uploads of ourselves (00:38:04)
• Culture and how minds make things happen (00:54:05)
• Challenges for waterbased animals (01:01:37)
• The importance of seatoland transitions in animal life (01:10:09)
• Luisa's outro (01:23:43)



The 80,000 Hours Podcast features unusually indepth conversations about the world’s most pressing problems and what you can do to solve them.