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Kind: captions
Language: en

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I've been thinking a lot about risk recently.
Partly because of the new scar on my face,

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and partly because I'm sitting on Pulpit Rock,
in the south of Norway, with nothing between

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me and a 600 meter drop. It is a very very
long way down and it is very windy.

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But how risky is this, really? I mean, millions
of people have visited Pulpit Rock. It's not

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a difficult hike. Families with kids come
up here all the time. And yet, in living memory,

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only one person has ever fallen off it. Walking
up here is probably more dangerous. Driving

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to the base of it certainly is. And yet this
has been called one of the world's scariest

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tourist attractions. And it is.

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Humans are bad at assessing risks. That's
not news, you know that. But would I still

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be here, would he still be sitting on the
edge, if the consequences were different?

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Let's say, theoretically, that at some future
point humanity has cured all disease, including

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ageing. No one gets old, no one gets ill.
Technically, you are immortal, but you can

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still get hit by a car, or fall off a very
high rock.

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I did some maths. An average, modern, healthy,
western person has about a 1 in 2500 chance

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of dying from an accident every year. It's
a rough estimate. But those odds mean that

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one in five of those immortals won't live
to see 500 years. One in three don't see 1,000.

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Sure, that's a long life, but it's not immortality.
You still die.

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Transhumanists would say, well, they're able
to back up their minds, that all they need

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to do is "live long enough to live forever"
– that's Ray Kurzweil. But if that turns

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out not to be an option, then the only way
to survive would be to avoid all risks.

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Now, in English, we use the word "live" not
just to mean our bodies working, but to represent

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experiences like this. It implies that hiding
away in a bunker, avoiding risk, is somehow

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being less alive. But if you really had literal
immortality, if you thought you'd survive

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into eternity, would you live like this, take
those actually quite scary 1 in 2500 odds

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every year, knowing that, at some point, your
number will come up? Or do you hide yourself

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away, never leave a safe bunker, knowing you
won't interact with the world, but know you'll

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grow old with it, you will find out what the
future holds?

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Ultimately: which is more human: the desire
to experience, or the desire to survive?

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I don't know the answer, and I suspect it's
somewhere in the middle, because some old

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part of my brain, with millions of years of
evolution guiding it, has already made the

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decision for me. Because I am sitting on this
bit of the rock, and not out there.

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That is absolutely terrifying.

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[Translating these subtitles? Add your name here!]

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OFF SCREEN: Did you enjoy that?

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Did I enjoy that? No. No.