EA - Some Carl Sagan quotations by finm

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Some Carl Sagan quotations, published by finm on October 10, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Carl Sagan (1934–1996) was an astronomer and science communicator. He organised the first physical messages to space (the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record), presented the hugely popular TV series Cosmos (1980), and considered humanity’s long-term future in Pale Blue Dot (1994). He was also part of the team of researchers who first discovered the possibility of nuclear winter, and so became a leading voice of concern about the use of nuclear weapons. Sagan’s words were often prescient and always poetic. In particular, I think he captures many ideas related to longtermism and existential risk as powerfully as anyone writing today. I’ve tried collecting some quotations that stand out to me from Sagan’s work, though I’ve only read a minority of his published writing. You can find a slightly more comprehensive version here. The website for Toby Ord’s book The Precipice contains a list of quotations pertaining to existential risk, which I partially borrowed from here. Michael Nielsen has also written some fantastic 'working notes' on Cosmos. Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980) Note that Cosmos was co-written with Ann Druyan. Episode 1 — "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean" The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. Our contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries. The size and age of the cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home, the Earth. For the first time we have the power to determine the fate of our planet, and ourselves. This is a time of great danger, but our species is young and curious and brave. It shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the cosmos, and our place within it. I believe our future depends powerfully on how we understand this cosmos; in which we float, like a mote of dust, in the morning sky. You can watch this opening scene here. The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we’ve learned most of what we know. Recently, we’ve waded a little way out; maybe ankle-deep: and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from; we long to return — and we can, because the Cosmos is also within us: we are made of star stuff. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice. We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do — here and how — with our intelligence, and our knowledge of the cosmos. Episode 13 — "Who Speaks for Earth?" [Imagining human extinction] Maybe the reptiles will evolve intelligence once more. Perhaps, one day, there will be civilizations again on Earth. There will be life. There will be intelligence. But there will be no more humans. Not here, not on a billion worlds. [T]he world impoverishes itself by spending a trillion dollars a year on preparations for war. And by employing perhaps half the scientists and high technologists on the planet in military endeavors. How would we explain all this to a dispassionate extraterrestrial observer? What account would we give of our stewardship of the planet Earth? We have heard the rationales offered by the superpowers. We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for the human species? It's probably here. [Alexandria] that the word "cosmopolitan" realized its true meaning of a citizen, not just...