whatever was happening.

Exactly.

To justify it.

I mean, we have to remember that these people who are doing things that we now look back upon as wicked thought they were good people.

Everyone wants to think they're a good person.

So what we see is an ideology develop of the civilizing mission, like the duty of European people to bring justice.

civilization to to other people and okay if that means taking their lands and enslaving them and and so on that this is all part of this mission but this had to be justified and so it was justified by by resurrecting this view of aristotle but was a kind of natural hierarchy of people and that hierarchy depends to a large extent on mental ability so you know in the 19th century we see interest developing in trying to demonstrate this scientifically And it starts with craniometry, which is the measurement of the skull.

Do you think that the extension of life will grind meaning to meaningless life today, Professor? Or do you think that, like music, there are so many other ways in which we can extend time, making life feel more fulfilling?

Back when Cave got his start, these sorts of topics were mostly the realm of science fiction writers.

With the rise of powerful AI in the last 20 years or so, people really are starting to think about machine consciousness, about mind uploading, and so on.

There really are services that you can pay for now which promise to create a kind of digital postmortem avatar so you can live on in some form after you die.

So technology is giving new urgency to a lot of ancient philosophical questions.

And maybe that's where Cave seems the most curmudgeonly.

I think real immortality, like really living forever, would be a curse.

If you live long enough, everyone performs all goodness and all perversity.

And you might think, well, you know, why? Why can't someone try to be good for, you know, centuries on end? Well, just imagine what it means to be, you know, a good Englishman over the last few hundred years.

Like, they struggle to press a lever or perceive an edge.

Which any animal can do, or at least, you know, any mammal, say.

And so effectively, these systems don't have the common sense of, uh, a mouse, whereas higher reasoning, maths and so on, they can do a hell of a lot better than humans can.

Hmm.

You know, what's wonderful about the octopus is they are phenomenally smart.

Now th- th- they can use tools, for example, without being taught.

Um, they develop sophisticated tactics of all kinds.

There are lots of wonderful octopus escape stories.