Yuri Milner's Eureka Manifesto: How to Advance Humanity’s Mission

The odds of your existence are infinitesimally small — almost zero. The chance of intelligent life emerging on Earth — or any planet in the Universe — is also highly unlikely. So the fact that you do exist, and can imagine such abstract cosmic concepts, is pretty special.

Encoded in the fact of your very unlikely existence is a profound idea: You are a way for the Universe to know itself. According to entrepreneur and investor Yuri Milner, this idea suggests humanity has a shared mission to explore and understand the cosmos. He discusses this mission in his short book Eureka Manifesto: The Mission for Our Civilisation.

Yuri Milner’s Mission to Explore and Understand Our Universe

Yuri Milner wrote and published Eureka Manifesto in 2021. A passionate science philanthropist, Milner began his career as a theoretical physicist, and he has continued to support scientists and fundamental research. Eureka Manifesto contains some of his ideas about scientific progress and humanity’s role in the future of the Universe.

We Need a Mission

Eureka Manifesto’s principal thesis is that humanity needs a shared mission to ensure we survive and thrive as a global civilisation for centuries to come. Milner argues that a mission “gives a purpose to existence, a guiding vision to our choices, and a rallying call to action.”

A global mission could also unite humanity in working together to build a better future. So far, Milner says, human progress has been chaotic. We fight over resources, play zero-sum games, and focus on short-term needs to the detriment of our species, our fellow animals, and our planet.

Our Mission

To find a common goal, Milner suggests we look beyond Earth, to the Universal Story we are part of. The Universal Story is “the story of everything,” from the Big Bang to the human mind that imagines it. The beats of the story are various “phase transitions” that shaped order out of chaos and ultimately produced the human species.

The Universal Story tells us that we are exceptionally rare as sentient beings. If there are other intelligent minds out there amongst the stars, we haven’t found them (yet).

Our capacity to conceptualise and map the Universe “beyond the bounds of our own little slice of space and time” casts us as significant players in the Universal Story. As beings that have evolved from the cosmos, we are a way for the Universe to know itself.

Our sentience is our “birthright” and a “gift.” From this birthright, Milner infers our mission: to explore and understand our Universe. We must explore the furthest reaches of space and time with “our eyes and our technologies.” And we must understand everything, from the laws of physics to the workings of the mind and life itself.

By embracing this mission, we can extend and refine the Universal Story. We can also collectively benefit from the technological progress we achieve along the way. And we can avoid existential pitfalls, such as failed enlightenments and extinction events.

Yuri Milner’s Plan of Action: How Humanity Can Advance the Mission

To advance the mission, Milner proposes a plan of action that involves:

• Celebrating scientists as heroes.
• Investing resources into fundamental science and space exploration.
• Enabling artificial intelligence (AI) to drive scientific progress.
• Focusing education on the Universal Story and using the power of art to tell it.
• Sparking a new enlightenment in which everyone can contribute to a shared culture of knowledge.

Celebrating Scientists as Heroes

Great scientists of the past have shaped our world immeasurably. The brilliant minds of today continue to build on this legacy of discovery and innovation.

To advance our shared mission, Milner suggests we recognise the contributions these researchers have made to our civilisation. By raising their profile and prestige, we can also inspire future generations to take up the scientific torch and forge new pathways of progress.

Milner co-founded the Breakthrough Prize in 2012 to celebrate scientists as heroes. The world’s largest scientific awards, the Breakthrough Prize honours groundbreaking achievements in Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences, and Mathematics.

Each year, Breakthrough Prize laureates receive $3 million prizes at an internationally broadcast gala award ceremony. Many have dubbed the ceremony the “Oscars of Science,” due to the event’s star-studded attendees and glamorous atmosphere.

Investing Resources into Fundamental Science and Space Exploration

Milner considers fundamental research the “most fertile ground for transformative discoveries and technologies.” He suggests humanity allocate funding to this area in proportion to the “true importance” of science in shaping our lives and futures.

Additionally, investing resources into space exploration can accelerate our progress towards becoming a truly spacefaring civilisation.

Milner has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to fundamental research and space exploration via the Breakthrough Initiatives. He and Stephen Hawking announced the pioneering space science programmes in 2015.

Breakthrough Listen and Watch are searching for evidence of life beyond Earth. Listen uses a network of the world’s most powerful telescopes to scan cosmic targets for radio signals that could originate from advanced alien civilisations.

Meanwhile, Watch is developing cutting-edge instruments to identify and characterise planets within 20 light years of us that could host primitive life.

Breakthrough Starshot is a research and development project for interstellar travel. Starshot’s mission is to demonstrate proof of concept for uncrewed spacecraft that could reach Alpha Centauri within 20 years of launch.

Enabling Artificial Intelligence to Drive Scientific Progress

Milner believes we could be at a phase transition in the evolution of artificial intelligence. We can leverage the vast potential of this technology by channelling additional AI-powered research into fundamental science.

Using AI could drive dramatic, potentially transformative progress in addressing some of the biggest questions in the Universe. AI could also produce technologies and solutions that might significantly enhance our lives.

Milner dedicates a chapter in Eureka Manifesto to AI. “The Significance of Our Moment” explores the future of machine learning and how “the silicon minds we birth” might help us advance our mission.

Focusing Education on the Universal Story and Using the Power of Art to Tell It

Milner explains that an education framed around the Universal Story can offer an alternative to our “fragmented, hyperspecialised approach to teaching children.” As the Universal Story includes the history of the cosmos, Earth, and human civilisation, it also encompasses all subjects, including the social sciences and humanities.

Using this approach, we can create a coherent, interconnected syllabus. Milner adds that the “epic nature” of the Universal Story can inspire young people to contribute to our shared mission.

Using art to underpin the Universal Story could also help individuals stay connected to the mission after they leave school. Storytelling in popular media like films, television, books, and music has enormous power to express the Universal Story in an accessible and emotionally resonant way.

Milner understands the importance of engaging children in scientific ideas. In 2015, he and his wife Julia established the Breakthrough Junior Challenge to achieve this goal. The annual, global competition invites students aged 13-18 to create and submit short videos that explain a challenging concept in physics, maths, or the life sciences.

Breakthrough Junior Challenges winners receive a $250,000 post-secondary scholarship. They also win $50,000 for the teacher who inspired them and a science lab worth $100,000 for their school.

Sparking a New Enlightenment

We can’t all be scientific heroes like Galileo Galilei or Marie Curie. Only a handful of extraordinary people working in the fundamental sciences will drive our understanding of the Universe.

However, Milner emphasises that we all have an important part to play in establishing the conditions for such progress. We can contribute to a society that values knowledge, critical thinking, and rational argument. By championing these values, we can work together to ignite a new Enlightenment.

The End of the Universal Story

The Universal Story has a beginning and an end. The “heat death of the Universe” model predicts that all stars and galaxies will eventually expand far away from each other and fade.

While this might only happen in about a hundred trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion years, it would mean the end of order, time, and memory. All records of the cosmos would “be lost to random drift,” including the attempts of intelligent minds to comprehend our Universe.

Milner says that “sad future” only makes the mission to explore and understand our Universe more vital. Especially as “now could be the moment that our minds begin to mature to a new level.”

About Yuri Milner

Yuri Milner’s passion for charitable giving led him to join the Giving Pledge in 2012. He predominantly invests in the science and technology arenas. Tech For Refugees is one of Milner’s latest non-profit initiatives. He established Tech For Refugees in 2022 to address the global refugee crisis. The initiative sponsors the tech-driven humanitarian efforts of partner companies and organisations.