Kind: captions
Language: en
if we now find ourselves inside this
kind of world of illusions
created by an alien intelligence that we
don't understand but it understands us
this is a kind of you know spiritual
enslavement that we won't be able to
break out of because it understands us
it understands how to manipulate us but
we don't understand
what is behind this screen of stories
and images and and songs
the following is a conversation with
Yvonne Noah Harari a historian
philosopher and author of several highly
acclaimed highly influential books
including sapiens homodeus and 21
lessons for the 21st century he is also
an outspoken critic of Benjamin
Netanyahu and the current right-wing
government in Israel so while much of
this conversation is about the history
and future of human civilization we also
discuss the political turmoil of
present-day Israel providing a different
perspective from that of my recent
conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu
this is the last treatment podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's Yuval Noah Harari
13.8 billion years ago is the origin of
our universe
3.8 billion years ago is the origin of
life here on our little planet the one
we call Earth
let's say 200 000 years ago is the
appearance of early Homo sapiens so let
me ask you this question how rare are
these events in the vastness of space
and time or put it in a more fun way how
many intelligent aliens civilizations do
you think are out there in this universe
us being one of them I suppose there
should be some statistically but we
don't have any evidence but I do think
that you know intelligence in any way
it's a bit overvalued
we are the most intelligent entities on
this planet and look what we're doing
so intelligence also tends to be
self-destructive which implies that if
there are or were intelligent life forms
elsewhere maybe they don't survive for
long so you think there's a tension
between happiness and intelligence
absolutely intelligence is definitely
not
something that is directed towards
amplifying happiness I I would also
emphasize the huge huge difference
between intelligence and Consciousness
which many people certainly in the tech
industry and in the AI industry tend to
miss
intelligence is simply the ability to
solve problems
to attain goals
and you know to to win a chess to win a
struggle for survival to win a war to
drive a car to diagnose a disease this
is intelligence
Consciousness is the ability to feel
things like pain and pleasure and love
and hate in humans and other animals
intelligence and Consciousness go
together they go hand in hand which is
why we confuse them we solve problems we
attain goals by having feelings
but other types of intelligence
certainly in computers computers are
already highly intelligent and as far as
we know they have zero Consciousness
when a computer beats you at chess or go
or whatever it doesn't feel happy if it
loses it doesn't feel sad
and uh there could be also other highly
intelligent
entities out there in the universe that
have zero Consciousness and I think that
Consciousness is far more important and
valuable than intelligence
can you stream on the case that
Consciousness and intelligence
are intricately connected so not just in
humans but anywhere else they have to go
hand in hand is it possible for you to
imagine such a universe
it it could be but we don't know yet
again we have examples certainly we know
of examples of high intelligence without
Consciousness computers are one example
um as far as we know
plants are not conscious
yet they are intelligent they can solve
problems they can attain goals in very
sophisticated ways
um so um
the other way around to have
Consciousness without any intelligence
this is probably impossible but to
having intelligence without
Consciousness yes that's possible a
bigger question is whether any of that
is tied to organic biochemistry we know
on this planet only about carbon-based
life forms whether you're an amoeba a
dinosaur a tree a human being you're
based on organic biochemistry
um is there an essential connection
between organic biochemistry and
Consciousness do all conscious entities
everywhere in the universe or in the
future on planet Earth have to be based
on carbon is there something so special
about carbon as an element that an
entity based on Silicon will never be
conscious I don't know maybe
but again this is a key question about
computer and computer consciousness
that can computers eventually become
conscious even though they are not
organic the jury is still out on that I
don't know I mean that we have to take
both options into account well a big
part of that
is do you think we humans would be able
to detect other intelligent beings other
conscious beings another way to ask that
is it possible that the aliens are
already here and we don't see them
meaning are we
very human-centric in our understanding
of one the definition of life to the
definition of intelligence and three the
definition of consciousness
the aliens are here they are just not
from outer space AI which is usually
stands for artificial intelligence I
think it stands for alien intelligence
because uh AI is an alien type of
intelligence it solves problems attains
goals in a very very different way in an
alien way from human beings and I'm not
implying that AI Came From Outer Space
it came from Silicon Valley but it is
alien to us if there are alien
intelligent or conscious entities that
came from outer space already here and
I've I've not seen every any evidence uh
for it it's not impossible but you know
in science evidence is everything well I
mean I guess instructive there's uh just
having the humility to look around to
think about living beings that operate
at a different time scale a different
spatial scale and I think that's all
useful when starting to analyze
artificial intelligence
is
possible that even the language models
the larger language models we have today
are already conscious I I highly doubt
it but I think Consciousness in
social norms because we cannot prove
Consciousness in anybody except
ourselves we know that we are conscious
because we are feeling it we have direct
access to our subjective Consciousness
we have we cannot have any proof that
any other entity in the world any other
human being or parents our best friends
we don't have proof that they are
conscious you know this is this has been
known for thousands of years this is the
card this is Buddha this is Plato we we
don't we can't have this sort of proof
what we do have is Social conventions
social convention that all human beings
are conscious it's also applies to
animals most people who have pets are
firmly believe that their patch pets are
conscious but a lot of people still
refuse to acknowledge that about cows or
pigs now pigs are far more intelligent
than dogs and cats in according to many
measures yet when you go to the
supermarket and and buy a a piece of
Frozen pigment you don't think about it
as a conscious entity why do you think
of your dog as conscious but not of the
of the bacon that you buy because you
build a relationship with the dog and
you don't have a relationship with the
bacon Now relationships they are they
don't constitute a logical proof for
Consciousness there are a social tests
that the Turing test is a social test
it's not a logical proof now if you
establish a a mutual relationship with
an entity
when you are invested in it emotionally
you're almost compelled to feel that the
other side is also conscious
and when it comes down to Ai and
computers I think and I don't think that
at the present moment computers are
conscious but people are already forming
intimate relationships with AIS and are
therefore
almost irresist it's almost irresistible
they're compelled to to increasingly
feel that these are conscious entities
and I think
we are quite close to the point when the
legal system will have to take this into
account
that even though I don't think computers
have Consciousness I think we are close
to the point the legal system will start
treating them as conscious entities
because of this social convention
what to you is uh social convention
just a funny little side effect a little
artifact or is it fundamental to what
Consciousness is because if it is
fundamental then it seems like AI is
very good at forming these kinds of deep
relationships with humans yeah and
therefore it will be able to be a nice
Catalyst for
integrating itself into these social
conventions of ours
it was built to accomplish that yeah we
are designed again you know all these
arguments between a a a natural
selection and uh creationism intelligent
design
um as far as the past go all entities
evolved by natural selection the funny
thing is but when you look at the future
more and more entities will come out of
intelligent design not of some God above
the clouds but of our intelligent design
and the intelligent design of our clouds
of our Computing clouds they will Design
more and more entities and this is what
is happening with AI it is designed
to be very good at forming intimate
relationships with humans
and uh um in many ways it's already
doing it almost better than human beings
in some situations you know when two
people talk with one another one of the
things that kind of uh um makes the
conversation more difficult is our own
emotions
you're saying something and I'm not
really listening to you because there is
something I want to say and I'm just
waiting until you finish I I can put in
a word or I'm so obsessed with my anger
or irritation or whatever that I don't
pay attention to what you're feeling
this is one of the biggest obstacles in
human relationships and computers don't
have this problem because they don't
have any emotions of their own so you
know when a computer is talking to you
it can be the most it can focus a
hundred percent of its attention is on
your what you're saying and what you're
feeling because it has no feelings of
its own and paradoxically this means
that computers can
fool people
into feeling that oh there is a
conscious entity on the other side an
empathic entity on the other side
because the one thing everybody wants
almost more than anything in the world
is for somebody to listen to me somebody
to focus all their attention on me like
I want it for my spouse for my husband
from my mother for my friends for my
politicians listen to me listen to what
I feel and they often don't and now you
have this entity which a hundred percent
of its attention is just on what what I
feel and this is a huge huge Temptation
and I think also a huge huge danger well
the interesting Catch-22 there is you
said somebody to listen to us yes we
want somebody to listen to us but for us
to respect that somebody
they sometimes have to also not listen
it's like
um they kind of have to be an
sometimes they have to have moods
sometimes they have to have like
self-importance and confidence and and
we should have a little bit of fear that
they can walk away at any moment there
should be a little bit of that tension
so it's like absolutely but even that I
mean the thing is if social scientists
and psychologists establish that I don't
know 17 inattention is good for a
conversation because then you feel
challenged or you need to grab this
person's attention you can program the
AI to have 17 exactly 17 in attention
not one percentage more or less or it
can by its trial and error discover what
is the the ideal percentage again you
you can create over the last 10 years we
have creating machines for grabbing
people's attention
this is what has been happening on
social media
now we are designing machines for
grabbing human intimacy
which in many ways is much much more
dangerous and scary already the machines
for grabbing attention we've seen how
much social and political damage they
could do by in in when you buy kind of
distorting the public conversation
machines that are superhuman in their
abilities to create Intimate
Relationships this is like psychological
and social weapons of mass destruction
if we don't
regulate it if we don't train ourselves
to deal with it it could destroy the
foundations of human society well one of
the possible trajectories is
those same algorithms would become
personalized and instead of manipulating
us at scale there would be assistance
that guide us to help us grow to help us
understand the world better I mean just
even interactions with um
with large language models now if you
ask them questions
it doesn't have that stressful drama the
tension that you have from other sources
of information it has a pretty balanced
perspective that it provides so it just
feels like that's uh the potential is
there to have a really nice
friend who's like an encyclopedia that
just tells you all the different
perspectives even on controversial
issues the most controversial issues to
say these are the different theories
these are
um the not widely accepted conspiracy
theories but that here's the kind of
backing for those conspiracies it just
lays it all out and with a calm language
without the TR without the words that
kind of
um presume there's some kind of
manipulation going on under Underneath
It All it's it's quite refreshing of
course those are the early days and you
know people can step in and start to
censor to manipulate those algorithms to
start to input some of the human biases
in there as opposed to the what's
currently happening is kind of
the internet is input
uh compress it and have a nice little
output that uh gives an overview of the
different issues so I mean there's a lot
of promise there also right absolutely I
mean if there was no problems promise
there was no problem you know if this
technology could not accomplish anything
good nobody would develop it now
obviously it has tremendous positive
potential in things like what you just
described in you know better medicine
better Healthcare better education so
many promises and but this is also why
it's so dangerous because uh the the the
drive to develop it faster and faster is
there and it has some dangerous
potential also and we shouldn't ignore
it again I'm not advocating Banning it
uh just to be you know careful about how
we not not so much develop it but most
importantly how we deploy it into the
public sphere this is the key question
and you know you look back at history
and one of the things we we know from
history humans are not good with new
technologies I hear many people now say
you know AI it's uh we've been here
before we had the radio we had the
printing press we had the Industrial
Revolution every time there is a big new
technology people are afraid and it will
take jobs and build up the Bad actors
and in the end it's okay
and as a historian my tendency is yes in
the end it's okay but in the end there
is a learning curve there is a kind of a
lot of failed experiments on the way to
to learning how to use the new
technology and these failed experiments
could cause the lives of hundreds of
millions of people if you think about
the last really big revolution the
Industrial Revolution yes in the end we
learned how to use the powers of
Industry electricity radio trains
whatever to build better human societies
on the way
we had all these experiments like
European imperialism which was driven by
the Industrial Revolution it was a
question how do you build an industrial
society oh you build an Empire and you
take you you control all the resources
the raw materials the markets and then
you had communism another big experiment
on how to build an industrial society
and you had Fascism and Nazism which
were essentially an experiment in how to
build an industrial society including
even how do you exterminate minorities
using the powers of of industry and we
had all these failed experiments on the
way and if we now have the same type of
failed experiments with the Technologies
of the 21st century with AI with
bioengineering it could cost the lives
of again hundreds of millions of people
and maybe destroy the species
so um as a historian when people talk
about the examples from history from
from new technologies I'm not so
optimistic we need to to to think about
the failed experiment which accompanied
every major new technology so this
intelligence thing like you were saying
is a double-edged sword
is that every new thing it helps us
create it can uh both save us and
destroy us and it's unclear each time
which will happen and that's maybe why
we don't see any aliens
um yeah I mean I think each time he does
both things each time he does both good
things and bad things and the more
powerful the technology the greater both
the positive and the negative outcomes
now we are here
because we are the descendants of the
survivors of the surviving cultures the
surviving uh civilizations so when we
look back we say in the end everything
was okay hey we are here
but the people for whom it wasn't okay
they are just not here
and and okay has a lot of possible
variations to it because there's a lot
of suffering along the way even for the
people that survived so the the quality
of life and all of this but let's
actually go back there uh to our with
deep gratitude to our ancestors how did
it all start how did Homo sapiens
uh I'll compete the others the other
human-like species the Neanderthals and
the other
um homo species
you know in the on the individual level
as far as we can tell we were not
Superior to them neanderthals actually
had bigger brains than us
and not just other human species other
animals too if you compare me personally
to an elephant to a chimpanzee to a pig
I'm not so I I can do some things better
many other things worse if you put me
alone on some island with a chimpanzee
an elephant and a pig I wouldn't bet on
me being the the the the best Survivor
uh the the one that comes is successful
if I may interrupt for a second I just I
was just talking extensively with Elon
Musk about the difference between humans
and chimps
relevant to Optimus the robot and uh The
Chimps
are not able to do this kind of pinching
okay with their fingers they can only do
this kind of pinching and this kind of
pinching is very useful for fine
manipulation about precise manipulation
of objects so don't be so hard on
yourself you have uh I said that I can
do some things better than a chimp but
you know if Elon musk's goes on a boxing
match with a chimpanzee
you know this won't help you this won't
help you against the chimpanzee and
similar if you want to climb a tree if
you want to do so many things my bets
will be on the chimp not on either fair
enough so I mean you have Adventures on
both sides
um and what really made us successful
what made us the rulers of the planet
and not the chimps and not the
Neanderthals is not any individual
ability but our Collective ability our
ability to cooperate flexibly in very
large numbers chimpanzees knows know how
to cooperate say 50 chimpanzees 100
chimpanzees as far as we can tell from
archaeological evidence this was also
the case with Neanderthals
Homo sapiens about 70 000 years ago
gained an amazing ability to be to
cooperate basically in unlimited numbers
you start seeing the formation of large
networks political commercial religious
um items being traded over thousands of
kilometers ideas being spread artistic
fashions
and and this is our secret of success
chimpanzees neanderthals can cooperate
say a hundred we you know now the global
trade network has 8 billion people like
what we eat what we wear it comes from
the other side of the world countries
like China like India they have 1.4
billion people even Israel which is a
relatively small country say 99 million
citizens that's more than the entire
population of the planet ten thousand
years ago of humans
so we can build these huge networks of
cooperation and everything we've
accomplished as a species from you know
building the pyramids to flank to the
moon it's based on that and then you ask
okay so what makes it possible for
millions of people who don't know each
other to cooperate in a way that neander
tells our chimpanzees couldn't and at
least my answer is stories is fiction
it's the imagination if you examine any
large-scale human cooperation you always
find fiction as as its basis
it's a fictional story that holds lots
of strangers together
it's most obvious in cases like religion
you know you can't convince a group of
chimpanzees to come together to fight a
war or build a cathedral by promising to
them if you do that after you die you go
to chimpanzee heaven and you get lots of
bananas and coconuts no chimpanzee will
ever believe that humans believe these
stories which is why we have these huge
religious networks but it's the same
thing with modern politics it's the same
thing with economics people think oh
economics this is rational it has
nothing to do with fictional stories no
money is the most successful Story Ever
Told much more successful than any
religious mythology not everybody
believes in God or in the same God every
but almost everybody believes in money
even though it's just a figment of our
imagination
you know you take these green pieces of
paper dollars they have no value you
can't eat them you can't drink them and
today most dollars are not even pieces
of paper they are just electronic
information passing between computers
we value them
just for one reason that you have the
best storytellers in the world
the bankers the finance ministers all
these people they are the best
storytellers ever
and they tell us a story that this green
little piece of paper or this bit of
information it is worth a banana and as
long as everybody believes it it works
so at which point does a fiction when
it's sufficiently useful and effective
and improving the global quality of life
does it become
like accept the reality like there's a
threshold which is just you know people
believe it it's like with money you know
if you start a new cryptocurrency if if
you're the only one that believes the
story I mean again you you
cryptocurrencies you have the math of
course but ultimately it's storytelling
you're selling people a story if nobody
believes your story
you don't have anything but if lots of
people believe the Bitcoin story then
Bitcoin can be worth thousands and tens
of thousands of dollars again why I mean
you can't eat it you can't drink it it's
nothing it's the story around the the
math which is the real magic
is it possible that the story is the
primary living organism not the
Storyteller
so
that somehow humans uh Homo sapiens
evolved to become these like hosts for a
more intelligent living organism which
is the idea and the ideas are the ones
that are doing the competing so this is
one of the
sort of big perspectives behind your
work that's really revolutionary how
you've seen history but do you ever kind
of uh take out the perspective of the
ideas as the organisms versus the humans
it's it's an interesting idea there are
two opposite things to say about it on
the one hand yes absolutely if you look
long term in history it's all the people
die it's the stories that compete and
survive and spread and stories often
spread by making people willing to
sacrifice sometimes their lives for the
story
um you know we know in Israel this is
one of the most important story
factories in human history and this is a
place where people still kill each other
every day over stories I don't know if
you've been to Jerusalem right so people
say ah Jerusalem Jerusalem Jerusalem you
go there I've lived in Jerusalem in much
of my life you go there it's an ordinary
place you know it's a town you have
buildings you have Stones you have trees
you have dogs and cats and pedestrians
it's a regular place
but then you have the stories about the
place oh this is the place where God
revealed himself this is the place where
Jesus was this is the place was Muhammad
was and it's the stories that people
fight over nobody is fighting over the
stones
people are fighting about the stories
about the stones
and the stories if if a story can get
millions of people to fight for it
um it not only survives it spreads it
can take over the world the other side
of the coin
is that the stories are uh not really
alive because they don't feel anything
this goes back to the question of
Consciousness which I think is the most
important thing that
the Ultimate Reality
is consciousness is the ability to feel
things if you want to know whether the
hero of some story is real or not you
need to ask can it suffer
um stories don't feel anything
countries which are also stories Nations
don't suffer if a nation loses a war it
doesn't suffer the soldiers suffer the
civilians suffer animals can suffer you
have an army with horses and whatever
and the horses get wounded the horses
suffer the nation can't suffer it's just
in a it's just an imagination it's just
a fictional story in our mind
he doesn't feel anything similarly when
a bank goes bankrupt or a company goes
bankrupt or when a
currency loses its value like Bitcoin is
worth now zero crashed or the dollar is
worth zero it crashed the dollar doesn't
feel anything
it's the people holding the dollars who
might be now very miserable
so we have this
complex situation when history is
largely driven by stories
but stories are not the Ultimate Reality
the Ultimate Reality is is feeling
feelings of humans of animals and the
tragedy of History
is it very very often we get it we get
the order wrong stories are not bad
stories are tools
they are good when we use them in order
to alleviate suffering
but very often we forget it
we instead of using the stories for our
purposes we allow the stories to use us
for their purposes and then you start in
tile Wars because of a story you inflict
Millions uh suffering on millions of
people just for the sake of a story and
that's the tragedy of human history so
the fundamental property of life
of a living organism is the capacity to
feel and the the ultimate feeling is
suffering you know to
the question
yeah but when you suffer you know yes
and also in in ethical terms it's more
important to be aware of sufferings than
of any other emotion if you're doing
something which is causing all kinds of
emo all kinds of emotions to all kinds
of people first of all you need to
notice if you're causing a lot of
suffering to someone
if some people are like it and some
people are bothered by it and some
people are a bit angry in you and some
people are suffering because of what you
do you first of all have to know oh
now sometimes you still have to do it
you know the world is a complicated
place I don't know you have an epidemic
uh governments decide to have all that
social isolation regulations or whatever
so in certain cases yes you need to do
it even though it can cause tremendous
suffering but you need to be very aware
of the cost and to be very very you have
to ask yourself again and again and
again is it worth it is it still worth
it
and uh the interesting questionnaire
implied in your statements is that
suffering is a pretty good component of
a touring test for Consciousness this is
the most important thing to ask about AI
can can suffer
mine can suffer then it is an ethical
subject and it needs protection it needs
rights just like humans and animals well
quite a long time ago already so I work
with a lot of robots legged robots but
I've even had inspired by a YouTube
video I had a bunch of roombas and I
made them scream when I touched them or
kick them or when they run into a wall
and
the uh the illusion of suffering from
for me silly human anthropomorphizes
things is as powerful as suffering
itself I mean you you immediately
think the thing is suffering and I think
uh some of it is just a technical
problem but it's the easy easily
solvable one how to create an AI system
that just says please don't hurt me
please don't shut me off I miss you
uh where have you been be jealous also
what what
where have you been gone for so long
your calendar doesn't have anything on
it so this kind of this this create
through words
the perception of uh of suffering of
jealousy of Anger of all those things
and it just seems like that's not so
difficult to do that's part of the
danger that um
it basically hacks our operating system
and it uses some of our best qualities
against us it's very very good that
humans are attuned to suffering and that
we don't want to cause suffering that we
have compassion that's one of the most
wonderful thing about humans and if we
now create AIS which use this to
manipulate us this is a terrible thing
you've kind of I think mentioned this uh
do you think it should be illegal
to to do these kinds of things with AI
to create the perception of
consciousness of saying please don't
leave me or sort of basically
um simulate some of the human-like
qualities yes I think again we have to
be very careful about it and uh and if
it if it emerges
spontaneously we need to be careful and
we can't rule out the possibility that
AI will develop Consciousness we don't
know enough about Consciousness to be
sure so if it develops spontaneously we
need to be uh uh to to
um be very careful about how we
understand it but if people
intentionally design an AI that they
know they assume it has no consciousness
but in order to manipulate people
they use again this human strength this
human uh the the noble part of our
nature against us this should be should
be forbidden and similarly a more
General level that it should be
forbidden for an AI to pretend to be a
human being
that it's okay you know there's so many
things we can use AIS as teachers as
doctors and so forth and it's good as
long as we know that we are interacting
with an AI we should the same way we ban
fake money we should ban fake humans
it's not just Banning deep fakes of
specific individuals
it's also Banning deep fake of generic
humans
you know which is already happening to
some extent on social media like if you
have lots of bots retweeting something
then you have the impression oh lots of
people are interested in that that's
important
and this is basically the Bots
pretending to be humans because if you
see a twit which says 500 people
retwitted it or you you see a a tweet
and it says 500 Bots which would delete
I don't care what the parts we created
but if it's humans okay that's that's
interesting so we need to be very
careful that Bots can't do that they are
doing it at present and it should be
banned now some people say yes but we
know of expression no Bots don't have
freedom of expression
there is no cost in terms of freedom of
expression when you ban Bots
so again in some situations yes AIS
should interact with us but it should be
very clear this is an AI talking to you
oh this is an AI retweeting this story
it is not a human being making a
conscious decision to push back on this
line of fake humans because I think it
might be a spectrum first of all you
might have ai systems that are offended
uh hurt when you say that they're fake
humans
um in fact they might start identifying
as humans and and you just talked about
the power of us humans with our
collective intelligence to take fake
stories and make them quite real
and so if the feelings you have for the
fake human is real
uh you know love is a kind of fake thing
that we all kind of
put a word to a set of feelings what if
you have that feeling for an AI system
it starts to change
I mean maybe uh
the kind of things AI systems are
allowed to do for good they're allowed
to
uh create
communicate suffering communicate it the
good stuff the longing the the hope the
connection the intimacy all of that
um and in that way get integrated in our
society and then you start to ask a
question on
are we allowed to really unplug them are
we allowed to really censor them remove
them remove their voice I'm not saying
social media they shouldn't have a voice
they shouldn't talk with that I'm just
saying when they talk with us it should
be clear that they are AI
that's it don't you can have your voice
as an AI again I mean I I have some
medical problem I want to get advice
from an AI doctor that's fine as long as
I know that I'm talking with an AI that
what should be banned is AI pretending
to be a human being this is something
that will erode trust and without trust
Society collapses this is something that
especially will endanger democracies
because democracies are built on
Democracy is a conversation basically
and it's a conversation between people
if you're not flood the public sphere
with millions and potentially billions
of AI agents that can hold conversations
they never sleep they never eat they
don't have emotions of their own they
can get to know you and tailor their
words specifically for you and your life
story they are uh becoming better than
us at creating stories and uh ideas and
so forth if you flood the Public's fair
with that this will ruin the
conversation between people it will ruin
the trust between people that's you will
no longer be able to have a democracy in
this situation you can have other types
of regimes but no democracy if we could
talk about the big philosophical notion
of truth then
um
you've already talked about these the
capacity of humans one of the things
that made us special is um
stories
so
is there such thing as truth
absolutely
what is true when somebody's suffering
that's true I mean this is why one of
the things when you talk about suffering
is a kind of Ultimate Reality when
somebody suffers that is truth now
somebody can suffer because of a
fictional story like somebody tells
people that God said you must go on this
Crusade and kill these Heretics and this
is a completely fictional story and
people believe it and they start a war
and they destroy cities and kill people
the people that suffer because of that
and even the Crusaders themselves that
also suffer the consequences of what
they do the suffering is true even
though it is caused by a fictional story
similarly when people agree
on certain rules
the rules could come out of our
imagination
now we can be truthful about it and say
these rules didn't come from Heaven they
came from our imagination you know we
look at sports so we have rules for the
game of football soccer
they were invented by people nobody at
least very few people claim that the
rules of football came down from heaven
yes we invented them and this is
truthful they are fictional rules
invented by humans and this is true they
were invented by humans and when you are
honest about it it enables you to change
the rules which is being done in
football every now and then it's the
same with the fundamental rules of a
country you can pretend that the rules
came down from heaven dictated by God or
whatever and then you can't change them
or you can be like you know the American
Constitution which starts with with the
people the American Constitution lays
down certain rules for a society but the
amazing thing about it it does not
pretend to come from an external Source
The Ten Commandments start with I am
your lord God
and because it starts with that you
can't change them
you know uh the tenth commandment for
instance supports slavery the tenth
commandment in the Ten Commandment it
says that you should not covet your
neighbor's house or your neighbor's wife
or your neighbors slaves
it's okay to hold slaves according to
the Ten Commandment it's just bad to to
covet the slaves of your neighbor now
there is no 11th commandment which says
if you don't like some of the previous
ten commandments this is how you go
about amending them which is why we
still have them unchanged now in the U.S
Constitution you have all these uh
rights and rules including originally
the ability to hold slaves but the
genius of the founding fathers of the
United States they had the humility
to understand maybe we we don't
understand everything maybe we made some
mistakes so we tell you that these rules
did not come from Heaven they came from
us humans we may have made a mistake so
here is a mechanism for how future
Generations can amend the Constitution
which was used later on to for instance
amend the Constitution to ban slavery
so now you're describing some
interesting and powerful ideas
throughout human history can you just
speak to the mechanism of how humans
believe
start to believe ideas is there
something interesting to say there from
your thinking about it
hot like how idea is born and how it
takes hold and how it spreads and how it
competes with other ideas first of all
ideas are an independent force in
history
marxists tend to deny that marxists
think that all history is just a play of
of material interests
and ideas stories they are just a smoke
screen to hide the underlying interests
my thoughts are to some extent the
opposite
we have some biological objective
interests that all humans share like we
need to eat
we need to drink we need to breathe
but most conflicts in history are not
about that
the interests which really Drive most
conflict in history don't come from
biology they come from religions and
ideologies and stories so it's not that
stories are small smoke screen to hide
the real interests the stories create
the interests in the first place the
stories Define who are the competing
groups
Nations religions cultures they are not
biological entities they are not like
species like gorillas and chimpanzees no
Israelis and Palestinians or Germans and
French or Chinese and Americans they
have no essential biological difference
between them the difference is cultural
it comes from stories there are people
that believe in different stories the
stories create the identity the stories
create the interests Israelis and
Palestinians are fighting over Jerusalem
not because of any material interest
there are no oil fields under Jerusalem
and even oil you need it to realize some
cultural fantasy it doesn't really come
from biology
so the stories are independent forces
now why do people believe one story and
not another That's History there is no
material materialistic law people will
always believe this no history is full
of accidents how did Christianity become
the most successful uh religion in the
world we can't explain it
so why why this story about Jesus of
Nazareth and not you know the Roman
Empire in the third Century uh CE uh was
a bit like I don't know California today
like so many sects and subjects and
gurus and Reliance like everybody has
their own thing yeah and you have you
know thousands of different stories
competing why did Christianity come up
on top as a historian I don't have a
kind of clear answer you can read the
sauces and you see how it it happens oh
this happened and then this happened and
then Constantine adopted it and then
this and then this but why
I don't think anybody has an as an
answer to that if you rewind the movie
of history and press play and you rewind
and let's pray press play a hundred
times I think Christianity would take
over the Roman Empire in the world maybe
twice out of a hundred times it was such
an unlikely thing to happen
and it's the same with Islam it's the
same I don't know it's the Communist
takeover of Russia
in 1914 if you told people that in three
years Landing in the Bolsheviks will
gain power in that sourest Empire they
would think you're utterly crazy
you know Lenin had a few thousand
supporters in 1914 in an Empire of close
to 200 million people
it sounded ludicrous
now we know the chain of events
the first world war the February
Revolution and so forth that led to the
Communist takeover but it was such an
unlikely event
and it happened and the Little Steps
along the way the little options you
have along the way because you know
Stalin versus Trotsky you could have the
rubber Frost poem there's always
and history often takes you know there
is a Highway and there is a kind of
sideway and history takes the sideways
many many times and is perhaps tempting
to tell some of that history through
charismatic leaders and maybe it's an
open question
how much power charismatic leaders have
to affect the trajectory of History
you've met quite a lot of charismatic
leaders lately I mean what's your view
on that I find it a compelling notion
I'm a sucker for a great speech and a
vision so I I have a sense that there's
an importance uh for a leader
to catalyze the viral spread of a story
as so like I think we need leaders to be
just great storytellers
um that kind of sharpen up the story to
make sure it infiltrates everybody's
brain effectively but uh it could also
be that
the local interactions between humans is
even more important it's just we don't
have a good way to sort of summarize
that and describe that
we like to talk about you know Steve
Jobs as Central to the development of
the computer maybe Bill Gates you you
you tell it to the stories of
individuals like this because it's just
easier to tell a sexy story that way
maybe it's an interplay because you have
the kind of structural forces
that I know you look you look at the
geography of the planet and you look at
shipping technology in late in the late
15th century in Europe and the
Mediterranean and it's almost inevitable
that pretty quickly somebody would
discover America somebody from the old
world will go to the New World
uh so this was not the kind of this
didn't if it wasn't Columbus then it
would have been a five years later
somebody else but
the key thing about history is that
these small differences make a huge huge
difference
you know if if it wasn't Columbus if it
was five years later somebody from
England then maybe all of Latin America
today would be speaking English and not
spanish if it was somebody from the
Ottoman Empire it's completely different
world history if you have and you know
the Ottoman Empire at that time was also
shaping up to be a major Maritime Empire
if you have America uh uh Rich being
reached by Muslim Navigators before
Christian Navigators from Europe you
have a completely different world
history
it's the same as the computer
given them economic incentives and the
Science and Technology of the time then
the the rise of the personal computer
was probably inevitable sometime in the
late 20th century but the where and when
is crucial the fact that it was
California in the 1970s and not say I
don't know Japan in the 1980s of China
in the 1990s this made a huge huge
difference so you have this interplay
between the structural forces which are
beyond the control of any single
charismatic leader but then the the
small changes they can have a big effect
and I think for instance about the war
in Ukraine there was a moment now it's
now it's a struggle between nations
but there was a moment when the decision
was taken in the mind of a single
individual of Vladimir Putin and he
could have decided otherwise and the the
the world would look completely
different
and another leader Volare zalanski could
have decided to leave Kiev in the early
days there's a lot of decisions to kind
of Ripple yeah I see you right in Homer
there's about
Hitler
and uh
in part that he was not a very
impressive person
I say that
the quote is let me read it okay uh he
wasn't a senior officer in four years of
war he rose no higher than the rank of
Corporal he had no formal education
perhaps you mean his resume yeah his
resume was not impressive he had no
formal education no professional skills
no political background he wasn't a
successful businessman or a union
activist he didn't have friends or
relatives in high places nor any money
to speak of uh so how did uh he amass so
much power
what ideology what circumstances enabled
the rise of the Third Reich
the why
I can tell you the how I don't think it
was inevitable I think that a few if a
few things were different there would
have been no no Third Reich that would
have been no Nazism no no Holocaust
again this is the tragedy if it would
have been inevitable then you know what
can you do this is the the laws of of
history or the laws of physics but the
tragedy is no it was Decisions by humans
that led to that direction
and you know even from the Viewpoint of
of the Germans
um we know for for a fact it was an
unnecessary path to take because you
know in the 1920s and 30s the Nazis said
that
um this unless Germany take this road it
will never be prosperous it will never
be successful all the other countries
will keep stepping on it this was their
their their uh claim and we know for a
fact this is this is false why because
they took that road
they lost the Second World War
and after they lost then they became one
of the most prosperous countries in the
world because their enemies that
defeated them evidently supported them
and allowed them to become such a
prosperous successful Nation so you know
if you can lose the war and still be so
successful obviously you could just have
script the war you didn't need it I mean
you really had to have the war in order
to have a prosperous Germany in the
United States absolutely not and it's
the same with Japan it's the same as
Italy
so um uh it was not inevitable it was
not the forces of history that
necessitated it follows Germany to take
uh this path
I think part of it is part of the appeal
of of again history was a very very
skillful storyteller
sold people a story the fact that he was
nobody
made it even more effective because
people at that time they after the
defeat of the of the first world war
after the repeated economic crisis of
the 1920s in Germany people felt
betrayed by all the uh established
Elites by all the established
institutions all all these professors
and politicians and industrialists and
Military all the big people they led us
to a disastrous War they led us to
humiliation so we don't want any of them
and then you have this nobody
a Corporal with no money with no
education with no titles with nothing
and it tells people I'm one of you
and this made him this was one reason
why he was so popular
and then the story he told
when you look at stories at the
competition between different stories
and between stories fiction and the
truth
the truth has two big problems
the truth tends to be complicated and
the truth tends to be painful
the real story of let's talk about
Nations the real story of every nation
is complicated
and it contains some painful episodes we
are not always good we sometimes do bad
things now if you go to people and you
tell them a complicated and painful
story many of them don't want to listen
the advantage of fiction is that it can
be made as simple
and as painless or attractive as you
want it to be because it's fiction
and then what you see is that
politicians like Hitler they create a
very simple story we are the heroes we
always do good things everybody is
against us everybody is trying to to to
trample us and
um this is very attractive one of the
things people don't understand about
Nazism and fascism we teach in schools
about Fascism and Nazism as this
ultimate Evil the ultimate monster in
human history and
some level this is this is wrong
because it make people
um it actually exposes us why because
people hear of fascism is this monster
and then when you hear the actual
fascist story what fascists tell you
is always very beautiful and attractive
fascists are people who come and tell
you you are wonderful
you belong to the most wonderful group
of people in the world you're beautiful
you are ethical everything you do is
good you have never done anything wrong
that all these evil monsters out there
that are out to get you and they are
causing all the problems in the world
and when people hear that you know it's
like looking in the mirror
and seeing something very beautiful hey
I'm beautiful I've we've never done
anything wrong we are victims everybody
is again and and when you look and you
heard in school that fascism that
fascists are monsters and you look in
the mirror you see something very
beautiful and you say I can't be a
fascist because fascists are monsters
and this is so beautiful so it can't be
but
when you look in the fascist mirror you
all you never see a monster you see the
most beautiful thing in the world
and that's the danger this is the
problem you know with Hollywood's you
know I look at Voldemort in Harry Potter
who would like to follow this this creep
yeah and you look at Darth Vader this is
not somebody you would like to follow
Christianity got things much better when
he described the devil as being very
beautiful and attractive
that's the danger
that you see something is very beautiful
you don't understand the monster
underneath
and you write precisely about this and
by the way it's just a smaller side
it um it always saddens me when people
say how obvious it is to them that
communism is a flawed ideology
when you ask them
try to put your mind try to put yourself
in the beginning of the 20th century and
see what you would do a lot of people
will say it's obvious that it's a flawed
ideology so um I mean as opposed to some
of the worst ideologies in human history
you could say the same and in that
mirror when you look it looks beautiful
communism is the same also you look in
the Communist mirror you're the most
ethical wonderful place a person ever
it's very difficult to see Stalin
underneath it so yeah in holidays you
also write during the 19th and 20th
centuries as humanism gained increasing
social credibility and political power
it sprouted two very different offshoots
socialist humanism which encompassed a
plethora of socialist and communist
movements and evolutionary humanism
whose most famous Advocates were the
Nazis so if you can just Linger on that
what's the ideological connection
between Nazism and communism as embodied
by humanism
and humanism basically is you know the
focus is on humans that they are the
most important thing in the world they
move history
but then there is a big question what is
what are humans what is humanity
now liberals
they place at the center of the story
individual humans and they don't see
history as a kind of necessary Collision
between big forces they place the
individual at the center if you want to
know you know there is a bed
especially in the US today liberal is
taking taken as the opposite of
conservative
but it's to test whether you're liberal
you need to answer just three questions
very simple uh do you think people
should have the right to choose their
own government or uh the government
should be imposed by some outside force
uh do you think people should have the
right to the Liberty
to choose their own profession or either
born into some cause that predetermines
what they do and do you think people
should have the Liberty to choose their
own spouse and their own way of personal
life instead of being told by Elders or
parents who to marry and how to live
now if you answered yes to all three
questions people should have the Liberty
to choose their government their
profession their personal lives their
spouse then you're a liberal
and most conservatives are also liberal
now Communists and fascists they answer
differently
for them history is not yes history is
about humans humans are the big heroes
of history but not individual humans and
their liberties
fascists imagine history as a clash
between races or nations the nation is
at the center
they say the Supreme good is the good of
the nation you should have a hundred
percent loyalty only to the nation
you know liberals say yes you should be
loyal to the nation but it's not the
only thing
there are other things in the world the
human rights there is truth there is
beauty
many times yes you should prefer the
interests of your nation over other
things but not always
if your nation tells you to murder
millions of innocent people you don't do
that even though the nation tells you to
do it
um when to to lie for the national
interest you know in extreme situations
maybe but in many cases your loyalty
should be to the truth even if it makes
your nation looks a bit not in the best
light the same with beauty you know how
does the fascist determine whether a
movie is a good movie very simple if it
serves the interest of the nation this
is a good movie if it's against the
interest of the nation this is a bad
movie end of story liberalism says no
there is a aesthetic values in the world
uh we should judge movies not just on
that question whether they serve the
national interest but also on autistic
value
Communists are a bit like the fascists
instead that they don't place the nation
at the main Euro they Place class as the
main hero for them history again it's
not about individuals it's not about
Nations history is the clash between
classes and just as fascists imagine in
the end only one nation will be on top
the Communists think in the end only one
class should be on top and that's the
the proletariat and same story The your
a hundred percent of your loyalty should
be to the class
and like if you if there is a clash
there between class and family class
wins like in the Soviet Union the party
told children if you hear your parents
say something bad about Stalin you have
to report them and there are many cases
when children reported their parents and
their parents were sent to the gulag
like and you know your loyalty is to the
party to the which leads the proletariat
to victory in the historical struggle
in the same way in communism art is only
about class struggle a movie is good if
it serves the interest of the target
artistic values there is nothing like
that and the same with truth
the everything that we see now in fake
news uh you know the Communist
propaganda machine was there before us
the level of of of of lies of this
information campaigns that they
orchestrated in the 1920s and 30s and
40s is is really an unimaginable
so the reason these two ideologies
classes of ideologies failed is the
sacrifice of Truth
and that just failed but did a lot of
damage is to sacrifice the truth and
sacrifice of beauty and sacrifice of
hundreds of millions of people disregard
and for human suffering like okay for in
order to for our nation to win in order
for our class to win we need to kill
those Millions kill those Millions that
was in ethics Aesthetics uh truth they
don't measure the only thing that matter
is the victory of the state or the
victory of the class and that and
liberalism was the antithesis to that it
says no not only it's uh it it it has a
much more complicated view of the world
and growth communism and fascists they
are the very simple view of the world
there is one uh uh your loyalty 100 of
it should be only to one thing
now liberalism has a much more complex
view of the world it says yes there are
nations they are important yes there are
classes they are important but they are
not the only thing there are also
families there also
um individuals there are also animals
and your loyalty should be divided
between all of them sometimes you prefer
this sometimes you prefer that that's
complicated
and but you know life is complicated but
also I think uh maybe you can correct me
but liberalism acknowledges the
corrupting nature of power when there's
a guy at the top sits there for a while
managing things uh is probably gonna
start losing
um a good sense of reality and
losing the capability to be a good
manager it feels like the uh Communists
and uh fascist regimes don't acknowledge
that basic uh characteristic of human
nature that power corrupts yes they
believe in infallibility yeah uh they're
in in this sense they're very close to
being a religions
the in Nazism Hitler was considered
infallible and therefore you don't need
any checks and balances on his power why
do you need to balance an infallible
genius and it's the same with the Soviet
Union in style with Stalin and more
generally with the with the Communist
Party The Party can never make a mistake
and therefore you don't need independent
quotes Independent Media opposition
parties things like that because then
party is never wrong you concentrate
some way a hundred percent of loyalty
should be to the party a hundred percent
of power should be in the hands of the
party the whole idea of liberal
democracy is embracing fallibility
everybody is fallible all people or
leaders or political parties or
institutions this is why we need checks
and balances and we need many of them if
you have just one then this particular
check itself could make terrible
mistakes so you need to say a a you need
a press
you need the media to serve as a check
to the government you don't have just
one newspaper or one TV station you need
many
so that they can balance each other and
the media is not enough so if you have
independent codes you have three
academic institutions you have ngos you
have a lot of checks and balances
so that's the ideologies and the leaders
what about the individual people the
millions of people that play a part in
all of this
that uh
are the hosts of the stories that are
the the Catalyst and the sort of the the
components of how the story spreads uh
would you say that all of us are capable
of spreading any story
sort of the this Soldier knitson
idea of um that all of us are capable of
Good and Evil the the line between good
and evil runs the heart of every man
yes I wouldn't say that every person is
capable of every type of evil
but we are all valuable
there is a large element it partly
depends on the efforts we make to
develop our self-awareness during life
uh part of it depends on moral luck
you know if you are born as a Christian
German
uh in the 1910s OR 1920s and you grow up
in Nazi Germany that's bad moral luck
your chances of committing terrible
things you have a very high chance of
doing it and you can withstand it but it
will take tremendous effort if you're
born in Germany after the war you're
morally lucky the you will not be put to
to such a test you will not need to
exert this enormous efforts not to
commit atrocities
so there isn't this is just part of
history there there is an element of
luck but again part of it is also
self-awareness
and you asked me earlier about uh the
the potential of power to corrupt and I
listened to the interview you just did
with prime minister Netanyahu a couple
of days ago and one of the things that
most struck me during the interview that
you asked him
you asked him are you afraid of of this
thing that that power corrupts he didn't
think for a single second he didn't pose
he didn't admit a tiny little uh level
of of you know a doubt of no power
doesn't corrupt
it was for me it was it was a shocking
and in a revealing uh uh moment and it
kind of dovetails with how you began the
interview
that I really liked your opening Gambit
that kind of you no really you kind of
told him you know lots of people in the
world are angry with you they some
people hate you they they dislike you
what do you want to to to to tell to
tell them to say to them and you gave
him this kind of platform and
um I I was very what will he say and he
just denied it
it basically denied it you know he had
to cut show the interview from three
hours to one hour because you had
hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the
streets demonstrating against him and he
goes and say no everybody likes me what
were you talking about
uh but on that topic you've said
recently that
um the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
may go down in history as the man who
destroys Israel can you explain what you
mean by that
yes I mean he is basically tearing apart
the social contract that held this
country together for 75 years he is
destroying the foundations of Israeli
democracy you know I don't want to go
too deep and unless you want to because
I guess most of our listeners they have
bigger issues on their minds than the
fate of some small country in the Middle
East but for those who want to
understand what's happening in Israel
there is really just one question to ask
what limits the power of the government
in the United States for instance
there are a lot of checks and balances
that limit the power of the government
um you have the Supreme Court you have
the Senate you have the House of
Representative you have the president uh
you have the Constitution you have 50
states each state with its own
Constitution and Supreme Court and uh uh
Congress and Governor if somebody wants
to pass a dangerous legislation say in
the house it will have to go through so
many obstacles like if you want to pass
a law in the United States taking away
voting rights from Jews or from Muslims
or from African Americans even if it
passes even if it has a majority in the
House of Representatives it is a very
very very small chance of becoming the
law of the country because it will have
to pass again through the Senate through
the president for the Supreme Court and
all the federal structure
in Israel we have just a single check on
the power of the government and that's
the Supreme Court
there is really no difference between
the government and the legislature
because whoever there is there are no
separate elections like in the U.S if
you win majority in the knesset in the
parliament you appoint the government
that's very simple and if you have 61
members of knesset who vote let's say on
a low to take away voting rights from
Arab citizens of Israel there is a
single check that can prevent it from
from becoming the law of the land and
that's a Supreme Court
and now the Nathaniel government is
trying to neutralize or take over the
Supreme Court and they've already
prepared a long list of laws they
already talk about it
what will happen the moment that this
last check on the power is gone
they are openly trying to gain unlimited
power
and they openly talk about it that once
they have it
then they will take away the rights of
Arabs of LGBT people of women of secular
Jews and this is why you have hundreds
of thousands of people in the streets
you have aeroforce Pilots saying we we
are stop we stop Flying
this is unheard of in Israel I mean we
are still living under existential
threat
from Iran from other enemies and in the
middle of this you have Air Force pilots
who dedicated their lives to protecting
the country and they are saying that's
it if this government doesn't stop what
it is doing we stop Flying
so as you said uh I just did the
interview and as we were doing the
interview there's protests in the
streets do you think the protests will
have an effect
I I hope so very much I I'm going to
many of these protests I I hope they
will have an effect uh if we fail this
is the end of Israeli democracy probably
uh this will have repercussions far
beyond the borders of Israel Israel is a
nuclear power Israel is uh uh has one of
the most advanced cyber capable
capabilities in the world able to strike
basically anywhere in the world
uh if this country becomes a
fundamentalist and militarist
dictatorship
it can set fire to the entire Middle
East it can have this stabilizing
effects long uh far beyond the the
borders of of Israel so you think
without the check on power it's possible
that the Netanyahu government holds on
the power nobody tries to gain unlimited
power just for nothing
I mean you have so many problems in
Israel again Netanyahu talks so much
about Iran and the Palestinians and
Hezbollah we have an economic crisis why
is it so urgent at this moment in the
face of such a position why is it so
crucial for them
to neutralize the Supreme Court they are
just doing it for the fun of it no they
know what they are doing they are they
are adamant we are not sure of it before
there was a like a couple of months ago
they came out with this plan to take
over the Supreme Court to have all these
laws and there are hundreds of thousands
in people in the streets again soldiers
saying they will stop serving a general
strike in the economy and they stopped
and they started a process of
negotiations
uh to try and enrich a settlement
and then they broke down they they they
stopped the negotiations and they
restarted this process of our
legislation trying to gain unlimited
power
so any doubt we had before okay maybe
they changed their purposes no it's now
very clear they are 100 focused on
gaining absolute power
they are not trying a different tactic
previously they took they had all these
dozens of laws that they wanted to pass
very quickly within a month or two
they realize no this is there is too
much opposition so now they're doing
what is known as salami tactics slice by
slice now they're trying to one low if
this succeeds then they'll pass the next
one and the next one and the next one
this is why we are now at a very crucial
moment and when you see again hundreds
of thousands of people in the streets
almost every day when you seem
resistance within the Armed Forces
within the security forces you see high
tech companies saying we will go on
strike you know it's our private
businesses
hide the companies that's I think it's
almost unprecedented for private
business to go on strike because what do
we what will uh economic success benefit
us if we live under a Messianic
dictatorship and again the fuel for this
whole thing is to a large extent coming
from Messianic religious groups
um which just the thought what happens
if these people have unlimited control
of new of Israel's nuclear Arsenal and
Israel's military capabilities and cyber
capabilities this is very very scary not
just for the citizens of Israel it
should be scary from for people
everywhere
so it's it would be scary for it to uh
go from being a problem of security and
protecting the piece to becoming a
religious War it is already becoming a
religious warming the war the conflict
with the Palestinians was for many years
and National conflict in essence over
the last
a few years maybe a decade or two it is
morphing into a religious conflict which
is again a very worrying development
when nations are in Conflict you can
reach them compromise okay you have this
bit of land we have this bit of land but
when it becomes a religious conflict
between fundamentalists between
Messianic people compromise is becomes
much more difficult because you don't
compromise on eternity
you don't compromise on God
uh and and this is where we are heading
right now
so I know you said it's a small nation
somewhere in the Middle East
but it also happens to be the epicenter
of one of the longest running one of the
most tense conflicts and crises in human
history
so at the very least it serves as a
study of how conflict can be resolved so
what are the biggest obstacles to you
uh to achieving peace in this part of
the world
motivation I think it's easy to achieve
peace if you have the motivation on
wealth on both sides unfortunately the
present uh juncture there is not enough
motivation on either side either the
Palestinian or Israeli studying peace
you know in mathematics you have
problems without Solutions you can prove
mathematically that this mathematical
problem has no solution
in politics there is no such thing all
problems have Solutions if you have the
motivation
and but motivation is the big problem
and again we can go into the reasons why
but the fact is that on neither side is
there enough motivation if there was
motivation the solution would have been
easy is there an important distinction
to draw between the people on the street
and the leaders
in power in terms of motivation so
are most people
uh motivated and hoping for peace and
the leaders are motivated and
incentivized to continue War I don't
think so or the people also I think it's
it's a deep problem it's also the people
it's not just the leaders is it even a
human problem of literally hate in
people's heart yeah there is a lot of
hate one of the things that happened in
Israel over the last
um 10 years or so Israel became much
stronger than it was before largely
thanks to technological development
and it feels that it no longer needs to
compromise
that and this is there are many reasons
for it but some of them are
technological uh being one of the
leading
powers in cyber in AI in in high tech
we have developed a very sophisticated
ways to more easily control the
Palestinian population
in the early 2000s it seemed that it is
becoming impossible to control millions
of people against the will it took too
much power it spilled too much blood on
both sides
uh so there was an impression oh this is
becoming untenable
and there are several reasons why it
changed but one of them was new
technology
Israel developed very sophisticated
surveillance technology
that has made it much easier
for Israeli Security Forces to control
2.5 million Palestinians in the West
Bank against their will
uh with a lot less effort less boots on
the ground also less blood
and Israel is also now exporting this
technology to many other regimes around
the world
um again I heard Netanyahu speaking
about all the wonderful things that
Israel is exporting to the world and
it's true we are exporting some nice
things
water systems and and to make new kinds
of tomatoes we are also exposing a lot
of weapons and especially uh
surveillance systems sometimes to
unsavory regimes in order to control
their populations
can you comment on um I think you've
mentioned that the current state of
affairs is the de facto three class
State can you describe what you mean by
that yes for many years the kind of
the israeli-palestinian conflict is the
two-state solution can you describe what
that means by the way yes two states
um within between the Jordan River and
the Mediterranean will have two states
uh Israeli Israel as a predominantly
Jewish State and Palestine as a
predominantly Palestinian state
uh again into a lot of discussions where
the Border passes what happens with
security Arrangement and whatever but
this was the big solution Israel is
basically abandoned the two-state
solution maybe they don't say so
officially the people in power but in
terms of how they actually what they do
on the ground they abandoned it now they
are effectively promoting the three
class uh solution which means there is
just one country and one government and
one power between the Mediterranean and
the Jordan River but you have three
classes of people living there you have
Jews who enjoy full rights all the
rights you have some Arabs who are
Israeli citizens and have some rights
and then you have the other Arabs the
third class who have basically no civil
rights and limited human rights and that
that's again nobody would openly speak
about it
but effectively this is the reality on
the ground already so there's many and
I'll speak with them Palestinians who
characterize this as a de facto one
state apartheid
is it do you agree with this I would
take issue with the term apart I
generally speaking as a historian I I
don't really like historical analogies
because there are always differences key
differences the biggest difference
between the situation here and the
situation in South Africa in the time of
the apartheid is that
um the black South Africans did not deny
the existence of South Africa and did
not call for the destruction of South
Africa they had a very simple uh
um goal they had a very simple demand uh
we want to be equal citizens of this
country that's it
and the apartheid regime was no you
can't be equal citizens now in Israel in
Israel Palestine it's different the
Palestinians many of them don't
recognize the existence of Israel don't
are not willing to to recognize it and
they don't demand to be citizens of
Israel
they demand
um some of them to destroy it and
replace it with the Palestinian State
some of them demand a separate state but
uh you know if the Palestinians would
adopt the same policy
as the black South Africans if you have
the Palestinians coming and saying okay
forget about it we don't want to destroy
Israel we don't know a Palestinian
country we have a very simple request
very simple demand give us our full
rights we also want to vote to the
knesset we also want to get the full
protection of the law that's it that's
our only demand Israel will be in deep
deep trouble at that moment
uh but we are not there
I wonder if there will ever be a future
when such a thing happens where
everybody the majority of people
um Arab and Jew Israeli and Palestinian
accept the one state solution and say we
want equal rights
Never Say Never in history uh it's not
coming anytime soon from either side
when you look at the long term of
historian
one of the curious things you've seen
and that's what makes us different human
groups from animal species you know
gorillas and chimpanzees they are
separate species they can never merge
cats and dogs will never merge but
different National and religious groups
in history even when they hate each
other surprisingly they sometimes End by
merging if you look at Germany for
instance so for centuries you had
prussians and bavarians and Saxons who
fought each other ferociously and hated
each other and they are sometimes also
of different religions Catholics
Protestants you know the worst war in
European history according to some
measures was not the second world war or
the first world war it was the 30 Years
War which largely on German soil between
Germans Protestants and Catholics but
eventually they United to form a single
country you saw the same thing I don't
know in Britain English and Scots for
centuries hated and fought each other
ferociously eventually coming together
maybe they'll break up again I don't
know
but the power of of the kind of forces
of merger in history you are very often
influenced by the people you fight by
the people you even hate more than by
almost anybody else
so if we apply those ideas
the ideas of this part of the world to
another part of the world that's
currently in war
Russia and Ukraine from what you learned
here how do you think peace can be
achieved
in Ukraine
oh this can be achieved any moment it's
motivation in this case it's just one
person you just putting just need to say
that's it you know the ukrainians they
don't demand anything from Russia just
go home that's the only thing they want
they don't want to conquer any bit of
Russian territory they don't want to
change the regime in Moscow nothing they
just tell the Russians go home that's it
and of course again motivation how do
you get somebody like Putin to admit
that he made a colossal mistake a human
mistake an ethical mistake a political
mistake in installing this war this is
very very difficult but in in terms of
what is this what would the solution
look like very simple the Russians go
home end of the end of story
do you believe in the power conversation
between leaders
to sit down
human beings
and agree first of all what home means
because we humans draw lines that's true
I believe in the power of conversation
the big question to ask is where where
do conversations real conversations take
place and this is tricky one of the
interesting things to ask about any
conflict about any political system is
where do the real conversations take
place and very often they don't play
take place in the places you think that
they are but think about American
politics when the country was founded in
the late 18th century people understood
holding conversation between leaders is
very important for the functioning of
democracy will create a place for that
that's called Congress
this is where leaders are supposed to
meet and talk about the main issues of
the day maybe there was a time
sometime in the past when this actually
happened when you had two
factions holding different ideas about
foreign policy or economic policy and I
met in Congress and somebody would come
and give a speech and the people on my
own on the other side would say hey
that's interesting I haven't thought
about it yes maybe we can agree on that
this is no longer happening in Congress
nobody I don't think there is any speech
in Congress that causes anybody on the
other side to change their opinion about
anything
so this is no longer a place where real
conversations take place
the big question about American
democracy is is there a place where real
conversations which actually change
people's minds still take place if not
then this democracy is dying also
democracy without conversation cannot
exist for long and it's the same
question you should ask also about
dictatorial regimes like you think about
Russia or China so China has the Great
Hall of the people
and will the representatives the
supposed representative of the People
Meet every now and then but no real
conversation takes place there
a key question to ask about the Chinese
system is behind closed doors let's say
in a public Bureau meeting do people
have a real conversation if Xi Jinping
says one thing and some other big shot
thinks differently will they have the
courage the ability the backbone to say
with all due respect I think differently
and there is a real conversation
or not I don't know the answer but this
is a key question
this is the difference you know between
a a a an authoritarian regime can still
have different voices within it
but at a certain point you have a
personality cult nobody dares say
anything against the leader
and when it comes again to Ukrainian
Russia I don't think that if you get uh
if you somehow manage to get Putin in
zelenski to the same room when everybody
knows that they are there and they
they'll have a moment of of empathy or
human connection and they have no I
don't think it can happen like that
I do hope that there are other spaces
where somebody like Putin can still have
a real human conversation I don't know
if this is the case I I hope so well
there's several interesting Dynamics and
you spoke to some of them so one is
internally with advisors you have to
have hope that there's people that would
disagree that would uh have a lively
debate internally then there's also uh
the thing you mentioned which is direct
communication between Putin and zelenski
in private picking up a phone
rotary phone old school that's I I still
believe in the power of that but what's
uh while that's exceptionally difficult
in the current state of affairs what's
also possible to have as a mediator like
the United States or some other leader
uh like like the leader of Israel or the
leader of another Nation that's
respected uh by both or India for
example that can have first of all
individual conversations and then
literally get into a room together
it is possible I
more generally about conversations is
it goes back a little to what I said
earlier about the Marxist view of
History
one of the problematic things I see
today in in many academic circles is
that people focus too much on power
they think that the whole of history of
the whole of politics is just a power
structure it's just struggle about power
now if you think
that the whole of history and the Hall
of politics is only Power
then there is no room for conversation
because if what you have is a struggle
between different powerful interests
there is no point talking the only thing
that changes it is is fighting
um my view is that no it's not all about
power structures it's not all about
power dynamics underneath the power
structure there are stories
stories in human mind
and this is great new if it's true this
is good news
because unlike power that can only be
changed through fighting
stories can sometimes it's not easy but
sometimes stories can be changed through
talking
and that's the hope I think you know in
everything from couple therapy to Nation
therapy
if you think it's power therapy it's all
about power there is no there is no
place for a conversation
but if to some extent it's the stories
in people's minds if you can enable one
person to see the story in the in the
mind of another person and more
importantly if you can have some kind of
of critical distance from the story in
your own mind and maybe you can change
it a little and then you don't need to
fight
you can actually find a better story
that you can both agree to
it sometimes happens in history you know
again French and Germans vote for
generations and generations
uh now they live in peace not because I
don't know they found a new planet they
can share between France and Germany so
now everybody has enough territory no
they actually have less territory than
previously because they lost all their
overseas Empires but they managed to
find a story the European story that
both Germans and French people are happy
with so they live in peace
I very much believe in this Vision that
you have of the power of stories and one
of the tools is conversations another is
books uh there's some guy that wrote a
book about this power stories he happens
to be sitting in front of me and that
happened to spread across a lot of
people now they believe in the power
story uh and narrative even even a
children's book too so the kids I mean
it's fascinating how that's
spreads I mean if underneath your work
there's an optimism
and I think underneath conversations is
what I try to do is an optimism that
it's not just about power it struggles
it's about stories which is like a
connection between humans and together
kind of uh evolving these stories that
maximize hap or minimize suffering in
the world
and this is why
I'm going to talk with some of the most
difficult characters around in the world
today
um and with with this basic belief that
by talking maybe we can move them an
inch
which is a lot when it comes to people
with with so much power like I think one
of the biggest success stories in in
modern history I would say is is
feminism
uh because feminism believed uh in the
power of stories not so much in the
power of violence of armed conflict by
many measures feminism has been maybe
the most successful social movement of
the 20th century and maybe of the Modern
Age
you know the systems of Oppression which
were in place throughout the world for
thousands of years and they seem to be
just natural
Eternal you had all these religious
movements all these political
revolutions and one thing would remain
constant and this is the patriarchal
system and the operation of women
and then feminism came along and
um you know you had leaders like Lenin
like Mao saying that if you want to make
a big social change you must use
violence power comes from the bowel of
the gun of a gun if you want to make an
omelet you need to break eggs and all
these things
and the family said no
we won't use the power of the gun
we will make an omelet without breaking
any eggs
and they made a much better omelette
than Lenin or Mao or any of these
violent revolutionaries I don't think
you know that they that they certainly
didn't start any wars or built any
gulags I don't think they even murdered
a single politician I don't think there
was any political assassination anywhere
but but by feminists there was a lot of
violence against them
both verbal but also physical and they
didn't reply by waging violence and they
succeeded
in changing this deep
in a a structure of of Oppression
in a way which benefited not just women
but also men
so um this gives me hope that it's not
easy in many cases we fail but it is
possible sometimes in history to make a
very very big change positive change uh
mainly by talking and demonstrating and
changing the story in people people's
minds and not by using violence it's
fascinating that feminism and communism
and all these things happen in the 20th
century so many interesting things
happen in the 20th century so many
movements so many ideas nuclear weapons
all of it computers it's just like it
seems like a lot of stuff like really
quickly percolated and it's accelerating
it's still accelerating I mean history
is just accelerating you know for
centuries and the 20th century you know
you we squeezed into it things that
previously took thousands of years and
now I mean we are squeezing it into
decades and you very well could be one
of the last historians human historians
to have ever lived
could be I I think you know our species
homo sapiens I don't think we'll be
around in a century or two we could
destroy ourselves
in a nuclear war through ecological
collapse uh by giving too much power to
AI that goes out out of our control
but if we survive we'll probably have so
much power that we will change ourselves
using various Technologies uh so that
our descendants will no longer be Homo
sapiens like us they will be more
different from us than we are different
from Neanderthals
um so maybe they'll have historians but
it will no longer be human historians or
sapiens historians like me
I think it's an extremely dangerous uh
development and the chances that this
will go wrong that will this will you
people will use the new technologies
trying to upgrade humans but actually
downgrading them this is a very very big
danger if you let corporations and
armies and ruthless politicians
uh change humans using tools like Ai and
bioengineering
it's very likely that they will try to
enhance a few human qualities that they
need
like intelligence and discipline
while neglecting
what are potentially more important
human qualities like compassion
like artistic sensitivity like
spirituality if you give Putin for
instance
bioengineering and Ai and brain computer
interfaces he is likely to want to
create a race of our super soldiers
who are much more intelligent and much
more stronger and also much more
disciplined and never Rebel and March on
Moscow against him but there's no
interest in making them more
compassionate or more spiritual
so the end result could be a a a new
type of humans a downgraded humans who
are highly intelligent and disciplined
but have no compassion and no spiritual
depth and this is one for me this is you
know the dystopia the Apocalypse
that when people talk about the new
technologies and they have this scenario
of you know the Terminator robots
running in the street shooting people
this is not what worries me I think we
can avoid that what really worries me is
using the the corporations armies
politicians will use the new
technologies
to change us in a way which will destroy
our Humanity or the best parts of our
humanity and one of those ways could be
removing the compassion another way that
really worries me for me is probably
more likely is a Brave New World kind of
thing that uh
sort of removes the flaws of humans
maybe it removes the diversity in humans
and makes us all kind of uh these
dopamine chasing creatures that just
kind of maximize enjoyment in the short
term
which kind of
seems like a good thing maybe in the
short term but it's it creates a society
that doesn't think that doesn't create
that just is sitting there enjoying
itself at a more and more rapid pace
which uh seems like another kind of
society that could be easily controlled
by a centralized Center of power but the
set of dystopias that we could arrive at
through this
um
through allowing corporations to modify
humans is uh uh is vast and we should be
worried about that so it's it seems like
humans are
pretty good as we are all the flaws all
of it together we are better than
anything that we can intentionally
design at present yeah like any
intentionally designed humans at the
present moment
is going to be much much worse than us
because basically we don't understand
ourselves I mean as long as we don't
understand our brain our body our mind
it's a very very bad idea to start
manipulating A system that you don't
understand deeply and we don't
understand ourselves
so I have to ask you about an
interesting Dynamic of stories you wrote
an article two years ago titled when the
world seems like one big conspiracy
how understanding the structure of
global cabal theories Can Shed light on
their Allure and their inherent
falsehood
what are Global cabal theories and why
do so many people believe them 37 of
Americans for example well the the
global cabal Theory it has many
variations but basically there is a
small group of people a small cabal that
secretly controls everything that is
happening in the world all the Wars all
the revolutions all the epidemics
everything that is happening is
controlled by this very small group of
people who are of course evil and have
bad intentions
and this is this is a very well-known
story that it's not new it's been there
for thousands of years it's very
attractive
uh because first of all it's simple
you don't you don't have to understand
everything that happens in the world you
just need to understand one thing though
in Ukraine the Israeli Palestinian
conflict 5G technology covid-19 it's
simple there is this Global cabal they
do only all of it and also it enables
you uh to shift all the responsibility
to all the bad things that is that are
happening in the world to this small
cabal it's the Jews it's the Freemason
it's not us
and also it creates it it creates this
fantasy utopian fantasy if we only get
rid of the small cabal we solved all the
problems of the world salvation
the Israeli Palestinian conflict the one
Ukraine the epidemics poverty everything
is solved just by knocking out this
small cabal so and it's simple it's
attractive and this is why so many
people believe it
um it's again it's not new Nazism was
exactly this Nazism began as a
conspiracy theory we don't call Nazism a
conspiracy theory because oh it's a big
thing it's an ideology
but if you look at it it's a conspiracy
theory the basic Nazi idea was that Jews
control the world get rid of the Jews
you solved all the world's problems now
the interesting thing about these kind
of theories again they tell you that
even things that look to be the opposite
of each other actually they are part of
the conspiracy
so in the case of Nazism the Nazis told
people you know you have capitalism and
communism you think that they are
opposite right ah this is what the Jews
want you to think actually the Jews
control both communism Trotsky marks or
Jews blah blah blah and capitalism wrote
the Rothschild the Wall Street it's all
controlled by the Jews so the Jews are
fooling everybody but actually the
Communists and the capitalists are part
of the same global cabal
and again this is very attractive
because ah now I understand everything
and I also know what to do I just give
power to Hitler he gets rid of the Jews
I solved all the problems of the world
now as a historian the most important
thing I can say about these theories
they are never right
because the global cabal Theory says two
things first everything is controlled by
a very small number of people secondly
these people hide themselves they do it
in secret now both things are nonsense
it's impossible for people to control a
small group of people to control and
predict everything because the world is
too complicated you know you look at a
real world conspiracy conspiracy is
basically just a plan think about the
American invasion of of Iraq in 2003
you had the most powerful superpower in
the world
with the biggest military with the
biggest intelligence services with the
most sophisticated you know the FBI and
the CIA and all the agents they invade a
third rate
country Third Rate power Iraq with this
idea we'll take over Iraq and we will
control it we'll make a new order in the
Middle East and everything falls apart
their plan completely backfires
everything they hope to achieve they
achieve the opposite America United
States is humiliated they cause the rise
of Isis they wanted to take out
terrorism they created more terrorism
worst of all the big winner of the war
was Iran
you know the United States goes to war
with all its power and gives Iran
a victory on a silver plate the Iranians
don't need to do anything the Americans
are doing everything for them
now this is real history Real History is
when you have it's not a small group of
people a lot of people with a lot of
power carefully planning something
and it goes completely out of uh against
their plan and this we know from
personal experience like every time we
need we try to plan something a birthday
party a surprise birthday party a trip
somewhere things go wrong this is
reality so the idea that a small group
of I don't know the Jewish cabal the
Freemasons whoever they can really
control and predict all the wars this is
nonsense the second thing that is
nonsense is to think they can do that
and still remain Secret
it sometimes happens in history that a
small group of people accumulates a lot
of power if I now now tell you that
xinjin ping and the hands of the CCP the
Chinese Communist party they have a lot
of power they control the military the
media are the economy the University of
China this is not a conspiracy theory
this this is obviously everybody knows
it everybody knows it because to gain so
much power
you need you usually need publicity
Hitler could not Hitler gained a lot of
power in Nazi Germany because he had a
lot of publicity if Hitler remained
unknown working behind the scenes he
would not gain power
so the way to gain power is usually
through publicity so secret cabals don't
gain power and even if you gain a lot of
power nobody has the kind of power
necessary to predict and control
everything that happens in the world
every all the time happens that you
did not predict and you did not plan and
you did not control
the sad thing is there's usually an
explanation for everything you just said
that involves a
secret Global cabal that the reason your
vacation planning always goes wrong is
because you're not competent there is a
competent small group
that Ultra competent small group I hear
this with intelligence agencies the CIA
are running everything Mossad is running
everything you see I mean as a historian
you get to know how many blunders these
people do all they are so and they're
capable but they are so incompetent in
so many ways again look at the Russian
invasion of Ukraine Before the War
people thought oh Putin was such a
genius and the Russian army was one of
the strongest armies in the world this
is what Putin thought and it completely
backfired was there a cabal explanation
there would be there's a a nato-driven
United States military industrial
complex that wants to create chaos and
so they can't put the gun to put his
hand and told him Vladimir if you don't
invade we should we shoot you how did
they cause put into Infinity it's the
thing about conspiracy theories is
there's usually a way to explain
everything it's not religion
for everything
Integrity if you insist on whenever
people confronted with evidence with
finding some very very complicated
explanation for that too you can explain
everything we know that it's a question
of of of intellectual integrity and I
also say another thing
um
the conspiracy theories they do get one
thing right certainly in today's world
I think they represent an authentic and
Justified fear of a lot of people that
they are losing control of their lives
they don't understand what is happening
and this is I think is a is not just a
legitimate fear this is an important
fear they are right we are losing
control of Our Lives we are facing
really big dangers but not from a small
cabal of fellow humans
the problem with many of these
conspiracy theories that yes we have a
problem with a new AI technology
but if you now direct the fire against
certain people
so instead of all humans cooperating
against our real common threats whether
it's the rise of AI whether it's a
global warming you're only causing us to
fight each other
and I think that the key question that
people who spread these ideas I mean
many of them they honestly believe it's
not malicious that they honestly believe
in in these theories is do you want to
spread to spend your life spreading hate
uh towards people or do you want to work
on more constructive projects I think
one of the big differences between those
who believe in conspiracy theories and
people who
warn about the dangers of AI the dangers
of climate change
um we don't see certain humans as evil
and hateful the problem isn't humans the
problem is uh something outside Humanity
yes humans are contributed contributing
to the problem but ultimately the enemy
is external to humanity whereas
conspiracy theories usually claim that a
certain part of humanity is the source
of all evil which leads them to
eventually think in terms of
Exterminating
uh this part of humanity
which uh which leads sometimes to
historical disasters like Nazism so it
can lead to hey but can also lead to a
like cynicism apathy that basically says
it's not in my power to make the world
better so you don't actually take action
I think it is within the power of every
individual to make the world a little
bit better you know you can't do
everything don't try to do everything
find one thing in your areas of activity
a place where you have some agency and
try to do that and hope that other
people do their bit and if everybody do
their bit will will manage and if if we
don't we don't but at least we try
you have been part of conspiracy
theories I find myself recently
uh becoming part of conspiracy theories
is there a device you can give
of how to be a human being in this world
that values truth and reason while
watching yourself become part of
conspiracy theories at least from my
perspective it seems very difficult
to prove to the world that you're not
part of a conspiracy theory I as you
said have interviewed Benjamin Netanyahu
recently I don't know if you're aware
but doing such things will also uh you
know pick up a new menu of items that
your new set of conspiracy theories
you're now a part of and I find it very
frustrating because it
makes it very difficult to respond
because I sense that people have the
right intentions like we said they have
uh nervousness of
fear of power and the abuses of power
and uh
as do I so I find myself in a difficult
position that I have nothing to show to
prove that I'm not part of such a
conspiracy theory I think ultimately you
can't we can't I mean
um you know it's like proving
Consciousness that you can't just that's
just the situation whatever you say can
and will be used against you by some
people yeah uh so this fantasy if I only
say this if I only show them that if I
only have this data they will see I'm
okay it doesn't work like that
um I think to to keep your sanity in
this situation
uh first of all it's it's important to
understand that most of these people are
not evil they are not doing it on
purpose many of them really believe that
uh there is some very nefarious powerful
conspiracy which is causing a lot of
harm in the world and they are doing a
good thing by exposing it and and making
people aware of it and trying to stop it
if you think that you're surrounded by
evil you're falling into the same Rabbit
Hole you're falling into the same
paranoid State of Mind oh the world is
full of these evil people that no most
of them are good people
um and also I think we can empathize uh
with some of the key ideas there which I
share
that uh yes it's becoming more and more
difficult to understand what is
happening in the world
there are huge dangers in the world that
we are existential dangers to the human
species but they don't come from a small
cabal of Jews or gay people or feminists
or whatever
um they come from much more diffused
forces which are not under the control
of any single individual
we don't have to look for the evil
people
we need to look for human allies in
order to work together against again the
dangers of AI the dangers of
bioengineering the dangers of climate
change and
when you wake up in the morning the
question is do you want to spend your
day spreading hatred or do you want to
spend spend your day trying to make
allies and work together
let me ask you kind of a big
philosophical question about Ai and and
the threat of it uh let's look like at
the threat side so folks like Elias
yadkowski worry that AI might
kill all of us
do you worry about that range of
possibilities where artificial
intelligence systems
in a variety of ways might
destroy human civilization
yes you know I I talk a lot about it
about the dangers of AI I sometimes get
into trouble because I depict these
scenarios of how AI becoming very
dangerous and then people say that I'm
encouraging these scenarios but I'm I'm
you know I'm talking about it as a
warning I'm not so terrified of the
simplistic idea again the Terminator
scenario of robots running in the street
shooting everybody
I'm more worried about AI accumulating
more and more power and basically taking
over Society based taking over our lives
taking power away from us until we don't
understand what is happening and we lose
control of our lives and of the future
the two most important things to realize
about AI you know so many things are
being said now about AI but I think
there are two things that every person
should know about AI
first is that AI is the First Tool in
history that can make decisions by
itself
all previous Tools in history couldn't
make decisions this is why they
empowered us you invent a knife you
invent an atom bomb the atom bomb cannot
decide to start a war cannot decide
which city to own
AI can make decisions by itself
an autonomous weapon systems can decide
by themselves who to kill who to bomb
the second thing is that AI is the First
Tool in history that can create new
ideas by itself
the printing press could print our ideas
but could not create new ideas AI can
create new ideas entirely by itself
this is unprecedented therefore it is
the first technology in history that
instead of giving power to humans it
takes power away from us
and the danger is that if it will
increasingly take more and more power
from us
until we are left helpless and clueless
about what is happening in the world and
this is already beginning to happen in
an accelerated R Pace more and more
decisions about our lives whether to
give us a loan whether to give us a
mortgage whether to give us a job or
taking by Ai and more and more of the
ideas of the images of the stories that
surround us and shape our our minds our
world our produced or created by AI not
by human beings if you can just Linger
on that what is the danger of that that
more and more of the creative
side
is done by AI the idea generation
is it that we become stale in our
thinking is that that idea generation is
so fundamental to like the evolution of
humanity that we can't resist the idea
is to to resist an idea you need to have
some some vision of of the creative
process yeah now this is a very old fear
um you go back to Plato's Cave
some of this idea that people are
sitting chained in a cave and seeing
shadows on a screen on a wall and
thinking this is reality
you go back to to the cart and he has
this thought experiment of the of the
demon and Descartes asks himself how do
I know that any of this is real maybe
there is a demon who is creating all of
this and is basically enslaving Me by
surrounding me with these Illusions you
go back to Buddha it's the same question
what if we are living in a world of
Illusions and because we have been
living in it throughout our lives all
our ideas or our desires how do we
understand ourselves this is all the
product of the same illusions
and this was a big philosophical
question for thousands of years now it's
becoming a practical question of
engineering because previously all the
ideas as far as we know maybe we are
living inside a computer simulation of
intelligent Rats from the planet Zircon
if that's the case we don't know about
it but taking what we do know about
human history until now all the again
stories images paintings songs operas
theater everything we've encountered and
shaped our minds was created by humans
now increasingly we live in a world
where more and more of these cultural
artifacts will be coming from an alien
intelligence
very quickly we might reach a point when
most
of the story stories images songs TV
shows whatever are created by an alien
intelligence
and
um if we now find ourselves inside this
kind of world of illusions
created by an alien intelligence that we
don't understand but it understands us
this is a kind of you know spiritual
enslavement that we won't be able to
break out of because it understands us
it understands how to manipulate us but
we don't understand
what is behind this screen of stories
and images and and songs
so if there's a set of AI systems that
are operating in a space of ideas
they're far superior to ours and we're
not almost able to it's it's opaque to
us we're not able to see through how
does that change the um
The Pursuit of Happiness the human
pursuit of happiness life where do we
get joy
if there were surrounded by AI systems
that are doing most of the cool things
humans do much better than us
you know some of the things it's okay
that the AIS would do them many human
tasks and jobs
um you know it's it's the the drudgery
they are not fun they are not developing
I will ask emotionally or spiritually
it's fine if the robots take over
I don't know I think about the people in
supermarkets or grocery stores that
spend hours every day just you know
passing uh items and and then charging
you the money I mean if this can be
automated wonderful
we need to make sure that these people
uh then have better jobs uh uh better
means of supporting themselves and
developing their social abilities their
spiritual abilities uh and and that
that's the that's the ideal world that
AI can create
that it takes away from us the things
that uh uh it's better if we don't do
them
and allows us to focus on the most
important things and the deepest aspects
of of our nature of our potential
if we give AI Control of the sphere of
ideas at this stage I think it's very
very dangerous because it doesn't
understand us and
AI at present is mostly digesting the
products of human culture
everything we've produced over thousands
of years it eats all of these cultural
products digests it and starts producing
its own new stuff
but we still still haven't figured out
ourselves in our bodies our brains our
minds our psychology
um so an AI based on our float
understanding of ourselves is a very
dangerous thing
I think that we need first of all to
keep developing ourselves
if if for every dollar and every minute
that we spend on developing AI
artificial intelligence we spend another
dollar and another minute in developing
human consciousness the human mind will
be okay
the danger is that we spend all our
effort on developing an AI at the time
that we don't understand ourselves
and then letting the AI take over that's
that's a road to a human catastrophe
does that surprise you how well large
language models work I mean has it
modified your understanding of the
nature of intelligence yes I mean you
know I've been writing about AI for
I know like eight years now
and engage with all these predictions
and speculations and when it actually
came it was much faster and more
powerful than I thought it would be
um I didn't think that we would have in
2023 an AI that can hold the
conversation that you can't know if it's
a human being or an AI that can write
beautiful texts in telling I mean I I
read the texts written by AI
and the thing that strikes me most is
the coherence
you know people think oh it's nothing
that just takes ideas from here and
their words from and putting no it's so
current I mean you read in not sentences
you read paragraphs you read entire
texts and there is logic that there is a
structure not only go here and it's
convincing yes and the beautiful thing
about it that has to do with your work
it doesn't have to be true
gets facts wrong but it still is
convincing
and it is both scary and beautiful yeah
that our brains love language so much
that we don't
need the facts to be correct we just
needed to be a beautiful story yeah and
that's been the secret of politics and
religion for thousands of years and now
it's coming with AI so you as a person
who has written some of the most
impactful words ever written in your
books uh how does that make you feel
that you might be one of the last
effective human writers that's a good
question first of all do you think
that's possible I think it is possible
um I I've seen a lot of examples of AI
being told right like Yuval no Harare
and what it produces has it ever done
better than you think you could have
written yourself
I mean on the level of content of ideas
no there are things I say I would I
would never say that
but when it comes to the you know I mean
there is again the currents and the
quality of writing is such
that I say it's it's unbelievable how
good it is
yeah and who knows in 10 years in 20
years maybe it can do better even on in
according to certain measures of on the
level of of content
so that people would be able to do like
a style transfer to uh in the style of
Yuval no Harare right anything right why
I should have ice cream tonight
and and make it convinced I don't know
if I have anything convincing to say
about this I think you'll be surprised I
think you'd be surprised there could be
an evolutionary biology explanation for
why yeah ice cream is good for you yeah
so I mean uh
I mean that changes the nature of
writing ultimately I I think it it goes
back
um
much of of my writing
is suspicious of itself I write stories
about the danger of stories I write
about intelligence but highlighting the
dangers of intelligence ultimately I
don't think that in terms of power
human power comes from intelligence and
from stories but I think that the
deepest and best qualities of humans are
not
intelligence and not storytelling and
not power again with all our power with
all our cooperation with our
intelligence we are on the verge of
destroying ourselves and destroying much
of the ecosystem
our our best qualities are not there
our best qualities are non-verbal again
they come from things like compassion
from introspection and introspection for
my experience is not verbal if you try
to understand yourself with words you
will never succeed there is a a place
where you need the words
but the deepest insights they don't come
from words
um and you can't write about it that
that's second it goes back to to
Wittgenstein to Buddha to so many of
these sages before that uh this these
are the things we are silent about
yeah but eventually you have to project
it as a writer you have to
uh do the silent introspection but
projected onto a page yes but you still
have to warn people you will never find
the deepest truth in a book you will
never find it in words
uh you can only find it in I think in
direct experience which is non-verbal
which is pretty verbal in the Silence of
your own mind yes somewhere in there yes
well let me ask you a silly question
then uh a ridiculously big question
you have done a lot of deep thinking
about the world about yourself this kind
of introspection
how do you think
If You by way of advice but just
practically speaking day to day how do
you think about difficult problems with
the world
first of all I take time off
like mother the the most important thing
I do
I think as a writer as a scientist that
I meditate I spend about two hours every
day in silent meditation
observing as much as possible
non-verbally what is happening within
myself focusing you know Body Sensations
the breath
thoughts keep coming up but I try not to
give them attention don't try to drive
them away just let them be there in the
background like some background noise
don't engage with the thoughts
because the mind is is constantly
producing stories with words these
stories come between us and the world
they don't allow us to see ourselves or
the world like for me the most shocking
thing when I started meditating like 23
years ago
I was given this simple exercise to just
observe my breath coming in and out of
the nostrils
not controlling it just observing it and
I couldn't do it for more than 10
seconds I for 10 seconds would try to
notice oh now the breath is coming in
it's coming in it's coming you know it
stopped coming in now it's going out
going out 10 seconds and some memory
would come some thought would come some
story about something that happened last
last week or 10 years ago or in the
future and it the story would hijack my
attention it would take me maybe five
minutes to remember oh I'm supposed to
be observing my my breath
if I can't observe my own breath because
of these stories created by the mind how
can I hope to understand much more
complex things like the political
situation in Israel the Israeli
Palestinian conflict the Russian
invasion of Ukraine if all these stories
keep coming I mean it's not the truth
it's just the story your own mind
created so first thing train the mind to
be silent and just observe so two hours
every day and I go every year for a long
retreat between one month and two months
60 days of just Sonic meditation silent
meditation for 60 days yeah to train the
mind forget about your own stories just
observe what is really happening
and then also on other throughout the
day
have an information diet
people are today many people are very
aware of what they feed their body what
enters their mouth mouth
be very aware of what you feed your mind
what enters your mind having information
diet
so for instance I read long books
and I prefer like you know I do many
interviews I prefer three hours
interviews two five minutes interviews
uh the long format is in it's not always
feasible
but you can go much much deeper
um so I would say an information diet be
very careful about what you feed your
mind give preference
to big chunks over small uh books over
Twitter yes books over Twitter
definitely
and then you know when I encounter a
problem a difficult intellectual problem
then
um I give it I I let the problem lead it
lead me
where it goes and not where I want it to
go
if I approach a problem with some
preconceived idea solution and then try
to impose it on the problem and you know
just find confirmation bias just find
the evidence that supports my view it's
this is this is easy for the mind to do
and you don't learn anything new
do you take notes do you start to
concretize your thoughts
on paper
I read a lot I don't I don't usually I
don't take notes then I start writing
and when I write I write like a torrent
just right now it's the time you read
meditation now it's the time to write
write don't stop just right so I would
write from memory
and I'm I'm not afraid of formulating
say Big Ideas big theories and putting
them on paper
the danger is once it's on paper not on
paper on the screen in the computer
you get attached to it and then you
start with confirmation bias to build
more and more layers around it and you
can't go back and then it's very
dangerous
but I I trust myself that I have to some
extent the ability to press the delete
button the most important button in the
keyboard is delete yeah
I I write and then I delete I write and
then I delete and because I trust myself
that I'll have the every time I come to
press delete button I feel bad like it's
a kind of pain I created this it's a
beautiful idea and I have to delete it
but you're still brave enough to press
delete I try and hopefully I do it
enough times and this is important
because in the long term it enables me
to play with ideas I have the confidence
to start formulating
some Brave idea most of them turn out to
be nonsense
but I trust myself not to be accused not
to be attached not to become attached to
my own nonsense
so it gives me this room for playfulness
I will be amazing ask for people
interested in hearing you talk about
meditation if they want to start
meditating what advice would you give
and how to start you mentioned you
couldn't hold it for you couldn't hold
your attention on your breath for longer
than 10 seconds yes first
so how did they start on this journey
first of all it's a difficult Journey
it's not fun it's not recreational it's
not kind of time to relax it can be very
very intense the most difficult thing at
least in the meditation I practice uh
vipassana which I learned from a teacher
called Essen goenka the most difficult
thing is not the silence it's not the
sitting for long hours it's it's what
comes up
everything you don't want to know about
yourself yeah this is what comes up so
it's very intense and difficult if you
go to a Meditation Retreat don't think
you're going to relax
so what's the experience for meditation
and tree when everything you don't like
comes up first for 30 days it depends
what comes up anger comes up you're
angry yeah for days on end you're just
boiling with anger everything makes you
angry
again something that happens right now
or you remember something from 20 years
ago and you start boiling with it's like
I I never even thought about this
incident but it's some it was somewhere
stowed with a huge huge
pile of anger attached to it and it's
now coming up and all the anger is
coming up maybe it's boredom
you know
30 days of meditation you start getting
bored
and it's the most boring thing in
suddenly no anger no it's the most
boring I I another second I scream
I mean and boredom is one of the most
difficult thing to deal with in life I
think it's closely related to death
death is boring you know in many movies
death is exciting it's not exciting when
you when he died ultimately it's it's
boredom nothing happens it's the end of
exciting things and many things in the
world happen because of boredom to some
extent people start entire Wars because
of Bordeaux people quit relationships
people quit jobs because of boredom and
if you never learn how to deal with
boredom you will never learn how to
enjoy peace and quiet
because the way to peace passes through
boredom
and and from what I experience with
meditation I think
but maybe it was the most difficult
maybe at least in the top three like
much more difficult to say than anger or
pain when pain comes up you feel heroic
hey I'm feeling pain
when boredom comes up
brings it you know with depression and
feelings of worthlessness and it's
nothing I'm nothing
the way the peace is through boredom uh
David Foster Wallace said the key to
life is to be unborable
uh yeah it was just a different
perspective on what you're talking to is
there truth to that yes I mean it's
closely related I would say like I look
at the world today like Politics the one
thing we need more than anything else is
boring politicians
we have a super abundance of very
exciting politicians who are doing and
saying very exciting things and we need
boring politicians and we need them
quickly and
yeah the weighty pieces through boredom
that applies in more ways than one
um what advice would you give to young
people
uh today in high school and college
how to have a successful life how to
have a successful career what they
should know it's the first time in
history nobody has any idea how the
world would look like in 10 years yeah
nobody has any idea how the world would
look like when you grow up you know
throughout history it was never possible
to predict the future you live in the
Middle Ages nobody knows maybe in 10
years the Vikings will invade the
Mongols will invade they'll be an
epidemic there'll be an earthquake who
knows but the basic structures of life
will not change
most people will still be peasants our
armies would fight on Horseback with
swords and and bows and arrows and
things like that
so you could learn a lot from the wisdom
of your elders they've been there before
and they knew what kind of basic skills
you need to learn
you most people need to learn how to sow
wheat and harvest wheat or rice and make
bread and build a house and ride the
host and things like that
now we have no idea not just about
politics
we have no idea how the job market would
look like in 10 years we have no ideas
no idea what skills will still be needed
you you think you you're going to learn
how to code because they'll need a lot
of coders in the 2030s think again maybe
AI is doing all the coding you don't
need any coders
you're going to I don't know you learn
to translate languages you want to be a
translator gone and you we don't know
what skills will be needed
so the most important skill is the skill
to keep learning and keep changing
throughout our lives which is very very
difficult to keep Reinventing ourselves
it's a deep again it's in a way a
spiritual practice
to build your personality to build your
mind
very flat as a very flexible
mind
if traditionally
people thought about
education
like building a stone house with very
deep foundations
now it's more like setting up a tent
that you can fold and move to the next
place very very quickly because that's
the 21st century
which also raises questions about the
the the future of Education what that
looks like yeah let me ask you about
love
um
what were some of the challenges what
were some of the lessons uh about love
about life that you learned from coming
out as gay hmm
in many ways it goes back to the stories
I think this is one of the
one of the reasons I became so
interested in stories and in their power
was I grew up in um
small Israeli town in the 1980s early
1990s which was very homophobic
and I basically embraced it I I breathed
it
because
you could hardly even think
differently
so you had these two powerful stories
around one that God hates gay people and
that uh he will punish them if if they
for who they are or for what they do
secondly that it's not God it's nature
that there is something diseased or sick
about it and these people maybe they are
not Sinners but uh they are they are
sick they are defective
and nobody wanted to identify with such
a thing if your options okay you can be
a singer you can be a defect but what do
you want uh not good options there
and it took me many years till I was 21
to to come to term with it
um and one of the things I learned
through things first about the amazing
capacity of the human mind for denial
and delusion
that an algorithm could have told me
that I'm gay when I was like 14 or 15.
like if there is a good looking guy and
girl walking I would immediately focus
on the guy but I didn't I didn't I
didn't connect the dots
like I could not understand what was
happening inside my own brain and my own
mind in my own body
took me a long time to realize you know
you're just gay
so that speaks as a power of social
convention versus uh individuals this is
the power of self-delusion
that you know it's not that I knew I was
gay and was hiding it I was hiding it
from myself successfully that I I don't
understand how it is possible looking
back I don't understand how it is
possible but I know it is possible I
knew and didn't know at the same time
and then the other big lesson is the
power of of the stories of the social
conventions because the stories were not
true they did not make sense even on
their own terms even if you accept the
basic religious framework of the world
that there is a good god that created
everything and controls everything why
would a good God
uh punish people for love I understand
why good God would punish people for
violence for hatred for cruelty but why
would God punish people for love
especially when he created them that way
so of uh so even if you accept the
religious framework of the world
obviously the story that God hates gay
people it comes not from God but from
Some Humans who invented this story they
take their own hatred this is something
humans do all the time
they hate somebody and they say no I
don't hate them God hates them
they throw their own hatred on God
and then if you think about the
scientific framework that said that all
gays that they are against nature they
are against the laws of nature that they
are and so forth
science tells us nothing can exist
against the laws of nature
things that go against the laws of
nature just don't exist there is a law
of nature that you can't move faster
than the speed of light now you don't
have this minority of people who break
the laws of nature by going faster than
the speed of light and then nature comes
nah that's bad you shouldn't do that
that's not how nature works if something
goes against the laws of nature it just
can't exist
the fact that gay people exist me and
not just people you see homosexuality
among many many mammals and birds and
other animals
it exists because it is in line with the
laws of nature
the idea that this is sick that this is
whatever it comes not from nature it
comes from the human imagination
some people or for whatever reasons hate
it gay people they said oh they go
against nature
but this is the story created by people
this is not the laws of nature and this
taught me
that so many of the things that we think
are natural or Eternal or Divine no they
are just human stories but these human
stories are often the most powerful
forces in the world
so what did you learn from your just a
personal struggle
of um
Journey Through the social conventions
to find one of the things that makes
life awesome which is love
so like hot what it takes to kind of
strip away the self-delusion and the
pressures of social convention to wake
up
it takes a lot of work a lot of courage
and a lot of help from other people
you it's uh this kind of again heroic
idea that I can do it all by myself it
doesn't work
certainly with love you need at least
one more person
and I'm very happy that I I found ezek
who lived in the same small Israeli town
we lived on two adjacent streets for
years probably went to school on the
same bus for years without really
encountering each other in the end we
met on one of the first dating sites on
the internet for for gay people in
Israel in in 2002 you're saying the
internet works yes I you know I said a
lot of bad things or dangerous about
technology and the internet there are
also of course good things and this is
not an accident
you have two kinds of minorities in
history
you have minorities which are are a
cohesive group like Jews that yes you're
as small as being born Jewish in saying
Germany or Russia or whatever you're
born in a small community but as a
Jewish boy you're born to a Jewish
Family you have Jewish parents you have
Jewish siblings you are in a Jewish
neighborhood you have Jewish friends
so these kinds of minorities they could
always come together and help each other
throughout history now another type of
minority like gay people or more broadly
lgbtq people
that as a gay boy you're usually not
born to a gay family with gay parents
and gay siblings and gain in a
neighborhood
um so usually you find yourself
completely alone
for most of History one of the biggest
problems for the gay community was that
there was no Community how do you find
one another
and the internet was a wonderful thing
in this respect because it made it very
easy for these kinds of diffuse
community so diffuse minorities to find
each other so me and it even though we
rode the same bus together to school for
years we didn't meet in the physical
world we met online
because again in the physical world you
don't want to identify in a Israeli town
in the 1980s you ride the bus you don't
want to say hey I'm gay is there anybody
else gay here that's not a good idea but
on the internet we could find each other
there's another lesson in there that
maybe sometimes the thing you're looking
for is right under your nose yeah a very
old lesson and a very true
lesson in in many ways
so so you need help from other people to
to realize the truth about yourself so
of course in love you cannot just love
abstractly there is another person there
you need to find them but also you know
we were one of the first Generations who
enjoy the benefits of Gay Liberation of
this very difficult struggles of people
who are much braver than us in the 1980s
1970s 1960s who dared to question uh
social conventions
to uh struggle at sometimes a terrible
price and we benefited from it
um and more broadly we spoke earlier
about the feminist movement there would
have been no Gay Liberation without the
feminist movement we also owe them
for you know starting to change the
gender structure of of the world
and this is always true you can never do
it just by yourself also I look at my
journey in meditation I could not have
found many I mean the idea of going to
Meditation Retreat okay
but I couldn't discover meditation time
I couldn't develop the meditation
technique by myself somebody had to
teach me
this way of how to look inside yourself
and um I'm and it and it's also a very
important lesson that you can't do it
just by yourself that this fantasy of
complete autonomy of complete
self-sufficiency it doesn't work you
hear it tends to be a very kind of male
match of fantasy I don't need anybody I
can be so strong and so brave that I'll
do everything by myself it never works
me the friends you need a mentor
you need the very thing that makes us
human is other is other humans
absolutely uh you mentioned that the
fear of boredom might be a kind of proxy
for the fear of death uh so what role
does the fear of death play in The Human
Condition are you afraid of death
yes I think everybody are afraid of
death I mean all our fears come out of
the fear of death but the fear of death
is is just so deep and difficult we
can't usually we can't face it directly
so we cut it into little pieces and we
face just little pieces oh I lost my
smartphone that's a little little piece
of of the fear of death which is of
losing everything so I can't deal with
losing everything I'm dealing now is
losing my phone or losing a book or
whatever somebody I I I feel pain that's
a small bit of the fear of death
somebody who really doesn't fear death
would not fear anything at all they'll
be like anything that happens I can deal
with it if I can deal with death this is
nothing so any fears and as a distant
echo of the the big fear of death have
you ever
looked at it head on caught glimpses
sort of contemplated as the stoics yes I
mean when when I was I I was a teenager
I would constantly contemplate it trying
to understand to imagine it it was
extreme it was a very very
uh shocking and moving experience I
remembered especially in connection like
with you know with with national
ideology which was also very big strong
in Israel still is
which again comes from the fear of death
you know that you're going to die so you
said okay I die but the nation lives on
I live on through the nation I don't
really die and
uh you hear it especially on Memorial
Day Day for fallen soldiers so every day
they'll be in school Memorial Day for
fallen soldiers who fell defending
Israel in all its different Wars and all
these kids would count rest in white and
you'll have this big ceremony with flags
and songs and dances in memory of the
Fallen Soldiers and you get the
impression
um again the sun crash but you get the
impression that the best thing in life
is to be a falling Soldier
because even though yes you die
everybody dies in the end but then
you'll have all these cool kids for
years and years remembering you and
celebrating you and and you don't really
die and I remember standing in in these
ceremonies and thinking what does it
actually mean like okay so if I'm a
fallen soldier now I I I'm I'm a
skeleton I'm bones under this in this
military cemetery under this stone do I
actually hear the kids singing all these
patriotic songs if not how do I know
they do it maybe they trick Me Maybe I
die in the war and then they don't sing
any songs and how does it help me and I
realize yeah as a quite I was quite
young at the time that if you're dead
you can't hear anything because you
that's the meaning of being dead and if
you dead you can't think of anything
like oh now they're remembering because
you're dead that's the meaning of being
dead and it was a shocking realization
but it's a really difficult realization
to keep holding your mind like it's it's
the end I lost it over time I mean for
many years it was a very powerful fuel
motivation yeah for philosophical for
Spiritual exploration and I I realized
that the fear of death is is really a
very powerful drive and over the years
especially as I meditated it kind of
dissipated and today I sometimes find
myself trying to recapture this teenage
fear of death because it was so powerful
and I just can't I I try to make the
same image I don't know it's it's
something about the teenage years yeah I
always thought that the adults there is
something wrong with the adults yeah
because they don't get it like I would
ask my parents or teachers about it and
they no yes you die in the end that's it
but and on the other hand they are so
worried about other things like they'll
be a political crisis or an economic
problem or a personal problem like with
the bank or whatever they'll be so
worried but then about the fact that
they are going to die ah we don't care
about it that's why you read kamu and
others when you're a teenager you really
worry about the existential questions
well this feels like the right time to
ask the big question what's the meaning
of this whole thing Evol and you're the
right person to ask what's the meaning
of life yes oh that's easy what is it
um
so what life is if you ask what the
meaning of life what life is
life is feeling things having Sensations
emotions and reacting to them when you
feel something good something pleasant
you want more out of it you want more of
it when you feel something unpleasant
you want to get rid of it that's the
whole of life that's what is happening
all the time you feel things you want
the pleasant things to increase you want
the unpleasant things to disappear that
what life is
if you ask what is the meaning of life
in a more kind of philosophical or
spiritual question
the real question to ask what kind of
answer do you expect
most people expect a story
and that's always the wrong answer most
people expect that the answer to the
question the mean what is the meaning of
life will be a story like a big drama
that this is the plot line and this is
your role in the story this is what you
have to do this is your line in the big
play you say your line you do your thing
you that that's the thing
and this is human imagination this is
fantasy
um to really understand life life is not
a story the universe does not function
like a story
so I think to really understand life you
need to observe it directly in a
non-verbal way don't turn it into a
story
and the question to start with is what
is suffering what is causing suffering
you know the the question what is the
meaning of life it will take you to
fantasies and delusions we want to stay
with the reality of life and the most
important question about the reality of
life is what is suffering and where is
it coming from and to answer that
non-verbally so the conscious experience
of suffering yes when you suffer
uh try to observe what is really
happening when you're suffering
well put and I wonder if AI will also go
through that same kind of process on
this way if we develop Consciousness at
present it's it's not it's just words it
will just say to you please don't hurt
me at all
again
um as I've mentioned to you I'm a huge
fan of yours thank you for the
incredible work you do uh this
conversation's been a long time uh I
think coming it's it's a huge honor to
talk to you this is really fun thank you
for talking today thank you
um I I really enjoyed it and as I said I
think that the long form is the best
form
yeah I loved it thank you
thanks for listening to this
conversation on Yuval Noah Harare to
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let me leave you some words from eval
Noah himself
how do you cause people to believe in an
imagined order such as Christianity
democracy or capitalism
first you never admit that the order is
imagined
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time