“From an evolutionary perspective, trusting in the knowledge of others has worked extremely well for Homo sapiens. Yet like many other human traits that made sense in past ages but cause trouble in the modern age, the knowledge illusion has its downside. The world is becoming ever more complex, and people fail to realize just how ignorant they are of what’s going on. Consequently, some people who know next to nothing about meteorology or biology nevertheless propose policies regarding climate change and genetically modified crops, while others hold extremely strong views about what should be done in Iraq or Ukraine without being able to locate these countries on a map. People rarely appreciate their ignorance, because they lock themselves inside an echo chamber of like-minded friends and self-confirming news feeds, where their beliefs are constantly reinforced and seldom challenged.3”
Start reading this book for free: https://a.co/3Pa06FX
“Yes it is likely that we are reaching an inflection point beyond which our imagination fails.”
TimesTalks | Yuval Noah Harari
Streamed live on Sep 4, 2018
https://youtu.be/Vxvb7Nw9JCE?t=3855
64:18
Yes it is likely that we are reaching an inflection point beyond which our imagination fails. We cannot say anything to anything meaningful about how the world would look like a hundred years from now. This is how I understand the singularity. Not in terms of some Big Bang or laws of physics or something like that but the point beyond which you just can’t look. So when you looked at the past many physicists called the Big Bang a singularity.
64:52
The question what happened before the Big Bang is meaningless we don’t have the abilities the tools to look before and we are approaching very fast a new point of singularity. Not fourteen billion years in the future but maybe fifty or a hundred years in the future which you simply cannot look behind beyond. Our imagination fails because one of the things that are going to change is our imagination.
65:19
Once you have the technology to re-engineer the human imagination by definition you cannot imagine what will happen after that.
Yes we mentioned in your in this book how important it was for you personally to understand story versus reality it defined who you are as a scientist as a story and a researcher. Which I would I would say majority of the world does not think like that and I will include other scientists historians and researchers.
68:45
This is one of my fears on the internal level of the internal ecological system. We are very far from understanding the complexities of the human mind but we are becoming very good in manipulating emotions and thoughts and so forth and this gap may result in an internal ecological collapse of our mental system.
I don’t know of any scientific evidence for the existence of life outside planet Earth but statistically it sounds quite probable that somewhere there is something whether it will be helpful in uniting us. I think we have enough on our plates on planet Earth even without aliens coming and adding more. I think that again nuclear war and climate change and the threat of technological disruption should be enough to unite our species.
If not we may not live long enough to encounter the aliens.
And on that hopeful note…
The election is over – China won
NYTimes: Splitting 5 to 4, Supreme Court Backs Religious Challenge to Cuomo’s Virus Shutdown Order
Splitting 5 to 4, Supreme Court Backs Religious Challenge to Cuomo’s Virus Shutdown Order nyti.ms/39icuy8
For Christians the Apocalypse is a self fulfilling prophecy.
It’s astonishing that we live in a country where our highest court sides with religious cults that believe their life after death fantasy is more important than the general public’s life.
By definition anyone who makes decisions based on ideology rather than empirical data is going to be wrong at least some of the time. That’s why the framers of our constitution believed in the separation of church and state.
Religious ideologists believe that only members of their religious cult will have a life after death. Consequently, they devalue every life on a planet including their own.
They are putting our country and the world in a death spiral.
Watch – Yuval Noah Harari on the Rise of Homo Deus
Yuval Noah Harari on the Rise of Homo Deus
“Studying history aims to loosen the grip of the past… It will not tell us what to choose, but at least it gives us more options.” – Yuval Noah Harari
Yuval Noah Harari is the star historian who shot to fame with his international bestseller ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’. In that book Harari explained how human values have been continually shifting since our earliest beginnings: once we placed gods at the centre of the universe; then came the Enlightenment, and from then on human feelings have been the authority from which we derive meaning and values. Now, using his trademark blend of science, history, philosophy and every discipline in between, Harari argues in his new book ‘Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow’, our values may be about to shift again – away from humans, as we transfer our faith to the almighty power of data and the algorithm.
In conversation with Kamal Ahmed, the BBC’s economics editor, Harari examined the political and economic revolutions that look set to transform society, as technology continues its exponential advance. What will happen when artificial intelligence takes over most of the jobs that people do? Will our liberal values of equality and universal human rights survive the creation of a massive new class of individuals who are economically useless? And when Google and Facebook know our political preferences better than we do ourselves, will democratic elections become redundant? As the 21st century progresses, not only our society and economy but our bodies and minds could be revolutionised by new technologies such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology and brain-computer interfaces. After a few countries master the enhancement of bodies and brains, will they conquer the planet while the rest of humankind is driven to extinction?
As AI develops engineers and software developers will be forced to employ philosophers in their product development as they are already doing with biological experts.
https://youtu.be/JJ1yS9JIJKs?t=1597
Watch – How Thomas Friedman and Yuval Noah Harari Think About The Future of Humanity
How Thomas Friedman and Yuval Noah Harari Think About The Future of Humanity
Two of the greatest thought leaders of the 21st century– Yuval Noah Harari and Thomas L. Friedman – discuss the Future of Humanity on March 19, 2018, with moderator Rachel Dry, The New York Times. “How To Understand Our Times” is an event series collaboration between The New York Times and how to: Academy bringing together New York Times journalists and leading figures in diverse fields to examine pressing issues in a changing world, including gender equality, artificial intelligence, and alternatives to fossil fuels, among others. For upcoming events, visit timesevents.nytimes.com.
From the beginning: https://youtu.be/5chp-PRYq-w
Full Transcript
Yuval Noah Harari of course is a
00:01
best-selling author and thinker whose
00:04
work engages us in the history of
00:07
humanity and where we’re heading
00:10
Thomas Friedman is also a best-selling
00:12
author and columnist who for decades has
00:15
been a guide to the world for readers of
00:18
his columns and his books were in very
00:21
good hands for the evening without
00:23
further ado please welcome to the stage
00:25
you’ve all her Aria and Thomas Friedman
00:30
[Applause]
00:43
so you’ve all we’re gonna begin with you
00:46
obviously we think about the future we
00:48
think about what’s happening in the
00:49
world and what is setting the global
00:52
agenda and if you could speak about the
00:54
global agenda yeah I think the first
00:58
thing to say about the global agenda is
01:00
that it exists there is a global agenda
01:04
which is not self-evident these days
01:07
because with all the talk at least about
01:11
the rise of nationalism and tribalism
01:14
and the clash of civilizations and so
01:16
forth we sometimes tend to forget that
01:19
in a very deep sense all of humanity
01:22
today constitutes a single civilization
01:26
yes we have a lot of conflicts but every
01:29
civilization every community every
01:31
family has a lot of conflicts the people
01:35
you fight most with are your family
01:38
members not with strangers because they
01:40
are there so the fact that the world is
01:44
full of conflict doesn’t mean that we
01:47
are not a single community or a single
01:50
civilization and I think in a deep sense
01:55
almost all humans today or at least
01:58
almost all countries today understand
02:01
the fundamentals of reality in the same
02:05
way they understand politics in the same
02:09
way if you think about China the USA
02:12
Iran or Israel they understand the
02:15
basics of politics in the same way the
02:18
basics of economics in the same way and
02:21
the basics of nature in the same way
02:24
they argue about a lot of things but
02:27
when it comes time to build a hospital
02:31
or an economy or a nuclear bomb they do
02:36
it in the same way and just as we have a
02:40
set of similar ideas and practices we
02:45
also all of humanity we have a set of
02:50
common problems global problems
02:54
can only be solved on a global level and
02:57
of these global problems the three most
03:01
important of nuclear war climate change
03:04
and technological disruption now the
03:07
first two are quite familiar by now the
03:11
third technological disruption is the
03:15
most mysterious most people don’t really
03:20
understand what’s coming even most
03:23
experts cannot really say what kinds of
03:27
threats what kind of dangers the new
03:30
technologies especially AI artificial
03:33
intelligence and bioengineering will
03:37
create there are a lot of scenarios
03:41
scary scenarios like if you think about
03:44
artificial intelligence so one scary
03:46
scenario is that it will lead to the
03:49
emergence to the rise of a global
03:52
useless class just as the Industrial
03:56
Revolution of the 19th century created
03:59
the urban working class so the
04:02
automation revolution of the 21st
04:05
century might create the useless class
04:08
and much of the political and social
04:11
history of the coming decades might
04:14
revolve around the problems and the
04:16
hopes and the fears of this new class
04:19
another danger is that new technologies
04:24
might lead to the collapse of liberal
04:27
democracy especially if you think about
04:31
the combination the merger of biotech
04:35
and Infotech they might very soon reach
04:40
the point when they create systems they
04:45
create algorithms that understand us
04:48
better than we understand ourselves and
04:52
once you have an external algorithm that
04:56
understands you better than you
04:58
understand yourself liberal democracy as
05:01
we have known it for the last century or
05:04
so is
05:05
doomed it will have to adapt to the new
05:09
conditions it will have to reinvent
05:11
itself in a radical new form or it will
05:14
collapse because you can say that the
05:18
Achilles heel of liberal democracy is
05:21
the heart liberal democracy trusts in
05:26
the feelings of human beings and that
05:29
worked as long as nobody could
05:33
understand your feelings better than you
05:35
yourself or your mother but if there is
05:41
an algorithm out there that understands
05:44
your feelings better than your mother
05:46
and can press your emotional buttons
05:49
better than your mother and you won’t
05:51
even understand that this is happening
05:54
then liberal democracy will become an
05:57
emotional puppet show and we have these
06:00
you know these slogans of listen to your
06:04
heart follow your heart but what happens
06:07
if your heart is a foreign agent is a
06:10
double agent serving somebody else who
06:14
knows how to press your emotional
06:17
buttons who knows how to make you angry
06:20
how to make you bold how to make you
06:24
joyful this is the kind of threat that
06:27
we are already beginning to see emerging
06:30
today for example elections and
06:33
referendums so really I would say that
06:38
the three big challenges the three top
06:41
items on our global agenda is how to
06:45
prevent nuclear war how to prevent
06:49
climate change and how to learn to
06:53
control the new technology before it
06:57
learns to control us thank you we think
07:03
about the future we are the future of
07:05
humanity we obviously have to think
07:06
about our understanding
07:08
of the world I wondered if you could
07:09
talk a little bit about how you
07:11
understand the world today
07:13
well first of all Rachel’s great to be
07:14
with you and devolopment thank you all
07:16
for coming out this is a real treat so
07:20
in my last you know as a columnist one
07:23
of the things I’m always asking myself
07:24
is um how does the Machine work what are
07:26
the biggest gears employees shaping or
07:29
reshaping the world today and in my last
07:32
book thank you for being late I picking
07:34
up really on some of the themes you’ve
07:35
all spoke about I argued that what is
07:37
shaping more things in more places in
07:39
more ways on more days is that we’re in
07:41
the middle three nonlinear accelerations
07:44
with the three largest forces on the
07:45
planet which I call the market mother
07:48
nature and Moore’s law so a mother
07:51
nature for me is climate change
07:52
biodiversity loss and population growth
07:55
in the developing world if you put that
07:58
on a graph it actually looks like a
07:59
giant hockey stick the market for me is
08:02
globalization but not your grandfather’s
08:05
globalization that was containers on
08:07
ships and planes that’s actually flat to
08:09
going down right now but digital
08:11
globalization so everything’s being
08:12
digitized and globalized put that on a
08:14
graph whether it’s measuring data
08:16
consumed per month or cellphones it
08:18
looks like a hockey stick and lastly
08:21
Moore’s Law coined by Gordon Moore in
08:23
1965 the co-founder of Intel argued that
08:26
the speed and power of microchips will
08:28
double every 24 months it’s closer to 30
08:30
months now but never mind Moore’s law
08:32
has held up for 53 years put it on a
08:36
graph it looks like a giant hockey stick
08:39
so we’re actually in the middle of three
08:41
hockey stick accelerations all at the
08:44
same time and I believe it’s the
08:45
interaction between them that really is
08:48
not just changing our world it’s it’s
08:50
reshaping our world and it’s reshaping
08:51
five realms in particular politics
08:54
geopolitics ethics the community in the
08:58
workplace so as I think about politics
09:02
right now that some of these on
09:04
everybody’s mind you know one of the
09:06
things you really see is that political
09:08
parties all over the world here in the
09:10
UK in the United States they’re blowing
09:11
up some are in power so they think
09:14
they’re alive but they’re all basically
09:15
dead and that’s because they in my view
09:20
they were all
09:21
warned of an industrial age model that
09:24
the central theme was capitalism versus
09:27
labor or big government versus small
09:30
government and the axis of politics was
09:32
left to right and right to left um what
09:35
I would argue and this is gets to how I
09:37
think about the world today is that um
09:40
that model is no longer relevant
09:42
I think the way to think about politics
09:45
today is through the model of climate
09:46
change but I think we’re in the middle
09:48
of three climate changes at once a first
09:51
friend the change of the climate of the
09:52
climate we’re going from what I call
09:54
later to now so when I was growing up in
09:57
Minnesota in the 50s and 60s later was
10:00
when I could clean that Lake repair that
10:02
River
10:02
save that for us rescue that orangutan I
10:05
could do it now or I could do it later
10:07
well today later is officially over
10:10
later will now be too late so whatever
10:13
you’re gonna save please save it now
10:15
that’s a climate change we’re going
10:17
through a change in the climate of
10:18
globalization I think we’re going from
10:20
an interconnected world to an
10:22
interdependent world and an
10:24
interdependent world you get a kind of
10:26
geopolitical invert inversion where
10:29
you’re first of all your friends your
10:31
friends start to be able to kill you
10:32
faster than your enemies um you have
10:35
Greek and Italian banks go under tonight
10:37
this room is half-full a Greece Italy
10:40
wait a min NATO there in the EU in an
10:42
interdependent world they can kill us
10:44
and an interdependent world your rivals
10:47
falling is actually more dangerous than
10:49
your rivals rising so if China take six
10:52
more islands in the South China Sea
10:53
tonight don’t quote me on this couldn’t
10:56
care less
10:56
um if China loses 6% growth tonight this
11:01
room is empty
11:02
that’s a climate change and lastly we’re
11:05
going through a change in the climate of
11:07
business and technology I’m a big
11:09
believer that um one reason I focus on
11:12
technology so much I’m a big believer
11:14
that whatever can be done will be done
11:16
the only question in business is will it
11:18
be done by you or to you but just don’t
11:21
think it won’t be done so I’m going to
11:23
ask you what can be done and when you
11:24
look at AI and some of the themes that
11:27
you’ve all talked about I think every
11:29
company they can therefore must analyze
11:32
optimize
11:33
sighs customize socialize and digitize /
11:37
autumn Atty virtually any job product or
11:39
service so they can analyze now thanks
11:42
to big data they can find the needle in
11:44
the haystack of their data as the norm
11:46
not the exception they can optimize I
11:49
flew here on British Airways rolls-royce
11:51
engines those engines actually connected
11:53
by sensor to rolls-royce and they could
11:55
tell ba exactly what altitude to fly
11:57
every mile to optimize their energy
11:59
efficiency they can prophesize you may
12:02
have seen the IBM Watson ad where the
12:04
IBM Watson repairman comes to a
12:06
high-rise building says I’m here to fix
12:07
the elevator and the doorman says the
12:10
elevators not broken and he says I know
12:11
but it will be in six weeks two three
12:13
days okay you can do predictive
12:15
analytics on anything now you can
12:17
socialize that is you could connect now
12:19
to your customers your suppliers your
12:21
employees on a horizontal way like never
12:23
before
12:24
you can customize just for guys from
12:26
Minnesota with brown eyes and a mustache
12:28
and you can digitize / autumn Atty
12:31
virtually any job product or service you
12:33
put all those together and every
12:36
business today finds himself in the
12:38
middle of the climate change so as I
12:40
thought about that I thought well what
12:42
do you want when the climate changes I
12:44
think you want two things you want
12:45
resilience maybe I’ll take a blow
12:47
because you get disruptive behavior when
12:48
the climate changes but you also want
12:50
propulsion you want to be able to move
12:51
ahead you don’t be curled up in a ball
12:53
under your bed waiting for the climate
12:55
change to pass so as I thought about
12:57
that I said who do I go to to find how
13:01
you get resilience and propulsion when
13:03
the climate changes then I realize I
13:05
knew this woman she was 3.8 billion
13:07
years old
13:08
her name was Mother Nature and she dealt
13:09
with more climate changes than anybody
13:11
so I called her up made an appointment
13:13
went out to see her um and I sat down I
13:17
said mother nature how do you produce
13:19
resilience in propulsion and when the
13:22
climate changes she said well Tom
13:24
everything I do I have to tell you I do
13:26
unconsciously but um these are my
13:28
strategies um first of all she said I’m
13:31
incredibly adaptive in my world it’s not
13:33
the smartest that survive it’s not the
13:34
strongest it’s actually the most
13:36
adaptive that that bet survived and I do
13:39
what she said through a rather brutal
13:40
mechanism I call natural selection
13:43
second she said I’m incredibly
13:45
entrepreneurial where
13:46
I see an opening in nature a blank space
13:48
I fill it with a planter animal
13:50
perfectly adapted for that niche third
13:53
she said I’m incredibly pluralistic Oh
13:55
Tom she said I’m the most pluralistic
13:58
person you’ve ever met
13:59
I tried 20 different species of
14:00
everything see who wins and she did tell
14:03
me something interesting she told me her
14:04
most diverse ecosystems are her most
14:06
resilient and propulsive ecosystems of
14:10
course she told me she’s totally
14:12
sustainable in a circular way everything
14:14
is food eat food poop seed eat food poop
14:17
seed nothing is wasted um v she said I’m
14:20
incredibly high bred and heterodox in my
14:22
thinking nothing dogmatic about me I’ll
14:25
try any trees with any soils any bees
14:27
with any flowers and lastly she did
14:29
mention that she does believe in the
14:31
laws of bankruptcy she told me she kills
14:34
all her failures returns them to the
14:35
great manufacturer in the sky and takes
14:38
their energy to nourish her successes
14:40
well my argument is that the community
14:42
the country the government and the
14:46
business that most closely mirrors
14:48
mother nature strategies for building
14:50
resilience and propulsion when the
14:52
climate changes is the one that will
14:54
thrive in this age of acceleration and
14:55
since when I was writing my book it was
14:58
the 216 election I actually imagine what
15:00
if Mother Nature was running against
15:02
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016
15:04
and so I created mother nature’s
15:06
political party based on these
15:08
strategies I won’t go into it I’m just
15:11
close by saying that on some issues
15:13
Mother Nature she’s out there on the
15:15
left with Bernie Sanders um because she
15:18
believes in universal health care and
15:19
making lifelong learning completely tax
15:22
free cuz she understands in this world
15:25
that you vols describing it’s gonna be
15:28
too damn fast for a lot of people so she
15:30
wants to strengthen our safety nets to
15:31
bounce people back into the game
15:33
and protect him but at the same time
15:34
mother nature would be out there on the
15:37
right with the Wall Street Journal
15:38
editorial page she’d actually be for
15:40
abolishing all corporate taxes only
15:42
unlike our Republican Party she’d
15:44
replaced them with a carbon tax a tax on
15:47
sugar attacks on bullets and a small
15:49
financial transaction tax she would get
15:52
radically entrepreneurial over here to
15:54
pay for our safety nets over here
15:56
unfortunately in our old industrial age
15:58
model of politics if you’re
16:00
for stronger safety nets he almost never
16:03
for radical entrepreneurship if your for
16:05
radical entrepreneurship you’re almost
16:07
never for stronger safety nets what
16:09
would mother nature call that stupid
16:12
that’s what she’d call it because she
16:14
would understand you will never produce
16:17
resilience
16:18
unless you’re a hybrid of these two and
16:20
because our current political parties
16:22
are not built on that model I think
16:25
they’re all struggling now to find a way
16:27
to talk about politics we’d also be
16:33
hearing from mother nature this evening
16:35
so there’s the three of us on stage and
16:37
a variety of perspective problems also
16:44
not our problems as you mentioned she is
16:49
quite keen on extinction and she does
16:54
believe in that and she wouldn’t care if
16:58
we are unable to cope with our problems
17:02
and go extinct also she wouldn’t care
17:05
very much if humankind splits and say a
17:10
small percentage becomes a new species
17:13
better adapted to the new conditions and
17:17
a couple of billions just go in the way
17:20
of the Neanderthals and the mammoths and
17:23
all that so it’s very good to learn from
17:27
mother nature but copying her methods
17:31
too closely would be I think very bad
17:34
news for a lot of people my you’ve
17:37
always get the best out of her and
17:39
cushion the worst because and I I do
17:42
agree with you your mother nature my one
17:45
of my science teachers talked about this
17:50
that she just chemistry biology and
17:52
physics that’s all she is
17:54
you can’t talk her up you can’t talk her
17:56
down can’t say mother nature were we’re
17:59
having a recession this year could we
18:01
take a year off on the climate um she’s
18:03
gonna actually do whatever chemistry
18:05
biology and physics dictate and to put
18:07
it in American baseball terms mother
18:09
nature always bats last
18:11
and she always bats a thousand so do not
18:14
mess with mother nature which is exactly
18:16
what we’re doing
18:17
I wonder where obviously I’m talking on
18:21
a long-term framework here but of course
18:27
I imagine many of you came here tonight
18:29
thinking about you know what’s
18:31
immediately in front of you
18:32
what news alerts are on your phones what
18:36
what tom I believe you’ve referred to
18:41
the American president as a brain-eating
18:43
disease perhaps what he might be up to
18:46
what else is going on both speak to how
18:50
we deal with what is unrelenting in
18:54
front of us while thinking about the
18:57
broader challenges that you’ve outlined
18:58
how do we do both at once how do we
19:00
adapt to do both at once first of all
19:05
can we have a bit more light on the
19:07
audience because it’s very difficult to
19:09
see who I’m talking to
19:10
it’s just a sea of darkness and it’s
19:13
nice to see some faces after all it’s
19:16
really about you not about us you will
19:20
have to deal with the future also yeah
19:24
it’s it’s very difficult for for people
19:27
I mean humans have proven throughout
19:29
history that they are very good when it
19:32
comes to short-term problems and
19:35
solutions but it’s extremely difficult
19:37
to foresee the long-term consequences
19:40
and one of the things that happened if
19:42
we talk about then various climate
19:45
changes is that time is accelerating so
19:49
thousands of years ago something like
19:52
the Agricultural Revolution takes
19:54
centuries even thousands of years and
19:57
the consequences of our decision today
20:01
to start growing wheat we will see or
20:06
not we somebody our descendants will see
20:09
the consequences of these this decision
20:12
in a couple of centuries maybe even in
20:15
thousands of years but now time is
20:18
accelerating so the long term is not
20:21
2,000 years or 200 years the long
20:24
term is 20 years we are really in an
20:28
unprecedented situation in history when
20:31
nobody knows the basics about how the
20:35
world would look like in 20 or 30 years
20:38
not just the basics of geopolitics who
20:41
would be the big superpowers in 20 or 30
20:44
years or what will be the major
20:46
alliances in the world in 20 30 years we
20:50
don’t know much more basic stuff such as
20:53
what the job market would look like what
20:56
kind of skills people will need what
20:59
family structure would look like what
21:01
general relations would look like so
21:04
it’s really the first time in history
21:05
when we have no idea how human society
21:10
will be like in a couple of decades and
21:13
this means among other things that for
21:16
the first time in history we have no
21:18
idea what to teach in schools and so we
21:25
focus on the short term and not just on
21:28
the short term but actually we should
21:30
then go back and focus on the past
21:33
connecting to what you said about the
21:35
crisis of most political parties that
21:39
still think in terms of the 20th century
21:41
and right versus left and capitalism
21:44
versus socialism and all that I think
21:47
that politics and government in most of
21:49
the world today they are doing a far
21:51
better job than ever before in running
21:55
the day-to-day business of the of the
21:57
country it may not look like this but
21:59
I’m a medievalist so I constantly
22:02
compare the government of today to the
22:05
government of a doll the third or low
22:07
st. Louis or something like that and
22:09
it’s wonderful the world we’re living in
22:13
is really wonderful
22:14
so they are doing an excellent job in in
22:17
in the day to day business of the
22:19
country but what they have almost lost
22:22
completely is the ability to have a long
22:26
term plan for the future because they
22:30
can’t see they have no realistic vision
22:35
of against base
22:37
things like the job market in 30 years
22:39
so what you see in more and more
22:42
countries is that they look to the Past
22:45
instead of to the future and instead of
22:49
formulating meaningful visions for the
22:53
word humankind will be in 2050 they
22:57
repackage nostalgic fantasies about the
23:01
past and there is a kind of competition
23:04
who can look back farthest so you have
23:08
Donald Trump wanting to go back to the
23:11
1950s or something like that and you
23:14
have put in basically wanting to go back
23:17
to the Tsarist Empire a century after
23:20
the Bolshevik Revolution and you have
23:22
Isis that wants to go back to the
23:25
seventh century Arabia and in my country
23:27
in Israel they beat everybody they want
23:30
to go back 2500 years to the age of the
23:34
Bible so we win we have the Bell the
23:37
longest term vision backwards and this
23:43
is a as a historian I can tell you two
23:47
things about the past the past wasn’t a
23:50
very good time you don’t really want to
23:52
go back there and secondly it is not
23:56
coming back no matter what you do you
23:59
can’t bring it back and so we are facing
24:03
really a crisis of the inability of the
24:07
political system to produce meaningful
24:09
visions for the future maybe the only
24:12
place in the world where there is
24:15
serious work on producing a meaningful
24:18
vision for the future is in China
24:20
whether it’s a good vision or a bad
24:22
vision it’s a different question but
24:24
this is the one place I think where the
24:27
government is seriously thinking in
24:30
future terms and in long terms of
24:32
decades and not in terms of one or two
24:36
years and certainly not in terms of
24:38
going back decades and centuries so just
24:43
to pick up on what you’ve all said
24:45
Richie that we’re starting with Trump I
24:47
described Trump as a brain-eating
24:49
disease
24:50
because as a columnist you’re always in
24:53
this position everyday where he says or
24:56
does something so outrageous you feel if
24:58
you don’t write about it you’re
25:00
normalizing him but if you do write
25:02
about it he stoled your brains for a day
25:04
now if you do that twice a week four
25:07
times or eight times a month you’ll wake
25:09
up after a year and discover all you’ve
25:11
written about is that knucklehead and um
25:13
and he’s actually sucked your brains out
25:16
so it’s a real it’s a real challenge um
25:19
so you know my the subtitle of my book
25:22
is is an optimist guide to thriving in
25:24
the age of acceleration so everything’s
25:27
sped up and the reason it’s called thank
25:30
you for being late as the title comes
25:32
from meeting people in Washington DC for
25:34
breakfast over the years and every once
25:36
in a while someone would come 15 20
25:39
minutes late they say Tom I’m really
25:40
sorry it was the weather the traffic the
25:42
subway the dog ate my homework and um
25:44
one day three and a half years ago an
25:46
Energy entrepreneur Peter Carr cell came
25:48
three enough minutes 15 minutes late and
25:51
said I’m really sorry whether the
25:52
traffic the subway the dog ate my
25:53
homework
25:54
and I just spontaneously said to him
25:56
actually Peter thank you for being late
26:00
because you were late I’ve been
26:04
eavesdropping on their conversation
26:07
fascinating I’ve been people watching
26:10
the lobby fantastic and best of all best
26:15
of all I just connected to ideas I’ve
26:17
been struggling with for a month so
26:20
thank you for being late people started
26:24
to get into it they’d say well you’re
26:27
welcome because they understood I was
26:32
actually giving them permission to pause
26:33
to slow down in fact my favorite quote
26:35
from the front of the book is from my
26:36
teacher and friend of Simon who says you
26:38
know when you press the pause button on
26:40
a computer it stops but when you press
26:44
the pause button on a human being
26:45
it starts that’s when it starts to
26:49
reflect rethink and reimagine and boy
26:52
don’t we need to do a lot of that right
26:54
now now to pick up on you Vols point
26:58
about leadership when the world is fast
27:01
small errors in navigation
27:03
can have huge consequences when we just
27:06
needed to go fifty miles at five miles
27:09
an hour well if you had a bad president
27:11
or prime minister for governor or mayor
27:13
you’d get off track but the pain of
27:15
getting back on track was fairly
27:17
tolerable but when you need to feel like
27:20
you’re going fifty thousand miles at
27:22
five thousand miles an hour when you
27:24
have a bad leader now you can get so far
27:26
off track it’s like a 747 pilot just
27:29
changing two digits as he enters the
27:32
navigation of his jet and suddenly
27:34
you’re halfway across the world in the
27:36
wrong direction and so leadership really
27:40
matters more right now now I you know I
27:46
I think I would agree with with what
27:48
you’ve all said about China in this
27:50
sense I think China’s leaders do wake up
27:53
every day more than the average leader
27:55
in the world and start the day by asking
27:57
what world am i living in what are the
27:59
biggest trends in this world and how do
28:01
i align myself with those trends unlike
28:04
I think a lot of leaders in the world
28:05
but I would find I would tell you I’m
28:07
seeing amazing leadership in America
28:10
today in two places you’ve a one is at
28:13
the corporate level and the other is at
28:16
the local level so at the corporate
28:20
level as I think about the workplace
28:24
challenge the way I put it I think our
28:26
central challenge is how do we turn a I
28:27
into ia how do we take artificial
28:31
intelligence and turn it into
28:32
intelligent assistance ance intelligent
28:36
assistance a NTS and intelligent
28:39
algorithms so more people can learn
28:42
faster and govern smarter so I’ll give
28:45
you example of intelligent assistance um
28:47
that I use it’s the HR department
28:50
resources department at AT&T are giant
28:52
telecom so you know what’s interesting
28:55
on AT&T three hundred thirty thousand
28:57
employees in one of the most competitive
28:59
businesses and world global telecom
29:01
pretty good chance that whatever is
29:03
going on in their HR department is
29:05
coming to a neighborhood near you so
29:07
what’s going on in HR at AT&T well they
29:10
begin their year now where their leader
29:11
Randall Stephenson he starts the year
29:13
with a pretty radically transparent
29:14
speech about where the companies
29:16
going what businesses they’re gonna be
29:17
in and what skills you need as a worker
29:20
at 80 that year filters down through the
29:24
company then they put all their managers
29:26
a hundred ten thousand people on their
29:28
own in-house LinkedIn system so I’m
29:31
there it’s Tom Friedman you know and it
29:33
has my academic background and the jobs
29:35
I’ve had in the company then they match
29:37
that up with the skill sets I’m making
29:40
up the number cuz I don’t remember it
29:41
exactly but it’s probably ten skill sets
29:43
you need that year to be a rising
29:45
employee at AT&T they’ve got my CV
29:47
they’re on LinkedIn and they realize
29:49
I’ve got seven of the ten but I’m
29:51
missing three then they partnered with
29:53
Sebastian Thrun from Udacity the online
29:55
learning University and he created
29:57
nanodegrees for all ten skill sets then
30:00
they came to me and said Tom here’s the
30:03
deal um we will give you up to eight
30:06
thousand dollars a year to take the Nano
30:08
degrees for the skill sets you’re
30:09
missing that we heard that you’re
30:11
interested in computer science we just
30:13
created an online computer science
30:15
degree for six thousand dollars a year
30:16
with Georgia Tech fact we heard you’re
30:18
interested in history you can take an
30:21
online course from that guy yeah you’ve
30:22
all Hariri will pay for that as well
30:24
yeah just one condition mr. Tom you have
30:28
to take these courses at home at night
30:30
on your own time not on company time now
30:34
if I say to them you know what mr. AT&T
30:36
I’ve actually climbed up one too many
30:38
telephone poles I’m just not into this
30:39
anymore
30:40
um they now have a wonderful severance
30:43
package for me okay but I will not be
30:46
working there much longer
30:47
so they flush out now about thirty
30:49
thousand people they take in about
30:51
thirty thousand people they advance
30:52
about ten thousand every year
30:53
what is AT&T social contract today with
30:56
their employees it’s a you can be a
30:59
lifelong employee still today if you’re
31:01
at AT&T but now only if you’re a
31:03
lifelong learner
31:04
if you are not ready to be a lifelong
31:07
learner you can no longer be a lifelong
31:09
employee at AT&T and that is the social
31:12
contract coming to a neighborhood near
31:14
you and that’s why one of my teacher is
31:17
Heather McGowan there’s an education
31:19
expert and this picks up on something
31:21
that you’ve all said Heather likes to
31:23
say mom dad never asked your kids today
31:26
what you want to be when you grow up
31:28
because whatever it is not
31:29
be here unless it’s policemen or firemen
31:32
okay only ask your kid today how you
31:36
want to be when you grow up will you
31:38
have an agile learning mindset will you
31:39
be predisposed to be a lifelong learner
31:42
long after you’ve left home and mom and
31:44
dad are not there to say you’ve all have
31:46
you done your homework and that leads to
31:49
what I think is really roiling societies
31:51
today and and and you’ve all touched on
31:53
this with these people might be out of
31:55
work which is something I learned from
31:57
marina gorebyss who runs the institute
31:58
of the future if we were having this
32:00
conversation 15 years ago one of the
32:02
themes we’d be talking about is the
32:04
digital divide
32:05
you know London’s got Internet
32:06
Manchester dozen Europe’s got it Africa
32:09
doesn’t digital divide it was huge um I
32:11
believe that digital byte is rapidly
32:13
disappearing I don’t know when it’ll be
32:14
gone but I’m sure in a decade it’ll be
32:17
gone and when it is the most important
32:18
divide in the world is going to be the
32:21
self-motivation divide whose kids have
32:23
the self-motivation to be a lifelong
32:25
learner long after they’ve left home and
32:28
mom and dad are not there to ask them to
32:30
do their homework is what you learned in
32:31
your first year now could be outdated by
32:34
your fourth year of college the idea
32:36
that you can get a four-year degree
32:38
Undine out on that for 30 years is like
32:40
so 1950s and that that has a lot of
32:44
people really unnerved because a lot of
32:47
people were actually born and bred to do
32:49
what they were told and God bless and
32:51
they built your country in mind and you
32:52
Falls but just doing what you’re told
32:54
now will not bring you average income
32:57
and an average lifestyle and I think
32:58
that has a lot of people really
33:00
frightened I think what you’re
33:03
describing is extremely stressful I mean
33:07
I just hear you and you know there is so
33:11
much stress and reinventing yourself
33:16
again and again throughout your life
33:19
sounds terrible to most people because
33:24
you know when you’re 15 you’re 16 then
33:26
you’re inventing yourself and it’s still
33:29
stressful when you’re 15 but it’s still
33:31
doable when you reach 4050 you don’t
33:35
want to change yes I want to keep on
33:37
learning new things and to gain
33:39
experience and to go into new places and
33:42
so forth but
33:43
really change the deep structures of my
33:47
personalities of my professional skills
33:50
to learn things afresh it sounds you
33:54
know very exciting and then very like
33:56
good but it’s actually extremely
33:58
difficult and if this is what we are
34:02
heading and we are heading in the
34:04
direction we will be facing a stress
34:06
epidemic even far worse than then today
34:10
and then other things with all these
34:13
algorithms that again are watching us
34:15
all the time in our learning our
34:18
abilities and our problems and whether
34:20
we are self-motivated or not once the
34:23
algorithms reached the conclusion that
34:26
you are not going to make it you will
34:29
not go you will not be able to make it I
34:31
mean we are used to this problem of
34:35
discrimination against people based on
34:38
wrong statistics like in the 20th
34:41
century discrimination against people
34:44
usually took the form of discriminating
34:47
against entire groups based either on
34:51
faulty statistics or based on just
34:54
religious biases and racism and so forth
34:58
so as the world if you were gay you had
35:00
discrimination against all gays if
35:02
you’re a woman then all all women and
35:05
one of the things about it is that you
35:08
could actually do something about it
35:10
because most of the time the biases were
35:13
not true and because many people
35:16
suffered from them they could join
35:19
together and have some a political
35:21
action against the discrimination now in
35:25
the coming years in the coming decades
35:27
we will face individual discrimination
35:30
and it might actually be based on a good
35:33
assessment of who you are I mean if 88
35:36
NT if the algorithms and the big data
35:39
algorithms of AT&T they follow you
35:42
around they look up your Facebook
35:44
profile your DNA your records from
35:47
kindergarten until today they will be
35:51
able to figure out quite accurately who
35:53
you are and if they for example find out
35:56
that I lack
35:57
motivation on the on the X scale on the
36:00
Harare scale of the Freedmen’s scale of
36:02
motif of of self-motivation 0 to 10
36:05
he is just 7.1 and we don’t want to
36:09
accept to our company
36:11
people of less than 8.2 and we know from
36:16
experience that yes we can give you a
36:18
little push but you just lack what we
36:21
need and you will not be able to do
36:25
anything or almost anything about this
36:27
discrimination first of all because it’s
36:30
just you they don’t discriminate against
36:33
your me because you’re Jewish or gay or
36:35
black or whatever because you are you
36:37
and the worst thing is there will be it
36:41
will be true I mean they got me i I
36:45
really lack self motivation they really
36:50
got me so what do I do about it and it
36:54
sounds funny in a way but if you think
36:56
about it deeply it’s terrible everybody
36:59
on what everybody has something and you
37:04
will not be able to do much about it so
37:07
let me give you the flip side of that
37:09
because everything about these systems
37:11
you’ve all is everything and it’s
37:13
opposite so you you just described the
37:16
downside of that but let me talk about
37:19
intelligent assistant for a second
37:22
example I give him the book so the
37:23
example I use is on the janitorial staff
37:26
at Qualcomm big American tech company in
37:30
San Diego they have 64 billion building
37:33
campus they they built the inside your
37:35
iPhone not Apple that’s why Apple is
37:36
always suing them over patents and um
37:39
they three years ago they took six of
37:43
their buildings they put sensors on
37:44
everything every door window light pipe
37:47
faucet drain computer and they beamed
37:49
all that data up to the cloud and now
37:50
they beam it down onto an iPad with this
37:52
incredibly user-friendly interface for
37:55
their janitorial staff so if you leave
37:57
your computer on or a pipe bursts above
37:58
my head
37:59
the janitor knows it before you or I do
38:01
and they just swipe down to see who to
38:03
call or how to fix it themselves
38:05
they’ve actually turned their janitors
38:07
into
38:08
it’s technologists they’re janitors now
38:10
give tours to foreign visitors what do
38:13
you think that does for the dignity of a
38:14
janitor because he or she now has an
38:16
intelligent assistant enabling them to
38:18
learn you know faster and work smarter I
38:20
will give you another example
38:23
intelligent algorithm so um those of you
38:27
American students here know that an 11th
38:29
grade way to take the PSAT exam the
38:31
practice SAT exam to take the SAT exam
38:34
to measure our math and verbal skills to
38:36
get into the college of our choice so we
38:40
also know in America that a lot of
38:41
parents go out in 11th grade and hire a
38:43
tutor for $200 an hour to Goose your
38:45
scores in math and verbal a completely
38:48
rigged game because if you come from a
38:50
family or neighborhood where you can’t
38:52
afford that you’re really at a
38:53
disadvantage so three years ago
38:55
the College Board that administers the
38:57
PSAT and SAT exam your a-levels and
38:59
o-levels partnered with Khan Academy the
39:02
online learning platform to create free
39:05
PSAT and SAT prep so the way it works
39:08
now is I take my PSAT and 11th grade I
39:10
get the results back I did really well
39:13
in verbal it says Tom you you could be a
39:15
journalist actually um but um but it
39:18
says I have a problem with math it
39:20
actually says I Tom Friedman personally
39:23
because it knows me have a problem with
39:25
fractions and right angles then it takes
39:28
me to a practice site just for fractions
39:30
and right angles doesn’t waste any time
39:32
on my weaknesses if I do well there
39:35
takes me to another site that says Tom
39:36
you could be an AP math Wow you need to
39:39
be met I mean no one in my family is an
39:42
AP math no one in my neighborhood
39:43
yeah you could be an AP math if I do
39:45
well there text me another site with 180
39:47
college scholarships last year 3 million
39:51
American kids got free PSAT and SAT prep
39:54
on this intelligent algorithm and I’ll
39:57
give you another one that’s very
39:58
relevant to the point you raised
39:59
we have about 32 million people who
40:01
start a college but never finished they
40:04
go one year two years two and a half
40:05
three three and a half years they drop
40:06
out go to bite get a job or do it online
40:09
the algorithm says you have no BA no job
40:12
so a whole new set of intelligent
40:15
algorithms have emerged one eye profiles
40:17
opportunity at work so what they do now
40:19
is you can go to them with your
40:21
year two year two and a half of
40:22
knowledge they will badge what you
40:24
actually know and what you can do with
40:26
what you know and they partner with
40:28
companies to slot you in without a BA so
40:31
I profiled a young african-american
40:32
woman LaShonda Lewis
40:33
she went to Michigan Tech for three and
40:35
a half years studied computer science
40:37
had to drop out for family reasons she
40:40
went back home was driving a school bus
40:42
to and from a computer school couldn’t
40:44
make that up and working at a law firm
40:46
on the helpdesk helping lawyers
40:48
rediscover their lost passwords okay she
40:51
was discovered by opportunity at work
40:53
they partnered with MasterCard slotted
40:56
her in as a stay measured her knowledge
40:57
slotted her in as a systems engineer at
41:00
MasterCard she’s now a senior systems
41:02
engineer at MasterCard and as she says
41:05
in the last line of her interview and
41:07
mr. Friedman I still don’t have a BA so
41:11
that’s an intelligent help that’s the
41:13
other side of this and and what I found
41:16
is there is enormous innovation going on
41:20
on the other side of this you’re
41:22
absolutely right on the downside but for
41:24
every downside of this somebody’s
41:27
invented an upside I would just add one
41:30
other point you know what was the
41:32
fastest growing restaurant chain in
41:34
America according to Entrepreneur
41:35
Magazine in 2015 and you never guess it
41:38
it’s actually called paint nite fastest
41:41
burn restaurant chain in America what is
41:42
paint nite it’s paint by numbers for
41:44
adults and bars
41:46
turns out idols like to get together in
41:48
a bar have an artist draw a design for
41:50
them and they paint by numbers together
41:53
according to that design and have a
41:55
drink it’s amazing how many adults like
41:58
to paint by numbers in bars okay who
42:00
knew okay that is there all these jobs
42:04
out there and that’s why I would close
42:06
by saying if you really want to blow
42:08
your mind
42:09
go to Airbnb x’ website you’ll notice
42:12
now there are two icons on the front
42:13
page ones homes that’s because I’m
42:17
coming to London like my sister did this
42:19
week and I want to get an apartment here
42:21
you know we all know that but now the
42:22
other ones called experiences and click
42:26
if you want to have some fun
42:27
click experiences it’s people monetizing
42:31
their passions I will give you a tour of
42:35
three man basketball games in Havana at
42:37
night with a mojito at the end read that
42:40
one the American mother who said I send
42:41
my 18 year old on this he didn’t come
42:43
back till 2:00 in the morning he was
42:44
having so much fun I’ll teach you how to
42:46
make falafel you know in job I’ll teach
42:48
you how to make it you know this is it
42:50
full time employment maybe maybe not
42:52
it’s the fastest growing part of Airbnb
42:55
is website and I predict in five years
42:57
it’ll be the biggest job site in the
43:00
world people monetizing their passions
43:03
sticking with this theme we’ve been
43:05
talking a lot about individuality we’ll
43:07
be able to learn individually just how
43:10
unmotivated we are again perhaps
43:13
motivated to go paint plates by numbers
43:16
so we’ll know so much more about
43:19
ourselves as individuals how is that
43:21
going to affect how we all live together
43:24
Tom you’ve written about I believe you
43:26
called yourself a pluralism supremacist
43:28
how does increase knowledge it’s
43:31
increased knowledge of our individuality
43:33
exactly just how
43:35
well-suited we are for a job or poorly
43:38
suited for any job what does that mean
43:41
and how we all live together and and are
43:43
we moving more inward in this moment or
43:46
where do you see floral ISM going it’s
43:50
very hard to say I mean of course as you
43:52
said I mean every technology has good
43:55
potential and in bad potential this is
43:58
what is different about disruptive
44:00
technologies compared to nuclear war and
44:03
climate change nuclear war is this is
44:05
obviously terrible nobody nobody wants
44:08
it the question is just how to prevent
44:10
it with disruptive technology the danger
44:13
in a way is far greater because it has
44:16
some wonderful potential so there are a
44:18
lot of forces that for some very good
44:21
reasons are pushing us faster and faster
44:24
to develop and adopt these disruptive
44:28
technologies and it’s very difficult to
44:31
know in advance what the consequences
44:34
will be in terms of community in terms
44:38
of relations between people in terms of
44:40
politics 20 years ago in the high days
44:43
of internet optimism
44:45
you had all this extremely optimistic
44:48
and today we say naive dreams and
44:53
visions that the internet will bring
44:56
everybody closer together you could have
44:58
friends from all over the world in the
45:00
end there will be freedom of expression
45:02
and all the dictators will fall and the
45:05
world will turn into one big happy and
45:08
peaceful community and this didn’t
45:11
happen and we look back today and we say
45:14
oh this was extremely naive I mean if
45:17
people forget about human nature did we
45:19
learn nothing from history and the
45:22
answer is yes we learn very little from
45:24
history does it mean that every new
45:27
technology will just make things worse
45:30
no obviously not but it extremely
45:33
difficult to know which way it will go I
45:39
think that history is just not
45:41
deterministic and again when you look to
45:45
the past when you look at the 20th
45:46
century and what people could do with
45:50
new technologies and you could build you
45:53
can use the trains and radio to build
45:55
Nazi Germany or you could use the same
45:58
technology to build liberal democracy
45:59
and it’s it’s kind of touching goal who
46:04
wins I don’t think there is any
46:07
predetermined or preordained winner in
46:12
these competitions so again with AI we
46:16
can sit here all evening and a couple of
46:19
more evenings and spin all kinds of
46:22
likely scenarios which are all possible
46:25
what will happen some very good and some
46:28
very bad and some in between and we just
46:32
don’t know I think as a story in the the
46:37
best thing the most important thing we
46:40
need to realize is that there is no
46:43
predetermined
46:44
story which is in a way very frightening
46:47
and you know we are now living with the
46:53
collapse of the last story of
46:57
inevitability
46:59
and in the 1990s in the same era of the
47:04
extremely optimistic vision of the
47:07
internet we also had this story this
47:12
idea that history is over that we know
47:16
who won the great ideological battle of
47:20
the 20th century liberal democracy and
47:22
in free-market capitalism came out on
47:25
out on top and now it’s just a question
47:28
of time until it will spread and take
47:31
over the whole world and again this now
47:34
seems extremely naive and the moment we
47:39
are at now is a moment of extreme
47:45
disillusionment and bewilderment because
47:48
we have no idea where things will will
47:53
go from here this is why I think it’s
47:56
it’s very important to be aware of the
47:59
of the downside of the dangerous
48:02
scenarios of the new technologies I mean
48:06
obviously the the corporation’s the
48:09
engineers the people in the laboratories
48:11
they naturally focus on all the enormous
48:16
benefits that these technologies might
48:20
bring us and it folds to historians and
48:24
to philosophers and to social scientists
48:27
to think about all the ways in which
48:29
things can go wrong so when Frank
48:33
Okayama wrote the end of history I at
48:36
the same time wrote a book called Lexus
48:38
and the olive tree and the argument of
48:40
the book was that I think what is going
48:42
to shape the future is a tension between
48:44
all of these things that are old faith
48:47
community religion sect tribe all things
48:50
that anchor us in the world olive trees
48:52
and the interaction between them and
48:54
technology and I still believe that that
48:57
is that’s certainly for me a helpful
48:59
framework that it’s a because what we do
49:01
with those passions how we govern them
49:03
how we mobilize them it can be for good
49:05
or for ill and that for it for me
49:09
you know it’s a good segue to talk about
49:11
the ethics question and one you wrote a
49:14
whole book about Homo dias
49:16
you know so uh III just did a little
49:18
chapter on it and and let me give mine
49:21
and then you give yours because I think
49:23
to be an interesting contrast between
49:25
the two so my version of the argument
49:29
you made the chapter on it is called is
49:33
God in cyberspace he’s God in cyberspace
49:37
best question ever got on book tour 1990
49:41
I was selling Lexus the Ala tree in
49:42
Portland Oregon question time came young
49:44
man stood up in the balcony said mr.
49:46
Friedman I have a question he is god in
49:48
cyberspace I said I have no idea
49:59
I felt like an idiot so I got home I
50:03
called my spiritual teacher he was a
50:05
rabbi I got to know at the Hartman
50:06
Institute in Jerusalem when I was the
50:08
New York Times correspondent there great
50:09
tome u2 scholar three marks
50:11
now there’s an Amsterdam married to a
50:12
Dutch priest interesting character and
50:14
um I called him up in Amsterdam I said
50:19
see I got a question I’ve never had
50:20
before is God in cyberspace
50:23
what should I said and I he said well
50:26
Tom in our faith tradition we actually
50:28
have two concepts of the Almighty a
50:29
biblical concept and a post biblical
50:31
concept so the biblical concept is that
50:33
the almighty is almighty he smites evil
50:37
and rewards good and if that’s your view
50:39
of God he sure isn’t in cyberspace which
50:43
is full of pornography gambling cheating
50:44
lying people smearing one another and
50:46
Twitter and now we know fake news so um
50:49
fortunately though he said we have a
50:51
post biblical view of God and the post
50:54
biblical view of God is that God
50:55
manifests himself by how we behave so if
50:58
we want God to be in cyberspace we have
51:00
to bring him there by how we behave
51:02
there I really like this answer I put it
51:04
into the paperback edition of Lexus the
51:06
olive tree in 2000 where none of you saw
51:08
it and it sat there for 16 years
51:09
anyways I started working on this book
51:11
and I found myself
51:13
spontaneously retelling that story I
51:15
said why are you retelling that story
51:17
and it became obvious to me for two
51:18
reasons and one just happened I think in
51:21
the last couple of years in the
51:23
developed world we began living 51
51:25
scent of our lives in cyberspace it’s
51:28
not where you go to find a date find us
51:29
out spouse buy a house buy a car write a
51:31
book buy a book get a mortgage give
51:34
alone get your news generate your news
51:36
we’re now living do your banking your
51:38
brokerage we’re now living 51% of our
51:41
lives in cyberspace and my definition of
51:44
cyberspace is that it’s a realm where
51:45
we’re all connected and no one’s in
51:47
charge so there are no courts in
51:50
cyberspace no lovely ceman no stoplights
51:52
no no 1-800 please stop Putin from
51:56
hacking my election but that’s where
51:59
we’re living our lives another way to
52:01
describe it we’re living 51% of our
52:03
lives in a realm that is fundamentally
52:06
God free at the same time because of
52:09
these accelerations you and I both have
52:11
talked about I think we’re standing at a
52:13
moral intersection we have never stood
52:15
at before as a species in 1945 we
52:18
entered the world where one country
52:20
could kill all of us possi regime and
52:23
that was the United States I’m glad it
52:25
had to be one country but it was the
52:26
United States I think we’re entering a
52:29
world where one person can kill all of
52:30
us and at the same time at the same time
52:33
where all of us could actually fix
52:36
everything because these accelerated
52:38
powers for the first time are creating
52:40
world where one of us could kill all of
52:41
us and all of us now if we actually put
52:43
our minds to it we have the tools to
52:45
feed house clothe and educate every
52:48
person on the planet we have never been
52:50
to this intersection before where one of
52:53
us can kill all of us and all of us
52:54
could fix everything and what does that
52:57
mean means we’ve never been more godlike
52:59
as a species than we are today well put
53:02
those two together we’ve never lived
53:03
more of our lives in a realm that’s
53:05
Godfrey and we have never been more
53:08
godlike and what that means is that what
53:11
every person thinks feels and believes
53:13
really matters it means everyone needs
53:17
to be in the grip of sustainable values
53:18
it means at a minimum everyone needs to
53:22
be in the embrace of the Golden Rule and
53:24
every faith and culture has their
53:25
version of it doing to others as you
53:27
wish them to do unto you because you now
53:28
live in a world where more people can do
53:30
unto you farther faster deeper cheaper
53:33
than ever before Putin did unto us in
53:35
our election and we can do unto others
53:37
farther faster deeper cheaper than ever
53:39
for everyone needs to be in the embrace
53:42
of the golden rule I know what you’re
53:45
thinking actually gave this thing as a
53:48
commencement address at Olin College of
53:50
Engineering two years ago and I said to
53:52
the parents there I know what you’re
53:55
thinking
53:55
you paid two hundred thousand dollars
53:58
for your kid to get an engineering
54:00
degree and who do they bring us the
54:02
commencement speaker but a knucklehead
54:05
promoting the golden rule is there
54:08
anything more naive and what I told them
54:12
is what I would say again tonight I
54:14
think in this age of acceleration
54:16
naivete is the new realism because
54:19
what’s really naive is thinking we’re
54:21
gonna be okay in a world that is this
54:24
interdependent we’re men women and
54:26
machines get this super empowered if
54:29
everyone is not in the embrace of the
54:32
golden rule where does the golden rule
54:34
come from I think two places primarily
54:36
strong families and healthy communities
54:39
and that’s why my focus and my work
54:42
today is so much on healthy communities
54:45
but I would say that maybe the big
54:49
problem is not so much morality as it is
54:52
causality that we just cause a little I
54:57
mean the ability to understand the
54:58
change of causes and effects in the
55:00
world I think there is no lack of values
55:03
today in the world but to really act
55:07
well it’s not enough to have good values
55:09
you need to have a good understanding of
55:12
the chains of causes and effects like if
55:15
you think about the commandment like
55:17
don’t steal so okay let’s everybody
55:20
agree it’s not good to steal but the big
55:23
problem today is not that somebody says
55:25
hey I want to steal what will you do to
55:27
me
55:27
the big problem is that stealing has
55:30
become so complicated that I’m steaming
55:33
all the time and I’m not even aware of
55:35
it the commandment don’t steal was
55:39
formalized in an era when stealing meant
55:42
meant breaking myself I’m breaking into
55:45
somebody’s house and snatching some gold
55:48
coins or a goat or whatever and it was
55:51
easy – at least honest
55:52
what I’m doing and what the potential
55:55
consequences are for the owner of the
55:58
gold coins of the gold but how do I
56:01
still today well I put like ten thousand
56:04
and I have a pension fund and ten
56:07
thousand dollars out of my pension fund
56:10
are invested in some big oil corporation
56:14
or chemical corporation that brings
56:16
profits of say four or five percent
56:19
every years with a very good investment
56:20
and how does the corporation makes such
56:24
huge profits for example by dumping
56:27
toxic waste into a river and polluting
56:31
the entire water resources of the area
56:34
and hurting the health of the local
56:36
population and the wildlife and so forth
56:39
but the cooperation is so rich that it
56:43
can retain an army of lawyers that
56:46
protects it against all lawsuits and
56:49
also a small brigade of people in the
56:55
capital that block any attempt to have
56:59
stronger environmental regulations now
57:02
am i guilty of stealing a river I’m not
57:06
even a word that part of my pension fund
57:09
is invested in this cooperation and even
57:12
if I am aware I don’t know how the
57:15
cooperation makes its money it will take
57:18
me months maybe years to find out where
57:22
my money
57:23
what my money is doing and during that
57:26
time I will be guilty of so many other
57:29
crimes which I know nothing about and
57:32
the really the problem is that our sense
57:36
of morality our sense of justice like
57:39
our other senses was evolved in the
57:45
ancient African savanna when your
57:48
pension funds you had just one pension
57:50
funds which was your kids and you knew
57:53
what your pension fund was you was doing
57:56
it was playing in the mud or something
57:59
and so the entire the ability that the
58:04
problem is no
58:05
agreeing on basic morality the problem
58:10
is on understanding the extremely
58:12
complicated change of cause and effect
58:14
in the world and again my fear is that
58:18
maybe Homo sapiens is just not up to it
58:21
we have created such a complicated world
58:23
that we have no longer able to make
58:26
sense of what is happening and if I
58:30
looked at politics in the u.s. again
58:33
from the vantage point of a medievalist
58:36
Republicans and Democrats seems almost
58:39
identical I just don’t understand what’s
58:41
the difference
58:42
if you can enlighten me on this what’s
58:44
the big difference between them in
58:47
ethical in their ethical view in their
58:50
view of the world they have a big
58:52
difference in their understanding of
58:54
cause-and-effect relations but when it
58:56
comes down to two basic values I think
58:59
the difference is is not big but again
59:01
the problem is that maybe we are no
59:03
longer able like the engineers you gave
59:06
the talk to so they could all agree yes
59:10
we should keep the Golden Rule but then
59:13
when they go to design some I don’t know
59:15
bridge of software they don’t understand
59:19
what they are what are the consequences
59:22
of what they are doing so how can they
59:24
act morally without this understanding
59:27
well you just described why we need a
59:30
free press um I think that’s one roll
59:33
the free press really plays today and
59:37
again what’s the upside of this age of
59:39
acceleration is now an individual can go
59:42
take a picture of that waste dumping by
59:44
that factory put it up on the internet
59:47
and it’ll go around the world in in 30
59:49
minutes competing against funny cat
59:51
videos ah no actually if you’re in my
59:54
business you’ll find that if I take a
59:56
picture of General Electric doing that
59:58
and put it up on the New York Times a
60:00
General Electric will stop doing that I
60:02
can assure you that will not compete
60:03
with cat videos so there’s an upside to
60:06
all of these I think you’ve all that
60:08
that I’m gonna we’re playing a very
60:11
useful function here I’ll do the outside
60:12
and but but but what I your people ask
60:16
me what I do for a living
60:18
tell them I am a translator from English
60:19
to English that’s what I do I try to
60:22
take complex things and break them down
60:24
first so I can understand them and then
60:25
hopefully explain them to others and I
60:28
am really my motto I’ve adopted from
60:31
Marie Curie who once said now is the
60:33
time to understand more so we may fear
60:36
less and now it’s truly I this is never
60:40
good journalism I think that practice by
60:43
the New York Times and many others has
60:46
never been more important to understand
60:49
more so people will fear less because we
60:51
now have a president who is actually in
60:53
the fear business backed up by a Pravda
60:56
like Network called Fox television
60:58
that’s in the business of making people
61:00
stupid and you put those two together
61:03
you know it’s really dangerous and and
61:06
the good news is we are finding at the
61:09
New York Times more people that we know
61:11
Donald Trump toys clients are failing
61:13
New York Times I assure you we are
61:15
anything but that today because so many
61:17
people are coming to not just the New
61:19
York Times but to trusted new sites
61:22
because they want to understand more so
61:23
they may fear less and and so many
61:27
individuals now can go out and actually
61:30
you know be citizen journalists like
61:33
never before and I would say this the
61:37
political side of that is that you know
61:40
so which like if you want to be an
61:45
optimist about America today I tell
61:47
people stand on your head because the
61:49
country looks so much better from the
61:51
bottom up than the top down okay so I
61:54
think that as we go into this age of
61:56
acceleration national governments with a
61:59
few exceptions are really too slow
62:02
certainly the big democracies are
62:04
because we’re too tribal eyes partisan
62:05
eyes now they they can’t move at the
62:07
pace of change because government moves
62:09
at the pace of trust and there’s no
62:10
trust the single individual single
62:13
family way too weak against these forces
62:16
so I think it’s the healthy community
62:19
that is going to be the proper of
62:21
governing unit of the 21st century and
62:23
if you want to know what makes me an
62:25
optimist in America is that our country
62:28
you know the cliche about America is
62:30
that we’re divided by two
62:32
so these two coasts everyone is
62:34
pluralizing diversifying globalizing and
62:36
modernizing and in between them is
62:38
flyover for America where everyone’s
62:40
high on opioids voted for Trump and
62:43
waiting for 1950 okay that’s kind of the
62:45
cliché so um well you only have to be
62:48
from Minnesota you only have to be from
62:49
flyover America – no that is not true
62:51
America is actually a checkerboard today
62:54
of communities that are collapsing from
62:57
the bottom down and communities that are
62:59
rising from the bottom up so I did a
63:02
trip a year ago to um I was invited to
63:05
give a talk at our national lab at Oak
63:07
Ridge Tennessee so I got the map out Oak
63:08
Ridge Tennessee
63:09
hey it’s down here southern tip of
63:11
Appalachia haven’t been to Appalachia I
63:13
think I’ll do a car trip across
63:15
Appalachia reading about all these
63:16
people voted for drum so I started the
63:19
trip in Austin Indiana so it’s a
63:21
southern Indiana northern tip of
63:23
Appalachian I went to excite read about
63:25
the town 4400 people and a 5% of the
63:28
town is HIV positive which is just the
63:33
worst possible levels of epidemic you
63:35
can imagine what was the story two
63:36
factories in the town one closed the
63:38
other got automated a lot of white
63:40
working-class men and women got
63:41
unemployed very quickly um
63:44
the they couldn’t adapt and I fell into
63:46
drug use and you had son father
63:49
grandfather all shooting up together
63:51
it’s a terrible store and I went there
63:53
to interview the one doctor in the town
63:54
then I got on my car and drove 40
63:57
minutes south on i-70 to Louisville
63:59
Kentucky Louisville Kentucky has 30,000
64:02
open jobs anybody looking for a job
64:04
Louisville Kentucky so what’s going on
64:07
there so which organisms thrive when the
64:10
climate changes they call complex
64:12
adaptive organisms what’s happening at
64:15
the community level the commutes that
64:16
are rising they’re creating complex
64:18
adaptive coalition’s and what you see in
64:21
Louisville and I can show you
64:23
communities all over the country these
64:25
complex adaptive coalition’s you have
64:27
the business community you’re not
64:28
plugging directly into the public school
64:31
system k12 community college four-year
64:33
college translating in real-time their
64:36
skills needs and demands okay not
64:38
waiting for the schools to figure it out
64:40
then you have the philanthropic
64:41
community
64:42
coming in supplementing it with
64:44
scholarships after-school programs
64:46
supplemental learning opportunities then
64:48
you have the local government catalyzing
64:51
at all and hiring global recruiters to
64:53
go into the world and find global
64:55
investors for their local attributes so
64:58
in the case of Louisville Louisville
64:59
happens to be the capital of Bourbon
65:01
tourism so Louisville is de Bourbon what
65:04
Napa Valley is – red wine and they’re
65:06
now distilleries and bed-and-breakfast
65:07
you go you know across just they’ve
65:10
created a tourism industry Louisville
65:12
happens to be the headquarters of ups so
65:14
you fly into Louisville Airport all you
65:16
see are factories everywhere because
65:18
when Jeff Bezos of Amazon com says
65:21
you’ve all get to that product in 24
65:23
hours it’s because he’s doing end of
65:24
runway assembly and manufacturing now in
65:27
Louisville and Louisville is a
65:29
headquarters of Humana wellness company
65:31
so the mayor’s equipped any young person
65:33
in the town who wants with a web
65:35
neighbor cloud connected breathalyzer
65:37
and kids got in the morning trying to
65:39
create citizen scientists and they map
65:41
the air quality in their neighborhood
65:43
and they feed it all into a website in
65:44
the city they’ve created a complex
65:46
adaptive coalition and this is happening
65:49
all over the country and so we’ve got
65:53
communities like Austin that opioid
65:55
crisis is real they’re collapsing but
65:57
those were you get this leadership
65:59
together are creating complex adaptive
66:01
coalition’s come to my hometown of
66:03
Minneapolis two and a half percent
66:05
unemployment I mean really thriving
66:07
they’re not waiting for Washington DC
66:09
because there’s a much higher trust
66:11
there and my my teacher Duff Seidman
66:14
always says you know Trust is the only
66:16
legal performance-enhancing drug okay so
66:19
where there’s trust in the room you can
66:21
go really fast you can go at the speed
66:23
of visits and when there’s no trust like
66:25
in Washington DC right now you can’t
66:27
move two inches so how do you make sense
66:30
of this extremely complex and checkered
66:34
reality I mean my job is much easier
66:36
than yours because as a historian who
66:39
looks mainly the past and also at long
66:41
periods of centuries and thousands of
66:44
years so the like that the main trains
66:47
jumps jump at you yeah but how do you
66:50
manage to make sense of such a
66:53
complicated and contradictory
66:55
reality and how do you know that you’re
66:58
not just you know following your biases
67:01
and seeing what you want to see so it’s
67:04
a combination it’s a very good question
67:05
of data I mean I can show you the
67:11
employment statistics you know the
67:13
economies of these towns and I can show
67:15
you the proliferation of them and then
67:19
obviously reporting and then anything is
67:22
going to be a guess you know but if I
67:24
look at the country I see the National
67:26
Statistics what’s going on to me the
67:29
question is and this I can’t do I can
67:32
only report on what’s going on is what
67:36
is the balance between these two trends
67:38
but as I’m not a historian I’m a
67:41
journalist what I’m trying to do is by
67:42
highlighting the positive trend because
67:45
I think one good example is worth a
67:47
thousand theories that people will
67:49
follow examples when they see people
67:51
like them doing it so my idealism is to
67:55
say here’s what’s working you know and
67:58
these people are just like you so you
68:00
can do it just like them I Israeli
68:03
general loozy Diane you know once said
68:05
to me Tom I know why you’re an optimist
68:08
I said why he said it’s because you’re
68:11
short and I said I’m not that sure he
68:15
said you can only see the part of the
68:17
glass that’s half-full okay so um I’m
68:20
actually not that short but I I do
68:24
believe in the Emil Evans the physicists
68:29
who helped me with all the physics in my
68:30
book you vote he likes to say when
68:33
people say Aimee are you an optimist or
68:35
a pessimist says I’m neither because
68:37
they’re just two different forms of
68:38
fatalism everything will be great
68:40
everything will be awful he said I
68:41
believe in applied hope don’t know if
68:45
it’s gonna work but I believe in applied
68:46
hope yeah I’m very interested in how you
68:49
ball has interrogated your optimism and
68:51
optimism of course it’d be the natural
68:53
note to end on but I want to care a tiny
68:55
bit more about your pessimism and
68:58
hopefully we can all think about how to
69:01
walk out of here holding both of those
69:03
ideas in our mind you wrote in sapience
69:05
I believe that there’s no
69:07
that I’m sorry I have no proof human
69:09
well-being inevitably improves as
69:12
history rolls along just a cheery
69:14
thought for all of us as we wind down
69:16
our time together
69:18
I wonder if you could help us think
69:21
about that what you’ve discussed this
69:22
evening and and Tom’s very convincing
69:26
data rich argument that when you’re
69:29
doing yoga and standing on your head you
69:31
really can see roots of communities
69:33
pulling together even in this
69:35
disorienting moment so help us leave
69:37
here both pessimists and optimists well
69:43
I try not to think in terms of pessimism
69:46
and optimism
69:49
it’s just that history just doesn’t
69:52
unfold in such a way usually you have
69:56
terrible things and wonderful things
69:58
happening at the same time maybe in
70:00
different places but happening at the
70:01
same time usually the same revolution
70:04
the same development it’s very rare when
70:07
you have a big revolution in history
70:09
which is doing only good or which is
70:11
doing only bad and of course you have
70:13
the added problem that those who lose
70:17
who lose the most and those who get
70:20
extinct and those who disappear they are
70:23
not there to tell their story
70:25
so in history there is always a certain
70:27
a certain bias towards the optimistic
70:30
side here we are here so it couldn’t
70:32
have been that bad the people for whom
70:36
it was very bad they are just not here
70:41
but you know so and also is as somebody
70:52
who tries to see the big picture and
70:55
look at the global picture there is
70:57
always the danger that you’re always
71:01
going to notice the agenda and the
71:06
opinions and the interests of the of the
71:10
hegemonic powers of the more powerful
71:12
people and societies and in classes and
71:15
whatever because they dominate
71:18
the conversation so even if you oppose
71:21
them even if you think you’re they’re
71:23
wrong you’re not going to miss their
71:26
ideas you might object their ideas you
71:30
might fight against them but you’re not
71:32
going to ignore them the problem of the
71:36
people who are like push to the side or
71:38
push down is that they are very often
71:42
just ignored not that you don’t agree
71:45
with what they say not that you think
71:47
their interests don’t count you just
71:50
don’t remember to even notice their
71:55
point of view or there are other
71:58
interests so also the question of of
72:01
pessimism and optimism it’s always a
72:04
question of who are you talking about I
72:07
think one of the main problems in
72:11
talking about the global agenda or the
72:15
problems of humanity or and the kind of
72:17
things that are that I try to doom is
72:20
that maybe there is no single future for
72:25
the whole of humankind
72:26
maybe the basic understanding of the
72:31
world is just that different groups are
72:34
going to have very different futures
72:37
maybe I mentioned earlier the question
72:40
of what to teach your kids so if you
72:43
live in one place and belong to a
72:46
particular community or to a particular
72:48
group so you teach your kids to be
72:51
resilient and you teach your kids
72:53
computer code and you teach your kids to
72:56
play the violin and you live in another
72:59
place maybe not very far away and the
73:01
best thing to teach your kids is how to
73:04
shoot a Kalashnikov and it’s happening
73:08
on the same on the same planet at the
73:10
same time and what’s more true or what’s
73:14
more important it’s it’s it’s kind of an
73:17
empty question it really boils down to
73:20
the question of perspective so this I
73:26
think is kind of a historical low or an
73:28
historical truth that there
73:31
never just a single story going around
73:35
and part of the responsibility part of
73:39
the difficulty I think of being a
73:42
journalist or being a historian is how
73:45
do you bring at least some justice to
73:49
this situation and how do you give at
73:52
least some attention to all the
73:55
different viewpoints and not just to the
73:57
to the dominant one um before you go
74:01
close you will just talk a little bit
74:04
about your next book and give us a
74:05
little tease I want to hear I’m gonna be
74:07
very sad for a second and then I’ll do
74:10
my so my next book is coming in August
74:15
September
74:16
it’s called 21 lessons for the 21st
74:19
century but it’s not really a book of
74:22
concrete lessons like do this go there
74:24
whatever it’s more an invitation to take
74:30
part in the major debates and
74:33
discussions of the world of the current
74:36
moment continuing what I said earlier I
74:40
think one of the problem problems that
74:43
most people today face is that they just
74:49
don’t have the time and the energy to be
74:52
part of the global debate of the debate
74:56
about the future of humanity there are
74:58
all these big questions of climate
75:02
change and artificial intelligence and
75:04
bioengineering and it’s going to have an
75:07
impact on the life of every single
75:10
individual on the planet but most people
75:13
they’re too busy going to work and
75:17
feeding their kids and taking care of
75:21
elderly parents and so forth they just
75:23
don’t have it’s a luxury to be able to
75:27
think about these issues to investigate
75:30
them to engage in the debate and the
75:34
problem was in one of the problems again
75:36
with history is that history never makes
75:40
any concessions and never gives any
75:43
discounts
75:44
just because you’re in difficulty oh
75:47
just because you’re poor or just because
75:50
you’re too busy taking care of your kids
75:53
if you don’t have the time and the
75:56
energy and the really the luxury to be
75:59
part of the debate it doesn’t mean that
76:03
you won’t suffer from the consequences
76:07
because in in this sense history’s
76:09
completely unfair and I see my job as a
76:15
historian as trying to help at least a
76:19
few more people take part in the debate
76:23
and this is the main purpose of the
76:27
coming book so I guess I see my job is
76:31
obviously you know reporting whatever
76:34
situation I’m assigned to report to but
76:36
I am always looking for examples of
76:39
what’s working and sharing them with
76:41
people so so because I think there’s a
76:44
power in that and that’s my version of
76:46
idealism it’s why I went into journalism
76:48
young people often come to me say I want
76:50
to do what you do you know what do I
76:53
need to know and you know I say you
76:57
build a type fast I can type real fast
76:59
um actually went to London secretarial
77:01
school to learn how to type back in on
77:03
my day here but I think that the most
77:06
important thing you need is a journalist
77:10
today is that you have to be a good
77:16
listener and for two reasons and the
77:18
second reason is more important than the
77:20
first the first is what you learn when
77:23
you listen you know but the second
77:26
reason is what you say when you listen
77:28
listening is a sign of respect and my
77:31
method to my madness if you travel with
77:34
me is I really do try to listen to
77:36
people whether on you know a little
77:39
Jewish guy from Minnesota in the Arab
77:40
world or I’m in Russia or I’m here
77:43
because I find that if you just listen
77:47
to people it’s amazing what they’ll let
77:50
you say back and if you don’t listen to
77:52
them it’s amazing you cannot tell them
77:55
it’s dark outside
77:56
and that’s why I’ve often said um before
77:59
I retire I’m gonna change my business
78:01
card it now says Thomas L Friedman New
78:03
York Times Foreign Affairs columnist and
78:05
I want to change it to Thomas L Friedman
78:07
New York Times humiliation and dignity
78:10
correspondent because I basically spent
78:12
my whole career covering people acting
78:14
out on their humiliation whether it’s in
78:16
the Middle East you know we all know the
78:19
stories they’re Russians feeling
78:20
committable Chinese you know and
78:21
questing for for dignity but I may add
78:26
also diversity correspondent and that’s
78:29
where I would end you know Rachel too
78:35
you know as a columnist sometimes you’re
78:37
in the right place at the right time and
78:39
sometimes you’re in the wrong place at
78:42
the wrong time especially when you’re a
78:44
once a week columnist as I am now
78:46
so less summer the head of the US Air
78:48
Force invited me to join him on a tour
78:50
of all America’s air bases in the Middle
78:53
East it’s a great opportunity to see
78:56
this perspective of the world in the
78:58
military and I found myself an Altoid
79:01
aid air base in Qatar the night Donald
79:05
Trump was giving his press conference
79:07
about the charlottesville disturbances
79:11
and talking about how there were good
79:13
white supremacist and bad white
79:15
supremacist and like that’s all the
79:18
world or in America was talking about
79:20
and I was in a load eight airbase at
79:23
Qatar and my column was due in a few
79:25
hours so I staring at a blank blank
79:28
screen thinking about what do I write
79:32
and then it just popped into my head I
79:35
looked around at my traveling party the
79:39
head of the US Air Force Dave goal find
79:41
his Jewish we are traveling with the Air
79:43
Force US Air Force secretary she’s a
79:45
woman Heather Wilson her chief executive
79:48
officer is an African American woman Air
79:51
Force lieutenant colonel there guards
79:53
name was one the head of the air base
79:56
and it was in Armenian American his
79:58
deputy was a lebanese american and our
80:00
intelligence briefers name was yang mr.
80:04
trump which part of this sentence don’t
80:07
you understand
80:08
okay that that is the real strength of
80:12
America our ability to make out of many
80:15
one you know and in a world where we’re
80:19
all getting so mixed up now I believe
80:23
that virtue that strength is so
80:24
important for every society now it’s
80:27
more important than ever and so I pray
80:31
this man will be a one-term president
80:33
because we can take four years of him we
80:37
cannot take eight years of him he will
80:39
destroy institutions in eight years but
80:42
I know that underneath you know there’s
80:47
still a really powerful idea of America
80:50
and diversity out there that I think
80:54
even Donald Trump cannot crush and
80:56
that’s why I is it shared also by the
80:59
average Trump voter I mean are you able
81:02
also to listen to them and I don’t think
81:05
there is an average Trump voter and I
81:07
think that because I think people came
81:09
to him for so many reasons
81:10
some people came because they were
81:12
humiliated Hillary Clinton said you’re
81:14
deplorable
81:14
I’m deplorable that I’m gonna wear a
81:16
t-shirt that says I’m a deplorable okay
81:18
some came because things you’ve talked
81:20
about you’ve all they want a wall to
81:22
stop the pace of change some came for
81:25
many reasons but my way of approaching
81:27
them because I’m a Wednesday columnist
81:29
it means I write Tuesday for Wednesday
81:31
means I have the first column after
81:32
every election hmm so I had the column
81:36
then I from one and I’m sorry the week
81:40
before he won I wrote my last column and
81:43
it was addressed to Trump voters and it
81:46
began dear fellow Americans treat people
81:49
with respect it’s amazing you know if
81:52
you start there how much you can peel
81:56
peel back you know just listen to people
81:59
and we have so many people broadcasting
82:01
now you know and not listening
82:04
particularly in politics that I think
82:09
that that’s truly the
82:12
optimism so I don’t feel we should go
82:13
too deep into the 26 women yes well to
82:19
comment actually about it one I think
82:21
that I mean the the Trump voters of
82:25
still the future of America I mean if
82:27
you don’t have them then America is
82:30
going nowhere so if you need to be
82:33
optimistic about something then you need
82:35
to be optimistic about about them as
82:37
well that I think they’re they’re all
82:40
people that you could take somewhere
82:42
with a different message not all but
82:44
many of them and secondly I would say
82:49
about about journalism I agree that it
82:55
is immensely important especially today
82:59
especially for the viability of liberal
83:02
democracies because you know democracy
83:06
is to some extent based on Lincoln’s
83:09
maxim that you can fool some people some
83:13
of the time all the time and you can
83:14
fool all the people some of the time but
83:16
not all the people all the time and this
83:19
is really just wishful thinking you can
83:22
fool people I mean not for eternity
83:24
nothing is for eternity but you can fool
83:27
all the people for a very very long time
83:29
and the the way to do it is to control
83:34
the information they get with the basic
83:37
idea of democracy is ok we elect a bunch
83:39
of people to govern the country and if
83:42
they do a bad job if they fail then
83:45
sooner or later enough people will
83:48
realize it and they will change the
83:50
government and this works fine as long
83:54
as you have free press and free
83:56
journalism if the government controls in
83:59
some way or the other
84:00
directly or indirectly if it controls
84:03
the media if it controls journalism then
84:06
it can always blame somebody else for
84:09
its failures it can always direct the
84:12
attention towards all kinds of enemies
84:15
either real or imaginary and there will
84:19
never be a day of reckoning so in in
84:23
this
84:23
there is no future to democracy without
84:27
a strong and free journalism I think yes
84:33
journalism
84:44
I was gonna say on behalf of the New
84:47
York Times a rousing defense of a strong
84:50
and free press works in very nicely to
84:53
remind you that we were here heard this
84:56
evening putting on this event
84:57
what a luxury called it to engage in
85:00
this debate and and to listen as Tom
85:03
described is so important as we do
85:05
figure out and make our way toward the
85:07
future we are going to call in an
85:10
evening here I want to thank all of you
85:12
for joining us thank the New York Times
85:14
and how to academy for putting a loss
85:16
event and please of course thank you of
85:18
all Harare and Thomas Friedman
85:21
[Applause]
85:23
[Music]
85:24
[Applause]
English (auto-generated)
NYTimes.com: Inside the Chaotic, Cutthroat Gray Market for N95 Masks
From The New York Times:
Inside the Chaotic, Cutthroat Gray Market for N95 Masks
As the country heads into a dangerous new phase of the pandemic, the government’s management of the P.P.E. crisis has left the private sector still straining to meet anticipated demand.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/magazine/n95-masks-market-covid.html?smid=em-share
In Georgia, private equity is investing in a divided government.
Watch – 21 Lessons for the 21st Century | Yuval Noah Harari | Talks at Google
Watch – 21 Lessons for the 21st Century | Yuval Noah Harari | Talks at Google
From the beginning.
From the quote below.
https://youtu.be/Bw9P_ZXWDJU?t=3186
YUVAL NOAH HARARI: “As I said in the very beginning, I don’t think we can predict the future, but I think we can influence it. What I try to do as a historian– and even when I talk about the future, I define myself as a historian, because I think that history is not the study of the past. History is the study of change, how human societies and political systems and economies change. And what I try to do is to map different possibilities rather than make predictions.
This is what will happen in 2050. And we need to keep a very broad perspective. One of the biggest dangers is when we have a very narrow perspective, like we develop a new technology and we think, oh, this technology will have this outcome. And we are convinced of this prediction, and we don’t take into account that the same technology might have very different outcomes. And then we don’t prepare.
And again, as I said in the beginning, it’s especially important to take into account the worst possible outcomes in order to be aware of them. So I would say whenever you are thinking about the future, the future impact of a technology and developing, create a map of different possibilities. If you see just one possibility, you’re not looking wide enough. If you see two or three, it’s probably also not wide enough. You need a map of, like, four or five different possibilities, minimum.”
AUDIENCE QUESTION:
https://youtu.be/Bw9P_ZXWDJU?t=3289
Hey, Mr. Harari.
So my question is– I’ll start very broad, and then I’ll narrow it down for the focus. I’m really interested in, what do you think are the components that make these fictional stories so powerful in how they guide human nature?
And then if I narrow it down is, I’m specifically interested in the self-destruction behavior of humans. How can these fictional stories led by a few people convince the mass to literally kill or die for that fictional story?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI:
It again goes back to hacking the brain and hacking the human animal. It’s been done throughout history, previously just by trial and error, without the deep knowledge of brain science and evolution we have today.
But to give an example, like if you want to convince people to persecute and exterminate some other group of people, what you need to do is really latch onto the disgust mechanisms in the human brain. Evolution has shaped homo sapiens with very powerful disgust mechanisms in the brain to protect us against diseases, against all kinds of sources of potential disease. And if you look at the history of bias and prejudice and genocide, one recurring theme
is that it repeatedly kind of latches onto these disgust mechanisms. And so you would find things like women are impure, or these other people, they smell bad and they bring diseases. And very, very often disgust is at the center.
So you’ll often find comparison between certain types of humans and rats or cockroaches, or all kinds of other disgusting things.
So if you want to instigate genocide, you start by hacking the disgust mechanisms in the human brain. And this is very, very deep. And if it’s done from an early age, it’s extremely difficult afterwards. People can– they know intellectually that it’s wrong to say that these people are disgusting, that these people, they smell bad. But they know it intellectually. But when you place them, like, in a brain scanner, they can’t help it. If they were raised– I mean, so we can still do something about it. We can still kind of defeat this. But it’s very difficult, because it really goes to the core of the brain.
WILSON WHITE:
So I’ll end on a final question, because we’re at time. When Larry and Sergey, when they founded Google, they did so with this deep belief in technology’s ability to improve people’s lives everywhere. So if you had a magic wand and you could give Google the next big project for us to work on, in 30 seconds or less, what would you grant us as our assignment?
YUVAL NOAH HARARI:
An AI system that gets to know me in order to protect me and not in order to sell me products or make me click on advertisements and so forth.
WILSON WHITE:
All right. Mission accepted.
[LAUGH]
Thank you, guys.
[APPLAUSE]
From the beginning.
NYTimes: Our Political System Is Unfair. Liberals Need to Just Deal With It.
Opinion
Our Political System Is Unfair. Liberals Need to Just Deal With It.
There are few if any pathways to changing either the Electoral College or the structure of the Senate in the near-term.
By
Mr. Teles is a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center.
The American voters chose to give the Democrats the White House, but denied them a mandate. Even if Democrats somehow squeak out wins in both Georgia Senate races, the Senate will then pivot on Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
Not only does this take much of the liberal wish list off the table, it also makes deep structural reform of federal institutions impossible. There will be no new voting rights act in honor of the late Representative John Lewis, no statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and no Supreme Court packing. For that matter, the filibuster will not be eliminated, which would have been the essential predicate for all of those other changes as well as expansive climate or health care legislation. Anything that Democrats want to do that requires a party-line vote is forlorn.
In response to this disappointment, a number of left-of-center commentators have concluded that “democracy lost” in 2020. Our constitutional order, they argue, is rotten and an obstacle to majority rule. The Electoral College and the overrepresentation of small, mostly conservative states in the Senate is an outrage. As Ezra Klein has argued, our constitution “forces Democrats to win voters ranging from the far left to the center right, but Republicans can win with only right-of-center votes.” As a consequence, liberals can’t have nice things.
The argument is logical, but it is also a strategic dead end. The United States is and in almost any plausible scenario will continue to be a federal republic. We are constituted as a nation of states, not as a single unitary community, a fact that is hard-wired into our constitutional structure. Liberals may not like this, just as a man standing outside in a rainstorm does not like the fact he is getting soaked. But instead of cursing the rain, it makes a lot more sense for him to find an umbrella.
Liberals need to adjust their political strategy and ideological ambitions to the country and political system we actually have, and make the most of it, rather than cursing that which they cannot change.
There are certainly some profound democratic deficits built into our federal constitution. Even federal systems like Germany, Australia and Canada do not have the same degree of representative inequality that the Electoral College and Senate generate between a citizen living in California versus one living in Wyoming.
There is also next to nothing we can do about it. The same system that generates this pattern of representative inequality also means that — short of violent revolution — the beneficiaries of our federal system will not allow for it to be changed, except at the margins. If Democrats at some point get a chance to get full representation for Washington, D.C., they should take it. But beyond that, there are few if any pathways to changing either the Electoral College or the structure of the Senate. So any near-term strategy for Democrats must accept these structures as fixed.
The initial step in accepting our federal system is for Democrats to commit to organizing everywhere — even places where we are not currently competitive. Led by Stacey Abrams, Democrats have organized and hustled in Georgia over the last couple of years, and the results are hard to argue with. Joe Biden should beg Ms. Abrams (or another proven organizer like Ben Wikler, the head of the party in Wisconsin) to take over the Democratic National Committee, dust off Howard Dean’s planning memos for a “50 state strategy” from the mid-2000s and commit to building the formal apparatus of the Democratic Party everywhere.
This party-building needs to happen across the country, even where the odds seem slim, in order to help Democrats prospect for attractive issues in red states (and red places in purple states), to identify attractive candidates and groom them for higher office and to build networks of citizens who can work together to rebuild the party at the local level.
A necessary corollary of a 50 state strategy is accepting that creating a serious governing majority means putting together a policy agenda that recognizes where voters are, not where they would be if we had a fairer system of representation. That starts with an economics that addresses the radically uneven patterns of economic growth in the country, even if doing so means attending disproportionately to the interests of voters outside of the Democrats’ urban base. That is not a matter of justice, necessarily, but brute electoral arithmetic.
That does not mean being moderate, in the sense of incremental and toothless. From the financialization of our economy to our constrictive intellectual property laws to our unjust tax competition between states for firms, the economic deck really is stacked for the concentration of economic power on the coasts. Democrats in the places where the party is less competitive should be far more populist on these and other related issues, even if it puts them in tension with the party’s megadonors.
We also need to recognize that the cultural values and rituals of Democrats in cosmopolitan cities and liberal institutional bastions like universities do not seem to travel well. Slogans like “defund the police” and “abolish ICE” may be mobilizing in places where three-quarters of voters pull the lever for Democrats. But it is madness to imagine that they could be the platform of a competitive party nationwide.
That doesn’t mean that we should expect members of the Squad not to speak out for fear of freaking out the small town voters that Democrats like Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia represent. But it does mean recognizing that, unlike the more homogeneous Republicans, the Democrats have no choice but to be a confederation of subcultures. We need to develop internal norms of pluralism and coexistence appropriate to a loose band of affiliated politicians and groups, rather than those of a party that is the arm of a cohesive social movement.
The Democratic Party has a future within the constitution the country has. The question for the next decade is, will we withdraw into pointless dreams of sweeping constitutional change or make our peace with our country and its constitution, seeking allies in unlikely places and squeezing out what progress we can get by organizing everywhere, even when the odds of success seem slim.
Steven Teles, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center, is an author, with Robert Saldin, of the book “Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites.”