#68 — Reality and the Imagination
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Summary
Yuvval Noah Harari is a tenured professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. He is the author of two books, Homo sapiens and Homo de Homo, and he is a regular meditation practitioner. In this episode, Yuvval talks about his work as a historian, his meditation practice, and his love for skype. He also talks about how he got into meditation, and why he thinks meditation is so important in order to answer the big questions of life. This is a great episode to listen to, especially if you're interested in meditation, philosophy, or other forms of mediation. Make sure to check out our companion podcast, Making Sense, wherever you get your podcasts. To access full episodes of the Making Sense podcast, you ll need to subscribe to the making sense podcast, where you ll get access to all kinds of great episodes of making sense. You ll also need to become a subscriber to the podcast. We don t run ads on the podcast and therefore it s made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers, who support what we re doing here. If you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming a supporter of the podcast by becoming a subscriber. It helps us make a better sense of the world, a better place to connect with the people who are making sense of it all, and help us connect the dots in the universe. Thank you for listening to the Making sense Podcast! -Sam Harris Sam Harris, PhD, MAJEval, PhD PhD, MFAU, MAU, and MFA, MAE, and so on and so much so on this podcast? The Making Sense Podcast, . Thanks for coming on this episode of Making Sense? (Make sense? ) (listen to this episode? "The Making Sense?" This episode is made possible by the podcast is a postscript to this epilogue of this episode on The Making sense podcast by me, Sam Harris? , and this podcast is out of this podcast on my book, "Make sense?" (The Making sense , and more than that, here's an introduction to the first episode of this eponymous epilog "I hope you'll get a chance to learn more about this podcast, I hope you're going to hear about it in the next one?"
Transcript
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welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing
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today i'm speaking with yuval noah harari yuval has a phd in history from oxford university
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and he's a tenured professor in the department of history at hebrew university in jerusalem
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he specialized in world history and medieval history and military history but his current
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research focuses on macro historical questions for instance what is the relationship between
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history and biology what is the essential difference between human beings and other animals
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is there justice in history does history have a direction did people become happier as history
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has unfolded these are all fascinating questions our time was somewhat limited by yuval's schedule
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our love for skype was somewhat unrequited he was back in israel at the time of this interview
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but i think you'll find our conversation very interesting and now i bring you yuval harari
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i am here with yuval noah harari yuval thanks for coming on the podcast it's my pleasure to be here
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you have really uh just exploded onto the scene here with two wonderful books sapiens being the first
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and homo deus which just came out in the u.s congratulations these are really fantastic beautiful
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exciting books thank you your backgrounds in history however you're you're a historian technically
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but you've written two very interdisciplinary books you get into anthropology and biology and technology
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to an unusual degree and i i'm very fond of this kind of crossing of boundaries intellectually being a
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fan of the concept of the unity of knowledge did you always know you wanted to work this way when you
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went into history was that your intention or is this just something that has happened kind of late
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in the game for you i always wanted to do it but for many years it seemed impossible uh it's really
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only after i got my tenure at the hebrew university in jerusalem that i also got the the courage of the
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opportunity to let go of the publish or perish regime and do what i really wanted to do which was to pursue
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the big questions of history the big questions of life and as you said i mean reality is one
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if you want to go to get answers to the really big questions you cannot remain confined within a single
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discipline because reality isn't confined to a single discipline yeah i often say that the single
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disciplines are now defined more by university architecture and budgets than anything else and
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to remain siloed in one way of thinking about reality in part it's an understandable outcome
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based on everyone's limitations on time and bandwidth and the impossibility of knowing everything about
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everything so people do specialize but really the the boundaries between philosophy and science and
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specific disciplines within science and anthropology and sociology and psychology and history i mean it's just
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the facts of the cosmos don't obey these boundaries so it's great to just see someone run directly over
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them i mean if you start with a question that for me is one of the most central questions of history
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whether humans today are happier than in stone age and whether we know how to translate power into
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happiness then i mean what discipline does this question belong to it's you know it's history it's
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philosophy it's biology it's everything yeah yeah so i want to jump into the books in particular
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your latest but before i do it's very rare that i get someone on the podcast who is also seriously
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committed to the practice of meditation and has a lot of experience there so i just want to this is a very
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novel thing okay you came off of a i believe a 60-day silent retreat recently and i if i'm not mistaken
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that's something you do every year how did you get into meditation and what does your background look
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like there well i when i did my phd in oxford um 17 years ago i went to a vipassana retreat
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and i learned vipassana meditation from a teacher called sm goenka
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and um it completely blew my mind and changed my life and ever since that first course i i do two
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hours of vipassana meditation every day i usually start my work day with one hour of meditation and
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i finish it with another hour of meditation and every year like my yearly vacation is to go for a long
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retreat of between 30 and 60 days of just meditation in complete silence no no emails no computers no
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books no reading writing nothing just just meditating oh that's wonderful i am envious do you have kids
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uh no just dogs explains a lot that explains your freedom yeah that's that's really wonderful so just
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to give people a clearer picture of what you're up to there so goenka is a very famous vipassana teacher
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there are two strands of vipassana that have been very influential particularly in the west among all
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the the westerners who in in the 60s discovered this practice and they both come out of burma
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and goenka's is one line coming from a teacher named ubakin and there was another line that came
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from a teacher named mahasi sayadao and so all of the vipassana practice i've done on retreat has come
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from the the mahasi sayadao line which teaches the same kind of mindfulness but it's a different
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sort of practice i mean i think the technical details are less important the key is just to
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observe reality as it is every moment just to stay focused what is really happening right now
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as against all the stories and explanations that our mind constantly generate and this is extremely
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difficult uh what struck me in my first course i remember like the first day i came to the retreat
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i was absolutely um amazed by it that this it starts with a very simple practice sounds simple anyway
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of you just have to focus your attention on the breath and observe when the breath is coming in
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and when the breath is going out of your nostrils that's it you don't have to do anything just just
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observe that and i couldn't do it for more than like five seconds or ten seconds and my mind would run
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away somewhere yeah and you know i was 24 at the time and it was the first time i realized how little i
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understand my mind how little control i have over my attention and this is why they start with this very
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simple practice just focus on the breath because it's so difficult and once you get the hang of that
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and you can do it for more than 10 seconds then yes the the the idea or the instruction is to start
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observing not just the breath but everything that is happening in the body um sensations throughout the
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body in every part of the body there is some sensation at any moment and um you start observing that
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and you see the deep connection between these sensations and what's happening in your mind that we think
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that we react to events in the outside world to memories from our childhood to something we saw on
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television but in fact in each of every moment we constantly react to the sensations within our body
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and and everything people do as a historian i can say that everything people do you know from
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fidgeting in your chair to starting a world war um you're actually reacting to sensations in your body
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it's amazing how out of control our minds are and how few people realize that their minds are out of
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control and the consequences of their of them being out of control are as you say these are the same
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process that that gets you to say something untoward in a personal interaction is the very process that
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brings us you know civilizational scale catastrophes wars and all the rest people are being moved by
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their thoughts in every moment and they see no alternative and meditation is for the most part the one
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way people can become more aware of these processes that rule their lives had you had any psychedelic
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experiences or anything that got you to go on that first retreat or how did you find yourself there
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no i had a very good friend he's still a good friend of mine he now works in silicon valley
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and he for an entire year kept like nudging me you should go to a retreat and he was very persistent
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and um i was at a time in life that i had all these big questions and i had no answers and i was very
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disappointed with the university with the academic world with um with my studies because they didn't
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provide me any answers to the really deep questions of um you know the the suffering in the world and
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the suffering in my life where is it coming from and what can we do about it and he kept telling me
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you know you should go to a meditation retreat maybe it will show you something and and i just kept
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reading books and reading articles and i was convinced that the answer will come from there
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until i reached a certain degree of desperation and i said okay what can i lose from going to this 10
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days meditation retreat and i never looked back since and have you done any psychedelics since or is that
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something that you haven't experienced as a student i i did uh what was it um ecstasy but um it's you
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know it was an interesting experience but it didn't teach me anything really valuable and later on i realized i
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mean the really i think the dangerous the dangerous potential of all the psychedelic drugs is that people
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get hooked on the excitement and that they want special experiences yeah and this is also dangerous
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sometimes in meditation that people come to a meditation retreat and they want something special they want
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to experience i don't know bliss and then to fly in the air and to see stars and whatever and then you come to
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the retreat at least in vipassana and they tell you okay observe your breath and then you have a pain in your
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back and they say oh good you have pain observe the pain look look just for once in your life
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instead of reacting to the pain just see how does pain feel or maybe it's very hot and they tell you
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okay observe the heat how does it feel how does the heat feel or how does boredom feel and people say i
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don't want to observe boredom or pain i want these special wonderful experiences and it's the same
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the same thing that i think that they can open your mind to some levels of reality which are usually
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hidden from us but the danger is that uh people just want the next trip and the next special experience
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and in the in the end i think the real key is to understand the normal everyday experiences
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and not the unique once in the once in a lifetime special experience because if you want to deal
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with your anger or boredom or irritation or anything then you need to observe your anger and
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it's very difficult if you're just pursuing special special experiences yeah that's a very important
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point and i fully agree with it the illusion that gets introduced when you're using psychedelics in that
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way to have more peak experiences as you say you can use meditation that way where you the moment you
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feel a little bliss or rapture or some very positive unusual mental state you can take that to be the
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signature of a successful meditation and the illusion that creeps in there which is of a piece with
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everyone's efforts to seek happiness throughout their lives is that experience has to change
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in order for the most profound things about the human mind or human consciousness can be discovered
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profundity is elsewhere which is in fact not the case i mean if the ego is an illusion as it turns out
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it is you can discover that coincident with the most ordinary moments of consciousness you don't need the
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full fireworks show of a psychedelic experience to notice that there's a subject object illusion that can be
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penetrated and that's something that you do get with a very systematic approach to mindfulness meditation
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in this case it's wonderful you're doing that has meditation affected the way you approach your work
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i believe i detect the the influence in in many of the things you've written but how do how do you view
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that yes it has a very deep influence both on on my ability um to research and to write such books
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because especially when you deal with something like the history of the world in one book the one
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thing you need above all else is the ability to focus what's really important and how not to get
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bogged down in the thousand little details and then you know all the kings and battles and dates and all that
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and the practice of meditation i think gave me this ability to remain focused and without that i couldn't
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have written sapiens or homo deus and on another level um at least vipassana is really
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about observing reality as it is and being able to distinguish between what is real and what is just
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a story or a fantasy created by our own minds and this had a very deep impact on my interpretation of history
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uh because also when i look at history for me the big question is what is real and what are fictions
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created by human beings and at least my understanding is that the source of human power but also the source
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of so much human misery is um the human imagination and the ability of humans to create fictional stories
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and then to believe them to such an extent that they can start entire wars just because they believe
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some religious or national or economic fiction and um this is really what gave us control of the planet
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we control this planet not because as individuals we are much more intelligent than chimpanzees or pigs or
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dogs but rather because we are the only mammal that can cooperate in very large numbers and we can do that
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because we believe in fictions if you examine any large-scale human cooperation you always find a fictional story
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at the basis whether it's about god or the nation or money or even human rights uh human rights like god and heaven
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they are just a story invented by humans they are not a biological reality and um this is again the source of
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of our power and also of many of our calamities you can never convince a group of chimpanzees to attack the
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neighboring group by promising them that after they die if they die for the great chimpanzee god or the great
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chimpanzee nation then after they die they will go to chimpanzee heaven and there receive lots of bananas
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and virgin chimpanzees and things like that no chimpanzee will ever ever believe such a story
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uh and this is why we control the world and not the chimpanzees i love this basic picture but i must admit
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i've had a few problems with some of your terminology here because you you use words like religion and fiction
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and stories fairly loosely so you say things like you know science depends on religion
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and humanism is a religion and you know all as you just said all large-scale human cooperation is based
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on fiction but it seems to me that there are fictions and then there are fictions and and i think we still
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want to differentiate between stories and concepts that are obviously false right and therefore spread
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confusion by definition and those that one need not be confused to adopt so you know the u.s constitution
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or the concept of human rights or the convention of money these are are not fictions in the same way
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that the concept of paradise or martyrdom or the holy spirit are fictions and i mean i don't have to be
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confused about the nature of reality to see the benefit of thinking in terms of human rights or to use money
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do you disagree with that or are we on the same page there i definitely agree that not all stories
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are the same and some stories are are much more beneficial than other stories and also they demand
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a kind of different kind maybe of belief but what happens is even if you start by a convention like money
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that yes everybody knows that these pieces of paper have no value and it's just an agreement
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between people that uh invest them with a certain value very soon what happens is um that people
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forget that or ignore that and if you open a suitcase full of a hundred dollar bills
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and you look at the brain of the person who is looking at that that pile of money you see like all the
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neurons going crazy and the person sees the money as something really valuable now if you start talking
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with him and you know have a long philosophical discussion then yes in the end maybe he will agree that
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ah actually it's just a convention but the immediate experience of the person looking at the pile of money
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is you know immense greed and even a willingness to kill for it and uh it's the same you know with
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corporations if you tell somebody that you know google is just a story or a general motors is just a story
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then yes if you sit for a long philosophical discussion or legal discussion they will understand what you mean
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but in most cases in everyday experience we treat these entities as if they are completely real
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yeah it's also worth pointing out that we can get locked in to these conventions in ways that
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create an immense amount of needless suffering and you must know alan watts the great popularizer of
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eastern philosophy from the 60s and 70s he told a an amusing story i'm sure he told this a hundred times
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but he when he's talking about the great depression in this vein and talking about the the concept
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of money he pointed out that money is an abstraction kind of like an inch right or any unit of
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measurement and so the way our economy fell into the the abyss after the great depression was to some
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degree a matter of are not being able to free ourselves from this convention and and so he talked about
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you know what happened in the great depression was like a construction worker showing up on
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the job and the foreman says sorry no more work today we've run out of inches right and the idea
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of running out of money when there's still houses to be built and still people who want them and
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there was no less work to be done but we couldn't coordinate our work given what had happened to the
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economy these abstractions obviously have enormous power yeah and also i would say that if you would talk
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with uh you know like a theologian then he will tell you well i also we also know that god is not this old man
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old angry man in the sky that gets upset if you if i don't know if if you don't uh follow his orders god is
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his love god is whatever and he will come up with some very abstract and maybe convincing story about
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what god is and when you hear this story of the theologian you will say well actually maybe i was too
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fast to condemn religion but as a historian i would tell you yes uh the theologian's god uh this is this is
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maybe kind of a nice or not nice but this idea has some sense in it but this is not the god of history
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this is not the god that launched the crusades and the jihads and all the religious wars and persecutions
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and so forth there is a huge gap between the god of the theologians and the god of the masses and it's
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for his from historical perspective it's the god of the masses that really counts it's the angry man in the sky
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and it's the same with money yes if if we have this deep conversation then we all agree that money
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is just an obstruction created by humans and so forth but uh i don't know if you're if you're in
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the middle of a warfare between two two gangs or between two corporations then everybody's dead serious
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that these pieces of paper or these electronic data on the computer this is the most important thing in
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the world so what is the internet doing to us now in affecting the power or lack of power of the
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stories we use to organize our lives how do you view our current moment with respect to creating stories
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that will allow for the emergence of a viable global civilization or you know truly open societies
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that are durable what's your sense of the present well there are two questions there one about the
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internet and and the other about a global society and they are not they i think they're very different
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questions let's hold globalism i want to talk about globalism and its precarious birth later on so let's
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let's just talk about technology and its implications at the moment well technology makes our stories and
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fantasies more important than ever before because it makes them more powerful than ever before
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you know if people in ancient egypt wanted to live forever they just couldn't they didn't have the
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technology so they fantasized and it had and their fantasies had a lot of impact on the economy
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because they they used all that all the resources to build these huge pyramids and it had an impact
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on on culture and on politics but the impact was was limited now when people fantasize about
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immortality they are starting to have the technology to actually do it i don't think it will be feasible
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in say 20 years but given 50 years 100 years um i don't think that overcoming old age and death
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is is impossible and then whatever we fantasize on whatever our dreams whatever stories we believe
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it becomes the most powerful force in the world uh the very future of evolution of life
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will be shaped by human fiction by i mean by human fiction i mean the stories in which we believe
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yeah yeah science and technology will give us the power to realize whatever fiction we we believe in
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and then the question what is your favorite fiction will become maybe the most important question in in the
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evolution of life what we are seeing or what we will see in the not so distant future is exactly the
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collapse of the collapse of the separation between fiction and reality because things that begin as
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fiction in in humans in the human mind we will have the technology to make them a reality and then they
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are no longer fiction yeah you could uh create your favorite heaven or hell maybe uh using bioengineering and
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using uh brain computer interfaces and virtual reality technology and things like that do you think in terms of
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optimism and pessimism here or are you just describing the world as you see it and and not tipping in one one
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direction or another with respect to your hope or fear about what's happening i try not to think in terms of
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optimism and pessimism because it then you know colors your your your lenses and makes it more difficult
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to just see what what is happening i also think as a historian that um history is not deterministic and
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technology is not deterministic you could use the same technology uh for very good purposes or for
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very bad purposes if you look at the 20th century then you see that with the same technology
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of electricity and cars and radio and all that people could create communist dictatorships or fascist regimes
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or liberal democracies the electricity didn't tell people what to do with it and it's the same with
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biotechnology and artificial intelligence uh we still have options and just to give one example
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uh which is close to my heart uh because i i'm very much concerned about what we are doing to other
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animals and especially farm animals and um i think that the biotechnology poses both the greatest threat
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and the greatest promise to farm animals depending on what we choose to do with it you could use
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biotechnology to start engineering cows and pigs and chickens that grow faster
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and have more meat and give more milk and whatever serving the interests of the industry while
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completely disregarding what this means in terms of the experience and the misery of the animals
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on the other hand you could use biotechnology to start uh what is known as cellular agriculture
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yeah or create uh cultured meat or clean meat which is meat grown from cells if you want a steak you don't need
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to raise a cow and kill it and have a steak you can just grow the steak from cells i actually had
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umma valetti the the ceo of memphis meats on the podcast about a year ago and and that was the topic
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like i'm very excited about this truly ethically pure approach to growing meat and just the no animal
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involved uh be a wonderful breakthrough yeah so so this is a good example that the same the same
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field of course it's not exactly the same technology but the same field depending on how we choose to use
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it can be an immense blessing and can be a terrible curse so i try to focus um just on understanding
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what are the possibilities and also i try not to make prophecies and forecasts i don't think anybody
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really knows how the world would look like in 2015 i really just try to map the different possibilities
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so to take a very local case that is in the news the news itself is in the news really so that the
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issue of fake news seems to me has direct relevance to this the influence of stories how do you view
00:29:25.900
this recent phenomenon of fake news is it is it at all new or is this have we been dealing with fake
00:29:32.560
news for thousands of years i i still don't understand what's new about it i mean it's a very troubling
00:29:38.600
phenomenon for sure but i don't think there is anything new um i mean if this is the era of
00:29:44.480
false truth then i would like to know when was the era of truth i mean was it you know the 1950s the 1930s
00:29:51.600
the middle ages i don't think there is anything that gebles joseph gebles didn't know about propaganda
00:29:59.060
and fake news and manipulating the public and um going much further back um you know fake news are
00:30:07.080
thousands of years old you just need to think of the bible and the bible is also a disconcerting
00:30:13.820
uh example that fake news can last forever yeah it's not get exposed after you know a month or a
00:30:23.340
year they can last for thousands of years that's a great meme fake news can last forever let's get
00:30:30.240
t-shirts printed so one thing is very interesting in your latest book again on this on the implications
00:30:38.860
of technology you speculate about the likely birth of new religions inspired by technology say a little
00:30:46.160
more about that uh yes i think that there is a good chance that silicon valley in places like it
00:30:52.620
will create not just gadgets and tools but ideological systems and even religions
00:31:00.840
that will make many of the traditional promises of religion uh promising you know justice and
00:31:09.340
prosperity and even immortality but here on earth with the help of technology and not after you die
00:31:17.500
with the help of supernatural beings and you can say that we have actually seen at least some
00:31:25.940
uh techno religions religions based on technology uh previously maybe the best example is socialism
00:31:33.840
and communism communism promised to create paradise on earth with the help of the technology of the
00:31:42.760
industrial revolution and now it didn't work very well but this was the basic idea we don't need a god
00:31:52.180
we just need to control the means of production and the engineers and the technicians they can create
00:31:59.420
paradise on earth for us and this this didn't work very well but i think that in the 21st century
00:32:05.280
we'll see a second wave of of these techno religions now if you don't like the term religion you can
00:32:12.440
you can just use ideology instead but i think there is not no essential difference between ideology and
00:32:20.440
religion uh they both fulfill the same function in history uh to give legitimacy to human institutions
00:32:27.900
and to human norms and values um whether there is a god involved or not is really far less important
00:32:37.500
than the historical function because in the end it's not god that makes religions it's humans that make
00:32:44.760
religion the dividing line for me usually between religion and another kind of ideology like a political one
00:32:52.560
is at the line between the natural and the supernatural so when you're when you're positing the existence of
00:32:59.040
invisible agents for which you have no real evidence or you're making claims about the validity of
00:33:06.580
prophecy you know the messiah is going to return or you're making claims about the survival of
00:33:12.560
consciousness after death based on precious little evidence that's where i think it's obviously a
00:33:20.600
religious enterprise and you have superstition and other worldliness creeping in but again there's no
00:33:26.360
very clear line there and when you talk about something like what the personality cult in north korea at the
00:33:33.660
moment obviously it has many of the features of a religion certainly the socially consequential ones
00:33:39.280
and then you have something like you know the singularity phenomenon or the idea of the singularity
00:33:44.500
in silicon valley as propounded by somebody like ray kurtzweil that has many of the features of
00:33:52.240
you know other worldliness arguably that a classical religion does i mean there is this expectation
00:33:58.360
of immortality that you mentioned a few moments ago and yeah i agree that the boundaries here are
00:34:05.700
somewhat fungible but when you think of the birth of a technology inspired religion is the notion of
00:34:13.360
the singularity something that that answers to that description already are you thinking about something
00:34:17.600
else definitely that's probably the best example we have today i think like the singularitarians
00:34:23.640
may deserve the title you know of the first silicon valley techno religion but as the technology
00:34:31.360
matures and delivers more and more achievements and power i think we'll see more and more of that
00:34:38.440
especially because you know again in contrast to ancient religions like christianity or the religion
00:34:45.840
of ancient egypt when you needed to postpone most of your desires to the afterlife the immense attraction
00:34:54.520
of of the new technologies is that they promised to fulfill all these miracles here here and here and now in
00:35:03.280
this very life on earth now whether they managed to to do it or not it's a different question of course
00:35:08.680
but the temptation is i think immense the difference here it really does strike me as a difference is that
00:35:15.840
the technology that promises this kind of rapturous fulfillment of all human desire exists to a
00:35:24.040
considerable degree even now and we are noticing it while it creates these benefits the benefits of
00:35:32.040
intelligent technology and automation it is creating the very harms that will make people more and more
00:35:43.500
desperate to find something to anchor them take automation as the the narrow case the consequences of
00:35:52.040
automation i think unarguably at this point will be a kind of relentless loss of the need for human
00:36:02.460
labor right there are jobs that will go away that will never be replaced and in the limit when you get
00:36:07.940
perfect perfect automation and perfect ai we have a total change of just the purpose of human life and
00:36:14.800
people will not be able to find their meaning anymore in work because there is no need for human work in the
00:36:22.780
same way that there's there's virtually no need for horses to work now and if you gave me a horse i
00:36:28.060
wouldn't know what to do with it i mean if you gave me a free horse you would just be imposing a cost on
00:36:33.140
me right whereas a century ago there were i think 28 million horses working in the u.s and they were
00:36:38.680
indispensable so if you buy the fact that we are moving towards something like in the best case i mean
00:36:45.480
this is this is to be desired and this is this is a matter of success you know if we don't destroy
00:36:50.200
ourselves with technology we will be putting ourselves out of a job then the the challenges of wealth
00:36:56.900
inequality and and you know how to spread this wealth around and developing the political and
00:37:02.820
ethical norms that will get people to want to do that that's a huge challenge and you'll have vast
00:37:09.220
numbers of people who are looking for meaning in their lives and you know obviously that's a problem
00:37:15.460
now it's been a problem for thousands of years but it's a problem that most people haven't had to
00:37:20.420
confront very directly because the burden has been on them to spend most of their lives working
00:37:25.800
and that's something that seems to be going away again if we succeed if it doesn't go away it means
00:37:31.980
we have created some chaos for ourselves that will will be intolerable for other reasons so tell me
00:37:38.980
about your views on wealth inequality here and the implications of automation and artificial intelligence
00:37:46.940
for the future i'll speak first about inequality and then about the problem of meaning which i think is
00:37:53.560
is that he was amazing if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation you'll need to
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