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The first of a series that's really been done
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in response to the current political upheaval.
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I don't know about you,
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I've become quite concerned about the growing divisiveness in this country
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and in the world.
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And I'm going to talk about the political upheaval
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and the political upheaval of the past.
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And I'm going to talk about the political upheaval of the past.
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And I'm going to talk about the political upheaval of the past.
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And I'm going to talk about the political upheaval of the past.
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And I'm going to talk about the political upheaval of the past.
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And I'm going to talk about the political upheaval of the past.
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And I'm going to talk about the political upheaval of the past.
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And I'm going to talk about the political upheaval of the past.
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And I'm going to talk about the political upheaval of the past.
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And I'm going to talk about the political upheaval of the past.
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And I'm going to talk about the political upheaval of the past.
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And I'm going to talk about the political upheaval of the past.
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And I'm going to talk about the political upheaval of the past.
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This is a mind right here that thinks pretty much like no one else on the planet,
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I would hasten to say.
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I'm serious.
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I'm serious.
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He synthesizes history with underlying ideas
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in a way that kind of takes your breath away.
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So some of you will know this book, Sapiens.
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Has anyone here read Sapiens?
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I mean, I could not put it down.
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The way that he tells the story of mankind
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through big ideas that really make you think differently about the world,
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it's kind of amazing.
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And here's the follow-up,
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which I think is being published in the US next week.
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Yeah, next week.
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Homo Deus.
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Now, this is the history of the next hundred years.
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I've had a chance to read it.
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It's extremely dramatic.
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And I dare say, for some people, quite alarming.
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It's a must-read.
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And honestly, we couldn't have someone better
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to help make sense of what on earth is happening in the world right now.
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So a warm welcome, please,
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to Yuval Noah Harari.
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(*Applause*)
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It's great to be joined by our friends on Facebook and around the web.
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Hello, Facebook.
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And all of you, as I start asking questions of Yuval,
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come up with your own questions.
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And not necessarily about the political scandal du jour,
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but about the broader understanding of where are we heading.
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You ready? OK, we're going to go.
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So here we are, Yuval. New York City, 2017.
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There's a new president in power,
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and shockwaves rippling around the world.
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What on earth is happening?
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I think the basic thing that happens is that we have lost our story.
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Humans think in stories,
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and we try to make sense of the world by telling stories.
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And for the last few decades,
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we had a very simple and very attractive story
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about what's happening in the world.
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And the story said that, oh, what's happening is
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that the economy is being globalized,
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politics is being liberalized,
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and the combination of the two will create paradise on earth.
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And we just need to keep on globalizing the economy
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and liberalizing the political system,
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and everything will be wonderful.
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And 2016 is the moment when a very large segment,
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even of the Western world, stopped believing in this story.
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For good or bad reason, doesn't matter.
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People stopped believing in the story.
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And when you don't have a story, you don't understand what's happening.
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Part of you believes that that story was actually a very effective story.
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It worked.
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To some extent, yes.
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I mean, according to some measurements,
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we are now in the best time ever for humankind.
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Today, for the first time in history,
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more people die from eating too much than from eating too little,
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which is an amazing achievement.
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(*Laughter*)
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Also, for the first time in history,
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more people die from old age than from infectious diseases.
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And violence is also down.
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For the first time in history, more people commit suicide
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than are killed by crime and terrorism and war put together.
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Statistically, you are your own worst enemy.
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At least from all the people in the world,
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you're most likely to be killed by yourself.
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(*Laughter*)
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Which is, again, very good news compared...
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(*Laughter*)
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compared to the level of violence that we saw in previous eras.
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But this process of connecting the world
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ended up with a large group of people kind of feeling left out.
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And they've reacted,
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and so we have this bombshell that's sort of ripping through the whole system.
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I mean, how do you make of what's happened?
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It feels like the old way that people thought of politics,
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you know, the left-right divide, has been blown up and replaced.
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How should we think of this?
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Yeah, the old 20th century political model of left versus right
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is now largely irrelevant.
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And the real divide today is between global and national,
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global or local.
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And you see it, again, all over the world,
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that this is now the main struggle.
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We probably need completely new political models
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and completely new ways of thinking about politics.
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In essence, what you can say is that we now have global ecology,
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we have a global economy,
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but we have national politics.
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And this doesn't work together.
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This makes the political system ineffective,
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because it has no control over the forces that shape our life.
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And you have basically two solutions to this imbalance.
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Either de-globalize the economy and turn it back into a national economy,
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or globalize the political system.
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So, some, I guess many liberals out there,
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view Trump and his government as kind of irredeemably bad,
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just awful in every way.
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Do you see any underlying narrative or political philosophy in there
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that is at least worth understanding?
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How would you articulate that philosophy?
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Is it just the philosophy of nationalism?
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I think the underlying feeling or idea
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is that the political system, something is broken there.
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It doesn't empower the ordinary person anymore.
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It doesn't care so much about the ordinary person anymore.
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And I think this diagnosis of the political disease is correct.
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With regard to the answers, I'm far less certain.
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I think what we are seeing is the immediate use of the word
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and what we are seeing is the immediate human reaction.
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If something doesn't work, let's go back.
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And you see it all over the world that people,
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almost nobody in the political system today
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has any future-oriented vision of where humankind is going.
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Almost everywhere you see retrograde vision.
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Let's make America great again.
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Like, it was great, I don't know, in the 50s, in the 80s,
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sometime, let's go back there.
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And you go to Russia,
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so 100 years after Lenin,
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Putin's vision for the future is basically,
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oh, let's go back to the Tsarist empire.
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And in Israel, where I come from,
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the hottest political vision of the present
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is, let's build a temple again.
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So let's go back 2,000 years backwards.
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So people are thinking,
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sometime in the past, we've lost it,
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and sometimes in the past, like you lost your way in the city,
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and you say, okay, let's go back to the point
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where I felt secure and start again.
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And I don't think this can work,
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but a lot of people, this is their gut instinct.
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CA But why couldn't it work?
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I mean, America First is a very appealing slogan in many ways.
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Patriotism is in many ways a very noble thing.
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It's played a role in promoting cooperation among large numbers of people.
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Why couldn't you have a world organized in countries,
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all of which put themselves first?
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CA For many centuries, even thousands of years,
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our patriotism worked quite well.
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Of course, it led to wars and so forth,
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but we shouldn't focus too much on the bad.
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There are also many, many positive things about patriotism
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and the ability to have a large number of people care about each other,
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sympathize with one another,
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and come together for collective action.
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If you go back to the First Nations,
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so thousands of years ago,
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the people who lived along the Yellow River in China,
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it was many, many different tribes.
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And they all depended on the river for survival and for prosperity,
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but all of them also suffered from periodical floods
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and periodical droughts.
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And no tribe could really do anything about it,
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because each of them controlled just a tiny section of the river.
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And then in a long and complicated process,
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the tribes coalesced together to form the Chinese nation,
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which controlled the entire Yellow River
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and had the ability to bring hundreds of thousands of people together
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to build dams and canals and regulate the river
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and prevent the worst floods and droughts
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and raise the level of prosperity for everybody.
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And this worked in many places around the world.
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But in the 21st century,
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technology is changing all that in a fundamental way.
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We are now living, all people in the world
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are living alongside the same cyber river.
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And no single nation can regulate this river by itself.
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We are all living together in a single planet,
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which is threatened by our own actions.
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And if you don't have some kind of global cooperation,
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nationalism just is not on the right level
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to tackle the problems of whether it's climate change
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or whether it's technological disruption.
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CA So it was a beautiful idea in a world
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where most of the action, most of the issues,
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took place on a national scale.
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But your argument is that the issues that matter most today
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no longer take place on a national scale, but on a global scale.
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CA Exactly.
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All the major problems of the world today are global.
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In essence.
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And they cannot be solved unless through some kind of global cooperation.
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It's not just climate change,
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which is like the most obvious example people give.
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I think more in terms of technological disruption.
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If you think about, for example, artificial intelligence,
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over the next 20, 30 years,
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pushing hundreds of millions of people out of the job market,
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this is a problem on a global level.
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It will disrupt the economy of all the countries.
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And similarly, if you think about, say, bioengineering
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and people being afraid of conducting,
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I don't know, genetic engineering research on humans,
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it won't help if just a single country, let's say the US,
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outlaws all genetic experiments on humans.
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But China or North Korea continues to do it.
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So the US cannot solve it by itself.
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And very quickly, the pressure on the US to do the same will be immense
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because we are talking about high-risk, high-gain technologies.
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If somebody else is doing it,
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I can't allow myself to remain behind.
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The only way to have regulations,
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effective regulations,
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on things like genetic engineering,
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is to have global regulations.
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If you just have national regulations,
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nobody would like to stay behind.
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So this is really interesting.
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It seems to me this may be one key to provoking
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at least a constructive conversation between the different sides here.
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Because I think everyone can agree that the start point
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of a lot of the anger that's propelled us to where we are
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is because of the legitimate concerns about job loss.
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Work has gone, a traditional way of life has gone.
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And it's no wonder that people are furious about that.
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And in general, they have blamed the sort of globalism,
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the global elites for doing this to them without asking their permission.
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And that seems like a legitimate complaint.
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But what I hear you saying is that ...
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So a key question is, what is the real cause of job loss,
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both now and going forward?
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To the extent that it's about globalism,
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then the right response, yes, is to shut down borders
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and keep people out and change trade agreements and so forth.
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But you're saying, I think, that actually the bigger cause of job loss
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is not going to be that at all.
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It's going to originate in technological questions.
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And we have no chance of solving that unless we operate as a connected world.
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Yeah, I think that ...
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I don't know about the present, but looking to the future,
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it's not the Mexicans or Chinese who will take the jobs
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from the people in Pennsylvania.
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It's the robots and algorithms.
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So unless you plan to build a big wall on the border of California,
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the wall on the border with Mexico is going to be very ineffective.
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And I was struck when I watched the debates before the elections,
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I was struck that certainly Trump did not even attempt to frighten people
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by saying, the robots will take your jobs.
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Now, even if it's not true, it doesn't matter.
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It could have been an extremely effective way of frightening people
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and galvanizing people.
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The robots will take your jobs.
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Nobody used that line.
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And it made me afraid,
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because it meant that no matter what happens in universities and laboratories,
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and there there is already an intense debate about it,
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but in the mainstream political system and among the general public,
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people are just unaware
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that there could be an immense technological disruption,
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not in 200 years,
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but in 10, 20, 30 years.
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And we have to do something about it now,
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partly because most of what we teach children today in school or in college
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is going to be completely irrelevant to the job market of 2040, 2050.
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So it's not something we'll need to think about in 2040.
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We need to think today what to teach the young people.
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CA Yeah, no, absolutely.
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I mean, you've often written about moments in history
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where humankind has entered a new era kind of unintentionally.
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Like, decisions have been made, technology has been developed,
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and suddenly the world has changed.
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And it may possibly be in a way that's worse for everyone.
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So one of the examples you've given, Sapiens,
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is even the whole agricultural revolution,
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which for an actual person tilling the fields,
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they just picked up a 12-hour backbreaking workday
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instead of six hours in the jungle
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in a much more interesting lifestyle.
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CA Mm-hmm.
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CA So are we at another possible phase change here,
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where we kind of sleepwalk into a future that none of us actually wants?
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CA Yes, very much so.
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During the agricultural revolution,
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what happened is that an immense technological and economic revolution
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empowered the human collective.
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But when you look at actual individual lives,
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the life of a tiny elite became much better,
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and the life of the majority of people became considerably worse.
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And this can happen again in the 21st century.
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No doubt, the new technologies will empower the human collective.
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But we may end up, again, with a tiny elite
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ripping all the benefits, taking all the fruits,
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and the masses of the population finding themselves worse
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than they were before,
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certainly much worse than this tiny elite.
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CA And those elites might not even be human elites.
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They might be cyborgs or ...
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CA They could be enhanced superhumans,
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they could be cyborgs,
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they could be completely non-organic elites,
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they could even be non-conscious algorithms.
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What we see now in the world is authority shifting away
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from humans to algorithms,
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more and more decisions about personal lives,
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about economic matters, about political matters.
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It's actually being taken by algorithms.
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If you ask the bank for a loan,
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chances are your fate is decided by an algorithm,
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not by a human being.
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And the general impression is that maybe homo sapiens just lost it.
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The world is so complicated.
17:08.080 --> 17:09.660
There is so much data.
17:10.280 --> 17:12.220
Things are changing so fast
17:12.240 --> 17:15.780
that this thing that evolved on the African savanna
17:15.800 --> 17:17.540
tens of thousands of years ago
17:17.540 --> 17:21.000
to cope with a particular environment,
17:21.020 --> 17:24.560
a particular volume of information and data,
17:24.580 --> 17:28.920
it just can't handle the realities of the 21st century.
17:28.940 --> 17:31.840
And the only thing that may be able to handle it
17:31.860 --> 17:33.960
is big data algorithms.
17:33.980 --> 17:37.320
So no wonder that more and more authority
17:37.340 --> 17:39.980
is shifting from us to the algorithms.
17:40.740 --> 17:42.200
CA So we're in New York City
17:42.220 --> 17:46.900
for the first of a series of TED dialogues with Yuval Harari.
17:47.540 --> 17:50.880
And there's a Facebook Live audience out there.
17:50.900 --> 17:52.600
We're excited to have you with us.
17:52.620 --> 17:55.280
We're going to start coming to some of your questions
17:55.300 --> 17:58.320
and questions of people in the room in just a few minutes,
17:58.340 --> 17:59.620
so have those coming.
18:00.580 --> 18:03.480
Yuval, if you're going to make the argument
18:03.500 --> 18:05.520
that we need to get past nationalism
18:05.540 --> 18:12.880
because of the coming technological danger, in a way,
18:12.900 --> 18:14.920
presented by so much of what's happening,
18:14.940 --> 18:17.520
so we've got to have a global conversation about this.
18:17.540 --> 18:19.920
It's really hard to get people really believing
18:19.940 --> 18:22.960
that AI really is an imminent threat and so forth.
18:22.980 --> 18:25.760
The things that people, some people at least,
18:25.780 --> 18:28.400
care about much more and much more immediately, perhaps,
18:28.420 --> 18:30.520
is climate change and perhaps other issues
18:30.540 --> 18:34.480
like refugees, nuclear weapons and so forth.
18:34.500 --> 18:39.440
How would you argue that, in where we are right now,
18:39.460 --> 18:43.040
that somehow those issues need to be dialed up?
18:43.060 --> 18:45.240
You've talked a lot about climate change,
18:45.240 --> 18:48.860
but I mean, Trump has said he doesn't believe in that.
18:48.880 --> 18:51.300
So in a way, your most powerful argument,
18:51.320 --> 18:54.100
you can't actually use to make this case.
18:54.120 --> 18:56.220
Yeah, I think with climate change,
18:56.240 --> 19:00.060
at first sight, it's quite surprising
19:00.080 --> 19:02.660
that there is a very close correlation
19:02.680 --> 19:05.940
between nationalism and climate change.
19:05.960 --> 19:07.220
I mean, almost always,
19:07.240 --> 19:10.580
the people who deny climate change are nationalists.
19:10.600 --> 19:12.660
And at first sight, you think, why?
19:12.680 --> 19:13.900
What's the connection?
19:13.900 --> 19:16.760
Why don't you have socialists denying climate change?
19:16.780 --> 19:19.120
But then when you think about it, it's obvious.
19:19.140 --> 19:22.880
Because nationalism has no solution to climate change,
19:22.900 --> 19:26.440
if you want to be a nationalist in the 21st century,
19:26.460 --> 19:28.000
you have to deny the problem.
19:28.020 --> 19:30.920
If you accept the reality of the problem,
19:30.940 --> 19:34.040
then you must accept that, yes, there is still room in the world
19:34.060 --> 19:35.360
for patriotism,
19:35.380 --> 19:40.640
there is still room in the world for having special loyalties and obligations
19:40.640 --> 19:44.100
towards your own people, towards your own country.
19:44.120 --> 19:47.980
I don't think anybody is really thinking of abolishing that.
19:48.000 --> 19:50.980
But in order to confront climate change,
19:51.000 --> 19:55.220
we need additional loyalties and commitments
19:55.240 --> 19:57.300
to a level beyond the nation.
19:57.320 --> 19:59.700
And this should not be impossible,
19:59.720 --> 20:03.420
because people can have several layers of loyalty.
20:03.440 --> 20:05.860
You can be loyal to your family,
20:05.880 --> 20:07.380
and to your community,
20:07.400 --> 20:08.740
and to your nation.
20:08.740 --> 20:12.360
So why can't you be also loyal to humankind as a whole?
20:12.380 --> 20:16.360
Of course, there are occasions when it becomes difficult
20:16.380 --> 20:18.040
what to put first,
20:18.060 --> 20:19.560
but you know, life is difficult.
20:19.580 --> 20:20.720
Handle it.
20:20.740 --> 20:21.920
!
20:21.940 --> 20:23.520
Laughter
20:23.540 --> 20:28.200
OK, so I would love to get some questions from the audience here.
20:28.220 --> 20:30.560
We've got a microphone here, speak into it,
20:30.580 --> 20:32.960
and Facebook, get them coming too.
20:32.980 --> 20:36.240
So one of the things that has clearly made a huge difference
20:36.260 --> 20:37.720
in this country and other countries
20:37.720 --> 20:40.380
is the income distribution inequality,
20:40.400 --> 20:44.740
the dramatic change in income distribution in the US
20:44.760 --> 20:47.500
from what it was 50 years ago and around the world.
20:47.520 --> 20:50.580
Is there anything that we can do to affect that?
20:50.600 --> 20:53.320
Because that gets at a lot of the underlying causes.
20:56.040 --> 21:01.500
So far, I haven't heard a very good idea about what to do about it.
21:01.520 --> 21:05.340
Again, partly because most ideas remain on the national level,
21:05.360 --> 21:07.100
and the problem is global.
21:07.100 --> 21:10.000
I mean, one idea that we hear quite a lot about now
21:10.020 --> 21:11.960
is universal basic income.
21:11.980 --> 21:13.080
But this is a problem.
21:13.100 --> 21:14.680
I mean, I think it's a good start,
21:14.700 --> 21:18.520
but it's a problematic idea because it's not clear what universal is,
21:18.540 --> 21:20.400
and it's not clear what basic is.
21:20.420 --> 21:23.840
Most people, when they speak about universal basic income,
21:23.860 --> 21:26.020
they actually mean national basic income.
21:26.820 --> 21:28.200
But the problem is global.
21:28.220 --> 21:32.040
Let's say that you have AI and 3D printers
21:32.060 --> 21:35.040
taking away millions of jobs in Bangladesh
21:35.080 --> 21:38.460
of all the people who make my shirts and my shoes.
21:38.480 --> 21:39.780
So what's going to happen?
21:39.800 --> 21:46.380
The US government will leave high taxes on Google and Apple in California
21:46.400 --> 21:51.020
and use that to pay basic income to unemployed Bangladeshis.
21:51.040 --> 21:52.460
If you believe that,
21:52.480 --> 21:56.980
you can just as well believe that Santa Claus will come and solve the problem.
21:57.800 --> 22:02.540
So unless we have really universal and not national basic income,
22:02.580 --> 22:05.680
the deep problems are not going to go away.
22:05.700 --> 22:08.440
And also, it's not clear what basic is.
22:08.460 --> 22:11.080
Because what are basic human needs?
22:11.100 --> 22:13.960
A thousand years ago, just food and shelter was enough.
22:13.980 --> 22:17.480
But today, people will say education is a basic human need.
22:17.500 --> 22:19.080
It should be part of the package.
22:19.100 --> 22:20.280
But how much?
22:20.300 --> 22:24.840
Six years, 12 years, PhD, similarly with health care.
22:24.860 --> 22:27.520
Let's say that in 20, 30, 40 years,
22:27.540 --> 22:32.320
you'll have expensive treatments that can extend human life to 120.
22:32.320 --> 22:33.380
I don't know.
22:33.400 --> 22:38.300
Would this be part of the basket of basic income or not?
22:38.320 --> 22:39.900
It's a very difficult problem,
22:39.920 --> 22:46.140
because in a world when people lose their ability to be employed,
22:46.160 --> 22:49.820
the only thing they're going to get is this basic income.
22:49.840 --> 22:54.900
So what's part of it is a very, very difficult ethical question.
22:54.920 --> 22:58.300
And there's a bunch of questions on how the world affords it as well.
22:58.320 --> 23:00.060
Who pays? The numbers are daunting.
23:00.140 --> 23:02.800
There's a question here from Facebook from Lisa Larson.
23:02.820 --> 23:04.920
How does nationalism in the US now
23:04.940 --> 23:09.860
compare to that between World War I and World War II in the last century?
23:09.900 --> 23:14.280
The good news, with regard to the dangers of nationalism,
23:14.300 --> 23:18.720
we are in a much better position than a century ago.
23:18.740 --> 23:20.960
A century ago, 1917,
23:20.980 --> 23:24.100
Europeans were killing each other by the millions.
23:25.300 --> 23:27.240
In 2016, with Brexit,
23:27.240 --> 23:30.340
as far as I remember, a single person lost her life,
23:30.360 --> 23:33.740
an MP who was murdered by some extremist.
23:33.760 --> 23:35.260
Just a single person.
23:35.280 --> 23:38.020
I mean, if Brexit was about British independence,
23:38.040 --> 23:42.840
this is the most peaceful war of independence in human history.
23:42.880 --> 23:48.580
And let's say that Scotland will now choose to leave the UK
23:48.600 --> 23:50.780
after Brexit.
23:50.800 --> 23:52.780
So in the 18th century,
23:52.780 --> 23:56.000
if Scotland wanted, and the Scots wanted several times,
23:56.020 --> 23:59.640
to break out of the control of London,
23:59.660 --> 24:02.000
the reaction of the government in London
24:02.020 --> 24:05.320
was to send an army up north to burn down Edinburgh
24:05.340 --> 24:07.360
and massacre the Highland tribes.
24:07.380 --> 24:12.960
My guess is that if in 2018 the Scots vote for independence,
24:12.980 --> 24:16.360
the London government will not send an army up north
24:16.380 --> 24:18.000
to burn down Edinburgh.
24:18.040 --> 24:22.300
Very few people are now willing to kill or be killed
24:22.320 --> 24:24.760
for Scottish or for British independence.
24:25.800 --> 24:30.060
So for all the talk of the rise of nationalism
24:30.080 --> 24:34.420
and going back in the 1930s or to the 19th century,
24:34.440 --> 24:36.140
in the West at least,
24:36.160 --> 24:40.500
the power of national sentiments today
24:40.520 --> 24:44.220
is far, far smaller than it was a century ago.
24:44.220 --> 24:46.040
Although some people now,
24:46.060 --> 24:49.720
you hear publicly worrying about whether that might be shifting,
24:49.740 --> 24:54.440
and that there could actually be outbreaks of violence in the US,
24:54.460 --> 24:56.600
depending on how things turn out.
24:56.620 --> 25:00.440
Should we be worried about that, or do you really think things have shifted?
25:00.460 --> 25:01.800
No, we should be worried.
25:01.820 --> 25:04.040
I think we should be worried of two things.
25:04.060 --> 25:05.800
First of all, don't be hysterical.
25:05.820 --> 25:08.760
We are not back in the First World War yet.
25:08.780 --> 25:11.720
But on the other hand, don't be complacent.
25:12.160 --> 25:13.260
There is no ...
25:13.280 --> 25:17.140
We reached from 1917 to 2017
25:17.160 --> 25:19.340
not by some divine miracle,
25:19.360 --> 25:21.380
but simply by human decisions.
25:21.400 --> 25:24.140
And if we now start making the wrong decisions,
25:24.160 --> 25:30.060
we could be back in an analogous situation to 1917 in a few years.
25:30.080 --> 25:32.420
One of the things I know as a historian
25:32.440 --> 25:36.020
is that you should never underestimate human stupidity.
25:36.020 --> 25:39.640
It's one of the most powerful forces in history,
25:39.660 --> 25:41.960
is human stupidity and human violence.
25:41.980 --> 25:45.960
Humans do such crazy things for no obvious reason.
25:45.980 --> 25:47.880
But again, at the same time,
25:47.900 --> 25:51.440
another very powerful force in history is human wisdom.
25:51.460 --> 25:52.680
We have both.
25:52.700 --> 25:55.680
We have with us here moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt,
25:55.700 --> 25:57.440
who I think has a question.
25:57.460 --> 25:59.240
OK, well, thanks, Yuval.
25:59.260 --> 26:02.200
So you seem to be a fan of global governance,
26:02.220 --> 26:04.400
but when you look at the map of the world,
26:04.720 --> 26:08.220
but when you look at the map of the world from Transparency International,
26:08.240 --> 26:11.620
which rates the level of corruption of political institutions,
26:11.640 --> 26:14.780
it's a vast sea of red with little bits of yellow here and there
26:14.800 --> 26:16.540
for those with good institutions.
26:16.560 --> 26:18.900
So if we were to have some kind of global governance,
26:18.920 --> 26:21.660
what makes you think that it would end up being more like Denmark
26:21.680 --> 26:23.860
rather than more like Russia or Honduras?
26:23.880 --> 26:27.300
And aren't there alternatives, such as we did with CFCs?
26:27.320 --> 26:30.420
I mean, there are ways to solve global problems with national governments.
26:30.440 --> 26:32.540
What would world government actually look like,
26:32.560 --> 26:34.340
and why do you think it would work?
26:34.660 --> 26:36.940
Well, I don't know how it would look like.
26:38.300 --> 26:41.020
Nobody still has a model for that.
26:41.780 --> 26:44.160
The main reason we need it
26:44.180 --> 26:48.480
is because many of these issues are lose-lose situations.
26:48.500 --> 26:51.320
I mean, when you have a win-win situation like trade,
26:51.340 --> 26:54.280
both sides can benefit from a trade agreement,
26:54.300 --> 26:56.440
then this is something you can work out
26:56.460 --> 26:58.800
without some kind of global government.
26:58.820 --> 27:01.840
National governments each have an interest in doing it.
27:01.860 --> 27:04.200
But when you have a lose-lose situation,
27:04.200 --> 27:05.700
like with climate change,
27:05.720 --> 27:07.540
it's much more difficult
27:07.560 --> 27:12.460
without some overarching authority, real authority.
27:12.480 --> 27:15.180
Now, how to get there and how would it look like,
27:15.200 --> 27:16.400
I don't know.
27:17.440 --> 27:20.940
And certainly, there is no obvious reason to think
27:20.960 --> 27:24.380
that it would look like Denmark or that it would be a democracy.
27:25.000 --> 27:26.940
Most likely, it wouldn't.
27:26.980 --> 27:34.300
We don't have workable democratic models for a global government.
27:35.220 --> 27:38.080
So maybe it would look more like ancient China
27:38.100 --> 27:39.880
than like modern Denmark.
27:39.900 --> 27:45.160
But still, given the dangers that we are facing,
27:45.180 --> 27:50.160
I think the imperative of having some kind of real ability
27:50.180 --> 27:54.400
to force through difficult decisions on the global level
27:54.440 --> 27:58.120
is more important than almost anything else.
27:59.560 --> 28:01.500
There's a question from Facebook here,
28:01.520 --> 28:03.340
and then we'll get the mic to Andrew.
28:03.360 --> 28:07.460
So Kat Haber on Facebook, calling in from Vale,
28:07.480 --> 28:11.520
how will developed nations manage the millions of climate migrants?
28:12.800 --> 28:13.980
I don't know.
28:14.000 --> 28:18.060
And I don't think that they know either.
28:18.080 --> 28:20.660
I mean, they'll just deny the problem, maybe.
28:20.680 --> 28:23.380
But immigration generally is another example of a problem
28:23.380 --> 28:25.960
that's very hard to solve on a nation-by-nation basis.
28:25.980 --> 28:27.680
One nation can shut its doors,
28:27.700 --> 28:30.540
but maybe that stores up problems for the future.
28:31.140 --> 28:34.360
Yes, it's another very good case,
28:34.380 --> 28:38.600
especially because it's so much easier to migrate today
28:38.620 --> 28:42.340
than it was in the Middle Ages or in ancient times.
28:42.380 --> 28:46.760
Yvon, there's a belief among many technologists, certainly,
28:46.780 --> 28:49.160
that political concerns are kind of overblown,
28:49.160 --> 28:53.420
that actually political leaders don't have that much influence in the world,
28:53.440 --> 28:57.180
that the real determination of humanity at this point
28:57.200 --> 28:59.380
is by science, by invention, by companies,
28:59.400 --> 29:03.900
by many things other than political leaders,
29:03.920 --> 29:06.300
and it's actually very hard for leaders to do much.
29:06.320 --> 29:08.800
So we're actually worrying about nothing here.
29:09.960 --> 29:13.540
Well, first, it should be emphasized that it's true,
29:13.560 --> 29:17.300
that political leaders' ability to do good is very limited,
29:17.300 --> 29:20.280
but their ability to do harm is unlimited.
29:20.300 --> 29:22.900
There is a basic imbalance here.
29:23.780 --> 29:26.480
You can still press the button and blow everybody up.
29:26.500 --> 29:28.120
You have that kind of ability.
29:28.140 --> 29:31.720
But if you want, for example, to reduce inequality,
29:31.740 --> 29:33.560
that's very, very difficult.
29:33.580 --> 29:36.840
But to start a war, you can still do so very easily.
29:36.860 --> 29:40.520
So there is a built-in imbalance in the political system today,
29:40.540 --> 29:42.200
which is very frustrating,
29:42.220 --> 29:44.600
that you cannot do a lot of good,
29:44.620 --> 29:47.100
but you can still do a lot of harm.
29:47.100 --> 29:51.040
And this makes the political system still a very big concern.
29:51.780 --> 29:53.840
CA So as you look at what's happening today
29:53.860 --> 29:55.480
and putting your historian's hat on,
29:55.500 --> 29:59.280
do you look back in history at moments when things were going just fine
29:59.300 --> 30:04.420
and an individual leader really took the world or their country backwards?
30:05.260 --> 30:07.880
RL Oh, there are quite a few examples,
30:07.900 --> 30:10.720
but I should emphasize, it's never an individual leader.
30:10.740 --> 30:12.640
I mean, somebody put him there,
30:12.660 --> 30:15.640
and somebody allowed him to continue to be there.
30:15.640 --> 30:19.820
So it's never really just the fault of a single individual.
30:19.840 --> 30:23.580
There is a lot of people behind every such individual.
30:23.600 --> 30:27.760
CA Can we have the microphone here, please, Andrew?
30:31.040 --> 30:33.980
Q You've talked a lot about the global versus the national,
30:34.000 --> 30:35.540
but increasingly, it seems to me
30:35.560 --> 30:38.820
that the world situation is in the hands of identity groups.
30:38.840 --> 30:42.900
We look at people within the United States who have been recruited by ISIS.
30:42.920 --> 30:45.220
We look at these other groups which have formed,
30:45.220 --> 30:49.400
which go outside of national bounds but still represent significant authorities.
30:49.420 --> 30:51.880
How are they to be integrated into the system,
30:51.900 --> 30:55.600
and how is a diverse set of identities to be made coherent
30:55.620 --> 30:58.060
under either national or global leadership?
30:59.420 --> 31:02.640
RL Well, the problem of such diverse identities
31:02.660 --> 31:04.780
is a problem from nationalism as well.
31:05.660 --> 31:09.640
Nationalism believes in a single, monolithic identity,
31:09.660 --> 31:13.720
and in an exclusive, or at least the more extreme versions of nationalism,
31:13.720 --> 31:17.300
believe in an exclusive loyalty to a single identity.
31:17.320 --> 31:20.260
And therefore, nationalism has had a lot of problems
31:20.280 --> 31:23.460
with people wanting to divide their identities
31:23.480 --> 31:25.220
between various groups.
31:25.240 --> 31:30.520
So it's not just a problem, say, from a global vision.
31:30.560 --> 31:34.840
And I think that, again, history shows that
31:35.800 --> 31:40.540
you shouldn't necessarily think in such exclusive terms.
31:40.540 --> 31:43.920
If you think that there is just a single identity for a person,
31:43.940 --> 31:45.920
I'm just X, that's it.
31:45.940 --> 31:49.000
I can't be several things, I can be just that.
31:49.020 --> 31:50.620
That's the start of the problem.
31:52.100 --> 31:57.080
You have religions, you have nations that sometimes demand exclusive loyalty,
31:57.100 --> 31:58.920
but it's not the only option.
31:58.940 --> 32:01.240
There are many religions and many nations
32:01.260 --> 32:05.120
that enable you to have diverse identities at the same time.
32:05.160 --> 32:09.540
But is one explanation of what's happened in the last year
32:09.560 --> 32:14.820
that a group of people have got fed up with, if you like,
32:14.840 --> 32:18.020
the liberal elites, for want of a better term,
32:18.040 --> 32:21.420
obsessing over many, many, many different identities,
32:21.440 --> 32:22.660
and then feeling,
32:22.680 --> 32:24.180
but what about my identity?
32:24.200 --> 32:26.060
I am being completely ignored here,
32:26.080 --> 32:29.300
and by the way, I thought I was the majority.
32:29.320 --> 32:31.960
And that's actually sparked a lot of the anger.
32:32.880 --> 32:35.980
Identity is always problematic,
32:36.000 --> 32:40.420
because identity is always based on fictional stories
32:40.440 --> 32:43.840
that sooner or later collide with reality.
32:43.880 --> 32:45.340
Almost all identities,
32:45.360 --> 32:50.340
I mean, beyond the level of the basic community of a few dozen people,
32:50.360 --> 32:52.220
are based on a fictional story.
32:52.240 --> 32:53.900
They are not the truth.
32:53.920 --> 32:55.180
They are not the reality.
32:55.200 --> 32:58.140
It's just a story that people invent and tell one another
32:58.160 --> 32:59.360
and start believing.
32:59.520 --> 33:04.100
And therefore, all identities are extremely unstable.
33:04.120 --> 33:06.740
They are not a biological reality.
33:06.760 --> 33:08.700
I mean, sometimes nationalists, for example,
33:08.720 --> 33:11.620
think that the nation is a biological entity.
33:11.640 --> 33:15.260
It's made of the combination of soil and blood,
33:15.280 --> 33:17.100
creates the nation.
33:17.120 --> 33:19.040
But this is just a fictional story.
33:20.040 --> 33:22.300
Soil and blood kind of makes a gooey mess.
33:22.320 --> 33:23.320
Uh ...
33:23.360 --> 33:27.580
It does, and also it messes with your mind
33:28.540 --> 33:33.400
when you think too much that I am a combination of soil and blood.
33:33.420 --> 33:36.680
If you look from a biological perspective,
33:36.700 --> 33:39.840
obviously none of the nations that exist today
33:39.860 --> 33:42.120
existed 5,000 years ago.
33:42.140 --> 33:45.880
Homo sapiens is a social animal, that's for sure.
33:45.900 --> 33:48.400
But for millions of years,
33:48.420 --> 33:51.120
homo sapiens and our hominid ancestors
33:51.140 --> 33:55.440
lived in small communities of a few dozen individuals.
33:55.460 --> 33:57.480
Everybody knew everybody else.
33:57.640 --> 34:01.740
Whereas in modern nations, our imagined communities,
34:01.760 --> 34:04.260
in the sense that I don't even know all these people.
34:04.280 --> 34:07.220
I mean, I come from a relatively small nation, Israel,
34:07.240 --> 34:09.020
and eight million Israelis,
34:09.040 --> 34:11.300
I never met most of them,
34:11.320 --> 34:13.940
I will never meet most of them.
34:13.960 --> 34:16.160
They basically exist here.
34:17.400 --> 34:21.620
But in terms of this identity, this group who feel left out,
34:21.640 --> 34:24.500
and perhaps work taken away,
34:24.580 --> 34:26.880
I mean, in Homo Deus,
34:26.900 --> 34:30.000
you actually speak of this group in one sense expanding,
34:30.020 --> 34:34.600
that so many people may have their jobs taken away by technology
34:34.620 --> 34:35.960
in some way,
34:35.980 --> 34:41.040
that we could end up with a really large, I think you call it a useless class,
34:41.060 --> 34:44.400
a class that traditionally, as viewed by the economy,
34:44.420 --> 34:46.400
these people have no use.
34:46.420 --> 34:50.200
How likely a possibility is that?
34:50.220 --> 34:53.040
Isn't that something we should be terrified about?
34:53.040 --> 34:55.660
Can we address it in any way?
34:55.680 --> 34:57.700
We should think about it very carefully.
34:57.720 --> 35:02.780
I mean, nobody really knows what the job market would look like in 2040, 2050.
35:02.800 --> 35:05.420
There is a chance many new jobs will appear,
35:05.440 --> 35:07.220
but it's not certain.
35:07.240 --> 35:09.420
And even if new jobs do appear,
35:09.440 --> 35:14.500
it won't necessarily be easy for a 50-year-old unemployed truck driver
35:14.520 --> 35:17.460
made unemployed by self-driving vehicles.
35:17.480 --> 35:21.140
It won't be easy for an unemployed truck driver
35:21.180 --> 35:26.120
to reinvent himself or herself as a designer of virtual worlds.
35:26.140 --> 35:30.840
I mean, previously, if you look at the trajectory of the Industrial Revolution,
35:30.860 --> 35:34.280
when machines replaced humans in one type of work,
35:34.300 --> 35:38.720
the solution usually came from low-skill work
35:38.740 --> 35:41.280
in new lines of business.
35:41.300 --> 35:44.720
So you didn't need any more agricultural workers,
35:44.740 --> 35:50.200
so people moved to working in low-skill industrial jobs.
35:50.200 --> 35:53.740
And when this was taken away by more and more machines,
35:53.760 --> 35:56.740
people moved to low-skill service jobs.
35:56.760 --> 36:00.060
Now, when people say there will be new jobs in the future,
36:00.080 --> 36:02.300
that humans can do better than AI,
36:02.320 --> 36:04.140
that humans can do better than robots,
36:04.160 --> 36:07.020
they usually think about high-skilled jobs,
36:07.040 --> 36:10.900
like software engineers designing virtual worlds.
36:10.920 --> 36:16.420
Now, I don't see how an unemployed cashier from Walmart
36:16.460 --> 36:21.040
reinvents herself or himself at 50 as a designer of virtual worlds,
36:21.060 --> 36:26.040
and certainly I don't see how the millions of unemployed Bangladeshi textile workers
36:26.060 --> 36:27.680
will be able to do that.
36:27.700 --> 36:29.320
I mean, if they are going to do it,
36:29.340 --> 36:32.680
we need to start teaching the Bangladeshis today
36:32.700 --> 36:34.520
how to be software designers,
36:34.540 --> 36:35.760
and we are not doing it.
36:35.780 --> 36:38.280
So what will they do in 20 years?
36:38.300 --> 36:42.320
CA It feels like you're really highlighting a question
36:42.340 --> 36:45.440
that's really been bugging me almost the last few months,
36:45.440 --> 36:47.060
more and more.
36:47.080 --> 36:49.260
It's almost a hard question to ask in public,
36:49.280 --> 36:51.940
but if any mind has some wisdom to offer in it,
36:51.960 --> 36:54.300
maybe it's yours, so I'm going to ask you.
36:54.320 --> 36:56.200
What are humans for?
36:57.160 --> 36:59.140
CA As far as we know, for nothing.
36:59.160 --> 37:04.060
I mean, there is no great cosmic drama,
37:04.080 --> 37:06.340
some great cosmic plan,
37:06.360 --> 37:09.220
that we have a role to play in it.
37:09.240 --> 37:12.340
And we just need to discover what our role is
37:12.360 --> 37:15.340
and then play to the best of our ability.
37:15.340 --> 37:20.320
This has been the story of all religions and ideologies and so forth,
37:20.340 --> 37:23.760
but as a scientist, the best I can say, this is not true.
37:23.780 --> 37:28.820
There is no universal drama with a role in it for homo sapiens.
37:31.060 --> 37:33.560
CA I'm going to push back on you, just on that minute,
37:33.580 --> 37:34.920
just from your own book,
37:34.940 --> 37:36.120
because in Homo Deus,
37:36.140 --> 37:41.040
you give really one of the most coherent and understandable accounts
37:41.060 --> 37:43.440
about sentience, about consciousness,
37:43.520 --> 37:46.300
and that unique sort of human skill.
37:46.320 --> 37:48.780
You point out that it's different from intelligence,
37:48.800 --> 37:51.180
the intelligence that we're building in machines.
37:51.200 --> 37:53.960
And there's actually a lot of mystery around it.
37:54.880 --> 37:58.300
How can you be sure there's no purpose
37:58.320 --> 38:02.420
when we don't even understand what this sentience thing is?
38:02.440 --> 38:04.020
I mean, in your own thinking,
38:04.040 --> 38:06.180
isn't there a chance that what humans are for
38:06.200 --> 38:09.220
are to be the universe's sentient things,
38:09.240 --> 38:12.780
you know, to be the centers of joy and love and happiness and hope?
38:12.780 --> 38:15.800
And maybe we can build machines that actually help amplify that,
38:15.820 --> 38:18.600
even if they're not going to become sentient themselves.
38:18.620 --> 38:19.760
Is that crazy?
38:19.780 --> 38:22.360
I kind of find myself hoping that, reading your book.
38:22.380 --> 38:24.200
CA Well, I certainly think
38:24.220 --> 38:27.080
that the most interesting question today in science
38:27.100 --> 38:29.520
is the question of consciousness and the mind.
38:29.540 --> 38:34.320
We are getting better and better in understanding the brain and intelligence,
38:34.340 --> 38:39.240
but we are not getting much better in understanding the mind and consciousness.
38:39.240 --> 38:42.500
People often confuse intelligence and consciousness,
38:42.520 --> 38:44.940
especially in places like Silicon Valley,
38:44.960 --> 38:48.740
which is understandable, because in humans, they go together.
38:48.760 --> 38:52.300
I mean, intelligence basically is the ability to solve problems.
38:52.320 --> 38:55.100
Consciousness is the ability to feel things,
38:55.120 --> 39:00.120
to feel joy and sadness and boredom and pain and so forth.
39:00.160 --> 39:02.740
In homo sapiens and all other mammals as well,
39:02.760 --> 39:04.020
it's not unique to humans.
39:04.040 --> 39:06.860
In all mammals and birds and some other animals,
39:06.900 --> 39:09.560
intelligence and consciousness go together.
39:09.580 --> 39:13.120
We often solve problems by feeling things,
39:13.140 --> 39:14.720
so we tend to confuse them.
39:14.740 --> 39:16.200
But there are different things.
39:16.220 --> 39:19.280
What's happening today in places like Silicon Valley
39:19.300 --> 39:22.920
is that we are creating artificial intelligence,
39:22.940 --> 39:24.800
but not artificial consciousness.
39:24.820 --> 39:28.160
There has been an amazing development in computer intelligence
39:28.180 --> 39:29.720
over the last 50 years,
39:29.740 --> 39:33.960
and exactly zero development in computer consciousness,
39:34.000 --> 39:35.340
and there is no indication
39:35.360 --> 39:38.680
that computers are going to become conscious anytime soon.
39:40.160 --> 39:45.700
So first of all, if there is some cosmic role for consciousness,
39:45.720 --> 39:48.060
it's not unique to homo sapiens.
39:48.080 --> 39:50.460
Cows are conscious, pigs are conscious,
39:50.480 --> 39:53.180
chimpanzees are conscious, chickens are conscious.
39:53.200 --> 39:54.780
So if we go that way,
39:54.800 --> 39:57.180
first of all, we need to broaden our horizons
39:57.200 --> 39:58.780
and remember very clearly,
39:58.800 --> 40:01.980
we are not the only sentient beings on Earth.
40:02.000 --> 40:03.740
And when it comes to sentience,
40:03.740 --> 40:05.800
I mean, when it comes to intelligence,
40:05.820 --> 40:07.320
there is good reason to think
40:07.340 --> 40:10.400
we are the most intelligent of the whole bunch.
40:10.420 --> 40:12.920
But when it comes to sentience,
40:12.940 --> 40:16.120
to say that humans are more sentient than whales
40:16.140 --> 40:20.320
or more sentient than baboons or more sentient than cats,
40:20.340 --> 40:22.520
I see no evidence for that.
40:22.540 --> 40:26.360
So first step is you go in that direction, expand.
40:26.380 --> 40:30.280
And then the second question of what is it for,
40:30.300 --> 40:32.040
I would reverse it,
40:32.080 --> 40:36.380
and I would say that I don't think sentience is for anything.
40:36.400 --> 40:40.540
I think we don't need to find our role in the universe.
40:40.560 --> 40:46.380
The really important thing is to liberate ourselves from suffering.
40:46.400 --> 40:49.340
What characterizes sentient beings
40:49.360 --> 40:53.260
in contrast to robots, to stones, to whatever,
40:53.280 --> 40:57.140
is that sentient beings suffer or can suffer.
40:57.160 --> 40:59.500
And what they should focus on
40:59.500 --> 41:03.720
is not finding their place in some mysterious cosmic drama.
41:03.740 --> 41:07.600
They should focus on understanding what suffering is,
41:07.620 --> 41:10.660
what causes it and how to be liberated from it.
41:11.500 --> 41:14.720
I know this is a big issue for you, and that was very eloquent.
41:14.740 --> 41:18.360
We're going to have a blizzard of questions from the audience here
41:18.380 --> 41:22.660
and maybe from Facebook as well, and maybe some comments as well.
41:22.700 --> 41:24.160
All right, so let's go quick.
41:24.180 --> 41:25.580
There's one right here.
41:26.580 --> 41:29.640
Put your hands, keep hands held up at the back if you want the mic,
41:29.660 --> 41:31.160
and we'll get it back to you.
41:31.180 --> 41:34.160
So in your work, you talk a lot about the fictional stories
41:34.180 --> 41:37.440
that we accept as truth, and we live our lives by it.
41:37.460 --> 41:39.880
As an individual, knowing that,
41:39.900 --> 41:43.640
how does it impact the stories that you choose to live your life?
41:43.660 --> 41:46.780
And do you confuse them with the truth, like all of us?
41:46.820 --> 41:48.040
Mm.
41:48.060 --> 41:49.200
I try not to.
41:49.220 --> 41:52.200
I mean, for me, maybe the most important question,
41:52.220 --> 41:54.560
both as a scientist and as a person,
41:54.720 --> 41:58.580
is how to tell the difference between fiction and reality.
41:58.600 --> 42:01.220
Because reality is there.
42:01.240 --> 42:03.100
I'm not saying that everything is fiction.
42:03.120 --> 42:05.260
It's just very difficult for human beings
42:05.280 --> 42:08.020
to tell the difference between fiction and reality.
42:08.040 --> 42:12.900
And it has become more and more difficult as history progressed,
42:12.920 --> 42:15.780
because the fictions that we have created,
42:15.800 --> 42:18.700
nations and gods and money and corporations,
42:18.720 --> 42:20.180
they now control the world.
42:20.200 --> 42:21.540
So just to even think that,
42:21.560 --> 42:24.460
oh, this is just all fictional entities that we've created,
42:24.460 --> 42:26.040
it's very difficult.
42:26.060 --> 42:27.740
But reality is there.
42:28.860 --> 42:30.320
For me, the best ...
42:30.340 --> 42:34.120
There are several tests to tell the difference
42:34.140 --> 42:35.920
between fiction and reality.
42:35.940 --> 42:39.320
The simplest one, the best one, that I can say in short,
42:39.340 --> 42:40.960
is the test of suffering.
42:40.980 --> 42:42.920
If it can suffer, it's real.
42:42.940 --> 42:44.800
If it can't suffer, it's not real.
42:44.820 --> 42:46.320
A nation cannot suffer.
42:46.340 --> 42:47.920
That's very, very clear.
42:47.940 --> 42:49.840
Even if a nation loses a war,
42:49.860 --> 42:53.920
we say Germany suffered a defeat in the First World War.
42:53.920 --> 42:54.940
It's a metaphor.
42:54.960 --> 42:56.300
Germany cannot suffer.
42:56.320 --> 42:57.740
Germany has no mind.
42:57.760 --> 42:59.460
Germany has no consciousness.
42:59.480 --> 43:01.300
Germans can suffer, yes.
43:01.320 --> 43:02.980
But Germany cannot.
43:03.000 --> 43:06.100
Similarly, when a bank goes bust.
43:06.120 --> 43:07.820
So the bank cannot suffer.
43:07.840 --> 43:11.260
When the dollar loses its value, the dollar doesn't suffer.
43:11.280 --> 43:12.420
People can suffer.
43:12.440 --> 43:13.580
Animals can suffer.
43:13.600 --> 43:14.740
This is real.
43:14.760 --> 43:19.180
So I would start, if you really want to see reality,
43:19.200 --> 43:21.380
I would go through the door of suffering.
43:21.420 --> 43:24.400
If you can really understand what suffering is,
43:24.420 --> 43:28.680
this will give you also the key to understand what reality is.
43:28.700 --> 43:31.640
CA There's a Facebook question here that connects to this,
43:31.660 --> 43:35.280
and it's from someone around the world in a language that I cannot read.
43:35.300 --> 43:36.640
It's Hebrew, there you go.
43:36.660 --> 43:38.160
Can you read the name?
43:38.180 --> 43:40.920
Olautelbach-Golin.
43:40.940 --> 43:42.720
CA Well, thank you for inviting me.
43:42.740 --> 43:47.320
The question is, is the post-truth era really a brand-new era,
43:47.320 --> 43:51.520
or just another climax or moment in a never-ending trend?
43:52.680 --> 43:55.940
OLAUTEBACH-GININ I don't connect to this idea of post-truth.
43:55.960 --> 43:58.540
My basic reaction as a historian,
43:58.560 --> 44:00.660
if this is the era of post-truth,
44:00.680 --> 44:02.820
when the hell was the era of truth?
44:02.840 --> 44:04.020
CA Right.
44:04.040 --> 44:05.240
OLAUTEBACH-GININ
44:05.280 --> 44:09.980
What is it, the 1980s, the 1950s, the Middle Ages?
44:10.000 --> 44:14.820
I mean, we always lived in an era in a way of post-truth.
44:14.840 --> 44:16.980
CA But I'd push back on that,
44:16.980 --> 44:21.160
because I think what people are talking about is that there was a world
44:21.180 --> 44:26.840
when you had fewer journalistic outlets,
44:26.860 --> 44:30.200
where there were traditions that things were fact-checked.
44:30.220 --> 44:34.520
It was sort of incorporated into the charter of those organizations
44:34.540 --> 44:36.680
that the truth mattered.
44:36.700 --> 44:40.680
So if you believe in a reality, then what you write is information.
44:40.700 --> 44:44.720
There was a belief that that information should connect to a reality in a real way,
44:44.720 --> 44:46.380
and I think that's a good point.
44:46.400 --> 44:47.860
I think that's a good point.
44:47.880 --> 44:49.380
I think that's a good point.
44:49.400 --> 44:51.100
I think that's a good point.
44:51.120 --> 44:52.740
I think that's a good point.
44:52.760 --> 44:54.260
I think that's a good point.
44:54.280 --> 44:55.860
I think that's a good point.
44:55.880 --> 44:57.380
I think that's a good point.
44:57.400 --> 44:58.980
I think that's a good point.
44:59.000 --> 45:00.460
I think that's a good point.
45:00.480 --> 45:02.180
I think that's a good point.
45:02.200 --> 45:03.780
I think that's a good point.
45:03.800 --> 45:05.460
I think that's a good point.
45:05.480 --> 45:07.140
I think that's a good point.
45:07.160 --> 45:08.900
I think that's a good point.
45:08.920 --> 45:10.700
I think that's a good point.
45:10.720 --> 45:12.460
I think that's a good point.
45:12.740 --> 45:18.420
And it's now easier to disseminate both truth and fiction and falsehood.
45:18.460 --> 45:19.760
It goes both ways.
45:19.780 --> 45:24.640
It's also much easier, though, to spread the truth than it was ever before.
45:24.660 --> 45:28.240
But I don't think there is anything essentially new
45:28.260 --> 45:33.000
about this disseminating fictions and errors.
45:33.020 --> 45:34.840
I mean, there is nothing that, I don't know,
45:34.860 --> 45:37.080
Gebel's, Joseph Gebel's, didn't know
45:37.080 --> 45:42.500
about all this idea of fake news and false truth.
45:42.520 --> 45:46.260
He famously said that if you repeat a lie often enough,
45:46.280 --> 45:48.180
people will think it's the truth,
45:48.200 --> 45:50.740
and the bigger the lie, the better.
45:50.760 --> 45:52.740
Because people won't even think that,
45:52.760 --> 45:56.540
oh, something so big can be a lie.
45:56.560 --> 46:02.460
And I think that fake news have been with us for thousands of years.
46:02.480 --> 46:04.140
Just think of the Bible.
46:04.140 --> 46:10.720
But there is a concern that fake news is associated with tyrannical regimes,
46:10.740 --> 46:13.400
and that when you see an uprise in fake news,
46:13.420 --> 46:15.880
that is a canary in the coal mine,
46:15.900 --> 46:18.340
that there may be dark times coming.
46:20.500 --> 46:27.600
Yeah, I mean, the intentional use of fake news is a disturbing sign.
46:27.620 --> 46:30.240
But I'm not saying that it's not bad,
46:30.260 --> 46:32.400
I'm just saying that it's not new.
46:32.760 --> 46:35.540
So there's a lot of interest in Facebook on this question
46:35.560 --> 46:39.840
about global governance versus nationalism.
46:41.240 --> 46:42.780
Question here from Phil Dennis.
46:42.800 --> 46:46.180
How do we get people, governments to relinquish power?
46:46.200 --> 46:47.360
Is that ...
46:49.040 --> 46:52.220
It's actually the text, it's so big I can't even read the full question,
46:52.240 --> 46:53.380
but is that a necessity?
46:53.400 --> 46:55.960
Is it going to take war to get there?
46:56.000 --> 46:59.700
Sorry, Phil, I mangled your question, but I blame the text right here.
46:59.740 --> 47:04.160
One option that some people talk about is that only a catastrophe
47:04.180 --> 47:06.600
can shake humankind
47:06.620 --> 47:11.960
and open the path to a real system of global governance.
47:11.980 --> 47:16.000
And they say that we can't do it before the catastrophe,
47:16.020 --> 47:18.800
but we need to start laying the foundations
47:18.820 --> 47:23.060
so that when the disaster strikes, we can react quickly.
47:23.900 --> 47:27.440
But people will just not have the motivation to do such a thing
47:27.460 --> 47:29.660
before the disaster strikes.
47:30.180 --> 47:33.660
Another thing that I would emphasize is that
47:33.700 --> 47:37.040
anybody who is really interested in global governance
47:37.060 --> 47:39.920
should always make it very, very clear
47:39.940 --> 47:46.480
that it doesn't replace or abolish local identities and communities,
47:46.500 --> 47:49.320
that it should come both at the same ...
47:49.340 --> 47:52.400
It should be part of a single package.
47:52.420 --> 47:53.440
CAOKEY SINGH
47:53.460 --> 47:54.920
So this is really ...
47:54.940 --> 47:56.280
I want to hear more on this,
47:56.300 --> 47:57.960
because the very words global governance
47:57.960 --> 48:01.180
are almost the epitome of evil
48:01.200 --> 48:05.100
in the mindset of a lot of people on the alt-right right now.
48:05.120 --> 48:08.220
It just seems scary, remote, distant, and it has let them down.
48:08.240 --> 48:11.500
And so globalists, global governance, no, go away.
48:12.440 --> 48:16.100
And many view the election as the ultimate sort of poke in the eye
48:16.120 --> 48:17.780
to anyone who believes in that.
48:17.800 --> 48:24.020
So how do we change the narrative so that it doesn't seem so scary and remote?
48:24.100 --> 48:29.640
Build more on this idea of being compatible with identity local communities.
48:29.660 --> 48:30.760
CAOKEY SINGH
48:30.780 --> 48:37.340
I think we should start really with the biological realities of homo sapiens.
48:38.100 --> 48:41.560
And biology tells us two things about homo sapiens
48:41.580 --> 48:43.920
which are very relevant to this issue.
48:43.940 --> 48:46.920
First of all, that we are completely dependent
48:46.940 --> 48:49.520
on the ecological system around us,
48:49.540 --> 48:52.880
and that today we are talking about a global system.
48:52.880 --> 48:54.420
You cannot escape that.
48:54.440 --> 48:55.740
And at the same time,
48:55.760 --> 48:58.060
biology tells us about homo sapiens,
48:58.080 --> 49:00.300
that we are social animals,
49:00.320 --> 49:04.520
but that we are social on a very, very local level.
49:05.200 --> 49:08.540
It's just a simple fact of humanity
49:08.560 --> 49:13.380
that we cannot have intimate familiarity
49:13.400 --> 49:17.120
with more than about 150 individuals.
49:17.160 --> 49:21.580
The size of the natural group,
49:21.600 --> 49:25.020
the natural community of homo sapiens,
49:25.040 --> 49:28.140
is not more than 150 individuals.
49:28.160 --> 49:30.020
And everything beyond that
49:30.040 --> 49:34.260
is really based on all kinds of imaginary stories
49:34.280 --> 49:36.580
and large-scale institutions.
49:36.600 --> 49:41.420
And I think that we can find a way,
49:41.440 --> 49:45.580
again, based on a biological understanding of our species,
49:45.580 --> 49:47.720
to weave the two together
49:47.740 --> 49:50.840
and to understand that today, the 21st century,
49:50.860 --> 49:54.080
we need both the global level
49:54.100 --> 49:56.360
and the local community.
49:56.380 --> 49:58.160
And I would go even further than that
49:58.180 --> 50:01.740
and say that it starts with the body itself.
50:02.460 --> 50:06.760
The feelings that people today have of alienation and loneliness
50:06.780 --> 50:10.020
and not finding their place in the world,
50:10.060 --> 50:16.220
I would think that the chief problem is not global capitalism.
50:16.260 --> 50:19.240
The chief problem is that over the last 100 years,
50:19.260 --> 50:23.200
people have been becoming disembodied,
50:23.220 --> 50:26.400
have been distancing themselves from their body.
50:26.420 --> 50:29.000
As a hunter-gatherer or even as a peasant,
50:29.020 --> 50:34.360
to survive, you need to be constantly in touch with your body
50:34.380 --> 50:36.440
and with your senses every moment.
50:36.460 --> 50:38.520
If you go to the forest to look for mushrooms
50:38.520 --> 50:41.180
and you don't pay attention to what you hear,
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to what you smell, to what you taste, you're dead.
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So you must be very connected.
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In the last 100 years,
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people are losing their ability
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to be in touch with their body and their senses,
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to hear, to smell, to feel.
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More and more attention goes to screens,
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to what is happening elsewhere some other time.
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This, I think, is the deep reason
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for the feelings of alienation and loneliness and so forth.
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And therefore, part of the solution
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is not to bring back some mass nationalism,
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but also to reconnect with our own bodies.
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And if you're back in touch with your body,
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you'll feel much more at home in the world also.
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CA Well, depending on how things go, we may all be back in the forest soon.
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We're going to have one more question in the room
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and one more on Facebook.
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Hello, I'm from Ghana, West Africa, and my question is,
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I'm wondering how do you present and justify the idea of global governance
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to countries that have been historically disenfranchised
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by the effects of globalization?
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And also, if we're talking about global governance,
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it also sounds to me like it will definitely come from a very westernized idea
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of what the global is supposed to look like.
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So how do we present and justify that idea of global versus wholistically,
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like wholly nationalist,
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to people in countries like Ghana and Nigeria and Togo
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and other countries like that?
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Thank you.
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CA I would start by saying that history is extremely unfair
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and that we should realize that
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many of the countries that suffered most from the last 200 years
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of globalization and imperialism and industrialization
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are exactly the countries
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which are also most likely to suffer most from the next wave.
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And we should be very, very clear about that.
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If we don't have global governance
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and if we suffer from climate change,
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from technological disruptions,
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the worst suffering will not be in the US.
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The worst suffering will be in Ghana,
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will be in Sudan,
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will be in Syria,
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will be in Bangladesh,
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will be in those places.
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So I think those countries have an even greater incentive
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to do something about the next wave of disruption,
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whether it's ecological or whether it's technological.
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Again, if you think about technological disruption,
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so if AI and 3D printers and robots will take the jobs
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from billions of people,
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I worry far less about the Swedes
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than about the people in Ghana or in Bangladesh.
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And therefore, because history is so unfair
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and the results of a calamity
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will not be shared equally between everybody,
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as usual, the rich will be able to get away
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from the worst consequences of climate change
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in a way that the poor will not be able to.
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CA And here's a great question from Cameron Taylor on Facebook.
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At the end of Sapiens,
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you said we should be asking the question,
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what do we want to want?
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Or what do you think we should want to want?
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I think we should want to want to know the truth,
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to understand reality.
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Mostly, what we want is to change reality,
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to fit it to our own desires, to our own wishes.
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And I think we should first want to understand it.
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If you look at the long-term trajectory of history,
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what you see is that for thousands of years,
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we humans have been gaining control of the world outside us
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and trying to shape it to fit our own desires.
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And we've gained control of the other animals,
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of the rivers, of the forests,
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and reshaped them completely,
54:49.460 --> 54:52.880
causing an ecological destruction
54:52.920 --> 54:56.000
without making ourselves satisfied.
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So the next step is we turn our gaze inwards
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and we say, okay,
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gaining control of the world outside us did not really make us satisfied,
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let's now try to gain control of the world inside us.
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This is the really big project of science and technology and industry
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in the 21st century
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will be to try and gain control of the world inside us,
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to learn how to engineer and produce bodies and brains and minds.
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These are likely to be the main products of the 21st century economy.
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When people think about the future,
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very often they think in terms of,
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oh, I want to gain control of my body and of my brain.
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And I think that's very dangerous.
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If we've learned anything from our previous history,
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it's that, yes, we gained the power to manipulate,
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but because we didn't really understand the complexity
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of the ecological system,
55:52.080 --> 55:54.960
we are now facing an ecological meltdown.
55:55.000 --> 56:00.420
And if we now try to re-engineer the world inside us
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without really understanding it,
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especially without understanding the complexity of our mental system,
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we might cause a kind of internal ecological disaster,
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and we'll face a kind of mental meltdown inside us.
56:15.080 --> 56:17.820
But putting all the pieces together here,
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the current politics, coming technology,
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concerns like the one you've just outlined,
56:22.360 --> 56:25.740
it seems like you yourself are in quite a bleak place
56:25.760 --> 56:27.220
when you think about the future.
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You're pretty worried about it.
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Is that right?
56:30.160 --> 56:33.660
And if there was one cause for hope,
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how would you state that?
56:36.800 --> 56:41.020
I focus on the more dangerous possibilities,
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partly because this is like my job or responsibility
56:43.740 --> 56:45.720
as a historian or a social critic.
56:45.740 --> 56:50.320
I mean, the industry focuses mainly on the positive sides.
56:50.340 --> 56:53.840
So it's the job of historians and philosophers and sociologists
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to highlight the more dangerous potential of all these new technologies.
56:58.340 --> 57:00.880
I don't think any of that is inevitable.
57:00.900 --> 57:04.000
Technology is never deterministic.
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You can use the same technology to create very different kinds of societies.
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If you look at the 20th century,
57:11.600 --> 57:15.100
so the technologies of the Industrial Revolution,
57:15.120 --> 57:17.660
the trains and electricity and all that
57:17.680 --> 57:20.700
could be used to create a communist dictatorship
57:20.720 --> 57:23.500
or a fascist regime or a liberal democracy.
57:23.520 --> 57:26.060
The trains did not tell you what to do with them.
57:26.080 --> 57:30.380
Similarly, now, artificial intelligence and bioengineering and all that,
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they don't predetermine a single outcome.
57:35.440 --> 57:37.820
Humanity can rise up to the challenge.
57:38.020 --> 57:41.640
And the best example we have of humanity rising up
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to the challenge of a new technology is nuclear weapons.
57:45.260 --> 57:48.720
In the late 40s, 50s,
57:48.740 --> 57:51.640
many people were convinced that sooner or later,
57:51.660 --> 57:54.560
the Cold War will end in a nuclear catastrophe
57:54.580 --> 57:56.640
destroying human civilization.
57:56.660 --> 57:58.040
And this did not happen.
57:58.060 --> 58:04.480
In fact, nuclear weapons prompted humans all over the world
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to change the way that they manage international politics,
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to reduce violence.
58:11.720 --> 58:16.860
And many countries basically took out war from their political toolkit.
58:16.880 --> 58:21.540
They no longer try to pursue their interests with warfare.
58:21.560 --> 58:24.820
Not all countries have done so, but many countries have.
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And this is maybe the most important reason
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why international violence has declined dramatically since 1945.
58:34.980 --> 58:39.900
And today, as I said, more people commit suicide than are killed in war.
58:40.980 --> 58:45.400
So this, I think, gives us a good example
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that even the most frightening technology,
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humans can rise up to the challenge,
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and actually, some good can come out of it.
58:54.840 --> 58:59.400
The problem is, we have very little margins for error.
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If we don't get it right,
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we might not have a second option to try again.
59:06.320 --> 59:07.780
That's a very powerful note,
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on which I think we should draw this to conclusion.
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Before I wrap up, I just want to say one thing to people here
59:14.120 --> 59:16.820
and to the global TED community watching online,
59:16.840 --> 59:18.400
anyone watching online.
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Help us with these dialogues.
59:22.340 --> 59:24.920
If you believe, like we do,
59:24.940 --> 59:27.880
that we need to find a different kind of conversation,
59:27.900 --> 59:30.240
now more than ever, help us do it.
59:30.260 --> 59:33.180
You know, reach out to other people,
59:33.220 --> 59:35.720
try and have conversations with people you disagree with,
59:35.740 --> 59:38.760
understand them, pull the pieces together
59:38.780 --> 59:42.600
and help us figure out how to take these conversations forward
59:42.620 --> 59:47.700
so that we can make a real contribution to what's happening in the world right now.
59:48.580 --> 59:52.280
I think everyone feels more alive, more concerned, more ...
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engaged with the politics of the moment.
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The stakes do seem quite high.
59:58.320 --> 01:00:03.020
So help us respond to it in a wise, wise way.
01:00:03.040 --> 01:00:04.540
Yuval Harari, thank you.
01:00:04.540 --> 01:00:05.760
Thank you.
01:00:05.780 --> 01:00:06.960
Thank you.
01:00:06.980 --> 01:00:08.160
Thank you.