Hi, I'm Rashida Jones. Hi, I'm Bill Gates. And we're here to ask the big questions. The, what is the strangest lie? You've ever heard about yourself. Well, this thing that I was involved in creating the coronavirus, I don't think it gets much stranger than that. Why do you think? People think that about
To. Well, if you want a villain, it helps. If they have more money than a human should have. And they think of themselves. As overly clever stuff is overly. Absolutely many. People have a fear that the vaccine will cause a lot of harm or maybe that the goal of the vaccine is somehow tracking people with the microchip with some connection to 5G. So,
Those conspiracies, in the turn, the effort of the foundation to save lives almost on its Cod are the craziest things I've ever heard about myself. Yes. So why would people tell those lies? What does the incentive to lie? Specifically about that? Well, vaccines are given to kids when they're very young and so that's not too surprising because you're in a very vulnerable period and it's not intuitive this idea of sticking metal needles in the kids.
Arms, which, you know, they cry, the idea that that literally is eradicated smallpox and save millions of lives. I mean, it's done more to improve human health than anything else and it's not that they're all perfect. They have to be made very carefully. They have to be trialed, but the net benefit of vaccines is mind-blowing.
So I know that generally you're probably a true Seeker, but is there one lie that you believe? Well, I certainly believe that Innovation can solve problems and you know, I've been spoiled in that, you know, the early work I did in software, worked out the health stuff that our foundation has done is worked out. And so even though I know it's not guaranteed when a problem comes along that there's some
Solution. I tell myself there is we just have to work hard enough to find the right. Brilliant people and give them resources and we can solve any problem, which is a grand over simplification, you know, other people come and tell me. Well, even if you invent this vaccine, it's hard to get it out there and all the complexity but that grand over simplification. I will let you just invent something to solve it. That's kind of my Creed. I do feel like that would be a Common Thread for people who are successful as they have to.
Lewd themselves on some level that something is possible to then make it possible and take risks. I mean, like, working on an HIV vaccine, the whole field is for the last decade. It's all been dead ends and yet we still get up and say, hey, let's put billions of dollars into that. And yes, we will succeed, you know, so stubbornness can be a virtue, but it's partly by not acknowledging. The fact that
Might completely. Never never get anywhere. Right? What's a lie that helps you? Well, it's similar to you. It's a way to keep myself optimistic, which is that people are good at heart and that the people in charge are capable and more capable than I am. And it's something I'm still working on because I actually don't think that the latter is actually very helpful to me anymore. But I think believing that people are good at heart. Even if you
Even if it's not true, I think I have to keep believing that. No, that's important. So it feels like the person we really want to be talking to about lies and conspiracy theories is you've all know a Harari. Absolutely. You've all is such an independent thinker. I read all of his books. What's the big takeaway for you? When you read, you've always work. Well, sapiens helps us understand. What have we been struggling with in a disease, hunger War?
It makes us realize even though we're not completely done with those things. I mean our foundation is all about that disease piece, but boy, we have made so much progress and we can actually see that those will not be our daily concern. So this deep philosophical question of what do we do with all this progress? We've made what becomes meaningful and important when it's not those basic needs. I think he was profound at
Question that way. Yeah, totally. And I love this idea that he pinpoints, that humans are the only species on Earth that believe in things that they can't see ya. Whether it's government or religion or nationalism or philosophy or corporation that none of these things are actually true. They're just Concepts and that these structures give us meaning and that meaning helps us to create community and infrastructure and Innovation, simply because we believe in these kind of
Like, big Concepts, sometimes that's good. And sometimes that's bad. Sure. Most of the time it's bad in my opinion, but I really want to talk to him about how to navigate this. So let's bring them in now. You've all hi.
Thank you for inviting me. It's an honor to be
here. Thank you so much for being here. I'm Rashida. This is my friend Bill Gates. Hi, you think we're just born Liars, right?
I wouldn't say that. We are born Liars. I don't think lies are so important.
As I put the emphasis on inflictions, on fictional stories, which are not true, but they are not lies, in the sense that people do, believe them. They don't intentionally deceive each other. I think basically Youmans control the world because we cooperate better than any other animal.
And we cooperate better because we are so good at inventing and believing fictional stories. All large-scale human cooperation is based on inventing and believing fictional stories.
So what is the difference between a lie and and fiction or a myth Ally
is when, you know perfectly? Well, that something is not true. And you say it in order to deceive others? A fiction is a very often something that you really
Leave it and you tell it to other people not in order to deceive them and it can be something small or it can be something big like a religion or economic theory or a racial Theory. I think that both Nazis really believed the Nazi racial Theory and the same way that most people who believe in a particular religion. There are huge. They are sometimes Crooks but usually people really believe the stories that they spread.
It
around well in the current state of affairs. In this country. It's hard to know who is intentionally telling a lie or spreading a fiction or not that if you don't believe that the deaths are taking place. So you think that wearing a mask is a political statement, you know, mask compliance is lower because of some of these misunderstandings and lies. Yeah, you've all, do you think that we have leadership who's intentionally lying for?
Specific
result, you know, the best even if you want to lie, you need to convince people. And the best way to convince people is to believe the lie yourself. Well, it's not easy to know the difference between deceiving others and deceiving yourself very often even if people start by lying somewhere along the way, they start to believe their own
lies.
You would said in March and April that it's essential that people believe in science as this pandemic starts to grip the world. What do you think now? That so much misinformation? So many lies have been spread specifically about covid-19. What do you think now?
Well, it's still essential to believe science and, you know, things are not ideal, but we are in a better situation than in almost any previous time in history. I mean, I'm a medievalist.
Origin, and you compare the situation. Now, to what was happening during the Black Death? It's a completely different game. When the Black Death was ravaging Europe, and Asia, it killed between a third and half of all humans in those continents and nobody ever understood. What was happening. Not a Chinese, not the Indians, not the Muslims, not the Italians, not the British. Nobody understood what was happening. They had lots of
theories. It's an astrological theories about the planets. It's the Jews poisoning, the world, all kinds of things, not a single person. You what was actually happening. So, you know today, at least you have a couple of people who know what's happening. That's an
improvement. One thing that's novel here is that we have digital social media. Yes, and the speed with which kind of wild explanations spread both within countries and across the globe.
That is quite novel. Right? And I think eventually, you know, we will get enough people to take the vaccine. This thing will come to an end, but they'll be some US versus them. So it will fracture the progress towards thinking of all of humanity is being in the same situation and needing to work together. Yeah, you've all do you think that lies are more dangerous now than they've
ever been.
No, I mean, they are most dangerous in one sense that you manatees found more powerful. So lies that are believed by people with nuclear, weapons are more dangerous than lies that are believed by people with stone Spears. In that sense. Yes, it's more dangerous. But we need to take this in the ground. Historical perspective. People often confuse information with truth information isn't truth. A conspiracy theory is also
Formation every new tool for spreading information, is also a new tool for spreading lies and fictions. And conspiracies. You know, when the book was invented printing was invented, or at least came to Europe. It was invented much earlier in China, but when printing came to Europe, people think are the Scientific Revolution, you had new tone and Copernicus and people read reading about physics. No way. You know that one of the biggest best sellers was the Hammer of the witches.
Has. It was a do-it-yourself manual to identifying and killing witches. This salt far, far more than anything by Copernicus and Newton, or any of these guys do very well. Now. Yeah, people think about which hunting is Medieval even the most some witch hunting in the Middle Ages, but the really big time for witch-hunting was the 16th and 17th century. Exactly the same time as the Scientific Revolution. It's the early modern age.
And it was largely fueled by print people were printing all these ridiculous conspiracies and it was spreading faster than ever and people believed it. Because, you know, it's a book. Where are they? If you see it printed, it must be true. Yeah.
Yeah. So, do you think we want to know the truth or do you think we just want to be told something is the truth that is does actually a
lie. It depends on what kind of truth you're talking about. We need to separate two, kinds of Truth.
There is truth about controlling things outside like you want to hunt a giraffe. You want to know the truth about where giraffes go and what do they do? Great. You want to build an atom bomb? You want to know the truth about nuclear physics. If you believe got some conspiracy theory, you want to be able to have an atom bomb. That's very simple, but the other kind of Truth or the other kind of stories are the stories that enable it to control you.
And now the basis for society things like religions and ideologies and so forth, and hear the true. You don't need the truth for power.
Power is based on making a lot of people believe the same story. The truth, usually gets in the way and it's not true that if their story is not real, if the story is not true. It will not be effective. No way. You can have enormous Social Power by making. A lot of people believe in fiction,
right about there is something know where people seek overly simple explanations of okay, this bad person, cause
This thing, you know kind of this US versus them. So the lies do have a certain pattern to them that make them kind of satisfying despite their lack of Truth.
Definitely. I mean, usually the whole Mark of conspiracy theories and things like that. They are simple. The world is complicated when you asked earlier about whether people want to know the truth. The two biggest problems with the truth is first at the
Ruth is often unpleasant, right? And painful to know about it. The truth about me. It was about somebody else. Okay, but the truth about me is often painful to know and it's complicated like just to understand what a virus is like try to explain that a virus. It's not a living organism. It's basically just a bit of information its biological code and how does it causes an epidemic? It's very complicated. Right? Our minds, our brains, our lazy.
We have been adopted by Evolution to understanding certain very complicated things, especially in terms of social relations. When it comes to social relations. We are geniuses because evolutionarily, when you lived in a small hunter-gatherer band, this is what you needed to know, above everything else, in order to survive, social relations, who hates whom, who is conspiring against me in the tribe, but you had absolutely no idea.
That there are viruses or things like that. So our brains just didn't evolve to understand it. Now. We don't like things that are difficult to understand. We prefer things that are easy to understand. Now, compare trying to really understand the epidemiological chain of events leading from some bad to Youmans, and then spread over the world. And so complicated to the idea that the rig is it
Spira. See, there are a couple of billionaires who are doing all this to control the world. This is something that is very similar to what we used to do is hunter-gatherers find conspiracy in the tribe and and we like it because it makes us feel smart. I understand what's happening in the world. Where is if you talk about these viruses, you feel stupid, only this professors. They understand. I can't understand it. I
see the search for
Felicity but I also think as complicated as the truth is so are the fictions in the mythologies that we've based modern Humanity
on the usually, very simple. I mean, look, you look for example, for instance, you
throughout government corporations religion. There's its complex. There's so many stories being told at the same time,
corporations are complicated, which is why most people don't really understand
corporate structure. He's laughing too hard.
If you compare corporate low to religious mythology, religious mythology is much simpler than corporate law. You do something bad. You after you die. You get roasted by
demons, that's very simple. So the idea is that corporations are intentionally or complicated, but the way that they're seen by most of humanity are, it's pretty simple. Yeah, things like corporations come from that technocratic side. It comes fairly late in human history, you know.
Government. The idea of knowing the US government budget and the numbers, the percentage of people who are dealing with the complexity in a direct sense is very tiny, right? We always ask people what percentage of the government. Budget goes to foreign aid, to help poor countries, and they'll say five or ten percent. But, you know, they wish it was only like two or three percent. Well, in fact, it's less than 1%. So we always
Say Hey, you can have your wish but thank God, we trust other people because the percentage of us who actually understand corporations or you know, electricity or viruses or you know, government tax structures is pretty darn small. Let's get back to corporations for a second because I do feel like there's a lot of lies and mythology that corporations use to operate whether it's internally or externally whether it's
adding or whatever, but I kind of want to conduct a little thought experiment here and just ask you first bill what Microsoft is and then you've all I want to know what your answer is. Well, Microsoft is somewhat utilitarian, you know, we built really good products. We weren't just good at branding a say Coca-Cola or even Apple. Steve Jobs had a much more intuitive sense of branding and I was not good in a Microsoft.
Would have been more successful. If I'd had more skills in that area. I think you're okay. No, no, we're more, right? We were good at writing the code. That was our thing. We were just pure Engineers, pretty much eventually. We tried to develop the other skills, but the core was The Innovation evolve. What's your answer?
But Microsoft like all other corporations, it's a story. It's a story invented by these powerful shamans called lawyers.
The only place it exists is in our shared imagination with. It doesn't mean that corporations are not powerful. They are some of the most powerful things in the world, but they exist only in our in the stories. We tell in the, in our imagination. I mean, you can't touch it. I mean, you can't touch Microsoft. You can't see it. You can't smell it. You can't taste it. It's and you know, no other animal on earth knows that Microsoft exists. Now, you
And takes a a chimpanzee to visit Microsoft headquarter and the chimpanzee will be able to say, okay. There is a building here and there are people going in and out and there is a banana in the cafeteria, but the chimpanzee will never get it. Maybe that's because that this is my still
failed with branding. He
know the chimpanzee who doesn't know that there is Coca-Cola right there. I mean, it can drink Coca-Cola, of course, but the corporation Coca-Cola, this is something that only humans know.
No exist because it exists only in our imagination. It's a kind of it's a kind of collective
dream.
What about beyond that? The thing that Microsoft cells? What about software? I mean, is that it's not something we can touch, but it's something that people use, right? And they used together. Does that make it any more real
know? The software is is much more real it really does thinks in the world. So again, and of course the software is not the corporation, the judge, or the government can order the dissolution of Microsoft. That's it doesn't exist anymore.
Or but the software is still there.
Do you agree with that though? Yeah, I mean companies do have stories about, you know, what they believe in and their values that they use to motivate. So it's like a group trying to get each other excited and they might think they're competitors. Are, you know, less worthy than they are in some way. So there is type of a US versus them at least in kind of a sports type.
Let's go beat them thing inside the company and then this idea that some products try and say that, oh, if you use my product, you'll be more attractive or have more fun. Well, that's true. About Microsoft. Right? Well, yeah. We it's a, we try to keep that secret but it's true. Do you think you've all that is anything true? I mean, I know that sounds.
Yeah, certainly the rivers that are mountains. There are humans. I often say that the most
Nothing in the world is suffering. Suffering is often caused by the stories in which we believe we might believe some story in there for go to war. The story is in imagination in our own minds, but the casualties of the war, the dead people, the injured, the people who lost their loved ones, all this is 100% real,
and do you think that lying can also get us out of suffering? You don't believe all lies are bad.
I think I know that well enough from Reading you, but do you believe that lies are the way to also relieve suffering mythology, lies fiction?
That is a big difference between lies and fiction. When the pope is instructing. The faithful Around the World in Christian dogma. I don't think that the pope is lying. I think he really believes what he says. I mean, you know, there's been a lot of popes in the last 2000 years, maybe a
Couple of them were lying but I think most Pope's sincerely believed in what they were telling the faithful explaining it to themselves in all kinds of you know, maybe they don't believe exactly what they are saying to the common person having a foul more complicated theological explanation for what they are saying, but I don't think they were lying in the same way. If you talk about, you know, corporations and money and all that. It's not a lie. I mean, when, for example, you
The interest rate it's not a lie, but it is a fictional story. It exists only in the on in our imagination and many of these fictions. They can be extremely helpful, you know, even you think about something like playing football together. Obviously unlike religion in the case of football. Most people know that the rules were invented by us, but everybody needs to believe the same set of rules for at least 90.
Minutes in order to enjoy the game. Great. And there is nothing bad about that. I mean the problem starts when we forget. It's just a story We Invented and we start being enslaved by our own Creations, you know people think about Frankenstein that the idea of creating something and then being overtaken by it as a modern phenomenon. It's not technologically. Maybe it's new but humans have been enslaved.
If by their Creations for tens of thousands of years, by these stories that they create about the gods about Nations about money, they forget that we created them and then, you know, we are trapped inside the dreams of dead people.
Do you feel like your world view has has changed at all? Or do you feel like you just kind of keep feeding your same framework? And when was the last time you had like a major? Aha moment, where you read something or research, something that changed your worldview?
What it changes quite a lot. When I wrote sapiens. I there is nothing in sapiens. I think about computers certainly not about artificial intelligence, maybe a sentence hearing or there and after that, I started reading a lot.
And now, it's like 50% of what I do is just write and talk about Ai and machine learning. And what it's going to do that. I still, I have a very poor understanding of the technical side. I can't write a line of code, even if my life depended on it, but I try to understand what are the historical political even philosophical implications of all these Amazing
Inventions. Tell, kind of the flip side question to you, which is
You do have a grasp on science. And you do write code. How much do you think storytelling is a part of your work? Well, a lot of the foundation's work is trying to get the world to see what's going on in developing countries. And to think, okay, those deaths are tragedy even though they're not in my neighborhood. So, trying to up the number of scientists trying to solve the
These has of poor countries. The amount of resources that go into those things and the numbers don't do the job an audience responds, more. If I put up three pictures of children who died, then, if I say, you know, 3, million children died and so the storytelling of a hero in the field, you know, a mother who got her children to vaccination or a health worker, who got out to a village.
Humans are so boring and two stories. So the foundation, even though I love statistics, we have to couple the statistics with stories and, you know, we're trying to get better at that. So that these millions of deaths actually do get a tiny fraction of the world's resources applied to them.
What do you
think happens to humanity once computers algorithms artificial intelligence? However, we call it know, us better than we know ourselves. And of course you can say that it's not going to happen. There is all there will always be something about humans that no matter how much information. You have a computer will never be able to understand that. I find it hard to credit, but maybe that's your opinion, but I'm really
Want to go past that and think what happens deeply, not. When it falls into the hands of some malevolent dictator. People usually go to the dystopian scenario that you have this totalitarian regime. That follows everybody all the time. Knows everything about you and that's terribly and but let's leave it. The salutary snowed. It's not totalitarian regime. It's not be stopped in the system, is really in your favor. It's a benign system, but still it knows you better than, you know yourself.
And it can basically take all the important decisions in life for you. What to study, what music to listen, to which books to read, or, who to marry, what happens to human life in such a
situation. Yeah. I certainly think a software agent will eventually know you better than you know yourself for better than other humans do and the whole purpose of. Okay. Why do I learn things?
Why do I pick certain experiences? I mean, we have values. You could say that certain drugs, give you pleasurable experiences. And yet we find it abhorrent that somebody would, you know, sit there for a decade and just enjoy those drugs as opposed to get out. And, you know, make movies or write write books. This software agent will be able to engage you in such a
fulfilling way that it's a very sophisticated pleasure mechanism and then you'll have this deep philosophical question. The machines will be able to make enough food for us. What should we do? You know, when we organized socially to what purpose, I find the answers to when you get past, the thing that Evolution picked us to do well.
I don't know the answer to that.
How much time do you think we have until a computer can know me more or less? Better Than I Know
Myself. We're still a few inventions away this thing where we just scale up these machine Learning Systems. They don't represent knowledge and a deep enough way. The interesting test is when can a machine read a book and
Process that information say, take a test way, better than humans. We're not there yet. We don't know how to represent knowledge. But in the next certainly 50 years, the inventions that will let us do that either by cheating and looking at how Evolution did it in the brain or just inventing it. De, novo, that will happen. Then you get machines that are more expert than we are. And can
Take over in terms of inventing things and managing things in a way that really makes you question. The purpose of individual activity. I mean, if the machine is 10 times better, that's a little disheartening. Yeah, just a little disheartening. And the thing is
that we want to be able to understand how they make the decisions, because they make a decision in a completely different way than humans humans at least when we think
Think consciously, we can't take into account more than two, three. Four Salient points. Like if I'm a banker and you come to me and you asked me for a loan, then I will basically make my decision on the basis of 34. Salient features about you like your past credit history or if I'm biased or racist maybe on the basis of real race or gender. This is how humans do it. Now, the thing about AI it
Take into account, thousands and thousands of tiny data points. Like, at what time in the day, you came in to ask for a loan and it has a 0.07% influence on the decision, but it's they're great. Sometimes people say, okay, even when computers will make the decisions will have a low like in Europe with the GDP are that it has to be explained, like, humans have the right for an explanation. If you
You applied for it, for a loan. The bank said no, you have the right to get an explanation. Why the bank said, no, but this is completely irrelevant. Because the bank will say, well, we have this algorithm and the algorithm went over masses of data. If you want. We can print you all the data, but we can't make sense of it. We just trust our algorithm. The thing is that if the algorithm made a
Vision in the same way as humans. We wouldn't need it. People just have a human Banker. I wonder if you
you you've all and also you build, er, do you are you concerned about the autonomy of a I like what happens when they are. So sophisticated it. No longer feels like the relationship is US programming it. Eventually that will be an issue. I'm not sure there's much. We can do about it right now.
Eventually, the universe gets into this heat death thing where complex objects can't exist death thing. Okay, how much we should later think way out in the future, you know, and can we change that versus what is kind of real today about suffering and autonomy of humans versus other humans?
You know, if I ever figure out how to avoid that problem. Sure, but you can spend a lot of time on it without coming up with much and it's not imminent, but it is possible that will be delegating a lot in our sense of who we are and why we do, what we do will be deeply challenged by
that.
I agree that. I mean the kind of Hollywood science fiction, scenario of the robots are coming to kill us because they are evil and they want to take over the world. This is we don't need to worry about that. But in the other kind of autonomy, it's already here. I mean the idea that a bank won't give you a loan because an algorithm said no, this is not science fiction. This is reality increasingly in more and more parts of the world. And I think we should be concerned about
And coming back to where we started with all these conspiracy theories about covid-19. I think that you know, we shouldn't dismiss conspiracy theories too easily. They often represent deep and sometimes Justified, fears that humans have. Now the idea that covid-19 was created in order to implant people with computer chips to control them. This is ridiculous in many different ways.
But it represents a real and realistic fear of surveillance technology. And it is I think true that one of the consequences of the pandemic unintentional. I for a minute I don't think anybody planned it, but I think that it is a reality that we see a huge rise in the implementation and acceptance of surveillance technology all over the world.
And this understanding of these conspiracy theories. I actually think you know conspiracy theories is something. Somebody else has I never have conspiracy theories. I have legitimate concerns so I can and I think this is a legitimate concern that covid-19, even though it wasn't intended or planned, will result in much more surveillance of people,
right? You know, when people say that
What else? You know, given that in 2015 I talked about this pandemic they say okay, what else is worrisome about the future that we ought to be ready for? You know, of course climate change is one answer. There will be future pandemics. I do think bio. Terrorism is something the world isn't as worried about us. It should be. So if this idea of okay, the conspiracy theory that a human created, this thing led to brilliant Investments to prevent bioterrorism, then I'd actually say
Oh, wow, this conspiracy theory even though it was nuts, LED governments on our behalf to bring together lots of resources and experts. And it is a interesting trade-off that if you want to stop bio terrorism, there's a little bit of surveillance where you're watching. People in Laboratories trying to make sure, you know, so can you have benign surveillance like that to stop something very, very bad. Just like we watch
You know, the people who get to mess around the nuclear weapons. I hope we're have them under very serious surveillance. Well, that that there's a difference between surveilling people who are working in a lab and people are just walking down the street. You're right and I hope we can draw the line there. Yeah, we won't we probably thought I agree with you ball, in the sense that this will be an excuse to to do a wide, widespread surveillance operation. So we have that to look forward to
I want to get to something more hopeful because I don't want to end with global surveillance and dangerous AI. Does anybody want to say anything about the? I asked Bill earlier what he thinks about the world, the next 20 years and he feels pretty hopeful about life being better and they're being less suffering. You've all, do you think that? Do you feel like in the next 20 years? We will continue to see the trend of Life getting better.
For more people.
It completely
depends on us. I don't think that you can really predict the future. I don't think that history is moving in the deterministic direction. If you think about something like covid-19, you can react to it by generating hatred. Blaming it on foreigners and minorities by generating greed thinking. Okay. How about going to make a lot of money from it? And by generating ignorance is spreading in believing all these conspiracy.
Race and you can react in diametrically opposed Way by generating compassion. How can I can help other people in this emergency by generating generosity of contributing what you have and generating wisdom. So let's believe science. And let's use the opportunity to understand, for example, what a virus is and how an epidemic start and how it spreads. And if people react in this way, then it will make it.
Easier not only to deal with the present crisis, but with all future crises as well. And from this perspective, I think our biggest enemy now is not the virus. It's our own inner demons of hatred and greed and ignorance.
But are you willing to say that somebody born 20 years from our 40 years from now is likely to be better off than they are today?
Not necessarily because I don't think that history is
Being in a straight line. Okay, we have the example from, you know, if you lived in Europe in 1913, you thought that, okay. Then things are going to be continued like, in the previous 40 years and obviously, they didn't. I think that there is a possibility that people would look back. Certainly in the west. People look back at the period from say 1990 to 2015 as a kind of golden age.
And it's downhill from there, both in terms of the length of the of the ecology, but also of politics and and so forth, but I don't know again, histories is very unexpected. And again, as a story that I know that you should never underestimate human stupidity, but, you know, data and Science and all that. It's great, but you should never underestimate humans.
Stupidity. It's not Invincible. We have made a very significant progress in the last few centuries. It's important to realize it. There are some people who say there is no progress at all. And this is dangerous because then the message is that there is no point trying possible, rape. If everything that people did in the last century didn't improve our health, our education, the way we treat minorities and so forth, then it's probably
hopeless, right? And it's probably something in the laws of nature that prevent any kind of progress. So it's important to realize there has been very significant progress. Right? But this is not a reason for complacency. It's a reason for responsibility. It means that we can make even more progress.
You've all thank you so much for joining us and taking the time. And just, I just feel really honored to talk to you, and I said this to bill before, but if you wanted to start a cult, I would join it. I know you probably don't want to, but I'm there. Just know you have one member.
I'll think about
it. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Thank you. And thank you, Bill. Yeah, it was a great pleasure to did.
All say anything that surprised you you've lost this broad way of looking at things, that's really brilliant. Reminding us about fictions and how much of Modern Life Is So abstract, that's part of his Brilliance is to see that and, you know, a lot of those fictions are beneficial there. They're helpful to people. So it was really helpful to talk to you've all
out lies in a historical context because it's a reminder of How Far We've Come really. But I still worry that we're entering a super dangerous new territory and that we're living in a world that if I believe the sky is green, that I can find some sort of like, experts on the internet, who's going to back me up and tell me that I'm right. And that's actually the truth and in this era of fake news and so-called facts that exist to support pretty much.
Any crazy idea that you have is there really such thing as an absolute truth. And if there is, where do I find it? Their sources that aren't just trying to appeal to your outrage that really are trying to be factual and I hope we figure out how to encourage people to gravitate to those sources.
Has that are there to connect you to reality instead of what just sounds good? I think that's the point is, how do we get people to become truth? Seekers? Because I think we're at a place now where people think that they're seeking the truth, right? And then they're just going just as far as their nose and the people who say, yeah, you're right. The sky is green and they're like great. I did it. I found the truth. It's true. My truth is the truth. So we have to encourage people to seek out the truth in the car.
Like meaningful way and it's a lot to ask from people. It's not like the Public's getting less educated. They are fooled by some attractive memes, but, you know, Mass opinion isn't going to solve hard problems. And so to seek out experts and make sure those experts are put in charge. I'm hopeful that, you know, will keep improving.
Being health, care and education and reducing poverty. I remain worried but I do think that we need some better PR around experts. Yeah, like we need to guide people towards wanting experts and to believe in science. Yeah, and it's sad that, you know, one party thinks of the experts is sort of systemically against that we have to solve and maybe the experts need to change some to avoid that. Okay, focus watching you experts focus on Experts. We got to fix
The experts.
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