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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
EXPERTS ON EXPERT: Yuval Noah Harari
EXPERTS ON EXPERT: Yuval Noah Harari

EXPERTS ON EXPERT: Yuval Noah Harari

Armchair Expert with Dax ShepardGo to Podcast Page

Dax Shepard, Yuval Noah Harari
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30 Clips
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Oct 4, 2018
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Episode Summary
Episode Transcript
0:00
Hiller everybody. I'm Dax Shepard. This is R. An Acca Redman. That's me
0:06
and this is an episode of
0:08
experts on Expert and today's expert is a juicy one. You've all Harari. Your me talk all the time about both sapiens and Homo dais and as a new book, 21 lessons for the 21st century and it's
0:24
equally as stimulating as the previous two
0:27
books, there's a lot of Concepts that
0:30
That he has introduced me to that. I have rattled off on here. So I think Monica and I both felt this way. We had x amount of time with you've all and that x amount of time went by in what felt like 16 minutes. I do never in my life, had the experience where time flew so quickly. I agree because he's so dang, smart, and interesting, you, it was a good time for us, right? Was it was candy brain. Candy was brain candy. We left turbocharged.
1:00
So please enjoy the genius, we call. You've all Harare guys, we are supported
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2:27
He's an option.
2:38
You've all Harari. Welcome to armchair expert.
2:41
Are you out on a book tour? Yes, you are. Just touring the North America, will you go all over the world? Now we have another European leg of the tour, and then China and then maybe turkey and India and eventually we hope to reach South America as well.
2:56
We are first two bucks sapiens and Homo day has sold
3:00
Well million copies more at this point and was translated in 45 languages. Yeah. So I assume you have a very Global appeal. It seems so he is it is it mind-blowing for an academic to have such success? Popular success
3:16
it wasn't the beginning. You get used to almost everything but it's also, you know, I get a lot of help from a lot of people, my husband will also my partner in manager is kind of the pee out genius behind this whole
3:29
Whole phenomena and I have a team of other people working us with us and, you know, if it was only me, I would have collapsed long ago. Yeah, it's impossible to deal with it and just as a single individual, an arrangement, I too have my wife? Yeah. It see. Actually historically. It's quite a common Arrangement that, you know, The Marriage Partners or the family is also the basic economic unit. So once upon a time, you had together a field or a herd of goats,
4:00
Oats and now you manage books. Well, I want to kind of launch
4:04
right into some your ideas. Let me, I just want to First say that. I would, I've read both of your first books. I've just started 21 lessons for the 21st century that your new book. Yeah, I got the title. Correct. Yes. Okay. Wonderful. I just passed the first
4:17
test, but I read the first
4:20
two books and I loved them sapiens. And Homo dais, I think I maybe even home a dais for me was more mind-blowing.
4:29
Owing and some Concepts. I had never thought of but I also heard you on Sam Harris over a year ago I guess and you said some things in there that weren't we're not in either book that really kind of blew my mind. So I kind of want to bring people slowly up to speed. So you first you have a PhD in history from Oxford. Is that yeah
4:48
accurate. Well originally I was a specialist in medieval military history I was writing about the Crusades and the Hundred Years War and things like that. Yeah.
4:58
Totally off topic but if you've seen any of this,
4:59
For where they're starting to bring to Market some of these potions that they used in medieval Europe, that could because they were written. And it turns out that some of them have been really effective in treating like SARS and stuffers these, super
5:16
viruses. I would be very skeptical about it. Life expectancy in the Middle Ages was under 40, something like almost 50 percent of children died before they reached adulthood. Yeah, medieval medicine. You
5:29
You wouldn't like the safest thing is to stay away from it. Okay? But they did, they didn't
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realize they did, but they had antibiotics, they
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had, they had the Alchemists were coming up
5:41
with the, you know, they would let it rot in a yak belly and all this crazy stuff, but they were creating antibiotics, but
5:46
then as viruses evolve
5:48
so quickly, they become irrelevant and they just existed. Now in a book, it's just fascinating to me that you can discover something amazing. Then you can lose it then you can it can
5:58
come. Yeah that's that's
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Certainly happened in history that we have lost a lot of stuff on the way and we don't even know what we've
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lost right. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know what we don't know.
6:09
Yeah. And so you grew up in Israel. Is that? Yeah. And you still live there? Yeah. I still live in Israel. Okay. And you also just getting
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personal life for five seconds. I learned on
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Sam Harris. You also disappear for like
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three months of the year and go to India and meditate my accurate
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all together. If you take all the Retreats that I do during the year, I think it added up to
6:29
Um, something like almost three
6:31
months now. I just want to say I admire that you I mean basically what you have is boundaries for your life, right? Because it would be, I assume quite tempting for you to just stay on the hamster wheel
6:43
spring, so it's not anything at all. It's not, it's a it's exhausting. So really it's, it's not easy to just stop everything. Yeah. That for a month or two, but it is tempting me.
7:00
It's but I would imagine.
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There are people that are disappointed to learn that. They will not hear from you for another six weeks or something. So, in your real life you're having to tell people. I'm very sorry, I know you need me but I will be gone. Yes, that's an admirable quality. I think it's almost the opposite of codependence in a way. It's a you know how to take care of yourself, right?
7:23
Yeah, but again, it also demands the cooperation of other people like my husband that they disappear for
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60 days and he has to stay there and keep answering the phones and emails and you know, 99% of what we do now is just say
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no. Yeah people
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come with all kinds of requests from interviews to theater Productions to some. And many of them are really wonderful ideas and a good causes. Yeah. Andy just you know, the thing with the human being so far, you can't you can't copy them. So is a book, I can
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12 million copies of my book and can reach everywhere. Yeah, but with myself there is just one pair of legs and one stomach and one head today today. Yeah and it's just in one place and you can't
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copy it. Well and on that topic I think all of our minds are blown that you're here,
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I don't know
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and yes to your in our stupid little attic and that's a little mind-blowing to me as a huge fan of yours. But I think what's kind of unique about what you do is
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you and this is all
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Always
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confused me. Why there isn't it? Maybe there is now but why there isn't a department at all universities? That is aggregating. Everything and just noticing. Oh, is there some
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overlap? Here are like we missing. Are they? Are they finding little bits of truth that someone should be
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assembling or aggregating to come up with some some real thought breakthroughs. And what you seem to do is you have a very comprehensive interest in the world. It starts I assume with history but then much of
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Sapiens is anthropological which is what I studied and then you get into technology and philosophy and Buddhism all these things, it's so comprehensive.
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Did you at all? Feel like you're getting off the path by doing that?
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Yeah, it's a bit of the path but the way the scientific kind of Enterprise is again. It's built on cooperation. Nobody can be an expert on everything. Most people become experts on more and more narrow subjects, and this is very important but you do need also people who kind of look at the big picture and also are able to communicate this big picture to the
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Republic. Which is what I do. Yeah. Now if all scientists would do what I do we would not have any science. Right, right. Right. Yeah. We'll just have a bunch of guys trying to depict the big picture but without any details you'd have a lot of great dinner conversation. Yes but no iPhone. Yeah so you need the people who spend like five years on developing the new antibiotic and you need the people who spent 10 years on researching some medieval.
10:11
Raped in order to better understand the relations between Christianity and Islam in the 12th century and things like that. And then yes, you need a few people who would take all these bits and pieces together and build some picture out of it. Because it's people are now we know flooded with enormous amounts of information. And the thing they need most is not more information. It's the last thing they need is more information. They need to make sense of it. Yeah,
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Um, and this is becoming more and more difficult. Well, this is
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I don't know if you remember but it soon as we had the Patriot Act and we the government had all these. They could now gather all this information from telephones and all this stuff gathering information is no
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problem. They have billions and
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billions of megabytes of all this information but nobody's figured out a way to sift through it or make any use of it really so it's almost useless that they're eating.
11:08
Yeah. But you know if you going this direction if
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You look, for example, of the recent Wars in Iraq, in Afghanistan, nobody in history had such good. Intelligent Gathering abilities. As the u.s. in Iraq. And in Afghanistan, you couldn't make yourself a cup of coffee in some Baghdad suburb without the Americans, knowing about it. Yeah. And what did they do with all these amazing information? Yeah, they still lost or losing both the wars. Yeah. So apparently just Gathering
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Lots and lots of information is not enough, right? Make the right decisions.
11:47
So I'm going to try to just Reader's Digest version sapiens, so I you correct me if I'm wrong but the compelling kind of narrative of that book is
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We as animals, we as humans, we have, we have dominated this planet, right? And how did we come to do that? Your first thought is over smart but that there's more to it than that. Yeah, for us to dominate, right? We have to be able to gather in large, large groups. And how do we do that in the answer is myths, right? Is that the thing that allows two strangers to meet each other on the Plains. And that, that stranger goes, I believe in money and you do too. So we have some business, we could
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Or I believe in Jesus is the son of God, me, too. So, it allows these myths trick that are in-group out-group and they do it allows us to include a lot of people in our in group. So do a better job than I just
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did. It allows us above all else to trust and cooperate with strangers, all social animals. I mean, the many social animals, besides Homo sapiens, and all social animals are heavy.
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Tricks about how to cooperate with other animals. They know chimpanzees can cooperate with 50 other chimpanzees with a hundred, other chimpanzees human species. Once there are many human species. We all know the only humans around, but until not very long ago, a couple of tentative of thousands of years. There were many different human species on the planet Earth and they are also social animals. What is really remarkable about our specie is not that we are small
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Of than everybody else but that we can cooperate in Far larger groups than anybody else. We can cooperate in thousands and tens of thousands and millions and eventually today we have Global Network of networks of billions of people, for instance, trading and belonging to the same economic system. So the question, why did Homo sapiens come to dominate this planet?
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Really boils down to. Why are we the only animals? The only mammals that can cooperate on a very large scale. And the answer to that is the imagination. The ability to create and spread fictions. Because if you look at any large-scale human cooperation, you will always find some fictional story at the bases. Its its clearest. In the case of religions that they are based on fiction,
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Stories. Now even religious people will agree that all religions. Are fictional stories except one except my religion, of course, yeah, sure you ask it to the Jew. Will tell you Judaism. It is that's the truth. But Christianity you know all these stories about Jesus rising from the dead and being the Son of God. This is just fictional story humans invented that you go to the Christians. They will say no no. No this is truth but the Muslims they believe in all this.
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These crazy mythologies that Muhammad received, the Quran from the Archangel Gabriel and, and so on and so forth. This is a fiction, you ask the Muslims. They will tell you, the Hindus they believe in really, silly myth and like that. So it's very obvious that all religions really are based on fiction, which is doesn't mean that they are bent these fictions. Enable people not just to fight Crusades and jihad's, but also come together to build
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Beautiful cathedrals of to build schools and hospitals and so forth. What is more important to realize is that the same principle also underlies? Our nation's also underlies, the modern economic system, modern economic system is also based on fictional stories corporations, which are the most important economic entities in the world. They are just stories invented by the
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Powerful Sorcerers that. We call lawyers corporation, like Google or Toyota or General Motors. It's not a factories. It's not the people, it's not the product. It's a story invented by lawyers but as long as everybody believes in the story, it works. Yes. And just as you know, a thousand years ago, almost all people, served some imaginary.
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Do the other. So today, most of us, serve some imaginary Corporation or other. Mmm.
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Now, when I was reading it, I had this very, I guess a cognitive dissonance
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where I'm reading and you're kind of taking me wisely
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from the most obvious, which is religion, which is an atheist. I'm like yep, that's a myth, everyone believed in and I see why it allowed people to gather in groups of tens of thousands money. Yes money has
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No value. This piece of paper, we all agree that it has a value, but there's no intrinsic value. In the piece of paper, we all disagree upon. That, that makes sense. And I'm going down the list of the things you expose is being missed the nation-state. I agree, we've there is a line across the map and one sides Canada, one sides, America. And we really think I'm American. That's my identity. I
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go. Yeah, that's preposterous. But then, you go, humanism is a
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myth and I go, whoa, hold on there you all
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I do.
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No, no, no. This is true. And then you say, civil rights is a myth and I go, whoa, hold on. You lost me. And then I had to really
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challenge myself. I'm like, well, what are the odds that I agree with every other example, he gave,
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but he's wrong on the to, I cherish, mmm, which is kind of the fun of reading the book
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if you're open to that kind of challenging yourself. So
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just explain quickly how on Earth could
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human rights be a
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myth
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What else? I mean, they are definitely don't get smug about it, they'll definitely not a biological reality. I mean people talk about natural rights and things like that but on the biological level just as chimpanzees don't have right and Jellyfish, don't have rights, Homo sapiens has no rights. They are not written in our DNA. You don't find the Declaration of Independence written
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to survive. You don't need shelter, water food in a right to
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vote.
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You know, in order to survive you need all kinds of stuff, but it doesn't mean you have a right to these things. Yeah. Just as I don't know, antelopes on the African Savannah. They don't have a right to live. Try to convince the Lions, and the cheetahs that the antelopes have a right to live. So also Homo sapiens biologically speaking, the rights, don't exist, you take a human being. You, you look anywhere you want you
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At the human open. You look in the heart in the brain, in the DNA. You won't find any rights. There, there's no organ. There is nothing more than that the writing center of the brain. Uh-huh. Rights are a story invented by humans not so long ago, it wasn't there throughout history just in the last couple of centuries. It became a very popular and widespread story this idea that the humans have rights. I'm not saying that there is that the it's something bad. I mean
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Many people, many people when they hear that, this is a story of that little fictional story. They think that this is bad, it's not necessarily bad. I mean, you can't organize people to do almost anything unless they agree on some fictional laws or fictional stories. You can't play baseball or basketball or football unless you get a couple of people to agree on lows, which should be obvious obvious to everybody. We invented them. They did not come from.
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Vinod from
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physics. Yes. So that's a great point to make just because you're pointing out that it is a myth or a fiction or created by us is not an argument against it. No. Or suggesting. It shouldn't be. It's just, let's
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that's honest and truthful about what it is first. Yeah, my you know how reporter is a fiction doesn't mean it's bad
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ideas. Witchcraft is
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very bad if people start killing each other because
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Because they believed in a different version of the story of Harry Potter. That's bad. Mmm. But as long as they do that, I mean, it's a very nice book. Well, that's where I'm guilty. I
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kind of want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. So if I see that people are arguing about whether Hogwarts was set here or there and that's causing Wars. I'm like let's just get rid of this fucking book like it's causing all this
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problems. It was a very famous incident. I think in Britain, maybe two years ago, I think either in the play.
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You're in one of the movies. They they wanted to cast a black person to play Hermione's. Okay. And there was this huge uproar in the internet how can a black person's player? My only she's she's white. Yeah and they went over the entire seven books of Harry Potter until they found the one single case, where there is a reference in the books to the skin color of Hermione's.
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It's something that they are sneaking in the woods at night and the the Moonlight Shines on the on the white skin off of her. Something like that. Sure. The one place in the whole seven books that they found and this was their proof that her. My only must be a white person and it's Unthinkable for a black person to play her. And, you know, this was amazing. Yeah, on the one hand, you know, this this biblical exegesis that you find this. This here here in Jeremiah
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Every part 3, the chapter 1, it says that song and also that, you know, you accept people flying on broomsticks. That's fine. That's fine. But but had person playing no, no, no, no. I'll have you thrown out there. Yeah, yes.
22:17
Again off topic. But have you had the pleasure of seeing Hamilton? The the ESU have
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right? I was amazed that anybody without a PhD in history can understand what's happening there apparently.
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They can. Yeah, there were there were many impressive things about it. One is I read that book and I thought how on Earth is this
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person going to put that entire book and do a two-hour Musical? And by God, he did it almost the whole books in there. It's incredible. But I had this moment where I was like, well, this is gonna be interesting. There's going to be a black Aaron Burr and a black Hamilton or whatever, you know, all these historical figures are going to be played by Black Or Hispanic actors that's going to be weird. That was my thought going
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in and within
22:58
In seconds of the play
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starting, I've completely lost
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that. I'm like, oh, it doesn't fucking matter at all. But I almost, I needed to experience it to recognize, so it has doesn't matter. We honestly should be casting black folks in movies as historical but it doesn't mean anything like yeah, I mean you think about I don't know Julius Caesar Shakespeare play. Now we are perfectly fine with somebody talking English as Julius Caesar we are perfectly fine with the Christian
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Saying, Julius Caesar. Why not? Even though? Jesus was not even born the time that it's Julius Caesar was alive. So, but when it comes to something like race or skin color, no, no, no, no, no, that's impossible.
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Yes. And in anthro this was something that people got great joy out of is just how arbitrary and insignificant to even start a category. That would be skin color
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because it's one of the most
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simple things in our DNA, right? That yours a couple of
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Alleles that are going to determine your skin color. While there's, you know, billions of other alleles, that you probably are, have much more in common with someone with perhaps black skin. It's just a terrible biological
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category, but it's very, very useful, in terrible, way for political and cultural purposes.
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Yes, yeah. Very, you don't need to do it to map. The person's genome to put them in the
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category. Exactly. The if you want to build a hierarchical society,
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T. You need very simple categories and you usually also need categories that are inherited in the family. I mean if you're the king you don't want your son to suddenly be in the wrong category. Yes, so if it's not an inherited its life, it's not inherited in the family. Usually it will not be selected to be the basis of some hierarchical social system. Stay
24:57
tuned for more.
24:58
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Another thing in sapiens that I loved, you have a really unique ability. You, you kind of cracked two concepts for me and sapiens one was, well just communism. I had never really heard why communism didn't work in such a very simple, elegant way, which probably other people knew and I just simply didn't because I'm a bozo,
28:02
but the fact that the fact that it was
28:06
centralized is the problem. That's why that system doesn't work is just
28:10
You can't have centralized control of anything and have it immediately meet the needs to correct for supply and everything else.
28:20
Yeah. And then you you
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kind of you map that onto everything and now how we how we trade ideas and how important and everything is to be decentralized and I just thought, oh okay, there is nothing even theoretical or moral or anything? It's just almost a mechanical
28:36
principle. Yeah, it depends really on the technology.
28:40
You have at your disposal, you could look at the whole of History through the prism of of methods to process information and the two main contenders are centralized system. When all the information goes into one place and being processed there and the decisions are made there and distributed systems in which the information flows freely between many different organizations and institutions.
29:10
Individuals, there is no Center and there are lots of places and and that that what were decisions, important decisions are being made. And in the 20th century political Arena, you see the struggle between communism and democracy. It's really about that Communism works by concentrating, all the information and Power in one place. You have some, some people in Moscow, deciding how many cabbages will be grown in some
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A farm in Kazakhstan and what will be the price of bread in every shop in the country. And then you have democracy and the free market system, which says no will just allow information to flow freely between between people and institutions and they can make their own decisions and given the technological realities of the 20th century. It just worked much, much much better. There is a famous story or
30:10
Nick do taiwan's turd that at the waning days of the Soviet Union when the system was collapsing. So gorbachov sent people to the west to understand how these capitalists, how do they manage their society ass? Oh yeah, it goes to London and the British are very happy to, you know, Margaret Thatcher was in power. Everything is about the free market and capitalism. Very happy to explain to this Soviet official how the system works. So, they take him to the banks and to the stock exchange and to the lse
30:40
Easy to talk to to economics professors. And then he finally says, wait a minute, there is something much more fundamental. I can't understand about your system back home in Moscow, we have our best Minds. The best might is Soviet Union. Working on the problem of how to provide bread to Moscow. And nevertheless, in every grocery store in every Supermarket, you have this long line of work you for the bread and here in London is a city of millions. We've
31:10
Passing all day, all these bakeries. And grocery stores, I haven't seen a single breadline. So console all my other appointments and just take me to meet the person, the minister of a minister. And then the British host, they like, who is this guy? I mean, there is no minister of bread. Nobody's in charge of providing read for London. And that's the real secret of the system. Yeah, you just allow all these
31:40
These consumers and producers to exchange information and make their own decisions. Now, what people often forget, when they hear this example or the analysis is that it all depends on the technology of the day, in some situations in given some technologies. Centralized systems are much less less efficient than distributed systems. This was the case in the late 20th century and this is why the United States defeated the Soviet
32:10
Union, but it's not always like that. Given a different technological, reality things, look very different. And one of the dangers in the 21st century is that machine learning and artificial intelligence will make centralized systems, much more efficient than distributed systems. And dictatorship, might become more efficient than democracies
32:33
how fascinating that's juicy. So that I assume is in 21st, that's
32:38
part of of, 2421 lessons for the
32:40
21st century, right? Because there was no way
32:43
for the Soviet Union to be gathering the appropriate dad. Real time making real-time decisions and technology is such now that that could conceivably happen with some Mega
32:55
computer Gathering. The data is less is the problem is not so much Gathering. The data its processing. It it's analyzing it. So like, in 1970 Soviet Union, you would have all these massive amount of information flowing all the
33:11
From the most distant provinces of Russia and Kazakhstan. And Ukraine to the central nervous system of the host of the hope of the whole organization in Moscow, mmm. And there you have the problem. Nobody had the ability to process these enormous amounts of information, fast enough and efficiently enough, and make the right decisions. So they are working worse and worse.
33:40
It's decisions. But what's changing now is that again given machine learning and artificial intelligence, we are developing the technology that can process enormous amount of information, much better than any human being in one place. And actually, there is now an advantage to try to concentrate it all in one place because you can thereby discover all kinds of patterns in the data.
34:11
That if you have only partial data, you will never be able to do to give an example. If you think about the advances. Now in genetics. So to discover what a gene or a group of gene is doing you, it's most of the time. Just based on statistics, you have statistics about the DNA and the medical situation in the life of a lot of people and you just discover
34:40
Patterns are people who have this gene. They tend to suffer from this disease. Yeah. People who have this combination of genes, they tend to be very proficient in this kind of skill. Aha, I found something. So, it's all
34:54
statistics, well, a lot of great steps coming out of, like, Denmark in those those Netherland Kanye's where the, that your medical information, although private it's not. It doesn't have your name attached to it. It does go into a database. Exactly. And they do all these great epidemiological studies there. And they have
35:10
Throws in three hours. Like here,
35:12
we people had the spurious connection between one of our vaccines and
35:17
autism, and they were just like, oh, let us tell you in three hours here. You know, 50% of people had that vaccine here, zero correlation whole case solved. Exactly. Yeah. And and in in these cases, concentrating all the data in one place actually makes it the the system much more efficient. So to take the extreme example. What happens if tomorrow morning?
35:40
The Chinese government issues. An order that every citizen of the People's Republic of China, should go within the next two weeks, to the nearest clinic or police station and given a DNA sample. And also, of course, give free access to all their medical records and school records. And in, in whatever, and you build in at a stroke, the largest genetic database in the world, and with zero, privacy concerns.
36:10
And you can start making all these amazing discoveries. And then what are the next thing that happens is that people all over the world. They realize actually the Chinese are the most advanced in this field of genetics. So if I want to scan my DNA and discover what kind of say ailments I am more susceptible to, I will not go to some American company which has just a database about a million people. I will go to the
36:40
He's with their database of 1.4 billion people, and when everybody goes there, it's a Snowball Effect. It becomes even more efficient and very soon and it's all based on concentrating, the data in one place. Yes. So for
36:56
us, Americans hell-bent on Liberty, and privacy and all these myths. We have basically come together to celebrate. That's a big leap for us, right? Yeah.
37:08
We have a lot of
37:09
distrust.
37:10
With whoever's in charge of that database
37:13
and for very good reason, I mean I'm not here kind of to recommend the Chinese system as the best system in the world. It obviously has a downside when somebody knows so much about you and they are hardly accountable2you, it's not like there is an election in four years and you can vote them out of office then you are extremely exposed to control and manipulation of a kind. We have never seen before in history starting in
37:40
Close didn't have anything like
37:42
that. Right now. You have some some some Clairvoyant Powers you have some incredible in there and Amadeus they're amazing. Your observations. Does this make this kind of thing? Being able to potentially map 1.4 billion people's genomes solve probably a laundry list of medical conditions. Does that make you excited and
38:02
optimistic or fearful or a combination of all both bombing these kinds of developments? They always have an upside and
38:10
A downside, they can do amazing things. For example, our health and at the same time, they can have terrible political and social consequences resulting in worst in worse discrimination than ever before in farm of dictatorial regimes than ever before in opening real biological gaps between for example classes. And costs that we have never seen before and it's true of every major technology and
38:40
Story. It always had an upside and a downside but it's futile
38:46
to even worry. I mean, like, the future you present
38:51
is likely. Nothing could stop it. No, he's nothing. He's like such a waste of your anxiety on. No, no, I don't agree. I mean, are you better off just doing these things then deal? Then then, as bad
39:04
consequences, arise solving, those those consequences or should you be fighting?
39:10
Passionately to prevent it from even happening. I guess. What's
39:13
the, we need? First of all, that we need to realize that technology doesn't determine how people use it. I mean, if somebody now comes along and says, look AI in genetics, this is scary stuff. We should just stop all research in Ai and genetics. This is this this will not
39:30
happen. Some foreign actor will do it. Yes, I hear.
39:34
Somebody will do it. Even if you can get an entire country, even the in the great USA bands all further.
39:40
So in genetics, so it will just continue in other places and very soon. The Americans will realize that they are being left behind so they have to join. Yeah. So you can't
39:51
just like the steroids in the Olympics. What the hell else you gonna do?
40:02
Because here you can actually do something regulation, is effective. It can be effective and there is a very good
40:10
Good case to be made that we do need to regulate something like steroids in sports, and that we can do it. The technology can help us. I mean technology works both ways. You can use the new technologies for example to give more and more treatments to athletes. But you can also use technology to monitor these kinds of usages in a more effective way and regulate against them, if this is what
40:40
What do you want to do? It's the same with something like Ai and surveillance that at present, we see the development of more and more AI systems which work in the service of Corporations and governments to monitor individuals. But there is nothing about the basic of basic capabilities of AI, which says you cannot use it in the opposite. Way you can build AI systems that monitor.
41:10
Other corporations and governments in the service of individuals, instead of the government is not the
41:16
capital required to have that kind of system, just naturally exclude, the proletariat like this.
41:24
How would you want? Develop it yourself. But there is a huge Market out there, for example, to develop an AI system. That monitors government officials in order to prevent corruption. Mmm, that the same way that a government can employ an AI system to
41:40
Ions are citizens and locate incident, incident in which citizens Express criticism of the government. It just goes over all your emails and all your phone calls and picks up the patterns of that are the government deems to be dangerous and can do that. You can also do the reverse build, an AI system that constantly monitors, the actions, and the emails, and the bank accounts and the lifestyle of government officials in
42:10
Order to discover patterns that are linked with
42:13
corruption. Mmm,
42:15
and why not. And there is a huge market for that. Where will that come out of the
42:19
University who's fighting for us
42:22
at present? We don't see many such systems being developed. Yeah, what I'm saying is, is the
42:27
technically it can happen? It
42:29
can happen. There is nothing that technology that says it must only in the service unidirectional. Yeah. So it could come from a corporation which realizes, hey, there is a huge business.
42:40
Eternity here, I can sell this monitoring system to countries all over the world in order to fight corruption and, you know, corruption is a business worth trillions of dollars. Yeah. So money, they can. Yeah, there's so many things going on all over the world, it can come from an NGO. You can get people to, you know, there are many ngos fighting against corruption, so they need to get together and get
43:10
A few good coders and start developing these kinds of of tools, it can be sponsored by a government. Lots of government, I'm not very happy with their officials being corrupt. Yeah, there is a huge opportunity out there. Stay
43:27
tuned for more armchair expert. If you dare, we are supported by one of my favorite sponsors vital Farms. Now, I want to clear something up
43:38
really quick. You might have heard on my Ted
43:39
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43:40
So that I said, I don't eat eggs, but the
43:42
fact is, I have eaten
43:44
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44:40
Vital Farms pasture-raised eggs, head to vital Farms.com - Dax. Okay, now of the many things I bring up at dinner parties, that year, are your thoughts, the one, I think II trade in most often as in Houma Deus. You talk about this. Very profound thing, which is the self and we think of the self as being one thing, me Dax Shepard. I'm a self and you point out that mr.
45:10
Minimally, there's two decks Shepherd's. There's the experiential deck. Shepherd, the one who's, you know, scrolling through Instagram. And so happy for two hours, the whole
45:20
time, I'm doing it. I'm in heaven. And then I go to in, lay
45:24
down at night, to go to bed and then there's the narrative self whose writing dax's. Life story who says Jesus, dude, you fucking spent two hours staring at your
45:32
hand. That's a terrible waste of your life. I'm disappointed in you,
45:35
right? So you start by just introducing this concept that even we aren't unified as one thing.
45:40
We have these facets
45:42
in that, where we're heading with
45:43
technology. Is that your smartphone very soon in the future will be measuring Biometrics, it'll know your blood sugar, your heart rate, your cortisol levels, all these things. And the example, I think you give is that you could set a goal on this Smartphone to help you realize something. And that smartphone met by bright as you're walking into a meeting and say, hey Dax, don't talk in this meeting because the last
46:10
Time. Your blood sugar was this way and you got this little amount of sleep. You have pissed off your
46:14
boss. Yes. So just shut the fuck up for the next hour and a half. And then you pose the
46:20
most intoxicating, question of all is, what is the device going to service? Is it going to service The Narrative decks or the experiential self? And will
46:30
we give it
46:31
permission to make that decision? That blew my head off my shoulders? Hmm, what did I leave out of that? Or what could you allow?
46:41
On that. I mean I just find that to be we will be confronting this problem you laid out in my
46:47
lifetime. Yes yes. I mean as as our understanding of the human body and the human brain improves and at the same time as we have more and more sophisticated AI so these kinds of scenarios that you know, can go in all kinds of directions, you can have the government monitoring you 24 hours a day, so if you live in North Korea and what you
47:10
Des just described will take a very different form. You have to worry, biometric bracelet all day, which constantly monitors, just what you said, your cortisol level your sugar, level your brought blood pressure and so forth. And if you just happen to listen to a speech by Kim Jang, hoon, and the bracelet, picks up the biometric signs of anger, that's the end of you. Yeah. So it can go in that direction in in some countries.
47:37
It's even get even, like, even more
47:40
In consequentials. Like my wife's got it hooked to my wrist and I walked by a beautiful girl in the street she goes
47:46
excuse me sir I see what's happening in your body? Yes it could under total end of all internal life. Yeah, once thought experiment which maybe even being done to them, not sure. Imagine that you are wearing a shirt which reacts, which is kind of the shirt is connected to biometric sensors like your your Fitbit or whatever and the shirt
48:10
It can light up in all kinds of colors. If you're angry, becomes red. If you are sexually attracted, it becomes red with flashing lights, if you're bored. It becomes, I don't know, blue and just imagine what it means in the technically, it's very simple. Maybe there is already start up out there, if not after this podcast. I think we'll have a couple. Sure. And maybe I should actually register this. Yes. Dear wife, definitely see my parents wanting it for their kids. Like if you could just visually know what animal, you're
48:40
In with about so helpful. But just imagine, let's leave aside, you know, the sexual issues. Okay. Bouldin, like, what happens if you go to meet your boss, your to having a chat with your mother, whatever. And the shirt goes blue and they know I and you know all this say all the things that for millions of years Evolution adopted us to hide. Yeah. Suddenly they are out there so that the shirt is thought experiment. This is like
49:10
The most in your face. Yeah. But you have all kinds of subtle scenarios in which only the government knows or only the corporation nose or only, you know, like, you want to gather information about yourself during the day that will afterwards be useful to making decisions in life. I mean, because of what you described this division between the experiencing self and and the narrating cell for the storytelling self.
49:40
We experience life in one way, and then we imagine it. And we tell ourselves stories which are often completely
49:45
different, a hundred bucks and remarried. You've experienced that daily.
49:49
Yes. So, if you think about making decisions about, I don't know, like, which friends you like to hang out with and so you think you enjoy yourself with these friends but actually the truth is very different so the device can tell you what you actually enjoy.
50:10
And, you know, people not experience it for instance, with, with television with VOD View and demand, always Netflix, that there is a, there is a famous study, I think, being done that when people recalled on their VOD, all kinds of movies. They tend to record all these kinds of high-level dramas and, you know, things like that. Yeah. But then when the moment comes to actually watch a movie, you never really. Yeah. You never want to
50:40
See it. You want to see some stupid Hollywood comedy
50:44
and watch your mouth, please.
50:47
I've totally. There are some very good Hollywood comedies, but the thing is that, that and and this device, now you you see it like you scroll through the list of movies and you say, yes, I recorded all these movies, but I don't really want to see them because mine are narrating self. Has this image of me as a very sophisticated.
51:10
Educated person who watch these French. Art Nouveau, dramas and whatever. And but I don't really want to see them, you know, I went, yeah, I'm on my
51:19
comparison would be every not everyone. Lots of people in my circle, subscribe to the New Yorker. Hmm. And then, if you go into their bathroom, and there's a New Yorker and US Weekly, that US Weekly, the pages are almost worn off, and they have not cracked the New Yorker. Like they want to be the person who reads the New Yorker every time. They can sit down yet, but they just can't resist the juicy pictures.
51:40
So, but what's interesting about this world, your
51:43
future of ours, your painting is that
51:46
these questions that are
51:48
ultimately philosophical questions.
51:51
Yeah. Which you would almost think would have been rendered
51:53
obsolete, as we kind of get more technologically advanced. They are almost were in a position where they're going to be vital weirdly, like, we actually are now going to have to find out what our philosophy is because we're going to engage these
52:10
means to execute what we think we believe in. So we had better figure out what we believe in, right as more now than ever. It's Paramount that we know what we're trying to aim for us as these things. Assist us to get there.
52:22
And I think, philosophy is now more important than ever before, because lots of what used to be philosophical. Problems are becoming very practical problems of engineering and more and more Engineers. I think need to learn philosophy in order to solve like,
52:40
The best example, I know is with self-driving cars that is is now everyone is talking about it in order to put a self-driving car on the road you need to solve a few philosophical questions. All right? Like the the most common scenario is that the car is driving and suddenly two kids running after a ball jump in front of the car. And the only way to save the two kids is to Swerve to the side and fall off a precipice.
53:10
Us and kill the owner of the car was asleep in the backseat. Yeah. Now what should we do? These kinds of questions philosophers have been arguing about for thousands and thousands of years with very little actual impact. It's the trolley, the trolley problem, exactly. The trolley problem. And the interesting thing about the trolley problem, there is a very big difference between what people say in in the philosophy seminar in University and how they actually behave. Yes.
53:40
Is a self-driving car. You need to program the algorithm in a certain way. You can't just
53:47
leave it on the side. Yeah.
53:48
You can't believe that you need an answer because people probably yeah the engineer's need an answer. So the answer can come in all kinds of ways. The government can mandate and answer, all you can just say I believe in the free market Tesla will come up with the Tesla all traced and the Tesla I go east and you just choose you know the customer is
54:10
Always right? Let me answer that question for you now, they don't even
54:13
have to bring the philanthropist version to the market. Everyone's buying the ego is
54:18
Tesla. Yeah, that was actually, again, a study about that and the thing is, most people who were asked said, they think that the car should sacrifice its owner, but then when they ask them, would you actually buy this car? They said absolutely. Not what I mean, crazy. That's right. I'll buy a Mercedes. I bet they'll let me
54:38
live. Yeah.
54:42
Now, this was an either your
54:44
books, but this was, this comes from Sam and I did this again, was another mind-blowing experience for me is you're laying out this future of AI and you were talking about the high probability, that in the future, eighty percent of the jobs that are currently being done. Now by humans will be done by machines and that you're going to have a huge class of people the useless class that don't really do anything but all there.
55:10
Needs are met by these different robots, right? And Sam said well what are people going to do all day to give meaning to their life and you said well they're going to participate in virtual reality. They're going to play virtual reality Games probably this is ringing a bell. My getting
55:24
it wrong I'm familiar with the. Okay
55:26
so like Sam I was listening to you and I thought well this is so dystopic I don't want my kids to just put fucking goggles on and that's their life, right? And he said well I'm so discouraged that that's what people are going.
55:40
To do. And then you said, oh Sam, we've been playing virtual reality for thousands of years. Religion is virtual reality explain to us how religion is virtual reality.
55:54
Well, you have a couple of rules of the game which were invented by humans but those who play this particular game, they are sure that this is the reality and you live your entire life, trying to gain points.
56:10
Not to lose points. So if you play the Christian game then you need to give to charity and you need to pray and you should you shouldn't have sex before marriage and absolutely no homosexual sex this you lose a hundred point if you do the big one and that's a big one and even the end of life you have a high enough score then you move on to the next level of the game in heaven. Yeah, that's wonderful.
56:36
And some people special, I think further back in history,
56:40
Re are playing that game hours of the day, they're aware of that game. Like a good chunk of their Consciousness is dedicated to that game. Yeah. And how they're interacting with people and everything. So
56:52
what's another example you
56:54
could give of this virtual reality, we've all been playing.
56:57
Well, you have, I mean, what people first of all, I have to say this is absolutely not a prophecy like, nobody really knows how the job market or
57:10
The world would look like in 50 years. This was just exploring one. Sure. Sure, one of the possibilities that we are facing we can still do many things to prevent this particular possibility from being realized but if it does happen and of course also much worse possibilities, there is the scenario that you have a lot of people who have no jobs, no economic value, no political power, and nobody cares about them and they get no support. They don't get to play.
57:40
Virtual reality Games because they hardly have anything to eat. They have to struggle for survival. So there are definitely worse. Scenarios it? Well, that even when you were describing it, I was listening. I thought, sure at the point where
57:53
80% of the people are unemployed and we've really figured out some production scale that feeds everyone and close them great. But then I said
58:04
it's when it's
58:05
35% of the population that you I don't even know how you get there like yes.
58:10
If you could turn on a light switch and 80% of us are unemployed
58:13
great. But I don't know how you get past the when 35 percent of the country's unemployed. That's a revolution.
58:20
I don't know how many full 35%. Yeah. I don't know how we get there. It's almost like, you just have to keep building the infrastructure, building it building and we're not allowed to turn that light switch. On until it's literally self-sufficient, which of course, will not happen. Yeah. I mean the the many, many pitfalls on the way and again people it's not like one
58:40
One day suddenly 80% of jobs disappear. And that's it. No, it's a gradual process, some jobs disappear. Some jobs, change, new jobs appear. The will be new jobs. Yeah, but one of the problems is that the pace of Change is Going to accelerate, and in order to find employment in the new jobs, you will have to retrain yourself and not just once but several times because you got a new job in 10 years later, the new jobs to has been automated
59:10
So you again, have to reinvent yourself, and it's going to be very difficult to retrain people not just on the, I know practical level of of new skills, but you really need to reinvent yourself, even psychologically. Well, I'm a
59:25
urologist told me that he doesn't think he would recommend his son. Go to medical school. He said, if you've seen Watson diagnose, cancer at an 80% success rate in the oncologist are only at 50%. I
59:38
can tell you pretty
59:38
assuredly that
59:40
ABS not going to exist for
59:41
my kids like no one can so no. I mean something that has to do only with information information comes in gets processed and an information goes out. This is the easiest thing to automate. So a Doctor Who's almost so duty is to suck information from you process it, and come up with a diagnosis. This is not going to be a viable job in a couple of decades mind-blowing, but I'm nurse on.
1:00:10
Other hand. This is a much safer, bet, mmm. Because anything that involves both cognitive and manual skills, this is much much more difficult. So the will be nurses Yuma, nurses, long after the old bag notice of cancer is done by computers. But, because to give an injection or to replace a bandage, robots are so far away from that. Yeah. You see the development of robots today.
1:00:40
I mean, we met, I think two years ago, this expert on the Robotics and and she said that, if the robots are coming from you, in some apocalyptic, robot science, fiction movie, if the robots are coming for you, just close the door behind you, no robot is so far able to manage this simple task of opening the door knob? No,
1:01:02
I just watch the video and everyone's so excited that this robot did, in fact, open a door. And it
1:01:07
took this fucking like, 45 seconds as like,
1:01:10
It was already like that was clumsy as it
1:01:12
gets. I wanted you to talk about Buddhism a little bit because I also love your breakdown of craving. I just think that's a fascinating thing to be aware of as a human being. Is that true suffering comes from craving? That's that's a breakthrough in thought for me.
1:01:27
Yeah, that's you know Buddhism 101 for the last two thousand thousand five hundred years but basically that yes I mean suffering is you want something, you don't get it. That's enough.
1:01:40
Suffering. That's that's the whole deal. Yeah, I mean I grew
1:01:43
up thinking, you know, mourning the loss of somebody was suffering but recognizing no craving to not be feeling that morning is the suffering now.
1:01:55
And when you when, when you miss something it's not an abstract idea, it's very unpleasant. Sensations in the body. It's a very unpleasant experience. And then a part of the Mind goes,
1:02:10
I don't like this. Yeah. And this, this this is generated by the mind and this is basically, this is what what suffering is all about. And we do, we go about trying to change the entire world. We completely disrupt. The ecology call system. We fly to the moon, we split the atom. We wage world wars, and it's all because we can't handle these experiences within
1:02:36
ourselves. Yeah. Okay, so my real question for you,
1:02:40
You is is you have more than any other person I've ever read the most comprehensive view of the world simply because, you know, its history. So well, you know a lot of its science, you really know how this place is working. No no,
1:02:58
no, no, I don't I don't
1:02:59
well, you won't accept that. But I'm going to tell you, you know, how it's working a lot more than most of us. And I want to know that as you've come to understand more and more
1:03:10
Why we do what we do again savings about how we got here on, what days is about where we're going 21 lessons is about where we're at now, which I'm glad you're because I will say that my only complaint about the two books is that there's nothing really prescriptive. It's like this is where it's going. This is where it was. I need you. Smart person. Tell me what the,
1:03:28
what should we do. But that aside, having this comprehensive,
1:03:33
understanding of how we got to this place and what why we do the things we do biochemically.
1:03:39
As that exacerbated, the plight of the human
1:03:41
condition or has it helped it, I want to know,
1:03:45
I think it helps. I think the to, to understand to be realistic about ourselves as individuals about ourselves as a specie is a very good thing to align your expectations. With reality to be aware of our own biases of our own weaknesses. This is an extremely important thing especially now, because of
1:04:09
A really extraordinary powers that we are gaining as a specie, we are really eyesight quite often, we are really in the process of upgrading of ourselves into God's. Yeah. And in the most literal and, you know, banal sense, that whatever abilities ancient mythology, is ascribed to the gods to Jesus and to Vishnu. And to Yahweh, we are now acquiring these abilities to ourselves. For instance, the ability,
1:04:39
T2 ingenue life and to manufacture life and we need to have a realistic understanding both of our power and of our weaknesses and biases. Otherwise we are going to be very irresponsible gods and if you had to
1:04:58
choose between your two knowledge sets, one being whatever, we would describe your meditating and India as what we call that. Are you Buddhist?
1:05:09
I knows, I try to understand myself as much as
1:05:12
possible. Okay? So that's something. You've dedicated a ton of time to as much or somewhat commensurate with your worldly knowledge. I'm going to I'm going to, I am God and I'm going to erase one of those two understandings. Which one are you going to give
1:05:28
up? Well, they are very closely intertwined.
1:05:31
Yeah, I think of them as opposed but you probably don't
1:05:33
know. I don't think that I could have done my scholarly work and written sapiens and Homo deals in.
1:05:39
One listens without both the insides of but also on a deeper level, simply theme the mental training that I got from meditation in order, for example, to try and condense the whole history of humankind to 450 Pages. Yeah you need the ability to focus. Yeah and I got that that from meditation. So I think if you took away like my experience with with meditation, my most of my
1:06:09
Scholarly achievements will go away with it,
1:06:11
so then I'm guessing you would not let go of the meditation above all,
1:06:16
I think. Yeah. This is an area. Yeah, I think this is a fair fair assumption.
1:06:21
Okay. And then you and your partner, let's say you guys have a daughter or a son adult, he's more like,
1:06:26
but in this scenario and I don't think dogs go to college, even the no not yet.
1:06:31
Are you? Are you hoping if you have that child, that they pursue one over the other. I guess it would be, you would hope that they would learn.
1:06:39
Some internal peace, probably
1:06:40
start. I think the most important is to learn this to get to know yourself better also because it's going to be them unlike in previous centuries. This is also going to be the most important for things like the job market and for finding your way around the world because when we are living in a situation in which you have all these systems, as we talked in the beginning that are really hacking you and getting to know you so well. So you
1:07:09
You have to know yourself, very, very well. Otherwise, you can be so easily, manipulated and controlled by these external systems will end in, as you're just saying this error
1:07:20
occurs to me, even if you think about it, in terms of the market, if there is a technology now that's going to replace so many parts of what a human can do. You had better invest in the one thing that can't be duplicated. Yeah, that's the one thing. That'll still be
1:07:34
scarce. Yeah, we still know. So very little about the human potential.
1:07:39
I'm most jobs that exist today utilize just a tiny tiny part of the human potential, we don't know. Most of it. Mmm. So both as individuals and also as a specie II would say that it's a very urgent thing to explore ourselves and to get to know a full human potential before it's too
1:08:01
late. I'm so mad you have to leave. I don't think I've ever been more upset by something. You're so special. I'm so flattered.
1:08:09
You came and saw us and I hope you have a great rest of your book tour years. Fucking awesome. And I hope everyone buys your book because you're incredible.
1:08:16
Thank you.
1:08:17
And now, my favorite part of the show, The fact check with my soulmate Monica badman. Okay, I wrote one down, this is a request. Oh wow, this is an armchair e request. Feel free to make them. I will note what it was and I wrote it down.
1:08:39
Yes, it's a fact. Check is a little old place where we can get together. All that back, check, baby. I got me your Chrysler, it seats about 20. So hurry up and bring your jukebox money. The fact check is a little old place where we can get together. Backcheck, baby.
1:09:09
Good requests, right? Arm chair, come, and keep them coming. Please. All right. You've all good luck. Checking those facts. When you have someone, like you've all on. Need you check fact, correct. There's not very many to check, right? That's yours. He is the
1:09:24
facts. Yeah, he's who I would be looking up.
1:09:27
Yeah. So so not very many. Okay, so you look, we decided to just take on. You've all like, put him on retainer to do our fact check it just when we were spending like three million dollars a year, just bankrupting
1:09:39
Selves to know that
1:09:41
the facts are coming from the generator of most fact. It might be worth it to know that their skin of Truth. Yeah. Okay. So you said that sapiens and Homo day has sold 12 million copies. Yeah, that's a, I read that directly off of the book jacket that they're promoting 21st, 21 lessons for. So I'm inclined to think that's correct. Might be correct. I scoured the internet for those numbers and I could not find it.
1:10:09
The right on the, the jacket of the book, all
1:10:11
right? They not all right, they are such as well.
1:10:16
We're in the internet in 2017 each of the his those books hit 1 million in the u.s. maybe domestically. This is a worldwide book, translated into 40, some languages I don't think of it anyway okay so this is a little tricky now you said that there's only a couple alleles that determines determine skin color. Thank you.
1:10:39
Are you talking about because people
1:10:42
define race as skin color and there is
1:10:46
like eight genetic variance in like just even African. What I'm saying, is the criteria by which they're sorting people into racial groups. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Is solely skin color, right? Exactly. Which is crazy because but I think but it's a missing something, a little different skin. Color is a super, it's a, it's incredibly.
1:11:09
He simple part of our genetic code, whether your skin is brown, white black. So, even if you were attempting to group people with similar genetics, the last thing you would do is take this really simple thing of skin color and make that the the criteria by which you're sorting these people out. So what I'm saying is that there are people in Africa that have the same skin color, so they have a couple of the alleles or loci for that. Yet a much larger part of their DNA will
1:11:39
More resemblance to someone from Ireland's than they do, even from someone in another part of Africa. That's what I'm right, right? I guess there was a New York Times
1:11:48
article with this,
1:11:50
professor from the University of Pennsylvania, that was saying, researchers pinpointed, eight genetic variants in for narrow regions of the human genome that strongly influence pigmentation. In in Africans, some making skin darker and others making it lighter. So and that is saying the same thing that
1:12:09
That we are,
1:12:09
we are attributing race to
1:12:12
color and that's wrong, but it's kind of saying,
1:12:16
well from the anthropological thing
1:12:18
that I'm talking about. It's just simply that how about this, if you were trying to separate food into nuts, plants meat Dairy, and you said, because cheese is yellow. And so is squash. Those two things are the same, right? That would be a terrible way to
1:12:39
Group food, right? Exactly. Yeah, it's a fun thing about skin color that I don't know. Everyone knows sure is the whole reason that I am white is because my ancestors left Africa and they went to a northern climate with far less sunlight and you synthesize Vitamin D from sunlight. And if you had dark skin and took on less sunlight, you would die of a vitamin D deficiency and you couldn't pass on your genes.
1:13:08
Jeans. That's what skin color is all about. Well also, like, North, a city to make melanin is a big part of it. Well sure. Melanin is the thing that makes your skin a different color darker. Yeah. Yeah. So if you have less of a genetically odds of passing your jeans on where much greater in a Northern climate because you'd be sucking in that vitamin D also male pattern baldness, that's the suck up. More that yummy, vitamin D. Mmm this
1:13:39
According to the internet and human skin, color is a polygenic trait. Meaning multiple Gene loci are involved. In, its expression at last count, the International Federation of pigment cells. Society has determined that there are a total of three hundred and seventy eight genetic loci loci. Oh, what does that mean? Loci is like, let's say There's 7 billion markers on a DNA strand. Each one is the loci I like location. Yep.
1:14:08
Yeah, that's why. That's why I gave it a hard C, right? It's intercepted. Yeah. All right. So 378 involved in determining skin color. In human and mice. Hmm. Glad they threw mice in there for us. Yeah, in case we were wondering about mice.
1:14:25
Okay, so we talked about the
1:14:26
trolley problem. We just mentioned the trolley problem really quick. In case, people don't know what the trolley problem is. They don't watch the good place exactly. The good place is the trolley problem. It's a thought experiment in
1:14:39
Ethics and philosophy where you see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied up, people lying on the tracks. You're standing next to a lever that controls a switch. If you pulled the lever, the trolley will be redirected onto a side track in the five people. On the main track will be saved. However, there is a single person lying on the side track. So you have two options one, do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track or to pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track, where it will kill one person.
1:15:08
Then what is the most ethical option? The interest is such an interesting. Well what's interesting about that in itself I don't find very interesting because everyone's going to say I pull that lever and save for people but the way that they then take the exact same math and fuck you up. Worse is then they go. Okay, so now there are five six people in hospital, bed one healthy person, lying in another bed, and you have the option of killing that person harvesting, the five organs that are required.
1:15:39
The five other people would you do that? And no one thinks that we should do that. Yeah. Because then you're actually murdering someone, it's by your hand. Well, I think it will. It's the same thing here at the. Yeah. So that's how you feel about it. I think it's because we have come to accept that people get sick. We haven't come to accept that innocent people. Get hit by trolleys, we've come to accept that people get sick and die. So we're very used to that outcome and somewhat comfortable with it. It's a
1:16:08
chiral trajectory for people. So these five people that are dying of an illness. You're just you're used to that. Yeah, that's what happens. But this healthy person shouldn't be sacrificed to prevent something that we know is inevitable but getting hit by a trolley is not inevitable. I think that's where it gets a hiccup E, I guess. Yeah. That mean that does make sense. I still think part of the Dilemma is in there. Still a part that's removed. Well, let's say that there was a like
1:16:39
Has gotten to a place in AI that you just pull a lever. And then the robot comes in, and use a nice as the person and abs and harvest their organs. Uh-huh. Then, is it get, I mean, I think more people would say yes to that. Mmm, that's still think it'd be a very low percentage of people that's would say, we should kill a healthy person to save five ill people. Yeah, I guess which is interesting because it's the exact same path as the trolley equation although I guess it is. But it
1:17:08
It I guess you're right that it isn't because one is by natural forces and the other is someone tied these people to attract about the five. People are just all standing on the track looking at the CN tower. Okay okay. They haven't been like a captured and being held hostage on the track like there's one guy on the track on the left he's looking at the CNN Tower as well and then on the right side there's five people looking at the CN Tower so just either 5 you are going to kill her one.
1:17:38
Going to get killed. And then the other one five people are going to die or one person's going to. Yeah, yeah, yes. I mean, it is all mathi but if you do
1:17:45
start but
1:17:48
but I think,
1:17:50
Yeah, I don't know. Yep. The all it does is point out the Frailty of the human mind and how we have all these really kind of abstract rationale, for why things or moral or any more like a robot, if the robot would pick to kill just one person on the trolley truck that same robot would definitely pick to kill. Yeah, but okay. Yeah, so the modern form of the problem was first introduced in 1967. However, an earlier version in, which one person to be sacrificed on the track was this.
1:18:20
Which means child was part of a moral question, are given to undergraduates at the University of Washington Wisconsin in 1905. Mmm, so that's where it started, okay? You mentioned Watson, you said it diagnosis, cancer an 80% success rate and the oncologist or at 50%. Oh, sorry. And 2016 human experts, at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine tested Watson by having it analyzed a thousand cancer diagnosis.
1:18:50
In 99% of the cases, Watson was able to recommend treatment plans that matched actual suggestions from oncologist. Not only that but because it can read and digest, thousands of documents and minutes Watson found treatment options, human doctors missed in thirty percent of the cases. The AI is processing power, allowed it to take into account all of the research papers or clinical trials at the human oncologist, might not have read at the time of diagnosis. The thing I was talking about, I saw on 60 Minutes, it was pretty cool. It was just about diagnosing.
1:19:20
Patient with cancer to begin with. It wasn't like recommending treatment. Just the thing I saw
1:19:28
But they can diagnose cancer. They're not very great at it. They're, they're right about half the time is what this thing said. Okay, that's it. Mmm, that was that. Mmm, did you like? You've all? Yeah, I did. Did you immensely? Can you walk me through what was going on in your, in your head while it was happening? I mean, it was just like being in school. Being in the best lecture. Yeah. Okay. Last can I just say one fun fact about you've all? Yes.
1:19:57
Is so fun, comical fact, was when you've all arrived, we learned that he had just met with somebody and that person who he had met with lives like a hundred and fifty feet from us. Yes, but you can exit the neighborhood. I don't either the North or South side and they had exited on the wrong side and then it took them 15 minutes to get here through the back door. Yeah. And when you got here is also, so sorry it was took us 15 minutes, you know, to get from this person's house and I said, you know, that person's house is
1:20:27
Maybe that way. It was we had a good little chuckle and nice.
1:20:31
Laugh is a great little
1:20:32
Icebreaker what? All right, all right, love you, love you.
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