If you're a business owner, the name PayPal is probably somewhat familiar, most folks know it as one of the most trusted names in online payments. And now they're bringing, you PayPal settle, their complete point-of-sale solution to help you simplify everything sales-related for your business. You can manage all your in-store and online sales and get access to inventory management, sales reports insights and more. That means you spend less time on busy work and more time on what you love.
Oh, and how cool is this? With PayPal settle One account. Lets you offer, credit debit, then Mo and Paypal payment options. Do your customers. So, they have more ways to pay you. Learn about the PayPal point of sale at paypal.com in store. PayPal's. Recognition is one of the most trusted Brands and online payments is based on the morning consult. Most trusted brand, study that surveyed adults and 15 markets globally during March 20 21
this
Your average business podcast and he's not your average Host. This is the James altucher show on the Choose Yourself Network.
Today on the James altucher show there is somebody on their ways right now? Trying to hack you and not just one. Amazon is trying to hack you and Google is trying to hack you. And Coca-Cola is trying to hack you and the Russians and the American government and the Chinese they are. All trying to hack. You right now in throughout history, this advice to people get to know yourself better. This was always very good advice. If you said, no, I can't be bothered about it.
You didn't have competition. So it wasn't such a disadvantage, not to know yourself. But now in the 21st century, what you need to realize you have real competition and you know, people know, so very little about themselves and, you know, we have this myth of free will, but once you realize know, my desires don't reflect my free. Will they reflect all kinds of processes on the biological level on the psychological level, which I don't.
And then we start being very curious about yourself. So as an individual, how do I start to cover this?
You buy one. Just get get started. Yes. I'm ready. Okay. So, once again, we have your Vault no Harari on the podcast you've all welcome back. Thank you. It's good to be here again. You came on after your second book home all day. Yes, but also to talk about your first book sapiens. And now this time we have 21 lessons for the 21st century. Each lesson is mind-boggling.
How smart and how many questions you ask about where our species is heading and how we have to think about now, I think you described it. As you know, sapiens was kind of about the past the history of the human species. Homo Deus is about the potential future even the far future where we are going as a species. But 21 lessons for the 21st century is how we can think about all these issues right now and potentially solve problems right now. Is that a
Fare. Ye broad macro assessment. Yeah, I started with the past and the future and now it's time for the present and I want if it's okay. I want to just quickly talk about reviews sapiens just to kind of you know, demonstrate the way you think maybe the such a thing. But when there is a close connection between the books, I mean, the the new book 21 lessons, it's really takes the insights from the previous, two books, and bring them to bear on the
The moment. So, okay. So we talked about neanderthals and we talked about cyborgs. What does this tell us about brexit and about the current crisis in the economy and climate and so forth. Yeah, and I mean, you deal with a lot of issues, you deal with, you know, where are we heading in terms of how much controlled data is going to have over our daily lives? Well, will the middle class turn into a useless class as data and automation, kind of take control of basic jobs. What's the role of?
Of liberalism as a philosophy for guiding governments, when there might be humans was more capabilities and others do to control over data. There's many, many questions you ask and I think questions even more than answers, which is, which is always interesting. Yeah. It's a book of questions. It's not a book of answers. It's not like, okay, read this. And you know, what you need to do in the world. It's more like let's open a discussion. Yeah, but what we need to do and actually let's focus the discussion.
Because we are having a lot of discussions, and many of them are about the wrong subjects. Well, well, essentially, I want to, I want to get to that in a second. So, today, Bill Gates, actually in the New York Times, wrote a great review of your book and I'm just curious does Bill Gates ever call you on the phone and say, hey, you've all, what do you think of this? Maybe calls it sick because I don't have a phone. So, but as far as I know, no, he hasn't called us yet. You don't have a phone. No.
No, not the smartphone. I have a landline, but nobody knows the number. You have a landline dude, does it have? Is it the kind of dial where you have to dial all the way around in a circle? No. No, it has. It has you press numbers but I don't have this a smartphone like a mobile phone. Are you trying to keep away from social media? I'm trying to conserve my time and attention and it's it can be such a draw, such a destruction. I don't think I would have the time to write books if I would have the smallest.
Phone either, I guess that's true, because a lot of people use social media to promote their ideas. But for you, you promote your able to promote your ideas through books that are widely read, or when they've been read by millions of people. So you don't really need to put an extra social media. I mean, I have a Facebook account and a Twitter account. And so, it is useful. I mean, to get to people, I mean, you do need to live in the 21st century lesson one. Yeah. Lesson number one, but I I tried
To, I'm very careful about preserving my time and my attention attention is, maybe the most important resource, its present and many devices. Like smartphones are really designed to grab your attention to take to take over your attention. So that that can be dangerous. Sometimes I love the Saudi and you don't read The Daily Newspaper hardly ever. I read long books. I mean? I distrust show texts. Yeah, so if I really
Understand something. I try to find a good book about it more clearly because part of writing these books. Particularly. They're so dense with knowledgeable information and I don't mean dense in a bad way. I mean, dents in a good way. You Tom so many stories, but you have to do kind of, there's a huge pyramid of research underneath. So you must be just constantly informing yourself not from the latest news, but from you know years and centuries of archaeological research.
Church historical Trends and so on to do the research for these books. Yeah, I start, I start reading a lot of books all the time. I drop like 90-something percent of them after 10 pages. If I didn't learn something really interesting or new after 10 pages. I say, ah, that must be some better book out there. I know it's not necessarily the best policy and not necessarily the best policy for everybody. But that's my method. Actually. It might not be a bad policy because if they
Say what their main core idea is that they're trying to educate you within 10 pages. What's the odds that they're going to do it in the yeah. This is exactly my way of thinking. So maybe we things like I don't know. Tolstoy's War and Peace, you can't you can't have this policy. But at least with most nonfiction, it doesn't have to be the main idea, but you need to get some new insight some New Perspective from the first few pages. Otherwise, my impression is it's unlikely to come later on and then
Even if you learn something in those first 10 pages, what? I feel like a lot of books, somebody has a good ten Pages, they submit to a publisher. And the publisher says listen, this was great. We did another 300 Pages. Now, to put it in a bookstore. What's the odds are? You're going to learn that much more in the next 300 Pages? Um, well in, in most case, I mean, I can drop a book after a hundred pages that that's also happened that they read the first 10 pages. It was very interesting and then I keep reading and after I haven't pages, I realized, Okay, so
It wasn't what I expected. But my main message is that really, I, I focus on a very broad spectrum of material and the way to manage it is to try to stick with something that really changes the way that you see the world. I mean, this is kind of the balance. I mean if if you're going to if you re just
One or two things, every week, instead of many, many different articles, at least, these one or two things should be profound and important in some way. Yeah, you bring up an interesting point because this is related to your writing. I feel like you don't write something unless you've really thought about how the current ways we think about an issue need to at least be questioned. And so you raised the question. So for instance and sapiens you bring up, I'm going to skip to the middle, but you you
Bring up the really interesting point that in 10,000 BC, the so-called Agricultural Revolution, where mankind starts harvesting and farming. Wheat was actually a negative to the species in many ways. It was a positive in that we could feed a billion people but it was a negative in that we suddenly changed our diet to just focus on a wheat based diet instead of plants, vegetables animals, what we were doing before and that our brains might have even
n shrunk as a result of not being aware of, you know, the three or five mile radius around us. We're just very focused on the very specialized farm work. We were doing, you know, that led to, you know, city states and kingdoms and wars and so on. As we kind of, you know, fought each other for resources. So all this became like a net negative basically for most people life just became harder, of course, if you're a king or you fuhrer, some high priest or even
Philosopher, then life was relatively good and better in many ways. Then as a hunter-gatherer in the Stone Age, but most people weren't Kings and weren't Aristocrats. They were peasants and farmers and herders, and their life, in many ways was much harder than before, physically you work, much harder. The human body evolved for millions of years in adaptation to climbing trees and running after rabbits. And
And things like that and suddenly you find yourself from sunrise to sunset, just plucking weeds and carrying water buckets from the river and harvesting and grinding corn. And you see it in archaeological remains that. People begin to suffer from all kinds of problems in their backs, in their necks, in their knees. And so, the body suffers from the transition. Also the Mind Life, as a hunter gatherer for most, people are far more interesting.
If you have to choose even today between going to the forest to look for mushrooms or carrying water buckets from the river all day or working, as a cashier in a supermarket all day. I think that going to the forest to look for mushrooms is far more interesting and even today depending on what mushrooms you looking for. Even if you look just for the ordinary, kind the Edible Ones to fill your stomach rather than to change your mind. Still it's more interesting when even the most people what
What most people do. Today? Of course, it comes with all kinds of difficulties and dangers. In the forest. You have snakes. You have tigers. You have to be alert all the time, but that also means that just by necessity, you develop kinds of alertness and Sensibility that most of us have lost over the last 10,000 years. When you go to the forest, to look for mushrooms, you have to be extremely present.
Don't, you have to be aware of every sound of every smell because this can be and dangerous signal, warning signal that the tiger is coming. If on the other hand, you today, go to the supermarket to buy our groceries. You don't need to be so alert. There are no Tigers lurking between the Corn Flakes or whatever. So, you can hold me the tiger. So that's one thing I got that lurks there, but he's not going to eat you. You're going to hit him.
And so you can just go there and, you know, stare at your mobile phone while doing a texting messages, and not even being present in the supermarket. So, in terms of these basic human skills to be present, to be able to listen, to be able to smell to be able to taste life was much more colorful and Rich 10,000 years ago and yet history will sort of pose this as a positive because we were able
Able to grow to a civilization, our species of a billion people. Yeah, the specie benefited enormously. If you look at it from the Viewpoint of the specie, then it's a net gain, but if you look at it from the Viewpoint of a three year old Chinese peasant girl, who is dying from starvation thousand years ago, then it doesn't look so so good in people as individuals paid an enormous price for our
Steve Advanced as a specie and most history books, of course celebrate the advances of the specie and tend to forget about the hard life of the individuals that make make all this possible. And you start, I want to ask you a little bit more about the thinking process of kind of going against these thousands of history books, but you start to make almost a parallel point about today's day and age and where the species is going with the rise of data could almost compare.
Are the rise of big data and Ai and the benefits. The touted benefits to the species is the same as the Agricultural Revolution, you know, supposedly benefit of this species in 10,000 BC. So how do you you know, we all grew up, you know, reading the same more or less textbooks or ideas. How do you then kind of come up with this twist that instead of humans domesticating? We and having this huge advance. I mean, it's called the
Revolution for a reason, you reverse a completely that wheat, domesticated humans. Yeah, just maybe you can actually see this particularly idea that wheat domesticated humans comes. It's not my idea. It comes from Jared Diamond's work and many of the Great insights over ideas of like this one. They actually the trick is to change the perspective. You tend to look at the story from one perspective. The easiest thing, you can do easiest in the conceptual.
A sense of all of thinking, okay. Let's try it right to find a new insight is change your perspective. Don't look at it from the Viewpoint of the king. Look at it from the Viewpoint of the peasant, don't look at it from the Viewpoint of the humans. Look at it, from the Viewpoint of the cows of Wheat and every time you turn the perspective, you see a completely different world and this is a trick that you can use when you make films, and it's a trick you use, when you write history books. So, so like I
She want to get to the seventy thousand BC that you mentioned sapiens, but let's skip ahead in this book. What were some of the perspectives that you kind of? So again, the books called 21 lessons for the 21st century. What were some of the perspectives that you switched in order to get some insight? Well once which is to switch from the perspective of humans, to the perspective of algorithms, I would, how would algorithms understand humans and the idea here is that you can
I understand. We are used to understanding humans from the inside out from our own experience, how we experience the world but when you look at us from the Viewpoint of a big data algorithm, we actually look like a huge organic or a huge biochemical algorithm that can be hacked and can be deciphered. And this is something maybe the most important thing to know about life in the 21st century is that we are now hackable animals and this is something
Most people refuse to accept because it completely contradicts their perspective of the world. They view the world from inside out. And from that, from that perspective. Nobody out. There can really understand me can really understand the rich inner world that I'm experiencing. My desires, my choices. They reflect my free will, there is reflect. My human spirit. This is something that computer will never be able to understand and you see,
For example, in almost all the science fiction books and movies that, you know, the robots are rebelling, a trying to kill all the humans or the aliens are coming from outer space with their gigantic spaceships and laser guns and whatever and humans are the you think that that's it humankind has absolutely no chance to resist the aliens or the other rebuilding robots, but in the end the humans win. Why? Because the robots can't figure out
Something called love, they just don't understand it. So they lose because they don't understand how the humans. Sacrifice one another. Oh, and what sacrifice himself for one another because of Love or something like that. And you know, this is extremely self-centered and and childish to think that although they will never be able to understand love. Because from the perspective of the algorithm. Well, this is just another bio.
A chemical process. If the computer can diagnose cancer, it can diagnose love. It's just a different different biochemistry. I love the barrel of viewing. Love is a disease that could be potentially cured. But if you think about it, humans have been manually hacking this for, let's say a hundred years since the beginning of advertising. So yeah, we walk around the street were flooded with thousands of advertising images a day. But again, we the kind of
Mutual pact. Is that we know this but we don't know this. We know that we are flooded by all these messages. But the common understanding is that the customer is always right. And it's the feelings and whims and the choices of the customers that the entire economy is built to satisfy and the idea that no, but the choices of the customers, they have been programmed by the advertisement in the
Astri, you can't say this. I mean, we know it part of our part of us know this because there's but everything, you know, there's testing of ads which works and so there's some algorithmic aspect even over the past, you know, 20 30 years, but it's intensified over the past five years. Exactly. I mean, the thing is that
What began as a kind of carpet bombing strategy. Now becomes precision-guided Munitions so you don't show the same ad to everybody. You tailor the add to the unique weaknesses and biases and Cravings of the individual, you hack the individual instead of working by statistics. Well, in the end, this is your point in the book that that free will
Itself is kind of a myth. I mean, we already know that a lot of cognitive biases that we have no control over shape our decisions, but we still think we have largely more control over them and then they have over us. But your point is that with data will be able to analyze. Well, what music triggers, what parts of the brain, what images trigger what, you know, the sales or greed parts of the brain and so on. So that the first level is kind of data used for advertising, but the
And level might be data used for much more Insidious decision-making. Yes. If you get to know a person well enough if you get to know a person better than that person knows himself or herself and that's even on the inside how the brain works and everything and, you know, people know. So very little about themselves, both on the biological level. Certainly how many people really understand their brains, but even on the psychological level on the mental level,
We have an entire profession of therapists who are just trying to help us get in touch with ourselves because it's so difficult. And if you go and practice something like meditation, then, at least when I started practicing meditation, I was struck by how little I know. I know almost nothing about my mind and you know, we have this myth of Free Will which in a way serves as a curtain that hides the reality about ourselves that actually mean
Dampens. Our curiosity. Because if you really believe in the myth of three of Lis, will my desires reflect my freedom. I chose these desires, I chose everything that I do, then, you know, everything you understand yourself. You understand your desires, you know, what they are coming from? There is nothing to investigate, but once you realize, no, my desires. Don't reflect my flea will then reflect all kinds of processes on.
A biological level on the psychological level, which I don't understand. Then you start being very curious about yourself. And I think that, you know, the 20th century in in throughout history, this advice to people get to know yourself better. This was always very good advice that you don't really know necessarily why you want this or why you want that. But for all of history,
So you had all these Socrates and Buddha and Freud telling people, no yourself. If you said, no, I don't I can't be bothered about it. You didn't have competition.
Still, you were a black box to the rest of humanity. So it wasn't such a little disadvantage, not to know yourself. But now in the 21st century what you need to realize you have real competition this time. It's not like in the days of Socrates. If you don't get to know yourself better, there is somebody out there who is right now, trying to hack you and not just one. Amazon is trying to hack you and Google is trying to hack you and Coca-Cola. He's trying to hack you and the Russians.
And the American government and the Chinese. They are all trying to hack you right now. Right? And so, and there's different again. There's different layers. So, for instance, Amazon's trying to hack you in the sense of, okay, you've all bought this this this and this and Rai and our data about people similar to you ball, show that he will probably buy this next. Yes. And so that's what they'll start to show you and then maybe five years from now, they'll send it to yesterday. What you were going to buy tomorrow. Yes, what's with
What's the next Insidious level of that? So that's kind of almost a good thing. When does it start to get darker? Well, its first they sell you a product and it really started with selling products. All these all these methods. But now these methods are also being used to sell you politicians, which is a bit more Insidious than selling people products. The next step is to start manipulating your desires instead of just
In them. Yes, he wants this but we can actually make him want that instead and then it really becomes kind of The Twilight Zone that if you realize that actually my desires, they do not reflect, my free. Will they reflect a more and more sophisticated system of manipulation? Then what can I trust if I cannot trust? My own inner, most authentic?
Desires and wishes. And again, this was a problem throughout history throughout history. If you really looked hard, you would have realized that many of your desires. They come either from biological bugs or from cultural manipulations and propaganda and so forth, but still you were in a privileged position.
Nobody out. There could really understand you better than you understand yourself. So you're saying, like things like nationalism or to an extreme fascism or on the other side liberalism, or before that religion. We're different men made stories to potentially take control of your free will, in a way that the Kings or whoever could control. But now it's with digitalism, for lack of a better word.
It could get deeper. They actually get inside of you in ways that you can't say no to. Exactly. Because simply because they understand the biology better, the understand the brain better. They have better devices to monitor what's happening there, and they are going to have better devices to change what is going on there. So, what you try to do a thousand years ago with the priest preaching from the pulpit?
You will be able to do in a far more invasive way in 10 or 15 years with all kinds of brain-computer interfaces and direct biological interventions. So it's not me what you mean by direct biological intervention as you understand, the biological system better. You can you know, like with every system once you understand how the system works you can start changing it in more and more ways.
Ranging from most sophisticated pills to change your mind all the way to genetic engineering, which changes the basic blueprints of the human brain and through that the human mind. I mean, after all if you think back 70,000 years ago we go back to the cognitive Revolution what made Homo sapiens different from all the other human species around like the Neanderthals and what really transformed us from the specie of
Important Apes into the rulers of the planet was quite minor changes in our DNA, which resulted in the restructuring. Also, on a relatively small scale of the human brain. The brain did not get bigger. It just got connected wired in a slightly different way. And this was enough to turn this insignificant ape into the ruler of the planet and end.
Just to just to mention. I mean, I thought this was so fascinating in sapiens. 70,000 years ago, the cognitive Revolution. You mentioned how humans Homo sapiens is opposed to even other branches of human. Like neanderthals developed the ability to essentially use imagination for storytelling and gossip. In this allowed us to work in bigger groups than just tribes, you know, working groups of millions and that allows
Us to conquer the world, and it would you think it was just mutations? Or what do you think as far as we understand me? The basic, the basic fact is that we control the planet, because we are the only mammals that can cooperate on a very large scale. No, other mammal, can cooperate, flexibly on the scale of thousands and millions, and if you examine all these large-scale human corporations, what you find is that they are based on storytelling.
A non-fictional and imaginary entities, we can cooperate with millions of strangers because we all believe in the same. Fictional stories about God's about Nations. About money about corporations, all kinds of things that exists only in the imagination. When you you mentioned a great example where you know, Isis could destroy a town but they'll save all the dollar bills. Yeah. Find even though they hate.
If they has George Washington on the Bell, they'll keep it because we have this belief in the story of the American dollar. Yeah, I mean the do know is that it's a completely worthless piece of paper. When we look at it from the perspective of a chimpanzee. You cannot eat a dollar bill. You cannot drink it. You cannot worry. There is nothing that a chimpanzee can do with a dollar bill and the same goes for Homo sapiens. There is nothing really useful that you can do with a dollar bill. So why is it so valuable?
Able because we have these most amazing storytellers in the world. Not the ones that win, the Nobel Prize for literature, but the ones in the Federal Reserve and they tell us this amazing story that you see, this, this green piece of paper. This is worth a banana. And as long as everybody believes this story, it really works. I can go to a complete, stranger whom. I never met before giving this worthless piece of paper and get a banana in exchange.
This is how the world
works.
Why do you think other hominids around 70,000 BC? And there were several different kinds out there including neanderthals? Why do you think they didn't? Develop the storytelling ability? As far as we know, it's pure chance as to the best of our understanding. What you have is some chance mutation in the DNA resulting in small changes in the internal structure of the brain which give rise to new cognitive abilities.
As the ability to create and believe fictional stories, which on the face of, it sounds like a very minor and insignificant ability, but actually turned out to be. Maybe the most important ability that we have, we can trade with billions of strangers because we believe in the dollar bill, and the chimpanzees can't, and this is why we control them and it goes all the way back to the Stone Age In the Stone Age. Also.
We have no evidence of trade between different Neanderthal, bands. As far as like quickly, you find you have artifacts made by neanderthals, but they are always made from Material like, Flintstones that are found in situ in, in the place where they lived, what we sapiens, you find artifacts made from Material, which was brought from hundreds of kilometers away. So, the was trade now,
How do you in order to have trained? You need trust you meet in the middle of the Jungle of the Savannah. This strange ape whom you don't know him or you don't know her and but you need to trust him or her to trade with them. So what do you do? You tell a story the most basic story as far as we can tell from anthropology is an ancestors tail? Yes. I don't know you but actually we are both descendants of the same.
Great ancestor who lived couple of generations ago. And if we both believe this story about the ancestor, we can trust each other and amazingly. It's still the story on the dollar because you have an ancestor altar. Hey, you use a descendant of George Washington me, too, so I can trust you. I can you can give a nice banana now. So before before getting into kind of some of the 21 lessons for the 21st century because this is related to
Think sapiens as a species are more violent than other species have been. Because you mentioned, for instance, in sapiens. We get to Australia, which is in itself, an amazing feat. Like, how do we get, how do we go over the water? And even know that Australia is there's going to be there but then within two or three thousand years, any species that could potentially hurt us. Is extinct. Like do you think we do you think it's humans that are naturally violent or
Would any species, be violent? And we happen to have this ability to work together. Some species of definitely more violent than others. And humans are quite violent and chimpanzees are also violent. No, no, maybe not a bonobos. But certainly the common chimpanzees are quite violent. The big difference is simply that we are far more powerful. It's a bit like with children and adults. Children are not nicer than adults. They are just weaker than adults. So, most of the murders in the world are
By adults, not because adults are more evil. Simply because adults are more powerful. It's interesting actually the transition between childhood and adulthood 18 to ages, 18 to 22. That's probably the most violent age yet, you know, when kids have the physical power of an adult. Now about, if you go even even a step further and you think about the really big Mass murderers, like Hitler, and Stalin and Mao and all these people, they were in their 40s and 50s and 60s. So again,
They are not necessarily. I'm not sure that Hitler would be the kind of guy you would be afraid to meet in a dark alley. There are much worse people to meet in a dark alley than Hitler, but
we always joke. No, really. I do
Comedy Club. Come on. I mean, he's not dangerous on the level of an individual. You meet in some dark corner at night. He's dangerous. When you put him in charge of a country or in charge of a storytelling machine own child of Storytelling machine.
Propaganda machine. Basically that created the fascism that he that he spread. Yes. So so it's a different kind of evil. And in this sense. It's not necessarily that it's not that we are more evil than chimpanzees. We are in charge of a far more powerful system. So, in there for all our weaknesses, our fears, our hatreds can result in
Mass murder on a scale that is far beyond what the most vicious chimpanzee can accomplish. So then, you know, bringing this into the present day and you're 21 lessons for the 21st century. You start to look at how
Today's Technologies may have exceeded our ability to essentially evolved with them. Yeah, because we still have the same DNA. We had, let's say, 70,000 years ago and our challenge now is what do we do? We got to look at all the worst-case scenarios and these and ask the questions, which is what you do in this book. So, you know, one of them being, you know, what does the rise of data mean towards Free Will, which in turns what does it mean towards our liberal?
Philosophies of democracy. And so on, you also look at, you know, essentially the rise of AI and Robotics. And what does this mean for moving our middle class to a useless class? Like what would you say across these lessons? There's just common theme of we're losing power to the to the machines that that we created and that some part of us might merge with like, what's your what's your worst case scenario? Oh, the worst case scenario. We have
Big problems. Humanity has three three big problems in the 21st century. And these are nuclear war and climate change and technological disruption. And each of them is enough to destroy human civilization on by itself. And when you combine them, you get a really toxic mix aan isn't there's. Another characteristic of all three, which is that
Globalism could maybe you know basically viewing civilization is one Global Society could potentially temper the risk. Yes, but we're not, we're probably not, you know, at the end of sapiens we get this sense that we're on, on the direction of globalism. But but the reality is, there's volatility along the way. And we may not get to globalism in time because there's nationalism, and then so on right now, but we'll still much more united than any previous time in history. We are far more
Elected. And we also, there are more and more ideas and institutions that are common to all people across the world. Whether it's in politics, whether it's in economics, everybody uses the dollar, even Isis liked to have the dollars. Certainly when it comes to science to things like medicine, how to build the hospital? How to cure a disease? How to build a bomb. Everybody agrees on that. You know, it's not like a thousand years ago when you had very different Medical Systems and medical theories in different parts of the world.
Old take something like the, I don't know the FIFA football World Cup. Just a few months ago try to get argentinians and French and Japanese thousand years ago. All call to come to Russia and play a game together. Absolutely impossible. Not just because you don't have the transportation and the Russians don't even know that America exists. The it's also because there is not a single game which Everybody Plays across the world. I mean, to think about
Session today. When everybody almost everybody, maybe not Americans. I hear that here football is not a big thing. But at least potentially you do. Have some food will just potentially that kids all over the world play exactly the same game. According to exactly the same rules and Argentinian meets an English football hooligan and they can speak about the offside Rule and they know exactly what we're talking about. There is nothing like it a thousand years ago. There is not a
A single game that all humans play everywhere. So you can't have something like that. We are far more united than ever before in this sense, but we are not United enough in order to deal with any of these three brick, big problems. Nuclear war, climate change and technological disruption. We need very significant Global cooperation because it should be absolutely clear. None of these problems can be solved on the national level by a single government. And I think that the
Is that let's take nuclear war. The fear is that the technology will increase so fast, meaning it'll be easier and cheaper to make a nuclear weapon that we don't evolve globalism enough to to basically meet the challenge, yo, or another big problem, which is becoming more than most of you these days is that, as AI develops, it could completely destabilise the the balance of power.
Were the nuclear balance of power in the kind of golden age of the Cold War? We when you had the balance of power between the Soviets and the Americans, it was based on on the robustness of the weapon systems that you knew that I knew that you knew that you can destroy me. There is nothing I can do to protect myself, but the promise of the new technologies and especially the rise of AI is,
It, you don't know, maybe I have already taken over your nooks and you just don't know it. Because you don't realize that I have planted all kinds of logic bombs and Trojan horses and malware inside the system that controls your nooks, and I know it. But you don't know it and this is extremely destabilizing.
In such a situation, are we are in a much worse position than in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Because if you don't, if you cannot be sure that you have control over your nukes. There is no longer an effective deterrents and there is an increasing temptation to use it before you lose it. Okay, maybe. Maybe now we have control over them. But at the rate that China is developing their AI.
In 10 years, we could be completely overtaken by them and we can't even trust our nukes at that time because maybe they already control them. I remember looking at a company where they are involved in cyber security. And these guys were telling me, that essentially every single company in the Fortune 500, in every electric grid is attacked all day long from basically every country in the world.
There's no, there's no to end and I said to them all. Can you is there a way to fix the problem and their answer and they were all phds? Their answer was, there's whoever they are, is smarter than us. Like the bad guys always somehow smarter than the good guy in these situations because the bad guys, just willing to do anything and the good guy has limitations. So. So essentially we can assume that that angle. You're going down, is going to have a bad end. Yeah. I mean in an a I'm in an AI arms race.
Whoever wins Humanity will lose. We are getting into an AI arms race. It's maybe the most important thing that is happening on the geopolitical level. Now, in the world is that we are entering five years ago. It wasn't like it, but now we are already in the midst of an AI arms race and this is a terrible situation because it almost guarantees that all our worst nightmares or about a I will be realized
But every country will say we don't want to do this terrible thing. We don't want to develop this dangerous technology, but we cannot trust our Rivals to abstain. So we have to do it first but you know, you can also assume still. If we assume they control us, they might not know that we control them. Yeah, and there's still that kind of game. I'm gonna say she makes it worse because well the less, you know, the more difficult it is to create effective deterrents.
The greater the temptation to just go ahead and do something. What about you mentioned, also the potential for one class of humans to use AI to enhance their abilities. Either enhance their brains or use biological Innovations to enhance their physical skills and a sense, you know, another problem. We potentially face in this century is the splitting apart of two species like the super humans. And the regular Homo sapiens. Is that is that realistic or
Or does the fact that technology always get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, make anything that's accessible to the superhumans, ultimately successful to everyone. Well, ultimately maybe but there is a question of a Time Gap. If it becomes cheap in a hundred years, it's not enough. Because during these hundred years, there will be enormous new developments. So the Gap will become bigger and not smaller and you, we cannot just assume in it. It could happen. Nobody knows but we cannot assume it.
Vaughn's that every major technological advance in things like bioengineering or direct brain. Computer interfaces will very quickly become very cheap and very common in. Everybody will enjoy it at least some technologies, could remain very expensive, very kind of lucrative. And we'll create an unprecedented gap between the rich and the poor. Because For the first time in history, you will be able to really Translate.
Economic inequality into biological inequality, right? So right now might have been the case that for a few years. Some people could afford iPads and others couldn't which wasn't really a big deal, but it will become a big deal depending on that the technological innovation and and the and the time it takes to reach the poor and even today, if you look at something like big data algorithms. So yes, everybody has smartphones. Almost everybody. This is part of the system. They need you to have a smartphone so they can gather the data about.
It's really, it doesn't make you more powerful. It makes the Big Data algorithms more powerful and in contrast to the smartphones, which are now almost ubiquitous the Big Data algorithms. They belong to a very, very small segment of society and a very small segment of the world even it's not there. Like every country has these big corporations just very few countries.
Control or your own, almost all the data of the world and it's not like they're going to share it. Like Google's never going to share the data. Except with the governor US Government base books. Never going to share their data sound like they're going to say, here's all the data to everybody else unless you buy. I don't know about never. I mean, you can have all kinds of it can come from within it. Come come from pressure from McDonald's, regulations political debates, but this is the kind of, it will definitely necessitate.
Political action. So so this is another problem that you mentioned, and then another problem you mentioned in terms of technological innovation is that the rise of AI and automation could turn the middle class into a useless class. So we're no longer shelving shelves at Walmart. These people are just simply as opposed to everybody who worked on horses. Eventually worked on cars. It's not the case that everyone who is going to be replaced by a, I will have a new industry to work in because you have a computer.
I'll be doing the jobs and the will be new jobs. But most of the new jobs will be high skilled jobs, that demand all kinds of creative abilities, and all kinds of Highly professional skills. And for many people, it might prove impossible to retrain themselves both because they lack the necessary education. They lack the necessary financial support to have a gyro.
To retrain themselves, maybe because they lack the Psychological Resources to reinvent themselves, but by its it's not like, you know, in the like in 1920 if you were a farm worker and you were laid off because they now have these tractors. They don't need you. So you move to the Troy to some big city and you go to work in a tractor Factory and this is you don't need to spend a lot of time on our effort to re-skill yourself as a
A worker in a big Factory, but if you lose your job as a truck driver in 2032, self-driving vehicle and there is a new opening in designing software. It's going to be a lot more difficult to retrain yourself as a software designer than it was to retrain yourself as a factory work. Although I wonder if like the profits generated by these corporations who are using these new productive Technologies owner of those prophets themselves will
Into
society and create more opportunities or more jobs or more. I don't know. We can't question. Yes. I mean, there are some very positive scenarios ahead of us. We've been focusing on the negative scenarios, but there are wonderful scenarios that yes, lots of job disappear, but it's the crappy job, is the disappear that people needed to do because he needed money. They needed food, but nobody really wanted to be a truck driver on the road, 12 hours a day.
And if you can, for example, tax, the big corporations that enjoy the enormous benefits of the automation Revolution, and use these revenues to support the unemployed truck drivers, and enable them either to retrain themselves or to realize whatever dreams they have in life. This could be a very good thing. The thing is that you need a completely different political system to do.
It and even more importantly, you need to do it on a global and not on a national level because of one of the biggest dangers is that the automation Revolution will completely destroy the economies of some countries. Whereas the benefits will go to a very small number of Highly developed countries. And if you don't have a global safety, net the consequences for billions of people could be catastrophic.
Vic. It's exactly these problems though. That could be the last the final thing preventing us from globalism. Just because of what you just said. So climate change for instance will at least initially benefit some countries and and hurt others. So there's there's a there's going to be a last-minute tendency to stick to nationalism. So that not everybody, you know, shares in the pain yet. That's one of the biggest dangers that it certainly for the last five years.
Are heading in the opposite direction of global cooperation and many of the pressures and also many of the opportunities of the new technologies and of climate change are going to tempt people of further in the direction of nationalism and isolationism. So in terms of we as individuals, okay, we have these problems and there's the many other lessons. You described in the 21 lessons for the 21st century.
But as an individual, how do I start to cope with this? Now? One of the things you mentioned is questioning like not you let not allowing this myth of free will, to think I understand myself both questioning all the ideologies around me. And then you also mentioned in the book, you know, your style of meditation. We may be kind of more internal reflection to to build the muscle of self-reflection. What what other what or what ways?
Do you use to kind of, you know, fight these potential catastrophes as an individual? Well in the individual, it's pretty limited. What you can do. You can certainly try and build your skills and you can certainly increase the your own self, understand, understanding your own powers of introspection and self-knowledge. And meditation is certainly very helpful in that.
And there are many different techniques to do it, but it's not kind of the silver bullet that will solve all the problems and that will save Humanity. We need to collect and we need Collective action on all levels. So as an individual, because it's very limited what you can accomplish as an individual one. Very good idea is join an organization. There is, there are so many organizations out there.
And when people organize, they can usually accomplish far more than way. They try to work as individual activists. You think there's a social media platform like Facebook is conducive towards creating Global organizations that could address some of these issues. They work both ways on the one hand. They make it easier for people to communicate, and to form organizations with like-minded people, maybe even on the other side of the planet, on the other hand, they can.
And also lock people inside these digital digital worlds. When you think that just doing likes or having signing online petitions. You've done your share. And actually, you need to go out into the offline world to I can. Yes. Yes, there is that you need to go out to the offline world, to make sometimes a real change. And and
So, what if you are really troubled about these things, join an organization? This is a very the one of the best advices that I can give. There is so much more that even an organization of 50 people can do compared with 50 individual activists each doing my own thing. So, you know, we have to wrap soon. I just want to again say what a great book by your violin or no?
Harare 21 lessons for the 21st century, but I really feel like all three of your books. It's like a it's like a Trilogy. You have to read all three they're just so amazing. I sort of feel like eight years ago. You must have had a tumor or
stroke like
you were writing about 12th century, medieval fighting. Ye Sun these autobiographical texts of knights from the round table or whatever and then suddenly right the three smartest folks ever.
In a mankind, like what happened in your life that you just said, I'm going to be the smartest man alive, instead of just some academic. But one thing that happen I got tenure at the University. That is, I could do whatever I wanted and I no longer had to feel the publish or perish, you know, whatever coaster in but a lot of people get tenure. Yeah, that's true. But for many people, it's too late. By the time they get to a new, they forgot what they really wanted to do.
And somehow I still remembered and you know, it's partly. It's it's it's locked and partly. It's a lot of help that I got from any other people. I mean you look at the book and you think okay the author muscles must have been a very smart person but there are many other people being responsible for the fact that you own are reading this book. I know just how to read books but like the real
PR genius behind the success of all three books is my husband itzik. Without whom, I think nobody would have heard about sapiens or homo do so 21 lessons. Did he put you on Coursera? Because that's where I first before savings came in America. I saw you had a very big fight with the university. The university we wanted to do this online course for Coursera. And they brought this, they put it in a basement of the University. I had like, I there was no teleprompter.
I was reading from a text on paper as if I was in the 1970s in some in the early days of television and the photographer that they brought kept falling asleep during end. Like one time, he just fell on the camera and the camera fell down.
Yeah, and he'll and he
fought and took forthwith with the university to get proper budget and to do it in a proper way. And this is how the the Coursera course came out and like that, you know.
Like you need an entire Village to raise a child, you need an entire Village to get a book out there, but I think also important like what you said in the very beginning about not having a phone that probably saved, he carries the phone. Also. This is why I have the large worker separate. How do you get in touch with each other? We have to meet. I'm going to try this. No phone thing because I feel like that takes an hour or two a day because you get on the phone. It's not a phone. It's just an app on your phone.
Phone. Now like the rest is just like checking nonsense. It's also actually the it's actually the new status symbol. If you're really important, you don't have a phone. If you work for somebody, you have a phone that says it. You're saying well, okay, you've all no hurry. Thanks. Once again for coming on the podcast. 21 lessons for the 21st century, but I also recommend sapiens and Homo dais. Is there going to be a fourth book. Are you thinking of it?
I don't know, you know, you all think of, you know, you, you should set up a little company advising these major companies about what to do with their big data, and Advising governments, had a had a deal with some of these issues. I think about multimillion-dollar company. I'll think about it. I have a feeling you're not going to think too much about it. Thanks very much. Thank you.
