The following is a conversation, we evolved the Harare, a historian philosopher and author of several highly acclaimed, highly influential books, including sapiens homo dais and 21 lessons for the 21st century. He is also an outspoken critic of Benjamin Netanyahu and the current right-wing government in Israel. So, while much of this conversation is about the history and future of human civilization, we also discuss the political turmoil of present.
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13.8 billion years ago is the origin of our universe. 3.8 billion years ago is the origin of life here on our little planet. The one we call Earth. Let's say 200,000 years ago is the appearance of early Homo sapiens. So let me ask you this question. How rare are these events in the vastness of space and time or put it in a more fun way? How many intelligent alien civilizations do you think are out there in this universe as being one of them? I see.
Suppose. There should be some statistically, but we don't have any evidence but I do think that, you know, intelligence in any way to bit overvalued, we are the most intelligent entities on this planet and look what we were doing. So intelligence also tends to be self-destructive which implies that if there are or were intelligent life forms elsewhere, maybe they don't survive for long. You think there's a tension between
In happiness and intelligence.
Absolutely intelligence is definitely not something that is directed towards amplifying happiness. I would also emphasize the huge difference between intelligence and Consciousness, which many people certainly in the tech industry and in the AI industry tend to miss intelligence, is simply the ability to solve problems to attain goals.
And, you know, to win a chess to win that struggle for survival to win a war to drive a car to diagnose the disease. This is intelligence Consciousness is the ability to feel things like pain and pleasure and love and hate in humans and other animals intelligence and Consciousness. Go together they go, hand-in-hand, which is why we confuse them. We solve problems, we attain go.
Goals by having feelings.
But other types of intelligence certainly in computers computers are already highly intelligent. And as far as we know, they have zero Consciousness when a computer beats you a chance. So go or whatever, it doesn't feel happy, if it loses, it doesn't feel sad. And there could be also other highly intelligent entities out there in the universe that have zero Consciousness. And I think that consciousness
this is far more important and valuable than intelligence.
Can you still me on the case that Consciousness and intelligence are intricately connected? So not just in humans, but anywhere else they had they have to go hand in hand. Is it possible for you to imagine such a universe? It could be, but we don't know. Yet again, we have examples, certainly, we know of examples of high intelligence without Consciousness. Computers are one example. As far as We Know,
Plants are not conscious yet. They are intelligent, they can solve problems, they can attain goals in very sophisticated ways. So I'm the other way around to have Consciousness. Without any intelligence, this is probably impossible, but to having intelligence without Consciousness, yes, that's possible. A bigger question is whether any of that is tied to organic biochemistry? We know
No. On this planet only about carbon-based life-forms. Whether you're an amoeba dinosaur, a tree, a human being. You are based on organic biochemistry.
Is there an essential connection between organic biochemistry and Consciousness? Do all conscious entities everywhere in the universe or in the future on planet Earth, have to be based on carbon, is there something so special about carbon is an element that an entity based on Silicon will never be conscious? I don't know maybe but again this is a key question about computer and computer consciousness.
Can computers eventually become conscious even though they are not organic. The jury's still out on that? I don't know. I mean, that we have to take both options into
account. Well, a big part of that is, do you think we humans would be able to detect other intelligent beings other conscious beings? Another way to ask that, is it possible that the aliens are already here? And we don't see them meaning, are we very human Centric in our understanding?
I of one, the definition of life to the definition of intelligence and three, the definition of Consciousness.
The aliens are here. They are just not from outer space, AI, which is usually stands for artificial intelligence. I think it stands for alien intelligence because AI is an alien type of intelligence. It solved problems attains goals in a very, very, different way in an alien way, from human beings, and I'm not implying that a, I came from outer space. It came from Silicon.
Valley, but it is alien to us, if there are alien intelligent or conscious entities that came from outer space already here. And I've not seen any any evidence for it. It's not impossible but you know in science evidence is everything. Well
I mean I guess instructive there's just having the humility to look around to think about living beings that operate a different time. Scale, a different spatial scale.
And I think that's all useful. When starting to analyze artificial intelligence, it's possible that even the language models. The large language models we have today are already
conscious. I highly doubt it, but I think Consciousness in the end it's a question of social norms because we cannot prove Consciousness in anybody except ourselves. We know that we are conscious because we are feeling it. We have direct access to our subjective Consciousness. We have
We cannot have any proof that any other entity in the world. Any other human being. Our parents are best friends. We don't have proof that they are conscious. You know, this is this has been known for thousands of years. This is the card, this is Buddha, this is Plato week. We don't we can't have this sort of proof. What we do have is Social conventions. It's a social convention that all human beings are conscious. It's also applies to animals. Most people who have pets are
Of firmly believe that their patch pets are conscious, but a lot of people still refuse to acknowledge that about cows or pigs. Now, pigs are far more intelligent than dogs and cats in according to many measures yet. When you go to the supermarket and buy it as a piece of Frozen pigment, you don't think about it as a conscious entity. Why do you think of your dog is conscious, but not of the, of the bacon, that you buy, because you've build a relationship.
Ship with the dog and you don't have a relationship with the bacon Now relationships. They don't constitute a logical proof for Consciousness. There is social test that the Turing. Test is a social test. It's not a logical proof. Now, if you establish a mutual relationship with an entity, we when you are invested in it, emotionally, you're almost compelled to
We feel that the other side is also conscious and when it comes down to a tie and computers, I think, and I don't think that at the present moment computers are conscious but people are already forming intimate. Relationships with a eyes and are therefore almost irresistible, almost irresistible. They're compelled to to increasingly feel that these are conscious entities and I think we are quite close to the point.
When the legal system will have to take this into account that even though I don't think computers have Consciousness, I think we are close to the point the legal system will start treating them as conscious entities because of this social convention. What
do you use social convention? Just a funny little side effect. A little artifact or is its fundamental to a Consciousness is because if it is
Well then it seems like AI is very good at forming. These kinds of deep relationships with humans. Yeah. And therefore it will be able to be a nice Catalyst for integrating itself into these social conventions of ours
it was built to accomplish that. Yeah we are designed again you know all this argument between natural selection and creationism intelligent design as far as the past go all entities.
Evolved by natural selection. The funny thing is when you look to the Future more and more entities will come out of intelligent design, not of some God above the clouds, but of our intelligent design, and the intelligent design of our clouds of our Computing clouds, they will Design more and more entities. And this is what is happening with AI. It is designed to be very good at forming intimate, relationships with humans
And in many ways it's already doing it almost better than human beings in some situations, you know, when two people talk with one, another, one of the things that kind of makes the conversation, more difficult is our own emotions. You're saying something and I'm not really listening to you bitter because there is something I want to say and I'm just waiting until you finish. I can put in a word or I'm so obsessed.
Just with my anger or irritation or whatever that, I don't pay attention to what you're feeling. This is one of the biggest obstacles in human relationships and computers don't have this problem because they don't have any emotions of their own. So you know, when a computer is talking to you, it can be the most. It can focus. 100% of its attention is on your what you're saying and what you're feeling because it has no feelings of its own and paradoxically
This means that computers can fool people into feeling that, oh, that there is a conscious entity on the other side and empathic entity on the other side. Because the one thing everybody wants, almost more than anything in the world is for somebody to listen to me. Somebody to focus, all their attention on me, like I want it for my spouse, for my husband, from my mother, for my friends, for my politicians listen to me. Listen to what I
Feel and they often don't. And now you have this entity which 100% of its attention is just on what what I feel. And this is a huge, huge Temptation and I think also a huge huge danger.
Well, the interesting Catch-22. There's you said somebody to listen to us yes, we want somebody to listen to us, but for us to respect that somebody
They sometimes have to also not listen, it's like they kind of have to be an asshole, sometimes they have to have mood sometimes have to have like self-importance and confidence and and we should have a little bit of fear that they can walk away at any moment. There should be a little bit of that tension. So it's like absolutely but even that, I mean, the thing is gonna be up there as for if social scientists and psychologists establish, that animal 17% in attention is good for a
Mission. Because then you feel challenged? Or I need to grab, this person's attention. You can program the AI to have 17. Exactly 17 percent in attention. Not one percentage more or less or it can by trial and error. Discover, what is the the ideal percentage? Again, you can create over the last ten years, we have creating machines for grabbing people's attention. This is what what has been happening on social media. Now we
have designing machines for grabbing human intimacy, which in many ways. It's much, much more dangerous and scary already the machines for grabbing attention. We've seen how much social and political damage they could do by, in many by kind of distorting the public conversation machines that are superhuman in their abilities, to create, Intimate Relationships. This is like psychological and social weapons.
Mass destruction. If we don't regulate it, if we don't, train ourselves to deal with it, it could destroy the foundations of human
society. Well, one of the possible trajectories is those same algorithms would become personalized. And instead of manipulating us at scale, they would be assistance. That guide us to help us grow to help us understand the world better. I mean, just even interactions with with large language models.
Now, if you ask them questions, it doesn't have that stressful drama, the tension that you have from other sources of information, it has a pretty balanced perspective that it provides. So it just feels like that's a the potential is there to have a really nice friend who's like an encyclopedia that just tells you all the different perspectives, even on controversial issues, the most controversial issues to say these are the different theories. These are
The not widely accepted conspiracy theories but that here's the kind of backing for those conspiracies just lays it all out and then with a calm language without the trip without the words that kind of presume this, some kind of manipulation going on under Underneath It All. It's quite refreshing, of course, those are the early days and, you know, people can step in and start to sensor to manipulate those algorithms to start to input some of the human biases in there, as opposed to the, what's currently
Happening, is kind of.
The internet is input. Compress it and have a nice little output that gives an overview of the different issues. So, I mean, there's a lot of Promise they're also,
absolutely. I mean, if there was no promise promise, that was no problem, you know, if this technology could not accomplish anything good, nobody would develop it. Now obviously it has tremendous positive potential in things like what you just described in, you know, better medicine, better health care. But a little education, so many promises and but this is also
It's so dangerous because the the drive to develop it faster and faster is there, and it has some dangerous potential also and we shouldn't ignore it again. I'm not advocating Banning, it just to be, you know, careful about how we not so much, develop it, but most importantly how we deploy it into the public sphere is this is the key question. And you know, you look back at history and one of the things we know from history, humans are not
Good with new technologies. I hear many people now say, you know, AI, it's we've been here before, we had the radio, we had the printing press, we had the Industrial Revolution. Every time there is a big new technology, people are afraid, and it will take jobs. And when they'll do the Bad actors, and in the end, it's okay. And as a store in my tendency is, yes, in the end, it's okay. But in the end, there is a learning curve. There is a kind of a lot of failed.
It's on the way to of to learning how to use the new technology and these failed experiments could cost the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Do you think about the last really big revolution, the Industrial Revolution? Yes, in the end, we learned how to use the powers of Industry, electricity radio trains, whatever to build better, human societies. But on the way we had all these experiments lying
European imperialism, which was driven by the internal Revolution. It was a question, how do you build an industrial society, how you build an Empire and you take, you control all the resources, the raw materials, the markets and then you had communism, another big experiment on how to build an industrial society and you had Fascism and Nazism which were essentially an experiment in how to build an industrial society including even how do you exterminate minorities using
Powers of of industry. And we had all these failed experiments on the way and if we now have the same type of failed experiments with the Technologies of the 21st century with AI. With bioengineering it could cost the lives of again hundreds of millions of people and maybe destroy the species. So as a story--and, when people talk about the examples from history from new technologies, I'm not
So optimistic, we need to think about the failed experiment, which accompanied every major new technology.
So, this intelligence thing, like you were saying is a double-edged sword, is that every new thing? It helps us create it can both save us and destroy us and it's unclear each time, which will happen. And that's maybe why we don't see any aliens. Yeah, I mean I think each time it does both things each
Time it does both good things and bad things and the more powerful the technology, the greater both the positive and the negative outcomes. Now, we are here because we are the descendants of the survivors of the surviving, cultures, the surviving civilizations. So, when we look back, we say in the end, everything was okay. We are here, but the people for whom it wasn't okay, they're just not here.
Ear and okay, he has a lot of possible variations to it because there's a lot of suffering along the way even for the people that survived. So the quality of life and all of this. But let's actually go back there to our with deep gratitude to our ancestors. How did it all start? How did Homo sapiens out-compete? The others? The other human-like species, the the Neanderthals, and the other homo species
You know, in the, on the individual level, as far as we can tell, we were not Superior to them. Neanderthals actually had bigger brains than us and not just other human species other animals, too. If you compare me personally to an elephant to a chimpanzee to a pig, I'm not. So I'm I can do some things better. Many other things worse. If you put me alone on some island with a chimpanzee and elephant and a pig, I wouldn't bet on me being the the
The the best Survivor the the one that comes as
successful. If I may interrupt for a second, I just I was just talking extensively with Elon Musk about the difference between humans and chimps relevant to optimize the robot and The Chimps are not able to do this kind of pinching, okay? With their fingers, they can only do this kind of pinching and this kind of pinching is very useful for five minutes. Elation of out precise manipulation of objects so don't be so hard on yourself.
You have I said that I can do some things better than a chimp but you know, if you don't masks goes on a boxing match with a chimpanzee, you know this won't help you. This is John's help you against the chimpanzee 0.10 similar. If you want to climb a tree if you want to do so many things, my bets will be on the chimp not on Iran, fair enough. So I mean you have Adventures on both sides and what really made us successful what made us the
Rulers of the planet and not a chimps. And not only a hundred Souls is not any individual ability, but our Collective ability, our ability to cooperate flexibly in very large. Numbers chimpanzees knows, know how to cooperate a 50 chimpanzees. 100 chimpanzees as far as we can tell from archaeological evidence. This was also the case with neanderthals Homo sapiens about 70,000 years ago, gain an amazing ability to bake to cooperate.
Basically, unlimited numbers, you start seeing the formation of large networks, political commercial, religious items, being traded over thousands of kilometers, ideas, being spread, artistic Fashions. And and this is our secret of success.
Chimpanzees neanderthals can cooperate say, 100. We, you know, now the global trade network has eight billion people. Like, what we eat, what we were, it comes from the other side of the world countries like China like India. They have one point four billion people even Israel, which is a relatively small country say, 99 million citizens. That's more than the entire population of the planet 10,000 years ago for humans.
So we can build these huge networks of cooperation and everything we've accomplished as a species form. You know, building the pyramids to flying to the moon. It's based on that and then you ask, okay, so what makes it possible for millions of people who don't know? Each other to cooperate, in a way that neanderthals are chimpanzees couldn't? And at least my answer is stories, is fiction. It's the imagination. If you examine
Any large-scale human cooperation. You always find fiction as its basis. It's a fictional story that holds lots of strangers together. It's most obvious in cases, like religion. You know, you can't convince a group of chimpanzees to come together to fight a war or build a cathedral by promising to them. If you do that after you die you go to chimpanzee heaven and you get lots of bananas and coconuts no chimpanzee.
Ever believe that humans believe these stories, which is why we have this huge religious networks, but it's the same thing with modern politics. It's the same thing with economics, people think, oh, economics, this is rational, it has nothing to do with fictional stories. No money is the most successful Story Ever Told much more successful than any religious mythology. Not everybody believes in God or in the same God everybody, almost everybody believes in money.
Even though it's just a figment of our imagination. You know, you take these green pieces of paper dollars, they have no value. You can't eat them, you can't drink them. And today, most dollars are not even pieces of paper. They are just electronic information passing between computers, we value them just for one reason that you have the best storytellers in the world. The bankers, the finance ministers, all these people, they are the best storytellers ever.
And they tell us a story that these green little piece of paper. Or this bit of information, it is worth a banana. And as long as everybody believes it, it works. So I wish point is a fiction when it's sufficiently useful and effective and improving the global quality of life. Does it become like accept the reality? Like there's a threshold, which is not even believe it. It's like with money you know, if you start a new cryptocurrency,
If you're the only one that believes the story behind you, you cryptocurrencies, you have the math, of course. But ultimately it's storytelling. You're selling people as story if nobody believes your story. You don't have anything. But if lots of people believe the Bitcoin story then Bitcoin can be worth thousands and tens of thousands of dollars again, why? I mean you can't eat it. You can't drink it, it's nothing. It's the story around the the math which is the real magic.
Is it possible that the story is the primary living organism, not the Storyteller? So that somehow humans Homo sapiens evolved to become this, like hosts for a more intelligent living organism which is the idea. And the idea is that the ones that are doing the competing. So this is one of the sort of big perspectives behind your work. That's really revolutionary. How you seen his?
Anybody ever kind of take a, the perspective of the ideas as the organisms versus the
humans? It's, it's an interesting idea of the two opposite things to say about it. On the one hand. Yes, absolutely, if you look long term in history, it's all all the people die. It's the stories that compete and survive and spread and stories often spread by making people willing to sacrifice sometimes their lives.
Eggs for the story. You know, we now in Israel this is one of the most important story factories in human history. And this is a place where people still kill each other every day over stories. I don't know. I've been to Jerusalem, right? So, people here are the result of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you go there. I've lived in Jerusalem, much of my life. You go there, it's an ordinary place, you know? It's a town, you have buildings, you have Stones, you have trees. You have dogs and cats and pedestrians. It's a
Regular place. But then you have the stories about the place. Oh, this is the place where God revealed himself, this is the place where Jesus was, this is the place was Muhammad Wars and it's the stories that people fight over, nobody's fighting over the stones. People are fighting about the stories about the stones and the stories. If a story can get millions of people to fight for it.
Is it not only survives it spreads? It can take over the world. The other side of the coin is that the stories are not really alive because they don't feel anything. This goes back to the question of Consciousness, which I think is the most important thing that the Ultimate Reality is consciousness is the ability to feel things. If you want to know whether the
Hero of some story is real or not you need to ask. Can it suffer
Stories, don't feel anything.
Countries, which also stories Nations don't suffer if a nation loses the war. It doesn't suffer the soldiers, sulfur, the civilians suffer animals can suffer. You have an army with horses and whatever, and the horses, get wounded, the hoses suffer, the nation con, some fur. It's just an it's just an imagination. It's just a fictional story in our mind, it doesn't feel anything. Similarly, when a bank goes bankrupt or company goes bankrupt, or when it
Currency loses its value like Bitcoin is worth now. 20 crashed of the dollar is worth the right crashed. The download doesn't feel anything, it's the people holding the dollars who might be now, very miserable. So we have this complex situation when history is largely driven by stories but stories are not the Ultimate Reality, the Ultimate Reality is feeling feelings of you.
Omens of animals and the tragedy of history. Is it very, very often. We get it, we get the order wrong, stories are not bad stories out tools, they are good. When we use them in order to alleviate suffering,
But very often we forget it. We instead of using the stories for our purposes, we allow the stories to use us for their purposes and then you start in tile Wars because of his story, you inflict Millions suffering on millions of people, just for the sake of a story and that's the tragedy of of human history.
So the fundamental property of life of a living organism is the
capacity to feel and the ultimate feeling is
suffering. You know, to know if you're happy or not, it's a very difficult question. Yeah. But when you suffer, you know, yes, and also in ethical terms, it's more important to be aware of sufferings and of any other emotion if you are doing something which is causing all kinds of amoa called, all kinds of emotions to all kinds of people. First of all, you need to notice if you're causing a lot of suffering to someone,
If some people are like it and some people are bored by it and some people are a bit angry and you and some people are suffering because of what you do. You first of all, have to know toe now, sometimes you still have to do it. You know, the world is a complicated place, I don't know. You have an epidemic governments decide to have all those social isolation regulations or whatever. So, in certain cases, yes you need to do it even though it can cause tremendous suffering but you need to be very aware of the cost.
To be very, very you have to ask yourself again and again, and again. Is it worth it? Is it still worth it?
And the interesting question are implied in your statements, is that suffering is a pretty good component of a Turing test for Consciousness.
This is the most important thing to ask about a, I can it suffer? Because if a I can suffer, then it is an ethical subject and it needs protection. It needs rights just like humans and
animals.
Well, quite a long time ago already. So I work with a lot of robots, legged robots, but I've even had inspired by a YouTube video, had a bunch of rumors and I made them scream when I touch them or kick them or when they run into a wall and the the illusion of suffering for me. Silly human, anthropomorphize is things is as powerful as suffering itself. I mean, you, you immediately think the thing is suffering and I think
Some of it is just a technical problem, but it's the easiest easily solvable and how to create an AI system. That just says, please don't hurt me. Please don't shut me off. I miss you. Where have you been be jealous? Also, what what where have you been gone for so long, your calendar doesn't have anything on it. So this kind of this this create through words, the perception of suffering of jealousy of
of all those things and it just seems like that's not so difficult to do.
That's part of the danger that it basically hacks are operating system and it uses some of our best qualities against us. It's very, very good that humans are attuned to suffering and that we don't want to cause suffering that we have compassion. That's one of the most wonderful thing about humans and if we now create a eyes, which
Use this to manipulate us. This is a terrible thing.
You've kind of I think mention this, do you think it should be illegal to do these kinds of things with AI to create the perception of consciousness of saying, please don't leave me or sort of basically simulate some of the human-like qualities?
Yes, I think we have to be very careful about it and and if it if it emerges, spontaneously, we need to be careful.
And we can't rule out the possibility that a, I will develop Consciousness. We don't know enough about Consciousness to be sure, so if it develops pretentiously, we need to be to be very careful about how we understand it. But if people intentionally design and AI that they know they assume it has no consciousness. But in order to manipulate people
They use again, this human strength. This human that the noble part of our nature against us. This should be should be forbidden. And similarly, a more General level that it should be forbidden for an AI to pretend to be a human being that it's okay. You know, there's so many things we can use a is as teachers as doctors and so forth and it's good as long as we know that we are interacting with an AI, we should the same.
We ban fake money, we should bend fake humans. It's not just Banning deep fakes of specific individuals.
It's also Banning deep. Fake of generic humans. You know which is already happening to some extent on social media. Like if you have lots of boats, retweeting something, then you have the impression. Oh, lots of people are interested in that that's important. And this is basically the Bots pretending to be Youmans because if you see a twit which says 500 people retweeted it or use, you see a tweet and it says five
100 boats, which we do that. I don't care what the but retreated, but if it's humans, okay, that that's interesting. So we need to be very careful that Bots can't do that, they are doing it at present and it should be banned. Now, some people say yes, but when off expression, no, Bots don't have freedom of expression. There is no cost in terms of freedom of expression, when you bend bots. So again in some situations, yes, a eyes should
Our act with us, but it should be very clear. This is an AI talking to you of this is an AI retweeting. This story, it is not a human being making a conscious decision
to push back and this line of fake humans because I think I might be a spectrum. First of all, you might have ai systems that are offended her when you say that they're fake humans. In fact, they might
Start identifying as humans as and you just talked about the power of us humans with our collective intelligence, to take fake stories and make them quite real. And so if the feelings you have for the fake human is real, you know, love is a kind of fake thing. We all kind of put a word to a set of feelings. What if you have that feeling for an AI system? It starts to change.
Jh.
I mean, maybe
the kind of things AI systems allowed to do for good. They're allowed to
Create communicate suffering, communicated the good stuff, the longing. The the hope is that connection, the intimacy, all of that. And in that way, get integrated in our society. And then you start to ask a question on, are we allowed to really unplug them? Are we allowed to really censor them. Remove them remove their
voice. I'm not saying social media. They shouldn't have a voice. They shouldn't talk without. I'm just saying, when they talk with us, it should be
clear that they are AI. That's it. Don't you can have your voice as an AI. Again, I mean II, some medical problem. I want to get advice from an AI doctor that's fine. As long as I know that I'm talking with an AI, the what should be banned is AI pretending to be a human being. This is something that will erode trust. And without trust Society, collapses, this is something that especially will endanger democracies because
McCarthy's are built on, democracies the conversation basically, and it's a conversation between people. If you know flood, the public sphere with millions and potentially billions of AI agents that can hold conversations. They never sleep. They never eat. They don't have emotions of their own, they can get to know you and Taylor the words specifically for you and your life story. They are
Becoming better than us at creating stories and ideas and so forth. If you flood the public sphere with that, this will ruin the conversation between people. It will ruin the trust between people. That's you will no longer be able to have a democracy in this situation. You can have other types of regimes but not democracy. We could talk about the big philosophical notion of truth, then.
You've already talked about these, the capacity of humans, one of the things that made us special is stories. So is there such thing as
truth? Absolutely. What was true when somebody suffering. That's true. I mean, this is why one of the things, but when you talk about suffering, as a kind of Ultimate Reality, when somebody suffers that is truth, now somebody can suffer because of a
A fictional story. Like somebody tells people that God said you must go on this Crusade and kill these Heretics and this is a completely fictional story and people believe it and they start a war and they destroy cities and kill people. The people that suffer because of that and even the Crusaders themselves, it's also suffer the consequences of what they do. The suffering is true, even though it is caused by a fictional story. Similarly, when people agree,
On certain rules. The rules could come out of our imagination. Now we can be truthful about it and say these rules. They don't come from Heaven, they came from our imagination. You know, we look at sports so you have rules for the game of football, soccer. They were invented by people. Nobody at least very few people claim that the rules of football came down from heaven. Yes, we invented them and this is truthful. They're fictional rule.
Rules invented by humans, and this is true. They were invented by humans and when you are honest about it, it enables you to change the rules, which is done, been done in football every now and then, it's the same with the fundamental rules of a country. You can pretend that the rules came down from heaven, dictated by God, or whatever and then you can't change them or you can be like, you know, the American Constitution which starts with. We, the People, the American Constitution Lays,
Down certain rules for a society. But the amazing thing about it, it does not pretend to come from an external Source. The Ten Commandments start with. I am your lord God and because it starts with that you can change them. You know the tenth commandment for instance, support slavery. The tenth commandment in the Ten Commandment it says that you should not covet your
Your neighbor's house or your neighbor's wife, or your neighbors slaves, it's okay to hold slaves, according to the Ten Commandment, it's just bad to to cover it, the slaves of your neighbor. Now, there is no 11th commandment which says if you don't like some of the previous ten commandments, this is how you go about amending them, which is why we still have them unchanged. Now in the US Constitution, you have all these rights and rules
Building, originally the ability to hold slaves, but the genius of the founding fathers of the United States. They had the humility to understand, maybe we don't understand everything, maybe we made some mistakes. So we tell you that these rules did not come from Heaven. They came from us humans. We may have made a mistake. So, here is a mechanism for how future Generations can amend the
Tushin which was used later on to, for instance, amend the Constitution to ban slavery. So now you're describing some interesting and powerful ideas throughout human history, you just speak to the mechanism of how humans believe start to believe ideas. There, something interesting to say they're from, you're thinking about it.
Hot like how idea is born and how it takes, hold and how it spreads and how it competes with other ideas. First of all ideas are an independent force in history. Marxists tend to deny that marxists think that all history is just a play of material interests and ideas stories. They are just a smokescreen to hide the underlying interests mindful thoughts are
To some extent the opposite.
We have some biological objective interests that all humans share. Like, we need to eat. We need to drink. We need to breathe, but most conflict in history. I'm not about that the interests which really Drive most conflict in history. Don't come from biology, they come from religions and ideologies and stories, so it's not that stories are Eskimos smokescreen to hide the real interests. This
Stories. Create the interests in the first place, the story's Define who are the competing groups Nations religions cultures? They are not biological entities, do not like species, like gorillas and chimpanzees. No, Israelis and Palestinians or Germans and French, or Chinese and Americans, they have no essential biological difference between them. The difference is cultural. It comes from stories that people that believe in different stories.
The stories create the identity, the stories, create the interests Israelis and Palestinians are fighting over Jerusalem, not because of any material interest. There are no oil fields under Jerusalem and even oil, you need it to realize some cultural fantasy. It doesn't really come from biology. So the stories are independent forces now. Why do people believe one story and not another? That's History. There is
Is no material materialistic, low. People will always believe these know. History is full of accidents. How did Christianity become the most successful religion in the world? We can't explain it.
So why why this story about Jesus of Nazareth and not, you know, the Roman Empire in the third Century CE e was a bit like I don't know. California today. Like so many sects and subjects and gurus and religions. I like everybody has their own thing. Yeah. And you have, you know, thousands of different stories competing. Why did Christianity come up on top as historian. I don't have a kind of
Clear answer. You can read the sources and you see how it happens. Oh, this happened, and then this happened and then, Constantine adopted it. And then this, and then this, but why I don't think anybody has an, as an answer to that if you rewind the movie of history and press play, and you rewind and play spread. Press play a hundred times, I think Christianity would take over the Roman Empire in the world. Maybe twice out of it.
A hundred times. It was such an unlikely thing to happen. It's the same with Islam, it's the same, I don't know. Is the Communist takeover of Russia in 1914? If you told people that in three years learning in the Bolsheviks will gain power in the tsarist Empire. They would think you're actually crazy, you know, Landing had a few thousand supporters in 1914, in an Empire of close to 200 million people.
It sounded ludicrous. Now, we know the chain of events, the first world war, the February Revolution, and so forth that land to the Communist takeover. But it was such an unlikely event and it happened and a little steps along the way the little options you have along the way because you know Stalin versus Trotsky you could have the Robert Frost poem. There's always come to and history, often takes, you know there is a Highway and there is a kind of sign.
The way and history takes the sideways many many
times and is perhaps tempting to tell some of that history through charismatic leaders and maybe it's an open question, how much power charismatic leaders have to affect the trajectory of History?
You've met quite a lot of charismatic leaders lately. I mean, what's your view on that?
I find it a compelling notion. I'm a sucker for a great speech in a vision. So I have a sense that there's an important
For leader to catalyze the viral spread of a story as so. Like I think we need leaders to be just great storytellers that kind of sharpened up the story to make sure it infiltrates, everybody's brain effectively. But it could also be that the local interactions between humans is even more important but just we don't have a good way to sort of summarize that describe that.
We like to talk about, you know, Steve Jobs as Central to the development of the computer, maybe Bill Gates and you you tell it's the stories of individuals like this because it's just easier to tell a sexy story that
way. Maybe it's an interplay because you have the kind of structural forces that I know you. Look, you look at the geography of the planet and you look at shipping technology in late in the late 15th century in Europe and the Mediterranean
And it's almost inevitable that pretty quickly. Somebody will discover America, somebody from the old world will get to the new world. So this was not a kind of this didn't work. If it wasn't Columbus, then it would have been a five years later somebody else. But the key thing about history is did these small differences, make a huge, huge difference. You know, if it wasn't Columbus, if it was 5 years later somebody.
From England, then maybe all of Latin America today would be speaking English and not spanish, if it was somebody from the Ottoman Empire, it's completely different world history if you have and, you know, the Ottoman Empire at that time was also shaping up to be a major Maritime Empire. If you have America Rich being reached by Muslim Navigators before, Christian Navigators from Europe, you have a completely different world history.
It's the same as the computer given them economic incentives, and the Science and Technology of the time, then the, the rise of the personal computer was probably inevitable sometime in the late 20th century. But the were and when is crucial, the fact that it was California in the 1970s and not say, I don't know Japan in the 1980s or China in the 1990s.
Is this made a huge, huge difference. So you have this interplay between the structural forces which are beyond the control of any single charismatic leader, but then the the small changes they can have a big effect. And I think for instance about the war in Ukraine, there was a moment. Now it's now it's a struggle between nations but there was a moment when the decision was taken in the mind of a single individual of Vladimir Putin and he could have decided
The wise and the, the one would have looked completely different.
And another leader volodymyr zelanski could have decided to leave Kiev in the early days. There's a lot of decisions that kind of Ripple. Yeah, I see you write in home ideas about Hitler and
in part that he was not a very impressive person. I say
that the quote is only read it, okay?
He wasn't a senior officer in four years of war heroes. No higher. Than the rank of Corporal. He had no formal education. Perhaps, you mean his
resume? Yeah, he's resume was not impressive. That
he had no formal education or professional skills, no political background. He wasn't a successful businessman or a union activist he didn't have
Friends or relatives in high places nor any money to speak of. So how did he amassed so much power?
What ideology, what circumstances, enabled the rise of the Third
Reich. Again, I can't tell you the why I can tell you the, how I don't think it was inevitable. I think that a few, if few things were different, there would have been, no, no, no, Third Reich. There would have been no Nazism. No, no Holocaust. Again, this is the tragedy. If it would have been inevitable. Then the you know, what can you do? This is the the laws of history of the laws of physics, but the tragedy is. No, it was Decisions by humans.
that led to that direction and, you know, even from the Viewpoint of of the Germans,
We know for a fact it was an unnecessary path to take because, you know, in the 1920s and 30s, the Nazis said that this unless Germany tank this road, it will never be prosperous, it will never be successful. All the other countries will keep stepping on it. This was their their, their claim. And we know for a fact this is a this is false, why? Because they took
Took that road they lost the second world war and after they lost then they became one of the most prosperous countries in the world because their enemies, that defeated them evidently supported them and allow them to become such a prosperous and successful Nation. So, you know, if you can lose the war and still be so successful, obviously you could just have script the war. We didn't need it.
I mean you really had to have the war in order to have a prosperous Germany. The night is absolutely not and it's the same with Japan, it's the same as Italy. So it was not inevitable. It was not the forces of history that necessitated it falls Germany to take this path.
I think part of it is part of the appeal of again, Hitler was a very, very skillful Storyteller. This old people is story, The Faculty was nobody made it even more effective. Because people at that time, they after the defeat of the first world war. After the ekend, repeated, economic crisis of the 1920s, in Germany, people felt betrayed by all the
Establish Elites by all the established institutions, all these professors, and politicians, and industrialism Military. All the big people, they led us to a disastrous War. They led us to humiliation, so we don't want any of them. And then you have this, nobody a Corporal with no money with no education, with no titles with nothing. And it tells people, I'm one of you.
And this made him, this was one reason why he was so popular.
And then the story told, when you look at stories at the competition between different stories and between stories fiction and the truth, the truth has two big problems. The truth tends to be complicated and the truth tends to be painful.
The real story of flat, let's talk about Nations. The real story of every nation is complicated, and it contains some painful episodes. We are not always good, we sometimes do bad things. Now if you go to people and you tell them a complicated and painful story, many of them don't want to listen. The advantage of fiction is that it can be made as simple.
And as painless attractive as you want it to be because it's fiction. And then what you see is that politicians like Hitler, they create a very simple story, we are the heroes, we always do good things, everybody is against us, everybody's trying to to trample us, and this is very attractive. One of the things people don't understand about Nazism and fascism. We teach in schools about
Fascism and Nazism as this ultimate Evil, the ultimate monster in human history and at some level, this is, this is wrong because it make people it actually exposes us. Why? Because people here or fascism is this monster, and then when you hear the actual fascist story, what? Fascists tell you is always very beautiful and attractive.
Fascists are people who come and tell you, you are wonderful. You belong to the most wonderful group of people in the world. You're beautiful. You are ethical. Everything you do is good. You have never done anything wrong that, all these evil monsters out there that are out to get you and they are causing all the problems in the world. And when people hear that, you know, it's like looking in the mirror and seeing something very beautiful. A I'm beautiful, I've we've never done anything wrong.
Wrong. We are victims, everybody's like Island and when you look and you heard in school, that fascism that fascist on monsters. And you look in the mirror, you see something very beautiful and you say I can't be a fascist because fascist Of Monsters And this is so beautiful so it can't be but when you look in the fascist mirror you all knew never see a monster. You see the most beautiful thing in the world and that's the danger. This is the problem you know is Hollywood
You know, I look at Voldemort in Harry Potter who would like to follow this this creep? Yeah and you look at Darth Vader this is not somebody who would like to follow Christianity. Got things much better when he described the devil as being very beautiful and attractive. That's the danger that you see something as very beautiful. You don't understand the monster underneath
and you right? Precisely about this. And by the way, is just a
All side, it arose saddens me when people say how obvious it is to them, that communism is a flawed ideology. When you ask them,
Try to put your mind, try to put yourself in the beginning of the 20th century and see what you would do. A lot of people will say it's obvious that it's a flawed ideology. So I mean, I supposed to some of the worst ideologies in human history, you could say the same. And in that mirror when you look it looks beautiful. Communism is the same. Also you look in the comments mirror. You're the most ethical, wonderful place person ever. It's very difficult to see Starling underneath it. So yeah. Yeah.
Nowadays, you also write during the 19th and 20th. Centuries as humanism gained, increasing social, credibility, and political power. It's sprouted two, very different offshoots. Socialist, humanism, which encompassed a plethora of socialist and communist movements and evolutionary humanism whose most famous Advocates were the Nazis. So, if you can just Linger on that, what's the ideological connection between Nazism? Communism as embodied by humanism
and humanism. Basically is
You know, the focus is on humans that they are the most important thing in the world. They move history. But then there is a big question. What is what are you means? What is humanity. Now, liberals they place at the center of the story individual humans and they don't see history as a kind of necessary collision between big forces. They place the individual at the
Enter. If you want to know, you know, there is a bad especially in the u.s. today liberal is talking taken as the opposite of conservative, but it's to test whether you're liberal, you need to answer just three questions. Very simple. Do you think people should have the right to choose their own government or the government should be imposed by some outside force? Do you think people should have the right to the Liberty? To choose their own?
On profession, or either born into some cars, that predetermines what they do. And do you think people should have the Liberty to choose their own spouse and their own way of personal life? Instead of being told by Elders or parents, who to marry and how to live. Now, if you answered yes, to all three questions, people should have the Liberty to choose their government, the profession, the personal lives their spouse, then, you're a liberal
And most conservatives are also liberal. Now Communists and fascists. They answer differently for them. History is not. Yes, history is about humans, humans of the big heroes of history, but not individual humans. And the Liberties, fascists, imagine history as a clash between races or nations. The nation is at the center.
They say the Supreme good is the good of the nation you should have 100% loyalty. Only to the nation you know. Liberals say yes. You should be loyal to the nation but it's not the only thing there are other things in the world that human rights. There is truth, there is beauty many times. Yes, you should prefer the interests of your nation over other things, but not always, if your nation tells you to murder millions of innocent people.
Don't do that even though the nation tells you to do it when to lie for the national interest you know, in extreme situations maybe but in some, in many cases, your loyalty should be to the truth. Even if it makes your nation looks a bit, not not in the best light, the same with beauty. You know, how does the fascist determine whether a movie is a good movie? Very simple. If it serves, the interest of the nation, this is a good.
Movie. If it's against the interest of the nation, this is a bad movie. End of story. Liberalism says, no, there is an aesthetic values in the world, we should judge movies, not just on the question, whether they serve the national interest. But also on artistic value,
Communists are a bit like the fascist instant that they don't place the nation at the main hero they Place class as the main hero for them history against not about individuals and about nation's history is the clash between classes and just as fascist imagine in the end only one nation will be on top. The Communists think in the end only one class should be on top and that's the the proletariat and same story The your
Or 100% of your loyalty should be to the class. And like, if you, if there is a clash, say between class and family class wins, like, in the Soviet Union, the party told children, if you hear your parents, say something bad about styling, you have to report them. And there are many cases when children reported their parents and their parents were sent to the gulag.
Like and you know your loyalty is to the party to the which leads the proletariat to victory in the historical struggle and the same way in communism art is only about class struggle and movies good. If it serves the interest of the plug proletariat artistic values there is nothing like that and the same with with truth the everything that we see now in fake news you know the Communist propaganda machine was there before.
Us. The level of lies of disinformation campaigns that they orchestrated in the 1920s and 30s and 40s is really
unimaginable. So the reason these two ideologies classes of ideology failed as the sacrifice of Truth.
Not just failed, but did a lot of damage is sacrifice the truth, and sacrifice of beauty,
and sacrifice of hundreds of millions of people disregard, and then for human suffering, like, okay, for in order to, for our nation, to win in order for our class to win, we need to kill those Millions. Kill those Millions, that's was an Ethics Aesthetics are truth, they don't matter. The only thing that matter is, the victory of the state, or the
Tory of the class and that and liberalism was the antithesis to that it is no, not only. Its it, it has a much more complicated view of the world and growth communism and fascism. They're the very simple view of the world. There is one your loyalty 100% of it should be only to one thing. Now, liberalism has a much more complex view of the world. It says, yes, there are nations. They are important. Yes, there are
Classes, they are important but they are not the only thing. They're also families. The also individuals, there are also animals and your loyalty should be divided between all of them. Sometimes you prefer this sometimes you prefer that that's complicated and but you know life is
complicated but also I think maybe you can correct me but liberalism acknowledges the corrupting nature of power when there's a guy in it.
The top sister for a while, managing things is probably going to start losing a good sense of reality and losing the capability to be a good manager. It feels like the Communist and fascist regimes, don't acknowledge that basic characteristic of human nature that power
corrupts. Yes, they believe in infallibility. They're in this sense, they are very close to being a religion.
They're in Nazism, Hitler was considered infallible and therefore you don't need any checks and balances on his power. Why do you need to balance and infallible genius? And it's the same with the Soviet Union install. We starting and more generally with the with the Communist Party. The Party can never make a mistake and therefore, you don't need independent courts, Independent, Media, opposition, parties, things like that because then party is never wrong.
Wrong. You concentrate the same way. A hundred percent of loyalty should be to the party. 100% of power should be in the hands of the party. The whole idea of liberal democracy is embracing fell ability. Everybody is fallible, all people or leaders or political parties, all institutions. This is why we need checks and balances and we need many of them. If you have just one, then this particular check itself could make terrible mistakes.
So you need say, you need to press, you need the media to serve as a check to the government. You don't have just one newspaper or one TV station you need many so that they can balance each other and at the media is not enough. So if you have independent calls you have three academic institutions, you have ngos, you have a lot of checks and balances.
So that's the ideologies in the leaders. What about the individual people? The millions of people have played a part in
All of this.
That.
Are the hosts of the stories that are the, the Catalyst in the sort of the components of how the story spreads. Would you say that all of us are capable of spreading any story sort of the this solzhenitsyn idea of that all of us are capable of Good and Evil. The the line between good and evil runs the heart of every man. Yes I wouldn't say that every person is capable.
People of every type of evil, but we are all fallible. There is a large element. It partly depends on the efforts we make to develop our self-awareness during Life part of. It depends on more luck. You know, if you are born as a Christian German in the 1910s and 1920s and you grow up in Nazi, Germany, that's bad. Moral luck.
Lock your chances of committing terrible things. You have a very high chance of doing it and you can withstand it, but it will will take tremendous effort. If you're born in Germany after the war, you're morally lucky. The you will not be put to such a test. You will not need to exert this enormous efforts, not to commit atrocities. So, there isn't, this is just part of history there. If there is an element,
Of luck. But then part of it is also self awareness. And you asked me earlier about the the potential of of power to corrupt and I listened to the interview you did with with prime minister Netanyahu couple of days ago. And one of the things that most struck me during the interview that you asked him, you asked him, are you afraid of this thing that the power corrupts he didn't think for a single second, he didn't pose he
Didn't admit a very tiny little level of you. No doubt has no part. Doesn't corrupt. It was for me. It was, it was a shocking and a revealing moment and it kind of dovetails with how you begin the interview that I really liked your opening Gambit, the kind of, you know, really. I kind of told him, you know, lots of people in the world are angry with you. They some people hate you, they
It is like you, what do you want to do to tell to tell them to say to them and you gave him this kind of platform and I was very what will he say? And he just denied it in basically denied it, you know, he had to cut short the interview from three hours to one hour because we had hundreds of thousands of his rallies in the streets demonstrating against him and he goes, and say, know, everybody likes me, what are you talking about?
But on that topic, you've said,
Recently that the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may go down in history as the man who destroys Israel. Can you explain what you mean by
that?
Yes. I mean, he is basically tearing apart the social contract that held this country together for 75 years. He's destroying the foundations of Israeli democracy, you know, I don't want to go too deep. And unless you want to it because I guess most of our listeners, they have bigger issues on their minds than the fate of some small country in the Middle East. But for those who want to understand what's happening in Israel, there is really just one question to ask, what?
Limits the power of the government in the United States. For instance, there are a lot of checks and balances that limit the power of the government, you have the Supreme Court, you have the Senate, you have the House of Representative, you have the president, you have the Constitution, you have 50 states. Each state with its own Constitution, and Supreme Court and Congress and Governor. If somebody wants to pass a
Jeurys legislation saying the house, it will have to go through so many obstacles. Like if you want to pass a law in United States taking away voting rights from Jews or from Muslims, or from African Americans, even if it passes, even if it has a majority in the House of Representatives, it is a very, very, very small chance of becoming the law of the country because it will have to pass again through the Senate, through the president with the Supreme Court and all the Federal
So in Israel we have just a single check on the power of the government and that the Supreme Court there is really no difference between the government and the legislature. Because whoever there is no separate elections. Like in the u.s., if you win majority in the knesset in the parliament, your point, the government that that's very simple. And if you have 61 members of knesset who vote, let's say only low to take away voting
rights from Arab citizens of Israel, there is a single check that can prevent it from becoming the law of the land and that the Supreme Court. And now, the Netanyahu government is trying to neutralize or take over the Supreme Court, and they've already prepared a long list of laws, they already talked about it. What will happen the moment that this last check on the power is gone. They are openly trying to gain unlimited power.
And they openly talk about it. That once they have it, then they will take away the rights of Arabs of LGBT people of women of secular Jews. And this is why you have hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. You have error Force pilots saying we we are stop. We stop Flying.
This is unheard of in is I mean we are still living under existential threat from Iran from other enemies. And in the middle of this, you have Air Force pilots who dedicated their lives to protecting the country, and there are saying that's it. If this government doesn't stop what it is doing, we stop Flying.
So as you said I just did the interview and as we're doing the interview, there's protests in the streets. Do you think the protest will have an effect? I hope so very much. I'm going to many of these protests. I hope they will have an effect. If we fail, this is the end of Israeli democracy. Probably. This will have repercussions far beyond the borders of Israel. Israel is a nuclear power. Israel is
Has one of the most advanced cyber capabilities in the world able to strike basically anywhere in the world if this country becomes a fundamentalist and Military dictatorship, it can set fire to the entire Middle East. It can again have destabilizing effects long far beyond the borders of Israel. So you think without the check on power is possible that the Netanyahu government
Hold on to
power, nobody tries to gain unlimited power, Just For Nothing. When you, you have so many problems in Israel and Nathan your talk, so much about Iran and the Palestinians and hizballah, we have an economic crisis. Why is it so urgent at this moment in the face of such opposition? Why is it so crucial for them to neutralize the Supreme Court? They are just doing it for the fun of it? No, they know what they are doing. They are they are Adam.
And we are not sure of it before there was a like a couple of months ago, they came out with this plan to take over the Supreme Court to have all these laws and there are hundreds of thousands of people in the streets again soldiers saying, they will stop serving a general strike in the economy and they stopped and they started a process of negotiations to try and reach a settlement, and then they broke down. They, they stop the negotiations and they restarted this
Process of legislation trying to gain unlimited power. So any doubt we had before, okay, maybe they changed their purposes. No, it's now very clean. They are 100% focused on gaining absolute power. They are not trying a different tactic. Previously they took they had all these dozens of lows that they wanted to pass very quickly within a month or two they realize. No, this is
There was so much opposition. So now they're doing what is known as salami tactics slice by slice. Now then trying to one low if this succeeds, then the past, the next one, and the next one. And the next one, this is one, we are now at a very crucial moment. And what you see, again, hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, almost every day, when you seem resistance within the Armed Forces within the security forces, you see, high-tech companies saying we will go on strike, you know, it's their private businesses.
Hide the companies that I think it's almost unprecedented for private business to go on strike because what do we want will economic success benefit us if we live under a Messianic dictatorship? And again the fuel for this whole thing is to allow extent coming from Messianic religious groups.
Which just the thought what happens, if these people have unlimited control of new of Israel's nuclear Arsenal and Israel's military capabilities and cyber capabilities. This is very, very scary, not just for the citizens of Israel, it should be scary from for people everywhere, so it's, it would be scary for it to go from being a problem of security and protecting the piece too.
Becoming a religious War.
It is already becoming a religious warming. The war the conflict with the Palestinians was for many years and National conflict in essence, over the last few years, maybe a decade or two, it is more thing into a religious conflict which is again, a very worrying development. When nations are in Conflict, you can reach some compromise, okay? You have this bit of land, we have this bit of land but when it becomes a
This conflict between fundamentalists between Messianic. People compromise is becomes much more difficult because you don't compromise on eternity, you don't compromise on God. And this is where we are heading right now.
So I know you said, it's a small nation somewhere in the Middle East, but it also happens to be the epicenter of one of the longest running. One of the most tense conflicts and crises in human history.
So at the very least, it serves as a study of how conflict can be resolved. So what are the biggest obstacles to you to achieving peace in this part of the world motivation? I think it's easy to achieve peace. If you have the motivation on wolves on both sides, unfortunately, the present juncture there is not enough motivation on either side, either the Palestinian or Israeli side in peace.
You know in mathematics you have problems without Solutions. You can prove mathematically that this mathematical problem has no solution in politics, there is no such thing, all problems have Solutions. If you have the motivation and but motivation is the big problem and I can we can go into the reasons why, but the fact is that on neither side? Is there enough motivation? If the was motivation
Ian, the solution would have been easy.
Is there an important distinction to draw between the people on the street and the leaders in power in terms of motivation? So, are most people motivated and hoping for peace, and the leaders are motivated incentivised to continue War II. Don't think so? Or the people also, I think it's a deep problem. It's also the people, it's not just the leaders. Is it even a
A human problem of literally hate in people's heart. Yeah, there is a lot of hate. One of the things that happened in Israel over the last 10 years or so, Israel became much stronger than it was before largely. Thanks to technological developments and it feels that it no longer needs to compromise.
The tenth. This is the many reasons for it, but some of them are technological. Being one of the leading powers in cyber, in AI. In, in high-tech, we have developed a very sophisticated ways to more easily control the Palestinian population in the early 2000s. It seemed that it is becoming impossible to control millions of people.
Against their will, it took too much power. It spilled too much blood on both sides. So the was an impression of this is becoming untenable and there are several reasons why I changed but one of them was new technology. Israel developed very sophisticated surveillance technology that has made it much easier for Israeli Security, Forces to control 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank against
Will with a lot less effort, less boots on the ground. Also less blunt and Israel is also now exporting this technology to many other regimes around the world. Then I heard Netanyahu speaking about all the wonderful things that Israel is exporting to the world and it's true. We are exporting some nice things, water systems and intimated a new kind of tomato. We are also exporting a lot of
Weapons and especially surveillance systems sometimes to unsavory regimes in order to control their populations.
Can you comment on? I think you've mentioned that the current state of affairs is the defect of three class State. Can you describe what we mean by that?
Yes, for many years, the kind of leading solution to the israeli-palestinian conflict is the two-state solution.
Okay. Describe what I mean?
By the way. Yes, two states within between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean will have two states Israel. In Israel as a predominantly Jewish State and Palestine as a predominantly Palestinian State. Again in the lot of discussions were the Border passes what happens with security Arrangement and whatever but this was the big solution is one is basically abandoned the two-state solution. Maybe they don't say. So officially the people in power but in terms of how they actually what they do on the ground they are
Abandoned it now, they are effectively promoting the three class solution, which means there is just one country and one government and one power between the Mediterranean in the Jordan River. But you have three classes of people living there, you have Jews who enjoy full rights all the rights. You have some Arabs, who are Israeli citizens and have some rights. And then you have the
Other Arabs, the third class who have basically no civil rights and limited human rights. And that's a nobody would openly speak about it. But effectively, this is the reality on the ground
already. So there's many and I'll speak to them Palestinians who characterize this, as a de facto one-state. Apartheid is if you agree with
this, I would take issue with the term apartheid, generally speaking as a historian. I don't really like historical analogies because there are always differences key.
France has the biggest difference between the situation here and the situation in South Africa, in the time of the apartheid is that black? South Africans did not deny the existence of South Africa and did not call for the destruction of South Africa. They had a very simple goal, they had a very simple demand, we want to be equal citizens of this country that's it and the apartheid regime.
Was no you can't be equal citizens now in Israel in Israel Palestine, it's different. The Palestinians, many of them don't recognize the existence of Israel, don't are not willing to recognize it and they don't demand to be citizens of Israel. They demand some of them to destroy it and replace it with a Palestinian State, some of them demand a separate state. But you know, if the Palestinians would adopt the same policy,
As the black South Africans. If you have the Palestinians coming and saying okay forget about it, we don't want to destroy Israel. We don't know Palestinian country. We have a very simple request. Very simple demand. Give us our full rights. We also want to vote to the knesset. We also want to get the full protection of the load. That's it. That's our only demand Israel will be in deep deep trouble at that moment, but we are not there.
I wonder if there will ever be a future when such a thing happens where everybody, the majority of people Arab and Jew Israeli and Palestinian except the one-state solution and say we want equal rights.
Never Say Never in history. It's not coming any time soon. From either side, when you look at the long-term of History, one of the curious things you see and that What Makes Us different human groups from animal species, you know, gorillas and chimpanzees. They are separate species. They can never merge cats. And dogs will never merge, but different National and religious groups in history even when they hate each other. So,
Surprisingly, they sometimes and by merging, if you look at Germany for instance, so for centuries, you had prussians and bavarians and Saxons who fault each other ferociously and hated each other and they are sometimes also of different religions Catholics Protestants, you know, the worst war in European history, according to some measures was not the second world. War was the first world war. It was the Thirty Years War, which largely agenda on German soil between
Men's Protestants and Catholics, but eventually they United to form a single country, you saw the same thing. I don't know, in Britain, English and Scots, for centuries hated and fault. Each other ferociously, eventually coming together, maybe we'll break up again, I don't know. But the power of the kind of forces of merger in history, you are very often influenced by the people you fight by
The people you even hate more than by almost anybody else.
So if we apply those ideas, the ideas of this part of the world to another part of the world that's currently in war Russia and Ukraine from what you learned here, how do you think peace can be achieved and Ukraine? This can be achieved any moment it's motivation in this case it's just one person you just put in just need to say that's it. You know the ukrainians.
Don't demand anything from Russia, just go home. That's the only thing they want. They don't want to conquer any bit of Russian territory. They don't want to change the regime in Moscow, nothing. They just tell the Russians go home. That's it. And of course, again motivation, how do you get somebody like putting to admit that? He made a colossal mistake a human mistake, an ethical mistake a political mistake in in starting this war. This is very, very difficult.
It. But in, in terms of what is this? What would the solution look like? Very simple, the Russians go home and of our end of story. Do you believe in the power of conversation between leaders to sit down assume beings?
And agree. First of all, what home means?
Because we humans draw lines, that's true. I believe in the power of conversation. The big question to ask is where where do conversations real conversations? Take place and this is tricky. One of the interesting things to ask about any conflict about any political system is, were do the real conversations take place and then we often they don't play take place in the places. You think that they are. But think about American politics,
When the country was founded in the late 18th century, people understood holding conversation between leaders is very important for the functioning of democracy will create a place for that. That's called Congress. This is where leaders are supposed to meet and talk about the main issues of the day. Maybe there was a time some time in the past when this actually happened when you had two factions.
It's holding different ideas about foreign policy or economic policy and the Imagine Congress and somebody would come and give a speech and the people on will and on the other side would say, hey that's interesting. I haven't thought about it. Yes, maybe we can agree on that, this is no longer happening in Congress. Nobody, I don't think there is any speech in Congress that causes anybody on the other side to change their opinion about anything.
So, this is no longer a place where real conversations take place. The big question about American democracy is is the replace work on real conversations which actually change people's minds? Still take place, if not, then this democracy is dying also democracy without conversation cannot exist for long and it's the same question you should ask also about dictatorial regimes like you think about Russia or China?
So China has the Great Hall of the people and we'll the representatives is supposed representative of the People Meet every now and then but no real conversation takes place there a key question to ask about the Chinese system is behind closed doors. Let's say in a politburo meeting do people have a real conversation if she Jinping says one thing and some other big shot things differently. Will they have the courage?
CH the ability, the backbone to say with all due respect I think differently and there is a real conversation or not, I don't know the answer but this is a key question. This is the difference. You know, between a an authoritarian regime can still have different voices within it, but at a certain point, you have a personality cult. Nobody dares say anything against the leader.
And when it comes again to Ukraine and Russia, I don't think that if you get, if you somehow manage to get putting in zalenski to the same room, when everybody is knows that they are there and they'll have a moment of empathy or human connection and they have not, I don't think it can happen like that. I do hope that there are other spaces.
Where somebody like Putin can still have a real human conversation. I don't know if this is the case, I hope so.
Well, there's several interesting Dynamics and you spoke to some of them. So one is internally with advisors, you have to have hope that there's people that would disagree, that would have a lively debate internally. Then there's also the thing you mentioned, which is direct communication between Putin and zalenski in private, picking up a phone.
Rotary phone old school, that's why I still believe in the power of that. But what's while that's exceptionally difficult in the current state of affairs, what's also possible to have as mediator, like United States or some other leader like like the leader of Israel, or the leader of another Nation that's respected by both or India. For example, that can have first of all individual conversations and then literally get into a room together.
It is possible. I would say more generally about conversations, is it? Goes back a little to what I said earlier about the Marxist view of History. One of the problematic things I see today, in many academic circles, is that people focus too much on power. They think that the whole of history of the, whole of politics is just a power structure. It's just struggle about power now,
If you think that the whole of history and the role of politics is only Power, then there is no room for conversation. Because if what you have is a struggle between different powerful interests, there is no point. Talking, the only thing that changes it is fighting my view, is that? No, it's not all about power structures, it's not all about power dynamics, underneath the power structure,
Our stories stories in human mind and this is great new. If it's true, this is good news because unlike power that can only be changed through fighting stories can sometimes, it's not easy, but sometimes stories can be changed through talking. And that's the hope I think, you know, in everything from couples therapy to Nation therapy. If you think,
It's power therapy. It's all about power, there is known. There is no place for a conversation, but if to some extent, it's the stories in people mind, if you can enable one person to see the story in the, in the mind of another person and more importantly, if you can have some kind of critical distance from the story in your own mind and maybe you can change it a little and then you don't need to fight, you can actually find a better.
We that you can both agree to it, sometimes happens in history, you know, going to French and Germans fought for generations and generations and now they live in peace. Not because I don't know if they found a new planet, they can share between France and Germany. So now everybody has enough territory know, they actually have less territory than previously because they lost all their overseas Empires. But they managed to find a story, the European story that both Germans and
French people are happy with so they live in peace. I very much believe in this Vision that you have of the power of stories and one of the tools is conversations and other is books. There's some guy that wrote a book about this power stories. He happens to be sitting in front of me and that happened to spread across a lot of people now, they believe in the power of story and narrative, even even a children's book to. So the kids and me, it's fascinating how that
Spreads, I mean, underneath your work, there's an optimism. And I think underneath conversations is what I tried to do is an optimism that it's not just about power struggles. Yes about stories which is like a connection between humans and together kind of evolving these stories that maximize have or minimize suffering in the world. And this is why I also I think I admire what
You're doing that. You're going to talk with some of the most difficult characters around in the world today, and with this basic belief, that by talking, maybe we can move them an inch, which is a lot when it comes to people with so much power. Like, I think, one of the biggest success stories in, in modern history, I would say is, it's feminism because feminism believed
In the power of stories, not so much in the power of violence of armed conflict by many measures feminism has been maybe the most successful social movement of the 20th century and maybe of the Modern Age, you know, systems of Oppression, which were in place throughout the world for thousands of years and they seem to be just natural Eternal. You had all these religious movements all these political revolutions and one
Think remained constant, and this is the patriarchal system and the oppression of women. And then feminism came along and, you know, you had leaders like learning like Mal saying that if you want to make a big social change, you must use violence. Power comes from the barrel of the gun of a gun. If you want to make an omelet, you need to break eggs and all these things. And the family said, no we want use the power of the gun, we will.
Make an omelet without breaking any eggs and they made a much better omelet then learning or Mao or any of these violent revolutionaries. I don't think you know that they certainly didn't start any wars or build any gulags. I don't think they even murdered a single politician. I don't think there was any political assassination anywhere, but by feminists there was a lot of violence against them both verbal but also physical
They didn't reply by waging violence and they succeeded in changing this deep in structure of Oppression in a way, which benefited not just women, but also men. So this gives me hope that it's not easy. In many cases we fail, but it is possible sometimes in history to make a very, very big change.
Positive change mainly by talking and demonstrating and changing the story and people people's minds and not by using violence in fastening that, feminism, and communism, and all these things happen in the 20th century. So many interesting things happen at the 20th century. So many movements, so many ideas, nuclear weapons. All of it computers, it's just like, it seems like a lot of stuff like really quickly percolated and it's accelerating, it's still accelerating. I mean, history is just
Generating enough for centuries and the 20th century. You know, you we squeezed into it, things that previously took thousands of years and now I mean we are squeezing it in two decades and you very well could be one of the last orient's human historians to have ever lived, could be II. Think, you know, our species, Homo sapiens? I don't think we'll be around in a century or two. We could destroy ourselves.
In a nuclear war through ecologically Collapse by giving too much power to AI. That goes out of our control.
But if we survive, will probably have so much power that we will change ourselves using various Technologies so that our descendants will no longer be. Homo sapiens, like us, they will beam more different from us than we are different from neanderthals. So maybe they'll have historians, but it will no longer be human historians or sapiens. Historians like me. I think it's an extremely dangerous.
Dangerous development and the chances that this will go wrong that with this. Will you people will use the new technologies trying to upgrade humans but actually downgrading them. This is a very very big danger. If you let corporations and armies and ruthless politicians change humans using tools like Ai and bioengineering. It's very likely that they will try to enhance a few human qualities.
That they need like, intelligence and discipline while neglecting what are potentially more important human qualities? Like, compassion, like artistic sensitivity, like spirituality. If you give put in, for instance, bioengineering, and Ai and brain-computer interfaces. He is likely to want to create a race of
Were soldiers who are much more intelligent and much more stronger and also much more disciplined and never Rebel and Mulch on Moscow against him but he has no interest in making them more compassionate, almost spiritual. So the end result could be a new type of humans a downgraded humans who are highly intelligent and discipline but have no compassion.
No spiritual depth. And this is one for me. This is, you know, the dystopia the apocalypse that when people talk about the new technologies and they have this scenario of, you know, the Terminator robot running in the streets shooting people. This is not what worries me. I think we can avoid that. What really worries me is using the the corporation's armies politicians will use the new technologies to change us.
And in a way, which will destroy our Humanity or the best parts of our humanity.
And one of those ways could be removing the compassion, another way that really worries me for me, it's probably more likely the Brave New World kind of thing that
Sort of removes the flaws of humans. Maybe removes the diversity in humans and makes us all kind of these dopamine, chasing creatures. That just kind of maximize enjoyment in the short term which kind of seems like a good thing maybe in the short term, but it's it creates a society. That doesn't think that doesn't create that just is sitting there enjoying itself at a
More and more rapid pace, which seems like another kind of society that could be easily controlled by a centralized Center of power. But the set of dystopia is that we can arrive at through this through allowing corporations to modify. Humans is its vast and we should be worried about that. So it's it seems like humans are
Pretty good. As we are all the flaws, all of it
together, we are better than anything that we can intentionally design. It present. Yeah. Like any intentionally designed humans at the present moment is going to be much much worse than us because basically, we don't understand ourselves. I mean, as long as we don't understand our brain or body or mind, it's a very, very bad idea to start manipulating A system that you don't understand deeply.
And we don't understand ourselves. So I have to ask you about an interesting Dynamic of stories. You wrote an article two years ago titled. When the world seems like one big conspiracy, how understanding the structure of global cabal theories Can Shed light on their Allure and their inherent falsehood? What our Global cabal theories. And why do so many people believe them 37% of Americans, for example, well the the global cabal Theory, it has many variations
Jeans, but basically, there is a small group of people a small cabal that secretly controls everything that is happening in the world. All the Wars, all the revolutions. All the epidemics everything that is happening is controlled by this. Very small group of people who are, of course, evil and have bad intentions. And this is, this is a very well known story that it's not new. It's been there for thousands of years. It's very attractive because first of all, it's simple.
You don't, you know, if understand everything that happens in the world, you just need to understand one thing, the war in Ukraine. These very Palestinian conflict 5G. Technology covid-19, it's simple. There is this Global kobold a dually all of it. And also it enables you to shift all the responsibility to all the bad things that is that are happening in the world to this small cabal, it's the Jews. It's the frame. A so it's not us and also it creates it.
Create this fantasy utopian fantasy. If we only get rid of the small cabal, we solved all the problems of the world salvation. These, well, Palestinian conflict, the war in Ukraine. The epidemics poverty. Everything is solved just by knocking out these small cabal. So then it's simple. Its attractive. And this is why so many people believe it. It's again, it's not new. Nazism was exactly this. Not Susan began as a conspiracy.
Theory, we don't call Nazism a conspiracy theory because oh, it's a big thing. It's an ideology. But if you look at it it's a conspiracy theory. The basic not CID was the Jews control the world, get rid of the Jews, you solved all the world's problems. Now, the interesting thing about these kind of theories. Again, they tell you that, even things that look to be the opposite of each other. Actually, they are part of the conspiracy.
So in the case of Nazism, the Nazis told people, you know, you have capitalism and communism, you think that they are opposite, right? Ah this is what the Jews want you to think, actually the Jews control, both communism, Trotsky marks, reduce blah, blah, blah, and capitalism rot the Rothschild, the Wall Street. It's all controlled by the Jews. So the Jews are fooling everybody, but actually the Communists in the capitalists are part of the same Global cabal. And again, this is very
Destructive because ah, now I understand everything and I also know what to do. I just give power to Hitler. He gets rid of the Jews. I solved all the problems of the world. Now as historian, the most important thing I can say about these theories, they are never right? Because the global cabal Theory, says two things. First, everything is controlled by a very small number of people. Secondly, these people hide themselves. They do it in secret. Now, both,
Things are nonsense. It's impossible for people to control a small group of people to control and predict everything because the world is too complicated. You know, you look at a real world conspiracy conspiracy. Is basically just a plan, think about the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, you had the most powerful superpower in the world. With the biggest military, with the biggest intelligence services with the most sophisticated.
And, you know, the FBI and the CIA and all the agents, they invade third-rate Country, third-rate power, Iraq. With this idea, will take over Iraq and will control. It will make a new order in the Middle East and everything falls apart, their plan completely backfired.
Everything they hope to achieve the achieve the opposite America United States is humiliated. They caused the rise of Isis. They wanted to take out terrorism, they created more terrorism. Worst of all the big winner of the war was Iran. You know, the United States goes to war with all its power and gives Iran Victory on a silver plate. The run is not need to do anything. The Americans are doing everything for them. Now this is real history.
Hurry Real History is when you have is not a small group of people. A lot of people with a lot of power carefully planning, something and it goes completely out of order against the plan. And this we know from personal experience that every time we need, we try to plan something. A birthday party, a surprise birthday party. A trip, somewhere things go wrong. This is reality. So the idea that a small group of uh no no the Jewish Kabbalah
Freemasons. Whoever they can really control and predict all the wars. This is nonsense. The second thing that is nonsense is to think they can do that, and still remain secret. It sometimes happens in history that a small group of people accumulates a lot of power if Anna a fine, I will. Now tell you that Shin Jin ping and the hands of the CCP, the Chinese Communist party. They have a lot of power. They control the military, the media
Are the economy, the University of China, this isn't a conspiracy theory. This is obviously, everybody knows it. Everybody knows it because to gain so much power, you need. You usually need publicity Hitler. Could not Hitler gained a lot of power in Nazi Germany because he had a lot of publicity. If Hitler remained unknown working behind the scenes, he would not gain power. So the way to gain power is usually through publicity. So
Secret cabals don't gain power. And even if you gain a lot of power, nobody has the kind of power necessary to predict and control everything that happens in the world. Every all the time shit happens that you did not predict and you did not plan. Any did not control.
The sad thing is there's usually an explanation for everything. You just said that involves a secret global cabal.
That the reason your vacation planning always goes wrong is because you're not competent. There is a competent, small group, that Ultra competent small group here. This was Intelligence agencies. The CIA are running everything, Mossad is running
everything you see. I mean, at least Orion, you get to note. How many blunders these people do? All they are so and they're capable. But they are so incompetent in so many ways again. Look at the Russian invasion of Ukraine Before the War, people thought put into
Was such a genius and the Russian army was one of the strongest armies in the world. This is what putting thought and it completely backfired, what the cabal
explanation, there would be there's a NATO driven United States military industrial complex that wants to create chaos and
gone to put in his head and told him Vladimir. If you don't invade you should you. How did they cause put into Infinity? This is
the thing about conspiracy, theories is, there's usually a way to
Explain
everything in your religion. You can, you can always find explanation for everything and you know, in the end it's intellectual Integrity. If you insist on whenever people confronted with evidence, with finding some very, very complicated explanation for that too, you can explain everything. We know that it's a question of of of intellectual integrity and I also say another thing
The conspiracy theories, they do get one thing right. Certainly in today's world, I think they represent an authentic and Justified fear of a lot of people that they are losing control of their lives. They don't understand what is happening. And this, I think is a, is not just a legitimate fear. This is an important fear. They are right, we are losing control of Our Lives. We are facing really big.
Rangers but not from a small cabal of fellow humans. The problem with many of these conspiracy theories that yes we have a problem with new AI technology but if you now direct the fire against certain people. So instead of all humans cooperating against are real common threats, whether it's the rise of AI, whether it's our global warming,
I'm your only causing us to find each other and I think that the key question that people who spread these ideas, I mean many of them they honestly, believe it's not malicious that they honestly believe in these theories is do you want to spread to spend your life spreading hate towards people? Or do you want to work on more constructive projects? I think one of the big differences between those who believe in conspiracy theories and people or
Warned about the dangers of AI, the dangers of climate change. We don't see certain humans as evil and hateful. The problem isn't humans. The problem is something outside Humanity. Yes, Youmans are contributed contributing to the problem, but ultimately the enemy is external to humanity. Where is conspiracy theories usually claim.
That a certain part of humanity is the source of all evil, which leads them to eventually think, in terms of Exterminating this part of humanity, which which leads sometimes to historical disasters, like Nazism, so can lead to. Hey, but can also lead to like cynicism and apathy that basically says it's not in my power to make the world better so you don't actually take action, I think
Is within the power of every individual to make the world a little bit better. You know, you can't do everything. Don't try to do everything. Find one thing in your areas of activity place where you have some agency, and try to do that and hope that other people do their bit. And if everybody do their bit, we'll manage and if we don't, we don't but at least we try
You have been part of conspiracy theories. I find myself recently, becoming part of conspiracy theories. Is there a device you can give of how to be a human being in this world? The values truth and reason while watching yourself become part of conspiracy theories, at least from my perspective, it seems very difficult to prove to the world that you're not part of a conspiracy theory. I as you said having to
viewed Benjamin Netanyahu. Recently, I don't know if you're aware but doing such things will also, you know, pick up a new menu of items that your new set of conspiracy theories. You're now part of and I find it very frustrating because it makes it very difficult to respond because I sense that people have the right intentions. Like we said, they have nervousness of fear of power and the ability
Uses of power and as do I so I found myself in a difficult position that I have nothing to show to prove that I'm not part of such a conspiracy theory.
I think ultimately what you can't we can't I mean you know it's like proving Consciousness that you can't just because that's just the situation whatever you say can and will be used against you by some people. Yeah. So this fantasy, if I only say this
If I only show them that if I only have this data they will see I'm okay. It doesn't work like that. I think to keep your sanity in this situation. First of all, it's important to understand that. Most of these people are not evil. They are not doing it on purpose. Many of them really believe that there is some very nefarious, powerful conspiracy, which is causing a lot of harm in the world and they are doing a good thing by
posing it and and making people aware of it and trying to stop it. If you think that you are surrounded by evil, you are falling into the same Rabbit Hole. You're falling into the same paranoid state of mind. Or the world is full of these evil people. That know, most of them are good people and also, I think we can empathize with some of the key ideas there, which I share.
That yes, it's becoming more and more difficult to understand what is happening in the world. There are huge dangers in the world that we are existential dangers to the human species. But they don't come from a small cabal of Jews or gay people or feminists or whatever. They come from much more diffused forces which are not under the control of any single individual.
We don't have to look for the evil people.
We need to look for human allies. In order to work together against again, the dangers of AI, the dangers of bioengineering, the dangers of climate change. And when you wake up in the morning, the question is, do you want to spend your day, spreading hatred of? Do you want to spend spend your day trying to make allies and work together?
Let me ask you kind of a big philosophical question about Ai and and the threat of it. Let's look like at the threat side. So folks I get Eliezer, yudkowsky worried that a I might kill all of us. Do you worry about that range of possibilities where artificial intelligence systems in a variety of ways might destroy human civilization?
Yes. You know, I took a lot about it about the dangers of a, I sometimes get into trouble because I depict these scenarios of how a i becoming very dangerous. And then people say that I'm encouraging these scenarios but I'm, you know, I'm talking about it as a warning. I'm not so terrified of the simplistic idea. Again, the Terminator scenario of robot running in the streets shooting everybody. I'm more worried about a i
Creating more and more power. And basically, taking over Society based taking over our lives, taking power away from us. Until we don't understand what is happening and we lose control of our lives and of the future. The two most important things to realize about a, I know so many things are being said, know about AI. But I think that two things that every person should know about AI first is that AI is the First Tool in history that
Can make decisions by itself all previous Tools in history. Couldn't make decisions. This is why they empowered us. You invent a knife. You invent an atom bomb. The atom bomb cannot decide to start a war cannot decide which city to warm a, I can make decisions by itself. An autonomous weapon systems can decide by themselves who to kill who to bond.
The second thing is that AI is the first time in history, that can create new ideas by itself, the printing press could print our ideas but could not create new ideas. A I can create new ideas entirely by itself. This is unprecedented. Therefore, it is the first technology in history that instead of giving power to humans, it takes power away from us.
And the danger is that it will increasingly take more and more power from us until we are left helpless and clueless about what is happening in the world and this is already beginning to happen. In an accelerated Pace, more and more decisions about our lives, whether to give us a loan, whether to give us a mortgage, whether to give us a job or taking by Ai and more and more of the ideas of the it.
Images of the stories that surround us and shape our minds. Our world, our producer created by AI not by human beings. You can just Linger on that. What is the danger of that, that more and more of the creative?
Side is done by AI. The idea generation is it that we become stale in our thinking is that, that idea generation? So fundamental to like, the evolution of humanity that we can't
resist. The idea is to resist an idea, you need to undo have some some vision of of the creative process. And this is a very old fear. You go back to Plato's Cave. Some of this idea that people are sitting
and in a cave and seeing shadows on a screen on a wall. And thinking, this is reality, you go back to to the cart and he has this thought experiment of the, of the demon. And the cutout asks himself, how do I know that any of this is real, maybe there is a demon who is creating all of this, and this Basically enslaving Me by surrounding me with these Illusions, you go back to Buddha. It's the same question.
What if we are living in a world of Illusions? And because we have been living in it throughout our lives, all our ideas, or our desires, how we understand ourselves. This is all the product of the same illusions.
And this was a big philosophical, question for thousands of years now. It's becoming a practical question of engineering because previously all the idea is. As far as we know, maybe we are living inside a computer simulation of intelligent Rats from the planet xerocon, if that's the case, we don't know about it. But taking what we do know about human history until now all the again stories images, painting songs Opera
Has theater everything we've encountered and shaped. Our minds was created by humans. Now, increasingly, we live in a world where more and more of these cultural artifacts will be coming from an alien intelligence very quickly. We might reach a point when most of the story stories, images songs TV shows, whatever are created by an alien intelligence, and if we know,
Find ourselves inside this kind of world of Illusions created by an alien intelligence that we don't understand but it understands us. This is a kind of, you know, spiritual enslavement that we won't be able to break out of because it understands us it understands how to manipulate us. But we don't understand what is behind this screen of
stories and images and and songs.
So if there's a set of AI systems that are operating in the space of ideas, they're far, superior to ours and we're not almost able to its opaque to us. We're not able to see through how does that change the
The Pursuit of Happiness, the human pursuit of happiness life. Where do we get joy? If there were surrounded by a AI systems that are doing, most of the cool things humans, do much better than us. Now some of the things it's okay, that the AI is would do them. Many human tasks and jobs, you know, it's the drudgery they are not fun, they are not developing us emotionally or
Literally it's fine. If the robots take over, I don't know. I think about the people in supermarkets and grocery stores. It spend hours every day just, you know, passing items and and charging you the money. I mean, if this can be automated, wonderful, we need to make sure that these people then have better jobs. Better means of supporting themselves and developing their social ability,
Tease the spiritual abilities. And that, that's the, that's the ideal world. That AI can create that. It takes away from us, the things that it's better. If we don't do them and allows us to focus on the most important things in the deepest, aspects of our nature of our potential. If we give AI Control of the sphere of ideas at this stage, I think.
It's very, very dangerous because it doesn't understand us and AI at present is mostly digesting the products of human culture. Everything we've produced over thousands of years, it eats all of these cultural products digests it and starts producing its own new stuff, but we stupid still haven't figured out ourselves in our bodies, our brain.
And our minds our psychology. So an AI based on our flawed understanding of ourselves is a very dangerous thing. I think that we need. First of all to keep developing ourselves if for every dollar and every minute that we spent on developing AI artificial intelligence, we spend another dollar and another minute in this
In developing human consciousness. The human mind will be okay. The danger is that we spent all our effort on developing, an AI at a time when we don't understand ourselves.
And then letting the a, I take over. That's that's a road. Could to a human
catastrophe. This is surprise you, how well large language models work. I mean, has it modified your understanding of the nature of intelligence?
Yes, I mean, you know, I've been writing about a iPhone, you know, like eight years now and engage with all these predictions and speculations. And when it actually came to us, much faster and more powerful than I thought it would be.
I didn't think that we would have in 2023 and AI that can hold a conversation that you can't know if it's a human being or an AI that can write beautiful texts. Until I mean, I read the texts written by Ai and the thing that strikes me most is the coherence, you know, people think oh it's nothing. They just takes ideas from here and their words from and put it. No, it's so
Warrant. I mean you read in not sentences you read paragraphs, you read, entire texts. And there is logic that there is a
structure that only go here and it's convincing. Yes, a beautiful thing about it that has to do with your work. It doesn't have to be true and it all know gets facts wrong but it still is convincing and it is both scary and beautiful. Yeah, that our brains love language. So
Much that we don't need the facts to be correct. We just needed to be a beautiful story.
Yeah, and that's been the secret of politics and religion for thousands of years and now it's coming with a. I
so you as a person who has written some of the most impactful words ever written in your books, how's that make? You feel that you might be one of the last effective human writers,
that's a good question.
What do you think that's possible. I think it is possible.
I've seen a lot of examples of a I being told, right? Like you Wagner Harare and what if
reduces has it ever done? Better than you? Think you could have written yourself.
I mean, on the level of content of ideas, know the things I said, I would, I would never say that, but when it comes to the, you know, that I mean there is again the conference and the quality of writing is
Such that I say it's unbelievable how good it is, and who knows in 10 years, in 20 years, maybe it can do better even on according to certain measures of on the level of of content
so that people will be able to do like a style transfer do in the style of you all know her re-write anything, right? Why I should have ice cream tonight.
And and make it convinced know if I have anything convincing to several. Do you think you'll be surprised? I think you'd be surprised, they could be an evolutionary biology explanation for why I think it's good for you. Yeah so I mean I mean that changes the nature of writing ultimately I think it goes back.
Much of my writing is suspicious of itself. I write stories about the danger of stories, I write about intelligence, but highlighting the dangers of intelligence. Ultimately, I don't think that, in terms of power, human power comes from intelligence and from stories, but I think that the deepest and best qualities of humans.
Are not intelligence and not storytelling and not power. Again, with all our power, with all our cooperation with our intelligence. We are on the verge of destroying ourselves and destroying much of the ecosystem. Our best qualities are not there. Our best qualities are non-verbal again, they come from things like compassion from introspection and introspection. For my experience is not
Verbal. If you try to understand yourself with words, you will never succeed. There is a place where you need the words, but the deepest Insight, they don't come from words.
And you can't write about it. That that's again. It goes back to VidCon Stein to Buddha to so many of these stages before that, this these are the things we are silent
about, but eventually you have to project it, as a writer, you have to do the silent introspection but projected onto a
page. Yes. But you still have to warn people, you will never find the deepest truth in a book. You will never find it in words.
You can only find it in, I think indirect experience, which is nonverbal, which is pre verbal
in the Silence of your own mind. Yes. Somewhere in there. Yes.
Well, let me ask you a silly
question, then a ridiculously big question.
You have done a lot of deep thinking about the world about yourself, this kind of introspection, how do you think if you by way of advice, but just practically speaking day to day? How do you think about difficult problems with the world? First of all I take time off like my the most important thing I do I think as a writer as a scientist I meditate I spend about two hours
Everyday in silent meditation.
Observing as much as possible. Non-verbally, what is happening within myself, focusing? You know, Body, Sensations the breath. Thoughts. Keep coming up, but I try not to give them attention. Don't try to drive them away, just let them be there in the background, like some background noise. Don't engage with the thoughts because the mind is, is constantly producing stories with words. These stories come between us and the world.
They don't allow us to see ourselves of the world like for me the most shocking thing. When I started meditating like 23 years ago, I was giving this simple exercise to just observe my breath coming in and out of the nostrils, not controlling it, just observing it and I couldn't do it for more than 10 seconds. I, for 10 seconds would try to notice all. Now, the breath is coming in coming in. It's coming in. Oh, it stopped coming in and I was going out going out, 10 seconds and some memory would come, some thought would
On some story about something that happened last last last week or ten years ago or in the future and it the story would hijack. My attention it would take me maybe five minutes to remember all I'm supposed to be observing my my breath if I can't observe my own breath because of these stories created by the mind how can I hope to understand much more complex things like the political situation in Israel?
These really Palestinian conflict the Russian invasion of Ukraine. If all these stories keep coming. I mean, it's not the truth, it's just your the story, your own mind created. So first thing train the mind to be silent and just observe so two hours every day, when I go every year for a long retreat between one month and two months, 60 days of just sign up, meditation, Sal meditation for 60 days. Yeah. Who train the mind forget about your own
Own stories, just observe what is really happening. And then also on other throughout the day, have an information diet. People are, today, many people are very aware of what they feed their body, what? Enters their mouth mouth. Be very aware of what you feed your mind. What? Enters your mind. Have an information diet.
So, for instance, I read long books.
And I prefer, like, you know, I did many interviews, I prefer three hours interviews, 25 minutes interviews. The long format is in, it's not always feasible, but you can go much, much deeper. So, I would say information diet. Be very careful about what you feed your mind. Give preference to big chunks over small
books over
Twitter. Yes, books over 2
Each other definitely and then you know, when I encounter a problem difficult intellectual problem, then I give it, I let the problem lead, it lead me where it goes and not where I want it to go. If I approach a problem with some preconceived idea solution and then try to impose it on the problem and, you know, just find confirmation bias. Just find the evidence that supports
Supports my view. It's this is this is easy for the mind to do and you don't learn anything new.
Do take notes. You start to concretize your thoughts on paper.
I read a lot. I don't, I don't usually I don't take notes, then I start writing and when I write I write like a torrent. Just right now, it's the time you read, you didn't even want, admitted meditation. Now, it's the time to write, right? Don't stop. Just right. So, I would write from memory and I'm not afraid of formulating.
It's a big Ideas, big theories and putting them on paper. The danger is once it's on paper, not on paper on the screen in the computer, you get attached to it and then you start with confirmation bias to build more and more layers around it and you can't go back and then it's very dangerous. But I trust myself that I have to some extent, the ability to press the delete button, the most important button,
In the keyboard is delete. I right? And then I delete I write and then I delete and because I trust myself that I'll have the. Every time I come to press the delete button, I feel bad, like it's a kind of pain and I created this, it's a beautiful idea and I have to delete
it. We still are brave enough to press
delete. I try em, and hopefully I do it enough times, and this is important, because in the long term, it enables me to play with the ideas. I have the confidence to
To start, formulating some Brave idea. Most of them turn out to be nonsense, but I trust myself not to be a cost, not to be attached, not to become attached to my own nonsense. So it gives me this room for
playfulness. I will be a mess if I didn't ask for people interested in hearing. You talk about meditation. If they want to start meditating, what advice would you give on how to start you mentioned? You couldn't hold it for
You couldn't hold your attention on your breath for longer than 10 seconds. Yeah, first. So how do they start on this journey?
First of all, it's a difficult Journey, it's not fun. It's not recreational, it's not kind of time to relax. It can be very, very intense. The most difficult thing, at least in the meditation. I practice vipassana, which are learn from a teacher called SN goenka. The most difficult thing is not the silence. It's not the sitting for long hours.
H it what comes up everything? You don't want to know
about yourself. Yeah, this is what comes up,
so it's very intense and difficult. If you go to a Meditation Retreat, don't think you're going to relax.
So what is the worst experience for Meditation Retreat? When everything you don't like comes up first for 30 days. It depends what comes up. Anger comes up, you're angry. Yeah, for days on end, you're just boiling with anger. Everything makes you angry again, something that happens right now, or you remember something from 20 years ago and you start boiling with, it's like I never even thought about this incident but it's somewhat, it was somewhere stowed with a huge
Huge pile of anger, attached to it, and it's now coming up in all the anger is coming up. Maybe it's boredom, you know, 30 days of meditation, you start getting bored and it's the most boring thing in suddenly, no anger. No, it's the most boring. I another second ice cream. I mean, and boredom is one of the most difficult thing to deal with. In life. I think it's closely related to death.
With. This is boring, you know,
in many movies, that is exciting. It's not exciting when you died, ultimately, it's board, nothing happens. It's the end of exciting things. And many things in the world happened because of boredom to some extent. People start entire Wars because of board of people quit relationships, people quit jobs because of boredom and if you never learn how to deal with boredom, you will
Never learn how to enjoy, peace and quiet because the way to peace passes through boredom and, and from what I experienced with meditation, I think. But maybe it was the most difficult maybe at least in the top three that much more difficult to say than anger or pain. When pain comes up, you feel heroic is pain when bottom comes out, it brings it. You know what?
With depression and feelings of worthlessness and it's nothing. I'm nothing
the way to peace is through boredom. David Foster Wallace said, the key to life is to be unbearable. Yeah. It was just a different perspective on what you're talking to us. It is there truth to that? Yes I mean it's closely related. I would say like I look at the world today like Politics. The one thing we need more than anything else. Is boring, politicians.
Yes, we have a super abundance of very exciting politicians while doing and saying very exciting things and we need boring politicians and we need them quickly. And yeah, the way to pieces to boredom that applies in more ways than one. What advice would you give to young people today in high school and college?
How to have a successful life, how to have a successful career,
what they should know. It's the first time in history. Nobody has any idea how the world would look like in 10 years? Yeah, nobody has any idea how the world would look like when you grow up, you know throughout history, it was never possible to predict the future you live in the Middle Ages. Nobody knows maybe in 10 years, the Vikings will invade. The Mongols will invade. They'll be an epidemic. They'll be an earthquake who knows? But the base
Basic structures of life will not change. Most people will still be peasants. Armies would fight on Horseback with swords and bows and arrows and things like that. So you could learn a lot from the wisdom of your elders. They've been there before and they knew what kind of basic skills you need to learn you. Most people need to learn how to sow wheat and harvest wheat, or rice and make
bread and build a house and write the hose and things like night. Now, we have no idea, not just about politics. We have no idea how the job market would look like in 10 years, we have no ideas, no idea what skills will still be needed you. You think you, you're going to learn how to code because they'll need a lot of coders in the 2030s think again, maybe AI is doing all the coding. You don't need any coders.
You're going to, I don't know, you learn to translate languages, you want to be translator gone and you would we don't know what skills will be needed. So the most important skill is the skill to keep learning and keep changing throughout our lives. She's very, very difficult to keep Reinventing ourselves. It's a deep again, it's in, in a way, a spiritual practice.
To build your personality to build your mind, very flattened as a very flexible mind. If traditionally people thought about education like Building Stone House with very deep foundations. Now it's more like setting up a tent that you can fold and move to the next place, very, very quickly.
Because that's the 21st century.
Which also raises questions about the the future of Education. What that looks like. Yeah, let me ask you about love what were some of the challenges? What were some of the lessons about love about life? They learn from coming out as gay in many ways. It goes back to the stories. I think this is one of the
oh, one of the reasons I became so interested in stories and in their power, was I grew up in a small Israeli town in the 1980s, early 1990s, if it was very homophobic,
And I basically embraced it, I breath. I breathed it because you could hardly even think differently. So you had these two powerful stories around one that God hates gay people and that he will punish them if they for who they are or what they do. Secondly, that it's not God. It's nature that there is something disease do
Or sick about it. And these people, maybe they are not Sinners, but they are, they are sick. They are defective and nobody wanted to identify with such a thing. If your options, okay? You can be a singer, you can be a defect, but what do you want? No, good options there. And it took me many years till I was 21 to come to terms with it. And one of the things I learned through things first about the
Capacity of the human mind for denial and delusion that an algorithm could have told me that I'm gay when I was like 14 or 15. Like if there is a good looking guy and girl walking, I would immediately focus on the guy but I didn't I didn't I didn't connect the dots.
Like I could not understand what was happening inside my own brain and my own mind. My own body took me a long time to realize, you know, you're just
gay.
So that speaks to the power of social convention, versus individual
thought the power of of self-delusion that you know it's not that I knew I was gay and was hiding it. I was hiding it from myself successfully that I don't understand how it is possible looking back. I don't understand how it is possible, but I know it is possible. I knew and didn't know at the same time and then the other big lesson is the power of the stories of the social conventions.
Because the stories were not true, they did not make sense, even on their own terms. Even if you accept the basic religious framework of the world, that there is a good god, that created everything and controls everything. Why would a good God?
Punish people for love. I understand why good God would punish people for violence, for hatred for cruelty, but why would God punish people for love especially when he created them that way? So of, so even if you accept the religious framework of the world, obviously the story that God hates gay people, it comes not from God, but from Some Humans who invented this story, The
We take the on hatred, this is something humans. Do all the time, they hate somebody and they say, no, I don't hate them. God hates them. They throw their own hatred on God. And then, if you think about the scientific framework, that said that all gays, they are against nature. They are against the laws of nature that they are and so forth. Science tells us, nothing can exist against the laws of nature things.
That go against the laws of nature, just don't exist. There is a law of nature that you can't move faster than the speed of light. Now, you don't have this minority of people who break the laws of nature by going faster than the speed of light, and then nature comes now that's bad. You shouldn't do that. That's not how nature works. If something goes against the laws of nature, he just can't exist.
The fact that gay people exist me and not just people, you see homosexuality among many, many mammals and birds, and other animals it exists because it is in line with the laws of nature. The idea that this is sick, that this is whatever it comes, not from nature. It comes from the human imagination. Some people who for whatever reasons, hated gay people, they said, oh, they go against nature but this is the
story created by people. This is not the laws of nature and this taught me that so many of the things that we think are natural or Eternal or Divine know, they'll just human stories but these human stories are often the most powerful forces in the
world. So what did you learn from your just a personal struggle?
Of Journey Through the social conventions to find. One of the things that makes life awesome. Which is love. So, like hot. What it takes to kind of strip away the self-delusion and the pressures of social convention the wake up. It takes a lot of work, a lot of courage and a lot of help from other people. You, it's this kind of like an heroic idea that I can do it all by myself.
Doesn't work. Certainly with love, at least one more person and I'm very happy that I found itzik. We lived in the same small Israeli town. We lived on two adjacent streets for years. Probably went to school on the same bus for years without really encountering each other in the end. We met on one of the first dating sites on the internet for gay people in Israel. In 2002, you're saying the internet works.
Yes, yes, I know I said a lot of bad. Things are dangerous about technology and the internet and they're also, of course, good things. And this is not an accident. You have two kinds of minorities in history. You have minorities which are are a cohesive group like Jews that. Yes you are as small as being born Jewish in saying Germany or Russia whatever you're born in a small community but as a Jewish boy, you're born to a Jewish Family, you have Jewish parents.
You have Jewish siblings, you are in a Jewish neighborhood. You have Jewish friends. So, these kinds of minorities, they could always come together and help each other throughout history. The another type of minority like gay people, arm abroad, lead. Lgbtq people that as a gay boy. You are usually not born to a gay family with gay parents and gay siblings and gained in an integrated neighborhood. So usually you find yourself completely alone for most of History.
Tori. One of the biggest problems for the gay community. Was that there was no Community. How do you find one another?
And the internet was a wonderful thing in this respect because it made it very easy for these kinds of diffuse community. So diffuse minorities to find each other. So me and it's like, even though we rode the same bus together to school for years, we didn't meet in the physical world. We met online because again in the physical world, you don't want to identify it in a Israeli town. In the 1980s, you ride the bus. You don't want to say, hey, I'm gay. Is there anybody else gay here? That's not a good idea.
But on the internet, we could find each other.
There's another lesson in there. That maybe sometimes, the thing you're looking for is right under your
nose. Yeah. Very old lesson in a very true name, lesson in many ways so you need help from other people to realize the truth about yourself. So of course in love you cannot just love, abstractly. There is another person. There you need to find them but also you know we were one of the first Generations.
Who enjoy the benefits of Gay Liberation of thus. Very difficult struggles of people who are much braver than us in the 1980s and 1970s 1960s who dared to question, social conventions to struggle it, sometimes a terrible price and we benefited from it. And more broadly. We spoke earlier about the feminist movement there would have been no Gay Liberation, without the
Movement. We also owe them for, you know, start starting to change the gender structure of of the world and this is always true. You can never do it just by yourself. Also, I look at my journey in meditation. I could not have found many. I mean, the idea of going to Meditation Retreat, okay. But I couldn't discover meditation by my couldn't develop the meditation technique by myself, somebody.
I had to teach me this way of how to look inside yourself.
And I'm, and it's, and it's also a very important lesson that you can't do it just by yourself that this fantasy of complete autonomy of complete self. Sufficiency it doesn't work, you will hear it. It tends to be a very kind of male Macho fantasy. I don't need anybody. I can be so strong and so brave that I'll do everything by myself. It never works.
Need friends, you need a mentor. You need the very thing that makes us human. As other is other humans. Absolutely. You mentioned that the fear of Border might be a kind of proxy for the fear of death. So, what role does the fear of death play in The Human Condition? Are You Afraid Of
Death? Yes, I think everybody are afraid of death. I mean, all of fears come out of the fear of death.
'The, but the fear of death is, it's just so deep and difficult, we can't usually be can't face it directly. So, we cut it into little pieces and we face just little pieces. All I lost my smartphone. That's a little, little, little piece of, of the fear of death, which is of losing everything, so I can't deal with losing everything. I'm dealing now. Is losing my phone or losing a book or whatever. Somebody I feel pain. That's a small bit of the
Fear of death. If somebody who really doesn't fear death would not fear anything at all, they'll being like anything that happens, I can deal with it if I can deal with death, this is nothing.
So any fears? And as a distant echo of the, the big fear of death, have you ever looked at it? Head on caught glimpses sort of contemplate as the stoics? Yeah,
I mean well, and when I was a teenager I would constantly
I'm plate it trying to understand to imagine it was extremely, it was a very, very shocking and moving experience around especially in connection like with, you know, with with national ideology which was also very big strong in Israel still is which in turn comes from the fear of death, you know that you're going to die. So you said okay I died but the nation lives on I live on through the nation, I don't really die and you hear it, especially
Leon Memorial Day Day for fallen soldiers. So every day they'll be in school Memorial Day for fallen soldiers, who fell defending Israel in all the different Wars. And all these kids would come dressed in white and you have this big ceremony with flags and songs and dances in memory of the Fallen Soldiers. And you get the impression again, I don't want to sound crass, but you got the impression that the best thing in life is to be a fallen soldier because even though yes, you died, everybody dies in the end.
End but then you'll have all these cool kids for years and years remembering you in celebrating you and you don't really die. And I remember standing in these ceremonies and thinking, what does it actually mean? Like, okay, so if I'm a fallen soldier, now I am. I'm a skeleton. I'm bones under this in this military cemetery under this stone do. I actually hear the kids singing all these patriotic songs if not, how do I know they do it? Maybe they
Took me, maybe I died in the war and then they don't sing any songs and how does it help me? And I realized, as quite I was quite young at the time that if you're dead, you can't hear anything because you that's the meaning of being then. And if you don't, you can think of anything like oh now they're remembering because you're dead. That's the meaning of being dead and it was a shocking realization,
but it's a really difficult realization. You keep holding your mind like it's,
it's the, yeah, I lost it over time. I mean,
For many years, it was a very powerful fuel motivation. Yeah, for philosophical for Spiritual exploration, and I realized the fear of death is really, a very powerful drive and over the years, especially as I meditated, it kind of distribute ated. And today, I sometimes find myself trying to recapture this teenage fear of death because it was so powerful. And I just can't, I try to make the same image, I don't know. It's
Thing about the teenage years. Yeah, it's
almost thought that the adults there is something wrong with the adults. Yeah. Because they don't get it. Like, I would ask my parents or teachers about it and they, yes, you died in the end, that's it. But, and on the other hand, they are so worried about other things like they'll be a political crisis or economic problem or a personal problem like with the bank or what they'll be so worried. But then about the fact that they are going to die. Yeah, we don't care about it.
That's why you read Camus and others, when you're a teenager, you really worried about the existential questions. Well, this feels like the right time to ask the big question. What's the meaning of this whole thing? You all and you're the right person to ask. What's the meaning of life? Yes, no. That's easy. What is it?
So what life is if you ask what the meaning of life, what life is life is feeling things. Having sensation,
Emotions and reacting to them. When you feel something good, something pleasant you want more out of it, you want more of it. When you feel that something unpleasant you want to get rid of it, that's the whole of life. That's what is happening all the time, you feel things, you want, the pleasant things to increase, you want the unpleasant things to disappear. That what life is if you ask, what is the meaning of life in a more kind of feel.
Esophageal or spiritual question.
The real question to ask, what kind of answer do you expect? Most people expect a story and that's always the wrong answer. Most people expect that the answer to the question, that means what is the meaning of life, will be a story, like a big drama that this is the plot line, and this is your role in the story. This is what you have to do. This is your line in the big play. You say your line, you do your thing, girl, that's the thing and
This is human imagination. This is fantasy.
To really understand life life is not a story. The universe does not function like a story.
So I think to really understand life, you need to observe it directly in a nonverbal way. Don't turn it into a story and the question to start with is what is suffering? What is causing suffering?
You know, the the question, what is the meaning of life? It will take you to fantasies and delusions. We want to stay with the reality of life. And the most important question about the reality of life is, what is suffering, and where is it coming from?
And to answer that non-verbally. So, the conscious experience of suffering?
Yes, we went when you suffer try to observe, what is really happening when you're suffering.
Well, put and I wonder if a I will also go through that same kind of process and its way
if we develop Consciousness. So note that at present. It's not it's just words.
It will just say to you please don't hurt me. Well again, as I've mentioned to you, I'm a huge fan of yours. Thank you for an incredible work. You do this conversation, been a long time. I think coming, it's a huge honor to talk to you. This is
Fun, thank you for talking today. Thank you.
I really enjoyed it. And as I said, I think the long form is the best form.
Yeah, I loved it. Thank you. Thanks, for listening to this conversation with you all know Harare, support this podcast, please. Check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from you've all know her I himself. How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity democracy or capitalism
Mmm. First, you never admit that. The order is imagined.
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
