Little boys and girls ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show. My guest today many of you will know the name and those who don't will know much more about him shortly Professor. You've all know a Harare is a historian and best-selling author who is considered one of the most influential public intellectuals in the world. I know that setting a high bar, but his popular books might ring a bell sapiens a brief history of humankind homo Deuce a brief history of tomorrow and 21 lessons for the 21st century have sold 27
one and a half million copies roughly in 60 languages. I'll let that sink in for people twenty seven point five million copies that is a lot of square footage or that's a cubic cubic feet cubic meters. They've been recommended by Barack Obama Chris Evans Bill Gates and many others. He is also behind sapiens a graphic history, which we'll talk about a brand new graphic novel series and collaboration with comic artists David vandermolen, I think co-writer and Daniel Casanova the
This beautifully Illustrated series is a radical reworking of his book sapiens subtitle a brief history of humankind. The series will be published in four volumes starting with volume 1 the birth of humankind, which is available now is website why and Harari har har i.com. You can find them on Facebook Twitter Instagram on Twitter Harari underscore. You've all will link to all the rest of them at Tim dot blog / podcasts.
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Our to see I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton.
You've all so nice to finally see
you. It's good to be here. Thank you for inviting
me. So we're going to start in a unusual Place perhaps. Okay, and that is with correcting my pronunciation on a word MOS hav how do you pronounce that and what does it
mean hav oh, that's actually a kind of mistake on Wikipedia. It's a most shelf now, it's some it somehow got around that I live in and on the moshav, which is some kind of socialist Collective.
Community less radical than the kibbutz but one of the experiments of socialist in Israel like decades ago and it's just not true. I mean, I live in a kind of middle class suburb of Tel Aviv.
So this is an example for those listing of something that some people call the Wikipedia Echo effect
because I actually try to correct it so many times and it's just I gave up its stronger
than me. So some point I got into Wikipedia then it ended.
It up in the guardian then other people site the guardian and it just will not go away. So it just keeps coming back. So let's go to something that I think is more of a first-hand report and it's a paragraph from your wonderful profile. I should say answers to questions in tribe of mentors, which is my last book from a few years ago. And here's the paragraph. I'd like to read and then we'll explore it since the first course in 2000. I began practicing but pasta for two hours every day and each year. I take a long meditation.
For a month or two, it's not an escape from reality. It's getting in touch with reality at least for two hours a day. I actually observe reality as it is while for the other 22 hours. I get overwhelmed by emails and tweets and funny cat videos without the focus and Clarity provided by this practice. I could not have written sapiens and Homo Dios.
So the missing piece here is the first course, would you be open to describing how you ended up going to your first the pasta experience?
Yeah. I mean I was doing my PhD at Oxford at the time about medieval military history.
And I was also looking for the meaning of life in Reading. Lots of philosophy books and thinking a lot and then nothing really clicked and the friend nag me for about a year to try and meditation Retreats instead of reading all these books and finally I gave up and said, okay, I'll try I'll see how it is and it was really fascinating because you know, the very first evening the instructions that I was given by the meditation teacher was
Very very simple instructions. I mean, I guess many people heard them that you just focus your entire at you sit down you close your eyes and you just focus your entire attention on your nostrils on your nose and you just feel try to feel whether your breath is coming in or whether your breath is going out sounds like the simplest thing in the world. It's not even a breathing exercise like you don't need to control the breath just to just let it be what it is and just feel what he does and I couldn't do it for more than 10.
Seconds, like most people that you know for 10 seconds, I would be focusing on my nostrils on my breath and after 10 seconds. My mind would run somewhere like to some memory some stories some something. I forgot to do something that happened years ago and I would roll in that for four minutes before realizing the hey I'm missing my breath and in come back and this was an extremely humiliating an important experience because it made me realize for the first time in my life that I have almost no control.
Control over my mind.
That you know, I was doing my PhD at Oxford. I thought it was I was a very intelligent person very smart. And you know, my mind is my tool.
And I have absolutely no control over it. I give it this very very simple task and it can't do it. And also you realize how overwhelming the story is that the Mind produced our and over time. This was not on the first night, but gradually over time it made me realize that you know, if you can't focus on the simple reality of your breath coming in and out of your nostrils without being overwhelmed by some stuff.
Regenerated in your mind then. How can you hope to understand? I don't know that the financial system of the world the geopolitical system. What's happening in Israel in the Middle East much much bigger things. If you can't do that, I mean no matter what I try to do these stories generated by the by my own mind get between me and reality and most of my life. I just spend on these stories.
He's
So it was ever since then it was one of my main practices in life is how do you avoid being overwhelmed by the stories that your mind
generate? Why did your friend nag you for a year? Was this a friend who is nagging everybody to go to a class and the teachers? I understand it. Maybe it was in video. I would wear I don't or maybe in person SN goenka. I don't know the lifespan. Mmm. Did they nag you because there's something about you that told them.
Would benefit in particular or was it a general nagging I drunk.
I mean, I think this guy was nagging everybody in a good way. I still good friends with him. I think it because I was really looking hard to understand life to understand what's happening here. Then he thought I would be a good candidate and then he was absolutely
right now the personal clicks for some people it doesn't click for other.
There's some people gravitate to Transcendental Meditation and repeating a mantra other people might find a different type of mindfulness practice, but it clicked for you. What did the before-and-after look like? If we let's just say go back to that point in time your first experience, and then we Flash Forward six months what had changed six months later, or how did your perception will change some
things change dramatically? Most things didn't I mean you have this kind of false Enlightenment experience? Thank you.
I think you realize something very deep. And now everything is going to change and over time you realize that the Deep patterns of yourself of your own mind. I'm not too much stronger than one cause of meditation or practice of of six months and it's a very long way and again for some people it doesn't click at all. I mean when I came out of my first course, I thought it oh, that's easy whenever you can set anybody there and it will have the same effect later on. I realize it's
if it doesn't work like that different things work for different people all the time. There are changing on so many levels. I'm not sure which of these levels is most interesting to you or to our listeners so I can talk on several of them, you know, everything from simple simple kind of peace of mind and better Mental Health
To and big change in my working methods in my professional life. I don't think as a wrote in that passage. You read. I don't think I could have written sapiens or homo dais or any of these other books without the practice of meditation because you need a tremendous amount of focus to do something like that and you need to be able to see through the man.
So if details and you know, you try to summarize the whole of human history in 500 pages the most important button on the keyboard is delete. That's the big thing. I mean what are so many important things what is really important that that's the big question and I don't think I could have done it without the kind of sharp Focus that the meditation
gives
so many people have heard a sapience. Certainly. There was a point in Silicon Valley when it first came out and nearly all of my friends seem to be reading the same book and I think there's a sort of revisionist Grand Illusion among many readers that sapiens came out and then like the snap of the fingers 20 million copies or however many millions of copies were sold worldwide and 60 languages now that doesn't seem to to match
Story exactly. What was the title of the original English version of sapiens? And how many copies did itself?
Yeah. It was a long story. I mean the original English version was titled from animals into gods and it's sold. It was a sort of publication on Amazon and it's sold something like 2,000 copies they now go for I don't know thousands of dollars or something because there are collector items. Yeah. It was a was a long way.
Way
it was long way and you brought in then it at at that point the number of professionals. I believe you. Maybe it was your husband to found. Yeah, I mean literary
agent the that was the main thing. I mean I have I think I'm quite a good writer, but I have very detailed skills in terms of publication negotiations or anything to do with the business side of life and I tried for some time for maybe a year or two to find a publisher by myself, and it was a complete
earlier and then my husband came in and he has much much better business skills than I do and he like immediately fired the agent that we were working with at the time and kind of lets go back to zero and he was the one that found the best literary agent in Israel Deborah Harris and she opened a lot of doors for us and we worked on it for I think we kind of we did the translation again and is several several because originally
it was in Hebrew and several rounds of editing and eventually something like three years or more than three years after the Hebrew version the real English version came out in 2014
what with the biggest changes that were made aside from the title. I be curious to hear the story of sapiens the title itself, but what were some of the changes that were made in the editing process before the grand debut of the new version if anything, I don't know.
Just fine-tuning the
language tuning nothing major changed. I mean the the all the major themes and ideas were already there in the Hebrew version. We just really redo the translation and edit it and I mean shortening here and there if you things but there was no major revision to the content. It was mainly issues of style and the entire kind of business approach of
who to work with and how and you
correct me if I'm wrong because you never know what you read on the internet the degree of veracity but that it was based on lectures you had given previously. Yeah. Is
that true? That's that's correct. I gave like four five six years previously. I was giving a course to the Hebrew University which was basically introduction to the history of the world and at some point after working on it for a couple of years. I began handing out.
My notes to the students because I wanted them to focus on what I was saying and be part of the discussion instead of just scribbling down whatever I say, so I told them didn't forget it. Then you don't need to write anything. I'll give you my notes and then the notes started circulating not only among the students of the class, but also other students at the University and this kind of gave me the idea that well maybe there is a larger audience for this and I began working on turning these lecture notes into into a book.
Look I got it was a long way but a lot of the major ideas were there in the in the lecture notes, and
I wanted to hear more about this because I've seen in some books that I've quite enjoyed like zero to one by Peter teal and his co-writer also came from lecture notes originally at Stanford. Yeah.
It's a good method because the students take no bullshit.
Um, you know when you write when you write a book and it's only you and the screen and the computer the computer suffers everything whatever you write. The computer is fine with it. It's too long. It's incomprehensible. It's boring the computer doesn't care but the students give you immediate feedback. I mean if you stand in class and you stand you talk and you see that the students have lost interest then that's a sign or they just don't understand what you're saying.
And the great thing about this cause it wasn't really an introduction to first year students and and Israeli students. And you know, if I if it was I don't know in Oxford then maybe it wouldn't work but Israeli students they tell you exactly what they think about you
and what do you say there?
So I got immediate feedback about everything and maybe the most important feedback is that and I was trying to explain the really basic concepts of human history. What is religion
What is money what is capitalism and you need you know, when you talk with professors of doctors, you can talk in a very very complicated way. So nobody realizes including yourself that you don't really know what you're talking about. But with first year students you have to use very simple language and that's a big challenge the simpler the language the bigger the challenge. It really shows you and your listeners whether you know,
Know what you're talking about or not. You can't hide behind professional. Jargon and very complicated. I don't know language. And so it was it foremost me. Like I was trying to explain what is money and I had to go back again and again to to the I to the core ideas into the lecture notes and ask do I really understand what I'm talking about if I really understand I should be able to
It's simpler. I should be able to give a straightforward
example. It makes me think quite a bit about Richard feinman the physicist who was very very esteemed teacher and felt very similarly that professionals could hide behind labels right pointing at the bird and knowing the name is very different from understanding the bird and if you have to describe it in simple terms, it's a real challenge of competence and clarity as a teacher you mentioned the term.
Suffering and again want you to fact-check me, but it seems to me in doing homework and reading your work that you are very attuned to suffering whether that is in the animal world whether that is in The Human Experience whether that is in your own experience say with the endless cloudy days in Oxford at one point. Could you speak to how you developed that sense?
Vidya if I'm not imposing that on you because I mean you I'm looking behind you right now and people might not be watching this video, but you have some calligraphy behind you, which is I believe it's Fortune which is like Buddhist heart or Buddhist mind and
I just offering is somebody gave okay present and they hang. All right. It's
yeah, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. So that's what it that's what it says. Okay and suffering and the concept of suffering is also Central to a lot of Buddhist thought. Yeah. Could you speak to how you think
About suffering or why that is something that you're so cognizant
of I realized both in my personal life. And in my work as a historian that this is the big question. I mean the big question is not the meaning of life and the big question is not how you satisfy some God or how you achieve this so that goal the big question is how you liberate yourself and others from suffering and this is also a
The main theme of human history is most historians are focused on the question of power. If you take most history books and also most economic books and so forth. They are about power they are not just, you know a guide to how to get power but about them the history of power conflicts about power between two kings between two kingdoms between two Gods between two religions between two classes. These are most history books are about that.
And it's an important part but it's not the bottom line. I think the bottom line. Okay, what does all this mean in terms of happiness and suffering? So, okay. So the Roman Empire Rose to power did it actually make humans happier. Did it make them more miserable if it had no noticeable effect on say average happiness in the world. What does it matter whether they won or lost and in my work I try to always keep both of these perspectives at the same time the
Effective of power end of suffering, especially because you know humans are very very good as a species not all you but as a species we are very good in acquiring more power, but we are not good at all in translating power into happiness in for me the big Paradox of history is that it's obvious. We are thousands of times more powerful than people in the Stone Age, but it's not clear whether we are at all happy.
Her than they were maybe we are happier a bit but not thousands of times more happier. So something is wrong, you know, it's like a car which you know, you you press the fuel pedal with all your strength, but your gear is in neutral. I mean, we have so much power in not we doesn't move anywhere and it's also often the case in your personal life that you can achieve so much and then you know, you look inside and you ask Mi actually happier than I was 10 years ago by 20 years ago and maybe
Not and one of the things I also realized personally and you know collectively is a story--and is that we just don't understand suffering very well. One of the main problems is that people think that
with regard to suffering
it's obvious. What suffering is the big problem is how to make it how to make it disappear. I know that I don't know pain is suffering. I don't have enough money. That's that's the cause of my suffering. So now let's focus on getting more money or getting a medicine and the mistake is that you don't really understand the Deep causes and mechanisms of suffering. You see just powder video obviously pain is suffering. That's true, but there is much more to it.
If we spent a little more time on understanding the Deep mechanisms of misery and dissatisfaction in life, then we can act far more effectively in in trying to alleviate
it. Can you speak to the test of suffering hmm to determine what entities are real and what are not what illusion and what are not I mean I should say illusion maybe
abstractions. Uh-huh the main way that Youmans gain power.
Is through Collective cooperation as individuals, we are not particularly powerful animals in a match between a human and chimpanzee. The chimpanzee will easily win the big advantage of humans. We can cooperate basically in unlimited numbers thousands millions today, even billions cooperate together chimpanzees can't cooperate more than say 50 or a hundred that's about the limit and then you know, what enables us to cooperate in very large numbers. These are this is our ability to invent and believe in
Fictional stories and the fictional entities all the big heroes of History almost all of them are fictional entities that exist only in our imagination only in the stories that we create Nations God's money corporations States. The only place they exist is in the stories that we invent Intel as they are. They are not physical or biological realities.
Again, the United States or Israel. The only place it exists is in the story that millions of people believe and it's the same with money it has you know money has absolutely no objective value.
But as long as millions of people believe in the story about the dollar of the story about the Euro it works now.
When you say that, sometimes people go to the Other Extreme and think that what you are saying is that nothing is real that the entire world is just one big illusion, but that's not the case. I mean there is still reality. There are still chimpanzees and elephants and humans and there is a very very simple test to know whether the hero of the story that you're telling is a real entity or
Fictional entity invented by humans and existing only in their in their imagination and that is the test of suffering that a human being can suffer a cow can suffer an elephant can suffer but in ancient can't if a nation loses the war it doesn't suffer. It has no mind. It can't feel pain or sadness or fear. The soldiers were fighting for the nation the citizens in that Nation now being conquered by some other nations they can
Suffer a lot of things but the nation's can't suffer should be obvious and it's the same with corporations. Even if the corporation loses a billion dollar. It doesn't suffer it if it goes bankrupt, it doesn't suffer because it again it has no mind can't feel pain can't feel anything. So it's you know, it's a very very simple test that we should remind ourselves from time to time. What is really in the world and what are these fictional stories now? I'm not a gay.
The stories we need them. They are the basis for cooperation, but we should always remember we created them as tools to serve us. We shouldn't be enslaved by them. If a story enables people to cooperate well and thereby improve their lives. That's wonderful. But once you forget it's just a story and you begin in tile walls, just in order to protect to defend the honour of the nation.
Oh to increase the profit of the corporation something went wrong.
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What is the story if there is one or stories that you have around money yourself? I was reading the New Yorker profile not from not too long ago and you probably know the paragraph that I might be thinking about where you and your husband might relate to money differently. What are the stories that that you have for yourself in your life
money, but in essence money is just trust it's the most successful and Universal system of mutual trust that humans.
Came up with and therefore. I don't think it's bad. You know, it's very common for historians and philosophers and people like that. Oh man. It's the source of all evil in the world. I don't think so it sometimes it causes a lot of bad things but in itself, it's a wonderful thing. It's just a system of mutual trust that you know, 50,000 years ago to trust somebody you need to know them personally. You need to know their personality what they did in the past. They like you they don't like you and that makes it
It very very hard to cooperate in large numbers because you can't know a lot of people personally and it also makes it particularly hard to cooperate with strangers and foreigners that you don't know. Now you look at today. I can go to a supermarket and a complete stranger that I never met in my life would give me food that I can actually eat which was grown by a couple of other people on the other side of the world and was transported from that.
Field old plantation to the supermarket buy a bunch of other people none of us knows so how do we cooperate? So effectively, how do we trust each other money makes it possible and money is really it's just trust, you know, the beginning money was and because people didn't have a lot of trust the money had to be made for from something with an objective value, which doesn't depend just on human belief. So the first money
that we know about was simply grain you paid for things with grain and grain, you know it you can eat them if nothing works, but gradually people
The thrust increased and today most money in the world. It's just Digital Data being passed between computers most money is not even banknotes and coins. It's I don't know like five percent or something of the of the money's is physical money. Most of it is just digital when during this crisis in the recent year governments and banks in the u.s. In Europe else were created trillions of dollars. They didn't even bother to print the money.
Honey, you just have some official in some Bank goes into the computer as a zero somewhere and you have a trillion new dollars emerging out of nothing and it works. I mean it works because people have so much trust in the banks in the government's not only of their own country that the amazing thing. I mean you do thought while you can only use the money of your Governor know you think about even I don't know Islamic fundamentalist Isis
They hated America. They hated American politics American culture American religion, but they had nothing against American dollars when they conquered. I don't know muscle and enter the banks. They didn't burn the dollars that were there. They took them they use them. So that's amazing that you can have such a level of trust even between complete enemies.
And in my personal life therefore, I don't have a negative attitude towards money. I think for me. I'm also I'm not chasing it a lot. But for me, the best thing about money is not to think about it. I'm now much wealthier than I was 10 years ago Jen, you know, just an A young Professor back then not that I was ever poor, but I'm not much more wealthier and the the thing I like most about
My wealth today is that I simply don't have to think about money. I go to the supermarket and I don't know in Israel pineapples are very expensive. So I if I wanted pineapple, I just I don't even look at how much it costs. I just don't want the pineapple. Okay, let's take
it you've mentioned the alleviating of suffering and getting a better understanding first of defining the problem as opposed to just rushing to Solutions and getting a better understanding of suffering are there ways.
Ways in which your life in contrast to say not thinking about money has been complicated or made harder to navigate with the tremendous success of sapiens and becoming more publicly visible. In other words, was it as just an example easier to find sort of tranquility and connection with bodily Sensations as a way to integrate yourself back at Oxford compared to
today. No.
But I have 20 years of experience now in doing that. So I don't know maybe if I remained an anonymous professor of medieval history, it would I would have much deeper experiences of meditation today. Maybe not. It's impossible to know. I still have time. No, I'm not so busy. I have now allowed team like again nightmare. Thanks to my husband to kind of set it up. We now have a team of 15 people working for us. So I guess
something like I don't know 15 20 emails a day. That's it and like this conversation. I didn't have to do anything. I just had to come like two minutes before it started and just put like plug myself in and that's it. Somebody organized everything. So I'm not extremely busy. I still have two hours every day to meditate. I still go every year for a long retreat of the 30 days or 40 or 60 days something like that.
Um, no, I mean I think a lot of a lot of things to think but I thought a lot even before that so it I mean that the content of my thoughts changed but I don't think the intensity changed one of the things I realized for now being this famous public intellectual and meeting all these famous people and leaders is that everybody is basically the same when you are prime minister or president.
Out of a superpower. You can't be more worried than when you run a small business. It's impossible. It's the you know, it's the same brain. It's the same mind. So if you have a small shop and you're the only worker maybe and it's now Corona time and and it is you have to shut it down and you have to pay your mortgage and whatever you worry about it all day. It's basically the same.
He wears a prime minister or president that worries about the economic crisis over War. It's of course objectively they have to be much more worried, but they can't they have the same brain that you have. So it really depends on you know, maybe they are even found less worried than you are. If you are an extremely erratic person. I don't know if Woody Allen had a small shop and I think he would be much more worried about his shop then.
Certain president and prime ministers to die in the world are worried about their
countries. So I read a read a quote from you. This is in the New York Times if if I was a superpower my superpower would be Detachment. Feel free to correct that if need be but assuming there's some grain of Truth to that. Could you expand on that
place? Yeah, I think it is true that I can keep a kind of
Distance from situations from development in my personal life or in our world history and even though I have my opinions and I my preferences I have a certain ability to keep a distance and say look at things from different angles. And also it makes me very skeptical about my own positions.
Maybe I maybe I just don't know maybe I'm wrong about it. It could have been you know debilitating that I can't like how can you write the history of the world if you're not sure about what you say, but actually I find it. I just don't take myself a hundred percent. Seriously, it's okay. So maybe I'll write something and it's nonsense. So okay that's time when I wrote sapiens initially I
I no idea what would be a big success. So I was kind of ahead this defense that I thought nobody is going to read it. Like maybe my students at University would read it and maybe a couple of other people but that's it. So we are you know, I can write what I want basically and later on when I became very successful. It was the other way around then that you know, it doesn't matter anymore that if I'm if I write something and it's not and I'm not a hundred percent sure.
Hold it then I can take the hit.
Then okay, so people will find out that I wrote in a something wrong and that's fine. That's part of the business. I mean, if you really want to write these kinds of big books, you have to accept to some extent that you will make mistakes and that you will not get everything right if you want. If you're a perfectionist, then it's better to write the history of kind of one battle in the Middle Ages, then you're on safer
grounds.
This is going to seem like a strange question perhaps and if it goes nowhere, that's totally fine. But I'm curious. What do your close friends come to you for when it comes to advice. Like what type of advice do your friends come to you for? Is there any any pattern to it or any particular stand up?
It depends on the friends. I think I have a core of very good friends that go with me for years. I mean from long before I think that since I became
I'm kind of famous. I made maybe just one or two new good friends. Almost all my good friends are with me from years back and I have different relationships with each of them. It's like each one of them holds a different part of my inner world or of my life and I hold different parts of the world. So, you know, they don't come for me to meet for advice about history. That's for
sure.
Maybe they'll ask me. Well, what do you think will happen in the u.s. Elections? And I said, I don't know but I mean some if something really big happens. I don't know when the during the height of the of the terrorist wave in the world. So they would come in at least some of them and I would say look for a big historical perspective. This is not so important, you know, every person that dies in a terrorist attack is the entire world destroyed but looking at the big picture from the history of the world, this is a very
A small Affair. I mean I can explain to you why terrorism gets so much attention. It's basically theater these people are experts in theater not in war and they are very good at it. So they get so much attention, but you don't need to worry that the terrorists will take over the world. It's not going to happen most of the things, you know, it's like somebody's breaking up with their boyfriend girlfriend. Somebody's just having a lousy.
At work and the usual
things the usual stuff. What would they say your superpower is if you said it's Detachment which we could dig further into but is there any other observations that they would have if we gave all of your closest friends to drinks and we said, okay, you've all superpower. What is it? What might this a
first they will say different things because they know different angles of me, right? I think some of them will say
a I spotted him a good listener partly because I talk so much during high with my work that like when I meet with friends, I like to be quiet and just let somebody else do the talking for a while, which is a very good thing because very very often when people come to you for help. They just want you to listen. They
don't want you to
solve the problems. They don't you know, it often happens that can somebody comes in with a problem and you don't have patience for them. So you think what is the
This way to get rid of them to end this phone call. I'll find the solution of the problem. Then they'll go away and this really is the last thing they want. They really just want to complain and for somebody to listen to them and I'm quite good at it,
right you spend all your words during the day and then you can you you have the space to listen. Yes. How do you relate to
happiness? Yeah. I usually prefer to talk about suffering or misery because happiness is
It is far more difficult to nail down when you miserable, you know it when you're happy. You think you're happy. You're quite often just deluding yourself. It's not so easy to really understand what's happening there. You know, it really goes down to the level of the body. This is something that I know for meditation when you have a pain somewhere in your body it acts like a magnet. They just draws the attention there. There is no way you can miss it.
And you try to observe other things and you can't it's just you're going to get tickets grown back to the painful sensation in the knee in the stomach where ever it is, but when you have pleasant Sensations in your body, they have usually the opposite effect. They throw you out you kind of float couple of feet above the ground. I mean, sometimes people come in meditation and they say I never have any Pleasant Sensations in the body. I just have pain and that's
it's never the case. What's true is that when you have pleasant Sensations, you don't notice them because the usual effect of feeling something very pleasant it throws you out. You start kind of imagining. Hey, what if I win the lottery and I'll have a million dollars. I'll do that. I'll do that and you you lose connection with what at the time that you're having this very pleasant thoughts. You're having very pleasant Sensations in the body, but you don't notice it.
And it's it's I found it it's harder to work and to see what's actually happening there. But it's I would eat it even more important than kind of noticing and working with the painful Sensations. I mean most in the end most of our I would say that the really difficult problems they begin with the pleasant Sensations.
That you know, we become so attached to them that the moment they're gone. Most of the time people don't have very painful experiences most of the time if you are dissatisfied it's because you are missing or craving for some very pleasant experience, which is just not there and you're not willing to settle for the kind of ordinary boring thing that you do have.
I want to rewind to your description of
Our current life compared to your just say pre Fame life, which seems to be similar in many ways. You've been able to preserve the space to do what you do best to have this team. You have this this husband is very good at saying no you have personal assistance or a very good at saying no and too many people listening who have achieved some modicum of success. I think they will listen with great Envy because very often when
Whether they are artists whether they are business people what made them successful is often the first thing to get crowded out by the new attention and success that they receive aside from luck because perhaps there was some luck and chance involved in meeting the person who then became your husband. Were there any decisions? Are are there any
Decisions are Frameworks or anything at all that has helped you to preserve the space that you
have. I think a very important decision was to keep the meditation first that like when I plan my day on I plan my year. It's the first thing I put in the calendar is the meditation which reads and everything else has to find Space around that.
And that was a very it was a conscious decision and a very important decision that that's really worked and in a bit similar way also to keep time for my old friends to keep time for my family and understanding that this is kind of a marathon race and did not a Sprint. It's okay. It's something very important happens. The new book is coming out. There is a very there is a lot of important things. So okay so I can I can change my routine.
For a while, but over the long run you have to keep these kind of basic blocks intact. This was a very conscious decision in my case. It worked also to kind of remember what's really important for you in life for me. I think maybe you know on a personal level. I really want to understand life to understand the world what's happening.
Opening I noticed quite early that most of kind of the big events that I'm participating in like conferences and so forth and the important people I meet They Don't Really contribute much to that. They don't seem to understand the life or have to have some particular Insight in the big conferences. They never talk about these things. You know, they talk about the global economy. They talk about climate change. They talk about the are important thing.
But in on the deeper level of what's actually happening here. It's I won't get any answers from there. You know, it's I don't think it's a coincidence that if you look at the whole span of human history and almost none of the important political leaders of humankind made a significant philosophical contribution.
To human thought you have a few exception. I don't know Marcus Aurelius or something like that, but generally speaking you would have thought that from their vantage point. They see something that ordinary Mortals don't they? Maybe they reach the top because they have some very keen insight into human nature. And if they have some Keen Insight, they keep it very very
secret.
Who are some of the people you respect could be past or present for really?
Seeing or seeking what is going on on the deeper levels.
I can tell you. I mean some of the names of thinkers and writers that influenced
me great. Let's start there. Yeah.
So I mean Charles Taylor then Canadian philosopher really influenced me a lot his book the sources of the self is I think one of the most important books I read in life one of the most difficult books also.
I mean if people take this as a kind of reading
recommendation, they should be
warned. It's really tough going to very good very dense. But if you make it it's really worth it, or of course, I was very influenced by my meditation teacher SN goenka again, not necessarily buy any books. He wrote of just by the guidance. I mean, I remember sitting in my first week passed and of course and having this really this guy,
Really gets it. He really understands. What's what's happening. This was something quite surprising for me to see that some of my good friends have some insight into What's Happening Here Yeah. I can give a list of books that influenced me. I'm not sure if this is kind of their answers the question, but
we are free to meander. This is we don't have time
constraints.
One of the problems I've realized it's that it's extremely difficult to share.
The really deep insights you have about life.
That very often they are in a nonverbal level.
And in any case my impression is that most of the inner world of most humans is never shared. They never talk about it because they don't even have the words and don't have the audience. I mean most of what happens to you deep down during the day your spouse probably doesn't know your parents don't know your children don't know your friends don't know even you don't know if you don't really make the effort.
One of them qualities of of great art not just writing but different kinds of out that it really gives words that you know, you feel something for many maybe for years and you have no idea how to communicate it and then you read a poem or you see a TV show and yes, this is exactly what I'm feeling and I never knew how to communicate it.
So that's why it was a very difficult to kind of know you meet somebody and you don't really know what's going on inside them and to what extent they understand or don't understand their life or life in general. So it's very very hard to say,
but you also underscore something that I've thought about a lot recently, which is it's quite unfair to expect other people to understand you fully when you don't understand your
fully on your own quite an quite an unfair expectation of people sometimes
this is a basic expectations because
Because we have trouble understanding ourselves. We have this hope that somebody will lend us a hand and we have the experience at least most of us. If we came from loving families that when your kids the work people they're like our parents who did exactly that for us. Even on the most Banner level that you know a child is crying.
And the mother would say well you're just tired of just go to sleep and you figure out what you should know that your tire. But no, I mean it's amazing that sometimes people have tired or hungry or whatever in the end. They don't know it and then somebody who really understands and comes a symbol just go to sleep and in my writing I engage a lot with the issue of the future of AI in surveillance, and I think one of the key fantasies
With AI and surveillance is that the algorithms will do that for us
that this for this ties into one of the books that has had a big impact on you. If I remember correctly, right? I mean the Aldous Huxley and yeah Brave New
World. Yeah Brave the world III. It really had a really really deep impact on me because I think he really got it and that he
The interesting thing about Brave New World. It's kind of you know, it's on the surface is a dystopia. But when you kind of ask yourself, why what's wrong with Brave New World? It's very difficult to say it to find out I mean everybody seems to be satisfied. Everybody seems to be happy. There is a system in place that understands you very very deeply and make sure that you'll never be in great pain.
Another note the Sutter any great misery and it's it's a very in this Encino 1984 like and it's brother book 1984.
It's a very simple book in this sense that 1984 describes a terrible terrible. Dystopia. The only question is how do we avoid getting there?
But Brave New World you read it and at least for me I kind of think. Okay. So what's what's really wrong with it, and it's not easy to answer this question.
Yeah, the the should have uncanny feeling that something is not quite right that you can't put words to it's very similar to the feeling of something that is quite right that you can't put words to that then gets reflected and good art. You can go both ways. Yeah. I know number of the things that I've read in preparation for this from various profiles. There's one that said you prefer television two novels. There was another that gave the example, but I've been the same profile of you swimming his part.
Routine in the summer and listening to non-fiction books. Yes via VIA headsets, but there I guess they're resonant they deal with the vibration of the yeah. I mean the the job of
this is really nice Gadget. I came across and I tried to listen through like usual earplugs and water would sip in somehow all the time and would ruin it. And then finally I came across this gadget that you can just put it on your forehead and some in some mysterious way it works better.
And you actually hear better than when you put it in your ears. So yeah, I would swing back and forth back and forth listening to other know I listen say to Shana Zoo both surveillance capitalism while swimming back and forth in my pool
with the with the dolphin headset for the resonance. That's amazing. So I'll know it's a forehead headset. Perhaps do you recall what type it is by any chance? I know this is getting into the minutiae if
it's very important.
I just think
it's Justin's and in the next room so I get it will take me a second if you want.
Oh, yeah, let's yeah sure. Let's let's grab it. Why not? I still mean it. I don't want to say this is the most important thing in the world, but I'm curious. I'll take it to any take a
minute.
So it's a this is how it looks by the
way. Oh, wow. All right, so it's connected to the ye doors dorsal snorkel that goes across the forehead so you don't have to rotate. Yes, and I don't have to pull to like
my put my head back and forth all the time from the water. It's by finish. This duel finis fi and
is all right. We'll find it and put it in the show notes. Thank you for grabbing that in those examples in these profiles.
It seems like you are not consuming much written fiction. But Brave New World is fiction. Yeah fast becoming reality and maybe also like you said philosophy disguised as science fiction. Are there other fiction books that you have found to have an impact on you or your thinking or do you do consume much in terms of
quite figler? Yeah. It's quite similar to Brave New World think
Has got to the Galaxy. I also worry about I also listed as a philosophy book, you know, I think that any tetany impact on not just on my thinking but on my own on how I write or work that I'm not saying it is a kind of I don't know metaphor something that these are feel. They are philosophy books. They just are written in a different way. And this is one of the ideas that gave me the inspiration.
And to kind of turn sapiens into a graphic novel which we might discuss later on. If we have the time that you can play with the form. I think that Aldous Huxley when he came to write Brave New World he had these philosophical issues. He wanted with disgust and maybe I'm inventing money. Maybe it wasn't like this at all. But my impression is that he thought well, it will actually be easier and more interesting and engaging instead of you know, having this
formal logical arguments and instead of having these thought experiments which philosophers love so much why not have any entire book, which is one long thought experiment and see where it takes me and I think that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is basically the something similar that it explores a lot of deep philosophical issues, but in a much more fun way than your typical philosophy
book,
I could not agree more. I just literally a few weeks ago. Listen to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy narrated by Stephen Fry who's incredible narrator for the first time and you're right that it has so many what otherwise could be very sterile thought experiments and Concepts. Yeah embedded into this entertaining narrative and I remember one line they're talking about the I want to say, he's the president of the Galaxy or something. Yeah.
That's right people
products and they talk about how successfully was and how people have the mistaken notion that the job of the president is to wield power, but that's not the job of the president to distract from those who are wielding power and just these short nuggets contain so much to chew on and it's really an effective way of providing people with footholds in a way. Yeah, ho ho
It's the same ways TV. Like I think that Black Mirror at least some of the episodes in Black Mirror are some of the best discussions that I've seen of certain dangerous tendencies in current technology. I mean some episodes of just fun. I don't know like some Jeanine Pirro. I think it's an extremely good episode but it describes the reality which is so far away from us that it's not really relevant to any of the discussions here, but you look at if you started nose.
Is dive about the end, you know, maybe the Chinese got the idea for their social quality system from nosedive, but it's such a powerful and important episode of you. Look at how is it called the one with the cartoon figure that became president that almost became an MP the the bluebird something and you know, this is before Trump. This was before this whole wave and they
This was so prophetic was really amazing. I mean I when I watched it for the first time in 2013, I thought what are they talking about? And then I watched it later like five years later that these guys have just Geniuses. I mean, how did they see it
coming? Yeah, it's very it's real sweet spot of near term or not too distant future kind of technological extrapolation. I love Black Mirror. I and I always encourage people to watch at least three episodes because I'd say maybe
Be 1 out of 3 or 1 out of 4 just completely Miss for me. They don't get it sort of strike a chord. So you have to your sample size has to be a few episodes and you'll usually strike on something a do you have any other we are going to talk about sapiens or graphic history? Because I've lot of questions about it before we get there. I've to actually I'll stick with one question before we get there. And that is any other television series could be documentaries also or movies that you think are.
Intelligent examples of philosophy or thought experiments in Disguise
again going back to The Usual Suspects of Science Fiction. I thought that are was a very intelligent and you know, Loki exploration of some of the potential of AI I don't like these movies when the robots Rebellion kill everybody. I mean, this is such it's implants the wrong fear.
Ears and it encourages the wrong discussions. I don't think that in the next 20 or 30 years the robots are going to rebuild and kill everybody but there are other dangers much more salmon or less subtle whether it's the job market whether it's surveillance and Equitable what people do to politics or whether it's you know changes in in in in human relationships, and I thought that her was a very in this way a very intelligent movie that avoided the
Usual traps and it goes back exactly to what we were discussing earlier that we have a deep yearning that somebody out there in the world would really understand us like we go about life and we hope that our parents will understand us at our teachers our lovers our kids somebody please understand me and for many people it never happens and to some extent somebody understands them but there are many hidden Corners within themselves that they are unable to communicate.
It and maybe they don't understand them fully and there is nobody out there that reaches out and kind of engages those Corners in them. And there is now a technology On The Rise which could fulfill that dream and this is extremely attractive and extremely frightening at the same time and hair is spot-on. I mean what happens when there is an algorithm that constantly observes you not just what you do, but also what's happening inside your body.
And really understands your personality your moods your likes your dislikes, you know, you come back home from work and you're grumpy and your husband doesn't notice it but the computer does notice it I mean and what kind of world is it? What kind of relationships will there be when computers and objects understands you better than the people in your life.
And that's a fascinating and frightening our question and I think a very realistic question. We have very very unlike the robots rebelling in a killing everybody the moment that your smart refrigerator knows you better than your husband is not very far in the future. And you know, this is we should be talking more about that and I would like to see more movies motive is shows most
Fiction novels that explore these kinds of
questions. Yeah, if you haven't read any of Ted Chang's Works, ehi Ang has a his a compilation of short stories called exhalation. Okay, and he has another collection of short stories. I think you would absolutely love them. One of his short stories was turned into believe it was a rival about the protagonist. Who is this female link?
Linguist who decodes the the graphic language of these aliens who arrived on Earth and it's about temporal perception. It's these are really really really incredible story. So Ted Shang CH i&g and exhalation. I think I think you'd enjoy it. Let's talk about sapiens graphic history. Well before we get to that I just want to say that the word understand and the concept of understanding is also fraught with difficulties and I think that that is part of what a I will also demonstrate that knowing
A few people who work on AI what does it mean for let's just say a computer or a refrigerator to pass the Turing test so effectively that you feel understood. Hmm.
Well, it's not I don't believe they'll be conscious. I don't believe that we are near the point when they will have Consciousness and if by understand you mean the kind of inner feeling that we have when we understand that that's not the case. I think we are not near there but understands in the sense that able
to predict our behavior and response right unconsciously in a way which will be more appropriate than the people around us. That's what what what I mean by it. Yes. It's a weaker. Definitely. I'm not thinking about the conscious experience of understanding. It's about just predicting could be manipulating but most importantly just are kind of reacting to us.
in a way that will find appropriate more appropriate than the way that will get so used to having these computers and robots that are very attuned to how we feel that we might become even more irritated with the humans who don't feel who don't react who don't understand how we feel and not reacting in the right way and then part of the problem is that so many people like everybody have often a self-centered so I don't get what my
I was making these feeling because I'm too focused on my own my own feelings. One of the reasons that computers could be better than humans in this is that they don't have feelings. The refrigerator doesn't have any expectations in life from you. You had no dreams. No Phantom nothing. So the refrigerated can be a hundred percent focused on what you feel. It has no feelings of its own so it can't be insulted can't be angry nothing.
Sounds like you have an episode of Black Mirror to write and to that point on some level. We're talking about philosophy disguised as Fiction more thought exercise is embedded in to say black mirror in a way that are not just fascinating but also prophetic in some respects sapiens a graphic history. I want to talk about this because I actually have a long history with graphic novels and comic
I want to be a penciler a comic book penciler for about 12 years and you just used to be an illustrator a long time ago. And then I lived in Japan in high school went to a Japanese school. And in Japan unlike in the u.s. There is a long Rich history of comic books and graphic novels for adults and also comic books and graphic novels for teaching difficult Concepts telling history and these are extended expansive collections of graphic novels and
I've seen how effective it is because I read some of these when I was in Japan on the history of Judo and other things and I would not have consumed 500 pages of pure text certainly not in Japanese and I think it's an incredibly powerful format how and why did you decide to take sapiens and create this piece of art but also an effective vehicle for perhaps teaching in a different way.
Actually, the initiative didn't come from me. It came from David and Danielle the two artists who collaborated with me on this project. They came up with the idea. They brought some initial suggestions and I really liked it. It connected to something that I did want to do for a long time, which is to reach new audiences. I see my name job today as bringing Science and History to more people people who wouldn't necessarily
He'd a traditional science book. Even if it's Popular Science. They still won't read it like 500 pages of text with footnotes. It's that they won't touch it, but they might connect to a graphic novel and yes, it is for adults and teenagers. I mean many people in the west have the idea that Comics are for kids, but no, it's just a different medium. It's a different language. It enables you to do. I mean some things you can't do you need to you know, cut down the tank.
Next but there are many things you can do much better in a graphic novel certainly to show things like you know, what the much of the graphic novel is about the life of hunter-gatherers. So you can just show it in images instead of long descriptions an image is worth a thousand words in many cases. It also enabled us to inform it was under the most fun project I've ever worked on because it was okay. Let's take all the academic conventions of how you write history.
Throw them aside. Let's experiment. So it's kind of a series of experiments in how to tell history. So, you know one part about the evolution of different human species the same penis neanderthals and so forth It's told like a reality TV show that there are different competition between different human species. Then you have an entire chapter about the how humans caused the extinction of many of the
The large animals of the world as they spread from Africa over the world and this is told as a detective movie. We created this fictional detective detective Lopez like Sherlock Holmes or other crystally kind of person and she goes around the world and investigates the worst serial killers in history who killed all these big animals and the invention of the first religions is sold according to the conventions of superhero action movies. So we created this superhero
Herring doctor fiction who embodies the human ability to invent fictional stories and mythologies and it was really fun working with David and Danielle on that and just saying well why not we can try that we can do that. It's allowed it also forced me and actually all of us to answer many questions, which we can just ignore in the text when you draw you have to draw specific.
Things when you write you can write enough structions when you draw the you can't draw obstructions. So if for instance you talk about the connection between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, and we now know that some sapiens and Neanderthals had sexual relations and even had children because most of us today still carry some Neanderthal genes in our DNA now in a book you can just write that sapiens had sex with neanderthals end of story but in a graphic novel
If you want to draw it, you have to make some decisions. I mean, who is the men and who is the woman? Is it a Neanderthal man with the sapiens woman or the other way around and what about skin color? What about hair color hair style all these questions. You can't draw a general human. It must have some skin color must have some hair color. So we have to go back to the literature the scientific literature and investigate in sometimes you find answers. Sometimes you don't
And then you have to take into account all the ideological and political issues of race and gender and so it's a huge huge thing to engage with all these and I found that it's not like okay. Let's just take sapiens and add some illustrations. It's a completely fresh
project. How did you problem solve when there was a conflict or some tension between the literature and what might dictate a drawing and the sort of political sensitivities that
Today, how did you how did you think about that or think through those types of decisions? We had a lot
of discussions about these things and you know, it was a balancing act. You can't ignore science just for the sake of being politically correct on the other hand. You have to be aware of the political implications of the choices you make I mean, you can't hide behind scientific objectivity because there is no such thing.
As a completely objective narrative. Just choosing. What is the opening scene? And what is the ending scene? It doesn't come from reality. It comes from your political ideological and religious beliefs in all reality that the real reality. It has no beginning and end no historical event had a beginning and an end and no historical event had a focus. You know it even easier to think about it in terms of movies.
You watch a movie. Let's say about the second world war. So the camera is somewhere and something is in the focus of the of the shot. Something is on the side and many things are don't you don't see them at all. Now in reality. There is no camera. There is no camera hanging above plant Earth the camera of History which point in a particular direction and this is the center of events and this is the the sidelines, you know, you can tell the second world war with
Churchill is the main hero Hitler and Stalin appearing on some a few few scenes and millions of Chinese the died in the war never appearing at all. And you can do an entire World War II movie just about a single Chinese village now, both are true. And what do you choose is not forced On You by the reality it reflects very often political and ideological and also artistic choices.
Now when you go back to the Stone Age, it's even more complicated because there are so many things. We just don't know. I mean that the basic things we don't know what family structure was like you have all these discussions about what is the natural human family and lots of people believe. Well, you know, it's obvious. It's a man a woman two and a half kids and a dog. This is a traditional family. This was always the case, but we know that even in recent history, this was not always the case. It's not the case.
today
In many countries close to 50% of children. Don't grow up in such a family today. You go back to the Middle Ages. It's not the structure of everybody you go to biology to other Apes chimpanzees don't live like that. Gorillas don't live like that orangutans don't live like that like that. So how did you means live 50,000 years ago and the answer is we don't know we have evidence from the Stone Age we have tools but the tools don't tell you that what was the family structure?
You have cave paintings, but the in one of the interesting things about cave painting we've found found thousands and thousands of cave paintings from the Stone Age. There is not a single image of a family there are lots of Mammoth. There are lots of horses. There are lots of Ibex. There are some humans also mostly stick figures but there isn't a single image from the Stone Age that you can say look that's how they depicted that family. And what does it mean? Why do
People draw all these elephants and never bother to draw their own family. I don't know what it means but it's it's interesting and it gives us as the you know, a lot of artistic Freedom about how to deal with these issues. So like I don't know we have this one scene about neanderthals and you know, neanderthals had a big revolution in the last 10 years, of course, they are dead, but I'll
Ending of them has completely changed in the last 10 years because of so many new evidence. We have both from genetics but also from artifacts and archaeological records and the war has 20 years ago. Maybe they were still this Arch typical cave people primitive and brutal and things like that. Now they have a very positive image.
We have not only because we have the genes in our DNA but also because we have evidence that they took care of wounded people of elderly people of disabled people. They had a much more sophisticated technology and maybe even art and culture than we assumed so we have we depicted in the graphic novel this change in image in this scene that you see these two Neanderthal guys sitting in the office of
Our consultant and the pr consultant has on the wall this old-fashioned image of a neanderthal a brutal Neanderthal with a big stick and dragging a female by the hair and there was a big X over this image and the pr consultant says well, you know, this was a good brand for the 19th century. But this is the 21st century. You need to lighten up your brand and the to Neanderthal say yes. Well, you know, actually we too are gay so obviously we don't have
Any evidence that they were they were gay neanderthals, I mean our scientific understanding of sex and gender today indicates that it's very likely that the Were Gay neanderthals. But if you ask for The Smoking Gun Show me a grave from 50,000 two years ago with two men together only then I believe then of course we don't have this but actually we hardly have we don't have a lot of direct evidence for sex in the Stone Age. We have a lot of indirect evidence.
It's like from jeans so we know that sapiens and Neanderthals had sex but maybe also the world cases of a sapiens men having sex with a Neanderthal man could be no evidence in the genes, of course, but could it have happened maybe and we have this artistic license that we can show that it it makes
sense. Also. I mean this is maybe going down a rabbit hole, but if you look at the behavior of chimpanzees and others
I mean there's there's some evidence to suggest that that type of interaction certainly exists. Yeah. I mean if you're looking at the circuit current day precursors in a sense, what is your hope for these graphic novels and they're coming out in four volumes. What do you anticipate or hope the spacing to be of those
those vowel a hopeful one every year the main challenge is the drawing. I mean, this is Daniel's job and I draw like a five-year-old kid. I mean they can't depend on me for anything when it comes to the
Ink and it takes a lot of time to draw, you know, these hundreds of images and also it goes back and forth because he Daniel draws an image or a couple of images and send them and then I don't know the archeological evidence indicates that actually the spear points were not like you depicted and then when the the political issues that okay, we need a more balanced gender relations in this image and and you did goes back to Daniel and he needs to do to draw it again and it takes a long time.
So I guess it will be one volume each year and the big hope that it will reach new audiences that may not read, you know, a 400-page text about the history of humankind, but would be interested and would find it fun and engaging when it's sold in a graphic
novel. I've seen the graphic novel and it's really well done. I have to say, you know, I've I've read I have probably
5,000 to 10,000 comic books that I've saved and poly bags over the years and I've collected everything from Sandman and the u.s. To dozens of different graphic novels in Japan. It's very well done. So thank you. I mean you you and your team deserve a lot of credit for that. I'd love to ask a question about your mission statement. Now, I don't know if you would call it a mission statement. Maybe it is so this is from The New Yorker.
Profile from this year and it describes how your mission statement reads as follows. And this is on a bulletin board in your office. Keep your eyes on the ball focus on the main Global problems facing Humanity learn to distinguish reality from illusion care about suffering and I guess there was previously Embrace ambiguity, but that got scratched out. Yes. So could you explain the origins of this mission statement, please?
It's a couple of mission statements. Do you know as we expand our team it becomes more difficult to get everybody on the same page to make sure that everybody you know, each person has a different personal and professional background. And so when it was just me or just my husband and me there was no need to write down these official mission statements, but when you have 15 employees, then it's becomes important and we had a long discussion.
Russian and like a back-and-forth also with all the employees and we came up with this as several kind of General guidelines to keep in mind and maybe the most important thing is that we see our task as helping to focus the global conversation on the most important issues.
Because one of the big problems of the 21st centuries people are flooded by enormous amounts of information. It's not like in the past when the information was scarce and the problem was how to get it now. It's the opposite and you just don't know what to pay attention to and it also goes back to my practice of meditation of how to stay focused and it's kind of linked the personal practice with the global project of
We don't see ourselves as providing Solutions.
But just kind helping to steer the global conversation in the most important
directions. You have such a historical context for determining the relative weight to assign to different events or phenomena in the world is indicated were described in the example of terrorist attacks and they're sort of cultural or I shouldn't say cultural but historic significance.
Yes, they're horrible. Yes, the theater and graphic nature of it is very compelling to the human psyche which would also be true of say a shark attack, right? If a 12 year old boy were attacked by a shark on the east coast of the United States, it would be in every newspaper and there would be a huge response probably dramatic overharvesting of sharks. So on and so forth, but in the sweep of human history its importance is is close to zero negligible. What
Are some of the more important the main Global problems facing Humanity from your
perspective. Well as we speak, I think the three big ones nuclear war which you know people tend to connect with the Cold War. Yeah, there was something there about nuclear weapons, but they are still here and I don't think we'll see a nuclear war in the next few months. But if tensions in the world continue to grow then it will become again a major issue and it is an existential issue other things can't be
Royals but nuclear world can so we have to keep it in mind all the time. The second big thing is ecological collapse. It's not just climate change that gets most of the headlines lately. It's many other things also like loss of biodiversity and destruction of habitats and so forth, but generally speaking. Yes, we are seeing we are in a war is nuclear war, you know, it's just a future possibility. Maybe it will happen. Maybe it won't happen ecological collapse is as already began. It's all around us and it's threatened.
Again, it's an existential danger it threatens the foundations of our civilization. I guess that some people will survive it. But if it if things really go bad with the economic and political implications of it, it could cost the lives of billions of people and the third big one and I think most complicated is technological disruption the consequences of disruptive Technologies, especially artificial intelligence and bioengineering. It's the most complicated.
The challenge because you know with nuclear war and climate change and ecological collapse You can disagree whether it's true or not. But everybody agrees what needs to be done about it to stop it. Nobody thinks that having a nuclear war is a good idea. Nobody thinks that climate change is a good idea. Maybe some people deny it but they don't say it's good now with technological disruption. It's much much more complicated because it has a lot of positive potential a lot of people.
Actively wish to see greater and faster technological disruptions and there is no agreement whatsoever about what we should do with Technologies like AI or like bioengineering the dreams of some people are the nightmares of other people. So it's very complicated again life like ecological collapse. It's not a future scenario. It's already happening all around us and I think the pace is such that
It may to some people it sounds like crazy but I strongly believe that given the Technologies we are now developing within a century or two at most our species will disappear the one I don't think that in the end of the 21st and 22nd century. The Earth will still be dominated by Homo sapiens. I think given the immense power was of Technologies. We are developing.
There are two scenarios only one scenario, which is the that the technology will destroy Humanity.
And I think it's less likely but still possible. The more likely scenario is that it will change Humanity in a profound way that we will use Ai and bioengineering to change Homo sapiens and to create new kinds of beings that will be much more different from us than we are different from neanderthals or from chimpanzees.
To give just one example. I think it is possible that we will create the first in organic life-forms after four billion years of organic evolution. So again, it's not a destruction of a species. It's the changing of species into something else. But what kind of thing it will be. We have to be extremely careful about that. It won't necessarily be a better version of us could be much much
worse.
Could you give a bit more detail around the new in organic life-form and in your mind's eye if we change for the worse in some tech enabled way deliberately or by accident what might that look like
to start with the second question of what it could look like, you know, you could use whatever technology to increase the efficiency of people.
All the intelligence of people at the price of things like artistic sensitivity or like spiritual depth. I mean if you ask Army's if you ask all operations, if you ask governments, what do you need from your employees from your soldiers? They was all we want people to be more efficient. We want people to reach to be more logical. We want people to be more disciplined and if you have the technology the new engineer such people, even if it comes and it always comes at the I mean usually when you improve something
Tends to come at the price of something else and things like I don't know spiritual depth what kind of army needs its soldiers to have spiritual depth. So if you live it to the corporations and armies, it's very likely that once you have a technology to change humans it will I would say downgrade them and not upgrade them. It will make them more efficient soldiers or employees or whatever but it will make them kind of poor beings lesser beings. So that's about
about just one scenario of what does it mean to downgrade people now with regard to in organic life-forms, you know for four billion years everything on the planet was or life force organic, whether it's a bacteria or a mammoth or a tree or a human. It's organic it obeys. The laws of organic chemistry now is the rise of AI we might have a chance again. I'm going to be agnostic about it. I'm not sure but it is possible that in a
Of decades we will be able to create either completely inorganic beings.
Or at least part organic part inorganic cyborgs, and this will be if it happens. It will be the biggest revolution in the history of life since the beginning of Life much much bigger than the creation of Mammoth or the creation of mammals or humans because it's a completely different game. Once you are no longer subject to organic chemistry. We can't even begin to imagine what it means because our imagination is the product of organic chemistry.
So if you have a kind of intelligence, which is not or based on organic chemistry, you know who I am. It can be
anything if you look over the next so you're talking about the I guess the the 22nd century and the prevalence dominance or existence of homo sapiens. If we look over the next 50 years just to choose an arbitrary time frame of nuclear war ecological collapse or these unforeseen.
Seen accidents or mistakes of high technology which scares you the most or which do you worry about the
most I worry most about the third because of what I said earlier that it's the most complicated that it's not enough to be kind of on a good and wise to deal with the first two it will be very hard to deal with the first two as it is but the third one is really complicated because there is none.
Tremont on the goal with the first two at least there is an agreement on the goal. And and then that makes it very very complicated. Also, you know, the first two nobody is actively working to make it happen sooner and even the people who deny climate change they are not in favor of climate change but each side it's not really doesn't happen. But with AI and bioengineering there are some of the most powerful people and organizations and governments and corporations.
Nations in the world. They are extremely busy making it happen faster. And it's also we don't have a framework even to think about it properly. So I is a thinker not a politician. I think this is where I can contribute the most is in trying to entangle this kind of completely new
threat just a few more questions and I'll I'll let you get going because I know we're separated by quite a few times zones when you are thinking about
Threats perhaps harkening back to your times reading Aldous huxley's work and here we're talking about Brave New World and not Island right very different descriptions. Although some parallels when you feel the potential for these various types of collapse or disaster. What keeps you going? Where do you find the light?
It's a good question, you know, if
You're able to deal with your own mortality as every person has to on some level. Then you should be able to deal with the potential mortality of the entire species. I mean, it's still part of biology. Yes individuals come and go Nations come and go also entire species come and go 99% of the species that evolved on planet Earth are gone for one reason or another Homo sapiens also is not internal and
Even the best scenario. I don't think Homo sapiens will be around in two or three hundred years the best scenario is that homo sapiens will disappear but in a peaceful and gradual way and be replaced by something better. I don't think there is any chance whatsoever that people are like us will just continue to have lives like us in 200 years that there will be in 200 years the professor of History sitting and having a
Podcast talk with somebody and it's not going to happen. I mean the the the the changes are going to be too big. So maybe it goes back again to the practice of meditation and the realization that change is the only certainty in
life. So you might as well tune into the changes. Yeah, so that you're at least aware that you're responding to your reactions to things outside and not the outside itself. Well, you've all this has been a lot of
For me, I think he's nice to connect with you. And of course, I will link to everything in the show notes for people the volume. One of you are series sapiens a graphic history is out now volume 1 can be found and I'll include links to that in the show notes for everyone at MDOT blog / podcast. Your website is YN Harari Facebook is prof. David Duval dot know I dot Harare Twitter Harare.
Score, you've all Instagram. You've all underscore. No underscore hurry. They'll provide all those two people don't have to remember them. Is there anything else that you would like to say to my audience asked of the audience suggest to the audience before we wrap up?
No, just thank you for your time. I know that the time and attention of the most valuable resources today for most people. So I hope you benefited from investing them in listening to
us likewise, and I can certainly speak for myself and saying that I enjoyed
Quite a lot and definitely check out Ted Chiang exhalation. I think you'll love it. I'll have a bunch of notes for things that I will be checking out and to everyone listening till next time. Thank you for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off number one. This is five. Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? And would you enjoy getting a short email from me? Every Friday that provides a little more solo.
Of fun before the weekend and five bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week that could include favorite new albums that have discovered it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I have read and that I've shared with my close friends for instance and it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite.
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