Monday, Nov 30, 2020 • 45min
EP 3: Why do we believe lies?
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Honesty is a core value in most cultures. But humanity has always been obsessed with untruths, from little white lies to vast conspiracy theories. Bill and Rashida are joined by Sapiens author and historian Yuval Noah Harari to talk about why we’re so willing to believe falsehoods and what these lies tell us about ourselves—both as individuals and as a society.
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Speakers
(3)
Yuval Harari
Rashida Jones
Bill Gates
Transcript
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Rashida Jones
00:00
Hi, I'm Rashida Jones.
Share
Bill Gates
00:02
Hi, I'm
Bill Gates
.Share
Rashida Jones
00:04
And we're here to ask the big questions.
Share
00:16
What is the strangest lie you've ever heard about yourself?
Share
Bill Gates
00:20
Well, this thing that I was involved in creating the
coronavirus
, I don't think it gets much stranger than that.Share
Rashida Jones
00:28
Why do you think people think that about you?
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Bill Gates
00:31
Well, if you want a villain, it helps if they have more money than a human should have, and they think of themselves as overly clever.
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Rashida Jones
00:39
You think of yourself as overly clever?
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Bill Gates
00:40
Absolutely. Many people have a fear that the vaccine will cause a lot of harm, or maybe that the goal of the vaccine is somehow tracking people with a microchip with some connection to
5G
. So those conspiracies, you know, that turned the effort of the Foundation
to save lives almost on its head, are the craziest things I've ever heard about myself.Share
Rashida Jones
01:11
Yes, so why would people tell those lies? What does the incentive to lie specifically about that?
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Bill Gates
01:18
Well, vaccines are given two kids when they're very young And so that's not too surprising because you're in a very vulnerable period. And it's not intuitive this idea of sticking metal needles into kids arms, which you know, they cry. The idea that that literally has eradicated smallpox and saved millions of lives.
Share
01:38
I mean, it's done more to improve human health than anything else. And it's not that they're all perfect, they have to be made very carefully, they have to be trialed. But the net benefit of vaccines is mind-blowing.
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Rashida Jones
01:54
So I know that generally you're probably a true seeker. But is there one lie that you believe?
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Bill Gates
02:03
Well, I certainly believe that innovation can solve problems and, you know, I've been spoiled in that, you know, the early work I did in software, worked out, the health stuff that our
Foundation
has done has worked out.Share
02:17
And so even though I know it's not guaranteed when a problem comes along that there's some innovation solution, I tell myself there is, we just have to work hard enough, find the right brilliant people, give them resources and we can solve any problem. Which is a grand oversimplification.
Share
02:35
You know, other people come and tell me, well, even if you invent this vaccine, it's hard to get it out there and all the complexity. But that grand oversimplification, let's just invent something to solve it, that's kind of my creed.
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Rashida Jones
02:49
I do feel like that would be a common thread for people who are successful, is they have to delude themselves on some level that something is possible to then make it possible.
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Bill Gates
02:58
And take risks. I mean, like working on an anti-HIV vaccine, the whole field is for the last decade, it's all been dead ends, and yet we still get up and say, hey, let's put billions of dollars into tha and yes, we will succeed. You know, so stubbornness can be a virtue, but it's partly by not acknowledging the fact that you might completely never, never get anywhere. What's a lie that helps you?
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Rashida Jones
03:31
Well, it's similar to you, it's a way to keep myself optimistic, which is that people are good at heart and that the people in charge are capable and more capable than I am. And it's something I'm still working on, because I actually don't think that the latter is actually very helpful to me anymore.
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03:50
But I think believing that people are good at heart, even if it's not true, I think I have to keep believing that.
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Bill Gates
03:57
No, that's important.
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Rashida Jones
03:59
So it feels like the person we really want to be talking to about lies and conspiracy theories is
Yuval Noah Harari
.Share
Bill Gates
04:06
Absolutely.
Yuval
is such an independent thinker, I read all of his books.Share
Rashida Jones
04:11
What's the big takeaway for you when you read
Yuval's
work?Share
Bill Gates
04:15
Well,
Sapiens
helps us understand what have we been struggling with, you know, disease, hunger, war. It makes us realize even though we're not completely done with those things, I mean, our Foundation
is all about that disease piece, but boy, we have made so much progress, and we can actually see that those will not be our daily concern.Share
04:40
So this deep philosophical question of what do we do with all this progress we've made? What becomes meaningful and important when it's not those basic needs? I think he was profound at framing the question that way.
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Rashida Jones
04:55
Yeah, totally. And I love this idea that he pinpoints that humans are the only species on earth that believe in things that they can't see. Whether it's government or religion or nationalism or philosophy or corporation, that none of these things are actually true, they're just concepts and that these structures give us meaning.
Share
05:16
And that meaning helps us to create community and infrastructure and innovation simply because we believe in these kind of like, big concepts, sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad. Most of the time it's bad, in my opinion, but I really want to talk to him about how to navigate this. So let's bring him in now.
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05:36
Yuval
, hi!Share
Yuval Harari
05:37
Thank you for inviting me. It's an honor to be here.
Share
Rashida Jones
05:40
Thank you so much for being here. I'm Rashida, this is my friend
Bill Gates.
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Bill Gates
05:45
Hi!
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Rashida Jones
05:46
You think we're just born liars, right?
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Yuval Harari
05:50
I wouldn't say that we are born liars. I don't think lies are so important. As I put the emphasis on fictions, on fictional stories, which are not true, but they are not lies, in the sense that people do believe them. They don't intentionally deceive each other.
Share
06:07
I think basically humans control the world because we cooperate better than any other animal, and we cooperate better because we are so good at inventing and believing fictional stories. All large scale human cooperation is based on inventing and believing fictional stories.
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Rashida Jones
06:29
So what is the difference between a lie and and fiction, or a myth?
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Yuval Harari
06:33
A lie is when you know perfectly well that something is not true and you say it in order to deceive others. A fiction is very often something that you really believe it, and you tell it to other people, not in order to receive them. And it can be something small or it can be something big, like a religion or an economic theory or a racial theory.
Share
06:57
I think that most nazis really believed the nazi racial theory, the same way that most people who believe in a particular religion. There are are sometimes crooks, but usually people really believe the stories that they spread around.
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Rashida Jones
07:14
Well in the current state of affairs, in this country, it's hard to know who is intentionally telling a lie or spreading a fiction or not.
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Bill Gates
07:24
If you don't believe that the deaths are taking place, so you think that wearing a mask is a political statement, you know, mask compliance is lower because of some of these misunderstandings and lies.
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Rashida Jones
07:38
Yeah. You all do you think that we have leadership who's intentionally lying for a specific result?
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Yuval Harari
07:46
You know, the best... even if you want to lie, you need to convince people. And the best way to convince people is to believe the lie yourself. It's not easy to know the difference between deceiving others and deceiving yourself. Very often, even if people start by lying, somewhere along the way they start to believe their own lies.
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Rashida Jones
08:12
You had said in March and April that it's essential that people believe in science, as this pandemic starts to grip the world. What do you think now that so much misinformation, so many lies have been spread specifically about
COVID-19?
What do you think now?Share
Yuval Harari
08:30
Well, it's still essential to believe science and, you know, things are not ideal, but we are in a better situation than in almost any previous time in history. I mean, I'm a medievalist by origin, and you compare the situation now to what was happening during the
Black Death
, it's a completely different game.Share
08:50
When the
Black Death
was ravaging Europe
and Asia
, it killed between a third and half of all humans in those continents, and nobody ever understood what was happening. Not the Chinese, not the Indians, not the Muslims, not the Italians, not the British. Nobody understood what was happening.Share
09:10
They had lots of theories. It's an astrological, theories about the planets, it's the jews poisoning the world, all kinds of things. Not a single person knew what was actually happening. So, you know, today at least you have a couple of people who know what's happening. That's an improvement.
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Bill Gates
09:28
One thing that's novel here is that we have digital social media and the speed with which kind of wild explanations spread both within countries and across the globe, that is quite novel. And I think eventually, you know, we will get enough people to take the vaccine, this thing will come to an end. But there will be some us versus them, so it'll fracture the progress towards thinking of all of humanity as being in the same situation and needing to work together.
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Rashida Jones
10:05
Do you think that lies are more dangerous now than they've ever been?
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Yuval Harari
10:10
No, I mean, they are more dangerous in one sense, that humanity is far more powerful. So lies that are believed by people with nuclear weapons are more dangerous than lies that are believed by people with stone spears. In that sense yes, it's more dangerous. But we need to take this in the grand historical perspective.
Share
10:33
People often confuse information with truth. Information isn't truth. A conspiracy theory is also information. Every new tool for spreading information is also a new tool for spreading lies and fictions and conspiracies. You know, when the book was invented, printing was invented, or at least came to
Europe
- it was invented much earlier in China
- but when printing came to Europe
, people think, ah! The Scientific Revolution
!Share
10:60
You had
Newton
and Copernicus
and people were reading about physics. No way. You know that one of the biggest bestsellers was "The Hammer of the Witches". It was a do-it-yourself manual to identifying and killing witches.Share
11:17
This sold far, far more than anything by
Copernicus
and Newton
or any of these guys.Share
Rashida Jones
11:23
That would do very well now.
Share
Yuval Harari
11:25
People think about witch hunting as medieval, and there was some witch hunting in the Middle Ages, but the really big time for witch hunting was the 16th and 17th century, exactly the same time as the
Scientific Revolution
, it's the early modern age, and it was largely fueled by print.Share
11:43
People were printing all these ridiculous conspiracies and it was spreading faster than ever. And people believed it, because you know, it's a book. If you see it printed, it must be the truth, right? Yeah.
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Rashida Jones
11:56
S do you think we want to know the truth or do you think we just want to be told something is the truth? That is actually lie?
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Yuval Harari
12:04
It depends on what kind of truth you're talking about. We need to separate two kinds of truth. There is truth about controlling things outside. Like, you want to hunt a giraffe. You want to know the truth about where giraffes go and what do they do. You want to build an atom bomb, you want to know the truth about nuclear physics.
Share
12:27
If you believe that some conspiracy theory, you want to be able to have an atom bomb, that's very simple. But the other kind of truth, or the other kind of stories, are the stories that enable you to control humans. They are the basis for society, things like religions and ideologies and so forth.
Share
12:47
And here, the truth, you don't need the truth for power. Power is based on making a lot of people believe the same story. The truth usually gets in the way. And it's not true that if the story is not real, if the story is not true, it will not be effective. No way. You can have enormous social power by making a lot of people believe in fiction.
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Rashida Jones
13:13
Right.
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Bill Gates
13:13
You know, there is something now, where people seek overly simple explanations of, okay, this bad person caused this thing, you know, kind of this us versus them. So the lies do have a certain pattern to them that make them kind of satisfying despite their lack of truth.
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Yuval Harari
13:35
Definitely. I mean, usually the hallmark of conspiracy theories and things like that, they are simple. The world is complicated. When you asked earlier about whether people want to know the truth. The two biggest problems with the truth is, first that the truth is often unpleasant and painful to know about. The truth about me, truth about somebody else, ok, but the truth about me is often painful to know.
Share
13:60
And it's complicated. Like, to just to understand what the virus is. Like, trying to explain that a virus it's not a living organism, it's basically just a bit of information. It's biological code. And how does it causes an epidemic? It's very complicated.
Share
14:17
Our minds, our brains, are lazy. And we have been adapted by evolution to understanding certain very complicated things, especially in terms of social relations. When it comes to social relations, we are geniuses. Because evolutionarily, when you lived in a small hunter-gatherer band, this is what you needed to know above everything else in order to survive.
Share
14:41
Social relations. Who hates whom, who is conspiring against me in the tribe. But you had absolutely no idea that there are viruses or things like that. So our brains just didn't evolve to understand it. Now, we don't like things that are difficult to understand. We prefer things that are easy to understand. Now, compare trying to really understand the epidermal logical chain of events leading from some bat to humans and then spread all over the world, it's so complicated.
Share
15:20
To the idea, to the conspiracy. That a couple of billionaires who are doing all this to control the world. This is something that is very similar to what we used to do as hunter-gatherers, find conspiracy in the tribe. And we like it, because it makes us feel smart. I understand whats happening in the world. Whereas if you talk about these viruses, you feel stupid. Oh, only these professors, they understand. I can't understand it.
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Rashida Jones
15:49
I see the search for simplicity, but I also think, as complicated as the truth is, so are the fictions and the mythologies that we've based modern humanity on.
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Yuval Harari
15:60
No, they're usually very simple. I mean, you look, for example, for instance, you think-
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Rashida Jones
16:04
Government? Corporations? Religion. It's complex. There's so many stories being told at the same time.
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Yuval Harari
16:13
Corporations are complicated, which is why most people don't really understand corporate structure.
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Rashida Jones
16:19
He's laughing too hard.
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Yuval Harari
16:21
If you compare corporate law to religious mythology, religious mythology is much simpler than corporate law. You do something bad, after you die, you get roasted by demons. That's very simple.
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Rashida Jones
16:35
So the idea is that corporations are intentionally complicated, but the way that they're seen by most of humanity, it's pretty simple.
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Bill Gates
16:44
Yeah, things like corporations come from that technocratic side, it comes fairly late in human history. You know, government, the idea of knowing the
U. S. Government
budget and the numbers, the percentage of people who are dealing with the complexity in a direct sense is very tiny. We always ask people what percentage of the government budget goes to foreign aid to help poor countries, and they'll say five or 10%.Share
17:16
But, you know, they wish it was only like 2 or 3%. Well, in fact, it's less than 1%. So we always say, hey, you can have your wish, but thank God we trust other people. Because the percentage of us who actually understand corporations or, you know, electricity, or viruses, or, you know, government tax structures is pretty darn small.
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Rashida Jones
17:39
Well let's get back to corporations for a second, because I do feel like there's a lot of lies and mythology that that corporations used to operate, whether it's internally or externally, whether it's branding or whatever. But I kind of want to conduct a little thought experiment here and just ask you first,
Bill
, what Microsoft
is. And then, Yuval
, I want to know what your answer is.Share
Bill Gates
18:04
Well,
Microsoft
is somewhat utilitarian. You know, we built really good products. We weren't just good at branding, to say Coca-Cola
or even Apple
. Steve Jobs
had a much more intuitive sense of branding, and I was not good. You know, Microsoft
would have been more successful if I'd had more skills in that area.Share
Rashida Jones
18:25
I think you're ok.
Share
Bill Gates
18:26
No, no, we're more... right, we were good at writing the code, that was our thing. We were just pure engineers. Pretty much, eventually we tried to develop the other skills, but the core was the innovation.
Share
18:39
Yuval
, what's your answer?Share
Yuval Harari
18:41
Well
Microsoft
, like all other corporations, it's a story. It's a story invented by these powerful shamans called lawyers. The only place it exists is in our shared imagination. It doesn't mean that corporations are not powerful, they are some of the most powerful things in the world, but they exist only in the stories we tell, in our imagination.Share
19:08
I mean, you can't touch it. I mean you can't touch
Microsoft
, you can't see it, you can't smell it, you can't taste it, and you know no other animal on earth knows that Microsoft
exists Now, you can take, say, a chimpanzee to visit Microsoft
headquarters, and the chimpanzee will be able to say okay, there is a building here, and there are people going in and out and there is a banana in the cafeteria. But the chimpanzee will never-Share
Rashida Jones
19:36
Maybe that's because
Bill
failed with branding.Share
Yuval Harari
19:40
No, the chimpanzee doesn't know that there is
Coca-Cola
either. I mean, it can drink Coca-Cola
, of course. But the corporation Coca-Cola
, this is something that only humans know exists, because it exists only in your imagination. It's a kind of collective dream.Share
Rashida Jones
19:58
What about beyond that, the thing that
Microsoft
sells? What about software? I mean, it's not something we can touch, but it's something that people use, right? And they use together. Does that make it any more real?Share
Yuval Harari
20:12
No, the software is much more real. It really does things in the world. So again, and of course the software is not the corporation, and the judge or the government can order the dissolution of
Microsoft
, that's it, doesn't exist anymore. But the software is still there.Share
Rashida Jones
20:30
Do you agree with that,
Bill
?Share
Bill Gates
20:32
Yeah, I mean, companies do have stories about, you know, what they believe in and their values that they use to motivate. So it's like a group trying to get each other excited, and they might think their competitors are, you know, less worthy than they are in some way. So there is a type of us versus them, at least in kind of a sports type "hey, let's go beat them" thing inside the company.
Share
21:00
And then this idea that some products try and say that, oh, if you use my product, you'll uh be more attractive or have more fun.
Share
Rashida Jones
21:10
Well, that's true about
Microsoft
, right?Share
Yuval Harari
21:11
Well, yeah, We we try to keep that secret, but it's true.
Share
Rashida Jones
21:16
Do you think,
Yuval
, is anything true? I mean, I know that sounds-Share
Yuval Harari
21:21
Yeah, certainly. There are rivers, there are mountains, there are humans. I often say that the most real thing in the world is suffering. Suffering is often caused by the stories in which we believe. We might believe some story and therefore go to war. The story is an imagination in our own minds. But the casualties of the war, the dead people, the injured, the people who lost their loved ones, all this is 100% real.
Share
Rashida Jones
21:51
And do you think that lying can also get us out of suffering? You don't believe all lies are bad, and I think I know that well enough from reading you. But do you believe that lies are the way to also relieve suffering? Mythology, lies, fiction.
Share
Yuval Harari
22:07
There is a big difference between lies and fiction. When the pope is instructing the faithful around the world in Christian dogma, I don't think that the pope is lying. I think he really believes what he says. I mean, you know, there's been a lot of Popes in the last 2000 years, maybe a couple of them were liars, but I think most Popes sincerely believed in what they were telling the faithful.
Share
22:35
Explaining it to themselves in all kinds of, you know, maybe they don't believe exactly what they are saying to the common person, having a far more complicated theological explanation for what they are saying, but I don't think they were lying. In the same way if you talk about, you know, corporations and money and all that, it's not a lie. I mean when, for example, you raise the interest rate. It's not a lie, but it is a fictional story. It exists only in our imagination, and many of these fictions, they can be extremely helpful.
Share
23:10
You know, even you think about something like playing football together. Obviously, unlike religion, in the case of football, most people know that the rules were invented by us. But everybody needs to believe the same set of rules for at least 90 minutes in order to enjoy the game, and there is nothing bad about that. I mean, the problem starts when we forget, it's just a story we invented, and we start being enslaved by our own creations.
Share
23:45
You know, people think about Frankenstein, that the idea of creating something and then being overtaken by it as a modern phenomenon, it's not. Technologically, maybe, it's new. But humans have been enslaved by their creations for tens of thousands of years by these stories that they create about gods, about nations, about money. They forget that we created them and then, you know, we, we are trapped inside the dreams of dead people.
Share
Rashida Jones
24:18
Do you feel like your world view has changed at all, or do you feel like you just kind of keep feeding your same framework? And when was the last time you had like a major a-ha moment where you read something or research something that changed your world view?
Share
Yuval Harari
24:33
Well, it changes quite a lot. When I wrote
Sapiens
, there is nothing in Sapiens
, I think, about computers, certainly not about Artificial Intelligence
. Maybe a sentence here or there. And after that, I started reading a lot, and now it's like 50% of what I do is just right and talk about AI
and machine learning
and what it's going to do.Share
24:56
Still, I have a very poor understanding of the technical side. I can't write a line of code even if my life depended on it. But I try to understand what are the historical, political, even philosophical implications of all these amazing inventions.
Share
Rashida Jones
25:15
Bill
, kind of the flipside question to you, which is, you do have a grasp on science, and you do write code. How much do you think storytelling is a part of your work?Share
Bill Gates
25:27
Well, a lot of the
Foundation's
work is trying to get the world to see what's going on in developing countries and to think, "okay, those deaths are a tragedy, even though they're not in my neighborhood". So trying to up the number of scientists trying to solve the diseases of poor countries, the amount of resources that go into those things.Share
25:53
And the numbers don't do the job. An audience responds more If I put up three pictures of children who died than if I say, you know, three million children died. And so, the storytelling of a hero in the field, you know, a mother who got her children to vaccination, or a health worker who got out to a village. Humans are so oriented to stories.
Share
26:21
So the
Foundation
, even though I love statistics, we have to couple the statistics with stories and you know, we're trying to get better at that, so that these millions of deaths actually do get a tiny fraction of the world's resources applied to them.Share
Yuval Harari
26:42
What do you think happens to humanity once computers, algorithms,
Artificial Intelligence
, however we call it, know us better than we know ourselves? And of course, you can say that it's not going to happen, there will always be something about humans that no matter how much information you have, a computer will never be able to understand that.Share
27:06
I find it hard to credit, but maybe that's your opinion, but I really want to go past that, and think what happens, deeply, not when it falls into the hands of some malevolent dictator. People usually go to the dystopian scenario that you have this totalitarian regime that follows everybody all the time, knows everything about you and then that's terrible.
Share
27:31
And let's leave it. Let's say it's not a totalitarian regime, it's not disturbing, the system is really in your favor. It s a benign system. But still, it knows you better than you know yourself, and it can basically take all the important decisions in life for you. What to study, what music to listen to, which books to read, who to marry. What happens to human life in such a situation?
Share
Bill Gates
27:58
I certainly think a software agent and will eventually know you better than you know yourself far better than other humans do. And the whole the purpose of, okay, why do I learn things? Why do I pick certain experiences? I mean, we have values.
Share
28:17
You could say that certain drugs give you pleasurable experiences and yet we find it abhorrent that somebody would, you know, sit there for a decade and just enjoy those drugs as opposed to get out and you know, make movies or write books. This software agent will be able to engage you in such a fulfilling way that it's a very sophisticated pleasure mechanism.
Share
28:50
And then you'll you'll have this deep philosophical question. The machines will be able to make enough food for us. What should we do? You know, when we organize socially, to what purpose? I find the answers to when you get past the thing that evolution picked us to do. Well, I don't I know the answer to that.
Share
Yuval Harari
29:16
How much time do you think we have until a computer can know me more or less better than I know myself?
Share
Bill Gates
29:26
We're still a few inventions away. This thing where we just scale up these machine learning systems, they don't represent knowledge in a deep enough way. The interesting test is when can a machine read a book and process that information? Say, take a test way better than humans? We're not there yet, we don't know how to represent knowledge.
Share
29:50
But in the next, certainly 50 years, the inventions that will let us do that, either by cheating and looking at how evolution did it in the brain, or just inventing it de novo, that will happen. Then you get machines that are more expert than we are, and can take over in terms of inventing things and managing things in a way that really makes you question the purpose of individual activity. I mean, if the machine is 10 times better, that's a little disheartening.
Share
Rashida Jones
30:27
Yeah, just a little disheartening.
Share
Yuval Harari
30:30
And the thing is that we want to be able to understand how they make the decisions, because they make a decision in a completely different way than humans. Humans, at least when we think consciously, we can't take into account more than 2, 3, 4 salient points. Like, if I'm a banker and you come to me and you asked me for a loan, then I will basically make my decision on the basis of 3, 4 salient features about you. Like your past credit history, or if I'm biased or racist, maybe on the basis of real race or gender. This is how humans do it.
Share
31:10
Now, the thing about
AI
, it can take into account thousands and thousands of tiny data points. Like, at what time in the day you came in to ask for a loan? And it has a 0.07% influence on the decision, but it's there. Sometimes people say "okay, even when computers will make the decisions will have a law like in Europe
with the GDPR
, that it has to be explained.Share
31:38
Like, humans have the right for an explanation. If you applied for it for a loan, the bank said no, you have the right to get an explanation why the bank said no. But this is completely irrelevant, because the bank will say "well, we have this algorithm and the algorithm went over masses of data. If you want, we can print you all the data, but we can't make sense of it, we just trust our algorithm."
Share
32:09
The thing is that if the algorithm made a decision in the same way as humans, we wouldn't need it. We would just have a human banker.
Share
Rashida Jones
32:18
I wonder if you,
Yuval
, and also you Bill
, are you concerned about the autonomy of A? Like what happens when they are so sophisticated it no longer feels like the relationship is us programming it?Share
Bill Gates
32:34
Eventually that will be an issue. I'm not sure there's much we can do about it right now. Eventually the universe gets into this heat death thing where complex objects can't exist.
Share
Rashida Jones
32:46
This heath death thing? Ok.
Share
Bill Gates
32:47
How much we should think way out in the future, you know, and can we change that, versus what is kind of real today about suffering and autonomy of humans versus other humans, you know. If I ever figure out how to avoid that problem, sure, but you can spend a lot of time on it without coming up with much, and it's not imminent. But it is possible that will be delegating a lot in our sense of who we are and why we do what we do will be deeply challenged by that.
Share
Yuval Harari
33:33
I agree, I mean, the kind of
Hollywood
science fiction scenario, of the robots are coming to kill us because they are evil and they want to take over the world, we don't need to worry about that. But the other kind of autonomy, it's already here. I mean, the idea that a bank won't give you a loan because an algorithm said no, this is not science fiction. This is reality. increasingly, in more and more parts of the world. And I think we should be concerned about it.Share
34:03
And coming back to where we started with all these conspiracy theories about
Covid
19. I think that, you know, we shouldn't dismiss conspiracy theories too easily. They often represent deep and sometimes justified fears that humans have. Now, the idea that COVID-19
was created in order to implant people with computer chips to control them, this is ridiculous in many different ways.Share
34:33
But it represents a real and realistic fear of surveillance technology, and it is, I think, true that one of the consequences of the pandemic, unintentional, for a minute I don't think anybody planned it, but I think that it is a reality that we see a huge rise in the implementation and acceptance of surveillance technology all over the world.
Share
35:02
And this understanding of these conspiracy theories, I actually think, you know "conspiracy theories is something somebody else has. I never have conspiracy theories, I have legitimate concerns". And I think this is a legitimate concern That
COVID
19, even though it wasn't intended or planned, will result in much more surveillance of people.Share
Bill Gates
35:30
You know, when people say to me, what else, you know, given that in 2015 I talked about this pandemic, they say, okay, what else is worrisome about the future, that we ought to be ready for? You know, of course, climate change is one answer. There will be future pandemics. I do think bioterrorism is something the world isn't as worried about as it should be.
Share
35:51
So if this idea of, okay, the conspiracy theory that a human created this thing lead to brilliant investments to prevent bioterrorism, then I'd actually say, wow! This conspiracy theory, even though it was nuts, led governments on our behalf to bring together lots of resources and experts, and it is an interesting trade off that if you want to stop bioterrorism, there's a little bit of surveillance where you're watching people in laboratories trying to make sure, you know.
Share
36:24
So can you have benign surveillance like that to stop something very, very bad? Just like we watch, you know, the people who get to mess around nuclear weapons. I hope we have them under very serious surveillance.
Share
Rashida Jones
36:39
Well, there's a difference between surveilling people who are working in a lab and people are just walking down the street.
Share
Bill Gates
36:45
You're right, and and I hope we can draw the line there.
Share
Rashida Jones
36:48
Yeah, we won't. We probably won't. I agree with you all in the sense that this will be an excuse to do a wide widespread surveillance operation. So we have that to look forward to. I want to get to something more hopeful because I don't want to end with global surveillance and dangerous
AI.
Share
37:11
Does anybody want to say anything about the... I asked
Bill
earlier what he thinks about the world in the next 20 years, and he feels pretty hopeful about life being better, and there being less suffering. Yuval
, do you think that? Do you feel like in the next 20 years we will continue to see the trend of life getting better for more people?Share
Yuval Harari
37:34
It completely depends on us. I don't think that you can really predict the future. I don't think that history is moving in a deterministic direction. If you think about something like
COVID-19
, you can react to it by generating hatred, blaming it on foreigners and minorities, by generating greed, thinking, okay, how I'm going to make a lot of money from it? and by generating ignorance, spreading and believing all these conspiracy theories.Share
38:04
And you can react in diametrically opposed way by generating compassion. How can I can help other people in this emergency? By generating generosity, of contributing what you have and generating wisdom. So let's believe science, and let's use the opportunity to understand, for example, what a virus is and how an epidemic start and how it spreads.
Share
38:29
And if people react in this way, then it will make it easier not only to deal with the present crisis, but with all future crisis as well. And from this perspective, I think our biggest enemy now is not the virus, it's our own inner demons of hatred and greed and ignorance.
Share
Bill Gates
38:50
But aren't you willing to say that somebody born 20 years from now or 40 years from now is likely to be better off than they are today?
Share
Yuval Harari
38:59
Not necessarily, because I don't think that history is moving in a straight line. We have the example from you know, if you lived in
Europe
in 1913, you thought that, ok, then things are going to be continue like in the previous 40 years, and obviously that they didn't.Share
39:18
I think that there is a possibility that people would look back, certainly in the West, people will look back at the period from say 1990 to 2015 as a kind of golden age, and it's downhill from there. Both in terms certainly of the ecology, but also of politics and and and so forth. But I don't know. Again, history is very unexpected. And again, as a historian I know that you should never underestimate human stupidity.
Share
39:53
But you know, data and science and all that, it's great. But you should never underestimate human stupidity. It's not invincible. We have made a very significant progress in the last few centuries, it's important to realize it. There are some people who say there is no progress at all, and this is dangerous. Because then the message is that there is no point trying.
Share
40:23
If everything that people did in the last century didn't improve our health, our education, the way we treat minorities and so forth, then it s probably hopeless. Then it's probably something in the laws of nature that prevents any kind of progress. So it's important to realize there has been very significant progress. But this is not a reason for complacency, it's a reason for responsibility. It means that we can make even more progress.
Share
Rashida Jones
40:50
Yuval
thank you so much for joining us and taking the time. And I just feel really honored to talk to you. And I said this to Bill
before, but if you wanted to start a cult, I would join it. I know you probably don't want to, but I'm there. Just know you have one member.Share
Yuval Harari
41:08
Okay. I'll think about it. Thank you.
Share
Rashida Jones
41:12
Thank you so much.
Share
Yuval Harari
41:13
Thank you. And thank you,
Bill
.Share
Bill Gates
41:14
Yeah, it was great to talk to you.
Share
Rashida Jones
41:20
Did Yuval said anything that surprised you?
Share
Bill Gates
41:23
Yuval has this broad way of looking at things that's really brilliant, reminding us about fictions and how much of modern life is so abstract. That's part of his brilliance, is to see that. And you know, a lot of those fictions are beneficial. They're they're helpful to people.
Share
Rashida Jones
41:48
So it was really helpful to talk to Yuval about lies in a historical context, because it's a reminder of how far we've come, really. But I still worry that we're entering a super dangerous new territory and that we're living in a world that, if I believe the sky is green, that I can find some sort of like expert on the internet who is going to back me up and tell me that I'm right and that's actually the truth.
Share
42:14
And in this era of fake news and so-called facts that exist to support pretty much any crazy idea that you have, is there really such thing as an absolute truth and, if there is, where do I find it?
Share
Bill Gates
42:30
There are sources that aren't just trying to appeal to your outrage, that really are trying to be factual. And I hope we figure out how to encourage people to gravitate to those sources that are there to connect you to reality instead of what just sounds good.
Share
Rashida Jones
42:59
I think that's the point, is how do we get people to become truth seekers? Because I think we're at a place now where people think that they're seeking the truth, right? And then they're just going as far as their nose, and there's people who say, "yeah, you're right, the sky is green". They're like "great, I did it, I found the truth, it's truth, my truth is the truth." So we have to encourage people to seek out the truth in a kind of like meaningful way. And it's a lot to ask from people.
Share
Bill Gates
43:25
It's not like the public's getting less educated. They are fooled by some attractive memes. But you know, mass opinion isn't going to solve hard problems. And so to seek out experts and make sure those experts are put in charge, I'm hopeful that, you know, we'll keep improving health care and education and reducing poverty.
Share
Rashida Jones
43:56
I remain worried, but I do think that we need some better PR around experts. Like, we need to guide people towards wanting experts and to believe in science.
Share
Bill Gates
44:06
Yeah, and it's sad that, you know, one part thinks of the experts are sort of systemically against them, that we have to solve. And maybe the experts need to change some to avoid that.
Share
Rashida Jones
44:16
Okay. Focus. Watching you, experts. Focus on experts. We've got to fix the experts..
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Rashida Jones
Bill Gates
Yuval Harari