A remarkable podcast between Yuval Harari (Sapiens, etc) and Ezra Klein (New York Times).
If you don't have time to listen, or if English is a barrier, here are the key ideas I noted:
Cooperation is humanity's superpower
On my own, I can't take on a bear or a lion.
But humans have the ability to coordinate with other humans to achieve their ends.
Trade? Society? Progress?
All of it was made possible by cooperation.
The Trumpian vision of power
Trump defends a different vision that, on paper, also holds up – at first.
What matters is strength.
If the weak obey the strong, if the nation with fewer resources obeys the empire, that's a guarantee of order and peace.
The strong protect the weak. The weak pay a price. That's how it works.
So when the weak defy the strong – for example when Denmark refuses to hand Greenland over to the US – they're going against the natural order of things and threatening world peace.
The problem with power
This arrangement has two pitfalls, says Harari.
First, it pushes every nation to want to be strong.
Because living under the thumb of a power that can take what it wants whenever it wants is not sustainable.
Which leads to the second point:
Every country has an interest in arming itself more than the others.
War becomes the top budget item, ahead of social welfare, ahead of everything else.
And yet more weapons have never made people more at ease.
The problem with doctrines
The advantage of liberalism, according to Harari, is that it doesn't believe in an end of history.
We will never find a perfect solution.
That's why liberals always seek to build "self-correction systems" into their institutions.
We will make mistakes. We will get things wrong. Some will become too greedy.
So the organization we put in place today is open to question. We'll likely find better, or notice gaping holes.
We need to build into the system a way to evolve.
For Harari, this vision is captured in the opening words of the Declaration of Independence:
"We the People."
What follows is not set in stone. It's the best we've found so far. We'll have to adapt.
The exact opposite of the opening words of the 10 Commandments:
"I am the Lord your God, who declares that..."
Nothing is to be touched. God said so.
The power of fiction
To spark action, a story is a far more powerful tool than the truth.
A story can be made as simple as needed.
And as flattering: "Us good, them bad."
But if you want to push people to act, or to fight, you have to eliminate doubt.
A story can do that. The truth, much less so.
The search for truth is a spiritual pursuit. In politics, it's a liability.
Though the most honest approach is to admit you're using a story.
Because deep down, no one is fooled.
Hatred must be fed
After certain atrocities, it's hard to imagine how two peoples could ever like each other again.
And yet, when a few decades pass...
History shows us that peoples forget. That it's possible to ally, to rebuild.
So systems built on fear and hatred must feed those emotions. The enemy must constantly be reminded of why they are the enemy.
The strength of Nationalism
For Harari, nationalism is a good thing.
Originally.
True nationalism is loving people you've never met because they belong to the same nation.
I'm willing to make sacrifices for people I've never seen because we share a language, a territory, a history.
Building national unity on hatred of the outsider before love of one's fellow citizen is new, and that's the trap.
Wars are never about survival
Almost no war has ever been declared because of food. Or lack of space.
Even in the Middle East, right now, there is objectively enough food to feed everyone.
And enough space to house everyone.
So war is not rooted in scarcity.
It is rooted in ideas, in stories.
Which become more important than everything else.
Anger, social media, and AI
The goal of social networks is to maximize engagement.
Algorithms have found that the best way to do that is to generate controversy and excitement.
It's very likely that people today agree with each other more than before – more than in the 1960s, say.
Extreme positions have broadly converged.
And yet we've never felt more divided.
People feel far stronger negative emotions over far smaller differences.
That is probably the consequence of technology.
AI's next goal
AI is the continuation of social networks.
It is now trying to reach a higher level: creating intimacy.
Where networks simply want to create interest, AI wants you to believe it's your friend.
Be careful.
And I promise this wasn't intentional, but it's exactly the subject of the Panique dans l'Espace episode out today:
Episode 5: 1000 Years of Solitude
It won an audience award at the Riom festival, and if you're interested in sci-fi or AI, I highly recommend it.