Charles C. Mann - Americas Before Columbus & Scientific Wizardry

1. 0:00 – 1:04

   Preview

   1. CMCharles C. Mann0:00

      One of the weird things is that, um, about podcasts, is that as far as I can tell, the average podcast interviewer, uh, is far more knowledgeable and, uh, thoughtful than the average sort of mainstreamed, uh, journalist (laughs) um, interview they had. I just find that amazing. I don't under- I don't understand it, so I think you guys should be hired by the, uh, you know, they should switch roles or something. (laughs) Yes, there's this thing that I think is not stressed enough in history, which is that often the elites kind of recognize each other and, uh, they- they- (laughs) they join up, um, in arrangements that increase both of their power and, you know, exploit the, uh, the- the poor schmucks down below. And that's exactly what happened in- with the East India Company and it's exactly what happened with- with- with Spain. Science and technology properly applied can allow you to produce your way out of these environmental dilemmas. You turn on the science machine essentially and we can, you know, we can escape these kind of, um, dilemmas. And the prophets say no. There's- there's- there's- There- that natural systems are governed by, um, laws, um, and there's an inherent carrying capacity or limits or planetary boundaries.

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel1:03

      Okay.

2. 1:04 – 1:29

   Epidemically Alternate Realities

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:04

      (laughs) Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Charles Mann, who is the author of three of my favorite books, including 1491: New Revelations of America Before Columbus; 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created; and The Wizard and The Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Vision to Shape Tomorrow's World. Charles, welcome to The Lunar Society.

   2. CMCharles C. Mann1:26

      It's a pleasure to be here.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:28

      My first question

3. 1:29 – 4:32

   Weak Points in Empires

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:29

      is, how much of the new world was basically baked into the cake? So at some point, people from Eurasia were going to travel to the New World and they were gonna bring their diseases, and o- uh, because of disparities in where they would survive, if the Acemoglu Theory that you cite is correct, then at s- some of these places were bound to be better, have good institutions, some of them were bound to have bad institutions. And all- uh, because of malaria, there were gonna be shortages in labor that people would try to fix with, um, African slaves. So, how much of this was just bound to happen? If s- if Columbus hadn't done it, maybe 50 years down the line, somebody from, you know, uh, Italy does it? What- like, what- what is the contingency here?

   2. CMCharles C. Mann2:10

      Well, I think some of it was baked into the cake. It's pretty clear that, you know, sometime people from Eurasia and, uh, people from the Western Hemisphere were going to come into contact with each other. I mean, how could that not happen, right? And there was a huge epi- epidemiological disparity between the two hemispheres, um, largely because, by a quirk of evolutionary history, there were many more domesticable animals, um, in Eurasia in the Eastern Hemisphere, and that led almost inevitably to the creation of zoonotic diseases, diseases that start off in animals and jump the species barrier and become human diseases. And most of the great killers, um, in human history are that kind of disease. So, they're gonna meet. There's gonna be those kinds of, um, diseases. But, you know, it's possible to, uh, imagine, you know, if you wanted to, some, you know, alternative histories. There's a wonderful, um, uh, book by Laurent Binet, uh, called Civilizations that in fact just does that. It's a great alternative history, uh, book, and he imagines that some of the Vikings came and they actually extended further into, um, North America than they did, and they brought the diseases so that by the time of Columbus and so forth, the- the epidemiological balance was different, um, and what happened was that they, uh, when Columbus and those guys came, these, uh, societies killed him, grabbed his boats, and went to-

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel3:36

      (laughs)

   4. CMCharles C. Mann3:36

      ... and went to Europe. And the Inca conquered Europe in this. And, you know, it's- it's- it's far-fetched but it does say that- that even th- this encounter will happen and the diseases will happen but it doesn't have to happen in the way that they- that they did. You know, it's perfectly possible to imagine again that, uh, Europeans didn't engage in wholesale slavery. Uh, there was a huge debate, you know, when this began about whether this was a good idea or not, and, uh, you had a lot of, uh, reservations, uh, particularly among the, uh, the Catholic monarchy, uh, sort of asking the Pope, "Is it okay that we do this?" And, uh, you know, you can imagine the- the penny, uh, dropping in a- in a- in- in a slightly different way. Uh, so, some of it was, I think, going to happen, I think, uh, but- but, you know, how exactly it happened is- is really up to chance and contingency and human agency.

4. 4:32 – 9:47

   Slave Revolts

   1. CMCharles C. Mann4:32

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel4:32

      Uh, when, I guess in the 15th and 16th century when, um, w- when the Spanish first arrived, were the Incas and the Aztecs, w- were they at a particularly weak point or particularly decadent, or was this just where you should have expected that civilization... Like, th- this was basically how well it would've been functioning at- on any given time period?

   3. CMCharles C. Mann4:52

      Well, typically, um, empires are much more, you know, sort of jumbly, fragile, um, entities than we- we- we kind of imagine. And there's always, you know, fighting at the top. And what, uh, Cortes was able to do, for instance, with the- with the Aztecs, the Triple Alliance... The Trip- they're better called the Triple Alliance. Aztec is a convention from the 19th century. Um, and that was three, uh, groups of people in central Mexico, the largest of which were the Mexica who had the great City of Tenochtitlan. But their other two guys, who I remember this, really resented them. They were the, you know, superior guys. And what Cortes was able to do was to foment a civil war within the Aztec, um, empire and, uh, uh, Tlaxcal- and to take some of the enemies of the Aztecs and some of the members of the Aztec empire and create an entire new order. And there's a fascinating set of, um, history that hasn't really, uh, I think emerged into the popular consciousness. Certainly it was new and I didn't include it in 1491 or 1493 because it wasn't, uh, it was- it was so new that it- I didn't know any- anything about it, largely Spanish and Me- uh, and Mexican scholars, about the conquest within the conquest. And so, the allies of the Spaniards, um, Tlaxcalan, Tlatelolco and so forth, actually sent armies out and conquered big swaths of northern and, uh, southern Mexico and centra- and- and Central America. And so there is a, you know, a far more complex, uh, picture than we realized even- even 15 or 20 years ago when I first pu- published, uh, uh, 14- 1491. So in that sense, yes, but the- also the conquest wasn't as complete as we- as we think. 'Cause what happened is Cortes moves in and what he does is he marries, I talk a little bit about this in 1493, he marries his lieutenants into these, um, you know, these- these indigenous things and creating this hybrid, uh, nobility that then extends on to the- to the Inca. ... so-

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel6:48

      Interesting.

   5. CMCharles C. Mann6:49

      ... and the same thing for the Inca. It's a, it's a very powerful but also unstable empire, and Pizarro has the luck to walk in right after a civil war. And, uh, when, uh, when he does that, and, uh, right after civil war and massive epidemic, he gets them at a, at a very vulnerable point. But again, it all would've been impossible. Pizarro, cleverly, uh, allies with the losing side, or the apparently losing side, in this, in, in the civil war, and is able to sort of create a new rallying point and they attack the, the, the winning side. So he's, you know, so you have, yes, they came in at weak points but empires typically have these weak points, um, because of fratricidal stuff going on in the, in, in the leadership.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel7:31

      Yeah, yeah. It does remind me also of, you know, the East India Trading Company, and-

   7. CMCharles C. Mann7:36

      Oh, yeah.

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel7:37

      ... how that

   9. CMCharles C. Mann7:37

      And the Mughal Empire.

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel7:38

       ... sort of exactly collapsed. Yeah.

   11. CMCharles C. Mann7:39

       Yes, and the, and Mughals, some of those guys in Bengal invited, uh, Clive and his guys in. And in fact, I was struck by this, uh, I've just been reading this, uh, book of, you must, maybe you've heard of it, The Anarchy by William Dalrymple?

   12. DPDwarkesh Patel7:52

       I've started reading it, but I-

   13. CMCharles C. Mann7:53

       It's amazing.

   14. DPDwarkesh Patel7:53

       ... haven't made that much progress. (laughs)

   15. CMCharles C. Mann7:54

       Yeah, it's an amazing, uh, book, and it's so oddly similar to what happened. There is this fratricidal stuff going on in the Mughal Empire, and one side thought, "Oh, we'll get these foreigners come in, and we'll use them." (laughs)

   16. DPDwarkesh Patel8:07

       (laughs)

   17. CMCharles C. Mann8:07

       And that turned out to be a big mistake.

   18. DPDwarkesh Patel8:10

       Yes. Uh, uh, and, what, what's also interestingly similar is the efficiency of the bureaucracy in the sense that, uh, Niall Ferguson has a good book on, uh, the British Empire, and one thing he points out is that, in India, the ratio between an actual English civil servant, I mean, you can call them what, uh, something else maybe, but, and the actual Indian population, was I think one to three million-

   19. CMCharles C. Mann8:35

       Yeah.

   20. DPDwarkesh Patel8:35

       ... at the peak of the ratio. And which obviously is, uh, only possible if you have cooperation of at least the elites, right?

   21. CMCharles C. Mann8:43

       Yeah.

   22. DPDwarkesh Patel8:43

       That sounds similar to what you were saying with Cortes marrying his underlings-

   23. CMCharles C. Mann8:47

       Right.

   24. DPDwarkesh Patel8:47

       ... to the nobility.

   25. CMCharles C. Mann8:49

       Yes, there's this thing that I think is not stressed enough in history, which is that often the elites kind of recognize each other, and, uh, they, they, (laughs) they join up, um, in arrangements that increase both of their power, and, you know, exploit the, uh, the, the poor schmucks down below. And that's exactly what happened in, with the East India Company, and it's exactly what happened with, with, with Spain. And it's not so much, uh, that the, you know, that there's this amazing efficiency, it's that, uh, it's a mutually beneficial arrangement for the, uh, for them. And then Tlaxcala, um, which is now a, a Mexican state, wasn't really fully part of, you know, it was, it had its rights, the people kept their, uh, integrity, they were not part of the, the Spanish Empire, and it really wasn't part of Mexico until, I think it's 1857 or something like that.

   26. DPDwarkesh Patel9:35

       Wow.

   27. CMCharles C. Mann9:36

       But it was a good deal for them. And the same thing was true for the Bengalis. They did, they made out like bandits from the, uh, the elites did-

   28. DPDwarkesh Patel9:43

       (laughs)

   29. CMCharles C. Mann9:43

       (laughs) ... from the, uh, from the British Empire.

   30. DPDwarkesh Patel9:46

       Yeah,

5. 9:47 – 12:51

   Slavery Ban

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel9:47

      that's super interesting. Um, why was there only one successful slave revolt in the New World in Haiti? Like, why, why didn't, why weren't... In this, in many of these cases, the ratios between slaves and the owners is just, you know, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's huge. So, why weren't more of them successful?

   2. CMCharles C. Mann10:04

      Well, I guess you would have to say, you know, define successful. Um, you know, Haiti wasn't successful if you meant creating a prosperous, uh-

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel10:15

      Yeah. (laughs)

   4. CMCharles C. Mann10:15

      ... state that would last for a long time. I mean, Haiti-

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel10:18

      Right.

   6. CMCharles C. Mann10:18

      ... uh, partly be, you know, uh, to no small, um, uh, you know, extent because of the, you know, incredible blockade that was put on it by all the other nations was, is, was and is, you know, in ter- in terrible shape. Um, whereas there were, um, you know, things like Palmares where you had, you know, for more than 100 years, uh, you know, people who were self-governing. Now eventually, they were incorporated into, um, the larger project of, uh, of Brazil, but you could also point out that, uh, there's a great, um, a great Brazilian sort of, you know, classic like Moby Dick or, is, or, or Huck Finn is to the US is this thing, uh, called, um, Os Sertoes, uh, by, uh, a guy named da Cunha. And it's go- it's translated, there's an amazing translation, very good translation, um, in English to, under Rebellion in the Backlands. And what it is about is in the 1880s, the creation of a hybrid state of, you know, runaway slaves, uh, uh, and so forth, and how they had essentially kept their independence, uh, and lack of supervision informally, uh, from the time of colo- uh, colonialism, and now the new British state is, uh, excuse me, new Brazilian state is trying to, you know, take, take control, and they fight 'em, you know, to the last person. And so, you had these effectively independent areas, you know, not in, uh, not, uh, de facto, if not de jure, um, that existed in, uh, the Americas for a very long time. And there were some in the, the US too, in the Great Dismal Swamp, and you hear about those maroon comm- com- communities in North Carolina, and, uh, there are certainly ones in, in Mexico where everybody just agreed these places aren't actually under our control, but we're go- not gonna say anything, and if they don't (laughs) mess with us too much, we won't mess with them too much. So, you know, is that successful or not? I don't know.

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel12:14

      Yeah, yeah. But it seems like, uh, these are temporary successes. There's, uh, if I remember correctly-

   8. CMCharles C. Mann12:20

      Well, how long do nations last? How long do nations last? I mean-

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel12:22

      That's true.

   10. CMCharles C. Mann12:22

       Right. The Genghis Khan, how long did (laughs) did the Khanate last? Right?

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel12:26

       Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know.

   12. CMCharles C. Mann12:26

       It was pretty, it had had some impact, yeah. So, I, I know-

   13. DPDwarkesh Patel12:29

       I don't know.

   14. CMCharles C. Mann12:29

       ... what you mean, I know what you mean. And, and they, they-

   15. DPDwarkesh Patel12:31

       Yeah.

   16. CMCharles C. Mann12:31

       ... basically they had overwhelming odds against them. Um, you know, they, there is a, an entire colonial system that was threatened by their existence, and, uh, for, you know, the same reason that, uh, you know, rebellions in, um, South Asia were, you know, in- suppressed with incredible brutality, uh, is because it was seen as so profoundly

6. 12:51 – 13:50

   Geoengineering

   1. CMCharles C. Mann12:51

      threatening to this entire, uh, colonial order that people, um, exerted a lot more force against them than you would think would be worthwhile.

   2. DPDwarkesh Patel12:59

      Right. It's, it sounds... It reminds me of, um, James Scott's thing in Against the Grain-

   3. CMCharles C. Mann13:03

      Mm-hmm.

   4. DPDwarkesh Patel13:04

      ... where he pointed out there were... If you look at the history of agriculture, there's many, uh, examples where people just, like, choose to run away-

   5. CMCharles C. Mann13:09

      Yeah.

   6. DPDwarkesh Patel13:10

      ... and live as foragers in the forest and then, uh, th- the State tries to bring them back into the fold.

   7. CMCharles C. Mann13:14

      Right. And so this... Yes, exactly. This is part of that d- dynamic. A certain number of people... You know, who wants to be a slave, right? And as many people as possible leave and, uh, it's easier in some places than others. Very easy in Brazil. And so all these... Uh, there's 20 million people in the Amazon res- you know, the... In Brazilian Amazon, something like that, and the great bulk of them are the descendants of people who left slavery and they're... You know, they're still Brazilians-

   8. DPDwarkesh Patel13:43

      Oh, wow.

   9. CMCharles C. Mann13:43

      ... and, and so forth but, you know, they, they ended up not being slaves.

   10. DPDwarkesh Patel13:48

       Yeah. That's super fascinating. What

7. 13:50 – 17:16

   Contingency & The Pyramids

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel13:50

      is the explanation for why slavery went from being obviously, uh, historically ever present, but also at that particular time it ended up being a- at its peak in terms of, uh, value and usefulness? What's the explanation for, like, you know, Britain bans the slave trade and within, like, a hundred, two hundred years there's basically no legal sanction for slavery anywhere in the world?

   2. CMCharles C. Mann14:11

      This is a really good question and the answer... So the, the real answer is historians have been arguing about this forever. I mean, not forever but, you know, for, for, for decades, and there's a bunch of different explanations. And the reason I think that it's, um, so hard to pin down is it's, it's science is so amazing. Um, I mean, if you think about it, uh, in 1800, you know, if, if you were to have a black and white map of the world and to put, uh, red in countries in which slavery was not legal and socially accepted, there would be no red anywhere (laughs) in, on, on the planet. I mean, it was, it was like the most ancient human institution that there is. The Code of Hammurabi, which I think is still the oldest complete legal code that we, we have, about a third of it is about, you know, the rules for, you know-

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel14:55

      (laughs)

   4. CMCharles C. Mann14:55

      ... when you can buy, when you can sell, how you can mistreat, how you can't, you know? (laughs) You know?

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel14:59

      Right.

   6. CMCharles C. Mann14:59

      All that stuff. It's, about a third of it is about buying and selling and working other human beings. Um, and so this thing has been going on for a very, very l- long time, and then in a century and a half, um, it s- suddenly changes. So there's some explanation. Machinery gets better. And so the reason to have people is that you have these, um, intelligent, autonomous, uh, workers who are like the world's best robots, um, you know, if you... From the point of view of the, of the, the owner, they're fantastically good except they're incredibly obstreperous and they're con... You're, you're constantly afraid they're gonna kill you. So if you have a chance to replace them with machinery or to create a wage, uh, in which they're run by wage people, uh, pa- wage workers who are, um, you know, kept in bad conditions but are... Somewhat have, uh, more legal rights, maybe that's a better deal for you. Um, another one is that, um, the, there were the in- industrialization produced different kinds of commodities that became more and more valuable and slavery was typically associated with agricultural labor, and so as agriculture diminished as a part of the, um, economy, slavery became less and less, uh, important and, um, it became easier to get rid of them. Another one has to do with the, you know, collapse in the beginning, collapse of the colonial order. I think that, uh, part of it has to do with, um, just a, in... At least in the, in the West, and I, I don't know enough about the East, it's just, you know, to, to say, but you have the rise of an abolition, a serious abolition movement with people like Wilberforce and, you know, various Darwins and, and so forth, and they're incredibly in- in- influential, uh, and to some extent, I, I think people s- started saying, "Wow, this is really bad." And, uh, I suspect that if you, uh, looked at, um, South Asia and, and Africa, you might see similar, uh, things, you know, having to do with the social, uh, moment. I, I, I just don't know enough about that. Uh, I know there's an anti-slavery movement, an anti-, you know, caste movement in... Which are all tangled up in, in South Asia, but I just don't know enough about it to say anything intelligent.

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel17:11

      Yeah, yeah. The, the social aspect of it is really interesting because the, the things you mentioned about, like,

8. 17:16 – 19:11

   Finding New Wizards

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel17:16

      automation and industrialization making slavery redundant, obviously by this time... That, that might have explained why it expanded but the... its original inception in Britain, like, that, that was before the Industrial Revolution took off, so that was purely them just taking a huge loss in or- be- because this, this movement took hold, right?

   2. CMCharles C. Mann17:34

      And the same thing is true for las Casas. I mean, las Casas, you know, in the 1540s sort of comes out of nowhere and, uh, starts saying, "Hey, this is bad." (laughs) And, um, he is this predecessor of the modern, uh, human rights movement, uh, and, uh-

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel17:50

      Yeah.

   4. CMCharles C. Mann17:50

      ... is absolutely extraordinary figure and he has huge amounts of influence and he causes Spain in the 1540s to pass, you know, the king to pass what they call the New Laws which is... Says no more slavery, which is a devastating blow, you know, if it would've been enacted to the, uh, to the colonial economy in, in Spain because they... It all depended on having slaves to work in the mines, the silver mines in, uh, the northern half of Mexico and, um, in, uh, Bolivia and... Which is, you know, the most important part of not only Spanish colonial economy but the entire Spanish Empire. It was all slave labor, um, and they actually tried to ban it. Now, (laughs) you know, you could say they came to their senses and found a workaround in, in which it wasn't banned but, uh, still, you know, this actually happened in the 1540s largely because people like las Casas said, "This is bad. Y- you're going to hell (laughs) for doing this."

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel18:44

      Right. I'm, I'm super fas- uh, interested in discussing with you, uh, once we get into the Wizard and the Prophet section, uh, how movements like... For example, environmentalism has been hugely effective-

   6. CMCharles C. Mann18:53

      Oh, yeah.

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel18:54

      ... again, even though-Um, it, it probably goes against the, the, maybe the, the naked self-interest of, of m- many countries. So, I'm, I'm, I'm very interested in discussing with you at that point about why these movements have been so influential. Um, but, but, but let me, let me continue asking you about, uh, the, the globalization

9. 19:11 – 19:17

   Agroforestry is Underrated

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel19:11

      in the new world. So I'm really interested in why you think, uh, or

10. 19:17 – 21:06

    Teotihuacan

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel19:17

       how you think about contingency in history, especially given that you have these two groups of people that are separated by tens of thousands, uh, that have been independently evolving for tens of thousands of years. What things turn out to be contingent and what things are y- y- both of them end up doing? You know, what I found really interesting from the book was both of them develop, uh, like pyramids, right? Like this structure. Like, who would have thought that just, like, in within our geo, uh, extended phenotype or something? But, uh-

    2. CMCharles C. Mann19:43

       That's also geometry. I mean, there's only a certain limited number of ways you can pile up stone blocks, uh, you know, in a, in a, in a stable way. And, uh, pyramids are, are, are certainly, are certainly one of them. It's harder to have a very long-lasting monument that's a cylinder. Um, and-

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel19:59

       I see.

    4. CMCharles C. Mann19:59

       ... and so pyramids kind of are, are... and also they're easier to build. As you get up cylinder, you have to have a scaffolding around it and that gets harder and harder. Pyramids, you can use each lower step to put the next one on and, uh, and, and so forth. So pyramids seem kind of natural to, to, to, to me. Now, what you make them of is gonna be partly determined by what there is. And so, um, in Cahokia and, uh, in the Mississippi Valley, there isn't a whole lot of stone, um, so people are gonna make these earthen, uh, pyramids. And there's gonna be... if you want them to stand for a long time, there's certain things you have to do for the structure in which people figured out. Um, same way for the pyramids, you had all this, I guess you, and y- you had all this marble around (laughs) and so you could make these, uh, things with giant slabs of marble, which seems, uh, today, from today's perspective, incredibly wasteful. So you, so yeah, so you're gonna have some things that are universals, uh, like that. And along with the apparently universal, uh, or near-universal idea that people who are really powerful like to identify themselves as, as supernatural and therefore want to be commemorated.

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel21:03

       Hmm. Um, yes. I, uh,

11. 21:06 – 26:24

    New Book Thesis

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel21:06

       visited Mexico City recently.

    2. CMCharles C. Mann21:07

       Mm-hmm.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel21:08

       And then I got a chance to check out-

    4. CMCharles C. Mann21:08

       It's a beautiful city.

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel21:09

       ... um, yeah, yeah, the Teo- Teo- the, the pyramids there. Um, and, you know, what, what struck me was that, you know, (laughs) I think I was reading your book at the time or had read your book. And so, if I remember correctly, they didn't have the wheel, right?

    6. CMCharles C. Mann21:24

       Yeah.

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel21:24

       And obviously they didn't have, uh, domesticated animals.

    8. CMCharles C. Mann21:27

       Mm-hmm.

    9. DPDwarkesh Patel21:28

       And so this whole thing, if you think about it, is really d- the amount of human misery and toil that it must have taken to put this thing together as basically a vanity project, um, (laughs) I don't know, it's like, uh, may- maybe adds a negative connotation if you, if you think about what it took to construct it.

    10. CMCharles C. Mann21:44

        Sure. Um, but, you know, one of the really interesting things about Teotihuacan, um, and, you know, again, this is just one of those things that you can only say so much in one book. And if I was writing the 2,000-page version of 1491 (laughs) I would have included this.

    11. DPDwarkesh Patel21:57

        (laughs)

    12. CMCharles C. Mann21:57

        So Teotihuacan pretty much stan- starts out as a standard imperial project and they build all these, you know, huge castles and, uh, temples and, and, and so forth. And there's no reason to suppose it was anything other than, you know, like building the pyramids, you know, an awful experience involved. But then something happens to, uh, Teotihuacan and we don't understand why. After that, more or less, all these new buildings spring up in the next couple hundred, hundred years and they're all very, very similar. They're like apartment blocks. And there doesn't seem to be a great separation between rich and poor. And, um, it's really quite striking how egalitarian the architecture is. And that's usu- that's usually thought to be a reflection of, uh, of social status. So it looks like there, you know, could there have been a political revolution of, of some sort? They create, you know, something, uh, you know, something much more egalitarian probably with kings, but a, you know, a bunch of good guy kings who are (laughs) aren't interested in elevating themselves so much. Now, it isn't, uh, and there's a whole chapter in, uh, the book by David Wengrow and David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything about this. And they're, they make this argument that, uh, that, you know, Tenochtitlan is... uh, uh, Teotihuacan, excuse me, is, um, you know, an example that we can look at of an ancient society that was, you know, much more socially egalitarian than we think. Um, now they, in my view, go a little overboard. It was also an aggressive imperial power and it was conquering, you know, uh, much of the Maya world at the same time. But it is absolutely true that, uh, something that started out one way starts looking very differently, uh, quite quickly. And you see this, uh, lots of times in the, in, in the Americas. Um, in the Southwest, um, you, you... I don't know if you've ever been to, like, Chaco Canyon or any of those, those places. Can't tell you, you should absolutely go. Um, unfortunately it's hard to get there because, uh, the road's terrible and so forth but it's totally worth it. It's an amazing place. And Mesa Verde right n- north of it is incredible. It's just really a, a, a fantastic thing to see. And there's these enormous structures there in Chaco Canyon, um, that if they were anywhere else we would call them castles. They're huge. They have like eight hund-... one of the, the biggest one, Pue- Pueblo Bonito has like 800 rooms or something, insane number like that. And, um, you know, it's clearly an imperial venture. Um, and then we know that on, it's in this canyon and on one side getting the good light and good sun is all these huge... there's a whole line of these huge castles and on the other side is where, you know, the peons lived. Um, we also know that, uh, starting, you know, around 1100, everybody just left. Uh, and then their descendants start the Pueblo who are this sort of, uh, intensely socially, um, egalitarian, uh, type of people. And it looks like a political revolution, um, took, took place. In fact, in the book I'm now writing, I'm arguing that, uh, you know, sort of tongue in cheek, but also seriously that this is the first American Revolution. It's, uh, they got rid of this, uh (laughs) -

    13. DPDwarkesh Patel24:58

        (laughs)

    14. CMCharles C. Mann24:58

        ... these, these guys or kings, you know, or something and, uh, and, uh, created these very different and much more egalitarian, uh, societies in which ordinary people had a much larger, uh, voice in what went on.

    15. DPDwarkesh Patel25:10

        Interesting. Um, but I wonder... I think I got a chance to see the Teotihuacan, um, apartments, uh, when I was there. And I wonder if that... The fa- we're just looking at the buildings that survived and the buildings that survived are maybe, like, better constructed because they were for the, um, for, like, the, the, th- th- those were the buildings for the elites, right? And then so, like, the... Where everybody else lived, it would... It just might have just washed away over the years?

    16. CMCharles C. Mann25:37

        So what's happened in the last 20 years is then, you know, basically much more, uh, sophisticated surveys of, of what, what is there. I mean, what you're saying is ad- absolutely the right question to ask. You know, are the rich guys the, you know, uh, the only things that survived and the ordinary people didn't? And you can never be absolutely sure of that. But what they have done is they kind of LiDAR and ground penetrating radar ser- surveys, and it looks like this sort of more egalitarian construction extends for a huge distance. And so it's possible that there's even more really, really poor people within thing, but at least you see the expan- you know, uh, an aggressively large "middle class", uh, getting there, which is very, very different than the kind of, uh, picture you have of the ancient world in which there's the sun priest or somebody and then all the peasants around there.

12. 26:24 – 32:19

    Gender Ratios and Silicon Valley

    1. CMCharles C. Mann26:24

    2. DPDwarkesh Patel26:24

       Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, by, by the way, are, are, is, is the thesis of the new book something you're willing to disclose at this moment, point?

    3. CMCharles C. Mann26:30

       Sure. Sure.

    4. DPDwarkesh Patel26:30

       Totally okay if you're not. Okay.

    5. CMCharles C. Mann26:32

       Okay. So the, the, the... This is sort of a weird thing. It's like a sequel or something or offshoot of 1491 and that book, um, I'm embarrassed to say was supposed to end with another chapter. And that chapter is gonna be about the American West, which is where I grew up in, you know, uh, and, uh, I'm, I'm very fond of it. And apparently, I had a lot to say because when I outlined the chapter, the actual... The outline was way longer than the actual completed chapters of the rest of the book. And I'd sort of tried to chop it up and so forth and it just was awful, and so I just cut it and if you carefully, um, look at 1491, it, it doesn't really have an ending. It's just got at the end, the author sort of goes, "Hey, I'm ending. Look at how great this is." (laughs)

    6. DPDwarkesh Patel27:11

       (laughs)

    7. CMCharles C. Mann27:12

       And, um, so... And this has been bothering me for 15 years and so during the pandemic, uh, you know, when I was stuck at home and, uh, like, like so many other people, I, I, I hauled out what I, what I had and I'd been saving string and, you know, was tossing articles that I came across into a folder and I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna write this out more seriously now, you know, 15 or 20 years later." And, um, and then it was, it was pretty long and I thought maybe this could be an e-book and I showed it to my editor and he said, "That is not an e-book. That's an actual book." (laughs)

    8. DPDwarkesh Patel27:44

       (laughs)

    9. CMCharles C. Mann27:45

       So I've taken a chapter and I hope I... just haven't padded it. Um, and it's about the North American West and the, the... Something I've added is, uh, uh, uh, thinking about it is, uh, you know, uh, my, my kids like the West and e- at various times, they've, they've said, you know, "What would it be like to move out there?" 'Cause I'm in Massachusetts, uh, where they, they grew up. And, um, so I started thinking about what is the West gonna be like tomorrow? You know, in, in, you know, when I'm not around 30 or 50 years from now. And it seemed to me that y- y- we won't know who's president or who's governor or anything, but there's some things we, uh, can know. It'd be just really a surprise if it isn't, you know, hotter and drier than it is now or has been, you know, in the re- recent past. That would just be really a surprise. So, uh, I think we can say that it's fr- very likely to be like that. Um, it would be a surprise if it wasn't, um... You know, the... All the projections are that something like 40% of the people, um, in the area between the, the Mississippi and the Pacific will be of, um, you know, Latino descent, uh, you know, from, fr- from the South, so to speak. Um, and there's a whole lot of people, um, from Asia, um, you know, along the Pac- Pacific Coast. So it's gonna be a real mixing ground, uh, ethnic mi- mixing ground. Um, and then the... there's gonna be an e- center of energy sort of no matter what happens, you know, whether it's solar, whether it's wind, whether it's petroleum, you know, uh, uh, hydroelectric. The West is, is, is, it's gonna be e- economically extremely powerful 'cause energy is sort of the fundamen- you know, a fundamental industry. And the last thing is, and this is the most iffy of the whole thing but I'm gonna go out on a limb and do this, is, uh, say that the ongoing recuperation of sovereignty by the 294, I think, uh, federally recognized native nations in the, in the West is going to continue. And, uh, but that's been going in this very jagged way, but definitely for the last 50 or 60 years, you know, as long as I've been around, um, it's f- the, the overall trend is in a very clear direction. And so then you think, okay, so this West is going to be wildly ethnically diverse, full of, uh, competing sovereignties and overlapping, uh, sovereignties and nature is gonna really be in kind of a turmoil. Well, that actually sounds like the 1200s and, uh-

    10. DPDwarkesh Patel30:03

        (laughs)

    11. CMCharles C. Mann30:03

        ... the conventional history starts at Lewis and Clark and so forth. Um, and sort of says that there is this break point in, in history, uh, when, you know, when people who look like me, uh, came in and sort of rolled in and they roll in from the East and kinda take over everything. The West disappears as a separate entity, native people disappear and nature is tamed. And that's pretty much what was in the textbooks when I was a kid. It was in, you know... Fr- do you know who Frederick Jackson Turner is? Um...

    12. DPDwarkesh Patel30:31

        No.

    13. CMCharles C. Mann30:31

        So he's like one of these guys who nobody knows who he is but was incredibly influential in setting intellectual ideas. He, he, uh, uh, wrote this article in 1893 called The Significance of the Frontier and it was the thing that established this idea that there is this frontier moving from East to West and on this side was, you know, savagery or barbarism and on this side was civilization and tame nature and wilderness and all that and it goes to the Pacific and then that's the end of the West. And that's still in the textbooks, you know, in different form. Uh, you know, we don't call native people lurking savages like he did. Um, you know? (laughs) That, that sort of stuff. Uh, but it's in my kids' textbooks. It's pro- if you have kids, it, it'll very likely be in their, uh, textbooks 'cause it's such a bedrock thing and I'm saying-... that's actually not a useful way to look at it, given what's coming up. And, uh, there's a wonderful Texas writer, Bruce Sterling, who, uh, says, uh, you know, "To know the past, you first have to understand the future." And, um... (laughs)

    14. DPDwarkesh Patel31:36

        (laughs)

    15. CMCharles C. Mann31:36

        And what he means is, uh, I mean, it's funny, right? But, uh, but what he means is, you know, all of us have an idea of where the trajectory of history is going and a whole lot of history is saying, "How did we get here? How did we get there?" And to get that, you have to have an idea of what the there is to- to do this. And so, I'm saying, I'm writing a history of the West with that West, you know, th- uh, that I talked about in mind, and that gives you a very different, uh, picture. Um, a lot more about, uh, you know, indigenous fire management and, uh, the way the Hohokam survived the drought of the 1200s, um, and- and a little bit less about Billy the Kid. (laughs)

    16. DPDwarkesh Patel32:15

        (laughs) Th- the... I- I- I love that quote. Um, s-

13. 32:19 – 42:28

    Technological Stupidity in the New World

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel32:19

       uh, speaking of the frontier, maybe- maybe it's a mistaken concept but... I mean, l- let- let's just stick with that for a second. I- I'm curious if you think that... Okay, so if you... I- I remember the chapter of 1493 where you talk about, you know, these rowdy adventurous men who way outnumber the women in the silver mines-

    2. CMCharles C. Mann32:36

       Mm-hmm.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel32:36

       ... and the kind of trouble that they cause. I wonder if there's some sort of distant analogy to, um, the technology world, or Silicon Valley-

    4. CMCharles C. Mann32:47

       Yeah.

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel32:47

       ... uh, where- where you have the same kind of gender ratio, you have the same kind of frontier spirit. Uh, maybe not the same kind of, like, physical violence but-

    6. CMCharles C. Mann32:53

       Let's hope. (laughs)

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel32:54

       ... sociologically-

    8. CMCharles C. Mann32:55

       Yeah.

    9. DPDwarkesh Patel32:55

       ... sociologically, i- is there any similarity there?

    10. CMCharles C. Mann32:58

        I think... It's funny, I hadn't thought about it but... so, um, but it- i- it's certainly funny to- to- to think about. So let- let me do this sort of off the top of my head, and then with the idea that if, uh, if I start saying, if I- I... with the idea that at- at the end of it I can say, "Wait a minute, that's ridiculous." Um, both of them would attract people who either didn't have much to lose or were oblivious about what they, what- what- what they- they- they had to lose and kind of had a resilience towards failure. I mean, it's amazing the number of people in Silicon Valley who have, like, completely failed at, uh, at numbers of things and just keep, get up and keep, uh, keep- keep trying, and have a- a kind of real obliviousness to, uh, to- to social norms. And, um, it's pretty clear, and- and are very much interested in making a mark and making, you know, their- their fortunes themselves. So there's a... you know, at- at least in, you know, in this sort of shallow comparison, there's a... there- there's- there's- there's some certain, uh, similarities. And I don't think this is entirely flattering to either groups. (laughs)

    11. DPDwarkesh Patel34:04

        (laughs)

    12. CMCharles C. Mann34:04

        Um, (laughs) you know, it is absolutely true that those silver miners in, um, in- in Bolivia and in northern- northern Mexico, you know, created, you know, to a large extent, the- the modern- modern world. But it's also true that they created these sort of cesspools of violence and exploitation (laughs) that- that- that, you know, w- that we're... that we're still, uh, whose consequences we're still living with, uh, today. So you have to kind of take the bitter with the sweet, and I- I think that's true of- of Silicon Valley and its- its- its products that I... I use them every day and I curse them every day. (laughs)

    13. DPDwarkesh Patel34:39

        (laughs) Right. Um, I- I- I wanna go back to the contigency-

    14. CMCharles C. Mann34:42

        I mean, let me give you an example, let me give you an example.

    15. DPDwarkesh Patel34:43

        Go for it.

    16. CMCharles C. Mann34:44

        In my own, uh, thing, the, uh, the- the internet has made it possible for me to do something like, you know, have a Twitter thread and have millions of people read it and, you know, and have a discussion, and that's really amazing, uh, at the same time. Yet today, The Washington Post is, uh, has a- has an article about how every book in... I- I think it's Texas, it's one of the states, um, uh, that- that a child checks out of the school library goes into a central state data bank. And, um, you know, and they can see and look for patterns of people taking out bad books and, uh, this sort of stuff. And I think, like, "Whoa, that's really bad. (laughs) That- that's not so good." And it's really the same technology that, uh... you know, this dissemination and collection of information, vast amounts of information with relative ease. So right, all of these things, you take the bitter with the sweet.

    17. DPDwarkesh Patel35:36

        Yeah, yeah. Um, I- I wanna ask you again about the contingency thing, because there are so many other examples where things you thought would be universal actually don't turn out to be. I think the... Um, you- you talk about how the- the- the- the natives had, like, different forms of metallurgy, I think with, um, gold and copper and things like that, but then they didn't do iron or steel. And you would think that given the warring nature of these tri-... like, iron would be such a huge help, um, and then the- the... like you- there's a clear incentive to build it, there's like millions of people living here who could have built or developed this technology. Um, same with the steel, I guess. Uh, sorry, sorry, same with, um, same with the wheel. Uh, wh- so like what- what- why- what is the explanation for why these things you think anybody would have come up with, it- it just didn't happen?

    18. CMCharles C. Mann36:23

        I... You know, it's just amazing to me. I don't know, and I- I- I... This is like one of those things like I think about all the time. Um, uh, a few weeks ago, uh, it rained and I went out, I walked the dog and, um, I'm always amazed that you can... uh, there's- there's literal, you know, glistening drops of water on the crabgrass and I... you know, you pick it up and, uh, sometimes there's little holes eaten by insects in the crabgrass. And every now and then if you look carefully, you'll see a drop of water in that, in one of those holes and it forms a lens, right? It- it- it... right. And you can look through it and you can see, it- it's not a very powerful lens by any means, but you can see it's magnified and you think like, "How long has there been crabgrass (laughs) and, um, you know, or leaves and- and water? Just forever. We've had glass forever. How is it that we had to wait to van Leeuwenhoek or whoever it was, to uh, to create lenses?" I just don't get it. Or, you know, in the book, uh, 1491, I mention the moldboard plow, which is the one with the curving blade that allows you to go through the- the soil much more easily. Invented in China, you know, thousands of years ago, not a- not around in Europe till the, till the 1400s. Like, come on guys, what was, was it? And, um-So you, you know, so there's this mysterious sort of mass stupidity (laughs) that can, that can affect... And one of the wonderful things about, uh, globalization and trade and contact and so forth is that maybe not everybody is, is as blind as you, and you can, you can, you can learn from them. I mean, that's the most wonderful thing about trade. Um, so in the case of the wheel, I mean the more amazing thing is, like, in Mesoamerica, they had the wheel. It was on, you know, child's toys. Why did they d- develop it? And the best explanation I can get is they didn't have domestic animals, um, and a cart then would have to be pulled by people. That would imply, to make the cart work, you'd have to cut a really good road. Whereas they did have travois, you know, the T- or I- I'm not sure if I... Travois? T-R-A-V-O-I-S, which are these, um, uh, things that you hold, and they have these skids that are, um, shaped like, kinda like an upside down V, and you, you, they're, they're... You can drag them across rough ground. You don't need a road for them, and that's what, uh, that's, that's what, like, um, people, um, used in, um, the, in the Great Plains and, and, and, and so forth. So you look at this and you think, like, maybe the ultimate sa- labor savings was... I mean, this was good enough, and you didn't have to build and maintain these, uh, roads to make this, the, the, this work, you know? So maybe it was rational, or just maybe they were just blinkered. I, I don't, I, I, I don't know. Um, and same way with the steel. Um, I think there's some values involved in that. I, I don't know if you've ever seen, uh, uh, one of those sword-like things they, they had in Mesoamerica called macuahuitls. Um, they're wooden clubs with, um, obsidian blades, um, on them, and they are sharp as hell. Um, you know, they're like, don't run your finger (laughs) along the edge, 'cause you'll just slice it open. And an obsidian blade is sh- pretty much sharper than any, um, uh, you know, iron or, or, or, or, or steel blade, um, and it doesn't rust, nice, but it's much more brittle. Yeah, yeah, right. And so, um, so you say, like, okay, they're, they're in... The Spaniards were really afraid of them because a single blow from these, these heavy, sharp blades could kill a horse. I mean, they saw people, like, whack off the head of a horse with a, you know, big strong guy with a single... So they're really dangerous, um, but they're not long-lasting. And, um, so part of the deal was that the values around conflict were different, in that conflict, um, in Mesoamerica wasn't a matter of sending out foot soldiers and, you know, grunts to, to go and get... It was a chance for, you know, soldiers to get individual glory and, uh, and, and prestige. And this was associated with having these very elaborately beautiful, uh, weapons that you, you know, killed people, killed people with. And so maybe this worked, not having steel, worked better for, for their values and what they were trying to do in, in war than it would have for Europe's. I mean, that's just a guess. But you can imagine a scenario in which it's not just blinkered, but, um, and expressive of what those people were trying to do on the basis of their different values. But this is hugely speculative. There's a wonderful book by Ross Hassig called, um, Aztec Warfare, in which he... Uh, it's an amazing, uh, book, which is like a military history of the Aztecs. It's, it's really quite interesting. And he talks about this a little bit, and he finally just says, "We don't know why they, they didn't, but this worked for them."

    19. DPDwarkesh Patel41:11

        Interesting. Yeah, it, it's, it's kinda similar to when you think about China not developing gunpowder into an, an actual, like, ballistic thing.

    20. CMCharles C. Mann41:18

        Or Japan giving up the gun, actually banning guns, um, the, in, during the Edo period. They, they, the Portuguese introduce guns and the Japan- the Japanese use them, and they said, "Ah, nope, don't want 'em," and they banned them. (laughs)

    21. DPDwarkesh Patel41:32

        (laughs)

    22. CMCharles C. Mann41:32

        This turned out to be a terrible idea when Perry came in the, uh, 1860s. But, uh, for a long time, uh, Japan... And there's this thing where supposedly, uh, under the Edo period, Japan had the longest, uh, period of any nation ever without a foreign war.

    23. DPDwarkesh Patel41:50

        Hmm. Interesting, interesting. Uh, m- may explain the... Yeah, it's concerning when you think the lack of war might make you vulnerable in certain ways, um, yeah.

    24. CMCharles C. Mann42:01

        Yeah, that's a depressing thought. (laughs)

    25. DPDwarkesh Patel42:04

        Right. Yeah, uh, uh, uh, Fukuyama in The End of History, he's obviously arguing that we should just, like, liberal democracy will be the, um, kind of the final form of government everywhere, but he has this, like, thing at the end where he's like, "Yeah, but maybe we need, like, a small war every 50 years just to make sure people remember-"

    26. CMCharles C. Mann42:19

        God. (laughs)

    27. DPDwarkesh Patel42:19

        "... how bad it can get and how to deal with it." Um, uh, anyways, so, uh, uh, when the epidemic started in

14. 42:28 – 44:28

    Religious Demoralization

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel42:28

       the New World, surely the Indians must have had some story. Maybe it was, like, a superstitious explanation, but some way of, like, explaining what is happening. What, what, what was it? Like, what, how, how, how did they account for it? What was that?

    2. CMCharles C. Mann42:39

       So you have to remember, the germ theory of disease didn't exist at the time.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel42:42

       Right.

    4. CMCharles C. Mann42:42

       So neither of the Spaniards, um, or the English, or, or native people had a clear idea of, of what was going on.

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel42:51

       Right.

    6. CMCharles C. Mann42:51

       And in fact, um, both of them thought of it as essentially a spiritual event, you know, a, a, a religious event. You went into are- you know, areas that were bad, and you got, uh, uh, you know, and the air was bad, and that was malaria. Malaria, right? That was an example. And it, so it was a, you know, and God is in control, uh, of the whole business. Um, when the diseases came, there's a line from, uh, my distant ancestor, the, um, Governor Bradford of, um, Plymouth Colony, who's like, you know, umpteen, umpteens, umpteenth gr- That's how WASPy I am. He's actually my ancestor.

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel43:27

       (laughs)

    8. CMCharles C. Mann43:27

       Um, is, (laughs) is, uh, about how God saw fit to clear the natives for, for us. So he, you know, they see all of this in really religious terms. And more or less, uh, native people did too. You know, they thought-... you know, all over and over again, there is this thing like, "We must have done something bad for this to have happened." Uh, and so this is a very powerful demoralizing thing. Um, you know, your god's had either punished you or failed you. And-

    9. DPDwarkesh Patel43:59

       Yeah.

    10. CMCharles C. Mann43:59

        ... um, this was a, this, this is one of the reasons that Christianity was able to make inroads, because-

    11. DPDwarkesh Patel44:04

        Interesting.

    12. CMCharles C. Mann44:05

        ... you know, people with their god, uh, was, were coming and they seemed to be less harmed by these diseases than people with our god. Um, now both of them are completely misinterpreting (laughs) what's going on. But, uh, but, you know, if you have that kind of spiritual explanation, it makes sense for you to say something, "Well maybe, maybe I should adopt their god."

    13. DPDwarkesh Patel44:25

        Yeah, yeah. It's super fascinating. There's been a lot of books

15. 44:28 – 49:30

    Critiques of Civilization Collapse Theories

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel44:28

       written in the last few decades about why civilizations collapse. You know, there's, um, there's Joseph Tainter's book, there's Jared Diamond's book. Do you feel like any of them actually do a good job of explaining how these different Indian societies collapsed over time?

    2. CMCharles C. Mann44:41

       Uh, no. Um, well not the ones that I, I've, I've read. Um, and the reason, there's two reasons, uh, for, for that. Um, one is, I mean it's not really a mystery if you have a society that's epidemiologically naive and, um, you know, smallpox sweeps in, kills 30% of you. You know, measles kills in, kills a 10% of you, and this all happens in a short period of time. That's, you know, uh, that's really tough. I mean, look what C- COVID killed one, you know, million people in the United States. That's one 330th of the population. Um, and it, it wasn't even particularly, you know, the most economically vital part of the population. It wasn't-

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel45:23

       Yeah.

    4. CMCharles C. Mann45:23

       ... yeah. It wasn't kids. It was, you know, elderly, uh, people like my aunt. Um, you know, so I don't, I, I hope I'm not sounding callous when I'm describing it like a demographer. Um, and, uh, 'cause, you know, I, I don't mean it that way. Uh, but it caused enormous, you know, economic damage and, you know, social conflict and so forth. Now imagine something that's, you know, 30 or 40 times worse than that and you have no explanation for it at all. Um, it's kind of not a surprise to me that this is a s- you know, super challenge. What's actually, uh, amazing is the number of, uh, nations that survived, um, and came up with ways to deal with this incredible loss. Um, and that goes to the second issue, which is, um, that it's sort of weird to talk about collapse in some ways that c- you sometimes do. Like both of them talk about the Maya collapse. But there's 40, no, 30 million Maya people still there. Um, they were, uh, never really conquered by the, the Spaniards. The, the, the Spaniards are still waging giant wars in Yucatan in the 1590s. Um, you know, when you go w- uh, one time, uh, this is in the, now in the, the, uh, in the early, uh, 21st century, um, I went with, uh, my son to, uh, Chiapas, which is the southernmost, uh, exit province. And that is where you probably heard about the Comandante Cero and, you know, there's rebellions are going on. And, uh, I, we were looking at some Maya ruins and it was, they were too beautiful and I stayed too long. We were driving back through the night, um, on these terrible roads and, uh, we got stopped by, uh, s- uh, some of these guys with guns. And, uh, I was like, "Oh, god." You know? (laughs) Not only have I, you know, got myself into this, I got my son into this. And the guy comes and he looks at us and says, "Who are you?" And I say that, "We're American tourists." And he just gets, looked this disgusted look and he says, "Go on." And I, I, I (laughs) I said, "Wait a minute." (laughs) You know what, you know, the journalist in me takes over and said, "Well, what do you mean just go on? Are..." And he says, "We're, we're, we're hunting for Mexicans." And I drive... in my mind I think, "Wait a minute. I'm in Mexico." (laughs) And that those are Maya. Um, you know, the... all those-

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel47:39

       Wow.

    6. CMCharles C. Mann47:39

       ... guys were Maya people still fighting against the, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Spaniards. So it's kind of funny to say that their, their, their society collapsed when they have v- you know, their Maya radio stations, their Maya schools, their, you know, their people speaking Maya in their home. The... it's true they don't have giant castles any- an- anymore, but it's, you know, it's, it's odd to think of that as a, as collapse. They seem like highly successful people who have dealt pretty well with, uh, a lot of foreign incursions. So there's this whole aspect of, what do you mean collapse? Um, and you, you see that in, um, Against the Grain, the James Scott book, where, you know-

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel48:17

       Yeah.

    8. CMCharles C. Mann48:17

       ... people say, "What do you mean barbarians? These guys have it pretty good." (laughs) And-

    9. DPDwarkesh Patel48:21

       (laughs)

    10. CMCharles C. Mann48:21

        ... you know, if m- if you're an average Maya person, you know, uh, you know, working as a farmer under these, uh, the, the, the purview of these elites in the big cities probably wasn't all that great. And, uh, after collapse, you were probably better off. So, you know... So all of that I feel like, uh, is important in, in this discussion of collapse. And I, I think it's hard to point to collapses that don't either have very clear exterior causes, um, or are, you know, really collapses of the environment, uh, particularly of the environmental sort that, um, that are pictured in, in books like, uh, D- Diamond's Collection. He talks, like, Easter Island, um, and the striking thing about that is we know pretty much what happened to all those trees. Easter Island is this little speck of land, um, you know, in the middle of the ocean. Dutch guys come there. It's the only wood around, you know, forever. They cut down all the trees to use it for boat repair, uh, ship repair. And, (laughs) um, and they enslaved most of the people, um, who were living there. I mean, we know pretty much what happened. There's no mystery about it. (laughs)

16. 49:30 – 53:56

    Virginia Company + Hubris

    1. CMCharles C. Mann49:30

    2. DPDwarkesh Patel49:31

       Why did the British government and the king keep subsidizing and giving sanction to the Virginia Company even after it was clear that this is not especially profitable, and basically, like, half the people that are going are dying?Why didn't they just, like, stop?

    3. CMCharles C. Mann49:46

       That, that's a really g- good question. That's a super good, um, question. I don't really know if we have a satisfactory answer, 'cause it was so stupid, um, for them to keep doing that. (laughs)

    4. DPDwarkesh Patel49:55

       (laughs)

    5. CMCharles C. Mann49:55

       It was such a loss for so, so long. Um, so you have to say they were thinking not purely economically. Um, and part of it is, uh, the, the backers of the Virginia Company, in sort of classic BC style, when things were going bad, they lied about it. And they, and they're burning through their cash. They did these rosy presentations and they said, "It's gonna be great. We just need this extra, uh, money," um, you know, kind of the way that Uber did with, um-

    6. DPDwarkesh Patel50:29

       Yeah. (laughs)

    7. CMCharles C. Mann50:30

       (laughs) You know? And then there's this tremendous burn rate, and now the company's (laughs) in tremendous, uh, trouble, 'cause these... it turns out that it's really expensive to provide all these, uh, c- cabs and, uh, and, and, and do all this stuff. And the cheaper prices that made me- people like me really happy about it, um, are vanishing. Um, so, you know, I think, uh, future business studies will st- uh, look at those rosy presentations from Uber and, and see that they have a kind of analogy to the ones that were done with the, uh, Virginia Company. Um, a second thing is that, um, there was this dogged belief, um, kind of based on, um, uh, you know, inabilities to, uh, understand longitude and, uh, and, and so forth, that the Americas were far narrower than they actually are. And there's a... I think I reproduced this in 1493. There's, there's all kinds of maps in Britain at the time showing this little skinny, you know, Philippines-like islands. And there's a thought that, you know, you just go up the Chesapeake and you go just a couple hundred miles and you're gonna get to the Pacific and to ch- to China. So there's this constant searching for a passage to China through this, uh, thought to be very narrow ?e. And Sir Francis Drake and people like that had shown that there was a West Coast, and so they thought the whole thing was this, you know, narrow Panama-like, uh, inlet.

    8. DPDwarkesh Patel51:53

       Right.

    9. CMCharles C. Mann51:53

       So there's, so there's this geographical, uh, confusion. And, um, fin- and, uh, e- and finally, there's the fact that the Spaniards had found all this gold and silver, which is an ideal-

    10. DPDwarkesh Patel52:05

        Yeah.

    11. CMCharles C. Mann52:05

        ... commodity because it's not perishable. It's small. You can put it on your ship and bring it back and it's, it, it's just great in every way. It's money, essentially. They j- they... you dig up money in the hills. And there's this longstanding belief there's got to be more of that, and, um, in, in, in the Americas and we just need to, to find out. So there's always that hope. And f- and finally there's this kind of imperial bragging rights. Um, you know, "We can't be the only guys without a (laughs) a colony." And you s- you see that with, um, with, you know, later in the 19th century, with, uh, you know, Germany becomes a nation and one of the first things it does is says... you know, looks for pieces of Africa that, that, uh, that the rest of Europe hasn't, uh, hasn't, uh, uh, claimed and, and sets up its own, you know, mini colonial empire. So there's this kind of keeping up with the Joneses, um, a- a- aspect. It just seems to be sort of deep in the, uh, European ruling class (laughs) that, that you gotta have an empire, you know, uh, in, in this weird way that, you know, uh, seems very culturally part of this. And I, I guess it's the same for many other places. Um, as soon as you get a... as soon as you feel like you have a state together, you wanna annex, uh, oth- other things. Uh, and you see that over and over again all over the world. So, uh, so that's part of it. So all those things, I think, contribute to it. This, uh, out and out lying, this delusion, and, and various delusions plus, uh, hubris.

    12. DPDwarkesh Patel53:31

        Yeah. Yeah. Uh, it, it seems, um, it seems that the colonial envy has probably today spread to China. I've... I don't know too much about it, but I hear that the Silk Road stuff they're doing is not especially economically wise. It just, uh... uh, but it is this kind of like you have this impulse if you're a n- nation trying to rise that, you know, "I, I gotta go, I gotta go over there, I gotta go over there."

    13. CMCharles C. Mann53:52

        You gotta go over there and show what a big guy I am. Yeah. (laughs)

    14. DPDwarkesh Patel53:55

        Exactly.

17. 53:56 – 1:03:28

    China’s Silver Trade

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel53:56

       Speaking of China and speaking of silver, I want to ask you about, um, the silver trade. So excuse another tortured analogy, but when I was reading that chapter where you're describing how the Spanish silver was ending up at China. You know, I'm, I'm reading this and I'm looking at... you're describing how the Ming Dynasty, it, it, it caused too much inflation. There were... people needed a reliable medium of exchange, and then they had to give up real goods from China just in order to get this silver, which is just a medium of exchange. It's not, it's not creating more apples, right? Um, and I was thinking about this. I was like, um, this sounds a bit like Bitcoin today in the sense... obviously to a much smaller magnitude, but in the sense that, um, a, s... you're using up goods like... I mean, it's a small amount of electricity al- all things considered, but, like, you're having to use up, like, um, real energy in order to con- construct this medium of exchange. And maybe somebody can claim that this is necessary because of, um, inflation or some other, uh, policy mistake like you can... compared to, like, Ming Dynasty or something. Um, but wh- what do you think is the analogy basically, that there's a similar thing where real goods are being exchanged for just a medium of exchange?

    2. CMCharles C. Mann55:08

       That's really interesting. The... I mean, on some level that's the way that money works, right? You know, I go into a store and I... you know, at Starbucks and I buy a coffee and I hand them a piece of paper with some drawings on it and they gi- they hand me an actual coffee in return for a piece of paper. So, you know, so that... the mysteriousness of money is kind of amazing and, oh... and there's... history is, of course, replete with examples of things that people took very seriously as money that to us seems very silly, like the cowry shell or, uh, in the, the Island of Yap, you know, where they, uh, had giant stones, um, and those were money and nobody ever carried them around. You transferred the ownership of the stone from one person to another person to buy something. So, you know, I would get some, you know, coconuts or gourds or whatever and now you own that stone on the hill. Um, so there's a, a t- a tremendous sort of mysteriousness about the human willingness to assign value to arbitrary things such as, in Bitcoin's case, strings of, uh, zeros and ones. Um-So that part of it make, uh, make, makes sense to me. What the extraordinary thing is that, uh, when the effort to create a medium of exchange ends up costing you significantly, which is what you're talking about and we were talking about in, uh, in, in China where, um, where people got, uh, uh, a medium of exchange but they had to work hugely to, to, to get the money. I don't have to work hugely to get a dollar bill, right? Uh, to get the dollar bill it's, it's not like I'm, you know, cutting down a tree and, uh, you know, smashing the paper into pulp and, you know, printing th- th- this. Um, you're right, right. And that's what they were kind of doing in, in China, and that's to a lesser extent, uh, what you're doing in, in, in Bitcoin. So I hadn't thought about this but it, it... And the Bitcoin in this case is using computer cycles and energy. And, um, to me it's absolutely ex- uh, ex- extraordinary, uh, the degree to which people are, who are Bitcoin miners are willing to upend their lives to get cheap energy. So, um, a guy I know has a... is, is talking about setting up small nuclear plants, you know, as, as part of his idea for climate change. And, and he... and to set them up he wants to set them up in, like, really weird remote areas. And I was saying, "Who would be your customers?" He said Bitcoin people would move (laughs) to these nowhere places so that they could have, like, these pocket nukes to privately supply their, um, Bitcoin, uh, ha- habits. (laughs) And I just thought, "That is really crazy to, you know, completely upend your life for, to create something that you hope is a medium of exchange that will allow you to buy the things that you're giving up." Uh, right, right. And so there, there's, there's a kind of funny aspect to, to this and that was partly what was happening in, uh, in, in China is that they were... Um, unfortunately China's very large and so they were able to send off, um, all, all this stuff to Mexico so that they could get the silver to pay their taxes. But it was definitely weakened the country.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel58:14

       Yeah. Well, actually, uh, the thing you're talking about, uh, in some sense it's, uh, El Salvador actually tried it. They were trying to set up a sit- Bitcoin city next to this volcano and they were gonna use the, I guess, the geothermal from the, uh, from the volcano in order to, like, uh, make people come there to mine cheap Bitcoin. Uh, or mine it cheaply. S- staying on the theme of China, w- do you think the prophets were more correct or the Wizards were more correct for that given time period? Because you have the introduction of, as you describe them in the book, potato, corn, uh, maize, sweet potatoes, and then this drastically increased this population, but then again it reaches a carrying capacity so... And then obviously there's other kinds of ecological problems this causes, as you describe in the book. So i- i- i- is this, um, is, is this, you think, uh, at that time, uh, uh, evidence of the Wizard worldview? That you had this potato and then, you know, population balloons? Or is it... are the prophets like, "Oh, no, no, the carrying capacity will catch up to us eventually"?

    4. CMCharles C. Mann59:10

       Okay, so let me, um, interject here, uh, for those members of your audience who, uh, don't know what, what we're talking about here. I wrote this book, The Wizard and the Prophet, and there's... it's about these sort of two camps, um, that have been around for a long time, uh, regarding about how we think about energy, resources, the environment, and all those issues. And the Wizards, you know, you can call them... th- that's my name for them, um, Stewart Brand calls them druids, um, and, uh, which is... In fact, uh, originally the title was going to be... involved the word "druid" but they, uh, my editor said, "Uh, nobody knows what a druid is" (laughs) so I, so I had to change it to Wizards. Anyway, um, you know, would say that science and technology properly applied can allow you to produce your way out of these environmental dilemmas. You turn on the science machine essentially and we can, you know, we can escape these kind of, um, dilemmas. And the prophets say, "No, the, there's... there, that natural systems are governed by, um, laws, um, and there's an inherent carrying capacity or limits or planetary boundaries" or, you know, there's a bunch of different names for them that say that you can't do more than so much. Um, and so what happened in China is that, um, European crops came over and, um, China's basic... one of China's sort of basic, uh, geographical conditions is it's, um, you know, something like 20% of the Earth's, you know, habitable surface area or, or it has 20% to the world's population, excuse me. Um, has this, you know, appreciable chunk of the world surface area but only has 7 or 8% of the world's above ground fresh water. There's no big giant lakes like we have, um, in the Great, Great Lakes, um, and there's only a couple of big rivers. The Yangtze and the Huang He or Yellow River. And the main staple crop in China has to be grown in swimming pools. That's, uh, you know, rice. And so there's this paradox which is, how do you keep people fed with rice, um, in a country that has very little water? And, um, you know, if you want a shorthand hist- uh, history of China, that's it. It's, "Okay, so..." And, and prophets believe that there's these planetary, um, uh, boundaries and so, um, in history these are typically called Malthusian limits after Malthus and the que- you know, the question is, with the available technology at a certain time, um, you know, how many people can you feed before there's misery? And the great thing about, uh, history and this sort of thing is it provides, um, evidence for both sides. 'cause in the short run what happened when American crops come in is that the potato, uh, the sweet potato and maize corn are the first staple crops that are dry land crops that can be grown in the western half of China which is very, very, um, dry and ha- and, and mountainous and has, uh, and, and has little water. And, um, population soars, uh, immediately afterwards but so does social unrest, um, misery and, and, and, and s- and, and so forth. In the long run, um, they becomes ad- adaptable and, um, and China becomes this wealthy and powerful, uh, powerful nation. In the short run, which is not so short, it's a couple of centuries, it's, uh, it really causes tremendous chaos and, and, and suffering. So-... which (laughs) you know, it provides evidence, if you like, for both sides. Uh, one is it increases human capacity, and the second, uh, there's no question about it, it increases human numbers, increases the po- possibility. The second is it leads to tremendous, uh, erosion, land degradation, and human suffering.

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:38

       (laughs) .

    6. CMCharles C. Mann1:02:39

       (laughs) .

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel1:02:40

       Um, yeah, that's a thick coin with the two sides. Um, by the way, so I realize I haven't, uh, gotten to the, uh, all the Wizard and Prophet questions and there's a lot of them, so...

    8. CMCharles C. Mann1:02:51

       I certainly have, you know, uh, time. I'm enjoying the conversation. One of the weird things is that, um, about podcasts is that as far as I can tell, the average podcast interviewer is far more knowledgeable and thoughtful than the average sort of mainstream, uh, journalist, um, interviewer had. I just find that amazing. I don't under- I don't understand it. So I think you guys should be hired by the, uh, you know, they should switch roles or something. Um, so-

    9. DPDwarkesh Patel1:03:17

       Yeah, maybe.

    10. CMCharles C. Mann1:03:18

        ... yeah, so it's a pleasure to be asked these interesting, um, questions about subjects I find fascinating.

    11. DPDwarkesh Patel1:03:24

        Oh no, it's my pleasure to get to talk to you and to have, uh, get to ask these

18. 1:03:28 – 1:08:20

    Wizards vs. Prophets

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:03:28

       questions. So let me ask about the Wizard and the Prophet. So one of... I just recently had Will MacAskill on.

    2. CMCharles C. Mann1:03:35

       Uh-huh.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:03:35

       He's, um... Okay, so you're familiar with him. And then we were talking about what ends up mattering most in history. And I asked him, um, you know, like Norman Borlaug, it said that he saved a billion lives. But then MacAskill pointed out that- that while that's an exceptional result, um, he doesn't think the technology is that contingent. So if Borlaug hadn't existed, somebody else would have discovered what he discovered, uh, about, you know, short wheat stalks anyways. And then so counterfactually, in a world where Borlaug doesn't exist, it's not like a billion people die. Maybe a couple million more die until the next guy comes around. That's what- that was his view. What would... Do you agree or what is your response?

    4. CMCharles C. Mann1:04:16

       In some- to some extent, I- I agree. You know, it's- it's very likely that, um, you know, in the absence of- of one scientist, some other scientist would have, uh, di- discovered this. And I mentioned in the book, in fact, that there's a guy named Swaminathan, um, as a remarkable, um, Indian scientist who was kind of, you know, a step behind him. Um, you know, and- and, you know, did- did much of the same work and, you know. Um, at the same time, um, the individual qualities of Borlaug are- are really quite remarkable. I mean, the amount of- the insane amount of work and dedication that he- that he did, um, is really hard to imagine. And the fact is that, um, he was going against many of the breeding- plant breeding dogmas of his day. That all and- uh, that all matters in his insistence on, um, feeding the poor. You know, there was- that was... So he did remarkable things. Yes, I think some of those same things that have been discovered would have been a huge deal if it had taken 20 years later. Um, I mean, that would have been a lot of people who would have been hurt in the- in- in the interim, because at the same time, things like, um, the end of colonialism, um, and the discovery of antibiotics and so forth has- was leading to a real population rise and, um, the amount of human misery that would have, um, occurred is really frightening to- to- to- to think about. Um, so in some sense, I think he's, uh, he- he's right, but I wouldn't be so glib about those couple of million people.

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel1:05:58

       Yeah, and- and another thing you might be concerned about is that given the hostile attitude that people had towards the Green Revolution right after, like if- if the- if the actual implementation of these, um, different strains in Pakistan and India, if that had been delayed, it's- it's not that weird to imagine a scenario where the government there are just like totally won over by the prophets and they're- they decide not to, um, implant this technology at all. If you think about like what happened to nuclear in the '70s in many different countries, right? Like maybe something similar could have happened to, um, maybe something similar could have happened to the Green Revolution. So-

    6. CMCharles C. Mann1:06:34

       Right.

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel1:06:35

       ... it's important- it's important to beat the prophet. Uh, maybe that's not the correct way to say it, but one way you could put it is, it's important like to beat the prophets, like before the policies are passed, you had to like get- get the technology in there.

    8. CMCharles C. Mann1:06:45

       Right. Or else you want- you know, you want to, um, listen to the, you know, in my opinion, this is just my personal opinion, you want to listen to the prophets about what the problems are. They're incredible about diagnosing, uh, problems and very frequently they're right, um, about those things. The- the social issues, the Green Revolution, dead right. They're completely right. I don't know if you, um, then adopt their solutions. Um, it's a little bit like my feeling with my editors. My editors often will point out problems with the manuscript.

    9. DPDwarkesh Patel1:07:14

       (laughs)

    10. CMCharles C. Mann1:07:14

        I almost never agree with their solution.

    11. DPDwarkesh Patel1:07:16

        Yeah, yeah.

    12. CMCharles C. Mann1:07:16

        But they're correct about the diagnoses. Um, you know, the- the fact is that Borlaug did develop this, um, this wheat that came into India, but it's also a fact that it probably wouldn't have been nearly as successful if Swaminathan hadn't, um, changed that wheat to make it more acceptable to, um, the- the- the, um, culture of India.

    13. DPDwarkesh Patel1:07:39

        Right.

    14. CMCharles C. Mann1:07:39

        Um, that was one of the most important parts for me of this book was- was when I went to Tamil Nadu and I listened to this and I thought, oh, I never heard about this part where they- they took Mexican wheat and they made it into Indian wheat. Um, you know, I don't even know if Borlaug ever knew they really grasped that they really had done that. By the way, a person for you to interview is, uh, there's a... Yes, it's Marcy Baranski, excuse me. M, uh, B-A-R-A-N-S-K-I. And she's got a green- a- a forthcoming book about the history of the Green Revolution and...

    15. DPDwarkesh Patel1:08:08

        Interesting.

    16. CMCharles C. Mann1:08:09

        Yeah, she sounds great. Um, I'm really looking forward to reading it. So here's a plug for her (laughs) .

    17. DPDwarkesh Patel1:08:15

        So if- if we apply that particular story to today, I mean-... it,

19. 1:08:20 – 1:19:11

    In Defense of Regulatory Delays

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel1:08:20

       it, or, a- a- let's say that we had regulatory agencies like the FDA back then that are as powerful e- e- w- we're as powerful back then as they are now. Do you think it's possible that the green r- like, th- these new advances would have just dithered in some approval process that took years or decades to complete? Um, e- and, or like, a- a- if you just, um, back test our current, uh, process for implementing technological solutions, ar- are- are you concerned that something like the green revolution could not have happened or would have taken way too long or something?

    2. CMCharles C. Mann1:08:50

       It's possible. I mean, you know, bureaucracies can always go, um, can always, uh, go rogue. And government is faced with this kind of impossible problem. So like, let, let us take, take for example, um, there's a, there's a current big political argument about, um, whether the former President, uh, Trump should have taken these, uh, documents, you know, top secret documents to, um, to his house in Florida and done whatever he wanted to. And let us say, let's just for the moment, let's accept the argument that these were like super secret doc- documents and should not have been in a basement. Let's just say that's true. (laughs) Um, eh, it, but we don't have, uh, and the re- and he says, "Well, whatever the president says is declassified is de- declassified." And let us say that's true. I mean, I- I don't know, I'm just talking about it as a paper. Um, obviously that would be bad. You would not want to have that kind of informal process if er... you can imagine all kinds of things you wouldn't want to have that in k- kind of informal process in place. So then the, um, but nobody has ever imagined that you would do that because it's sort of nutty, um, in- in that scenario. And, uh, you, you, so then you say you write a law and you create a bureaucracy for declassifying and immediately you add more, you know, uh, delay, you make things, um, harder, you add in the problems of, um, of- of, um, the bureaucrats creating too much power. You know, all the things that you, you do. So you have this, this problem with government which is that people occasionally do things you would never imagine as, you know, completely screwy, and so then you put in regulatory mechanisms to stop them from- from- from- from doing that, and that impedes everybody else. And so in the case of the FDA was founded, um, in the '30s when some person, um, produced this thing called Elixir of Sulfanilamide that killed hundreds of people. It was a flat-out poison. (laughs) And, um, and you know, hundreds of people died and you think like who would do that? But somebody did that, and they created this entire review mechanism to make sure it never happened again which introduced delay. And then, something with Thalidomide, um, you know, which they did stop here because, uh, p- you know the people who invented that didn't even do the most cursory kind of, uh, check. So you have this constant p- um, problem. So I'm sympathetic to, um, the- the- the dilemma faced by government here in which you either, um, let through really bad things done by v- occasional people or you screw up everything for everybody else (laughs) and, you know, it's kind of like this... I- I- I was phrasing it crudely but I think you see the kind of trade-off. So, h- the question is how well can you manage this trade-off? And so I would argue, um, that sometimes it's well managed and sometimes it's not. Like, it's kind of remarkable that we got vaccines produced by an entirely new mechanism, you know, in record time, um, and they passed pretty rigorous safety r- reviews and they were given to millions and millions and millions of people with very, very few negative effects. I mean, that's a real regulatory triumph there, right? So that would be the counter-example. You know, you have this new thing that you can, um, feed people and- and- and so forth and they- they let it through very quickly. On the other hand, you have, um, things like genetically modified salmon and, uh, trees, which as far as I can tell, they've done s- especially for the chestnuts, extraordinary efforts to- to test. And I'm sure that those are going to be in regulatory hell for- uh, for- for years to come. (laughs)

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel1:12:19

       (laughs) Right.

    4. CMCharles C. Mann1:12:19

       So, I, you know, I- I just feel I have this, um, there's this great problem, um, in- in the- the- the flaws that you identify. All right, I would like to back up and say this is a problem sort of inherent to government and, um, you know, that, uh, that there is always, uh, you know, they're always protecting us against the edge case. And the edge case sets the rules and they're, and that ends up, um, you know, unless you're very careful, um, making it very difficult for everybody else.

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel1:12:47

       Yeah. Um, and the vaccines are a- a- a interesting example here because one of the things you talk about in the book, what are the possibilities with regards to climate change is that you can have some kind of geoengineering-

    6. CMCharles C. Mann1:12:58

       Right.

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel1:12:59

       ... and I think you mentioned in the book that well, as long as it could just be like if- even one country tries this, then they can effectively, for relatively modest amount of money, they could change the atmosphere. Um, but then I look at the failure of any government to approve human challenge trials-

    8. CMCharles C. Mann1:13:15

       Yes.

    9. DPDwarkesh Patel1:13:16

       ... something that seems like an obvious thing to do and would have, um, would have potentially saved hundreds of thousands of lives during COVID by speeding up the vaccine approval. Um, and then I wonder may- maybe the collaboration among, uh, uh, the international collaboration is strong enough that something like geoengineering actually couldn't happen because something like human challenge trials didn't happen.

    10. CMCharles C. Mann1:13:35

        So let me give a plug here for a- a fun novel by my friend, uh, Neal Stephenson, uh, called Termination Shock, which is about, uh, some rich person just do- just doing it (laughs) and, um, just doing eng- geoengineering and, um, the fact that it's actually not against the law, um, to fire off rockets into the stratosphere. (laughs)

    11. DPDwarkesh Patel1:13:55

        (laughs)

    12. CMCharles C. Mann1:13:55

        Uh, in- in his case, it's a giant gun that shoots, uh, shoots shells into the, uh, full of sulfur into the upper atmosphere. Um, and I guess the- the question is what time scale do you think is appropriate for- for, um, all- all- all this? I feel quite confident that there will be, um, geoengineering trials, um, within the next 10 years. Uh, is that fast enough?Um, you know, that's, that's a real j- uh, judgment call. I think people like David Keith and the other advocates, uh, for geoengineering would have said it should have happened already, and that's way, way too slow. People who are, you know, super anxious, uh, uh, about moral hazard and the precautionary principle would say that's way, way too fast. So you have these different, um, uh, constituencies. So it'd be, it's, it's hard for me to think off the top of my head of an example where these regulatory ac- agencies have actually totally throttled something, um, in a long-lasting way, as opposed to delaying it for 10 years. And 10 years is not, not... I don't, I don't mean to imply that that's nothing. Um, but, uh, but really killing off something, is there an example? If you can think of a, of a thing that was killed off-

    13. DPDwarkesh Patel1:15:03

        Uh, nuclear?

    14. CMCharles C. Mann1:15:04

        Well, with that-

    15. DPDwarkesh Patel1:15:05

        I mean, it, it's very dependent on where you think, uh, wh- where you think it would have been otherwise. Like, I've heard people say maybe it was, it was just bound to be at this state, but...

    16. CMCharles C. Mann1:15:12

        Yeah. I think in that case, um, that was a very, uh, successful case of, um, uh, you know, as far as I can tell, of regulatory capture, in which, um, the opponents of the, um, of, of the technology successfully, um, created, uh, this crazy... So, the, the, one of the weird things about nuclear stuff, this isn't, this is not actually in the book. I actually wrote a whole long section about it in the book and I cut it out 'cause it was, felt like it was just too much in the weeds. Um, if you have, um, a coal plant, uh, they have environmental rules. And the rules are based, based on a threshold principle, that they, you, you set a safe threshold for the emission of particulates and, you know, o- o- other things. Um, and as long as you're below that threshold, you're fine. Nuclear power has, um, a thing for its main type of, you know, quote, "Pollution," which is radiation. It, they, it's called the linear no-threshold model, and what it says is that you have to reduce the radiation to the maximum extent practicable, you know? And that is set by essentially, um, you know, if, if your nuclear power is way cheaper than coal power, which it is, um, that means you have more profit, so that you can spend more money (laughs) -

    17. DPDwarkesh Patel1:16:32

        Yeah.

    18. CMCharles C. Mann1:16:32

        ... on, on reducing it.

    19. DPDwarkesh Patel1:16:33

        Right.

    20. CMCharles C. Mann1:16:33

        And so you're, you're, you know, you're going ever further in the, on the road to diminishing return. So you have a completely different regulatory standard, um, for nuclear, and I'm talking about this country, um, than you, than you do for coal. And so you have this bizarre fact that coal power plants emit more radiation than nuclear plant plants do-

    21. DPDwarkesh Patel1:16:50

        (laughs)

    22. CMCharles C. Mann1:16:50

        ... because of the residual radiation in the coal that's dug up from underneath the earth.

Episode duration: 1:32:29