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What Now? With Trevor NoahMaking Bureaucracies Sexier with Yuval Noah Harari | What Now? with Trevor Noah Podcast
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80 min read · 15,992 words- 0:00 – 4:55
From Sapiens to Nexus: Bad Information, Not Bad Human Nature
- TNTrevor Noah
My favorite thing that, that Forbes does-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... is they will write an article about a billionaire who has lost money.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hm.
- TNTrevor Noah
And the story will always, like, lament them. You know?
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
It'll be like, "The misfortunes of Jeff Bezos."
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
And they'll be like, "Carlos Slim used to be one of the richest men in the world. Now he languishes in 15th spot."
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs] Hm.
- TNTrevor Noah
I do think that's a, that's the difficulty of being human-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hm
- TNTrevor Noah
... is that some of our progress is the fact that we are never satisfied.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Some of our progress lies in the fact that we're always yearning for more, and then the downside becomes that we create a false floor. You're listening to What Now?, the podcast where I chat to interesting people about the conversations taking over our world. And this week, ooh, what an interesting conversation. Joining myself and Christiana in studio is Yuval Noah Harari. If you've heard of Sapiens, you know who Yuval is. That was the book that completely changed people's ideas of how we organize society and why humans have the power we do. Well, his new book, Nexus, is just as contentious. It focuses on a possible answer to what makes society work and what could break it completely. The rise of AI, the war in the Middle East, the breakdown in communication between politicians and the people. In this episode, we discuss it all. As I often say, the only thing I love more than peeling back the layers of a story is doing it with my favorite thinkers, and Yuval is indeed one of my favorite thinkers. Whether you agree with him on everything or not, it's definitely gonna set your brain on fire. [upbeat music] This is What Now? With Trevor Noah. [upbeat music] Yuval, from, uh, one Noah to another Noah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Welcome to the podcast.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Thank you. It's really good to be here.
- TNTrevor Noah
I, one of the reasons I'm so excited to chat to you is because I feel like, and I could be wrong, I feel like you may be one of the few people I know in the world who have more controversial ideas than my friend Christiana here.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Like, I feel like-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
We will see. Yeah. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
I feel like the two of you have these i- these ideas that, that challenge how people perceive reality and, and, and how they think about our existence on this planet. Um, your book Sapiens, I mean, is, is the perfect example of that. And I guess maybe that- that's, you know, the perfect place to think about your new book or, you know, in, in relation to Sapiens. If Sapiens was a conversation that helped us understand how humans dominated or got to the position of power that we got to as a species, it feels like Nexus is a conversation about the networks and the information that has gotten us there, and the way-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hm
- TNTrevor Noah
... that it could end us all. Uh, am I understanding it right? Or, or what, what are you hoping to achieve with Nexus that, that Sapiens maybe laid the groundwork for?
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah, Nexus basically begins where Sapiens ends, and the key question that, that starts Nexus is, "If humans are so smart, why are we so stupid?"
- TNTrevor Noah
Hm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Like, we've taken over the world, we've reached the moon, we can split the atom, we can decipher DNA, and yet we are on the verge of destroying ourselves and much of the ecological system.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- 4:55 – 12:29
Information Is Not Truth: Maps, Reality and Democracy
- YHYuval Noah Harari
But then who gave these few individuals so much power? Again, if you think about the classic examples from, from history, if you think about Nazism and Hitler-
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... so already it was Hitler's fault. But how did Hitler gain so much power? If you just put ... If you think about some of the most powerful individuals today in the world, if you just put them alone in the forest, they have no power. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Right. If a Hitler-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
So-
- TNTrevor Noah
... is alone in the forest, then-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah, if a Putin is alone in, in the forest, he has no power.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
The question is, how does he get millions of people who they don't even know him personally. It's not his family. They are not his close friends. You have millions of people who never met him in his, in, in their lives, and they are still willing to obey his orders and sometimes to risk and even sacrifice their lives, uh, because he says so. Um, again, it's not the, the power of an individual. It's, in a way, the power of a network and the power of a brand. Brands are stories.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
If you think about the Coca-Cola brand, so it's the story of Coca-Cola. You have the reality-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... of the drink, which is, you know, sugary water. Wow.
- TNTrevor Noah
That's one way to put it.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. [laughs]
- YHYuval Noah Harari
And, and, and, and then-
- TNTrevor Noah
As I said, controversial
- YHYuval Noah Harari
...
- TNTrevor Noah
Sugary water. Take that, Coca-Cola
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... w- with, with a little more flavor than-
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... just, just sugar. But then you have the story about it. If you drink, that's the story. Oh, it's, it's, it's youth and happiness-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... and fun and-
- TNTrevor Noah
Ah, friendship and connecting and-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah, and friendship and, you know, I mean ... And this is, you know, billions of dollars over tens of, of, of, of decades were invested to make this connection in our mind, and we react to the story in the mind and not to the actual chemistry of, of, of, of the drink.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
And it's the same with, with, with charismatic leaders or leaders in general. We react to the story that wa- was woven around them and not to the actuality of the person, which is often, uh, uh, very different from the story they tell about them, or is sometimes unknown.
- TNTrevor Noah
So then wait, let me, let me ask you this then. Th- th- there was a moment where I was reading your book, and it felt like for a second Sapiens had given us this inflated sense of achievement, and it's almost like with Nexus you've come to steal it away from us-
- 12:29 – 15:48
The AI Arms Race and the Two Doors
- TNTrevor Noah
And there's a few things that you've sparked for me. Um, first, firstly, I can never tell this from page to page in your book and from sentence to sentence when you speak, would you regard yourself as a, as an optimist or a pessimist with how much history you consume-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
... and with how you look at the development of the world?
- YHYuval Noah Harari
I thought I'd be a realist. I mean, again, you know what-
- TNTrevor Noah
No, but, but I mean, if I'm to challenge you based on your book, there's, there's gotta be a, a slant in a certain direction. Like, do you, you know ...
- YHYuval Noah Harari
I, I'll tell you the main question.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. Okay.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
The, the really kind of most fundamental question. When you talk to the people who lead the AI revolution about-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... the potential dangers, they agree there are threats. When you tell them, "So we need to slow down to give humanity a chance to adapt. It's just a matter of pace, just slow down," everybody tells you the same thing. We would like to slow down, but we can't because we cannot trust our competitors.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, it's an arms race.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
It's an arms race. Our competitor is either here or certainly across the ocean. So the, the, the, the, the f- thing that really fuels the whole thing is not being able to trust human beings.
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm. Well-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
And then, but, but then you ask them, "But when you develop the AI, are you sure you'll be able to trust the AI?" And then they tell you, "Yes." So it's this paradox that we cannot trust the humans, but we think we can trust the machines-
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
.. more than we trust the humans. And in a way, I mean, there are also, th- there are some, some of them are thoughtful people, and th- they, they realize how, how kind of alarming and even ridiculous is what they are saying. But the, the, the key thing is they tell you, "You know, it's like you are trapped in a room, and one door, you open it for thousands of years, and there is a monster behind the door."
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
This is the inability to trust humans. And there is another r- uh, door, and there is a very high chance there is an even worse monster behind that door, but we never opened it, so we are not sure. So we are gambling the future of humanity on, on, on the chance, the small chance, that behind door number two is not a monster.
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
That we will be able to create AIs we can trust even though we are unable to trust the humans.
- CHChristiana
You know, Trevor asked you if you're an optimist or a pessimist.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- CHChristiana
And you kind of, like, dodged the question.
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah.
- CHChristiana
Uh, very well, very, in a very sophisticated manner.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
This was my answer.
- CHChristiana
I will say-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
This was my answer.
- CHChristiana
Something I kept-
- 15:48 – 24:11
Ignorance, Evil and Why Institutions Need Self-Correction
- CHChristiana
But can I ask, why do you think people are drawn to those type of stories? Ignorance aside, right? 'Cause sometimes you see these things that go viral online that, let's say, they're eating cats and dogs.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- CHChristiana
To me, I hear that and I'm like, "Of course they're not."
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm.
- CHChristiana
That's my, that's where I feel. But a lot of humans are like, "Maybe they are."
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hmm.
- CHChristiana
Why is that a compelling story? Why is that a compelling piece of information that the human will receive it? And there's enough people out there in the world right now-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hmm
- CHChristiana
... that believe that Haitians eat cats and dogs. Like, we like the salacious. We like the darkness.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hmm.
- CHChristiana
We like to believe that other people are inferior, and that's where for me I'm ... 'Cause I'm just straight up. I'm like Hobbes. I'm like, "These people are shit," right? [laughs]
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- CHChristiana
So, so-
- TNTrevor Noah
But, yeah, but what do you, what do you-
- CHChristiana
Yeah, what is it about humans that they are, they are, these, this information, they can be drawn into it?
- YHYuval Noah Harari
In a way, evil is easier to deal with, at least cognitively, than ignorance. Evil is kind of simple.
- CHChristiana
Hmm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
It's a simple story about the world. There is evil. There is good. Uh, uh, you can ... And, and even if you say humans have something evil inside them, but then there is this perfect good like there is Jesus.
- CHChristiana
Mm-hmm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
And we just need to trust in this perfect good being that will come to save us. The struggle of good and evil in general, it's a simple story about the world.
- CHChristiana
Mm-hmm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Uh, ignorance, on the other hand, it's not some kind of deep something in human nature. It's just the world is so complicated.
- TNTrevor Noah
But w-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
I mean, w- we are ignorant not because, again, uh, uh, we didn't go to school or something. It's simply because the reality is extremely, extremely complicated.
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
So it's, it's not, uh, so, and so there is no easy solution. It's not like, okay, let's send everybody to school, and they will not be ignorant.
- CHChristiana
Yeah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
People can have PhDs in whatever-
- CHChristiana
Yeah, for sure
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... and still be incredibly ignorant about so mu- so many things.
- 24:11 – 26:43
The Boring Middle Path: Bureaucracy and the Deep State
- TNTrevor Noah
So then could you, could you say that a lot of what you're arguing in this book and even in this conversation is there's no perfect
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Absolutely. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
There is no, there is no infallible truth. There ... But what we should be striving toward or always l- seeking to exist within is a place where we are allowed to challenge and self-correct. Is, is that almost your-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... is that almost your metric for whether we're living in a healthy society and in a healthy information system?
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm-hmm. Yes. This is a kind of middle path between just blind conformity-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah ... and kind of this total rejection- Yeah ... total distrust of all institutions, which leads either to anarchy- Yeah ... or to dictatorship.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm-hmm. The middle path is that we ... Again, it's, and it's, it's, i- in a way, it's boring because it's bureaucratic. It's not heroic. And this is another theme that repeats itself in, in, in Nexus, the, the importance of bureaucracy as the foundation of large scale human societies and the difficulty people have with understanding bureaucracies.
- TNTrevor Noah
It's not sexy.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah. And, and th- and it's dangerous because people then don't understand how the world functions. They fall easy prey to conspiracy theories about the deep state and all that. You know, for me, the deep state is the sewage system.
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- YHYuval Noah Harari
When, you know, when people t-tell me, "Oh, the deep state," I immediately think about the sewage system, you know, this deep network of pipes and pumps and whoever knows what under our houses and neighborhoods and streets.
- TNTrevor Noah
That's your deep state.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
That's my deep state. Like, you go to the toilet, you do what you do.
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- YHYuval Noah Harari
You press the button, and it disappears into the deep state. [laughs] And again, it goes back to ignorance and evil. If a tax collector comes and take taxes from you, how do you know if it's Putin using your taxes to build a dacha for himself-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... or, or whatever, or if this money actually goes to, uh, uh, provide a, a, a pure drinking water-
- TNTrevor Noah
Right, the public good
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah ... for people on the other side of the country? How do you know? Yeah. You need to understand things like how the budget works. Like my taxes, they go to this collective fund, and then there is a budget, and they allocate it in a certain way. When was the last time you saw a Hollywood blockbuster about the budget?
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- YHYuval Noah Harari
I mean, how does the budget work?
- TNTrevor Noah
Don't go anywhere 'cause we got more What Now? after this. [upbeat music]
- 26:43 – 35:01
AI as an Agent, Not a Tool
- TNTrevor Noah
What seems like the most complicated aspect of the book, in a strange way to me, seems easier to navigate because it contains more truths that we agree on, and, and that is AI.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
You know, w- when I, when I looked at the chapters of your book, I thought, "Oh, yeah, information. That's gonna be the quick part of the book."
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
I'll read through that, and then I-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... you know, and then I'll jump on, and then we talk about the past and empires and dictatorships. Oh, that's gonna be ... AI's gonna be difficult. I, I found it to be the opposite.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
And even in, in my anecdotal conversations with people, I have found that the, the, the discussions around AI share many more truths. So, so let's, let's, let's jump into AI and sort of work our way backwards-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Okay
- TNTrevor Noah
... through some of, through some of these ideas.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
You know, I, I don't know if you keep up with yourself online as a person.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
But your face now in, let's say, especially since the release of this book, has sort of become synonymous with being anti-AI.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
You know, they go, "Yuval," and I ... Like, if I type your name into Google, I go, "Yuval Noah," and then it's like, "AI's gonna kill the world. AI's gonna destroy us."
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
"AI's gonna take ..." Like, how, how did you develop your opinions on AI, and are they the ones that we're actually seeing online, or are those flattened ideas of you?
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Uh, flattened as, as usual. I, I think, first of all, that AI can have tremendous, uh, positive benefits for humanity. Otherwise, people would not develop it. Um, it can improve healthcare. It can help us fight climate change. It can, you know, d- all, all this talk about autonomous, uh, vehicles. Every year, more than one million people are killed in car accidents. Most of these accidents are because of human errors, like drinking alcohol and driving or falling asleep at the wheel, and autonomous vehicles are likely to save a million people every year. So there is enormous positive potential. Personally, I don't talk much about the positive potential because there are enough other people, uh, that do it. I just say there are also dangers. There are also threats that we need to take into account, uh, in order to make wiser decisions about how to develop this technology, and the most important thing to understand about AI is that this is the first technology in history which is not a tool. It's an agent.
- TNTrevor Noah
Let's, let's dig more into that because y- y- you write that in, you know, that's one of the lines that stuck out to me in the book.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah, yeah, because there is so-
- TNTrevor Noah
And I think it might be one of the most highlighted parts as well for many other people.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
A- absolutely, because there is so much hype around it that now is AI, especially now in the market, everybody wants to, to, to claim that what they are doing is AI.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. [laughs]
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Because then you get investments, and then the ... So not every machine is an AI. Not even every automatic machine is an AI. If you think about something like a coffee machine, so if you have a coffee machine that automatically makes coffee, like you press the button, and it makes you an espresso cup, this is not AI. It's just an automatic machine. What is AI? AI is defined by the ability to learn by itself, change by itself, and make decisions and invent new ideas by itself. So in the case of a coffee machine, it becomes an AI if as you approach the machine, before you press a single button, the machine tells you, "Hey." I know you. I've been monitoring you and many other people for weeks and months now. Based on everything I know about you and your patterns and the time of day it is and your facial expression, I predict that you probably want an espresso with one, uh, a spoon of sugar.
- CHChristiana
Yuval, you're selling AI to me right now [laughs] .
- YHYuval Noah Harari
And I took-
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- YHYuval Noah Harari
And I took-
- 35:01 – 40:44
Biased and Alien Intelligence: The AlphaGo Lesson
- TNTrevor Noah
So now coming back to, coming back to Nexus and your experience of information and networks, would you say that that might be the fundamental flaw of AI, is that we are teaching something to be what we hope will be superior to us-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm
- TNTrevor Noah
... but it is fundamentally based on us, and that contains all of our flaws?
- YHYuval Noah Harari
That's one danger. And you also have the opposite danger, that we are creating something totally alien. I mean, for me when I think about the acronym AI, traditionally it's artificial intelligence.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
But I think it's better to think about it as alien intelligence. Alien not in the sense that it's coming from outer space.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- CHChristiana
Mm. Yeah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
It's not. Alien, it's, it's fundamentally different from how humans process information and make decisions and, and, and invent ideas. Artificial gives you the kind of feeling, oh, th- this is just an artifact. We, we control it.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- CHChristiana
Mm-hmm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
But with each passing year, AI is becoming less artificial and more alien. Uh, again, to, to give you a, a famous example, one of the key moments in the AI revolution was the victory of AlphaGo-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yes
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... over Lee Sedol. In the game of Go. Yeah. I mean, the US Go is not very big, but in East Asia Go, you know, it's, it's, it's a strategy game invented in ancient China more than 2,000 years ago, which has been considered one of the basic kind of arts that any civilized person in East Asia should know how to play. And over ... It's much more complex than chess, and this is why people thought that even after, you know, Deep Blue defeated Kasparov in the late '90s, it's said computers will never manage to do it in Go. It's a different re- uh, re- level of complexity. Over 2,000 years, tens of millions of people played Go. Entire schools of thought were formulated around how to play Go, different f- strategies which were seen as a kind of metaphor for how to live life.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yes.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And how to act in, in the real world. And then AlphaGo came along and smashed the human champion Le- Lee Sedol. But the amazing thing was how it did it. The strategy that AlphaGo deployed in, in their game in 2016, it stunned the Go experts, uh, because it was totally different from anything humans thought about in more than 2,000 years. When first AlphaGo deployed the strategy, the expert says, "Ah, such a stupid computer, such a- Mm ... an idiot's mistake." And it proved to be brilliant, and it changed the way Go is played even by humans today. Yeah. And this is now likely to happen in much more consequential fields than Go. Um, and again, it could be good. It could be bad. Before we get into the discussion is it good or bad, just we need to understand it's alien. I mean, we are going to see, uh, music. We are going to, to hear music. We are going to see financial devices. We are going perhaps to encounter religions that emanate from a kind of intelligence that analyzes the world and makes decisions in a really, really different way than us.
- TNTrevor Noah
Is that ... Not necessarily ... Let's, let's remove good or bad for a second. But if we, if we analyze this, this world that you're speaking about, isn't that fundamentally what innovation is? And I, I say this cautiously.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
But, but when I think about many of the things you're saying, let's take AI out of it. I think of every time in human history someone has thought of something that was completely paradoxical to the, the, the, the status quo. I think of times when people said, "We can fly," and people said, "You're crazy."
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs] Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
You know, when, when someone said, "Hey, instead of leeches, maybe we could, we could draw people's blood out of them," they said, "You're a witch." There were these individuals who thought to themselves, "Well, what if we didn't do it like this?"
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm.
- TNTrevor Noah
And they, they were given all of these labels. You know, when, when you look at AlphaGo, one of the things I really loved about that story was Lee Sedol in particular, right? Lee Sedol is the greatest. He's ... You know what they said? They said he's the Roger Federer of, of Go. But I ... Even more.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
He's like he's the, the Jordan and Federer combined.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
No one could beat him in Go. And when you listen to his story, he's this young boy, comes from an island, and, and he comes to the city, and he starts playing Go. And he's religiously there every single day. He plays for hours and hours. And his teacher speaks about him emphatically saying he didn't just play the game as if it was about winning or losing.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm.
- TNTrevor Noah
He played it as if it was a way to create new expressions of yourself. And when Lee Sedol loses to Go, apart from his ego and him saying, "I'm sorry I lost, and I, I was arrogant," and all these things, one of the most beautiful moments for me in that story was when he says, "It has inspired me-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm
- 40:44 – 44:50
Lessons from the Industrial Revolution for an AI Society
- YHYuval Noah Harari
I, I think it's, it's ... Really, it's a question of pace, of, of time. That- that's it. It, it, it's time, that we need time to adapt. And our greatest problem right now-
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... is that the AI, it moves at a co- at an, at an alien speed. And we just ... Uh, my fear is that we ... Yes, we can adapt. What we don't have ... It will not give us enough time to adapt. When you look at history, new ideas and new technologies, uh, I, I hear it often when people say, "You know, every time there is a new invention, the printing press-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yes, yes.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... the s-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
The steam engine. Yeah. You have all these doomsday scenario. And it's okay. I mean, steam engines have made our li- life better. But as a historian, I tell them, "That's not true. You're forgetting the transition period."
- TNTrevor Noah
Huh.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Uh, when new powerful technologies and inventions come, very often a lot of people suffer terribly because it takes time to adapt, and people don't know how to use the new technology as well. And if you think about, uh, the last big wave of inventions, the Industrial Revolution. So in the late 18th and early 19th century, and you have these doomsday scenario, and many of them came true. Not necessarily for the people who invented [laughs] the-
- CHChristiana
Yeah
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... these technologies, but for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Because, uh, when industry comes along in the 19th century, nobody knows how to build an industrial society because there are no blueprints, there are no examples in history. And people start coming up with some very dangerous ideas how to do it. The first one was imperialism, and they're saying, "You know, the only way to build an industrial society is to build an empire." They say agrarian societies based on agriculture, they can live from the local, uh, uh, uh, conditions.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Resources. Industry needs raw materials and industry needs markets. Now, if we build an industrial society without an empire, then our competitors might cut us off-
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... from the raw materials-
- CHChristiana
Mm-hmm
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... and markets, and we will collapse. And it took more than 100 years or 150 years until people said, "Actually, it was a very bad idea." And then you had, uh, uh, people like Lenin and Stalin telling people, "Um, um, the way to build an industrial society is to create a communist totalitarian regime. That's the only thing that will work." There is no communist dictatorship without electricity, radio, trains, telegraph. There were no communist dictatorships before the 19th century. It was an experiment in how to build an industrial society, and fascism was the same. But think about the cost of all these experiments.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- CHChristiana
Mm-hmm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
And this was just steam engines, like, uh, you know, g- glorified kettles. And now we have to do the same with AI. We have no idea how to build an AI-based society. If we need to go through another cycle of empires-
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... and totalitarian regimes and world wars in order to understand the, how to build an AI-based society, this is going to be hell. Maybe not for the people in Silicon Valley, but [laughs] for a lot of other people, uh, around the world. You're already seeing that after decades of convergence that, you know, the Industrial Revolution created this huge gap in, in power and abilities and prosperity between the few industrial power and the rest of the world.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
And for decades, you have countries like India, like South Africa, trying to kind of close the gap. And now when they are coming close to closing the gap, it's going to potentially reopen on a much, much bigger scale. Because again, you have a few countries who are leading the AI revolution and will have this immense power and wealth generated by AI. Are they going to share all that with all the world? Probably not.
- 44:50 – 53:18
Trust, Cynicism and Individualism in Everyday Life
- TNTrevor Noah
I w- I want us to move to, to, like, the personal side of this.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
And I wondered from, from your side ... You know, I've, I've seen you speaking about a, a broad range of topics. When you look at this in your personal life, you know, e- everyone out there can, you know, have these lofty conversations, but I think there's an overlap to how we speak to each other as people and how we engage with our family members, our coworkers, et cetera. How do we develop those networks to maintain the trust? Like, where does the trust get built-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... and where do you find it breaks in those information systems that are just between people? Before we go to nations and before we go to states, is, is there an overlap between these?
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Um, any ... Trust depends a lot on, on how we understand reality. W- what is our theory of human nature, basically? And, um, one of the things that is happening now in the world, which is very dangerous, is the spread of a very, very cynical view of human nature and human society, which basically says that all reality is just power. And the question to ask is not, is it true, but whose privileges are being served by what is being said?
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Uh, if you think like that, if you start with the assumption any human interaction is just a power struggle, if you are now saying something to me, I need to s- to find out, okay, whose interests are being served by it.
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
I immediately discount the fact that maybe you just think it's true. You're not making a power play on me. And, um, the thing is, this cynical view of the world is, is ... Uh, first of all, again, it's dangerous because it erodes trust in all institutions. And then one institution after the other, you don't believe anybody, and you think you're liberating yourself. You're actually handing society on a plate to a dictator. Because once people lose trust in all the institutions, again, the only thing that works is a dictatorship in this situation-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... which d- which doesn't need trust. It works on terror.
- CHChristiana
Mm-hmm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Very different, uh, uh, mechanism. So it's a dangerous view, and it's also wrong. Most human beings in most institutions, most journalists, scientists, politicians, whatever, uh, even if they pursue power and even if they have this kind ... Sometimes they manipulate people. Yeah, that- that's, that's also true. That's not the only thing about them. Um, and you start with a more charitable and generous view of other people. When they said something, even if I disagree with, um, it's not necessarily they are trying to manipulate me.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Maybe they really believe it, and maybe they have some good reasons to believe it.
- CHChristiana
Yuval, how do, how do people do this reframing? 'Cause what you're suggesting is a deeply radical idea, [laughs] which is just to give people the benefit of the doubt.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Of the doubt. [laughs]
- CHChristiana
Give people the benefit of the doubt-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
It shouldn't be radical. It should be-
- CHChristiana
And be, maybe be a bit compassionate with yourself in figuring out, like, what makes you tick, but-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah
- CHChristiana
... that is a very daunting prospect, just reframing that maybe the world is more good than ba- Like, you telling me that, I'm like, "I don't know about that." [laughs] I'm already, like, freezing up, but that's my ego-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hmm
- CHChristiana
... 'cause you're actually right. There's more good out there than bad.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
I mean, we wouldn't survive a day if it wasn't for that. I mean, again, this radical ... uh, uh, doubt that everybody's just out to manipulate me and to gain power. I mean, if this was true, I would not be alive. I mean, every day I'm alive because so many people are doing d- different things for me, from the people who manage the sewage system to the people who collect the garbage to the doctors who develop, uh, uh, m- medications and then take care of me. If I go around the world feeling I can't trust anybody-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... you're just fooling yourself. You're trusting people all the time. Like, you read some conspiracy theory on your smartphone and you say, "I don't trust anybody." You trust the people that made the smartphone-
- CHChristiana
Yeah
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... and the people who tell you the conspiracy theory. You constantly trust so many people. So just to acknowledge that, I think it's also very humbling because a lot of distrust, it comes from this, some kind of megalomania that I can do it all by myself.
- 53:18 – 56:23
Suffering, Perspective and Fragile Progress
- YHYuval Noah Harari
The problem is that, uh, there is a very long way to the bottom still. I mean, as bad as things are right now-
- TNTrevor Noah
Interesting. I like that.
- CHChristiana
Interesting. Tell me more about the bottom.
- TNTrevor Noah
No, I like the section.
- CHChristiana
Yeah. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Perspec- perspective.
- CHChristiana
Yeah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
As bad as things are right now, they can be far, far worse.
- CHChristiana
Yeah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Like, name the decade-
- CHChristiana
Yeah
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... in human history that, that you think was better. Was it, what, the 1950s? Was it the 1850s? When is your golden age?
- CHChristiana
400 years ago, before the transatlantic s- slave trade.
- TNTrevor Noah
You think it was better?
- CHChristiana
Yeah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
It was better.
- CHChristiana
Yeah, before they came with ships. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
It was better. [laughs]
- YHYuval Noah Harari
With, with, with kind of, like, half of children dying before reaching 18 from all these diseases.
- CHChristiana
That, that would be my point.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
I, but, but, but also-
- CHChristiana
Yeah, you're great. Yeah, you're right. You're right
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... and even if we just stick with the issue of slavery, there was slavery all over the world. I mean, slavery was not invented five hu- I mean, the, the specific, uh, uh, uh, type of slavery-
- TNTrevor Noah
Chattel slavery, yeah
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... that was, uh, uh, imposed by the European powers, yes. But, um, you had different kinds of slavery, some of them horrible, for centuries and thousands of years before in many different civilizations. So again, it doesn't belittle, uh, this particular type, but people are very aware of what they know, of what they suffer, and they discount the suffering they don't experience.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm. Mm-hmm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
And they also discount the good things that they have, and they just take for granted. Today, we have healthcare systems in most of the world much better than anything we saw before in history, and they are fragile. I mean, to give just one statistic, in the ... Still today, it's changing because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the crisis in the Middle East and so forth, but still, in the early 21st century, average government expenditure on the military was about 6%, 6 to 7%. Average government spe- expenditure on healthcare, I'm talking globally, all countries together, Sweden, Nigeria, everything together, uh, 10%. It's the first time in human history that governments spent considerably more on healthcare than on the military. It's amazing that governments spend more on healthcare, and my concern is that because people don't appreciate it, it's very fragile.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
It can go away like this. I look at my region of the world, the Middle East. I look at the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It can go away within ... In Russia today, more than 30% of government budget goes to the military. Nobody knows for sure because it's a big secret and so forth, but the, the, the Russian government is diverting money from schools, from hospitals, to tanks and, and missiles and drones. And this is likely to spread to, to more and more countries around the world. And people, like, if, if this continues, in 10 years, people will look back at now, and they would say they lived in paradise. They just didn't realize it.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right. [upbeat music] Don't go anywhere, 'cause we got more What Now? after this. [upbeat music]
- 56:23 – 59:54
A Monk's Lesson on Contentment and Our Shifting Floor
- TNTrevor Noah
One of my favorite lessons I learned was, was, um, was from a monk who said to me one day, I said to him like, "What do you think happiness is?" Or, and he said, he said, "I don't even talk about happiness. I think we're using the wrong word." He said, "I look for peace." Mm. He said, "I look for peace and contentment." And he said, "Sometimes in your life, just pause for a moment and ask yourself how many of the things you have now were the things that you wished for a decade ago." Mm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
Just pause and do that. Yeah. And he said, "What you'll be shocked to discover is the person that you cannot bear to have a conversation with today, that is your spouse, you dreamed one day that they would look your way in a bar." [laughs]
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
You dreamed and you yearned for the day that they would text you back. You know what I mean? Mm. Yeah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
That, that car that you now loathe because it has to be serviced, and you have to change the tires on- Yeah ... and you have to ... There was a time when you looked at it in a catalog, and you went, "That is my dream car." Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Those children where once you cried because you could not see the egg fertilized-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm
- TNTrevor Noah
... and because, you know, your, your, your partner couldn't get pregnant or you ... All of these things, th- there was a moment where ... And now you see them, and you, they're running through your living room. [laughs]
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
And you go, "I, I hate the fact that you were born." [laughs]
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
And it, and it's inter- it's difficult because I feel- Yeah ... like it is the gift and curse of being human because we keep adjusting that floor.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. And so to your point, I love what you're saying there because I, I think a lot of-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... a lot of what you do is that. It's like sometimes the gift and curse of our progress through time as humans is that it doesn't allow us to appreciate because now we've sort of minimized the time that it takes to get something. I wanna talk to you about, like, how we, how we can better find ourselves or how we can better position ourselves to question with compassion, to look back at history with a healthy dose of, of, of skepticism but also optimism. Mm-hmm. And, and stand in moments when we might lose the people around us. Like, you know, in doing the research around you, uh, I only knew you really through the books, and then I ... You know, I watched the videos you've done online, and I, I, I watch a bunch of other conversations. And one of the things I was surprised by was how there are two factions of people, and obviously not just two-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... who have very differing opinions on your role in Israel.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm. This is a really interesting one for me.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
And depending on how I searched your name, there were some people who said, "This man is a Zionist who wishes to see the destruction of the, um, the Palestinian people."
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
"And he's a tool of the Israeli government." But then if I searched your name in a different way, it said, "Yuval is one of the worst exports of Israel, and he's undermined Netanyahu's government, and he seeks to question and destroy, you know, the very validity of Israel and this idea and ..."
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
And I sat there just reading through all of this, and I was like, wow. It's, it, it felt strangely ironic that I was reading a book from you about how people can perceive the same thing in very different ways.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm. And, and, and I, I was wondering, because you, you, you handle it delicately, and I ... You know, it is-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm-hmm
- 59:54 – 1:08:36
Zionism, Two Peoples and the Facts on the Ground
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah. I, I, I try to, to, to, to rely on history, uh, to rely on, on the facts, on, on the evidence. Like for instance, th- this issue of Zionism. That for my experience, most people just don't understand what the word means. They, uh, when they equate Zionism with racism, they don't listen to what many Zionists tell, the, the, the word actually means or the ideology actually means. Zionism, as far as I know from my historical experience, is simply the national movement of the Jewish people, which is not inherently different from the national movement of Poles or of Palestinians or of Turks. Uh, Zionism basically says three things. Jews are not just individuals, they're also a people. The same way that Poles are not just individuals, they're also a Polish nation.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
The second thing it says is that, uh, uh, the Jewish nation, like other nations around the world, has a right to self-determination. Like, it would be strange that, you know, all nations have a right to self-determination except the Jewish nation. They don't get this, this right. Why? And then the third thing it says is that the Jewish people has a historical and cultural deep connection to the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, which is historically true. I mean, you find historical and archeological evidence of Jews living in this land going back about 3,000 years, and it's in all the spiritual writings and all the cultural traditions and so forth. That- that's just a fact. Now, none of this means that you need to deny the existence or the rights of the Palestinian people. At the same time, I would also admit, I would say I'm a Zionist. I think that the Jewish people has a right to self-determination.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
At the same time, there is a Palestinian people. It has a very deep cultural and historical connection to the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. It has a right to self-determination. Palestinians have as much right as Israelis to live secure and prosperous and dignified lives in, in the country of their birth. And then the question becomes, okay, so what do we do with these two facts? Which are both, as far as I con- I'm concerned, facts. There are 7 million Jews in this land. The vast majority of them were born there and have nowhere else to go. There are more than 7 million Palestinians in this land. They were born there. They have nowhere else to go. Both have, deserve the same rights. Now, what kind of political solution can we find? So some people would say, "Okay, one state." Some people say, "No, two states. Let, let's have confederacy with Jordan. Let's do this. Let's do that." But this is already kind of y- the, the other argument, the political argument.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
But, uh, the, the, the first step for me is simply to recognize the reality on the ground and don't deny half the reality. The fact that you accept the existence and the right of one people doesn't force you to deny the existence or the rights of, of the other people. Yes, it's complicated and it, it, it's complex, uh, but people can have, can hold two facts in, in their mind at the same time. Now, the war, really the deep seed of, of the terrible war is that, uh, I think both sides deny either the existence or the right to exist of, of the other side. And again, I'll say it about my own side, about Jews in Israel. Uh, many, if not most of them, either just deny that there is a Palestinian people. You would see many Jewish Israelis who would tell you, like, with a straight face, there are just, there is no such thing as a Palestinian people.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
They just deny their existence, or they would say, "Yes, they exist, but they don't have a right to be here because God gave us all the land." And you find people saying the kind of parallel things on the Palestinian side. They would just deny that there is any connection between Jews and this land, or that they would deny that they have a right. And as a historian, you know, people constantly argue about the past. But the one thing about the past is that the past is gone. Uh, you can have a huge argument about whether it was, uh, uh, um, rightful for, uh, uh, Jews to come to Israel, say, 100 years ago.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
That's 100 years ago.
- TNTrevor Noah
For the, for the British to section, yeah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah. Well, the, you have there now 7 million people. What do you want them to do? Where, where do you want them to go? And another thing is most people, again, they don't ... I mean, the, the, the history of every country is very complex. One of the things that I often hear people say in the States that have this idea that Israelis are basically European colonizers, and they don't realize that most Israelis are actually descendants of Middle Eastern Jews who were expelled from countries like Iraq, like Egypt, like Yemen, after 1948 in revenge for, for the Nakba.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
So yes, you had this element of Jews coming from Europe, and they were the main, the dominant group in the Jewish community u- up to 1948. But then after the war, you had Jewish communities living all over the Middle East, you know, for, for centuries-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... for thousands of years, and systematically expelled from their homeland in revenge, and now their descendants are the majority of the Jews in Israel. So I hear people, like my husband, his family comes from Egypt. Both his parents were born in Cairo. So when people, uh, uh, like sometimes tell him, "Oh, you should go back to Poland."
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- YHYuval Noah Harari
But I came from Egypt. What do you want from me? What Poland? [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
It's ... You, you know, when, when, when, when we talk about this, and I, I look at it through the lens of history, I like that you say that your books are not deterministic. They're asking questions of a time that was to try and help us understa- understand the time that is, and maybe what could be. And so I wonder, as a historian, you know, what I love is how you, how you talk about history And how where we're looking at the history from even shapes that, you know? So for many Palestinian people, they'll, they'll say like, "Well, as, as long as our time can see, this was the land we were on."
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
"And this changed because of the British."
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
And many people go, "No, the British created the original sin, and now we're living in that, and it's, you know, it's a terrible disaster because of it." And people go back and forth. As a South African, I know that I've looked at it through a specific type of lens, and I, I don't think of it through, only through the lens of blame, but I sometimes think more about, like, what the potential effects could be.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
You know? And, and I, I'll talk to, like, my Israeli friends, and I'll talk to, you know, even friends of mine who live in the region, whether it's like Qatar or Egypt or, um, you know, Saudi Arabia, et cetera. And what I found, and I, I'd love to know your opinion on this, using history maybe as a lens, is have we seen the potential conclusions for what this type of conflict could be, and why should we, why should we be wary of that? Like, why should-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... leaders want to find discourse? Why should they want to negotiate? Why should they want to find some sort of middle ground? Because things I've heard, and maybe you could disagree or agree, is, you know, some people in the region would say this conflict that is slowly inflaming more and more in front-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... of our eyes could eventually lead to the end of this Jewish state as we know it because we, 'cause we don't know where-
- 1:08:36 – 1:19:41
Seeing Reality: War, Fantasy and the Path to Peace
- YHYuval Noah Harari
if you're talking specifically about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... so again, o- on the one hand, uh, as a historian, my main message is don't try to save the past, try to save the present and the future.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
The people who were killed 100 years ago or a year ago, you cannot bring them back to life, but there are a lot of people who are alive right now, women, men, children, elderly, that will be dead in a month or in a year or in two years if we don't make the right decisions right now. And we should focus on those we can still save, and not on those who we can't save because it's, it's, it's the past.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
We can't save it. Um, and-
- TNTrevor Noah
Are, are there ex- Maybe I'll ask it to you this way.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Are there examples or moments in history where you've, you've, you've stumbled upon something that enabled leaders to find, even if it wasn't common ground, but a compromise in a time when people couldn't, and what was that key? Because I, I sometimes look at some of history and I go, "Wow, you know, what if the Israeli prime minister-"
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... wasn't shot when he was?
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
What would've happened today? You know, what if Ra- you know, Rabin had been a little more charming and charismatic when talking to-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
... Arafat?
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Would we have been where we are today? And so while, you know, you'll talk about these large networks and the we that we started speaking about, unfortunately, the we, as you said, elects people.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
And then those wes condense down into two mes, and those mes make decisions that really sometimes are just about the human ego and the human experience. And, and so I wonder if, like, have you stumbled on anything?
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
And I, I know I'm asking you not, not to solve it, but I'm just going, like, to go back to AlphaGo. What is that move?
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
You know? And I, I'm not gonna suggest AI right now.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs] No, no.
- TNTrevor Noah
I'm not trying to trick you, but I'm saying, what is that move that we think is impossible because nobody has played it? Or what inspired those moves in the past? Is there any insight into that? Was it people getting drunk?
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Was it-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
No. I think it's the opposite
- TNTrevor Noah
... a vision? What, what was it?
- 1:19:41 – 1:23:18
Truth, Attention and Taking Time to Sip
- YHYuval Noah Harari
so a- a- again, um, p- going back to what we discussed with this entire, uh, uh-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- YHYuval Noah Harari
... conversation, um, the reality is just very, very complex because you have to take into account all these different actors and all these different facts, and the tendency is constantly to try to make it simpler by focusing on just one aspect. And everybody, of course, chooses their favorite frame, which makes them seem, seem, seem the good guys. And part of this dance, again, between which we started with, between truth and reality, reality is, is, is, is vast, and you cannot make a one-to-one map of the whole of reality. The truth is about pointing at particular aspects of reality and kind of directing human attention towards these aspects of reality. And, and, and this is the big responsibility of academics and journalists and, and, and politicians. How do you do that in a responsible way?
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
And the problem here is that then what gets people, their attention, is not necessarily the truth.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Most information is, is not true.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, or nuanced even.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm. I think one of the things I, I've loved most about hearing you speak after reading your books is, I think it's, it's given me an, an, an additional way to process the information that you've, you've so eloquently put on the pages. And fundamental- fundamentally through all of these, I, I feel there's one common thread, and it applies to time and how we utilize that time in processing the information that we have. You know, if in some ways information is like water-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm
- TNTrevor Noah
... we need water to survive.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm.
- TNTrevor Noah
But if you give us too much water-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Or polluted water
- TNTrevor Noah
... we drown.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Yeah. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
You know? And so essentially what, what Nexus is arguing and what this book is really challenging all of us to do is to, in a world that does, tells us we don't have any of it, which I think sometimes is a fallacy, is to, like, take the time to sip, take the time to analyze, take the time to understand, question, challenge.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm.
- TNTrevor Noah
And I think through all of these, it's like, you know, everything you're saying, I, I, I see the threads between. You know, it's Israel, Palestine, I see the threads, the same threads of trust in the Cold War, the same threads of trust in, you know, Silicon Valley and AI and where are we putting that trust. The same trust between people, the same trust between institutions and individuals. And, uh, look, the one thing I love about your books is it doesn't solve anything.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Um, it's a fantastic way ... No, it's a fantastic way to understand many of the parts-
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Mm
- TNTrevor Noah
... of the world, and I genuinely think it's a, it's a wonderful instruction manual for, for us to look at how we perceive information and what it does. I mean, we could definitely talk to you for many, many more hours. But one thing I wanted to ask you is, when you look back on Sapiens, what's the one thing you wish you could have included that you didn't? Or which, what's the one thing you wish you could take out that you didn't?
- YHYuval Noah Harari
There, there are m- m- many things. Um-
- TNTrevor Noah
There's got to be one that bugs you all the time.
- YHYuval Noah Harari
Actually not. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, wow. Really?
- YHYuval Noah Harari
No. I mean, again, it's, um, um, it's-
- TNTrevor Noah
It's the past
Episode duration: 1:23:18
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Transcript of episode jO8ZLWYg71M
