Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics | Lex Fridman Podcast #360

... of radical, um, political movement, of which there will always be a lot in the country, has managed to do something that, um, radical movements are not supposed to be able to do in the US, which is they've managed to hijack institutions all across the country and hijack medical journals-

Yeah.

... and universities, and, you know, the ACLU, you know, saying all the, you know, activist organizations and nonprofits and many tech companies. And the way I view a liberal democracy is, it isn't. It is, is a bunch of these institutions that were, that were trial and error crafted over h- you know, hundreds of years, and they all rely on trust, public trust, and a certain kind of feeling of unity that, that actually is critical to a liberal democracy's functioning.

Mm-hmm.

And what I see this thing is, is as a parasite on that, that whose goal is, and I'm not saying each indi- by the way, each individual in this is, I don't think they're bad people. I think that it's, it's the ideology itself has the property of its goal is to tear apart the pretty delicate workings of the liberal democracy and shred the critical lines of trust.

The following is a conversation with Tim Urban, his second time on the podcast. He's the author and illustrator of the amazing blog called Wait But Why?, and is the author of a new book coming out tomorrow called What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies. We talk a lot about this book in this podcast, but you really do need to get it and experience it for yourself. It is a fearless, insightful, hilarious, and I think important book in this divisive time that we live in. The Kindle version, the audiobook, and the web version should be all available on day of publication. I should also mention that my face might be a bit more beat up than usual. I got hit in the chin, uh, pretty good since I've been getting back into, uh, training jujitsu, a sport I love very much, after recovering from an injury. So if you see marks on my face during these intros or conversations, you know that, uh, um, my life is in a pretty good place. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, dear friends, here's Tim Urban. You wrote an incredible book called What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies. In the beginning, you, uh, present this view of, uh, human history as a thousand-page book where each page is 250 years, and it's a brilliant visualization because almost nothing happens for most of it. So what blows your mind most about that visualization when you just sit back and think about it?

It's a boring book. So 950 pages, 95% of the book, hunter-gatherers kinda doing their thing. I'm sure there's, you know, there's some, there's obviously some major cognitive and advancements along the way and language, and I'm sure, you know, the bow and arrow comes around at some point, you know, so, so, so tiny things but it's like, oh, now we have 400 pages till the next thing. Then you get to page 950 and things start moving.