This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #449 with Graham Hancock.
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A topic I recently discussed with the archeologist Ed Barnhart. Let me say that Ed represents the kind of archeologist scholar I love talking to on the podcast, extremely knowledgeable, humble, open minded, and respectful in disagreement. I’ll do many more podcasts on history, including ancient history. Our distant past is full of mysteries, and I find it truly exciting to explore those mysteries with people both on the inside and the outside of the mainstream in the various disciplines involved. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Graham Hancock.
And then we have anatomically modern humans. And I think the earliest anatomically modern human skeletal remains are from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco and date to about 310,000 years ago. So the question is what were our ancestors doing after that? And I think we can include the Neanderthals and the Denisovans in that general picture. And why did it take so long? This is one of the puzzles, one of the questions that bother me. Why did it take so long? When we have creatures who are physically identical to us, we cannot actually weigh and measure their brains. But from the work that’s been done on the crania, it looks like they had the same brains that we do with the same wiring. So if we’ve been around for 300,000 plus years at least, and if ultimately in our future was the process to create civilization or civilizations, why didn’t it happen sooner?
Why did it take so long? Why was it such a long time? Even the story of anatomically modern humans has kept on changing. I remember a time when it was said that there hadn’t been anatomically modern humans before 50,000 years ago, and then it became 196,000 years ago with the findings in Ethiopia and then 310,000 years ago. There’s a lot of missing pieces in the puzzle there. But the big question for me in that timeline is why didn’t we do it sooner? Why did it take so long? Why did we wait until after 12,000 years ago, really after 10,000 years ago to start seeing what are selected as the beginnings of civilization in places like Turkey, for example. And then there’s a relatively slow process of adopting agriculture. And by 6,000 years ago, we see ancient Sumer emerging as a civilization. And we’re then in the pre-dynastic period in ancient Egypt as well 6,000 years ago, beginning to see definite signs of what will become the dynastic civilization of Egypt about 5,000 years ago.
And interestingly round about the same time, you have the Indus Valley civilization popping up out of nowhere. And by the way, the Indus Valley civilization was a lost civilization until the 1920s when railway workers accidentally stumbled across some ruins. I’ve been to Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, and these are extraordinarily beautifully centrally planned cities. Clearly they’re the work of an already sophisticated civilization. One of the things that strikes me about the Indus Valley Civilization is that we find a steatite seal of an individual seated in a recognizable yoga posture. And that seal is 5,000 years old, and the yoga posture is Mulabandhasana, which involves a real contortion of the ankles and twisting the feet back. It’s an advanced yoga posture. So there it is, 5,000 years ago. And that then raises the question, well, how long did yoga take to get to that place when it was already so advanced 5,000 years ago?
What’s the background to this? China, the Yellow River Civilization again, it’s around about the same period, five to 6,000 years ago. You get these first signs of something happening. So it’s very odd that all around the world we have this sudden upsurge of civilization about 6,000 years ago, preceded by what seems like a natural evolutionary process that would lead to a civilization. And yet certain ideas being carried down and manifested and expressed in many of these different civilizations. I just find that that whole idea very puzzling and very disturbing, especially when I look at this radical break that takes place in not just the human story, but the story of all life on Earth, which was the last great cataclysm that the Earth went through, which was the Younger Dryas event. It was an extinction level event. That’s when all the great megafauna of the Ice Age went extinct.
It’s after that. It’s after event that we start seeing this what had taken to be the beginnings of the first gradual steps towards civilization, we come out of the upper Paleolithic as it’s defined the end of the old Stone Age and into the Neolithic. And that’s when the wheels are supposedly set in motion to start civilization rolling. But what happened before that and why did that suddenly happen then? And I can’t help feeling, and I’ve felt this for a very long while, that there are major missing pieces in our story. It’s often said that I’m claiming to have proved that there was an advanced lost civilization in the Ice Age. And I am not claiming to have proved that. That is a hypothesis that I’m putting forward to answer some of the questions that I have about prehistory. And I think it’s worthwhile to inquire into those possibilities because the Younger Dryas event was a massive global cataclysm, whatever caused it.
And it’s strange that just after it we start seeing these first signs.
I really don’t have much more to say about it. And I turned in another direction and I wrote a book called Supernatural Meetings With the Ancient Teachers of Mankind recently retitled Visionary. And that was about the role of fundamentally about the role of psychedelics in the evolution of human culture. And I didn’t think that I would go back to the lost civilization issue, but Göbekli Tepe in Turkey kept on forcing itself upon me the more and more discoveries there, the 11,600 year date from Enclosure D, which is the two largest megalithic pillars. And I reached a point where I realized I have to get back in the water and I have to investigate this again. And Göbekli Tepe was a game changer, but I think it’s a game changer for everything because Göbekli Tepe, the extraordinary nature of it. We are looking at a major megalithic site, which is at least five and a half thousand years older than Ġgantija in Malta, which was previously considered to be the oldest megalithic site in the world.
And this led of course to a huge amount of interest and attention, both from the Turkish government who see the potential tourism potential of having the world’s oldest megalithic site and from archeologists. And this in turn has led to exploration and excavation throughout the region. And what they’re finding throughout that whole region around Göbekli Tepe and going down into Syria and further down into the Jordan Valley as far as Jericho and even across a bit of the Mediterranean into Cyprus, is what Turkish archeologists are now calling the Taş Tepeler civilization. They’re calling it a civilization, the Stone Hills Civilization with very definite identifying characteristics, semi-subterranean circular structures, the use of T-shaped megalithic pillars, sometimes not anywhere near as big as those at Göbekli Tepe. It’s clear that Göbekli Tepe now was not the beginning of this process. It was actually in a way, the end of this process.
It was the summation of everything that Stone Hills Civilization had achieved. But what is becoming clear is that this is a period between before the foundation of Göbekli Tepe, as far as we know, that date of 11,600 years ago is the oldest date for Göbekli Tepe. But of course there’s a lot of Göbekli Tepe still underground, so we can’t say for sure that that’s the oldest, but it’s the oldest so far excavated. What we’re seeing is that in that whole region around there, there was something was in motion and it began to go into motion round about the beginning of the Younger Dryas. And this is where these two dates are really important. The Younger Dryas, I’ll round the figures off, begins around 12,800 years ago, and it ends around 11,600 years ago.
So Göbekli Tepe’s construction date, if it is 11,600 years ago, if they don’t find older materials, marks the end of the Younger Dryas, but the beginning of the Younger Dryas, we are already seeing the stirrings of the kind of culture that manifests in full form at Göbekli Tepe and after the construction of Göbekli Tepe, in fact, even during the construction of Göbekli Tepe, we see agriculture beginning to be adopted. The people who created Göbekli Tepe were all hunter-foragers at the beginning. But by the time Göbekli Tepe was finished, and it was definitely deliberately finished, closed off, closed down, deliberately buried, covered with earth, covered with rubble, and then topped off with a hill, which is why Göbekli Tepe is called what it is, Göbekli Tepe means pot-bellied hill or the hill of the navel. For a long time, Göbekli Tepe was thought to be just a hill that looked a bit like a pot belly.
And then inside them you have pairs of megalithic pillars. And the archetypal part of that site is Enclosure D, which contains the two largest upright megaliths, about 18 feet tall and reckoned to weigh somewhere in the range of 20 tons, if I have my memory correct, they’re substantial hefty pieces of stone. It isn’t some kind of extraordinary feat to create a 20 foot tall or 20 ton megalith, nor is it an extraordinary feat to move it. There’s nothing magical or really weird about that. Human beings can do that and always have, besides the quarry for the megaliths is right there. It’s within 200 meters of the main enclosures. So that’s not a mystery, but the mystery is, the mystery is why suddenly this new form of architecture, this massive, massive megalithic pillars appear, and the pillars, one of the things that interests me about the pillars is their alignment.
And there is good work that’s been done, which suggests that Enclosure D aligns to the rising of the star Sirius. And the rising points of the star Sirius appear to be mapped by the other enclosures, which are all oriented in slightly different directions. It was the work entirely of hunter-foragers. But by the time Göbekli Tepe was completed, agriculture was being introduced and was taking place there. Now you asked how Göbekli Tepe was found. The answer to that is that there was a survey of that pot-bellied hill in the 1960s by some American archeologists, and they were looking absolutely looking for Stone Age material, for material from the Paleolithic. And they had found some Paleolithic flints, upper Paleolithic flints around there. So it looked like a good place to look. But then they noticed sticking out of the side of the hill, some very finely cut stone, bits of very large and very finely cut stone.
And looking at that, the workmanship was so good that those archeologists were confident that it had nothing to do with the Stone Age, and they thought they were looking at perhaps some Byzantine remains, and they abandoned the site and never looked at it further. And it wasn’t until the German Archaeological Institute got involved, and particularly Klaus Schmidt, who I think was a genius, had real insight into this and started to dig at Göbekli Tepe that they’d realized what they’d found, that they’d found potentially the oldest megalithic site in the world. And they’d found it at a place where agriculture, according to the established historical timeline, that’s where agriculture, at any rate in Europe and Western Asia begins. It begins in Anatolia, in Turkey, and then it gradually disseminates westward from there.
But agriculture has taken a firm root by then. Actually, one other thing, I’ll just say this in passing. When I talk about a lost civilization introducing ideas to people, I’m often accused of stealing credit from the indigenous people who had those ideas in the first place. So I do find it slightly hypocritical that archeology fully accepts that the idea of agriculture was introduced to Western Europe from Turkey, and that Western Europeans didn’t invent agriculture. It was absolutely introduced by Anatolian farmers who traveled west. So the notion of dissemination of ideas perhaps shouldn’t be so annoying to archeologists as it is.
There’s no doubt that human beings, our deep origins are in Africa. But then as you rightly say, there were these very early migrations out of Africa by species that are likely ancestral to anatomically modern humans, including definitely Homo erectus and the astonishingly distant travels that they undertook. Yes, I think there is an urge to explore in all of humanity. I think there is an urge to find out what’s around the next corner, what’s over the brow of the next hill. And I think that goes very deep into human character. And I think it was being manifested in those early adventures of people who left Africa and traveled all around the world and then settling in different parts of the world. I think a lot of anatomically modern human evolution took place outside Africa as well, not only in Africa.
They don’t necessarily occur at the same time. And this is where I think that archeology is perhaps desperately needing a history of ideas as well as just a history of things. Because an idea can manifest again and again throughout the human story. So there are particular issues, for example, the notion of the afterlife, destiny of the soul, what happens to us when we die? And believe me, when you reach my age, that’s something you do think about what happens. I used to feel immortal when I was in my forties, but now that I’m 74, I definitely know that I’m not. Well, it would be natural for human beings all around the world to have that same feeling, that same idea. But why would they all decide that what happens to the soul after death is that it makes a leap to the heavens, to the Milky Way, that it makes a journey along the Milky Way, that there it is confronted by challenges, by monsters, by closed gates.
The course of the life that that person has lived will determine their destiny in that afterlife journey. And this idea, the path of souls, the Milky Way is called the path of souls. It’s very strongly found in the Americas right from South America through Mexico, through into North America. But it’s also found in ancient Egypt, in ancient India, in ancient Mesopotamia, the same idea. And I don’t feel that that can be a coincidence. I feel that what we are looking at is an inheritance of an idea, a legacy that’s been passed down from a remote common source to cultures all around the world, and that has taken on a life of its own within those cultures. So the remote common source would explain both the similarities and the differences in the expression of these ideas. The other thing, very puzzling thing, is the sequence of numbers that are a result of the precession of the equinoxes.
At least I think that’s the best theory to explain them. Here, I think it’s important to pay tribute to the work of Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend. Giorgio de Santillana was professor of history of science actually at MIT, where you are based, back in the sixties. And Hertha von Dechend was professor of the history of science at Frankfurt University, and they wrote an immense book in the 1960s called Hamlet’s Mill, and Hamlet’s Mill differs very strongly from established opinion on the issue of the phenomenon of precession. And I’ll explain what precession is in a moment. Generally, it’s held that it was the Greeks who discovered the precession and the dating on that is put back not very far, maybe 2,300 years ago or so. Santillana and von Dechend are pointing out that knowledge of precession is much, much older than that, thousands of years older than that.
And they do actually trace it. I think I’m quoting them pretty much correctly to some almost unbelievable ancestor civilization. Reading that book was one of the several reasons that I got into this mystery in the first place. Okay, now, the precession of the equinoxes, to give it its full name, results from the fact that our planet is the viewing platform from which we observe the stars. And our planet, of course, is rotating on its own axis at roughly a thousand miles an hour at the equator. But what’s less obvious is that it’s also wobbling on its axis. So if you imagine the extended North Pole of the earth pointing up at the sky in our time, it’s pointing at the star Polaris, and that is our pole star. But Polaris has not always been the pole star precisely because of this wobble on the axis of the Earth.
Other stars have occupied the pole position, and sometimes the extended North Pole of the earth points at empty space. There is no pole star. That’s one of the obvious results of the wobble on the Earth’s axis. The other one is that there are 12 well-known constellations in our time, the 12 constellations of the zodiac that lie along what is referred to as the path of the sun. The earth is orbiting the sun, and we are seeing what’s behind it, what’s in direct line with the sun in our view. And the zodiacal constellations all lie along the path of the sun. So at different times of the year, the sun will rise against the background of a particular zodiacal constellation. Today we live in the age of Pisces, and it’s definitely not an accident that the early Christians used the fish as their symbol. This is another area where I differ from archeology.
Think the constellations of the zodiac were recognized as such much earlier than we suppose. Anyway, to get to the point, the key marker of the year, certainly in the northern hemisphere, was the spring equinox. The question was, what constellation is rising behind the sun? What constellation is housing the sun at dawn on the spring equinox? Right now it’s Pisces. In another 150 years or so, it’ll be Aquarius. We do live in the dawning of the age of Aquarius. Back in the time of the late ancient Egyptians, it was Aries going back to the time of Ramesses or before. Before that it was Taurus and so on and so forth. It’s backwards through the zodiac until 12,500 years ago. You come to the age of Leo when the constellation of Leo houses the sun on the spring equinox. Now this process unfolds very, very, very, very slowly, the whole cycle, and it is a cycle.
It repeats itself roughly every 26,000 years. Put a more exact figure on it, 25,920 years. That may be a convention. Some scholars would say it was a bit less than that, a bit more. But you’re talking fractions. It’s in that area, 25,920 years. And to observe it, you really need more than one human lifetime because it unfolds very, very slowly at a rate of one degree every 72 years. And the parallel that I often give is hold your finger up to the horizon, the distant horizon. The movement in one lifetime, in a period of 72 years is about the width of your finger. It’s not impossible to notice in a lifetime, but it’s difficult. You’ve got to pass it on. And what seems to have happened is that some ancient culture, the culture that Santillana and von Dechend call some almost unbelievable ancestor culture, worked out the entire process of precession and selected the key numbers of precession, of which the most important number, the governing number is the number 72. But we also have numbers related to the number 72. 72 plus 36 is 108, 108 divided by two.
And at Angkor, in Cambodia, for example, you have the bridge to Angkor Thom. And on that bridge you have figures on both sides, sculpted figures, which are holding the body of a serpent. That serpent is Vasuki, and what they’re doing is they’re churning the milky ocean. It’s the same metaphor of churning and turning that’s defined in the story of Hamlet’s Mill, of Amlodhi’s mill. There are 54 on each side. 54 plus 54 is 108. 108 is 72 plus 36. It’s a precessional number according to the work that Santillana and von Dechend did.
And the fascination with this numbers system and its discovery all around the world is one of the puzzles that intrigue me. And suggest to me that we are looking at ancestral knowledge that was passed down, and probably was passed down from a specific single common source at one time, but then was spread out very widely around the world.
And that’s one of the reasons why I’m really confident that the constellations that we now recognize as the constellations of the zodiac were recognized much earlier, because it’s hard to miss when you pay attention to the sky, that the sun over the course of the solar year is month by month rising against the background of different constellations. And then there’s a much longer process, the process of precession, which takes that journey backwards and where we have a period of 2,160 years for each sign of the zodiac.
I think it would’ve been hard for the ancients to have missed that. They might not have identified the constellations in exactly the same way we do today. That may well be a Babylonian or Greek convention, but that the constellations were there I think was very clear. And that they were special constellations, unlike other ones higher up in the sky which were not on the path of the sun, that people paid attention to.
Actually, there’s a nice story from Ancient Egypt about the god Thoth, the god of wisdom, who is very proud of himself because he has invented writing. “Look at this gift,” he says to a mythical pharaoh of that time, “Look at the gift that I’m giving humanity, writing. This is a wonderful thing. It’ll enable you to preserve so much that you would otherwise lose.” And the pharaoh in this story replies to him, “No, you have not given us a wonderful gift. You have destroyed the art of memory. We will forget everything. Words will roam free around the world, not accompanied by any wise advice to set them into context.” And actually that’s a very interesting point. And we do know that cultures that still do have oral traditions are able to preserve information for very long periods of time.
One thing I think is clear in any time, in any period of history, is human beings love stories. We love great stories. And one way to preserve information is to encode it, embed it in a great story. And so carefully done that actually, it doesn’t matter whether the storyteller knows that they’re passing on that information or not. The story itself is the vehicle. And as long as it’s repeated faithfully, the information contained within it will be passed on. And I do think this is part of the story of the preservation of knowledge.
But has there been such a cataclysm in the lifetime of the human species? Yeah, the Mount Toba eruption about 70,000 years ago was pretty bad. But a global cataclysm, the Younger Dryas really ticks all the boxes as a worldwide disaster, which definitely involved sea level rise, both at the beginning and at the end of the Younger Dryas. It definitely involved the swallowing up of lands that previously had been above water.
And I think it’s an excellent candidate for this worldwide tradition of a global cataclysm, of which one of, but not the only, distinguishing characteristics was a flood, an enormous flood, and the submergence of lands that had previously been above water, underwater. The fact that this story is found all around the world suggests to me that the archeological explanation is, look, people suffer local floods all the time. I mean, as we’re talking, there’s flooding in Florida, but I don’t think anybody in Florida is going to make the mistake of believing that that’s a global flood. They know it’s local.
But that’s the argument largely of archeology, dealing with the flood myths, or that some local population experienced a nasty local flooding event and they decided to say that it affected the whole world. I’m not persuaded by that, particularly since we know there was a nasty epoch, the Younger Dryas, when flooding did occur, and when the Earth was subjected to events cataclysmic enough to extinguish entirely the megafauna of the ice age.
And they are collectively puzzled by the sudden onset of the Younger Dryas, and by the fact that it is accompanied 12,800 years ago by a distinct layer in the Earth. You can see it most clearly at Murray Springs in Arizona, for example. You can see, it’s about the width of a human hand, and there’s a draw there that’s been cut by flash flooding at some time. And that draw has revealed the sides of the draw.
And you can see the cross-section. And in the cross-section is this distinct dark layer that runs through the Earth. And it contains evidence of wildfires, there is a lot of soot in it. There are also nanodiamonds in it. There is shocked quartz in it. There is quartz that’s been melted at temperatures in excess of 2,200 degrees centigrade. There are carbon microspherules. All of these are proxies for some kind of cosmic impact.
I talked a moment ago about the extinction of the dinosaurs. Luis and Walter Alvarez, who made that incredible discovery, initially their discovery was based entirely on impact proxies, just as the Younger Dryas is. There was no crater. And for a long time they were disbelieved because they couldn’t produce a crater. But when they finally did produce that deeply buried Chicxulub crater, that’s when people started to say, “Yeah, they have to be right.” But they weren’t relying on the crater, they were relying on the impact proxies. And they’re the same impact proxies that we find in what’s called the Younger Dryas boundary layer all around the world.
So it’s the fact that at the moment when the Earth tips into a radical climate shift, it’s been warming up for at least 2,000 years before 12,800 years ago, people at the time must have been feeling a great sense of relief. “We’ve been living through this really cold time, but it’s getting better. Things are getting better.” And then suddenly, around 12,800 years ago, some might say 12, 860 years ago, there’s a massive global plunge in global temperatures, and the world suddenly gets as cold as it was at the peak of the ice age. And it’s almost literally overnight. It’s very, very, very rapid.
Normally in an epoch, when the Earth is going into a freeze, you would not expect sea levels to rise. But there is a sea level rise, a sudden one, right at the beginning of the Younger Dryas. And then you have this long frozen period from 12,800 to 11,600 years ago. And then equally, dramatically and equally suddenly the Younger Dryas comes to an end and the world very rapidly warms up. And you have a recognized pulse of meltwater at that time as the last of the glaciers collapse into the sea, called meltwater pulse 1B, around about 11,600 years ago.
This is a period which is very tightly defined, it’s a period when we know that human populations were grievously disturbed. That’s when the so-called Clovis culture of North America vanished entirely from the record during the Younger Dryas. And it’s the time when the mammoths and the saber-toothed tigers vanished from the record as well.
But what’s not really been addressed before is why that happened, why the Gulf Stream was cut, why a sudden pulse of meltwater went into the world ocean, and it was so much of it and it was so cold that it actually stopped the Gulf Stream in its tracks. And that’s where the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis offers a very elegant and very satisfactory solution to the problem.
Now, the hypothesis, of course, is broader than that. Amongst the scientists working on it are, for example, Bill Napier, an astrophysicist and astronomer. They have assembled a great deal of evidence, which suggests that the culprit in the Younger Dryas impact event or events was what we now call the Taurid meteor stream, which the Earth still passes through twice a year. It’s now about 30 million kilometers wide, takes the Earth a couple of days to pass through it on its orbit. It passes through it in June, and it passes through it at the end of October.
The suggestion is that the Taurid meteor stream is the end product of a very large comet that entered the solar system round about 20,000 years ago. Came in from the Oort cloud, got trapped by the gravity of the Sun, and went into orbit around the Sun, an orbit that crossed the orbit of the Earth. However, when it was one object, the likelihood of a collision with the Earth was extremely small.
But as it started to do what all comets do, which was to break up into multiple fragments because these are chunks of rock held together by ice, and as they warm up, they split and disintegrate and break into pieces, as it passed through that its debris stream became larger and larger and wider and wider. And the theory is that 12,800 years ago, the Earth passed through a particularly dense part of the Taurid meteor stream and was hit by multiple impacts all around the planet, certainly from the west of North America, as far east as Syria.
And that we are by and large not talking about impacts that would’ve caused craters, although there certainly were some, we are talking about air bursts. When an object is 100 or 150 meters in diameter and it’s coming in very fast into the Earth’s atmosphere, it is very unlikely to reach the earth, it’s going to blow up in the sky. And the best known recent example of that is the Tunguska event in Siberia, which took place on the 30th of June 1908.
The Tunguska event was, nobody disputes, it was definitely an air burst of a cometary fragment. And the date is interesting because the 30th of June is the height of the Beta Taurids. It’s one of the two times when the Earth is going through the Taurid meteor stream. Well, luckily that part of Siberia wasn’t inhabited, but 2,000 square miles of forest were destroyed. If that had happened over a major city, we would all be thinking very hard about objects out of the Taurid meteor stream and about the risk of cosmic impact.
So the suggestion is that it wasn’t one impact, it wasn’t two impacts, it wasn’t three impacts, it was hundreds of air bursts all around the planet. Coupled with a number of bigger objects, which the scientists working on this think hit the North American ice cap largely. Some of them may also have hit the Northern European ice cap, resulting in that sudden otherwise unexplained flood of meltwater that went into the world ocean and caused the cooling that then took place.
But this was a disaster for life all over the planet. And it’s interesting that one of the sites where they find the Younger Dryas boundary and where they find overwhelming evidence of an air burst and where they find all the shocked quartz, the carbon microspherules, the nanodiamonds, the trinitite, and so on and so forth, all of those impact proxies are found at Abu Hureyra. That was a settlement within 150 miles of Gobekli Tepe, and it was hit 12,800 years ago and it was obliterated. Interestingly, it was re-inhabited by human beings within probably five years, but it was completely obliterated at that time. And it is difficult to imagine that the people who lived in that area would not have been very impressed by what they saw happening by these massive explosions in the sky and the obliteration of Abu Hureyra.
Now this is a theory, the Younger Dryas impact. It’s a hypothesis actually, it’s not even a theory. A theory is, I think, considered a higher level than a hypothesis. That’s why it’s the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. And of course it has many opponents and there are many who disagree with it. And there have been a series of peer-reviewed papers that have been published supposedly debunking the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. One, I think was in 2011, it was called a Requiem for the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. And there’s one just been published a few months ago or a year ago called a Complete Refutation of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, something like that, some lengthy title.
So it’s a hypothesis that has its opponents, and even within those of us who are looking at the alternative side of history, there are different points of view. Robert Schoch from Boston University, the geologist who demonstrated that the erosion on the Sphinx may well have been caused by exposure to a long period of very heavy rainfall, he doesn’t go for the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. He fully accepts that the Younger Dryas was a global cataclysm and that the extinctions took place, but he thinks it was caused by some kind of massive solar outburst.
What everybody’s agreed on is the Younger Dryas was bad, but there is dispute about what caused it. I personally have found the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis to be the most persuasive, which most effectively explains all the evidence.
And that word, advanced civilization, this is another word that is easily misunderstood. And I’ve tried to make clear many, many times that when we consider the possibility of something like a civilization in the past, we shouldn’t imagine that it’s us, that it’s something like us. We should expect it to be completely different from us, but that it would’ve achieved certain things.
Amongst the clues that intrigue me are those precessional numbers that are found all around the world, and are a category of ancient maps called Portolanos, which suddenly started to appear just after the crusade that entered Constantinople and sacked Constantinople, the Portolanos suddenly start to appear. And they’re extremely accurate maps. The most of the ones that have survived are extremely accurate maps of the Mediterranean alone, but some of them show much wider areas.
For example, on these Portolano-style maps, you do find a depiction of Antarctica again and again. And another thing that these maps have in common is that many of the mapmakers state that they base their maps on multiple older source maps, which have not survived. These maps are intriguing because they have very accurate relative longitudes.
Our civilization did not crack the longitude problem until the mid-18th century with Harrison’s chronometer, which was able to keep accurate time at sea so you could have the time in London and you could have the local time at sea at the same time. And then you could work out your longitude. There might be other ways of working out longitude as well, but there it is. The fact is these Portolanos have extremely accurate relative longitudes.
Secondly, some of them show the world, to my eye, as it looked during the ice age. They show a much extended Indonesia and Malaysian peninsula and the series of islands that make up Indonesia today are all grouped together into one landmass. And that was the case during the ice age. That was the Sunda Shelf. And the presence of Antarctica on some of these maps also puzzles and intrigues me and is not satisfactorily explained in my view by archeology, which says, “Oh, those mapmakers, they felt that the world needed something underneath it to balance it so they put a fictional landmass there.”
I don’t think that makes sense. I think somebody was mapping the world during the last ice age, but that doesn’t mean that they had our kind of tech. It means that they were following that exploration instinct. That they knew how to navigate. They’d been watching the stars for thousands of years before, they knew how to navigate and they knew how to build seagoing ships. And they explored the world and they mapped the world.
Those maps were made a very, very long time ago. Some of them, I believe, were likely preserved in the Library of Alexandria. I think even then they were being copied and recopied. We don’t know exactly what happened to the Library of Alexandria, except that it was destroyed. I suggest it’s likely this was during the period of the Roman Empire. I suggest it’s likely that some of those maps were taken out of the library and taken to Constantinople, and that’s where they were liberated during the crusade and entered world culture again and started to be copied and recopied.
Actually, he got that idea from a philosopher called Schwaller de Lubicz, who’d noticed what he thought was water erosion on the body of the Sphinx. John West picked that up, and he was a great amateur Egyptologist himself. He spent most of his life in Egypt and he was hugely versed in Ancient Egypt. And when he looked at the Sphinx and at the strange scalloped erosion patterns and the vertical fissures, particularly in the trench around the Sphinx, he began to think maybe Schwaller was right, maybe there was some of some sort of flooding here.
And that’s when he brought Robert Shoch, second person I’d like to recognize, geologist at Boston University. He brought Shoch to Giza, and Shock was the first geologist to stick his neck out, risk the ire of Egyptologists, and say, “Well, it looks to me like the Sphinx was exposed to at least a thousand years of heavy rainfall.” And as Shoch’s calculations have continued, as he’s continued to be immersed in this mystery, he’s continuously pushed that back. And he’s now, again, looking at the date of around 12,000, 12,500 years ago during the Younger Dryas for the creation of the Great Sphinx.
And then, of course, this is the period of the wet Sahara, the humid Sahara. The Sahara was a completely different place during the ice age. There were rivers in it, there were lakes in it, it was fertile, it was possibly densely populated, and there was a lot of rain. There’s not no rain in Giza today, but there’s relatively little rain. Not enough rain to cause that erosion damage on the Sphinx.
The next person who needs to be mentioned in this context is Robert Bauval. Robert and I have co-authored a number of books together. Unfortunately, Robert has been very ill for the last seven years. He’s got a very bad chest infection. And I think also that Robert became very demoralized by the attacks of Egyptologists on his work. But Robert is the genius, and it does take a genius sometime to make these connections because nobody noticed it before, that the three pyramids of Giza are laid out on the ground in the pattern of the three stars of Orion’s belt.
And skeptics will say, “Well, you can find any buildings and line them up with any stars you want,” but Orion actually isn’t any old constellation. Orion was the god Osiris in the sky. The ancient Egyptians called the Orion constellation Sahu, and they recognized it as the celestial image of the god Osiris. So what’s being copied on the ground is the belt of a deity, of a celestial deity. It’s not just a random constellation.
And then when we take precession into account, you find something else very intriguing happening. First of all, you find that the exact orientation of the pyramids as it is today, and pretty much as it was when they’re supposed to have been built 4,500 years ago, it’s not precisely related to how Orion’s Belt looked at that time. There’s a bit of a twist, they’re not quite right. But as you precess the stars backwards, as you go back and back and back and you come to around 10,500 BC, 12,500 years ago in the Younger Dryas, you find that suddenly they lock perfectly. They match perfectly with the three pyramids on the ground.
And that’s the same moment that the Great Sphinx, an equinoctial monument, aligned perfectly to the rising sun on the spring equinox. Anybody can test this through themselves. Just go to Giza on the 21st of March, be there before dawn, stand behind the Sphinx, and you will see the sun rising directly in line with the gaze of the Sphinx. But the question is what constellation was behind the Sphinx? And 12,500 years ago it was the constellation of Leo. And actually the constellation of Leo has a very Sphinx-like look. And I and my colleagues are pretty sure that the Sphinx was originally a lion entirely. And that over the thousands of years, it became damaged, it became eroded, particularly the part of it that sticks out the head. There were periods when the Sphinx was completely covered in sand, but still the head stuck out.
By the time you come to the Fourth Dynasty, when the Great Pyramids are supposedly built, by the time you come to the Fourth Dynasty, the lion, original lion head, would’ve been a complete mess. And we suggest that it was then re-carved into a pharaonic head. Egyptologists think it was the pharaoh Khafre, but there’s no real strong resemblance, but it’s definitely wearing the nemes headdress of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh. And we think that that’s a result of a recarving of what was originally not only a lion-bodied, but also a lion-headed monument.
It wouldn’t make sense if you create an equinoctial marker in the time of Khafre 4,500 years ago, and the Sphinx is an equinoctial marker. I mean, it’s 270 feet long and 70 feet high and it’s looking directly at the rising sun on the equinox. If you create it then, you’d be more likely to create it in the shape of a bull, because that was the age of Taurus, when the constellation of Taurus housed the sun on the spring equinox. So why is it a lion? And again, we think that’s because of that observation of the skies and putting on the ground as above, so below, putting on the ground an image of the sky at a particular time.
Now, the fact that the Giza Plateau, it’s a fact, of course, that Egyptologists completely dispute, but the fact that the principle monuments of the Giza Plateau, the three Great Pyramids and the Great Sphinx, all lock astronomically on the date of around 10,500 BC, to me, is most unlikely to be an accident. And actually, if you look at computer software at the sky at that time, you’ll see that the Milky Way is very prominent and seems to be mirrored on the ground by the river Nile-
We are pretty sure that the Sphinx, at least, does date back to 12 and a half thousand years ago and with it, the megalithic temples, the so-called Valley Temple, which stands just to the east and just to the south of the Sphinx and the Sphinx temple, which stands directly in front of the Sphinx. The Sphinx temple has largely been destroyed. But the Valley Temple, attributed to Khafre on no good grounds whatsoever, is a huge megalithic construction with blocks of limestone that weigh up to 100 tons each. Yet, it has been remodeled/refaced with granite. There are granite blocks that are placed on top of the core limestone blocks. Those core limestone blocks were already eroded when the granite blocks were put there. Why? Because the granite blocks have actually been purposefully and deliberately cut to fit into the erosion marks on the, we believe, much older megalithic blocks there.
I think Giza is a very complicated site. I would never seek to divorce the dynastic ancient Egyptians from the Great Pyramids. They were closely involved in the construction of the Great Pyramids as we see them today. But what I do suggest is that there were very low platforms on the Giza Plateau that are much older and that when we look at the three Great Pyramids, we are looking at a renovation and a restoration and a enhancement of much older structures that had existed on the Giza Plateau for a much longer period before that. Actually, the Great Pyramid is built around a natural hill. That natural hill might’ve been seen as the original primeval mound to the ancient Egyptians.
Then, within that same 100-year span, we have the Giza pyramids being built. This is according to the Orthodox chronology. Then, suddenly, once the Giza project is finished, pyramid building goes into a massive slump in Ancient Egypt. The pyramids of the Fifth Dynasty are, frankly speaking, a mess outside. They’re very inferior constructions. You can hardly recognize them as pyramids at all. But what happens when you go inside them is you find that they’re extensively covered in hieroglyphs and imagery, repeating the name of the king who was supposedly buried in that place. Whereas, the Giza pyramids have no internal inscriptions whatsoever. What we do have is one piece of graffiti about which there is some controversy.
Basic statistics: it’s a 6 million-ton structure. Each side is about 750 feet long. It’s aligned almost perfectly to true north, south, east, and west within 3/60ths of a single degree, the 06ths, because degrees are divided into 60s. It’s the precision of the orientation and the absolute massive size of the thing plus its very complicated internal passageways that are involved in it. In the ninth century, the Great Pyramid still had its facing stones in place, but there was an Arab Caliph, Khalifa al-Mamun, who had already realized that other pyramids did have their entrances in the north face. Nobody knew where the entrance to the Great Pyramid was. But he figured if there’s an entrance to this thing, it’s going to be in the north face somewhere. He put together a team of workers. They went in with sledgehammers. They started smashing where he thought would be the entrance. They cut their way into the Great Pyramid for a distance of maybe 100 feet. Then, the hammering that they did dislodged something. They heard a little bit further away, something big falling, and they realized there was a cavity there. They started heading in that direction. Then, they joined the internal passageway of the Great Pyramid, the descending and the ascending corridors that go up.
When you go up the ascending corridor, every one of the internal passageways in the Great Pyramid that people can walk in slopes at an angle of 26 degrees. That’s interesting because the angle of slope of the exterior of the Great Pyramid is 52 degrees. We know mathematicians were at work as well as geometers in the creation of the Great Pyramid.
If you go up the Grand Gallery, which is at the end of the so-called ascending corridor, and it’s above the so-called Queen’s Chamber… You go up the Grand Gallery. You’re eventually going to come to what is known as the King’s Chamber in which there is a sarcophagus. That sarcophagus is a little bit too big to have been got in through the narrow entrance passageway. It’s almost as though the so-called King’s Chamber was built around the sarcophagus, already in place.
Above the King’s Chamber are five other chambers. These are known as relieving chambers. The theory was that they were built to relieve the pressure on the King’s Chamber of the weight of the monument. But I think what makes that theory dubious is the fact that even lower down, where more weight was involved, you have the Queen’s Chamber, and there are no such relieving chambers above that.
In the top of these five chambers, a British adventurer and vandal called Howard Vyse, who dynamited his way into those chambers in the first place, allegedly found… Well, he claims he found a piece of graffiti left by a work-gang naming the Pharaoh Khufu. It’s true. I’ve been in that chamber, and there is the cartouche of Khufu there. Quite recognizable. But the dispute around it is whether that is a genuine piece of graffiti dating from the Old Kingdom or whether Howard Vyse actually put it there himself because he was in desperate need of money at the time. I’m not sure what the answer to that question is. But it’s one of the reasons that Egyptologists feel confident in saying that the pyramid is the work of Khufu. Another is what is called the Wadi al-Jarf Papyri, where, on the Red Sea, the diary of an individual Merer was found. He talks about bringing highly polished limestone to the Great Pyramid. It’s clear that what he’s talking about is the facing stones of the Great Pyramid. He’s not talking about the body of the Great Pyramid. He’s talking about the facing stones of the Great Pyramid during the reign of Khufu. That’s another reason why the Great Pyramid is attributed to Khufu. But I think that Khufu was undoubtedly involved in the Great Pyramid and in a big way. But I think he was building upon and elaborating a much older structure.
I think the heart of that structure is the subterranean chamber, which is 100 feet vertically beneath the base of the Great Pyramid. Anybody who suffers from claustrophobia will not enjoy being down there. You’ve got to go down a 26-degree sloping corridor until a distance of about 300 feet. It’s 100 feet vertically, but the slope means you’re going to walk a distance of… Not walk. You’ve got to ape walk. You’re almost going to have to crawl. I’ve learned from long experience that the best way to go down these corridors is actually backwards. If you go forward, you keep bumping your head on them because they’re only three feet five inches high. You get down to the bottom. You have a short horizontal passage, and then you get into the subterranean chamber.
The theory of Egyptology is that this was supposed to be the burial place of Khufu, but after cutting out that 300-foot long, 26-degree sloping passage, a lot of which passes through bedrock, and having cut the subterranean chamber out of bedrock, gone to all that trouble, they decided they wouldn’t bury him there. They built what’s now known as the Queen’s Chamber as his burial chamber. But then they decided that wouldn’t do either. They then built the King’s chamber, and that’s where the Pharaoh is supposed to have been buried. Those Arab raiders under Khalifa al-Mamun didn’t find anything in the Great Pyramid at all.
Now, what you also have in Egypt are what might almost be described as secret societies. The followers of Horus are one of those specifically tasked with bringing forward the knowledge from the first time into later periods. The souls of Pe and Nekhen are another one of these mysterious secret society groups who are possessors of knowledge that they transmit to the future. What I’m broadly suggesting is that those survivors of the Younger Dryas cataclysm, who settled in Giza may have been relatively small in number. It’s interesting that they’re referred to in the Edfu Building Texts as seven sages because that repeats again and again. It’s also in Mesopotamia.
It’s seven sages, seven Apkallu, who come out of the waters of the Persian Gulf and teach people all the skills of agriculture and of architecture and of astronomy. It’s found all around the world that there was a relatively small number of people who took refuge in Giza, who benefited from the survival skills of the hunter-foragers who lived at Giza at that time, and who also passed on their knowledge to those hunter-foragers. But it was not knowledge that was ready to be put into shape at that time. That knowledge was then preserved and kept and handled within very secretive groups that passed it down over thousands of years. Finally, it burst into full form in the fourth dynasty in Ancient Egypt.
The notion that knowledge might be transferred over thousands of years shouldn’t be absurd. We know, for example, in the case of ancient Israel… It goes back to the time of Abraham, which is pretty much, I think, around 2000 BC. Knowledge has been preserved from that time right up to the present day. If you can preserve knowledge for 4,000 years, you can probably preserve it for eight.
The Amazon rainforest is another example of this. I think the Sahara is about 9 million square kilometers. The Amazon that’s left under dense canopy rainforest is about 5 million square kilometers, maybe closer to six. Then, you have the continental shelves that were submerged by sea level rise at the end of the ice age. Now, it’s well established that sea level rose by 400 feet, but it didn’t rise by 400 feet overnight. It came in dribs and drabs. There were periods of very rapid, quite significant sea level rise, and there were periods when the sea level was rising much more slowly. That 400-foot sea level rise is spread out over a period of about 10,000 years. But there are episodes within it like meltwater pulse 1B like meltwater pulse 1A when the flooding was really immense.
Then, I can only speculate. Maybe there was a cultural value where it was felt that it was not appropriate to interfere with the lives of hunter-foragers at that time. Maybe it was felt that they should keep their distance from them, just as, even today, there is a feeling that we shouldn’t be interfering too much with the uncontacted tribes in the Amazon rainforest. Although interestingly, some of those tribes are now using cell phones. That possibility may have been there in the past. Only when we come to a global cataclysm does it become essential to have outreach and, actually, to take refuge amongst those hunter-forager populations. That is the hypothesis that I’m putting forward. I’m not claiming that it’s a fact. But, for me, it helps to explain the evidence.
But I think in a way that’s what Göbekli Tepe is. Göbekli Tepe is a hall of records. It’s interesting that just as I’ve tried to outline, I hope reasonably clearly, that the three great pyramids of Giza match Orion’s belt in 10,500 BC just as the Sphinx matches Leo in 10,500 BC, 12,500 years ago or so. Pillar 43 in Enclosure D at Göbekli Tepe contains what a number of researchers, myself included, regard as an astronomical diagram. Martin Sweatman of Edinburgh University has brought forward the best work in this field. But it was initially started by a gentleman called Paul Burley who noticed that one of the figures on Pillar 43 is a scorpion, very much like we represent the constellation of Scorpio today and that above it is a vulture with outstretched wings, which is in a posture very similar to the constellation that we call Sagittarius. On that outstretched wing is a circular object, and the suggestion is that it’s marking the time when the sun was at the center of the dark rift in the Milky Way at the summer solstice 12 and a half thousand years ago. That’s what it’s marking.
It’s interesting that the same date can be deduced from Pillar… Of course, it’s controversial. Martin Sweatman’s ideas are by no means accepted by archeology. But he’s done very, very thorough, detailed, statistical work on this. I’m personally convinced. We have a time capsule at Göbekli Tepe, which is memorializing a date that is at least 1,200 years before Göbekli Tepe was built if that dating of 11,600 years ago proves to be absolutely the oldest date as it is at present. The date memorialized on Pillar 43 is 12,800 years ago, the beginning of the Younger Dryas, the beginning of the impact event.
Then, Giza does the same thing but in much larger scale. It uses massive megalithic architecture, which is very difficult to destroy, and a profound knowledge of astronomy to encode a date in a language that any culture which is sufficiently literate in astronomy will be able to decode. We don’t have to have a script that we can’t read like we do with the Indus Valley civilization or with the Easter Island script. We don’t have to have a script that can’t be interpreted. If you use astronomical language, then any astronomical literate civilization will be able to give you a date.
Hoover Dam has a star map built into it. That star map is part of an exhibition that was put there at the founding of the Hoover Dam. What it does is it freezes the sky above the Hoover Dam at the moment of its completion. Oscar Hansen, the artist who created that piece said so specifically that this would be so that any future culture would be able to know the time of the dam’s construction. You can use astronomy and architecture to memorialize a particular date.
That is the case today. That is why Ancient Apocalypse Season 1 was defined as the most dangerous show on Netflix. It’s why the Society for American Archeology wrote an open letter to Netflix asking Netflix to reclassify the series of science fiction. It’s why they accused the series of antisemitism, misogyny, white supremacism, and… I don’t know, a whole bunch of other things like that, that have nothing to do with anything that’s in the series. It was like, “We must shut this down. This is so dangerous to us.” There are many more dangerous things in the world than a television series going on right now. But maybe it was seen as a danger to archeology, that this non-archeologist was in archeological terrain and being viewed and seen and read by large numbers of people. Maybe that was part of the problem.
Human nature being what it is, I noticed that two of my principal critics, John Hoopes from the University of Kansas and Flint Dibble, who’s now teaching at the University of Cardiff in Wales in the UK, are both people who like to have media exposure. John Hoopes has just recently started a YouTube channel. Flint Dibble has had one for quite a while. A pretty small number of followers. I think that they feel that they should be the ones who are getting the global attention and that it’s not right that I am and that the best way to stop that is to stop me, to shut me down, to get me canceled and basically requiring Netflix to relabel my series from a documentary to a science fiction, which is what they actually had the temerity to suggest to Netflix.
If that had gone through, if Netflix had listened to them, that would’ve effectively been the cancellation of my documentary series. It would no longer have been ranked under documentaries. It was a deliberate attempt to shut me down. I see that going on again and again, and it’s so unfortunate and so unnecessary. I’ve become very defensive towards archeology. I hit back. After 30 years of these attacks on my work, I’m tired of it. I do defend myself. Sometimes, I’m perhaps over-vigorous in that defense. Maybe I was a little bit too strong in my critique of archeology in the first season of Ancient Apocalypse. Maybe I should have been a bit gentler and a bit kinder. I’ve tried to reflect that in the second season and to bring also many more Indigenous voices into the second season, as well as the voices of many more archeologists.
But basically, I think majority of archeologists are in complete good faith on this. I don’t think that anybody’s really seeking to frame me. I think that what we are hearing from most archeologists… some much more vicious than others. But what we’re hearing from most archeologists is this is what we found, and we don’t see evidence for a lost civilization in it. To that, I…
And I didn’t know that. I thought, “My God. If Flint has a point here. If there’d been three million shipwrecks found and mapped, if that’s the case, the absence of any shipwreck from a lost civilization of the ice age is a problem.” But then I discovered that it isn’t three million shipwrecks that have been mapped. It’s much, much less than that. And maybe it’s 250,000. Still a large number, but most of them from the last 1,000 years. And unfortunately, what Flint didn’t go into, and perhaps he should have shared with the audience … And again I go into this in the video, is that there is indisputable evidence that human beings were seafarers as much as 50 or 60,000 years ago. The peopling of Australia involved a relatively short 90 kilometers, 100-kilometer ocean voyage. But nevertheless, it was an ocean voyage.
And it must have involved a large enough people, a large enough number of people to create a permanent population that wouldn’t go extinct. The settlement of Cyprus is the same thing. It was always an island even during the ice age. And no ships have survived that speak to the settlement of Australia, and no ships have survived that speak to the settlement of Cyprus either. But that doesn’t mean that that thing didn’t happen.
So Sahul was New Guinea joined to Australia. So they would’ve made landfall in New Guinea. And then they think, “Well, here is this vast open, incredible land. We need to bring more people here.” And that would’ve involved larger craft. You need to bring people with resources and you need to bring enough of them, both men and women in order to produce a population that will not rapidly become extinct. And it’s the same in Cyprus. There the work that’s been done suggests very strongly that we’re looking at planned migrations of groups of people in excess of 1,000 at a time, bringing animals with them. And this certainly would’ve involved multiple boats and boats of a significant size.
But the end result of those statements is that people all around the world came to the conclusion that Graham Hancock is a racist and a white supremacist. And that really got under my skin and it really upset me. And I felt angry about it and I felt that I was there to defend Ancient Apocalypse, season one, whereas in fact, what I was there to do was to listen to a series of lectures where an archaeologist tells me what archaeologists have found. And that somehow I’m to deduce that from what they have found, they’re not going to find anything else. At least not anything to do with the lost civilization.
I was definitely up against a superior debater in that debate. I’m not sure that I have those debating skills and I certainly didn’t have them on that particular day. I also admire about Flint something else, which is that he was willing to be there. Most archaeologists don’t want to talk to me at all. They want to insult me from the sidelines. They want to make sure that Wikipedia keeps on calling me a pseudo-archaeologist, or a purveyor of pseudo-archaeological theories. They want to make sure that the hints of racism are there, but they actually don’t want to sit down and confront me.
At least Flint was willing to do that and I’m grateful to him for that. And I think in that sense it is an important encounter between people with, let’s say, an alternative view of history and those with the very much mainstream view of history that archaeology gives us. And he’s also a very determined character. He doesn’t give up. So all of those things about him I admire and respect. But, I think he fought dirty during the debate, and I’ve said exactly why in this video that I now have up on YouTube.
At Gobekli Tepe, I’m not really looking at what archaeologists look at, I’m looking at the alignments of the megaliths and how they seem to track precession of the star Sirius over a period of time. Archaeologists aren’t interested in any of that. So I value and respect archeology. I think it’s an incredible tool for investigating our past, but I wish archaeologists would bring a slightly gentler frame of mind to it and a slightly opener perspective. And also that archaeologists would be willing to trust the general public to make up their own minds. It’s as though certain archaeologists are afraid of the public being presented with an alternative point of view, which they regard as quote, unquote, “dangerous,” because they somehow underestimate the intelligence of the general public and think the general public are just going to accept that.
Actually by condemning those alternative point of view, archaeologists make it much more likely that the general public will accept those alternative point of view, because there is a great distrust of experts in our society today. And behaving in a snobbish arrogant way, we archaeologists are the only people who are really qualified to speak about the past and anybody else who speaks about the past is dangerous. That actually is not helpful to archaeology in the long term. There could be a much more positive and a much more cooperative relationship. And I can see that relationship with a gentleman like Ed Barnhart. Was very much the case with archaeologist Martti Parssinen from the University of Helsinki and with geographer Alcio Arranzi, Brazilian geographer. Very, very senior figure who I worked with in the Amazon for season two of Ancient Apocalypse, looking at these astonishing earthworks that have emerged from the Amazon jungle and which more and more are now being found with LiDAR. Indeed, we found some of them ourselves with LiDAR while we were there.
But it was actually Francis Crick who pointed out something odd, that within 100 million years of the earth being cool enough to support life, there’s bacterial life all over the planet. And Crick wrote a book called Life Itself that was published in 1981, and he suggested that life had been brought here by a process of panspermia. Now that’s an idea that’s around in circulation that comets may carry bacteria, which can seed life on planets. But, Crick actually in Life Itself was talking about directed panspermia. He envisaged … This is Crick, not me. He envisaged an alien civilization far away across the galaxy, which faced extinction. Perhaps a supernova was going to go off in the neighborhood.
They were highly advanced. Their first thought it might’ve been, “Let’s get ourselves off the planet and go and populate some other planet,” but the distances of interstellar space were so great. So their second thought was, “Let’s preserve our DNA. Let’s put genetically engineered bacteria into cryogenic chambers and fire them off into the universe in all directions.” And bottom line of Crick’s theory in Life Itself is one of those cryogenic containers containing bacterial life from another solar system crashed into the early Earth. And that’s why life began so suddenly here on Earth.
And the same. For us to be selfish and self-obsessed for us humans, what was the magic leap to Homo sapiens from the other hominids? And why did Homo sapiens win out against the Neanderthals and the other competitors? Why are they not around anymore? So those are all fascinating mysteries and it feels like the more we propose radical ideas about our past and take it seriously and explore the more we’ll be able to figure out that puzzle that leads all the way back to Homo sapiens and maybe all the way back to the origin of life on Earth.
There’s lots of possibilities that have been put forward. Maybe we just out-competed them. Maybe anatomically modern humans had some brain connections that they didn’t have. Even though the Neanderthal brain was bigger than the brain of anatomically modern human beings, as the old saying goes, size isn’t everything. Maybe we just had a more compact, more efficient brain. The fact of the matter is that Neanderthals and Denisovans did not survive the rise of Homo sapiens.
So I think all civilization arises out of shamanism. And shamanism is a naturally scientific endeavor, where experimentation is undertaken an exploration and investigation of the environment around us. And what I’m suggesting is that one group, perhaps more than one group, went a bit further than other groups did, and used that study of the skies and developed navigational techniques and we’re able to sail and explore the Earth. But that ultimately what lies behind it is the same curiosity and investigative skill that shamans are still using in the Amazon to this day. And I do see them as scientists in a very proper use of the word.
But then unleashes these extraordinary experiences. And it isn’t just pretty visuals. It’s the sense of encounters with sentient others, that there are sentient beings, that somehow we are surrounded by a realm of sentience that is not normally accessible to us. And that what the ayahuasca brew and certain other psychedelics, like some psilocybin mushrooms in a high enough dose can do it as well. LSD can do it. But Ayahuasca is the master in this of lowering the veil to what appears to be a seamlessly convincing other realm, other world. And of course the hard line, rational scientists will say that’s just all fantasies of your brain. But I don’t think we fully understand,
Or even close to understanding exactly what consciousness is. And I remain open to two possibilities that consciousness is generated by the brain, is made by the brain in the way that a factory makes cars. But I also am open to the possibility that the brain is a receiver of consciousness, just as a television set is the receiver of television signals. And that if that is the case, then we locked into the physical realm. We need our everyday alert, problem-solving state of consciousness, and that’s the state of consciousness that western civilization values and highly encourages. But these other states of consciousness that allow us to access alternative realities are possibly more important. It may be apocryphal, but it was reported after Francis Crick’s role-
These sentient others that are encountered, what are they? Are they just figments of our brain on drugs or are we actually gaining access to a parallel reality, which is inhabited by consciousness which is in a non-physical form? And I’m equally open to that idea. I think that may be what is going on here with ayahuasca.
But the other thing is that there is a presence within the ayahuasca brew, and she is present both in ayahuasca and in yachay. And that’s one of the reasons why the shamans say that actually the master of the process is the ayahuasca vine, not the leaves. It’s as though the vine has harnessed the leaves to gain access to human consciousness. And there, if you have sufficient exposure to ayahuasca or yachay, you drink it enough times, I’ve had maybe 75 or 80 journeys with ayahuasca, you definitely start to feel an intelligent presence with a definite personality, which I interpret as feminine, and which most people in the West interpret it as feminine and they call her Mother Ayahuasca. There are some tribes in the Amazon who interpret the spirit of ayahuasca as male, but in all cases, that spirit is seen as a teacher. That’s fundamentally what ayahuasca is. It’s a teacher. And it teaches moral lessons.
And that’s fascinating, that a mixture of two plants should cause us to reflect on our own behavior and how it may have hurt and damaged and affected others and fill us with a powerful wish not to repeat that negative behavior again in the future. The more baggage you carry in your life, the harder the beating the ayahuasca is going to give you, until it forces you to confront and take responsibility for your own behavior. And that is an extraordinary thing to come from a plant brew in that way.
And I think yes, I think ayahuasca is the most powerful of all the plant medicines for accessing these mysterious realms. But there’s no doubt you can access them. They’re all tryptamines. They’re all related to one another in one way. You can access them through LSD and you certainly can access them through psilocyb mushrooms as well in large enough dose.
I like to give credit where credit is due, and there are two names that need to be mentioned here. One is the late, great Terence McKenna and his book Food of the Gods, where he proposed the idea very strongly that it was our ancestral encounters with psychedelics that made us fully human. That’s what switched on the modern human mind.
And very much the same idea began to be explored a bit earlier by Professor David Lewis-Williams at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, fabulous book called The Mind in the Cave, where he is again arguing that these astonishing similarities in cave art and rock art all around the world can only be properly explained by people in deeply altered states of consciousness attempting to remember, when they return to a normal everyday state of consciousness, attempting to remember their visions and document them on permanent media like the wall of a cave.
So, typically you get a lot of geometric patterns, but you also got entities. And those entities often are therianthropes, part animal, part human in form. Might have the head of a wolf and the body of a human being, might have the head of a bird and the body of a human being, and so on and so forth. And that they communicate with us in the visionary state.
Interestingly, although this sounds like woo-woo, and it is an area that most scientists would steer clear of at risk of their careers, there is very serious work now being done at Imperial College in London and at the University of California at San Diego, where volunteers are being given extended DMT. There’s a new technology, DMTx, where the DMT is fed directly into the bloodstream by drip, and it’s possible to keep the individual in the peak DMT state. Which normally when you smoke or vape DMT, you’re looking, if you’re lucky, at 10 minutes, or if you’re unlucky, if it’s a bad journey, because those 10 minutes can seem like forever. But with DMTx, with the drip-feeding of DMT into the bloodstream, these volunteers actually could be kept in the peak state for hours.
And unlike LSD where you rapidly build up tolerance, nobody ever builds up tolerance to DMT. It always hits you with the same power. Even if you took it yesterday and the day before and you’re taking it tomorrow as well, it’s still going to have that same power. There’s no tolerance there. So that’s how they can use that lack of tolerance to keep volunteers in this state.
And then when they debrief those volunteers… They’re also putting them in MRI scanners and looking at what’s happening in the brain. But when they debrief them, they’re all talking about encounters with sentient others. There’s even a group now called Sentient Others, where volunteers are now exchanging their experiences. They weren’t allowed to do so at the beginning of the experiment, but now that most of them have left it, they’re exchanging their experiences, and it’s all about encounters with sentient others who wish to teach them moral lessons.
Now, to me, that’s wild. What is going on here? How do we account for this? Yeah, I get the notion of hallucinations and brightly colored visuals, but the moral lessons that come with it, those are very odd.
But in the case of even cannabis, I know, this is one of the great things that’s happening in America. It’s happening state by state where cannabis is being legalized and that draconian hand of government is being taken off the back of people who are consuming a medicine that is far less harmful than alcohol, which is glorified in our society.
We cannot say that we are free if we allow our government to dictate to us what experiences we may or may not have in our inner consciousness, while doing no harm to others. And the point there is we already have a whole raft of laws that deal with us when we do harm to others. Do we really need laws that tell us what we may or may not experience in the inner sanctum of our own consciousness? I think it’s a fundamental violation of adult sovereignty. And we would have much less drug problems if these drugs were all legalized and made available to people without shaming them, without punishing them in any way, but just part of normal social life. And then you could be sure that you were getting good product rather than really shitty product, which has been cut with all sorts of other things.
Ultimately, the way forward is for adults to take responsibility for their own behavior, and for society to allow that to happen, and not to have big government taking responsibility for decisions that should be in the hands of individuals.
I often think that the Great Pyramid is partly designed to do that. It’s designed to invite its own initiates. Some people aren’t interested in the Great Pyramid at all, but some people are fascinated by it and they’re drawn towards it. And when they’re drawn towards it, it immediately starts raising questions in their minds, and they seek answers to their questions.
So it’s like saying, ” Here I stand. Investigate me. Find out about me. Figure out what I am. Why have I got these two shafts cut into the side of the so-called Queen’s Chamber?” Why do they slope up through the body of the Great Pyramid? Why do they not exit on the outside of the Great Pyramid? Why, when we send a robot up those shafts, do we find them after about 160 feet blocked by a door with metal handles. Why when we drill through that door to see what’s beyond it, three or four feet away, we see another door. It’s very frustrating. But it’s saying to us, “Keep on exploring. If you’re persistent enough, we’ll eventually give you the answer.”
So I’m hoping that that answer will come as to how this most mysterious of monuments was actually built and the inspiration that lay behind it. Certainly, I’m sure it was never a tomb, or a tomb only. The later pyramids might’ve been. Actually no pharaonic burial has been discovered in any pyramid. But nevertheless, it’s pretty clear that the later pyramids with the pyramid texts written on the walls, like the pyramid of Unas, Fifth Dynasty pyramid at Saqqara, were tombs.
But the Great Pyramid, to go to that length to create a tomb, to make it a scale model of the earth, to orient it perfectly to true north, to make it 6 million tons. This is not a tomb. This is something else. This is a curiosity device. This is something that is asking us to understand it. And I hope we will understand it. And I hope Egyptologists will be willing to set aside that prejudice that they’re only looking at a tomb and consider other possibilities. And as new tech is revealing these previously unknown inner spaces within the Great Pyramid, I think that’s going to become more and more likely.
Now, yeah, ramps are proposed as the solution, but where are the remains of those ramps? If you’re going to carry blocks weighing up to two or three tons right to the top of the Great Pyramid to complete your work, you’re going to need a ramp that’s going to extend out into the desert for more than a mile at a 10 degree slope. And it’s calculated that a 10 degree slope is about the maximum slope that human labor can haul objects up a ramp. And that ramp can’t just be compacted sand, since heavy objects are being hauled up. It’s going to have to be made of very solid material, almost as solid as the pyramid itself. Where is it? We don’t see any trace of those so-called ramps that are supposed to have been involved in the construction of the pyramid. I think we don’t know. I think we have no idea it’s built. That’s why there’s so many different theories. We haven’t got the answer yet. But the how of it is one of the big mysteries from our past.
And there are a few cultures that really intensely, deeply studied that mystery. We are not one of them. The general view of science, I think, is that we’re accidents of evolution. When we die, the light blinks out. There’s no more of us. There’s no such thing as the soul. But that’s not a proven point. There’s no experiment that proves that’s the case. We know we die, but we don’t know whether there’s such a thing as a soul or not.
But death is going to come to all of us. I accept it. It’s going to come to me. I’m not going to say I’m looking forward to it, but when it happens, I’m going to approach it, I hope, with a sense of curiosity and a sense of adventure, that there’s something beyond this life. It isn’t heaven, it isn’t hell, but there’s something. The soul goes on. I think reincarnation is a very plausible idea. Again, modern science would reject that. But there’s the excellent work of Ian Stevenson, Children Who Remember Past Lives, who found that children up to the age of seven often have memories of past lives.
And in cultures where memories of past lives are discouraged, they tend not to express that much. But in cultures where memories of past lives are encouraged, like India, they do express it. And he found several subjects, children under the age of seven in India, who were able to remember specific details of a past life, and he was able to go to the place where that past life unfolded and validate those details. So if consciousness is the basis of everything, if it’s the essence of everything, and consciousness benefits in some way from being incarnated in physical form, then reincarnation makes a lot of sense. All the investment that the universe has put into creating this home for life may have a much bigger purpose than just accident.
And now let me leave you with some words from Charles Darwin. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 1:34 – Lost Ice Age civilization
- 8:39 – Göbekli Tepe
- 20:43 – Early humans
- 25:43 – Astronomical symbolism
- 37:11 – Younger Dryas impact hypothesis
- 55:31 – The Great Pyramid and the Sphinx of Giza
- 1:16:04 – Sahara Desert and the Amazon rainforest
- 1:25:25 – Response to critics
- 1:49:31 – Panspermia
- 1:56:58 – Shamanism
- 2:20:58 – How the Great Pyramid was built
- 2:28:17 – Mortality
Introduction
Graham Hancock
The big question for me in that timeline is why didn’t we do it sooner? Why did it take so long? Why did we wait until after 12,000 years ago, really after 10,000 years ago to start seeing the beginnings of civilization?
The big question for me in that timeline is why didn’t we do it sooner? Why did it take so long? Why did we wait until after 12,000 years ago, really after 10,000 years ago to start seeing the beginnings of civilization?
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Graham Hancock, a journalist and author who for over 30 years has explored the controversial possibility that there existed a lost civilization during the last ice age and that it was destroyed in a global cataclysm some 12,000 years ago. He is the presenter of the Netflix documentary series, Ancient Apocalypse, the second season of which has just been released and it’s focused on the distant past of the Americas.
The following is a conversation with Graham Hancock, a journalist and author who for over 30 years has explored the controversial possibility that there existed a lost civilization during the last ice age and that it was destroyed in a global cataclysm some 12,000 years ago. He is the presenter of the Netflix documentary series, Ancient Apocalypse, the second season of which has just been released and it’s focused on the distant past of the Americas.
A topic I recently discussed with the archeologist Ed Barnhart. Let me say that Ed represents the kind of archeologist scholar I love talking to on the podcast, extremely knowledgeable, humble, open minded, and respectful in disagreement. I’ll do many more podcasts on history, including ancient history. Our distant past is full of mysteries, and I find it truly exciting to explore those mysteries with people both on the inside and the outside of the mainstream in the various disciplines involved. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Graham Hancock.
Lost Ice Age civilization
Lex Fridman
Let’s start with a big foundational idea that you have about human history. That there was an advanced Ice Age civilization that came before and perhaps seeded what people now call the sixth cradles of Civilization, Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Indies, and Mesoamerica. So let’s talk about this idea that you have. Can you at the highest possible level describe it?
Let’s start with a big foundational idea that you have about human history. That there was an advanced Ice Age civilization that came before and perhaps seeded what people now call the sixth cradles of Civilization, Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Indies, and Mesoamerica. So let’s talk about this idea that you have. Can you at the highest possible level describe it?
Graham Hancock
It would be better to describe it as a foundational sense of puzzlement and incompleteness in the story that we are taught about our past, which envisages more or less, there have been a few ups and downs, but more or less a straightforward evolutionary progress. We start out as hunter-foragers, then we become agriculturalists. The hunter-forager phase could go back hundreds of thousands of years. I mean, this is where it is also important to mention that anatomically modern humans, and we’re not the only humans. We had Neanderthals from, I don’t know, 400,000 years ago to about 40,000 years ago. They were certainly human because anatomically modern humans interbred with them. And we carry Neanderthal genes. There were the Denisovans maybe 300,000 to perhaps even as recently as 30,000 years ago. And again, interbreeding took place. They’re obviously a human species. So we’ve got this background of humans who didn’t look quite like us.
It would be better to describe it as a foundational sense of puzzlement and incompleteness in the story that we are taught about our past, which envisages more or less, there have been a few ups and downs, but more or less a straightforward evolutionary progress. We start out as hunter-foragers, then we become agriculturalists. The hunter-forager phase could go back hundreds of thousands of years. I mean, this is where it is also important to mention that anatomically modern humans, and we’re not the only humans. We had Neanderthals from, I don’t know, 400,000 years ago to about 40,000 years ago. They were certainly human because anatomically modern humans interbred with them. And we carry Neanderthal genes. There were the Denisovans maybe 300,000 to perhaps even as recently as 30,000 years ago. And again, interbreeding took place. They’re obviously a human species. So we’ve got this background of humans who didn’t look quite like us.
And then we have anatomically modern humans. And I think the earliest anatomically modern human skeletal remains are from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco and date to about 310,000 years ago. So the question is what were our ancestors doing after that? And I think we can include the Neanderthals and the Denisovans in that general picture. And why did it take so long? This is one of the puzzles, one of the questions that bother me. Why did it take so long? When we have creatures who are physically identical to us, we cannot actually weigh and measure their brains. But from the work that’s been done on the crania, it looks like they had the same brains that we do with the same wiring. So if we’ve been around for 300,000 plus years at least, and if ultimately in our future was the process to create civilization or civilizations, why didn’t it happen sooner?
Why did it take so long? Why was it such a long time? Even the story of anatomically modern humans has kept on changing. I remember a time when it was said that there hadn’t been anatomically modern humans before 50,000 years ago, and then it became 196,000 years ago with the findings in Ethiopia and then 310,000 years ago. There’s a lot of missing pieces in the puzzle there. But the big question for me in that timeline is why didn’t we do it sooner? Why did it take so long? Why did we wait until after 12,000 years ago, really after 10,000 years ago to start seeing what are selected as the beginnings of civilization in places like Turkey, for example. And then there’s a relatively slow process of adopting agriculture. And by 6,000 years ago, we see ancient Sumer emerging as a civilization. And we’re then in the pre-dynastic period in ancient Egypt as well 6,000 years ago, beginning to see definite signs of what will become the dynastic civilization of Egypt about 5,000 years ago.
And interestingly round about the same time, you have the Indus Valley civilization popping up out of nowhere. And by the way, the Indus Valley civilization was a lost civilization until the 1920s when railway workers accidentally stumbled across some ruins. I’ve been to Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, and these are extraordinarily beautifully centrally planned cities. Clearly they’re the work of an already sophisticated civilization. One of the things that strikes me about the Indus Valley Civilization is that we find a steatite seal of an individual seated in a recognizable yoga posture. And that seal is 5,000 years old, and the yoga posture is Mulabandhasana, which involves a real contortion of the ankles and twisting the feet back. It’s an advanced yoga posture. So there it is, 5,000 years ago. And that then raises the question, well, how long did yoga take to get to that place when it was already so advanced 5,000 years ago?
What’s the background to this? China, the Yellow River Civilization again, it’s around about the same period, five to 6,000 years ago. You get these first signs of something happening. So it’s very odd that all around the world we have this sudden upsurge of civilization about 6,000 years ago, preceded by what seems like a natural evolutionary process that would lead to a civilization. And yet certain ideas being carried down and manifested and expressed in many of these different civilizations. I just find that that whole idea very puzzling and very disturbing, especially when I look at this radical break that takes place in not just the human story, but the story of all life on Earth, which was the last great cataclysm that the Earth went through, which was the Younger Dryas event. It was an extinction level event. That’s when all the great megafauna of the Ice Age went extinct.
It’s after that. It’s after event that we start seeing this what had taken to be the beginnings of the first gradual steps towards civilization, we come out of the upper Paleolithic as it’s defined the end of the old Stone Age and into the Neolithic. And that’s when the wheels are supposedly set in motion to start civilization rolling. But what happened before that and why did that suddenly happen then? And I can’t help feeling, and I’ve felt this for a very long while, that there are major missing pieces in our story. It’s often said that I’m claiming to have proved that there was an advanced lost civilization in the Ice Age. And I am not claiming to have proved that. That is a hypothesis that I’m putting forward to answer some of the questions that I have about prehistory. And I think it’s worthwhile to inquire into those possibilities because the Younger Dryas event was a massive global cataclysm, whatever caused it.
And it’s strange that just after it we start seeing these first signs.
Göbekli Tepe
Lex Fridman
So the current understanding in mainstream archeology is that after the Younger Dryas is when the civilizations popped up in different places of the globe with a lot of similarities, but they popped up independently.
So the current understanding in mainstream archeology is that after the Younger Dryas is when the civilizations popped up in different places of the globe with a lot of similarities, but they popped up independently.
Graham Hancock
Independently. And by coincidence. And by coincidence, those big civilizations that we all remember as the first civilizations, Sumer, Egypt, the Indus Valley Civilization, China, they all pop up at pretty much the same time. That is the mainstream view.
Independently. And by coincidence. And by coincidence, those big civilizations that we all remember as the first civilizations, Sumer, Egypt, the Indus Valley Civilization, China, they all pop up at pretty much the same time. That is the mainstream view.
Lex Fridman
And they don’t just pop up, they kind of build up gradually. First there’s some settlements.
And they don’t just pop up, they kind of build up gradually. First there’s some settlements.
Graham Hancock
Oh, definitely, yes.
Oh, definitely, yes.
Lex Fridman
And then there’s different dynamics of how they build up and the role of agriculture. And that is also non-obvious, but it’s just there’s first a kind of settlement, a stabilization of where the people are living. Then they start using agriculture, then they start getting urban centers and that kind of stuff.
And then there’s different dynamics of how they build up and the role of agriculture. And that is also non-obvious, but it’s just there’s first a kind of settlement, a stabilization of where the people are living. Then they start using agriculture, then they start getting urban centers and that kind of stuff.
Graham Hancock
It seems like an entirely reasonable argument. Everything about that makes sense. There is no doubt that you’re seeing evolutionary progress, social evolution taking place in those thousands of years before Sumer emerges. But what’s happening now, really, I spent much of the nineties and the late 1980s investigating this issue of a lost civilization. I wrote a series of books about it. But by 2002 when I published a book called Underworld, which was the most massive and most heavy book that I’ve ever written, because I was writing very defensively at the time. By the time I finished that book, my wife Santha and I spent seven years scuba diving all around the world looking for structures underwater, often led by local fishermen or local divers to anomalies that they’d seen underwater. By the time that book was finished, I thought, actually, I’ve done this story. I’ve walked the walk.
It seems like an entirely reasonable argument. Everything about that makes sense. There is no doubt that you’re seeing evolutionary progress, social evolution taking place in those thousands of years before Sumer emerges. But what’s happening now, really, I spent much of the nineties and the late 1980s investigating this issue of a lost civilization. I wrote a series of books about it. But by 2002 when I published a book called Underworld, which was the most massive and most heavy book that I’ve ever written, because I was writing very defensively at the time. By the time I finished that book, my wife Santha and I spent seven years scuba diving all around the world looking for structures underwater, often led by local fishermen or local divers to anomalies that they’d seen underwater. By the time that book was finished, I thought, actually, I’ve done this story. I’ve walked the walk.
I really don’t have much more to say about it. And I turned in another direction and I wrote a book called Supernatural Meetings With the Ancient Teachers of Mankind recently retitled Visionary. And that was about the role of fundamentally about the role of psychedelics in the evolution of human culture. And I didn’t think that I would go back to the lost civilization issue, but Göbekli Tepe in Turkey kept on forcing itself upon me the more and more discoveries there, the 11,600 year date from Enclosure D, which is the two largest megalithic pillars. And I reached a point where I realized I have to get back in the water and I have to investigate this again. And Göbekli Tepe was a game changer, but I think it’s a game changer for everything because Göbekli Tepe, the extraordinary nature of it. We are looking at a major megalithic site, which is at least five and a half thousand years older than Ġgantija in Malta, which was previously considered to be the oldest megalithic site in the world.
And this led of course to a huge amount of interest and attention, both from the Turkish government who see the potential tourism potential of having the world’s oldest megalithic site and from archeologists. And this in turn has led to exploration and excavation throughout the region. And what they’re finding throughout that whole region around Göbekli Tepe and going down into Syria and further down into the Jordan Valley as far as Jericho and even across a bit of the Mediterranean into Cyprus, is what Turkish archeologists are now calling the Taş Tepeler civilization. They’re calling it a civilization, the Stone Hills Civilization with very definite identifying characteristics, semi-subterranean circular structures, the use of T-shaped megalithic pillars, sometimes not anywhere near as big as those at Göbekli Tepe. It’s clear that Göbekli Tepe now was not the beginning of this process. It was actually in a way, the end of this process.
It was the summation of everything that Stone Hills Civilization had achieved. But what is becoming clear is that this is a period between before the foundation of Göbekli Tepe, as far as we know, that date of 11,600 years ago is the oldest date for Göbekli Tepe. But of course there’s a lot of Göbekli Tepe still underground, so we can’t say for sure that that’s the oldest, but it’s the oldest so far excavated. What we’re seeing is that in that whole region around there, there was something was in motion and it began to go into motion round about the beginning of the Younger Dryas. And this is where these two dates are really important. The Younger Dryas, I’ll round the figures off, begins around 12,800 years ago, and it ends around 11,600 years ago.
So Göbekli Tepe’s construction date, if it is 11,600 years ago, if they don’t find older materials, marks the end of the Younger Dryas, but the beginning of the Younger Dryas, we are already seeing the stirrings of the kind of culture that manifests in full form at Göbekli Tepe and after the construction of Göbekli Tepe, in fact, even during the construction of Göbekli Tepe, we see agriculture beginning to be adopted. The people who created Göbekli Tepe were all hunter-foragers at the beginning. But by the time Göbekli Tepe was finished, and it was definitely deliberately finished, closed off, closed down, deliberately buried, covered with earth, covered with rubble, and then topped off with a hill, which is why Göbekli Tepe is called what it is, Göbekli Tepe means pot-bellied hill or the hill of the navel. For a long time, Göbekli Tepe was thought to be just a hill that looked a bit like a pot belly.
Lex Fridman
You say how it was discovered, I think this is one of the most fascinating things on Earth, period. So maybe can you say what it is and how it was discovered?
You say how it was discovered, I think this is one of the most fascinating things on Earth, period. So maybe can you say what it is and how it was discovered?
Graham Hancock
Well, Göbekli Tepe is first of all the oldest fully elaborated megalithic site that we know of anywhere in the world. It doesn’t mean that older ones won’t be found, but it is the oldest so far found. The part of the site that’s been excavated, which is a tiny percentage of the whole site. We do know. My first visit to Göbekli Tepe was in 2013, and Dr. Klaus Schmidt, the late Dr. Klaus Schmidt, who died a year later, was very generous to me and showed me around the site for over a period of three days. And he explained to me that they’ve already used ground penetrating radar on the site, and they know that there’s much more Göbekli Tepe still underground. So anything is possible in terms of the dating of Göbekli Tepe. But what we have at the moment is a series of almost circular, but not quite circular enclosures, which are walled with relatively small stones.
Well, Göbekli Tepe is first of all the oldest fully elaborated megalithic site that we know of anywhere in the world. It doesn’t mean that older ones won’t be found, but it is the oldest so far found. The part of the site that’s been excavated, which is a tiny percentage of the whole site. We do know. My first visit to Göbekli Tepe was in 2013, and Dr. Klaus Schmidt, the late Dr. Klaus Schmidt, who died a year later, was very generous to me and showed me around the site for over a period of three days. And he explained to me that they’ve already used ground penetrating radar on the site, and they know that there’s much more Göbekli Tepe still underground. So anything is possible in terms of the dating of Göbekli Tepe. But what we have at the moment is a series of almost circular, but not quite circular enclosures, which are walled with relatively small stones.
And then inside them you have pairs of megalithic pillars. And the archetypal part of that site is Enclosure D, which contains the two largest upright megaliths, about 18 feet tall and reckoned to weigh somewhere in the range of 20 tons, if I have my memory correct, they’re substantial hefty pieces of stone. It isn’t some kind of extraordinary feat to create a 20 foot tall or 20 ton megalith, nor is it an extraordinary feat to move it. There’s nothing magical or really weird about that. Human beings can do that and always have, besides the quarry for the megaliths is right there. It’s within 200 meters of the main enclosures. So that’s not a mystery, but the mystery is, the mystery is why suddenly this new form of architecture, this massive, massive megalithic pillars appear, and the pillars, one of the things that interests me about the pillars is their alignment.
And there is good work that’s been done, which suggests that Enclosure D aligns to the rising of the star Sirius. And the rising points of the star Sirius appear to be mapped by the other enclosures, which are all oriented in slightly different directions. It was the work entirely of hunter-foragers. But by the time Göbekli Tepe was completed, agriculture was being introduced and was taking place there. Now you asked how Göbekli Tepe was found. The answer to that is that there was a survey of that pot-bellied hill in the 1960s by some American archeologists, and they were looking absolutely looking for Stone Age material, for material from the Paleolithic. And they had found some Paleolithic flints, upper Paleolithic flints around there. So it looked like a good place to look. But then they noticed sticking out of the side of the hill, some very finely cut stone, bits of very large and very finely cut stone.
And looking at that, the workmanship was so good that those archeologists were confident that it had nothing to do with the Stone Age, and they thought they were looking at perhaps some Byzantine remains, and they abandoned the site and never looked at it further. And it wasn’t until the German Archaeological Institute got involved, and particularly Klaus Schmidt, who I think was a genius, had real insight into this and started to dig at Göbekli Tepe that they’d realized what they’d found, that they’d found potentially the oldest megalithic site in the world. And they’d found it at a place where agriculture, according to the established historical timeline, that’s where agriculture, at any rate in Europe and Western Asia begins. It begins in Anatolia, in Turkey, and then it gradually disseminates westward from there.
Lex Fridman
And yet the understanding is it was created by hunter-gatherers.
And yet the understanding is it was created by hunter-gatherers.
Graham Hancock
It was created by hunter-gatherers. Yeah, there was no agriculture 11,600 years ago in Göbekli Tepe. But by the time Göbekli Tepe was decommissioned, and I use that word deliberately, was closed down and buried. Agriculture was all around it. And this was agriculture of people who knew how to cultivate plants.
It was created by hunter-gatherers. Yeah, there was no agriculture 11,600 years ago in Göbekli Tepe. But by the time Göbekli Tepe was decommissioned, and I use that word deliberately, was closed down and buried. Agriculture was all around it. And this was agriculture of people who knew how to cultivate plants.
Lex Fridman
Do we have an understanding when it was turned into a, if I could say a time capsule so protected by forming a mound around it?
Do we have an understanding when it was turned into a, if I could say a time capsule so protected by forming a mound around it?
Graham Hancock
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
Is it around that similar time?
Is it around that similar time?
Graham Hancock
It stood from roughly 11,600 years ago to about 10,400 years ago to about 8,400 BC. So around 1200 years it was there, and it continued to be elaborated as a site. And while it was being elaborated as a site, we see agriculture, I’m going to use the word being introduced, there’d been no sign of it before, and suddenly it’s there. And to me, that’s another of the mysteries about Göbekli Tepe. And then with the new work that’s being done, we realize that it’s part of a much wider phenomenon which spreads across an enormous distance. And the puzzling thing is that after Göbekli Tepe there almost seems to be a decline. Things fall down again, and then we enter this long, slow process of the Neolithic, thousands of years, gradual developments until we come to ancient Sumer and Mesopotamia.
It stood from roughly 11,600 years ago to about 10,400 years ago to about 8,400 BC. So around 1200 years it was there, and it continued to be elaborated as a site. And while it was being elaborated as a site, we see agriculture, I’m going to use the word being introduced, there’d been no sign of it before, and suddenly it’s there. And to me, that’s another of the mysteries about Göbekli Tepe. And then with the new work that’s being done, we realize that it’s part of a much wider phenomenon which spreads across an enormous distance. And the puzzling thing is that after Göbekli Tepe there almost seems to be a decline. Things fall down again, and then we enter this long, slow process of the Neolithic, thousands of years, gradual developments until we come to ancient Sumer and Mesopotamia.
But agriculture has taken a firm root by then. Actually, one other thing, I’ll just say this in passing. When I talk about a lost civilization introducing ideas to people, I’m often accused of stealing credit from the indigenous people who had those ideas in the first place. So I do find it slightly hypocritical that archeology fully accepts that the idea of agriculture was introduced to Western Europe from Turkey, and that Western Europeans didn’t invent agriculture. It was absolutely introduced by Anatolian farmers who traveled west. So the notion of dissemination of ideas perhaps shouldn’t be so annoying to archeologists as it is.
Early humans
Lex Fridman
And perhaps we should also state, if we look at the entirety of history of hominids, humans or hominids have been explorers. I didn’t even know this when I was preparing for this. Looking at Homo erectus 1. 9 million years ago.
And perhaps we should also state, if we look at the entirety of history of hominids, humans or hominids have been explorers. I didn’t even know this when I was preparing for this. Looking at Homo erectus 1. 9 million years ago.
Graham Hancock
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman
Almost right away they spread out through the whole world and we, Homo sapiens evolved from them. And we should also mention, since we’re talking about controversial debates going on, as I understand there’s still debates about the dynamics of all that was going on there. Like we mentioned in Africa that I think the current understanding, we didn’t come from one particular point of Africa, that there’s multiple locations.
Almost right away they spread out through the whole world and we, Homo sapiens evolved from them. And we should also mention, since we’re talking about controversial debates going on, as I understand there’s still debates about the dynamics of all that was going on there. Like we mentioned in Africa that I think the current understanding, we didn’t come from one particular point of Africa, that there’s multiple locations.
Graham Hancock
This is the Out of Africa theory. I think it’s more than a theory. It’s really strongly evidenced. Why? Because we’re part of the Great Ape family and it’s an African family.
This is the Out of Africa theory. I think it’s more than a theory. It’s really strongly evidenced. Why? Because we’re part of the Great Ape family and it’s an African family.
There’s no doubt that human beings, our deep origins are in Africa. But then as you rightly say, there were these very early migrations out of Africa by species that are likely ancestral to anatomically modern humans, including definitely Homo erectus and the astonishingly distant travels that they undertook. Yes, I think there is an urge to explore in all of humanity. I think there is an urge to find out what’s around the next corner, what’s over the brow of the next hill. And I think that goes very deep into human character. And I think it was being manifested in those early adventures of people who left Africa and traveled all around the world and then settling in different parts of the world. I think a lot of anatomically modern human evolution took place outside Africa as well, not only in Africa.
Lex Fridman
So I guess the general puzzlement that you’re filled with is given that these creatures explore and spread and try out different environments, why did it take hundreds of thousands of years for them to develop complicated society settlements?
So I guess the general puzzlement that you’re filled with is given that these creatures explore and spread and try out different environments, why did it take hundreds of thousands of years for them to develop complicated society settlements?
Graham Hancock
That’s the first big question. Why did it take so long? And that raises in my mind a hypothesis, a possibility. Maybe it didn’t take so long. Maybe things were happening that we haven’t yet got hold of in the archeological record, which await to be discovered. And of course, there are huge parts of the world that have not been studied at all by archeology, but the fact that huge parts of the world have not been studied at all by archeology is not on its own enough to suggest that we’re missing a chapter in the human story. The reason that I come to that isn’t only puzzlement about that 300,000 year gap. It’s also to do with the fact that there’s common iconography. There’s common myths and traditions, and there’s common spiritual ideas that are found all around the world, and they’re found amongst cultures that are geographically distant from one another and that are also distant from one another in time.
That’s the first big question. Why did it take so long? And that raises in my mind a hypothesis, a possibility. Maybe it didn’t take so long. Maybe things were happening that we haven’t yet got hold of in the archeological record, which await to be discovered. And of course, there are huge parts of the world that have not been studied at all by archeology, but the fact that huge parts of the world have not been studied at all by archeology is not on its own enough to suggest that we’re missing a chapter in the human story. The reason that I come to that isn’t only puzzlement about that 300,000 year gap. It’s also to do with the fact that there’s common iconography. There’s common myths and traditions, and there’s common spiritual ideas that are found all around the world, and they’re found amongst cultures that are geographically distant from one another and that are also distant from one another in time.
They don’t necessarily occur at the same time. And this is where I think that archeology is perhaps desperately needing a history of ideas as well as just a history of things. Because an idea can manifest again and again throughout the human story. So there are particular issues, for example, the notion of the afterlife, destiny of the soul, what happens to us when we die? And believe me, when you reach my age, that’s something you do think about what happens. I used to feel immortal when I was in my forties, but now that I’m 74, I definitely know that I’m not. Well, it would be natural for human beings all around the world to have that same feeling, that same idea. But why would they all decide that what happens to the soul after death is that it makes a leap to the heavens, to the Milky Way, that it makes a journey along the Milky Way, that there it is confronted by challenges, by monsters, by closed gates.
The course of the life that that person has lived will determine their destiny in that afterlife journey. And this idea, the path of souls, the Milky Way is called the path of souls. It’s very strongly found in the Americas right from South America through Mexico, through into North America. But it’s also found in ancient Egypt, in ancient India, in ancient Mesopotamia, the same idea. And I don’t feel that that can be a coincidence. I feel that what we are looking at is an inheritance of an idea, a legacy that’s been passed down from a remote common source to cultures all around the world, and that has taken on a life of its own within those cultures. So the remote common source would explain both the similarities and the differences in the expression of these ideas. The other thing, very puzzling thing, is the sequence of numbers that are a result of the precession of the equinoxes.
Astronomical symbolism
At least I think that’s the best theory to explain them. Here, I think it’s important to pay tribute to the work of Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend. Giorgio de Santillana was professor of history of science actually at MIT, where you are based, back in the sixties. And Hertha von Dechend was professor of the history of science at Frankfurt University, and they wrote an immense book in the 1960s called Hamlet’s Mill, and Hamlet’s Mill differs very strongly from established opinion on the issue of the phenomenon of precession. And I’ll explain what precession is in a moment. Generally, it’s held that it was the Greeks who discovered the precession and the dating on that is put back not very far, maybe 2,300 years ago or so. Santillana and von Dechend are pointing out that knowledge of precession is much, much older than that, thousands of years older than that.
And they do actually trace it. I think I’m quoting them pretty much correctly to some almost unbelievable ancestor civilization. Reading that book was one of the several reasons that I got into this mystery in the first place. Okay, now, the precession of the equinoxes, to give it its full name, results from the fact that our planet is the viewing platform from which we observe the stars. And our planet, of course, is rotating on its own axis at roughly a thousand miles an hour at the equator. But what’s less obvious is that it’s also wobbling on its axis. So if you imagine the extended North Pole of the earth pointing up at the sky in our time, it’s pointing at the star Polaris, and that is our pole star. But Polaris has not always been the pole star precisely because of this wobble on the axis of the Earth.
Other stars have occupied the pole position, and sometimes the extended North Pole of the earth points at empty space. There is no pole star. That’s one of the obvious results of the wobble on the Earth’s axis. The other one is that there are 12 well-known constellations in our time, the 12 constellations of the zodiac that lie along what is referred to as the path of the sun. The earth is orbiting the sun, and we are seeing what’s behind it, what’s in direct line with the sun in our view. And the zodiacal constellations all lie along the path of the sun. So at different times of the year, the sun will rise against the background of a particular zodiacal constellation. Today we live in the age of Pisces, and it’s definitely not an accident that the early Christians used the fish as their symbol. This is another area where I differ from archeology.
Think the constellations of the zodiac were recognized as such much earlier than we suppose. Anyway, to get to the point, the key marker of the year, certainly in the northern hemisphere, was the spring equinox. The question was, what constellation is rising behind the sun? What constellation is housing the sun at dawn on the spring equinox? Right now it’s Pisces. In another 150 years or so, it’ll be Aquarius. We do live in the dawning of the age of Aquarius. Back in the time of the late ancient Egyptians, it was Aries going back to the time of Ramesses or before. Before that it was Taurus and so on and so forth. It’s backwards through the zodiac until 12,500 years ago. You come to the age of Leo when the constellation of Leo houses the sun on the spring equinox. Now this process unfolds very, very, very, very slowly, the whole cycle, and it is a cycle.
It repeats itself roughly every 26,000 years. Put a more exact figure on it, 25,920 years. That may be a convention. Some scholars would say it was a bit less than that, a bit more. But you’re talking fractions. It’s in that area, 25,920 years. And to observe it, you really need more than one human lifetime because it unfolds very, very slowly at a rate of one degree every 72 years. And the parallel that I often give is hold your finger up to the horizon, the distant horizon. The movement in one lifetime, in a period of 72 years is about the width of your finger. It’s not impossible to notice in a lifetime, but it’s difficult. You’ve got to pass it on. And what seems to have happened is that some ancient culture, the culture that Santillana and von Dechend call some almost unbelievable ancestor culture, worked out the entire process of precession and selected the key numbers of precession, of which the most important number, the governing number is the number 72. But we also have numbers related to the number 72. 72 plus 36 is 108, 108 divided by two.
Graham Hancock
… 36 is 108. 108 divided by two is 54. These numbers are also found in mythology all around the world. There were 72 conspirators who were involved in killing the god Osiris in Ancient Egypt and nailing him up in a wooden coffer and dumping him in the Nile. There are 432,000 in the Rigveda. 432,000 is a multiple of 72.
… 36 is 108. 108 divided by two is 54. These numbers are also found in mythology all around the world. There were 72 conspirators who were involved in killing the god Osiris in Ancient Egypt and nailing him up in a wooden coffer and dumping him in the Nile. There are 432,000 in the Rigveda. 432,000 is a multiple of 72.
And at Angkor, in Cambodia, for example, you have the bridge to Angkor Thom. And on that bridge you have figures on both sides, sculpted figures, which are holding the body of a serpent. That serpent is Vasuki, and what they’re doing is they’re churning the milky ocean. It’s the same metaphor of churning and turning that’s defined in the story of Hamlet’s Mill, of Amlodhi’s mill. There are 54 on each side. 54 plus 54 is 108. 108 is 72 plus 36. It’s a precessional number according to the work that Santillana and von Dechend did.
And the fascination with this numbers system and its discovery all around the world is one of the puzzles that intrigue me. And suggest to me that we are looking at ancestral knowledge that was passed down, and probably was passed down from a specific single common source at one time, but then was spread out very widely around the world.
Lex Fridman
One of the defining ways that you approach the study of human history that I think contrasts with mainstream archeology is that you take this astronomical symbolism and the relationship between humans and the stars very seriously.
One of the defining ways that you approach the study of human history that I think contrasts with mainstream archeology is that you take this astronomical symbolism and the relationship between humans and the stars very seriously.
Graham Hancock
I do, as I believe the ancients did.
I do, as I believe the ancients did.
Lex Fridman
I think it’s important to consider what humans would’ve thought about back then. Now we have a lot of distractions. We have social media, we can watch videos on YouTube and whatever. But back then, especially before electricity, the stars is the sexiest thing to talk about.
I think it’s important to consider what humans would’ve thought about back then. Now we have a lot of distractions. We have social media, we can watch videos on YouTube and whatever. But back then, especially before electricity, the stars is the sexiest thing to talk about.
Graham Hancock
There’s no light pollution.
There’s no light pollution.
Lex Fridman
There’s no light pollution so, I mean, you’re [inaudible 00:33:21]-
There’s no light pollution so, I mean, you’re [inaudible 00:33:21]-
Graham Hancock
That’s the majesty of the heavens.
That’s the majesty of the heavens.
Lex Fridman
Every single night you’re spending looking up at the stars. And you can imagine there’s a lot of status value to be the guy who’s very good at studying the stars, as the scientists of the day. And I’m sure there’s going to be these geniuses that emerge. They’re able to do two things. One, tell stories about the gods of whatever, based on the stars. And then also, as we’ll probably talk about, use the stars practically for navigation, for example.
Every single night you’re spending looking up at the stars. And you can imagine there’s a lot of status value to be the guy who’s very good at studying the stars, as the scientists of the day. And I’m sure there’s going to be these geniuses that emerge. They’re able to do two things. One, tell stories about the gods of whatever, based on the stars. And then also, as we’ll probably talk about, use the stars practically for navigation, for example.
Graham Hancock
Oh, yeah. Definitely.
Oh, yeah. Definitely.
Lex Fridman
So it makes sense that the stars had a primal importance for the ideas of the times, for the status, for religious explorations.
So it makes sense that the stars had a primal importance for the ideas of the times, for the status, for religious explorations.
Graham Hancock
It was an ever-present reality, and it was bright and it was brilliant, and it was full of lights. It’s inconceivable that the ancients would not have paid attention to it. It was an overwhelming presence.
It was an ever-present reality, and it was bright and it was brilliant, and it was full of lights. It’s inconceivable that the ancients would not have paid attention to it. It was an overwhelming presence.
And that’s one of the reasons why I’m really confident that the constellations that we now recognize as the constellations of the zodiac were recognized much earlier, because it’s hard to miss when you pay attention to the sky, that the sun over the course of the solar year is month by month rising against the background of different constellations. And then there’s a much longer process, the process of precession, which takes that journey backwards and where we have a period of 2,160 years for each sign of the zodiac.
I think it would’ve been hard for the ancients to have missed that. They might not have identified the constellations in exactly the same way we do today. That may well be a Babylonian or Greek convention, but that the constellations were there I think was very clear. And that they were special constellations, unlike other ones higher up in the sky which were not on the path of the sun, that people paid attention to.
Lex Fridman
Well, but detecting the procession of the equinox is hard because especially they don’t have any writing systems, they don’t have any mathematical systems. So everything is told through words.
Well, but detecting the procession of the equinox is hard because especially they don’t have any writing systems, they don’t have any mathematical systems. So everything is told through words.
Graham Hancock
Yeah. Let’s not underestimate oral traditions. Oral traditions, that’s something we’ve lost in our culture today. One of the things that happens with the written word is that you gradually lose your memory.
Yeah. Let’s not underestimate oral traditions. Oral traditions, that’s something we’ve lost in our culture today. One of the things that happens with the written word is that you gradually lose your memory.
Actually, there’s a nice story from Ancient Egypt about the god Thoth, the god of wisdom, who is very proud of himself because he has invented writing. “Look at this gift,” he says to a mythical pharaoh of that time, “Look at the gift that I’m giving humanity, writing. This is a wonderful thing. It’ll enable you to preserve so much that you would otherwise lose.” And the pharaoh in this story replies to him, “No, you have not given us a wonderful gift. You have destroyed the art of memory. We will forget everything. Words will roam free around the world, not accompanied by any wise advice to set them into context.” And actually that’s a very interesting point. And we do know that cultures that still do have oral traditions are able to preserve information for very long periods of time.
One thing I think is clear in any time, in any period of history, is human beings love stories. We love great stories. And one way to preserve information is to encode it, embed it in a great story. And so carefully done that actually, it doesn’t matter whether the storyteller knows that they’re passing on that information or not. The story itself is the vehicle. And as long as it’s repeated faithfully, the information contained within it will be passed on. And I do think this is part of the story of the preservation of knowledge.
Lex Fridman
That’s one of the reasons that you take myths seriously.
That’s one of the reasons that you take myths seriously.
Younger Dryas impact hypothesis
Graham Hancock
I take them very seriously. There’s many reasons, but I can’t help being deeply impressed and deeply puzzled by the worldwide tradition of a global cataclysm within human memory. I mean, we know scientifically that there have been many, many cataclysms in the past going back millions of years. I mean, the best-known one of course is the KPG event as it’s now called, that made the dinosaurs extinct 65 million or 66 million years ago.
I take them very seriously. There’s many reasons, but I can’t help being deeply impressed and deeply puzzled by the worldwide tradition of a global cataclysm within human memory. I mean, we know scientifically that there have been many, many cataclysms in the past going back millions of years. I mean, the best-known one of course is the KPG event as it’s now called, that made the dinosaurs extinct 65 million or 66 million years ago.
But has there been such a cataclysm in the lifetime of the human species? Yeah, the Mount Toba eruption about 70,000 years ago was pretty bad. But a global cataclysm, the Younger Dryas really ticks all the boxes as a worldwide disaster, which definitely involved sea level rise, both at the beginning and at the end of the Younger Dryas. It definitely involved the swallowing up of lands that previously had been above water.
And I think it’s an excellent candidate for this worldwide tradition of a global cataclysm, of which one of, but not the only, distinguishing characteristics was a flood, an enormous flood, and the submergence of lands that had previously been above water, underwater. The fact that this story is found all around the world suggests to me that the archeological explanation is, look, people suffer local floods all the time. I mean, as we’re talking, there’s flooding in Florida, but I don’t think anybody in Florida is going to make the mistake of believing that that’s a global flood. They know it’s local.
But that’s the argument largely of archeology, dealing with the flood myths, or that some local population experienced a nasty local flooding event and they decided to say that it affected the whole world. I’m not persuaded by that, particularly since we know there was a nasty epoch, the Younger Dryas, when flooding did occur, and when the Earth was subjected to events cataclysmic enough to extinguish entirely the megafauna of the ice age.
Lex Fridman
There is the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis that provides an explanation of what happened during this period that resulted in such rapid environmental change. So can you explain this hypothesis?
There is the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis that provides an explanation of what happened during this period that resulted in such rapid environmental change. So can you explain this hypothesis?
Graham Hancock
Yes. The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, YDIH for short, is not a lunatic fringe theory as its opponents often attempt to write it off. It’s the work of more than 60 major scientists working across many different disciplines, including archeology and including oceanography as well.
Yes. The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, YDIH for short, is not a lunatic fringe theory as its opponents often attempt to write it off. It’s the work of more than 60 major scientists working across many different disciplines, including archeology and including oceanography as well.
And they are collectively puzzled by the sudden onset of the Younger Dryas, and by the fact that it is accompanied 12,800 years ago by a distinct layer in the Earth. You can see it most clearly at Murray Springs in Arizona, for example. You can see, it’s about the width of a human hand, and there’s a draw there that’s been cut by flash flooding at some time. And that draw has revealed the sides of the draw.
And you can see the cross-section. And in the cross-section is this distinct dark layer that runs through the Earth. And it contains evidence of wildfires, there is a lot of soot in it. There are also nanodiamonds in it. There is shocked quartz in it. There is quartz that’s been melted at temperatures in excess of 2,200 degrees centigrade. There are carbon microspherules. All of these are proxies for some kind of cosmic impact.
I talked a moment ago about the extinction of the dinosaurs. Luis and Walter Alvarez, who made that incredible discovery, initially their discovery was based entirely on impact proxies, just as the Younger Dryas is. There was no crater. And for a long time they were disbelieved because they couldn’t produce a crater. But when they finally did produce that deeply buried Chicxulub crater, that’s when people started to say, “Yeah, they have to be right.” But they weren’t relying on the crater, they were relying on the impact proxies. And they’re the same impact proxies that we find in what’s called the Younger Dryas boundary layer all around the world.
So it’s the fact that at the moment when the Earth tips into a radical climate shift, it’s been warming up for at least 2,000 years before 12,800 years ago, people at the time must have been feeling a great sense of relief. “We’ve been living through this really cold time, but it’s getting better. Things are getting better.” And then suddenly, around 12,800 years ago, some might say 12, 860 years ago, there’s a massive global plunge in global temperatures, and the world suddenly gets as cold as it was at the peak of the ice age. And it’s almost literally overnight. It’s very, very, very rapid.
Normally in an epoch, when the Earth is going into a freeze, you would not expect sea levels to rise. But there is a sea level rise, a sudden one, right at the beginning of the Younger Dryas. And then you have this long frozen period from 12,800 to 11,600 years ago. And then equally, dramatically and equally suddenly the Younger Dryas comes to an end and the world very rapidly warms up. And you have a recognized pulse of meltwater at that time as the last of the glaciers collapse into the sea, called meltwater pulse 1B, around about 11,600 years ago.
This is a period which is very tightly defined, it’s a period when we know that human populations were grievously disturbed. That’s when the so-called Clovis culture of North America vanished entirely from the record during the Younger Dryas. And it’s the time when the mammoths and the saber-toothed tigers vanished from the record as well.
Lex Fridman
Is there a good understanding of what happened geologically, whether there was an impact or not? What explains this huge dip in temperature and then rise in temperature?
Is there a good understanding of what happened geologically, whether there was an impact or not? What explains this huge dip in temperature and then rise in temperature?
Graham Hancock
The abrupt cessation of the global meridional overturning circulation, of which the Gulf Stream is the best-known part, the main theory that’s been put forward up to now, and I don’t dispute that theory at all, is that the sudden freeze was caused by the cutting off of the Gulf Stream basically, which is part of the central heating system of our planet. So no wonder it became cold.
The abrupt cessation of the global meridional overturning circulation, of which the Gulf Stream is the best-known part, the main theory that’s been put forward up to now, and I don’t dispute that theory at all, is that the sudden freeze was caused by the cutting off of the Gulf Stream basically, which is part of the central heating system of our planet. So no wonder it became cold.
But what’s not really been addressed before is why that happened, why the Gulf Stream was cut, why a sudden pulse of meltwater went into the world ocean, and it was so much of it and it was so cold that it actually stopped the Gulf Stream in its tracks. And that’s where the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis offers a very elegant and very satisfactory solution to the problem.
Now, the hypothesis, of course, is broader than that. Amongst the scientists working on it are, for example, Bill Napier, an astrophysicist and astronomer. They have assembled a great deal of evidence, which suggests that the culprit in the Younger Dryas impact event or events was what we now call the Taurid meteor stream, which the Earth still passes through twice a year. It’s now about 30 million kilometers wide, takes the Earth a couple of days to pass through it on its orbit. It passes through it in June, and it passes through it at the end of October.
The suggestion is that the Taurid meteor stream is the end product of a very large comet that entered the solar system round about 20,000 years ago. Came in from the Oort cloud, got trapped by the gravity of the Sun, and went into orbit around the Sun, an orbit that crossed the orbit of the Earth. However, when it was one object, the likelihood of a collision with the Earth was extremely small.
But as it started to do what all comets do, which was to break up into multiple fragments because these are chunks of rock held together by ice, and as they warm up, they split and disintegrate and break into pieces, as it passed through that its debris stream became larger and larger and wider and wider. And the theory is that 12,800 years ago, the Earth passed through a particularly dense part of the Taurid meteor stream and was hit by multiple impacts all around the planet, certainly from the west of North America, as far east as Syria.
And that we are by and large not talking about impacts that would’ve caused craters, although there certainly were some, we are talking about air bursts. When an object is 100 or 150 meters in diameter and it’s coming in very fast into the Earth’s atmosphere, it is very unlikely to reach the earth, it’s going to blow up in the sky. And the best known recent example of that is the Tunguska event in Siberia, which took place on the 30th of June 1908.
The Tunguska event was, nobody disputes, it was definitely an air burst of a cometary fragment. And the date is interesting because the 30th of June is the height of the Beta Taurids. It’s one of the two times when the Earth is going through the Taurid meteor stream. Well, luckily that part of Siberia wasn’t inhabited, but 2,000 square miles of forest were destroyed. If that had happened over a major city, we would all be thinking very hard about objects out of the Taurid meteor stream and about the risk of cosmic impact.
So the suggestion is that it wasn’t one impact, it wasn’t two impacts, it wasn’t three impacts, it was hundreds of air bursts all around the planet. Coupled with a number of bigger objects, which the scientists working on this think hit the North American ice cap largely. Some of them may also have hit the Northern European ice cap, resulting in that sudden otherwise unexplained flood of meltwater that went into the world ocean and caused the cooling that then took place.
But this was a disaster for life all over the planet. And it’s interesting that one of the sites where they find the Younger Dryas boundary and where they find overwhelming evidence of an air burst and where they find all the shocked quartz, the carbon microspherules, the nanodiamonds, the trinitite, and so on and so forth, all of those impact proxies are found at Abu Hureyra. That was a settlement within 150 miles of Gobekli Tepe, and it was hit 12,800 years ago and it was obliterated. Interestingly, it was re-inhabited by human beings within probably five years, but it was completely obliterated at that time. And it is difficult to imagine that the people who lived in that area would not have been very impressed by what they saw happening by these massive explosions in the sky and the obliteration of Abu Hureyra.
Now this is a theory, the Younger Dryas impact. It’s a hypothesis actually, it’s not even a theory. A theory is, I think, considered a higher level than a hypothesis. That’s why it’s the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. And of course it has many opponents and there are many who disagree with it. And there have been a series of peer-reviewed papers that have been published supposedly debunking the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. One, I think was in 2011, it was called a Requiem for the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. And there’s one just been published a few months ago or a year ago called a Complete Refutation of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, something like that, some lengthy title.
So it’s a hypothesis that has its opponents, and even within those of us who are looking at the alternative side of history, there are different points of view. Robert Schoch from Boston University, the geologist who demonstrated that the erosion on the Sphinx may well have been caused by exposure to a long period of very heavy rainfall, he doesn’t go for the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. He fully accepts that the Younger Dryas was a global cataclysm and that the extinctions took place, but he thinks it was caused by some kind of massive solar outburst.
What everybody’s agreed on is the Younger Dryas was bad, but there is dispute about what caused it. I personally have found the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis to be the most persuasive, which most effectively explains all the evidence.
Lex Fridman
How important is the impact hypothesis to your understanding of the ice age advanced civilizations? Is it possible to have another explanation for environmental factors that could have erased most of an advanced civilization during this period?
How important is the impact hypothesis to your understanding of the ice age advanced civilizations? Is it possible to have another explanation for environmental factors that could have erased most of an advanced civilization during this period?
Graham Hancock
In a sense, it’s not the impact hypothesis that is central to what I’m saying, it’s the Younger Dryas that’s central to what I’m saying. And the Younger Dryas required a trigger, something caused it. I think the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, the notion that we’re looking at a debris stream of a fragmenting comet, and we can still see that debris stream because it’s still up there and we still pass through it twice a year, is the best explanation. But I don’t mind other explanations. It’s good that there are other explanations. The Younger Dryas is a big mystery, and it’s not a mystery that’s been solved yet.
In a sense, it’s not the impact hypothesis that is central to what I’m saying, it’s the Younger Dryas that’s central to what I’m saying. And the Younger Dryas required a trigger, something caused it. I think the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, the notion that we’re looking at a debris stream of a fragmenting comet, and we can still see that debris stream because it’s still up there and we still pass through it twice a year, is the best explanation. But I don’t mind other explanations. It’s good that there are other explanations. The Younger Dryas is a big mystery, and it’s not a mystery that’s been solved yet.
And that word, advanced civilization, this is another word that is easily misunderstood. And I’ve tried to make clear many, many times that when we consider the possibility of something like a civilization in the past, we shouldn’t imagine that it’s us, that it’s something like us. We should expect it to be completely different from us, but that it would’ve achieved certain things.
Amongst the clues that intrigue me are those precessional numbers that are found all around the world, and are a category of ancient maps called Portolanos, which suddenly started to appear just after the crusade that entered Constantinople and sacked Constantinople, the Portolanos suddenly start to appear. And they’re extremely accurate maps. The most of the ones that have survived are extremely accurate maps of the Mediterranean alone, but some of them show much wider areas.
For example, on these Portolano-style maps, you do find a depiction of Antarctica again and again. And another thing that these maps have in common is that many of the mapmakers state that they base their maps on multiple older source maps, which have not survived. These maps are intriguing because they have very accurate relative longitudes.
Our civilization did not crack the longitude problem until the mid-18th century with Harrison’s chronometer, which was able to keep accurate time at sea so you could have the time in London and you could have the local time at sea at the same time. And then you could work out your longitude. There might be other ways of working out longitude as well, but there it is. The fact is these Portolanos have extremely accurate relative longitudes.
Secondly, some of them show the world, to my eye, as it looked during the ice age. They show a much extended Indonesia and Malaysian peninsula and the series of islands that make up Indonesia today are all grouped together into one landmass. And that was the case during the ice age. That was the Sunda Shelf. And the presence of Antarctica on some of these maps also puzzles and intrigues me and is not satisfactorily explained in my view by archeology, which says, “Oh, those mapmakers, they felt that the world needed something underneath it to balance it so they put a fictional landmass there.”
I don’t think that makes sense. I think somebody was mapping the world during the last ice age, but that doesn’t mean that they had our kind of tech. It means that they were following that exploration instinct. That they knew how to navigate. They’d been watching the stars for thousands of years before, they knew how to navigate and they knew how to build seagoing ships. And they explored the world and they mapped the world.
Those maps were made a very, very long time ago. Some of them, I believe, were likely preserved in the Library of Alexandria. I think even then they were being copied and recopied. We don’t know exactly what happened to the Library of Alexandria, except that it was destroyed. I suggest it’s likely this was during the period of the Roman Empire. I suggest it’s likely that some of those maps were taken out of the library and taken to Constantinople, and that’s where they were liberated during the crusade and entered world culture again and started to be copied and recopied.
Lex Fridman
From this perspective, when we talk about advanced ice age civilization, it could have been a relatively small group of people with the technology of their scholars of the stars and their expert seafaring navigators.
From this perspective, when we talk about advanced ice age civilization, it could have been a relatively small group of people with the technology of their scholars of the stars and their expert seafaring navigators.
Graham Hancock
Yes, that’s about as far as I would take it. And when I say that, as I have said on a number of occasions, that it had technology equivalent to ours in the 18th century, I’m referring specifically to the ability to calculate longitude. I’m not saying that they were building steam engines. I don’t see any evidence for that.
Yes, that’s about as far as I would take it. And when I say that, as I have said on a number of occasions, that it had technology equivalent to ours in the 18th century, I’m referring specifically to the ability to calculate longitude. I’m not saying that they were building steam engines. I don’t see any evidence for that.
Lex Fridman
And perhaps some building tricks and skills of how to [inaudible 00:55:03].
And perhaps some building tricks and skills of how to [inaudible 00:55:03].
Graham Hancock
Well, definitely. And this, again, is where you come to a series of mysteries, which are perhaps best expressed on the Giza Plateau in Egypt with the three Great Pyramids. And the extraordinary megalithic temples that many people don’t pay much attention to on the Giza Plateau and the Great Sphinx itself. This is an area of particular importance in understanding this issue.
Well, definitely. And this, again, is where you come to a series of mysteries, which are perhaps best expressed on the Giza Plateau in Egypt with the three Great Pyramids. And the extraordinary megalithic temples that many people don’t pay much attention to on the Giza Plateau and the Great Sphinx itself. This is an area of particular importance in understanding this issue.
The Great Pyramid and the Sphinx of Giza
Lex Fridman
Well, can you actually describe the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids and what you find most mysterious and interesting about them?
Well, can you actually describe the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids and what you find most mysterious and interesting about them?
Graham Hancock
Well, first of all, the astronomy. And here I must pay tribute to two individuals, actually three individuals in particular. One of them is John Anthony West, passed away in 2018. He was the first person in our era to begin to wonder if the Sphinx was much older than it had been.
Well, first of all, the astronomy. And here I must pay tribute to two individuals, actually three individuals in particular. One of them is John Anthony West, passed away in 2018. He was the first person in our era to begin to wonder if the Sphinx was much older than it had been.
Actually, he got that idea from a philosopher called Schwaller de Lubicz, who’d noticed what he thought was water erosion on the body of the Sphinx. John West picked that up, and he was a great amateur Egyptologist himself. He spent most of his life in Egypt and he was hugely versed in Ancient Egypt. And when he looked at the Sphinx and at the strange scalloped erosion patterns and the vertical fissures, particularly in the trench around the Sphinx, he began to think maybe Schwaller was right, maybe there was some of some sort of flooding here.
And that’s when he brought Robert Shoch, second person I’d like to recognize, geologist at Boston University. He brought Shoch to Giza, and Shock was the first geologist to stick his neck out, risk the ire of Egyptologists, and say, “Well, it looks to me like the Sphinx was exposed to at least a thousand years of heavy rainfall.” And as Shoch’s calculations have continued, as he’s continued to be immersed in this mystery, he’s continuously pushed that back. And he’s now, again, looking at the date of around 12,000, 12,500 years ago during the Younger Dryas for the creation of the Great Sphinx.
And then, of course, this is the period of the wet Sahara, the humid Sahara. The Sahara was a completely different place during the ice age. There were rivers in it, there were lakes in it, it was fertile, it was possibly densely populated, and there was a lot of rain. There’s not no rain in Giza today, but there’s relatively little rain. Not enough rain to cause that erosion damage on the Sphinx.
The next person who needs to be mentioned in this context is Robert Bauval. Robert and I have co-authored a number of books together. Unfortunately, Robert has been very ill for the last seven years. He’s got a very bad chest infection. And I think also that Robert became very demoralized by the attacks of Egyptologists on his work. But Robert is the genius, and it does take a genius sometime to make these connections because nobody noticed it before, that the three pyramids of Giza are laid out on the ground in the pattern of the three stars of Orion’s belt.
And skeptics will say, “Well, you can find any buildings and line them up with any stars you want,” but Orion actually isn’t any old constellation. Orion was the god Osiris in the sky. The ancient Egyptians called the Orion constellation Sahu, and they recognized it as the celestial image of the god Osiris. So what’s being copied on the ground is the belt of a deity, of a celestial deity. It’s not just a random constellation.
And then when we take precession into account, you find something else very intriguing happening. First of all, you find that the exact orientation of the pyramids as it is today, and pretty much as it was when they’re supposed to have been built 4,500 years ago, it’s not precisely related to how Orion’s Belt looked at that time. There’s a bit of a twist, they’re not quite right. But as you precess the stars backwards, as you go back and back and back and you come to around 10,500 BC, 12,500 years ago in the Younger Dryas, you find that suddenly they lock perfectly. They match perfectly with the three pyramids on the ground.
And that’s the same moment that the Great Sphinx, an equinoctial monument, aligned perfectly to the rising sun on the spring equinox. Anybody can test this through themselves. Just go to Giza on the 21st of March, be there before dawn, stand behind the Sphinx, and you will see the sun rising directly in line with the gaze of the Sphinx. But the question is what constellation was behind the Sphinx? And 12,500 years ago it was the constellation of Leo. And actually the constellation of Leo has a very Sphinx-like look. And I and my colleagues are pretty sure that the Sphinx was originally a lion entirely. And that over the thousands of years, it became damaged, it became eroded, particularly the part of it that sticks out the head. There were periods when the Sphinx was completely covered in sand, but still the head stuck out.
By the time you come to the Fourth Dynasty, when the Great Pyramids are supposedly built, by the time you come to the Fourth Dynasty, the lion, original lion head, would’ve been a complete mess. And we suggest that it was then re-carved into a pharaonic head. Egyptologists think it was the pharaoh Khafre, but there’s no real strong resemblance, but it’s definitely wearing the nemes headdress of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh. And we think that that’s a result of a recarving of what was originally not only a lion-bodied, but also a lion-headed monument.
It wouldn’t make sense if you create an equinoctial marker in the time of Khafre 4,500 years ago, and the Sphinx is an equinoctial marker. I mean, it’s 270 feet long and 70 feet high and it’s looking directly at the rising sun on the equinox. If you create it then, you’d be more likely to create it in the shape of a bull, because that was the age of Taurus, when the constellation of Taurus housed the sun on the spring equinox. So why is it a lion? And again, we think that’s because of that observation of the skies and putting on the ground as above, so below, putting on the ground an image of the sky at a particular time.
Now, the fact that the Giza Plateau, it’s a fact, of course, that Egyptologists completely dispute, but the fact that the principle monuments of the Giza Plateau, the three Great Pyramids and the Great Sphinx, all lock astronomically on the date of around 10,500 BC, to me, is most unlikely to be an accident. And actually, if you look at computer software at the sky at that time, you’ll see that the Milky Way is very prominent and seems to be mirrored on the ground by the river Nile-
Graham Hancock
…prominent and seems to be mirrored on the ground by the river Nile. I suggest that may be one of the reasons amongst many why Giza was chosen as the site for this very special place. The point I want to make is that an astronomical design on the ground, which memorializes a very ancient date, does not have to have been done 12,500 years ago. If, from the ancient Egyptian point of view, you’re there 4, 500 years ago, and there’s a time 8,000 years before that, which is very, very, very important to you, you could use astronomical language and megalithic architecture to memorialize that date on the Giza Plateau, which is what we think we’re looking at, except for one thing, and that’s the erosion patterns on the Sphinx.
…prominent and seems to be mirrored on the ground by the river Nile. I suggest that may be one of the reasons amongst many why Giza was chosen as the site for this very special place. The point I want to make is that an astronomical design on the ground, which memorializes a very ancient date, does not have to have been done 12,500 years ago. If, from the ancient Egyptian point of view, you’re there 4, 500 years ago, and there’s a time 8,000 years before that, which is very, very, very important to you, you could use astronomical language and megalithic architecture to memorialize that date on the Giza Plateau, which is what we think we’re looking at, except for one thing, and that’s the erosion patterns on the Sphinx.
We are pretty sure that the Sphinx, at least, does date back to 12 and a half thousand years ago and with it, the megalithic temples, the so-called Valley Temple, which stands just to the east and just to the south of the Sphinx and the Sphinx temple, which stands directly in front of the Sphinx. The Sphinx temple has largely been destroyed. But the Valley Temple, attributed to Khafre on no good grounds whatsoever, is a huge megalithic construction with blocks of limestone that weigh up to 100 tons each. Yet, it has been remodeled/refaced with granite. There are granite blocks that are placed on top of the core limestone blocks. Those core limestone blocks were already eroded when the granite blocks were put there. Why? Because the granite blocks have actually been purposefully and deliberately cut to fit into the erosion marks on the, we believe, much older megalithic blocks there.
I think Giza is a very complicated site. I would never seek to divorce the dynastic ancient Egyptians from the Great Pyramids. They were closely involved in the construction of the Great Pyramids as we see them today. But what I do suggest is that there were very low platforms on the Giza Plateau that are much older and that when we look at the three Great Pyramids, we are looking at a renovation and a restoration and a enhancement of much older structures that had existed on the Giza Plateau for a much longer period before that. Actually, the Great Pyramid is built around a natural hill. That natural hill might’ve been seen as the original primeval mound to the ancient Egyptians.
Lex Fridman
So the idea is that the Sphinx was there long before the pyramids, and the pyramids were built by the Egyptians to celebrate further an already holy place.
So the idea is that the Sphinx was there long before the pyramids, and the pyramids were built by the Egyptians to celebrate further an already holy place.
Graham Hancock
Yeah. There were platforms in place where the pyramids stand, not the pyramids as we see them today, but the base of those pyramids was already in place at that time.
Yeah. There were platforms in place where the pyramids stand, not the pyramids as we see them today, but the base of those pyramids was already in place at that time.
Lex Fridman
What’s the evidence that the Egyptologists use to make the attributions that they do for the dating of the pyramids and the Sphinx?
What’s the evidence that the Egyptologists use to make the attributions that they do for the dating of the pyramids and the Sphinx?
Graham Hancock
Well, the three great pyramids of Giza are different from later pyramids. This is another problem that I have with the whole thing is the story of pyramid building. When did it really begin? The timeline that we get from Egyptology is the first pyramid is the pyramid of the Pharaoh, Djoser, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, about 100 years or so before the Giza pyramids were built. Then, we have this explosion in the fourth dynasty of true pyramids. We have three of them attributed to a single Pharaoh, Sneferu, who built, supposedly, the pyramid at Meidum and the two pyramids at Dahshur, the Bent and the Red Pyramid.
Well, the three great pyramids of Giza are different from later pyramids. This is another problem that I have with the whole thing is the story of pyramid building. When did it really begin? The timeline that we get from Egyptology is the first pyramid is the pyramid of the Pharaoh, Djoser, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, about 100 years or so before the Giza pyramids were built. Then, we have this explosion in the fourth dynasty of true pyramids. We have three of them attributed to a single Pharaoh, Sneferu, who built, supposedly, the pyramid at Meidum and the two pyramids at Dahshur, the Bent and the Red Pyramid.
Then, within that same 100-year span, we have the Giza pyramids being built. This is according to the Orthodox chronology. Then, suddenly, once the Giza project is finished, pyramid building goes into a massive slump in Ancient Egypt. The pyramids of the Fifth Dynasty are, frankly speaking, a mess outside. They’re very inferior constructions. You can hardly recognize them as pyramids at all. But what happens when you go inside them is you find that they’re extensively covered in hieroglyphs and imagery, repeating the name of the king who was supposedly buried in that place. Whereas, the Giza pyramids have no internal inscriptions whatsoever. What we do have is one piece of graffiti about which there is some controversy.
Basic statistics: it’s a 6 million-ton structure. Each side is about 750 feet long. It’s aligned almost perfectly to true north, south, east, and west within 3/60ths of a single degree, the 06ths, because degrees are divided into 60s. It’s the precision of the orientation and the absolute massive size of the thing plus its very complicated internal passageways that are involved in it. In the ninth century, the Great Pyramid still had its facing stones in place, but there was an Arab Caliph, Khalifa al-Mamun, who had already realized that other pyramids did have their entrances in the north face. Nobody knew where the entrance to the Great Pyramid was. But he figured if there’s an entrance to this thing, it’s going to be in the north face somewhere. He put together a team of workers. They went in with sledgehammers. They started smashing where he thought would be the entrance. They cut their way into the Great Pyramid for a distance of maybe 100 feet. Then, the hammering that they did dislodged something. They heard a little bit further away, something big falling, and they realized there was a cavity there. They started heading in that direction. Then, they joined the internal passageway of the Great Pyramid, the descending and the ascending corridors that go up.
When you go up the ascending corridor, every one of the internal passageways in the Great Pyramid that people can walk in slopes at an angle of 26 degrees. That’s interesting because the angle of slope of the exterior of the Great Pyramid is 52 degrees. We know mathematicians were at work as well as geometers in the creation of the Great Pyramid.
If you go up the Grand Gallery, which is at the end of the so-called ascending corridor, and it’s above the so-called Queen’s Chamber… You go up the Grand Gallery. You’re eventually going to come to what is known as the King’s Chamber in which there is a sarcophagus. That sarcophagus is a little bit too big to have been got in through the narrow entrance passageway. It’s almost as though the so-called King’s Chamber was built around the sarcophagus, already in place.
Above the King’s Chamber are five other chambers. These are known as relieving chambers. The theory was that they were built to relieve the pressure on the King’s Chamber of the weight of the monument. But I think what makes that theory dubious is the fact that even lower down, where more weight was involved, you have the Queen’s Chamber, and there are no such relieving chambers above that.
In the top of these five chambers, a British adventurer and vandal called Howard Vyse, who dynamited his way into those chambers in the first place, allegedly found… Well, he claims he found a piece of graffiti left by a work-gang naming the Pharaoh Khufu. It’s true. I’ve been in that chamber, and there is the cartouche of Khufu there. Quite recognizable. But the dispute around it is whether that is a genuine piece of graffiti dating from the Old Kingdom or whether Howard Vyse actually put it there himself because he was in desperate need of money at the time. I’m not sure what the answer to that question is. But it’s one of the reasons that Egyptologists feel confident in saying that the pyramid is the work of Khufu. Another is what is called the Wadi al-Jarf Papyri, where, on the Red Sea, the diary of an individual Merer was found. He talks about bringing highly polished limestone to the Great Pyramid. It’s clear that what he’s talking about is the facing stones of the Great Pyramid. He’s not talking about the body of the Great Pyramid. He’s talking about the facing stones of the Great Pyramid during the reign of Khufu. That’s another reason why the Great Pyramid is attributed to Khufu. But I think that Khufu was undoubtedly involved in the Great Pyramid and in a big way. But I think he was building upon and elaborating a much older structure.
I think the heart of that structure is the subterranean chamber, which is 100 feet vertically beneath the base of the Great Pyramid. Anybody who suffers from claustrophobia will not enjoy being down there. You’ve got to go down a 26-degree sloping corridor until a distance of about 300 feet. It’s 100 feet vertically, but the slope means you’re going to walk a distance of… Not walk. You’ve got to ape walk. You’re almost going to have to crawl. I’ve learned from long experience that the best way to go down these corridors is actually backwards. If you go forward, you keep bumping your head on them because they’re only three feet five inches high. You get down to the bottom. You have a short horizontal passage, and then you get into the subterranean chamber.
The theory of Egyptology is that this was supposed to be the burial place of Khufu, but after cutting out that 300-foot long, 26-degree sloping passage, a lot of which passes through bedrock, and having cut the subterranean chamber out of bedrock, gone to all that trouble, they decided they wouldn’t bury him there. They built what’s now known as the Queen’s Chamber as his burial chamber. But then they decided that wouldn’t do either. They then built the King’s chamber, and that’s where the Pharaoh is supposed to have been buried. Those Arab raiders under Khalifa al-Mamun didn’t find anything in the Great Pyramid at all.
Lex Fridman
Your idea is that the Sphinx and maybe some aspects of the pyramid were much earlier. Why that’s important is, in that case, it would be evidence of some transfer of technology-
Your idea is that the Sphinx and maybe some aspects of the pyramid were much earlier. Why that’s important is, in that case, it would be evidence of some transfer of technology-
Graham Hancock
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
…from a much older civilization. The idea is that during the Younger Dryas, most of that civilization was either destroyed or damaged, and they desperately scattered across the globe.
…from a much older civilization. The idea is that during the Younger Dryas, most of that civilization was either destroyed or damaged, and they desperately scattered across the globe.
Graham Hancock
Seeking refuge.
Seeking refuge.
Lex Fridman
Seeking refuge and telling stories of maybe, one, the importance of the stars, their knowledge about the stars, and their knowledge about building and knowledge about navigation.
Seeking refuge and telling stories of maybe, one, the importance of the stars, their knowledge about the stars, and their knowledge about building and knowledge about navigation.
Graham Hancock
That’s roughly the idea. It’s interesting that the ancient Egyptians have a notion of an epoch that they call Zep Tepi, which is the first time. It means the first time. This is when the gods walk the earth. This is when seven sages brought wisdom to Ancient Egypt. That is seen as the origin of ancient Egyptian civilization. There are king lists… by the ancient Egyptians themselves. There are king lists that go back way beyond the First Dynasty/go back 30,000 years into the past in Ancient Egypt, considered to be entirely mythical by Egyptologists. But nevertheless, it’s interesting that there’s that reference to remote time.
That’s roughly the idea. It’s interesting that the ancient Egyptians have a notion of an epoch that they call Zep Tepi, which is the first time. It means the first time. This is when the gods walk the earth. This is when seven sages brought wisdom to Ancient Egypt. That is seen as the origin of ancient Egyptian civilization. There are king lists… by the ancient Egyptians themselves. There are king lists that go back way beyond the First Dynasty/go back 30,000 years into the past in Ancient Egypt, considered to be entirely mythical by Egyptologists. But nevertheless, it’s interesting that there’s that reference to remote time.
Now, what you also have in Egypt are what might almost be described as secret societies. The followers of Horus are one of those specifically tasked with bringing forward the knowledge from the first time into later periods. The souls of Pe and Nekhen are another one of these mysterious secret society groups who are possessors of knowledge that they transmit to the future. What I’m broadly suggesting is that those survivors of the Younger Dryas cataclysm, who settled in Giza may have been relatively small in number. It’s interesting that they’re referred to in the Edfu Building Texts as seven sages because that repeats again and again. It’s also in Mesopotamia.
It’s seven sages, seven Apkallu, who come out of the waters of the Persian Gulf and teach people all the skills of agriculture and of architecture and of astronomy. It’s found all around the world that there was a relatively small number of people who took refuge in Giza, who benefited from the survival skills of the hunter-foragers who lived at Giza at that time, and who also passed on their knowledge to those hunter-foragers. But it was not knowledge that was ready to be put into shape at that time. That knowledge was then preserved and kept and handled within very secretive groups that passed it down over thousands of years. Finally, it burst into full form in the fourth dynasty in Ancient Egypt.
The notion that knowledge might be transferred over thousands of years shouldn’t be absurd. We know, for example, in the case of ancient Israel… It goes back to the time of Abraham, which is pretty much, I think, around 2000 BC. Knowledge has been preserved from that time right up to the present day. If you can preserve knowledge for 4,000 years, you can probably preserve it for eight.
Sahara Desert and the Amazon rainforest
Lex Fridman
Now, of course, the air bars on this are quite large, but if an advanced ice-age civilization existed, where do you think it was? Where do you think we might find it one day if it existed, and how big do you think it might have been?
Now, of course, the air bars on this are quite large, but if an advanced ice-age civilization existed, where do you think it was? Where do you think we might find it one day if it existed, and how big do you think it might have been?
Graham Hancock
Well, this is where I’m often accused of presenting a God-of-the-gaps argument, that I think there was a lost civilization because there’s lots of the earth that archeologists have never looked at. Of course, I’m not thinking that. These are very special gaps that I’m interested in. I’m interested in them because of all the curiosities and the puzzlement that I’ve expressed to you before. It’s not just because they’re gaps in the archeological record. It’s because those gaps involve places that were very interesting places to live during the ice age. They specifically include the Sahara Desert, which was not a desert during the ice age and went through this warm wet period when it was very, very fertile. Certainly, some archeology has been done in the Sahara, but it’s fractional. It’s tiny. I think if we want to get into the true origins of Ancient Egyptian civilization, of the peoples of Ancient Egypt, we need to be looking in the Sahara for that.
Well, this is where I’m often accused of presenting a God-of-the-gaps argument, that I think there was a lost civilization because there’s lots of the earth that archeologists have never looked at. Of course, I’m not thinking that. These are very special gaps that I’m interested in. I’m interested in them because of all the curiosities and the puzzlement that I’ve expressed to you before. It’s not just because they’re gaps in the archeological record. It’s because those gaps involve places that were very interesting places to live during the ice age. They specifically include the Sahara Desert, which was not a desert during the ice age and went through this warm wet period when it was very, very fertile. Certainly, some archeology has been done in the Sahara, but it’s fractional. It’s tiny. I think if we want to get into the true origins of Ancient Egyptian civilization, of the peoples of Ancient Egypt, we need to be looking in the Sahara for that.
The Amazon rainforest is another example of this. I think the Sahara is about 9 million square kilometers. The Amazon that’s left under dense canopy rainforest is about 5 million square kilometers, maybe closer to six. Then, you have the continental shelves that were submerged by sea level rise at the end of the ice age. Now, it’s well established that sea level rose by 400 feet, but it didn’t rise by 400 feet overnight. It came in dribs and drabs. There were periods of very rapid, quite significant sea level rise, and there were periods when the sea level was rising much more slowly. That 400-foot sea level rise is spread out over a period of about 10,000 years. But there are episodes within it like meltwater pulse 1B like meltwater pulse 1A when the flooding was really immense.
Lex Fridman
How big do you think it might’ve been? Do you think it was spread across the globe? If there were expert navigators, do you think they spread across the globe?
How big do you think it might’ve been? Do you think it was spread across the globe? If there were expert navigators, do you think they spread across the globe?
Graham Hancock
Well, the reason that I’m talking about the gaps is I don’t know where this civilization started or where it was based. All I’m seeing are clues and mysteries and puzzles that intrigue me and which suggest to me that something is missing from our past. I’m not inclined to look for that missing something in, for example, Northern Europe, because Northern Europe was not a very nice place to live during the ice age. I mean, nobody smart would build a civilization in Northern Europe 12,000 years ago. It was a hideous, frozen wasteland. The places to look are places that were hospitable and welcoming to human beings during the ice age. That, of course, includes the coastlines that are now underwater. Of course, it includes the Sahara Desert. Of course, it includes the Amazon rainforest as well. All of these places, I think, are candidates for “my lost civilization.” Because I think, largely from those ancient maps, that it was a navigating seafaring civilization, I suspect that it wasn’t only in one place. It was probably in a number of places.
Well, the reason that I’m talking about the gaps is I don’t know where this civilization started or where it was based. All I’m seeing are clues and mysteries and puzzles that intrigue me and which suggest to me that something is missing from our past. I’m not inclined to look for that missing something in, for example, Northern Europe, because Northern Europe was not a very nice place to live during the ice age. I mean, nobody smart would build a civilization in Northern Europe 12,000 years ago. It was a hideous, frozen wasteland. The places to look are places that were hospitable and welcoming to human beings during the ice age. That, of course, includes the coastlines that are now underwater. Of course, it includes the Sahara Desert. Of course, it includes the Amazon rainforest as well. All of these places, I think, are candidates for “my lost civilization.” Because I think, largely from those ancient maps, that it was a navigating seafaring civilization, I suspect that it wasn’t only in one place. It was probably in a number of places.
Then, I can only speculate. Maybe there was a cultural value where it was felt that it was not appropriate to interfere with the lives of hunter-foragers at that time. Maybe it was felt that they should keep their distance from them, just as, even today, there is a feeling that we shouldn’t be interfering too much with the uncontacted tribes in the Amazon rainforest. Although interestingly, some of those tribes are now using cell phones. That possibility may have been there in the past. Only when we come to a global cataclysm does it become essential to have outreach and, actually, to take refuge amongst those hunter-forager populations. That is the hypothesis that I’m putting forward. I’m not claiming that it’s a fact. But, for me, it helps to explain the evidence.
Lex Fridman
That speaks to one of the challenges that archeologists provide to this idea, is that there is a lot of evidence of humans in the ice age and they appear to be all hunter-gatherers. But, like you said, only a small percent of areas where humans have lived have been studied by archeologists.
That speaks to one of the challenges that archeologists provide to this idea, is that there is a lot of evidence of humans in the ice age and they appear to be all hunter-gatherers. But, like you said, only a small percent of areas where humans have lived have been studied by archeologists.
Graham Hancock
That’s right. Very tiny percent. Even a tiny percent of every archeological site has been studied by archeologists, too. Typically, one to 5% of any archeological site is excavated.
That’s right. Very tiny percent. Even a tiny percent of every archeological site has been studied by archeologists, too. Typically, one to 5% of any archeological site is excavated.
Lex Fridman
I mean, that’s why Göbekli Tepe fills my mind with imagination, especially seeing it as a time capsule. It’s almost certain that there is places on earth we haven’t discovered that, once we do, even if it’s after the ice age, will change our view of human history. What would be your dream thing to discover, like Göbekli Tepe, that says a definitive perturbation to our understanding of ice age history?
I mean, that’s why Göbekli Tepe fills my mind with imagination, especially seeing it as a time capsule. It’s almost certain that there is places on earth we haven’t discovered that, once we do, even if it’s after the ice age, will change our view of human history. What would be your dream thing to discover, like Göbekli Tepe, that says a definitive perturbation to our understanding of ice age history?
Graham Hancock
Some archive. Some hall of records. There’s both mystical associations with the Hall of Records at Giza from people like the Edgar Cayce organization. There’s also ancient Egyptian traditions which suggest that something was concealed beneath the Sphinx. This is not an idea that is alien to Ancient Egypt. It’s quite present in Ancient Egypt. So far, as far as I know, nobody has some dug down beneath the Sphinx. Of course, there’s very good reasons for that. You don’t want to damage the place too much. But let’s call it the Hall of Records. I’d love to find that.
Some archive. Some hall of records. There’s both mystical associations with the Hall of Records at Giza from people like the Edgar Cayce organization. There’s also ancient Egyptian traditions which suggest that something was concealed beneath the Sphinx. This is not an idea that is alien to Ancient Egypt. It’s quite present in Ancient Egypt. So far, as far as I know, nobody has some dug down beneath the Sphinx. Of course, there’s very good reasons for that. You don’t want to damage the place too much. But let’s call it the Hall of Records. I’d love to find that.
But I think in a way that’s what Göbekli Tepe is. Göbekli Tepe is a hall of records. It’s interesting that just as I’ve tried to outline, I hope reasonably clearly, that the three great pyramids of Giza match Orion’s belt in 10,500 BC just as the Sphinx matches Leo in 10,500 BC, 12,500 years ago or so. Pillar 43 in Enclosure D at Göbekli Tepe contains what a number of researchers, myself included, regard as an astronomical diagram. Martin Sweatman of Edinburgh University has brought forward the best work in this field. But it was initially started by a gentleman called Paul Burley who noticed that one of the figures on Pillar 43 is a scorpion, very much like we represent the constellation of Scorpio today and that above it is a vulture with outstretched wings, which is in a posture very similar to the constellation that we call Sagittarius. On that outstretched wing is a circular object, and the suggestion is that it’s marking the time when the sun was at the center of the dark rift in the Milky Way at the summer solstice 12 and a half thousand years ago. That’s what it’s marking.
It’s interesting that the same date can be deduced from Pillar… Of course, it’s controversial. Martin Sweatman’s ideas are by no means accepted by archeology. But he’s done very, very thorough, detailed, statistical work on this. I’m personally convinced. We have a time capsule at Göbekli Tepe, which is memorializing a date that is at least 1,200 years before Göbekli Tepe was built if that dating of 11,600 years ago proves to be absolutely the oldest date as it is at present. The date memorialized on Pillar 43 is 12,800 years ago, the beginning of the Younger Dryas, the beginning of the impact event.
Then, Giza does the same thing but in much larger scale. It uses massive megalithic architecture, which is very difficult to destroy, and a profound knowledge of astronomy to encode a date in a language that any culture which is sufficiently literate in astronomy will be able to decode. We don’t have to have a script that we can’t read like we do with the Indus Valley civilization or with the Easter Island script. We don’t have to have a script that can’t be interpreted. If you use astronomical language, then any astronomical literate civilization will be able to give you a date.
Hoover Dam has a star map built into it. That star map is part of an exhibition that was put there at the founding of the Hoover Dam. What it does is it freezes the sky above the Hoover Dam at the moment of its completion. Oscar Hansen, the artist who created that piece said so specifically that this would be so that any future culture would be able to know the time of the dam’s construction. You can use astronomy and architecture to memorialize a particular date.
Lex Fridman
Quick pause. Bathroom break.
Quick pause. Bathroom break.
Graham Hancock
Sounds good.
Sounds good.
Response to critics
Lex Fridman
To me, the story that we’ve been talking about… It is both exciting if the mainstream archeology narrative is correct and the one you’re constructing is correct. Both are super interesting because the mainstream archeology perspective means that there’s something about the human mind from which the pyramids/these ideas spring naturally. You place humans anywhere. You place them on Mars. It’s going to come out that way. That’s an interesting story of human psychology that then becomes even more interesting when you evolve out of Africa with homo sapiens, how they think about the world. That’s super interesting. Then, if there’s an ancient civilization/advanced civilization that explains why there’s so many similar types of ideas that spread, that means that there’s so much undiscovered still about the spring of these ideas of civilization that come. To me, they’re both fascinating. I don’t know why there’s so much infighting.
To me, the story that we’ve been talking about… It is both exciting if the mainstream archeology narrative is correct and the one you’re constructing is correct. Both are super interesting because the mainstream archeology perspective means that there’s something about the human mind from which the pyramids/these ideas spring naturally. You place humans anywhere. You place them on Mars. It’s going to come out that way. That’s an interesting story of human psychology that then becomes even more interesting when you evolve out of Africa with homo sapiens, how they think about the world. That’s super interesting. Then, if there’s an ancient civilization/advanced civilization that explains why there’s so many similar types of ideas that spread, that means that there’s so much undiscovered still about the spring of these ideas of civilization that come. To me, they’re both fascinating. I don’t know why there’s so much infighting.
Graham Hancock
I think it’s partly territorial. I cannot speak of all archeologists, but some archeologists feel very territorial about their profession. They do not feel happy about outsiders entering their realm, especially if those outsiders have a large platform. I’ve found that the attacks on me by archeologists have increased step-by-step with the increase of my exposure. I wasn’t very interesting to them when I just had one minor bestseller in 1992 with a book called The Sign and the Seal. But when Fingerprints of the Gods was published in 1995 and became a global bestseller, then I started to attract their attention and appear to have been regarded as a threat to them.
I think it’s partly territorial. I cannot speak of all archeologists, but some archeologists feel very territorial about their profession. They do not feel happy about outsiders entering their realm, especially if those outsiders have a large platform. I’ve found that the attacks on me by archeologists have increased step-by-step with the increase of my exposure. I wasn’t very interesting to them when I just had one minor bestseller in 1992 with a book called The Sign and the Seal. But when Fingerprints of the Gods was published in 1995 and became a global bestseller, then I started to attract their attention and appear to have been regarded as a threat to them.
That is the case today. That is why Ancient Apocalypse Season 1 was defined as the most dangerous show on Netflix. It’s why the Society for American Archeology wrote an open letter to Netflix asking Netflix to reclassify the series of science fiction. It’s why they accused the series of antisemitism, misogyny, white supremacism, and… I don’t know, a whole bunch of other things like that, that have nothing to do with anything that’s in the series. It was like, “We must shut this down. This is so dangerous to us.” There are many more dangerous things in the world than a television series going on right now. But maybe it was seen as a danger to archeology, that this non-archeologist was in archeological terrain and being viewed and seen and read by large numbers of people. Maybe that was part of the problem.
Human nature being what it is, I noticed that two of my principal critics, John Hoopes from the University of Kansas and Flint Dibble, who’s now teaching at the University of Cardiff in Wales in the UK, are both people who like to have media exposure. John Hoopes has just recently started a YouTube channel. Flint Dibble has had one for quite a while. A pretty small number of followers. I think that they feel that they should be the ones who are getting the global attention and that it’s not right that I am and that the best way to stop that is to stop me, to shut me down, to get me canceled and basically requiring Netflix to relabel my series from a documentary to a science fiction, which is what they actually had the temerity to suggest to Netflix.
If that had gone through, if Netflix had listened to them, that would’ve effectively been the cancellation of my documentary series. It would no longer have been ranked under documentaries. It was a deliberate attempt to shut me down. I see that going on again and again, and it’s so unfortunate and so unnecessary. I’ve become very defensive towards archeology. I hit back. After 30 years of these attacks on my work, I’m tired of it. I do defend myself. Sometimes, I’m perhaps over-vigorous in that defense. Maybe I was a little bit too strong in my critique of archeology in the first season of Ancient Apocalypse. Maybe I should have been a bit gentler and a bit kinder. I’ve tried to reflect that in the second season and to bring also many more Indigenous voices into the second season, as well as the voices of many more archeologists.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. In general, I got a chance to get a glimpse of the archeology community. In archeology/in science, in general, I don’t have much patience for this arrogance or snark or dismissal of general human curiosity that I think your work inspires in people. That’s why people like Ed Barnhart, who I recently had a conversation with… He radiates kindness and curiosity as well. It’s like that kind of approach to ideas, especially about human history, it inspires people.
Yeah. In general, I got a chance to get a glimpse of the archeology community. In archeology/in science, in general, I don’t have much patience for this arrogance or snark or dismissal of general human curiosity that I think your work inspires in people. That’s why people like Ed Barnhart, who I recently had a conversation with… He radiates kindness and curiosity as well. It’s like that kind of approach to ideas, especially about human history, it inspires people.
Graham Hancock
Exactly.
Exactly.
Lex Fridman
Inspires millions of people to ask questions.
Inspires millions of people to ask questions.
Graham Hancock
Exactly. Exactly.
Exactly. Exactly.
Lex Fridman
I mean, that’s why you had Keanu Reeves on the new season. He’s basically coming to the show from that same perspective of curiosity.
I mean, that’s why you had Keanu Reeves on the new season. He’s basically coming to the show from that same perspective of curiosity.
Graham Hancock
Keanu is genuinely curious about the past and very, very interested in it. He’s bringing to it questions that everybody brings to the past. He’s speaking for every man in the series.
Keanu is genuinely curious about the past and very, very interested in it. He’s bringing to it questions that everybody brings to the past. He’s speaking for every man in the series.
Lex Fridman
Given that, can you maybe steelman the case that archeologists make about this period that we’ve been talking about? Can make the case that that is indeed what happened; is it was hunter-gatherers for a long time, and then there was a cataclysm, a very difficult period in human history with the Younger Dryas, and that changed the environment and then led to the springing up of civilizations at different places on earth? Can you make the case for that?
Given that, can you maybe steelman the case that archeologists make about this period that we’ve been talking about? Can make the case that that is indeed what happened; is it was hunter-gatherers for a long time, and then there was a cataclysm, a very difficult period in human history with the Younger Dryas, and that changed the environment and then led to the springing up of civilizations at different places on earth? Can you make the case for that?
Graham Hancock
No, I completely understand why that is the position of archeology because that’s what they’ve found. Archeology is very much wishing to define itself as a science. The techniques of weighing, and measuring, and counting are very key to what archeology does. In what they’ve found and what they’ve studied around the world, they don’t see any traces of a lost civilization. We live in a very politically correct world today. The idea that some lost civilization brought knowledge to other cultures around the world is seen as almost racist or colonialist in some way. It triggers that aspect as well.
No, I completely understand why that is the position of archeology because that’s what they’ve found. Archeology is very much wishing to define itself as a science. The techniques of weighing, and measuring, and counting are very key to what archeology does. In what they’ve found and what they’ve studied around the world, they don’t see any traces of a lost civilization. We live in a very politically correct world today. The idea that some lost civilization brought knowledge to other cultures around the world is seen as almost racist or colonialist in some way. It triggers that aspect as well.
But basically, I think majority of archeologists are in complete good faith on this. I don’t think that anybody’s really seeking to frame me. I think that what we are hearing from most archeologists… some much more vicious than others. But what we’re hearing from most archeologists is this is what we found, and we don’t see evidence for a lost civilization in it. To that, I…
Graham Hancock
… civilization in it. And to that, I must reply, “Please look at the myths. Please consider the implications of the Younger Dryas. Please look at the ancient astronomy. Please look at those ancient maps and don’t just dismiss them and sneer at them. And for God’s sake, please look more deeply at the parts of the world that were immensely habitable and attractive during the ice age and that have hardly been studied by archaeology at all, before you tell us that your theory is the only one that can possibly be correct.” In fact, it’s a very arrogant and silly position of archeology, because archaeological theories are always being overthrown. It can take years, it can take decades. It took decades in the case of the Clovis-First hypothesis for the settlement of the Americas. But sooner or later a bad idea will be kicked out by a preponderance of evidence that that idea does not explain.
… civilization in it. And to that, I must reply, “Please look at the myths. Please consider the implications of the Younger Dryas. Please look at the ancient astronomy. Please look at those ancient maps and don’t just dismiss them and sneer at them. And for God’s sake, please look more deeply at the parts of the world that were immensely habitable and attractive during the ice age and that have hardly been studied by archaeology at all, before you tell us that your theory is the only one that can possibly be correct.” In fact, it’s a very arrogant and silly position of archeology, because archaeological theories are always being overthrown. It can take years, it can take decades. It took decades in the case of the Clovis-First hypothesis for the settlement of the Americas. But sooner or later a bad idea will be kicked out by a preponderance of evidence that that idea does not explain.
Lex Fridman
If we can just look back at your debate with Flint Dibble on Joe Rogan Experience, what are some takeaways from that? What have you learned? Maybe what are some things you like about Flint? You said that he’s one of your big critics, but what do you like about his ideas? And what were you maybe bothered by?
If we can just look back at your debate with Flint Dibble on Joe Rogan Experience, what are some takeaways from that? What have you learned? Maybe what are some things you like about Flint? You said that he’s one of your big critics, but what do you like about his ideas? And what were you maybe bothered by?
Graham Hancock
First of all, just very recently, and it can be found on my YouTube channel and it’s signaled on my website, I have made a video. Runs about an hour, which looks at a series of statements that Flint made during the debate, which I was not prepared to answer. And it turns out that some of those statements are not correct. The notion, for example, that there were three million shipwrecks that have been mapped, Flint actually uses the word “mapped.” Three million shipwrecks that have been mapped at one point in the debate. And I’ve put that clip into the video that I brought out. That is not a fact, that is an estimate, a UNESCO estimate. And actually in the small print on one of the slides that he has on the screen, you can see the word “estimate,” but he never expresses that word out loud. So those who are listening to the podcast rather than watching it wouldn’t even have a chance to see that. And I, sitting there in the studio didn’t see that word estimate either.
First of all, just very recently, and it can be found on my YouTube channel and it’s signaled on my website, I have made a video. Runs about an hour, which looks at a series of statements that Flint made during the debate, which I was not prepared to answer. And it turns out that some of those statements are not correct. The notion, for example, that there were three million shipwrecks that have been mapped, Flint actually uses the word “mapped.” Three million shipwrecks that have been mapped at one point in the debate. And I’ve put that clip into the video that I brought out. That is not a fact, that is an estimate, a UNESCO estimate. And actually in the small print on one of the slides that he has on the screen, you can see the word “estimate,” but he never expresses that word out loud. So those who are listening to the podcast rather than watching it wouldn’t even have a chance to see that. And I, sitting there in the studio didn’t see that word estimate either.
And I didn’t know that. I thought, “My God. If Flint has a point here. If there’d been three million shipwrecks found and mapped, if that’s the case, the absence of any shipwreck from a lost civilization of the ice age is a problem.” But then I discovered that it isn’t three million shipwrecks that have been mapped. It’s much, much less than that. And maybe it’s 250,000. Still a large number, but most of them from the last 1,000 years. And unfortunately, what Flint didn’t go into, and perhaps he should have shared with the audience … And again I go into this in the video, is that there is indisputable evidence that human beings were seafarers as much as 50 or 60,000 years ago. The peopling of Australia involved a relatively short 90 kilometers, 100-kilometer ocean voyage. But nevertheless, it was an ocean voyage.
And it must have involved a large enough people, a large enough number of people to create a permanent population that wouldn’t go extinct. The settlement of Cyprus is the same thing. It was always an island even during the ice age. And no ships have survived that speak to the settlement of Australia, and no ships have survived that speak to the settlement of Cyprus either. But that doesn’t mean that that thing didn’t happen.
Lex Fridman
I [inaudible 01:36:33] linger on this, because for me it was, the shipwrecks thing was convincing. And then looking back, first of all, watching your video, but also just realizing the peopling of Australia part, that’s mind boggling. 50,000 years ago. Just imagine being the person standing on the shore, looking out into the ocean. Standing on the shore of a harsh environment, looking out the ocean, a harsh environment and deciding that, “You know what? I’m going to go towards near certain death and explore-
I [inaudible 01:36:33] linger on this, because for me it was, the shipwrecks thing was convincing. And then looking back, first of all, watching your video, but also just realizing the peopling of Australia part, that’s mind boggling. 50,000 years ago. Just imagine being the person standing on the shore, looking out into the ocean. Standing on the shore of a harsh environment, looking out the ocean, a harsh environment and deciding that, “You know what? I’m going to go towards near certain death and explore-
Graham Hancock
You don’t know what’s on the other side of that water. You can’t see 90 kilometers-
You don’t know what’s on the other side of that water. You can’t see 90 kilometers-
Lex Fridman
And humans did it.
And humans did it.
Graham Hancock
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
I love humans so much.
I love humans so much.
Graham Hancock
Again, it’s that urge to explore. And I suggest that it probably began with a few pioneers who made the journey there and back. They ventured into the water. They definitely had boats. And lo and behold, after a two- or three-day voyage, they ended up on a coastline. You’re an individual. You’ve got by relatively straightforward island- hopping, where each island is within sight of each other as far as Timor. And when you get to Timor, suddenly you can’t island hop anymore. There’s an expansive ocean that you can’t see across. But that urge to explore, that curiosity, that is central to the human condition would undoubtedly have led some adventurous individuals to want to find out more and even be willing to risk their lives. And that first reconnoitering of what lay beyond that strait would’ve undoubtedly been undertaken by very few individuals. Not enough to create a permanent population in Australia, but when they came back with the good news that there’s a whole land there, that’s the land that geographers call Sahul, which just as Sunda was the Ice age Indonesian and Malaysian Peninsula all joined together into one landmass.
Again, it’s that urge to explore. And I suggest that it probably began with a few pioneers who made the journey there and back. They ventured into the water. They definitely had boats. And lo and behold, after a two- or three-day voyage, they ended up on a coastline. You’re an individual. You’ve got by relatively straightforward island- hopping, where each island is within sight of each other as far as Timor. And when you get to Timor, suddenly you can’t island hop anymore. There’s an expansive ocean that you can’t see across. But that urge to explore, that curiosity, that is central to the human condition would undoubtedly have led some adventurous individuals to want to find out more and even be willing to risk their lives. And that first reconnoitering of what lay beyond that strait would’ve undoubtedly been undertaken by very few individuals. Not enough to create a permanent population in Australia, but when they came back with the good news that there’s a whole land there, that’s the land that geographers call Sahul, which just as Sunda was the Ice age Indonesian and Malaysian Peninsula all joined together into one landmass.
So Sahul was New Guinea joined to Australia. So they would’ve made landfall in New Guinea. And then they think, “Well, here is this vast open, incredible land. We need to bring more people here.” And that would’ve involved larger craft. You need to bring people with resources and you need to bring enough of them, both men and women in order to produce a population that will not rapidly become extinct. And it’s the same in Cyprus. There the work that’s been done suggests very strongly that we’re looking at planned migrations of groups of people in excess of 1,000 at a time, bringing animals with them. And this certainly would’ve involved multiple boats and boats of a significant size.
Lex Fridman
And there’s no archaeological evidence of those boats?
And there’s no archaeological evidence of those boats?
Graham Hancock
None whatsoever. The oldest boat that’s ever been found in the world is the Dokos shipwreck off Greece, which is around 5,000 years old if, I recall correctly.
None whatsoever. The oldest boat that’s ever been found in the world is the Dokos shipwreck off Greece, which is around 5,000 years old if, I recall correctly.
Lex Fridman
So everything that makes a boat is lost at the time?
So everything that makes a boat is lost at the time?
Graham Hancock
Yes. Boats can be preserved under certain circumstances. There’s a wreck at the bottom of the Black Sea, almost two miles deep. I didn’t know the Black Sea was that deep. But there’s a wreck and there’s no oxygen down there that is more than 2000 years old and is still in pretty much perfect condition. But in other conditions, the structure of the ship evaporates. Sometimes what you’re left with is the cargo of the ship. And you could say there was a ship that sank here, but the ship itself has gone. The fact is we know that our ancestors were seafarers as much as 50,000 years ago. And no ship has survived to testify to that, yet we accept that they were.
Yes. Boats can be preserved under certain circumstances. There’s a wreck at the bottom of the Black Sea, almost two miles deep. I didn’t know the Black Sea was that deep. But there’s a wreck and there’s no oxygen down there that is more than 2000 years old and is still in pretty much perfect condition. But in other conditions, the structure of the ship evaporates. Sometimes what you’re left with is the cargo of the ship. And you could say there was a ship that sank here, but the ship itself has gone. The fact is we know that our ancestors were seafarers as much as 50,000 years ago. And no ship has survived to testify to that, yet we accept that they were.
Lex Fridman
Do you think you one day we’ll find a ship that’s 10, 20, 30, 40, 50,000 years old?
Do you think you one day we’ll find a ship that’s 10, 20, 30, 40, 50,000 years old?
Graham Hancock
It’s not impossible. I think it’s quite unlikely, given the very thin survival of ships the further back you go in time, with the oldest, as I say, being about 6,000 years old now. And then the other thing to take into account is the Younger Dryas event itself and the cataclysmic circumstances of that event. And the roiling of the seas that would’ve taken place then, how much would’ve survived in a boat accident at that time, would’ve survived for thousands of years afterwards, I’m not sure. But I don’t give up hope, it’s possible.
It’s not impossible. I think it’s quite unlikely, given the very thin survival of ships the further back you go in time, with the oldest, as I say, being about 6,000 years old now. And then the other thing to take into account is the Younger Dryas event itself and the cataclysmic circumstances of that event. And the roiling of the seas that would’ve taken place then, how much would’ve survived in a boat accident at that time, would’ve survived for thousands of years afterwards, I’m not sure. But I don’t give up hope, it’s possible.
Lex Fridman
Okay. So that’s back to the three million shipwrecks.
Okay. So that’s back to the three million shipwrecks.
Graham Hancock
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So what’s your takeaway from that debate?
So what’s your takeaway from that debate?
Graham Hancock
Well, my takeaway from that debate is that I should have been better prepared and I should have been less angry. I have to say that Flint had really disturbed me with these constant snide, not quite exact, references to racism and white supremacism in my work. I detest such things, and to have those labels stuck on me … He’s always avoided taking direct responsibility, pretty much always avoided. There’s one example that I include in the video I’ve made, where he really hasn’t successfully avoided it. But in most cases he’s trying to say that I rely on sources that were racist, but that he’s not saying that I myself am a racist.
Well, my takeaway from that debate is that I should have been better prepared and I should have been less angry. I have to say that Flint had really disturbed me with these constant snide, not quite exact, references to racism and white supremacism in my work. I detest such things, and to have those labels stuck on me … He’s always avoided taking direct responsibility, pretty much always avoided. There’s one example that I include in the video I’ve made, where he really hasn’t successfully avoided it. But in most cases he’s trying to say that I rely on sources that were racist, but that he’s not saying that I myself am a racist.
But the end result of those statements is that people all around the world came to the conclusion that Graham Hancock is a racist and a white supremacist. And that really got under my skin and it really upset me. And I felt angry about it and I felt that I was there to defend Ancient Apocalypse, season one, whereas in fact, what I was there to do was to listen to a series of lectures where an archaeologist tells me what archaeologists have found. And that somehow I’m to deduce that from what they have found, they’re not going to find anything else. At least not anything to do with the lost civilization.
Lex Fridman
Listen, I feel you. I’ve seen the intensity of the attacks and the whole racism label is the one that can get under your skin. And it’s a toolbox that’s been prevalent over the past, let’s say decade, maybe a little bit more, as a method of cancellation. When a person is the opposite of racist, very often it’s hilarious to watch. But it can get under your skin, especially when you have certain dynamics that happen on the internet, where it seeps into a Wikipedia page and then other people read that Wikipedia page and you get to hear it from friends, “Oh, I didn’t know you’re … ” whatever. And you realize that Wikipedia description of who you are is actually has a lot of power, not by people that know you well, but people that just are learning about you for the first time-
Listen, I feel you. I’ve seen the intensity of the attacks and the whole racism label is the one that can get under your skin. And it’s a toolbox that’s been prevalent over the past, let’s say decade, maybe a little bit more, as a method of cancellation. When a person is the opposite of racist, very often it’s hilarious to watch. But it can get under your skin, especially when you have certain dynamics that happen on the internet, where it seeps into a Wikipedia page and then other people read that Wikipedia page and you get to hear it from friends, “Oh, I didn’t know you’re … ” whatever. And you realize that Wikipedia description of who you are is actually has a lot of power, not by people that know you well, but people that just are learning about you for the first time-
Graham Hancock
Definitely.
Definitely.
Lex Fridman
And they can really start to annoy you and get onto your skin, when people are indirectly injecting … They’re writing articles about you. They can then be cited by Wikipedia. It can really bother a person who’s actually trying to do good science, or just trying to inspire people with different ideas.
And they can really start to annoy you and get onto your skin, when people are indirectly injecting … They’re writing articles about you. They can then be cited by Wikipedia. It can really bother a person who’s actually trying to do good science, or just trying to inspire people with different ideas.
Graham Hancock
I felt that my work was being deliberately misrepresented and I felt that I, as a human being, was being insulted and wronged in ways that are deeply hurtful. My wife and I have six children between us and we have nine grandchildren. And of those nine grandchildren, seven are of mixed race. And this is my family, and these are kids who are going to grow up and read Wikipedia and learn from reading Wikipedia that Grandpa was some kind of racist. This is a personal issue for me, and I’m afraid I carried that personal anger into the debate and it made me less effective than I should have been. But ultimately I do want to pay tribute to Flint. He is an excellent debater. He’s got a very sharp mind. He’s a very clever man and he’s very fast on his feet. And I recognize that.
I felt that my work was being deliberately misrepresented and I felt that I, as a human being, was being insulted and wronged in ways that are deeply hurtful. My wife and I have six children between us and we have nine grandchildren. And of those nine grandchildren, seven are of mixed race. And this is my family, and these are kids who are going to grow up and read Wikipedia and learn from reading Wikipedia that Grandpa was some kind of racist. This is a personal issue for me, and I’m afraid I carried that personal anger into the debate and it made me less effective than I should have been. But ultimately I do want to pay tribute to Flint. He is an excellent debater. He’s got a very sharp mind. He’s a very clever man and he’s very fast on his feet. And I recognize that.
I was definitely up against a superior debater in that debate. I’m not sure that I have those debating skills and I certainly didn’t have them on that particular day. I also admire about Flint something else, which is that he was willing to be there. Most archaeologists don’t want to talk to me at all. They want to insult me from the sidelines. They want to make sure that Wikipedia keeps on calling me a pseudo-archaeologist, or a purveyor of pseudo-archaeological theories. They want to make sure that the hints of racism are there, but they actually don’t want to sit down and confront me.
At least Flint was willing to do that and I’m grateful to him for that. And I think in that sense it is an important encounter between people with, let’s say, an alternative view of history and those with the very much mainstream view of history that archaeology gives us. And he’s also a very determined character. He doesn’t give up. So all of those things about him I admire and respect. But, I think he fought dirty during the debate, and I’ve said exactly why in this video that I now have up on YouTube.
Lex Fridman
To say a positive thing that I enjoyed, I think towards the end and him speaking about agriculture was pretty interesting. So the techniques of archaeology are pretty interesting, where you can get some insights through the fog of time about what people were doing, how they were living. That’s pretty interesting.
To say a positive thing that I enjoyed, I think towards the end and him speaking about agriculture was pretty interesting. So the techniques of archaeology are pretty interesting, where you can get some insights through the fog of time about what people were doing, how they were living. That’s pretty interesting.
Graham Hancock
It’s very interesting. It’s a very important discipline. And I’ve said many times before, publicly, I couldn’t do any of my work without the work that archaeologists do. I emphasize very strongly in this video that I don’t study what archaeologists study. But nevertheless, the data that archaeologists have generated over the last century or so has been incredibly valuable to me in the work that I do. But, when I look at the Great Sphinx and the studies of archaeology saying that this is the work of the pharaoh Khafre, despite the absence of any single contemporary inscription that describes it to Khafre, and in fact the presence of other inscriptions that say that it was already there in the time of Khufu, I am not looking at what egyptologists study. They just dismiss all of that and lock into the Khafre connection.
It’s very interesting. It’s a very important discipline. And I’ve said many times before, publicly, I couldn’t do any of my work without the work that archaeologists do. I emphasize very strongly in this video that I don’t study what archaeologists study. But nevertheless, the data that archaeologists have generated over the last century or so has been incredibly valuable to me in the work that I do. But, when I look at the Great Sphinx and the studies of archaeology saying that this is the work of the pharaoh Khafre, despite the absence of any single contemporary inscription that describes it to Khafre, and in fact the presence of other inscriptions that say that it was already there in the time of Khufu, I am not looking at what egyptologists study. They just dismiss all of that and lock into the Khafre connection.
At Gobekli Tepe, I’m not really looking at what archaeologists look at, I’m looking at the alignments of the megaliths and how they seem to track precession of the star Sirius over a period of time. Archaeologists aren’t interested in any of that. So I value and respect archeology. I think it’s an incredible tool for investigating our past, but I wish archaeologists would bring a slightly gentler frame of mind to it and a slightly opener perspective. And also that archaeologists would be willing to trust the general public to make up their own minds. It’s as though certain archaeologists are afraid of the public being presented with an alternative point of view, which they regard as quote, unquote, “dangerous,” because they somehow underestimate the intelligence of the general public and think the general public are just going to accept that.
Actually by condemning those alternative point of view, archaeologists make it much more likely that the general public will accept those alternative point of view, because there is a great distrust of experts in our society today. And behaving in a snobbish arrogant way, we archaeologists are the only people who are really qualified to speak about the past and anybody else who speaks about the past is dangerous. That actually is not helpful to archaeology in the long term. There could be a much more positive and a much more cooperative relationship. And I can see that relationship with a gentleman like Ed Barnhart. Was very much the case with archaeologist Martti Parssinen from the University of Helsinki and with geographer Alcio Arranzi, Brazilian geographer. Very, very senior figure who I worked with in the Amazon for season two of Ancient Apocalypse, looking at these astonishing earthworks that have emerged from the Amazon jungle and which more and more are now being found with LiDAR. Indeed, we found some of them ourselves with LiDAR while we were there.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. That was an incredible part of the show that I got a chance to preview. It’s like there’s all this earthworks. Yeah. The traces of things built on the ground that probably you can only really appreciate when you look from up above.
Yeah. That was an incredible part of the show that I got a chance to preview. It’s like there’s all this earthworks. Yeah. The traces of things built on the ground that probably you can only really appreciate when you look from up above.
Graham Hancock
That’s right.
That’s right.
Lex Fridman
So the idea that they built stuff that you can only appreciate when viewed from up above means they had a very deep relationship with the sky.
So the idea that they built stuff that you can only appreciate when viewed from up above means they had a very deep relationship with the sky.
Graham Hancock
With the sky. And a very good knowledge of geometry as well, because these are geometrical structures and some of them even seem to incorporate geometrical games, almost like squaring the circle. It’s not quite that, but you have a lovely square earthwork with a lovely circle earthwork right in the middle of it. Whatever else they were, they were geometers. They were not just builders of fantastically huge earthworks that nobody expected in the Amazon. Not just builders of cities that we now know existed in the Amazon. But, that they were astronomers and mathematicians as well.
With the sky. And a very good knowledge of geometry as well, because these are geometrical structures and some of them even seem to incorporate geometrical games, almost like squaring the circle. It’s not quite that, but you have a lovely square earthwork with a lovely circle earthwork right in the middle of it. Whatever else they were, they were geometers. They were not just builders of fantastically huge earthworks that nobody expected in the Amazon. Not just builders of cities that we now know existed in the Amazon. But, that they were astronomers and mathematicians as well.
Panspermia
Lex Fridman
Everything we’re talking about is so full of mystery. It’s just fascinating, especially the farther back we go.
Everything we’re talking about is so full of mystery. It’s just fascinating, especially the farther back we go.
Graham Hancock
That’s what I love about the past, is the mystery that’s there. And that’s another thing that I regret about some archeologists is that their mission seems to drain all mystery out of the past, to suck it dry like some vampire sucking the blood out of the past and to reduce it to a series of numbers that appear to be scientific. I think that’s most unfortunate. The past is deeply mysterious. The whole story of life on earth is deeply mysterious. We were talking about the timeline of human beings, but if you go back to the formation of the earth itself, if I’ve got the figures right, it’s about four-and-a-half billion years ago that the Earth supposedly formed. It was then incredibly hot and inhospitable to life for the next several hundred million years.
That’s what I love about the past, is the mystery that’s there. And that’s another thing that I regret about some archeologists is that their mission seems to drain all mystery out of the past, to suck it dry like some vampire sucking the blood out of the past and to reduce it to a series of numbers that appear to be scientific. I think that’s most unfortunate. The past is deeply mysterious. The whole story of life on earth is deeply mysterious. We were talking about the timeline of human beings, but if you go back to the formation of the earth itself, if I’ve got the figures right, it’s about four-and-a-half billion years ago that the Earth supposedly formed. It was then incredibly hot and inhospitable to life for the next several hundred million years.
But it was actually Francis Crick who pointed out something odd, that within 100 million years of the earth being cool enough to support life, there’s bacterial life all over the planet. And Crick wrote a book called Life Itself that was published in 1981, and he suggested that life had been brought here by a process of panspermia. Now that’s an idea that’s around in circulation that comets may carry bacteria, which can seed life on planets. But, Crick actually in Life Itself was talking about directed panspermia. He envisaged … This is Crick, not me. He envisaged an alien civilization far away across the galaxy, which faced extinction. Perhaps a supernova was going to go off in the neighborhood.
They were highly advanced. Their first thought it might’ve been, “Let’s get ourselves off the planet and go and populate some other planet,” but the distances of interstellar space were so great. So their second thought was, “Let’s preserve our DNA. Let’s put genetically engineered bacteria into cryogenic chambers and fire them off into the universe in all directions.” And bottom line of Crick’s theory in Life Itself is one of those cryogenic containers containing bacterial life from another solar system crashed into the early Earth. And that’s why life began so suddenly here on Earth.
Lex Fridman
If we as a human civilization continue, I think that is a one way to create backups of us elsewhere in the universe, given the space is to do a life gun and shoot it everywhere and it just plants. And you hope that whatever is the magic that makes up human consciousness … And if that magic was already there in the initial DNA of the bacteria-
If we as a human civilization continue, I think that is a one way to create backups of us elsewhere in the universe, given the space is to do a life gun and shoot it everywhere and it just plants. And you hope that whatever is the magic that makes up human consciousness … And if that magic was already there in the initial DNA of the bacteria-
Graham Hancock
The potential for that magic is there.
The potential for that magic is there.
Lex Fridman
The potential is there.
The potential is there.
Graham Hancock
And evolutionary forces will work upon it in different ways in different environments. But the potential is there. Yes. It’s something that we would do. If we were facing a complete extinction of life on planet Earth, a major global effort would be made to preserve it somehow. And that might well include firing off cryogenic chambers into the universe and hoping that some of them would land somewhere hospitable.
And evolutionary forces will work upon it in different ways in different environments. But the potential is there. Yes. It’s something that we would do. If we were facing a complete extinction of life on planet Earth, a major global effort would be made to preserve it somehow. And that might well include firing off cryogenic chambers into the universe and hoping that some of them would land somewhere hospitable.
Lex Fridman
And as you were mentioning, there’s just so many interesting mysteries along the way here. For example, I think like three billion years it was single-cell organisms. So it seems like life was pretty good for single-cell organisms, that there was no need for multicellularity that for animals, for any of this kind of stuff. So why is that? It seems like you could adapt much better if you are a more complicated organism. It took a really long time to take that leap. Is it because it’s really hard to do? And what was the forcing function to do that kind of leap?
And as you were mentioning, there’s just so many interesting mysteries along the way here. For example, I think like three billion years it was single-cell organisms. So it seems like life was pretty good for single-cell organisms, that there was no need for multicellularity that for animals, for any of this kind of stuff. So why is that? It seems like you could adapt much better if you are a more complicated organism. It took a really long time to take that leap. Is it because it’s really hard to do? And what was the forcing function to do that kind of leap?
And the same. For us to be selfish and self-obsessed for us humans, what was the magic leap to Homo sapiens from the other hominids? And why did Homo sapiens win out against the Neanderthals and the other competitors? Why are they not around anymore? So those are all fascinating mysteries and it feels like the more we propose radical ideas about our past and take it seriously and explore the more we’ll be able to figure out that puzzle that leads all the way back to Homo sapiens and maybe all the way back to the origin of life on Earth.
Graham Hancock
Yeah. Yeah. I think that Homo sapiens is the tail end of a very long, deep series of mysteries that goes back right to the beginning of life on this planet. And probably long before actually, because this planet is part of the universe. And God knows what else is out there in the universe.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that Homo sapiens is the tail end of a very long, deep series of mysteries that goes back right to the beginning of life on this planet. And probably long before actually, because this planet is part of the universe. And God knows what else is out there in the universe.
Lex Fridman
Why do you think Homo sapiens evolved? What was the magic thing? There’s a bunch of theories about fire leading to meat, to cooking, which can fuel the brain. That’s one. The other is social interaction. We’re able to use our imagination to construct ideas and share those ideas and tell great stories and that is somehow an evolutionary advantage. Do you have any favorite conceptions of-
Why do you think Homo sapiens evolved? What was the magic thing? There’s a bunch of theories about fire leading to meat, to cooking, which can fuel the brain. That’s one. The other is social interaction. We’re able to use our imagination to construct ideas and share those ideas and tell great stories and that is somehow an evolutionary advantage. Do you have any favorite conceptions of-
Graham Hancock
Well, it’s interesting. There’s no doubt that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals coexisted in Europe for at least 10,000 years, probably more than that. And yet one of the popular views is that anatomically modern humans wiped out the Neanderthals, that we killed them off. But, at the same time we were into breeding with the Neanderthals. In a sense, the Neanderthals are not gone. They’re still within us today. We are part Neanderthal. There’s another theory that I’ve read about. There is some evidence that Neanderthals were cannibals, that there was ritual cannibalism took place amongst Neanderthals and particularly the eating of human brains. And this can cause Kuru, which can kill off whole populations. That’s another suggestion of why the Neanderthals died out.
Well, it’s interesting. There’s no doubt that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals coexisted in Europe for at least 10,000 years, probably more than that. And yet one of the popular views is that anatomically modern humans wiped out the Neanderthals, that we killed them off. But, at the same time we were into breeding with the Neanderthals. In a sense, the Neanderthals are not gone. They’re still within us today. We are part Neanderthal. There’s another theory that I’ve read about. There is some evidence that Neanderthals were cannibals, that there was ritual cannibalism took place amongst Neanderthals and particularly the eating of human brains. And this can cause Kuru, which can kill off whole populations. That’s another suggestion of why the Neanderthals died out.
There’s lots of possibilities that have been put forward. Maybe we just out-competed them. Maybe anatomically modern humans had some brain connections that they didn’t have. Even though the Neanderthal brain was bigger than the brain of anatomically modern human beings, as the old saying goes, size isn’t everything. Maybe we just had a more compact, more efficient brain. The fact of the matter is that Neanderthals and Denisovans did not survive the rise of Homo sapiens.
Lex Fridman
For our discussion, though, what is interesting is all the hominids seem to be explorers.
For our discussion, though, what is interesting is all the hominids seem to be explorers.
Graham Hancock
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
They spread. I didn’t know this.
They spread. I didn’t know this.
Graham Hancock
The fact that Homo erectus was all over the planet more than a million years ago is testament to that. And I do think that exploration urge is fundamental to humanity. And I would like to say that’s what I think I’m doing. I’m exercising my urge to explore the past in my own way, making my own path and defining my own route.
The fact that Homo erectus was all over the planet more than a million years ago is testament to that. And I do think that exploration urge is fundamental to humanity. And I would like to say that’s what I think I’m doing. I’m exercising my urge to explore the past in my own way, making my own path and defining my own route.
Shamanism
Lex Fridman
That’s the leap from non-human to human. One of the things you’ve discussed is your idea of what was the leap to human civilization? What is the driver? What is the inspiration for humans to form civilizations? And for you, that’s shamanism.
That’s the leap from non-human to human. One of the things you’ve discussed is your idea of what was the leap to human civilization? What is the driver? What is the inspiration for humans to form civilizations? And for you, that’s shamanism.
Graham Hancock
Definitely.
Definitely.
Lex Fridman
Can you explain what that means?
Can you explain what that means?
Graham Hancock
I think that shamanism is the origin of everything of value in humanity. I think it was the earliest form of science. When I spend time with shamans in the Amazon, I observe people who are constantly experimenting with plants in a very scientific way. They’re always trying a pinch of this and a pinch of that in different forms, for example, of the ayahuasca brew, to see if it enhances it or makes it different in any way. The invention of curare is a remarkable scientific feat, which is entirely down to shamans in the Amazon. They are the scientists of the hunter-forager state of society and they were the ancient leaders of human civilization.
I think that shamanism is the origin of everything of value in humanity. I think it was the earliest form of science. When I spend time with shamans in the Amazon, I observe people who are constantly experimenting with plants in a very scientific way. They’re always trying a pinch of this and a pinch of that in different forms, for example, of the ayahuasca brew, to see if it enhances it or makes it different in any way. The invention of curare is a remarkable scientific feat, which is entirely down to shamans in the Amazon. They are the scientists of the hunter-forager state of society and they were the ancient leaders of human civilization.
So I think all civilization arises out of shamanism. And shamanism is a naturally scientific endeavor, where experimentation is undertaken an exploration and investigation of the environment around us. And what I’m suggesting is that one group, perhaps more than one group, went a bit further than other groups did, and used that study of the skies and developed navigational techniques and we’re able to sail and explore the Earth. But that ultimately what lies behind it is the same curiosity and investigative skill that shamans are still using in the Amazon to this day. And I do see them as scientists in a very proper use of the word.
Lex Fridman
But do you think something like ayahuasca was a part of that process?
But do you think something like ayahuasca was a part of that process?
Graham Hancock
Yes. Ayahuasca is the result of shamanistic investigation of what’s available in the Amazon. Of course, ayahuasca is all the fad in Western industrialized societies today. And some people see it as a miracle cure for all kinds of ailments and problems. And perhaps it is, perhaps it can be in certain ways. The ayahuasca itself is not an Amazonian word. It comes from the Quechuan language and it means the vine of souls or the vine of the dead. But the ayahuasca vine is only one of two principle ingredients in the ayahuasca brew. And the other ingredient are leaves that contain dimethyltryptamine. And there are two sources of that. One is a bush called Psychotria viridis, that’s its botanical name. They call it Chacruna in the Amazon. And its leaves are rich in dimethyltryptamine DMT, which is arguably the most powerful psychedelic known to science. And the other source comes from another vine, Diplopterys cabrerana, which the leaves of that vine also contain DMT. So the ayahuasca vine on its own is not going to give you a visionary journey. And the leaves that contain DMT on their own, whether they come from Diplopterys or whether they come from Chacruna, are not going to give you a visionary journey. And the reason they’re not going to give you the visionary journey, is because of the enzyme monoamine oxidase in the gut that shuts down DMT when absorbed orally. Basically, DMT is not accessible orally, unless you combine it with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. And that’s what I mean when I’m talking about science in the Amazon, because there’s so many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands different species of plants and trees in the Amazon. And they’ve gone around and they’ve found just two or three of them that put together can produce these extraordinary visionary experiences.
Yes. Ayahuasca is the result of shamanistic investigation of what’s available in the Amazon. Of course, ayahuasca is all the fad in Western industrialized societies today. And some people see it as a miracle cure for all kinds of ailments and problems. And perhaps it is, perhaps it can be in certain ways. The ayahuasca itself is not an Amazonian word. It comes from the Quechuan language and it means the vine of souls or the vine of the dead. But the ayahuasca vine is only one of two principle ingredients in the ayahuasca brew. And the other ingredient are leaves that contain dimethyltryptamine. And there are two sources of that. One is a bush called Psychotria viridis, that’s its botanical name. They call it Chacruna in the Amazon. And its leaves are rich in dimethyltryptamine DMT, which is arguably the most powerful psychedelic known to science. And the other source comes from another vine, Diplopterys cabrerana, which the leaves of that vine also contain DMT. So the ayahuasca vine on its own is not going to give you a visionary journey. And the leaves that contain DMT on their own, whether they come from Diplopterys or whether they come from Chacruna, are not going to give you a visionary journey. And the reason they’re not going to give you the visionary journey, is because of the enzyme monoamine oxidase in the gut that shuts down DMT when absorbed orally. Basically, DMT is not accessible orally, unless you combine it with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. And that’s what I mean when I’m talking about science in the Amazon, because there’s so many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands different species of plants and trees in the Amazon. And they’ve gone around and they’ve found just two or three of them that put together can produce these extraordinary visionary experiences.
Lex Fridman
Just imagine the number of plants they had to have eaten, consumed and smoked or all kinds of combinations to arrive at that.
Just imagine the number of plants they had to have eaten, consumed and smoked or all kinds of combinations to arrive at that.
Graham Hancock
Exactly. Exactly. To realize that this is something very special. And then to use the principles there to find another form of it. So ayahuasca is the form that is made with the ayahuasca vine and the leaves of the Chacruna plant. But Yage is made from the ayahuasca vine and the leaves of another vine the ploparis caapiano, which contain not only, which is the DMT that everybody’s pretty much familiar with these days, but also 5-MeO-DMT. And the Yage experience, which I have also had, in my view is more intense and more powerful almost to the point of being overwhelming than the ayahuasca experience. But what the result of this sophisticated chemistry that we find taking place here is a brew which is hideous to drink. The taste, I find it quite repulsive. I almost retched just smelling it in the cup.
Exactly. Exactly. To realize that this is something very special. And then to use the principles there to find another form of it. So ayahuasca is the form that is made with the ayahuasca vine and the leaves of the Chacruna plant. But Yage is made from the ayahuasca vine and the leaves of another vine the ploparis caapiano, which contain not only, which is the DMT that everybody’s pretty much familiar with these days, but also 5-MeO-DMT. And the Yage experience, which I have also had, in my view is more intense and more powerful almost to the point of being overwhelming than the ayahuasca experience. But what the result of this sophisticated chemistry that we find taking place here is a brew which is hideous to drink. The taste, I find it quite repulsive. I almost retched just smelling it in the cup.
But then unleashes these extraordinary experiences. And it isn’t just pretty visuals. It’s the sense of encounters with sentient others, that there are sentient beings, that somehow we are surrounded by a realm of sentience that is not normally accessible to us. And that what the ayahuasca brew and certain other psychedelics, like some psilocybin mushrooms in a high enough dose can do it as well. LSD can do it. But Ayahuasca is the master in this of lowering the veil to what appears to be a seamlessly convincing other realm, other world. And of course the hard line, rational scientists will say that’s just all fantasies of your brain. But I don’t think we fully understand,
Or even close to understanding exactly what consciousness is. And I remain open to two possibilities that consciousness is generated by the brain, is made by the brain in the way that a factory makes cars. But I also am open to the possibility that the brain is a receiver of consciousness, just as a television set is the receiver of television signals. And that if that is the case, then we locked into the physical realm. We need our everyday alert, problem-solving state of consciousness, and that’s the state of consciousness that western civilization values and highly encourages. But these other states of consciousness that allow us to access alternative realities are possibly more important. It may be apocryphal, but it was reported after Francis Crick’s role-
Graham Hancock
But it was reported after Francis Crick’s role and his Nobel Prize for the discovery of the double helix that he finally got it under the influence of LSD. There’s the classic example of Kary Mullis and the polymerase chain reaction. He said he got that under the influence of LSD. So the notion that the alert problem-solving state of consciousness is the only valuable state of consciousness is disproved by valuable experiences that people have had in a visionary state. But the question that remains unresolved is those entities that we encounter, and not everybody encounters them, and you’re certainly not going to encounter them on every ayahuasca trip. There are ayahuasca journeys where nothing seems to happen. I suspect something does happen, but it happens at a subconscious level. I know that shamans in the Amazon regard those trips where actually you don’t see visions as amongst the most valuable, and they say you are learning stuff that you’re not remembering, but you’re learning it anyway.
But it was reported after Francis Crick’s role and his Nobel Prize for the discovery of the double helix that he finally got it under the influence of LSD. There’s the classic example of Kary Mullis and the polymerase chain reaction. He said he got that under the influence of LSD. So the notion that the alert problem-solving state of consciousness is the only valuable state of consciousness is disproved by valuable experiences that people have had in a visionary state. But the question that remains unresolved is those entities that we encounter, and not everybody encounters them, and you’re certainly not going to encounter them on every ayahuasca trip. There are ayahuasca journeys where nothing seems to happen. I suspect something does happen, but it happens at a subconscious level. I know that shamans in the Amazon regard those trips where actually you don’t see visions as amongst the most valuable, and they say you are learning stuff that you’re not remembering, but you’re learning it anyway.
These sentient others that are encountered, what are they? Are they just figments of our brain on drugs or are we actually gaining access to a parallel reality, which is inhabited by consciousness which is in a non-physical form? And I’m equally open to that idea. I think that may be what is going on here with ayahuasca.
But the other thing is that there is a presence within the ayahuasca brew, and she is present both in ayahuasca and in yachay. And that’s one of the reasons why the shamans say that actually the master of the process is the ayahuasca vine, not the leaves. It’s as though the vine has harnessed the leaves to gain access to human consciousness. And there, if you have sufficient exposure to ayahuasca or yachay, you drink it enough times, I’ve had maybe 75 or 80 journeys with ayahuasca, you definitely start to feel an intelligent presence with a definite personality, which I interpret as feminine, and which most people in the West interpret it as feminine and they call her Mother Ayahuasca. There are some tribes in the Amazon who interpret the spirit of ayahuasca as male, but in all cases, that spirit is seen as a teacher. That’s fundamentally what ayahuasca is. It’s a teacher. And it teaches moral lessons.
And that’s fascinating, that a mixture of two plants should cause us to reflect on our own behavior and how it may have hurt and damaged and affected others and fill us with a powerful wish not to repeat that negative behavior again in the future. The more baggage you carry in your life, the harder the beating the ayahuasca is going to give you, until it forces you to confront and take responsibility for your own behavior. And that is an extraordinary thing to come from a plant brew in that way.
And I think yes, I think ayahuasca is the most powerful of all the plant medicines for accessing these mysterious realms. But there’s no doubt you can access them. They’re all tryptamines. They’re all related to one another in one way. You can access them through LSD and you certainly can access them through psilocyb mushrooms as well in large enough dose.
Lex Fridman
Both possibilities, as you describe, are interesting. And to me, they’re kind of akin to each other. I wonder what the limit of the brain’s capacity is to create imaginary worlds and treat them seriously and make them real, and in those worlds, explore and have real moral, deep brainstorming sessions with those entities. So it’s almost like the power of the human mind to imagine taken to its limit.
Both possibilities, as you describe, are interesting. And to me, they’re kind of akin to each other. I wonder what the limit of the brain’s capacity is to create imaginary worlds and treat them seriously and make them real, and in those worlds, explore and have real moral, deep brainstorming sessions with those entities. So it’s almost like the power of the human mind to imagine taken to its limit.
Graham Hancock
It is. And the curious thing is that the same iconography… People paint their visions after ayahuasca sessions. People were painting in Europe in the cave of Lascaux, for example, and of course they had access to psilocyb mushrooms in prehistoric Europe. There’s a remarkable commonality in the imagery that is painted.
It is. And the curious thing is that the same iconography… People paint their visions after ayahuasca sessions. People were painting in Europe in the cave of Lascaux, for example, and of course they had access to psilocyb mushrooms in prehistoric Europe. There’s a remarkable commonality in the imagery that is painted.
I like to give credit where credit is due, and there are two names that need to be mentioned here. One is the late, great Terence McKenna and his book Food of the Gods, where he proposed the idea very strongly that it was our ancestral encounters with psychedelics that made us fully human. That’s what switched on the modern human mind.
And very much the same idea began to be explored a bit earlier by Professor David Lewis-Williams at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, fabulous book called The Mind in the Cave, where he is again arguing that these astonishing similarities in cave art and rock art all around the world can only be properly explained by people in deeply altered states of consciousness attempting to remember, when they return to a normal everyday state of consciousness, attempting to remember their visions and document them on permanent media like the wall of a cave.
So, typically you get a lot of geometric patterns, but you also got entities. And those entities often are therianthropes, part animal, part human in form. Might have the head of a wolf and the body of a human being, might have the head of a bird and the body of a human being, and so on and so forth. And that they communicate with us in the visionary state.
Interestingly, although this sounds like woo-woo, and it is an area that most scientists would steer clear of at risk of their careers, there is very serious work now being done at Imperial College in London and at the University of California at San Diego, where volunteers are being given extended DMT. There’s a new technology, DMTx, where the DMT is fed directly into the bloodstream by drip, and it’s possible to keep the individual in the peak DMT state. Which normally when you smoke or vape DMT, you’re looking, if you’re lucky, at 10 minutes, or if you’re unlucky, if it’s a bad journey, because those 10 minutes can seem like forever. But with DMTx, with the drip-feeding of DMT into the bloodstream, these volunteers actually could be kept in the peak state for hours.
And unlike LSD where you rapidly build up tolerance, nobody ever builds up tolerance to DMT. It always hits you with the same power. Even if you took it yesterday and the day before and you’re taking it tomorrow as well, it’s still going to have that same power. There’s no tolerance there. So that’s how they can use that lack of tolerance to keep volunteers in this state.
And then when they debrief those volunteers… They’re also putting them in MRI scanners and looking at what’s happening in the brain. But when they debrief them, they’re all talking about encounters with sentient others. There’s even a group now called Sentient Others, where volunteers are now exchanging their experiences. They weren’t allowed to do so at the beginning of the experiment, but now that most of them have left it, they’re exchanging their experiences, and it’s all about encounters with sentient others who wish to teach them moral lessons.
Now, to me, that’s wild. What is going on here? How do we account for this? Yeah, I get the notion of hallucinations and brightly colored visuals, but the moral lessons that come with it, those are very odd.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. And would you say that the reason that could give birth to a civilization, is it because such visions can help create myths, and especially religious myths, that would be a cohesive thing for a large group of people to get around?
Yeah. And would you say that the reason that could give birth to a civilization, is it because such visions can help create myths, and especially religious myths, that would be a cohesive thing for a large group of people to get around?
Graham Hancock
Yes. And can help us to be better members of our own community.
Yes. And can help us to be better members of our own community.
Lex Fridman
Right, with moral lessons.
Right, with moral lessons.
Graham Hancock
Yeah. More contributing members of our community. More caring, more nurturing members of our community. That’s got to be good for any community. I’ve said this a dozen times, but I’ll say it again. If I had the power to do so, I would make it a law, an absolute law, that anybody running for a powerful political position, particularly if that position is president or head of state in any kind of way, that that person has to undergo the ayahuasca ordeal first. They have to have 10 or 12 sessions of ayahuasca as a condition for applying for the job. I suspect that most who had had those experiences wouldn’t want to apply for the job anymore. They would want to live a different kind of life. And those who did want to carry on being a leader of a nation would be very different people from the people who are leading the nations of the earth into chaos and destruction today.
Yeah. More contributing members of our community. More caring, more nurturing members of our community. That’s got to be good for any community. I’ve said this a dozen times, but I’ll say it again. If I had the power to do so, I would make it a law, an absolute law, that anybody running for a powerful political position, particularly if that position is president or head of state in any kind of way, that that person has to undergo the ayahuasca ordeal first. They have to have 10 or 12 sessions of ayahuasca as a condition for applying for the job. I suspect that most who had had those experiences wouldn’t want to apply for the job anymore. They would want to live a different kind of life. And those who did want to carry on being a leader of a nation would be very different people from the people who are leading the nations of the earth into chaos and destruction today.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, they would be doing it for the right reasons. I mentioned to you, I recently interviewed Donald Trump, and I actually brought up this same idea that it would be a much better world if most of Congress and most politicians would take some form of psychedelic, at the very least.
Yeah, they would be doing it for the right reasons. I mentioned to you, I recently interviewed Donald Trump, and I actually brought up this same idea that it would be a much better world if most of Congress and most politicians would take some form of psychedelic, at the very least.
Graham Hancock
Yeah. I have no doubt that it would be a better world. I mean, this raises an interesting point, which is the role of government in controlling our consciousness. And in my opinion, the so-called War on Drugs is one of the fundamental abuses of human rights that have been undertaken in the past 60 years. It should be a Republican issue. If I understand the Republican Party correctly, the Republican Party believes in individual freedom for adults as much as possible, and particularly the freedom to make choices over their own bodies.
Yeah. I have no doubt that it would be a better world. I mean, this raises an interesting point, which is the role of government in controlling our consciousness. And in my opinion, the so-called War on Drugs is one of the fundamental abuses of human rights that have been undertaken in the past 60 years. It should be a Republican issue. If I understand the Republican Party correctly, the Republican Party believes in individual freedom for adults as much as possible, and particularly the freedom to make choices over their own bodies.
But in the case of even cannabis, I know, this is one of the great things that’s happening in America. It’s happening state by state where cannabis is being legalized and that draconian hand of government is being taken off the back of people who are consuming a medicine that is far less harmful than alcohol, which is glorified in our society.
We cannot say that we are free if we allow our government to dictate to us what experiences we may or may not have in our inner consciousness, while doing no harm to others. And the point there is we already have a whole raft of laws that deal with us when we do harm to others. Do we really need laws that tell us what we may or may not experience in the inner sanctum of our own consciousness? I think it’s a fundamental violation of adult sovereignty. And we would have much less drug problems if these drugs were all legalized and made available to people without shaming them, without punishing them in any way, but just part of normal social life. And then you could be sure that you were getting good product rather than really shitty product, which has been cut with all sorts of other things.
Ultimately, the way forward is for adults to take responsibility for their own behavior, and for society to allow that to happen, and not to have big government taking responsibility for decisions that should be in the hands of individuals.
Lex Fridman
And for me also, it’s exciting. Some of these substances like psilocybin are being integrated into scientific studies in large scales. It’s really interesting.
And for me also, it’s exciting. Some of these substances like psilocybin are being integrated into scientific studies in large scales. It’s really interesting.
Graham Hancock
We’ve seen a revolution in the way science looks at psychedelics in the last 20, 25 years. They were in that highly demonized category. But again, it’s one of those paradigms which gets overwhelmed by new evidence, and it began to be realized that psilocybin and other psychedelics are very helpful in a range of conditions from which people suffer. Post-traumatic stress disorder. The fear of death when you’re suffering from terminal cancer can be overwhelming, and it’s been found that psilocybin can remove that. Deep depressions can be evaporated with one single massive psilocybin journey. They just go away. There’s really good science on this. And they are being integrated into conventional medicine more and more. We’ll see it happening. I’m not sure if it’ll happen as fast as I would like to see it happen in my lifetime, but it is going to happen.
We’ve seen a revolution in the way science looks at psychedelics in the last 20, 25 years. They were in that highly demonized category. But again, it’s one of those paradigms which gets overwhelmed by new evidence, and it began to be realized that psilocybin and other psychedelics are very helpful in a range of conditions from which people suffer. Post-traumatic stress disorder. The fear of death when you’re suffering from terminal cancer can be overwhelming, and it’s been found that psilocybin can remove that. Deep depressions can be evaporated with one single massive psilocybin journey. They just go away. There’s really good science on this. And they are being integrated into conventional medicine more and more. We’ll see it happening. I’m not sure if it’ll happen as fast as I would like to see it happen in my lifetime, but it is going to happen.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I actually just recently found out that you had a TED Talk, War on Consciousness, that was taken down, and that was just part of just the general resistance. Because it was a pretty… It wasn’t radical. It wasn’t really a radical-
Yeah, I actually just recently found out that you had a TED Talk, War on Consciousness, that was taken down, and that was just part of just the general resistance. Because it was a pretty… It wasn’t radical. It wasn’t really a radical-
Graham Hancock
I was talking about ayahuasca and I was talking about the view that I hold very strongly that as long as we do no harm to others, sovereign adults should be allowed to make decisions about their own bodies and not face a jail sentence or shaming as the result. So it was a TEDx Talk, not a TED Talk, organized by a local TED group. They called them TEDx Talks. And I gave this talk about the war on consciousness, and it was immediately pulled down from TED’s main channel with all kinds of bizarre reasons being given. But unfortunately, it was too late because a number of people had already downloaded the talk and then uploaded it onto other YouTube channels. And actually, their banning of it made it go viral in a way that would not have happened otherwise. But again, it’s a sign that points of view that are not acceptable to those in positions of power are simply dismissed and shut down, or at least attempts are made to do so.
I was talking about ayahuasca and I was talking about the view that I hold very strongly that as long as we do no harm to others, sovereign adults should be allowed to make decisions about their own bodies and not face a jail sentence or shaming as the result. So it was a TEDx Talk, not a TED Talk, organized by a local TED group. They called them TEDx Talks. And I gave this talk about the war on consciousness, and it was immediately pulled down from TED’s main channel with all kinds of bizarre reasons being given. But unfortunately, it was too late because a number of people had already downloaded the talk and then uploaded it onto other YouTube channels. And actually, their banning of it made it go viral in a way that would not have happened otherwise. But again, it’s a sign that points of view that are not acceptable to those in positions of power are simply dismissed and shut down, or at least attempts are made to do so.
Lex Fridman
In general, just along that line of thinking, I’m pretty sure that what we understand about consciousness today will seem silly to humans from a hundred years from now.
In general, just along that line of thinking, I’m pretty sure that what we understand about consciousness today will seem silly to humans from a hundred years from now.
Graham Hancock
You bet it will. Especially if we harness psychedelics to investigate consciousness. And that is what is happening at Imperial College right now is the investigation of the experience. They’re not looking… There are other trials that are looking for the therapeutic potential of DMT, but in this case, they’re looking entirely at the experiences that people have and why they’re so similar from people from different age groups and different genders and different parts of the world, they’re all having the same experiences.
You bet it will. Especially if we harness psychedelics to investigate consciousness. And that is what is happening at Imperial College right now is the investigation of the experience. They’re not looking… There are other trials that are looking for the therapeutic potential of DMT, but in this case, they’re looking entirely at the experiences that people have and why they’re so similar from people from different age groups and different genders and different parts of the world, they’re all having the same experiences.
Lex Fridman
And for me, from an engineer perspective, it’s interesting if it’s possible to engineer consciousness in artificial beings. It’s another way to approach the question of how special is human consciousness. From where does it arise? Is it something that permeates all of life? And then in that case, what is the thing that makes life special? What is life? What is these living organisms that we have here that evolve to create humans? And what is truly special about humans? It’s both scary and exciting to consider the possibility that we can create something like this.
And for me, from an engineer perspective, it’s interesting if it’s possible to engineer consciousness in artificial beings. It’s another way to approach the question of how special is human consciousness. From where does it arise? Is it something that permeates all of life? And then in that case, what is the thing that makes life special? What is life? What is these living organisms that we have here that evolve to create humans? And what is truly special about humans? It’s both scary and exciting to consider the possibility that we can create something like this.
Graham Hancock
But why not? We are a vehicle for consciousness, in my view. I think consciousness is present in all life on earth. I don’t think it’s limited to human beings. We have the equipment to manifest and express that consciousness in the way that a dog, for example, doesn’t have or a snail doesn’t have or a pigeon doesn’t have. But when I look at two pigeons sitting on my garden fence and rubbing up close to each other and enjoying each other’s company and taking off together and hanging out together, I think they’re conscious beings. And I think consciousness is everywhere. I think it’s the basis of everything. And I suspect that fundamentally, consciousness is non-physical, and that it can manifest in physical forms where it can then have experiences that would not be available in the non-physical state. That’s a guess.
But why not? We are a vehicle for consciousness, in my view. I think consciousness is present in all life on earth. I don’t think it’s limited to human beings. We have the equipment to manifest and express that consciousness in the way that a dog, for example, doesn’t have or a snail doesn’t have or a pigeon doesn’t have. But when I look at two pigeons sitting on my garden fence and rubbing up close to each other and enjoying each other’s company and taking off together and hanging out together, I think they’re conscious beings. And I think consciousness is everywhere. I think it’s the basis of everything. And I suspect that fundamentally, consciousness is non-physical, and that it can manifest in physical forms where it can then have experiences that would not be available in the non-physical state. That’s a guess.
Lex Fridman
That’d be a fascinating… Because then you can construct all kinds of physical forms to manifest the consciousness.
That’d be a fascinating… Because then you can construct all kinds of physical forms to manifest the consciousness.
Graham Hancock
Yeah. And see if consciousness enters, if they become conscious. Isn’t there some suggestion that artificial intelligence is already becoming conscious?
Yeah. And see if consciousness enters, if they become conscious. Isn’t there some suggestion that artificial intelligence is already becoming conscious?
Lex Fridman
That makes humans really uncomfortable, because we are at the top of the food chain, we consider ourselves truly special, and to consider that there’s other things that could be special is scary.
That makes humans really uncomfortable, because we are at the top of the food chain, we consider ourselves truly special, and to consider that there’s other things that could be special is scary.
Graham Hancock
Well, look how other people make us uncomfortable too. I mean, look at the state of the world today. All the conflicts that are raging. That’s because we’re afraid. When I say we, I’m speaking nation by nation, we are afraid of other people. We fear that they’re going to hurt us or damage us in some way. And so we seek to stop that. It’s the root of many, many conflicts, this fear. And so fear of AI may not be such a good idea after all. It might be very interesting to go down that route and see where it comes. Certainly in terms of exploring consciousness, it is very interesting.
Well, look how other people make us uncomfortable too. I mean, look at the state of the world today. All the conflicts that are raging. That’s because we’re afraid. When I say we, I’m speaking nation by nation, we are afraid of other people. We fear that they’re going to hurt us or damage us in some way. And so we seek to stop that. It’s the root of many, many conflicts, this fear. And so fear of AI may not be such a good idea after all. It might be very interesting to go down that route and see where it comes. Certainly in terms of exploring consciousness, it is very interesting.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, fear is a useful thing, but it can also be destructive.
Yeah, fear is a useful thing, but it can also be destructive.
Graham Hancock
Well, it can be destructive and it can shut you down completely.
Well, it can be destructive and it can shut you down completely.
How the Great Pyramid was built
Lex Fridman
If you look into the future, maybe the next a hundred years, what do you hope are the interesting discoveries in archeology that we’ll find?
If you look into the future, maybe the next a hundred years, what do you hope are the interesting discoveries in archeology that we’ll find?
Graham Hancock
Well, I’d really like to know how the Great Pyramid was built. And we now have, with new tech, with scanning technology, it’s now become apparent that there are many major voids within the Great Pyramid. Right above the Grand Gallery, there’s what looks like a second Grand Gallery that has been identified with remote scanning. And new chambers, one of them has even been opened up already, are being found as a result of this. So it may be that the Great Pyramid will ultimately give up its secrets.
Well, I’d really like to know how the Great Pyramid was built. And we now have, with new tech, with scanning technology, it’s now become apparent that there are many major voids within the Great Pyramid. Right above the Grand Gallery, there’s what looks like a second Grand Gallery that has been identified with remote scanning. And new chambers, one of them has even been opened up already, are being found as a result of this. So it may be that the Great Pyramid will ultimately give up its secrets.
I often think that the Great Pyramid is partly designed to do that. It’s designed to invite its own initiates. Some people aren’t interested in the Great Pyramid at all, but some people are fascinated by it and they’re drawn towards it. And when they’re drawn towards it, it immediately starts raising questions in their minds, and they seek answers to their questions.
So it’s like saying, ” Here I stand. Investigate me. Find out about me. Figure out what I am. Why have I got these two shafts cut into the side of the so-called Queen’s Chamber?” Why do they slope up through the body of the Great Pyramid? Why do they not exit on the outside of the Great Pyramid? Why, when we send a robot up those shafts, do we find them after about 160 feet blocked by a door with metal handles. Why when we drill through that door to see what’s beyond it, three or four feet away, we see another door. It’s very frustrating. But it’s saying to us, “Keep on exploring. If you’re persistent enough, we’ll eventually give you the answer.”
So I’m hoping that that answer will come as to how this most mysterious of monuments was actually built and the inspiration that lay behind it. Certainly, I’m sure it was never a tomb, or a tomb only. The later pyramids might’ve been. Actually no pharaonic burial has been discovered in any pyramid. But nevertheless, it’s pretty clear that the later pyramids with the pyramid texts written on the walls, like the pyramid of Unas, Fifth Dynasty pyramid at Saqqara, were tombs.
But the Great Pyramid, to go to that length to create a tomb, to make it a scale model of the earth, to orient it perfectly to true north, to make it 6 million tons. This is not a tomb. This is something else. This is a curiosity device. This is something that is asking us to understand it. And I hope we will understand it. And I hope Egyptologists will be willing to set aside that prejudice that they’re only looking at a tomb and consider other possibilities. And as new tech is revealing these previously unknown inner spaces within the Great Pyramid, I think that’s going to become more and more likely.
Lex Fridman
So not just the how it was built, but the why.
So not just the how it was built, but the why.
Graham Hancock
But the why.
But the why.
Lex Fridman
And to you, it seems obvious that there would be a cosmic motivation.
And to you, it seems obvious that there would be a cosmic motivation.
Graham Hancock
Yeah, very, very much so. As above, so below. Which is an idea in the Hermetica. The God Hermes for the Greeks was the Greek version of Thoth, the wisdom God of Ancient Egypt. And that’s where that saying comes from. It comes from the Hermetica. But it’s expressing an ancient Egyptian idea, to mirror the perfection of the heavens on earth.
Yeah, very, very much so. As above, so below. Which is an idea in the Hermetica. The God Hermes for the Greeks was the Greek version of Thoth, the wisdom God of Ancient Egypt. And that’s where that saying comes from. It comes from the Hermetica. But it’s expressing an ancient Egyptian idea, to mirror the perfection of the heavens on earth.
Lex Fridman
So you think there’s something interesting to be discovered about the how it was built? You mean beyond the ideas of using ramps and wet sand.
So you think there’s something interesting to be discovered about the how it was built? You mean beyond the ideas of using ramps and wet sand.
Graham Hancock
Yeah. Ramps won’t do it. Ramps won’t do it. Nor will wet sand. It’s true that the ancient Egyptians did haul big objects on sleds on wet sand. There are even reliefs that show the process where an individual is standing on the front of the sledge pouring water down to lubricate the sand underneath. And that’s a perfectly respectable way to move a 200 ton block of stone across sand, flat sand, if you have enough people to pull it. But that is not going to help you get dozens of 70 ton granite blocks 300 feet in the air to form the roof of the King’s Chamber and the floor of the chamber above it, and the roof of that chamber, and the floor of the chamber above that, and so on and so forth. Wet sand never got those objects up there. Somehow they were lifted up there.
Yeah. Ramps won’t do it. Ramps won’t do it. Nor will wet sand. It’s true that the ancient Egyptians did haul big objects on sleds on wet sand. There are even reliefs that show the process where an individual is standing on the front of the sledge pouring water down to lubricate the sand underneath. And that’s a perfectly respectable way to move a 200 ton block of stone across sand, flat sand, if you have enough people to pull it. But that is not going to help you get dozens of 70 ton granite blocks 300 feet in the air to form the roof of the King’s Chamber and the floor of the chamber above it, and the roof of that chamber, and the floor of the chamber above that, and so on and so forth. Wet sand never got those objects up there. Somehow they were lifted up there.
Now, yeah, ramps are proposed as the solution, but where are the remains of those ramps? If you’re going to carry blocks weighing up to two or three tons right to the top of the Great Pyramid to complete your work, you’re going to need a ramp that’s going to extend out into the desert for more than a mile at a 10 degree slope. And it’s calculated that a 10 degree slope is about the maximum slope that human labor can haul objects up a ramp. And that ramp can’t just be compacted sand, since heavy objects are being hauled up. It’s going to have to be made of very solid material, almost as solid as the pyramid itself. Where is it? We don’t see any trace of those so-called ramps that are supposed to have been involved in the construction of the pyramid. I think we don’t know. I think we have no idea it’s built. That’s why there’s so many different theories. We haven’t got the answer yet. But the how of it is one of the big mysteries from our past.
Lex Fridman
I love the Great Pyramids as a kind of puzzle that was created by the ancient peoples to be solved by later peoples. I don’t know if you’re aware of the 10,000-year clock that was built by Jeff Bezos and Danny Hillis in Sierra Diablo mountains in Texas. They’re building a clock that ticks once a year for 10,000 years.
I love the Great Pyramids as a kind of puzzle that was created by the ancient peoples to be solved by later peoples. I don’t know if you’re aware of the 10,000-year clock that was built by Jeff Bezos and Danny Hillis in Sierra Diablo mountains in Texas. They’re building a clock that ticks once a year for 10,000 years.
Graham Hancock
Oh, wow.
Oh, wow.
Lex Fridman
So it’s talking about… And it’s supposed to sort of run, if there’s a nuclear apocalypse, it just runs.
So it’s talking about… And it’s supposed to sort of run, if there’s a nuclear apocalypse, it just runs.
Graham Hancock
It’ll keep running.
It’ll keep running.
Lex Fridman
It’s an example of modern humans thinking like, okay, if 10,000 years from now and beyond, if something goes wrong or the future humans that are way different come back and they analyze what happened here, how can we create monuments that they could then analyze, and in that way be curious about. In their curiosity, discover some deep truths about this current time. It’s an interesting kind of notion of what can we build now.
It’s an example of modern humans thinking like, okay, if 10,000 years from now and beyond, if something goes wrong or the future humans that are way different come back and they analyze what happened here, how can we create monuments that they could then analyze, and in that way be curious about. In their curiosity, discover some deep truths about this current time. It’s an interesting kind of notion of what can we build now.
Graham Hancock
That would last. And the answer is that the majority of what we build now wouldn’t last.
That would last. And the answer is that the majority of what we build now wouldn’t last.
Lex Fridman
It wouldn’t.
It wouldn’t.
Graham Hancock
It would be gone within a few thousand years. But what would last is massive megalithic structures like the Great Pyramid. That would last. And it could be used to send a message to the future. I think Göbekli Tepe serves a similar function. I mean, there it was, it was buried 10,400 years ago. And then for the next 10,000 years, nobody touched it. Nobody knew it was there. It took the genius of Klaus Schmidt, the original excavator, to realize what he’d found and what it was. But the great thing about the ceiling of Göbekli Tepe, the deliberate burial of Göbekli Tepe, is it means that no later culture trod over it and imposed their organic materials on it and messed up the dating sequences and so on and so forth, or vandalized it or used it as a quarry. It’s all there intact.
It would be gone within a few thousand years. But what would last is massive megalithic structures like the Great Pyramid. That would last. And it could be used to send a message to the future. I think Göbekli Tepe serves a similar function. I mean, there it was, it was buried 10,400 years ago. And then for the next 10,000 years, nobody touched it. Nobody knew it was there. It took the genius of Klaus Schmidt, the original excavator, to realize what he’d found and what it was. But the great thing about the ceiling of Göbekli Tepe, the deliberate burial of Göbekli Tepe, is it means that no later culture trod over it and imposed their organic materials on it and messed up the dating sequences and so on and so forth, or vandalized it or used it as a quarry. It’s all there intact.
Mortality
Lex Fridman
So you mentioned that the pyramids, and some of the other amazing things that humans have built, was the result of us humans struggling with our mortality.
So you mentioned that the pyramids, and some of the other amazing things that humans have built, was the result of us humans struggling with our mortality.
Graham Hancock
That’s the ultimate goal. That seems to me what’s at the heart of many pyramids around the world is that they’re connected in one way or another to the notion of death and to the notion of the exploration of the afterlife. And this is of course, the fundamental mystery that all human beings face. We may wish to ignore it, we may wish to pretend that it’s not going to happen, but we are of course, all mortal. Every one of us, all 8 billion or however many of us that are on the planet right now, we’re all going to face death sooner or later. And the question is what happens?
That’s the ultimate goal. That seems to me what’s at the heart of many pyramids around the world is that they’re connected in one way or another to the notion of death and to the notion of the exploration of the afterlife. And this is of course, the fundamental mystery that all human beings face. We may wish to ignore it, we may wish to pretend that it’s not going to happen, but we are of course, all mortal. Every one of us, all 8 billion or however many of us that are on the planet right now, we’re all going to face death sooner or later. And the question is what happens?
And there are a few cultures that really intensely, deeply studied that mystery. We are not one of them. The general view of science, I think, is that we’re accidents of evolution. When we die, the light blinks out. There’s no more of us. There’s no such thing as the soul. But that’s not a proven point. There’s no experiment that proves that’s the case. We know we die, but we don’t know whether there’s such a thing as a soul or not.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s the great mystery.
Yeah, it’s the great mystery.
Graham Hancock
It’s a great mystery that we all share, and those cultures that have investigated it, and Ancient Egypt is the best example, have investigated it thoroughly and map out the journey that we make after death. But that notion of a journey after death and of hazards and challenges along the way and ultimately of a judgment, that notion is found right around the world, and it even manifests into the three monotheistic faiths that are still present in the world today.
It’s a great mystery that we all share, and those cultures that have investigated it, and Ancient Egypt is the best example, have investigated it thoroughly and map out the journey that we make after death. But that notion of a journey after death and of hazards and challenges along the way and ultimately of a judgment, that notion is found right around the world, and it even manifests into the three monotheistic faiths that are still present in the world today.
Lex Fridman
Well, you’re one such human, and you said you contemplate your own death.
Well, you’re one such human, and you said you contemplate your own death.
Graham Hancock
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Are you afraid of it?
Are you afraid of it?
Graham Hancock
No. I’m not afraid of death at all. I’m curious about death. I think it could be very interesting. I think it’s the beginning of the next great adventure. So I don’t fear it. And I would like to live as long as my body is healthy enough to make living worthwhile. But I don’t fear death. What I do fear is pain. I do fear the humiliation that old age and the collapse of the faculties can bring. I do fear the cancers that can strike us down and riddle us with pain and agony. That I fear very, very much indeed.
No. I’m not afraid of death at all. I’m curious about death. I think it could be very interesting. I think it’s the beginning of the next great adventure. So I don’t fear it. And I would like to live as long as my body is healthy enough to make living worthwhile. But I don’t fear death. What I do fear is pain. I do fear the humiliation that old age and the collapse of the faculties can bring. I do fear the cancers that can strike us down and riddle us with pain and agony. That I fear very, very much indeed.
But death is going to come to all of us. I accept it. It’s going to come to me. I’m not going to say I’m looking forward to it, but when it happens, I’m going to approach it, I hope, with a sense of curiosity and a sense of adventure, that there’s something beyond this life. It isn’t heaven, it isn’t hell, but there’s something. The soul goes on. I think reincarnation is a very plausible idea. Again, modern science would reject that. But there’s the excellent work of Ian Stevenson, Children Who Remember Past Lives, who found that children up to the age of seven often have memories of past lives.
And in cultures where memories of past lives are discouraged, they tend not to express that much. But in cultures where memories of past lives are encouraged, like India, they do express it. And he found several subjects, children under the age of seven in India, who were able to remember specific details of a past life, and he was able to go to the place where that past life unfolded and validate those details. So if consciousness is the basis of everything, if it’s the essence of everything, and consciousness benefits in some way from being incarnated in physical form, then reincarnation makes a lot of sense. All the investment that the universe has put into creating this home for life may have a much bigger purpose than just accident.
Lex Fridman
What a beautiful mystery this whole thing is.
What a beautiful mystery this whole thing is.
Graham Hancock
Yeah. We are immersed in mystery. We live in the midst of mystery. We’re surrounded by mystery. And if we pretend otherwise, we’re deluding ourselves.
Yeah. We are immersed in mystery. We live in the midst of mystery. We’re surrounded by mystery. And if we pretend otherwise, we’re deluding ourselves.
Lex Fridman
And Graham, thank you so much for inspiring the world to explore that mystery. Thank you for talking today.
And Graham, thank you so much for inspiring the world to explore that mystery. Thank you for talking today.
Graham Hancock
Thank you, Lex. It’s been a pleasure.
Thank you, Lex. It’s been a pleasure.
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Graham Hancock. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Graham Hancock. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now let me leave you with some words from Charles Darwin. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Transcript for Jordan Peterson: Nietzsche, Hitler, God, Psychopathy, Suffering & Meaning | Lex Fridman Podcast #448
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #448 with Jordan Peterson.
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So there’s other people whose thought is of equivalent value. I’ve returned recently, and I’m going to do a course on to the work of this Romanian historian of religions, Mircea Eliade, who’s not nearly as well known as he should be, and whose work, by the way, is a real antidote to the postmodern, nihilistic, Marxist stream of literary interpretation that the universities as a whole have adopted. And Eliade is like that too. I used this book called The Sacred and the Profane quite extensively in a book that I’m releasing in mid-November, We Who Wrestle with God, and it’s of the same sort. It’s endlessly analyzable. Eliade walked through the whole history of religious ideas and he had the intellect that enabled him to do that. And everything he wrote is dreamlike in its density. So every sentence or paragraph is evocative in an image-rich manner. And that also, what would you say deepens and broadens the scope.
That’s part of often what distinguishes writing that has a literary end from writing that’s more merely technical. The literary writings have this imagistic and dreamlike reference space around them. It takes a long time to turn a complex image into something semantic. And so if you’re writing evokes deep imagery, it has a depth that can’t be captured merely in words. And the great romantic poetic philosophers, Nietzsche is a very good example, Dostoevsky is a good example, so is Mircea Eliade, they have that quality and it’s a good way of thinking about it. It’s kind of interesting from the perspective of technical analysis of intelligence, and there’s a good book called The User Illusion, which is the best book on consciousness that I ever read. It explains the manner in which our communication is understandable in this manner. So imagine that when you’re communicating something, you’re trying to change the way that your target audience perceives and acts in the world.
So that’s an embodied issue, but you’re using words which obviously aren’t equivalent to the actions themselves. You can imagine that the words are surrounded by a cloud of images that they evoke and that the images can be translated into actions. And the greatest writing uses words in a manner that evokes images that profoundly affects perception and action. And so I would take the manner in which I act and behave, I would translate that into a set of images. My dreams do that for me, for example. Then I compress them into words. I toss you the words, you decompose them, decompress them into the images and then into the actions. And that’s what happens in a meaningful conversation. It’s a very good way of understanding how we communicate linguistically.
You’re sampling and you’re only sampling a small element of the space that’s in front of you, and the element that you choose to sample is dependent on your aims and your goals. So it’s value saturated. And so all your perceptions are action predicated and partly what you’re doing when you’re communicating is therefore not only changing people’s actions, let’s say, but you’re also changing the strategy that they use to perceive. And so you change the way the world reveals itself for them. See, this is why it’s such a profound experience to read a particularly deep thinker because you could also think of your perceptions as the axioms of your thought. That’s a good way of thinking about it. A perception is like a… what would you say? It’s a thought that’s so set in concrete that you now see it rather than conceptualize it. A really profound thinker changes the way you perceive the world. That’s way deeper than just how you think about it or how you feel about it.
Now, Nietzsche was very interested in that, and I don’t think he got that exactly right. But the postmodernists, for example, especially the ones, and this is most of them with the Neo-Marxist bent, their presumption is that the fundamental unifying idea is power, that everything’s about compulsion and force essentially, and that that’s the only true unifying ethos of mankind, which is, I don’t know if there’s a worse idea than that. I mean, there are ideas that are potentially as dangerous. The nihilistic idea is pretty dangerous, although it’s more of a disintegrating notion than a unifying idea. The hedonistic idea that you live for pleasure, for example, that’s also very dangerous. But if you wanted to go for sheer pathology, the notion that, and this is Foucault in a nutshell and Marx for that matter, that power rules everything. Not only is that a terrible unifying idea, but it fully justifies your own use of power.
And I don’t mean the power Nietzsche talks about. His will to power was more his insistence that a human being is an expression of will rather than a mechanism of self-protection and security. He thought of the life force in human beings as something that strived not to protect itself, but to exhaust itself in being and becoming. It’s like an upward oriented motivational drive even towards meaning. Now he called it the will to power, and that had some unfortunate consequences, at least that’s how it’s translated. But he didn’t mean the power motivation that people like Foucault or Marx became so hung up on.
But the truth of the matter is that you can force people to see things your way, let’s say, but it’s nowhere near as good as strategy even practically than the strategy that would be associated with something like voluntary joint agreement of pattern of movement strategy towards a goal. See, this is such an important thing to understand because it helps you start to understand the distinction between a unifying force that’s based on power and compulsion, and one that is much more in keeping, I would say with the ethos that governs western societies, free western societies, there’s really a qualitative difference, and it’s not some morally relativistic illusion.
Fractionation of your goals, so that means you’re less motivated to move forward than you might be because there’s many things competing for your attention. And also anxiety, because anxiety actually signals something like goal conflict. So there’s an inescapable proclivity of value systems to unite. Now, if you kill the thing that’s uniting them, that’s the death of God, they either fractionate and you get confusion, anxiety and hopelessness, or you get social disunity or and you get social disunity or something else arises out of the abyss to constitute that unifying force. And Nietzsche said specifically that he believed that one of those manifestations would be that of communism and that that would kill… he said this in Will to Power, that that would kill tens of millions of people in the upcoming 20th century.
He could see that coming 50 years earlier. And Dostoevsky did the same thing in his book, Demons. So this is the thing that the areligious have to contend with. It’s a real conundrum because I mean, you could dispute the idea that our value systems tend towards a unity and society does as well because otherwise we’re disunified. But the cost of that disunity, as I said, is goal confusion, anxiety, and hopelessness. So it’s like a real cost. So you could dispense with the notion of unity altogether, and the Postmodernists did that to some degree, but they pulled off a sleight of hand too where they replaced it by power. Now, Nietzsche did. He’s responsible for that to some degree because Nietzsche said with his conception of the Übermensch, let’s say, is that human beings would have to create their own values because the value structure that had descended from on high was now shunted aside.
But there’s a major problem with that, many major problems. The psychoanalysts were the first people who really figured this out after Nietzsche, because imagine that we don’t have a relationship with the transcendental anymore that orients us. Okay, now we have to turn to ourselves. Now, if we were a unity, a clear unity within ourselves, let’s say, then we could turn to ourselves for that discovery. But if we’re a fractionated plurality internally, then when we turn to ourselves, we turn to a fractionated plurality. Well, that was Freud’s observation. It’s like, well, how can you make your own values when you’re not the master in your own house?
You’re a war of competing motivations, or maybe you’re someone who’s dominated by the will to force and compulsion. And so why do you think that you can rely on yourself as the source of values? And why do you think you’re wise enough to consult with yourself to find out what those values are or what they should be say in the course of a single life? I mean, it’s difficult to organize your own personal relationship like one relationship in the course of your life, let alone to try to imagine that out of whole cloth you could construct an ethos that would be psychologically and socially stabilizing and last over the long run. And of course, Marx people like that, the people who reduce human motivation to a single axis, they had the intellectual hubris to imagine that they could do that. Postmodernists are a good example of that as well.
We’re seeing this happen online. One of the things that you’re seeing happening online, I’m sure you’ve noticed this, especially on the right wing psychopathic troll side of the distribution, is the weaponization of a certain form of Christian ideation. And that’s often marked at least online by the presence of, what would you say, cliches like Christ is king, which has a certain religious meaning, but a completely different meaning in this sphere of emerging right wing pathology, “right wing”. The political dimension isn’t the right dimension of analysis, but it’s definitely the case that the best possible ideas can be used for the worst possible purposes. And that also brings up another specter, which is like, well, is there any reliable and valid way of distinguishing truly beneficial, unifying ideas from those that are pathological? And so that’s another thing that I tried to detail out in these lectures, but also in this new book, it’s like, how do you tell the good actors from the bad actors at the most fundamental level of analysis?
Part of the way… See, that problem is actually resolved to some degree in the notion of… in the developing notion of sacrifice that emerges in the western canon over thousands and thousands of years. So one of the suggestions, for example, and this is something exemplified in the passion story, is that you can tell the valid holder of an idea because that holder will take the responsibility for the consequences of his idea onto himself. And that’s why, for example, you see one way of conceptualizing Christ in the gospel story is as the ultimate sacrifice to God. So you might ask, well, what’s the ultimate sacrifice? And there are variants of the answer to that. One form of ultimate sacrifice is the sacrifice of a child, the offering of a child, and the other is the offering of the self. And the story of Christ brings both of those together because he’s the son of God that’s offered to God.
And so it’s a marketable resolution of that tension between ultimate sacrifice, ultimate because once you’re a parent, most parents would rather sacrifice themselves than their children. So you have something that becomes of even more value than yourself. But the sacrifice of self is also a very high order level of sacrifice. Christ is an archetype of the pattern of being that’s predicated on the decision to take… to offer everything up to the highest value, that pattern of self-sacrifice. And I think part of the reason that’s valid is because the person who undertakes to do that pays the price themselves. It’s not externalized. They’re not trying to change anyone else except maybe by example. It’s your problem. Like Solzhenitsyn pointed that out too when he was struggling with the idea of good versus evil, and you see this in more sophisticated literature.
In really unsophisticated literature or drama, there’s a good guy and the bad guy and the good guy’s all good, and the bad guy’s all bad. And in more sophisticated literature, the good and bad are abstracted. You can think of them as spirits. And then those spirits possess all the characters in the complex drama to a greater or lesser degree and that battle is fought out both socially and internally. In the high order religious conceptualizations in the West, if they culminate, let’s say in the Christian story, the notion is that battle between good and evil is fundamentally played out as an internal drama.
But given the alignment, let’s say, of the more mainstream Protestant movements with the woke mob, I don’t think it’s an absurd criticism. It’s something like the degeneration of Christianity into the notion that good and harmless are the same thing, or good and empathic are the same thing, which is simply not true and far too simplified. And I also think Nietzsche was extremely wrong in his presumption that human beings should take it to themselves to construct their own values. I think he made a colossal error in that presumption.
You can’t gerrymander the foundation because your foundational beliefs have to put you in harmony like musical harmony with the actual structure of reality as such. So I can give you an example of that. So our goal insofar as we’re conducting ourselves properly, is to have the kind of interesting conversation that allows both of us to express ourselves in a manner that enables us to learn and grow, such that we can share that with everyone who’s listening. And if our aim is true and upward, then that’s what we’re doing. Well, that means that we’re going to have to match ourselves to a pattern of interaction, and that’s marked for us emotionally. Like you and I both know this, if we’re doing this right…
To do that, we have to align with that pattern. I can’t decide that there’s some arbitrary way that I’m going to play you. I mean, I could do that if I was a psychopathic manipulator. But to do that optimally, I’m not going to impose a certain A priori aim, let’s say, on our communication and manipulate you into that. So the constraints on my ethos reflect the actual structure of the world.
This is the communist presumptions. It’s like, we’re going to burn everything down and we’re going to start from scratch. And we’ve got these axiomatic presumptions, and we’re going to put them into place. And we’re going to socialize people so they now think and live like communists from day one. And human beings are infinitely malleable, and we can use a rational set of presuppositions to decide what sort of beings they should be.
The transhumanists are doing this too. It’s like, no, there’s a pattern of being that you have to fall into alignment with. I think it’s the pattern of being, by the way, that if you fall into alignment with, it gives you hope, it protects you from anxiety, and it gives you a sense of harmony with your surroundings and with other people. And none of that’s arbitrary.
And that space of play is going to depend on the sophistication of the player, obviously. But those who are capable of engaging in deeper conversations talk about more fundamental things with more play. Now, we have to come to the conversation with a certain degree of structure, because we wouldn’t be able to understand each other or communicate if a lot of things weren’t already assumed or taken for granted.
There’s more patterns of potential games on a chessboard than there are subatomic particles in the observable universe. It’s an insane space. So it’s not like there’s not freedom within it. But it’s a weird paradox in a way, isn’t it? Because music is like this too, is that there are definitely rules. You can’t throw a basketball into a chess board and still be playing chess. But weirdly enough, if you adhere to the rules, the realm of freedom increases rather than decreasing.
I think you can make the same case for a playful conversation. It’s like we’re playing by certain rules and a lot of them are implicit, but that doesn’t mean that… It might mean the reverse of constraint. Because in this seminar, for example, that I was referring to, the Exodus Seminar and then the Gospel Seminar, everybody in this seminar, there’s about eight of us, played fair.
Nobody used power. Nobody tried to prove they were right. They put forward their points, but they were like, “Here’s a way of looking at that. Assess it.” They were also doing it genuinely. It’s like, this is what I’ve concluded about say this story. And I’m going to make a case for it, but I’d like to hear what you have to say because maybe you can change it, you can extend it, you can find a flaw in it.
Well, that’s a conversation that has flow and that’s engaging and that other people will listen to as well. See, I think that one of the things that we can conclude now, and we can do this even from a neuroscientific basis, is that that sense of engaged meaning is a marker not only for the emergence of harmony between you and your environment, but for the emergence of that harmony in a way that is developmentally rich, that moves you upward towards…
What would you say? Well, I think towards a more effective entropic state. That’s actually the technical answer to that. But it makes you more than you are, and there’s a directionality in that.
Because there’s ambiguity, there’s room for play in communism and Marxism, because they had a utopian sense of where everybody’s headed, don’t know how it’s going to happen. Maybe revolution is required. But after the revolution is done, we’ll figure it out. And there’s an underlying assumption that maybe human beings are good and they’ll figure it out once you remove the oppressor.
I mean, all these ideas, until you put them into practice, it can be quite convincing if you were in the 19th century. If I was reading, which is fascinating, the 19th century produced such powerful ideas, Marx and Nietzsche.
And that once we become civilized, so we produce societies that are united even among people who don’t know one another, different principles have to apply as a consequence of scale. So that’s partly an engineering response, but I think there’s a deeper way of going after the communist problem. So I think part of the fundamental problem with the communist axioms is the notion that the world of complex social interactions can be simplified sufficiently so that centralized planning authorities can deal with it.
And I think the best way to think about the free exchange rejoinder to that presumption is no, the sum total of human interactions in a large civilization are so immense that you need a distributed network of cognition in order to compute the proper way forward. And so what you do is you give each actor their domain of individual choice so that they can maximize their own movement forward.
And you allow the aggregate direction to emerge from that rather than trying to impose it from the top down, which I think is computationally impossible. So that might be one engineering reason why the communist solution doesn’t work. Like I read in Solzhenitsyn, for example, that the Central Soviet authorities often had to make 200 pricing decisions a day. Now, if you’ve ever started a business or created a product and had to wrestle with the problem of pricing, you’d become aware of just how intractable that is.
How do you calculate worth? Well, there’s the central existential problem of life. How do you calculate worth? It’s not something like a central authority can sit down and just manage. There is a lot of inputs that go into a pricing decision. And the free market answer to that is something like, well, if you get the price right, people will buy it and you’ll survive.
And so Eliade and Jung, Erich Neumann and Campbell, they were looking and Campbell, they were looking at patterns of narrative that were common across religious traditions that had spanned millennia and found many patterns. The hero’s myth, for example, is one of those patterns. And it’s, I think, the evidence that it has its reflection in human neurophysiology and neuropsychology is incontrovertible.
And so these foundational narratives, they last. They’re common across multiple religious traditions. They unite. They work psychologically, but they also reflect the underlying neurophysiological architecture. So I can give you an example of that. So the hero myth is really a quest myth. And a quest myth is really a story of exploration and expansion of adaptation.
So Bilbo the Hobbit, he’s kind of an ordinary every man. He lives in a very constrained and orderly and secure world. And then the quest call comes and he goes out and he expands his personality and develops his wisdom. And that’s reflected in human neuropsychological architecture at a very low level, way below cognition. So one of the most fundamental elements of the mammalian brain, and even in lower animal forms, is the hypothalamus.
It’s the root of primary motivation. So it governs lust, and it regulates your breathing, and it regulates your hunger, and it regulates your thirst, and it regulates your temperature. Like really low level biological necessities are regulated by the hypothalamus. When you get hungry, it’s the hypothalamus. When you’re activated in a defensively aggressive manner, that’s the hypothalamus.
Half the hypothalamus is the origin of the dopaminergic tracts, and they subsume exploration. And so you could think of the human motivational reality as a domain that’s governed by axiomatic motivational states, love, sex, defensive aggression, hunger, and another domain that’s governed by exploration. And the rule would be something like when your basic motivational states are sated, explore.
And that’s not cognitive. Like I said, this is deep, deep brain architecture. It’s extraordinarily ancient. And the exploration story is something like go out into the unknown and take the risks because the information that you discover and the skills you develop will be worthwhile, even in sating the basic motivational drives. And then you want to learn to do that in a iterative manner so it sustains across time, and you want to do it in a way that unites you with other people.
And there’s a pattern to that, and I do think that’s the pattern that we strive to encapsulate in our deep religious narratives. And I think that in many ways we’ve done that successfully.
So he speaks in the voice of a cynical nihilistic and bitter bureaucrat who’s been a failure, who’s talking cynically about the nature of human beings, but also very accurately. And one of the things he points out with regards to modern utopianism is that human beings are very strange creatures.
And that if you gave them what the socialist utopians want to give them, so let’s say all your needs are taken care of, all your material needs are taken care of and even indefinitely, Dostoevsky’s claim was, well, you don’t understand human beings very well. Because if you put them in an environment that was that comfortable, they would purposefully go insane just to break it into bits just so something interesting would happen.
Right. And he says it’s the human proclivity to curse and complain. He says this in quite a cynic and caustic manner, but he’s pointing to something deep, which is that we’re not built for comfort and security. We’re not infants. We’re not after satiation. So then you might ask, well, what the hell are we after then? That’s what the Abraham story addresses. Abraham is the first true individual in the biblical narrative.
So you could think about his story as the archetypal story of the developing individual. So you said, well, what’s God? Well, in the Abraham story, God has characterized a lot of different ways in the classic religious texts. Like the Bible is actually a compilation of different characterizations of the divine with the insistence that they reflect an underlying unity. In the story of Abraham, the divine is the call to adventure.
So Abraham has the socialist utopia at hand. He’s from a wealthy family, and he has everything he needs. And he actually doesn’t do anything until he’s in his 70s. Now, hypothetically, people in those times lived much longer. But a voice comes to Abraham and it tells him something very specific. It says, “Leave your zone of comfort. Leave your parents. Leave your tent. Leave your community. Leave your tribe. Leave your land. Go out into the world.”
And Abraham thinks, well, why? I’ve got naked slave girls peeling grapes and feeding them to me. It’s like, what do I need an adventure for? And God tells them, and this is the covenant, by the way, part of the covenant that the God of the Israelites makes with his people. It’s very, very specific. It’s very brilliant. He says, “If you follow the voice of adventure, you’ll become a blessing to yourself.”
So that’s a good deal because people generally live at odds with themselves. And he says, God says, “That’s not all. You’ll become a blessing to yourself in a way that furthers your reputation among people and validly, so that you’ll accomplish things that were real and people will know it. And you’ll be held high in their esteem and that will be valid.” So that’s a pretty good deal because social people would like to be regarded as of utility and worth by others.
And so that’s a good deal. And God says, “That’s not all. You’ll establish something of lasting permanent and deep value.” That’s why Abraham becomes the father of nations. And finally, he caps it off and he says, “There’s a better element even to it. There’s a capstone. You’ll do all three of those things in a way that’s maximally beneficial to everyone else.” And so the divinity in the Abrahamic story is making a claim.
He says, first of all, there’s a drive that you should attend to, so the spirit of adventure that calls you out of your zone of comfort. Now, if you attend to that and you make the sacrifices necessary to follow that path, then the following benefits will accrue to you. Your life will be a blessing. Everyone will hold you in high esteem. You’ll establish something of permanent value, and you’ll do it in a way that’s maximally beneficial to everyone else.
And so think about what this means biologically or from an engineering standpoint. It means that the instinct to develop that characterizes outward moving children, let’s say, or adults is the same instinct that allows for psychological stability, that allows for movement upward in a social hierarchy that establishes something iterable, and that does that in a manner that allows everyone else to partake in the same process.
Well, that’s a good deal. I can’t see how it cannot be true, because the alternative hypothesis would be that the spirit that moves you beyond yourself to develop, the spirit of a curious child, let’s say, what, is that antithetical to your own esteem? Is that antithetical to other people’s best interest? Is it not the thing that increases the probability that you’ll do something permanent? That’s a stupid theory.
That’s a terrible thing, A, because the passion story is a catastrophic tragedy, although it obviously has its redemptive elements. But one of the things that’s implied there is that there’s no distinction between the true adventure of life and taking on the pathway of maximal responsibility and burden. And I can’t see how that cannot be true. Because the counter hypothesis is, well, Lex, the best thing for you to do in your life is to shrink from all challenge and hide, to remain infantile, to remain secure, not to ever push yourself beyond your limits, not to take any risks. Well, no one thinks that’s true.
And you might say, well, could you undertake that voluntarily as an adventure? And the answer to that is something like, well, what’s your relationship with death? That’s a problem you have to solve. And you could fight it and you could be bitter about it. And there’s reasons for that, especially if it’s painful and degrading. But the alternative is something like… Well, it’s what’s fleshed out in religious imagery always.
It’s very difficult to cast into words. It’s like, no, you welcome the struggle. That’s why I called the book, We Who Wrestle with God. You welcome the struggle. And Lex, I don’t see how you can come to terms with life without construing it as something like, bring it on. Welcome the struggle. I can’t see that there’s a limit to that. It’s like, well, I welcome the struggle until it gets difficult.
So it’s not merely tragedy. And I think the malevolence is actually worse. The reason I think that is because I know the literature on post-traumatic stress disorder, and most people who encounter, let’s say, a challenge that’s so brutal that it fragments them, it isn’t mere suffering that does that to people. It’s an encounter with malevolence that does that to people.
Their own sometimes often, by the way. Soldier will go out into a battlefield and find out that there’s a part of him that really enjoys the mayhem, and that conceptualization doesn’t fit in well with everything he thinks he knows about himself and humanity. And after that contact with that dark part of himself, he never recovers. That happens to people, and it happens to people who encounter bad actors in the world too.
If you’re a naive person and the right narcissistic psychopath comes your way, you are in mortal trouble because you might die, but that’s not where the trouble ends.
It’s like part of the way you can tell that that’s wrong is that you can’t voluntarily gerrymander your own interests. You find some things interesting, and that seems natural and autonomous, and other things you don’t find interesting and you can’t really force yourself to be interested in them. So what is the domain of interest that makes itself manifest to you? Well, it’s like an autonomous spirit. It’s like certain things in your field of perception are illuminated to you.
You think, “Oh, that’s interesting. That’s compelling. That’s gripping.” Rudolf Otto, who studied the phenomenology of religious experience, describe that as numinous. The thing grips you because compelled by it, and maybe it’s also somewhat anxiety provoking. It’s the same reaction like a cat has to a dog. When the cat’s hair stands on end, that’s an awe response. And so there’s going to be things in your phenomenological field that pull you forward, compel you.
That’s like the voice of positive emotion and enthusiasm. Things draw you into the world. It might be love. It might be aesthetic interest. It might be friendship. It might be social status. It might be duty and industriousness. There’s various domains of interest that shine for people. That’s on the positive side. God is calling. That would be akin to the spirit of adventure for Abraham. But there’s also God as conscience, and this is a useful thing to know too.
Certain things bother you. They take root within you and they turn your thoughts towards certain issues. Like there are things you’re interested in that you’ve pursued your whole life. There are things I’m interested in that I felt as a moral compulsion. And so you could think and I think the way you can think about it technically is that something pulls you forward so that you move ahead and you develop.
And then another voice, this a voice of negative emotion, says while you’re moving forward, stay on this narrow pathway. And it’ll mark deviations, and it marks deviations with shame and guilt and anxiety, regret. And that actually has a voice. Don’t do that. Well, why not? Well, you’re wandering off the straight narrow path. So the divine marks the pathway forward and reveals it, but then puts up the constraints of conscience. And the divine in the Old Testament is portrayed not least as the dynamic between calling and conscience.
You could learn from your failure. When you failed, you invited in the spirit of envy and resentment, and you allowed it to possess you. And that’s why you’re miserable.” And so Cain is embittered by that response, and that’s when he kills Abel. You might say, well, how do you fortify yourself against that pathway of resentment? Part of classic religious practice is aimed to do that precisely. What’s the antithesis of envy? Gratitude. That’s something you can practice. And I mean, literally practice.
Well, how about, here’s an answer. You don’t have enough faith in yourself. And maybe you don’t have enough faith in, well, I would say the divine. You don’t believe that the world is characterized by enough potentiality so that even miserable you has a crack at the brass ring. I talked about this actually practically in one of my previous books, because I wrote a chapter called Compare Yourself to Who You Are and Not to Someone Else at the Present Time. Well, why? Well, your best benchmark for tomorrow is you today. And you might not be able to have what someone else has on the particular axis you’re comparing yourself with them on, but you could make an incremental improvement over your current state regardless of the direction that you’re aiming.
And it is the case, and this is a law. The return on incremental improvement is exponential or geometric and not linear. So even if you start … This is why the hero is always born in a lowly place, mythologically. Christ, who redeems the world is born in a manger with the animals to poverty parents in the middle of a God-forsaken desert in a non-descript time and place, isolated. Well, why? Well, because everyone young struggles with their insufficiency. But that doesn’t mean that great things can’t make themselves manifest. And part of the insistence in the biblical text, for example, is that it’s incumbent on you to have the courage to have faith in yourself and in the spirit of reality, the essence of reality, regardless of how you construe the evidence at hand. Right. Look at me, I’m so useless. I don’t know anything. I don’t have anything. It’s hopeless. I don’t have it within me. The world couldn’t offer me that possibility. Well, what the hell do you know about that?
This is what job figures out in the midst of his suffering in the Book of Job, because Job is tortured terribly by God, who makes a bet with Satan himself to bring him down. And Job’s decision in the face of his intense suffering is, “I’m not going to lose faith in my essential goodness, and I’m not going to lose faith in the essential goodness of being itself, regardless of how terrible the face it’s showing to me at the moment happens to be.” And I think, okay, what do you make of that claim? Well, let’s look at it practically.
You’re being tortured by the arbitrariness of life. That’s horrible. Now you lose faith in yourself and you become cynical about being. So are you infinitely worse off instantly? And then you might say, “Well yeah,” but it’s really asking a lot of people that they maintain faith even in their darkest hours. It’s like, yeah, that might be asking everything from people. But then you also might ask … This is a very strange question. If you were brought into being by something that was essentially good, wouldn’t that thing that brought you into being demand that you make the best in yourself manifest? And wouldn’t it be precisely when you most need that it be that you’d be desperate enough to risk what it would take to let it emerge?
But then I would also say there’s every suggestion that the pathway of adventure itself is the best pathway to romantic attractiveness. And we know this, in some ways in very blunt manner. The Google boys, the engineers who are too … What would you say? Naively oriented towards empirical truth to note when they’re being politically incorrect, they wrote a great book called A Billion Wicked Thoughts, which I really like. It’s a very good book. And it’s engineers as psychologists. And so they’ll say all sorts of things that no one with any sense would ever say that happen to be true. And they studied the pattern of pornographic fantasy, and women like pornographic stories, not images. So women’s use of pornography is literary. Who are the main protagonists in female pornographic fantasy? Pirates, werewolves, vampires, surgeons, billionaires. Tony Stark.
And so the basic pornographic narrative is Beauty and the Beast. Those five categories. Terrible, aggressive male, tamable by the right relationship, hot erotic attraction. And so I would say to the young men who, and I have many times to the young men who are locked in isolation, it’s first of all, “Join the bloody club.” Because the default value of a 15 year-old male on the mating market is zero. And there’s reason for that. Zero is a bit of an exaggeration, but not much. And the reason for that is, well, what the hell do you know? You’re not good for anything. You have potential and maybe plenty, and hopefully that’ll be made manifest, but you shouldn’t be all upset because you’re the same loser as everyone else your age has always been since the beginning of time.
But then you might ask, “Well, what should I do about it?” and the answer is, get yourself together. Stand up straight with your shoulders back, take on some adventure, find your calling, abide by your conscience, put yourself together and you’ll become attractive. And we know this is … Look, we know this is true. The correlation between male sexual opportunity and relative masculine status is about 0.6. That’s higher than the correlation between intelligence and academic achievement. I don’t think that there’s a larger correlation between two independent phenomena in the entire social science and health literature than the correlation between relative male social status and reproductive success. It’s by far the most fundamental determinant.
There’s a documentary I watch from time to time, which I think is the most brilliant documentary I’ve ever seen. It’s called Crumb, and it’s the story of this underground cartoonist. Robert Crumb, who in high school was in the category of males for whom a date was not only not likely, but unimaginable. So he was at the bottom of the bottom rung, and almost all the reactions he got from females wasn’t just no, it was like, “Are you out of your mind?” With that contempt. And then he became successful. And so the documentary is super interesting because it tracks the utter pathology of his sexual fantasies because he was bitter and resentful. And if you want to understand the psychology of serial sexual killers and the like, and you watch Crumb, you’ll find out a lot more about that than anybody with any sense would want to know.
But then he makes this transition, and partly because he does take the heroic adventure path, and he actually has a family and children, and he is actually a pretty functional person as opposed to his brothers, one of whom commits suicide, and one of whom is literally a repeat sexual offender. It’s a brutal documentary. But what he did in his adolescence after being rejected was he found what he was interested in. He was a very good artist. He was very interested in music, and he started to pursue those single-mindedly, and he became successful. And as soon as he became successful, and the documentary tracks this beautifully, he’s immediately attractive to women. And then you might ask too, even if you’re cynical, it’s like, “Well, why do I have to perform for women?” And the answer to that is something like, why the hell should they have anything to do with you if you’re useless? They’re going to have infants. They don’t need another one.
Partly the reason that women are hypergamous, they want males who are of higher status than they are, is because they’re trying to redress the reproductive burden. And it’s substantial. The female of any species is the sex that devotes more to the reproductive function. That’s a more fundamental definition than chromosomal differentiation. And that’s taken to its ultimate extreme with humans. And so of course women are going to want someone around that’s useful, because the cost of sex for them is an 18 year-old period of dependency with an infant. So I think the adventure comes first.
The rule for me when he was on the stairs was as soon as you’re willing to be a civilized human being, you can get off the stairs. And you might think, well, that’s nothing but arbitrary superego, patriarchal oppressive constraint. Or you could say, “Well, no, what I’m actually doing is facilitating his cortical maturation.” Because when a child misbehaves, it’s usually because they’re under the domination of some primordial emotional or motivational impulse. They’re angry, they’re over-enthusiastic, they’re upset, they’re selfish. It’s narrow self-centeredness expressed in a immature manner.
Now, you can also find that model in books, and people do that sometimes. I’ve interviewed people who had pretty fragmented childhoods, who turned to books and found the pattern that guided them in, let’s say, the adventures of the heroes of the past, because that’s a good way of thinking about it. And I read a book called Angela’s Ashes that was written by an Irish author, Frank McCourt. Fantastic book, beautiful book. And his father was an alcoholic of gargantuan proportions. An Irish drinker who drank every cent that came into the family and many of whose children died in poverty.
And what Frank did is a testament to the human spirit, is he sort of divided his father conceptually into two elements. There was sober morning father who was encouraging and with whom he had a relationship, and then there was drunk and useless later afternoon and evening father, and he rejected the negative and he amplified his relationship with the positive. Now, he had other things going for him, but he did a very good job of discriminating.
And partly the question that you’re raising is to what degree is it useful to have a beneficial adversary? Yeah, struggle-free progress is not possible. And I think there are situations under which where you might be motivated to prove someone in your immediate circle wrong, but then that also implies that at some level, for some reason, you actually care about their judgment. You just didn’t write them off completely.
And part of what I would say is twisted pseudo-Christian morality that Nietzsche was criticizing was exactly of that sort, and it tied into resentment and envy. And he tied that in explicitly said that failure in life masked by the morality that’s nothing but weak cowardice turns to the resentment that undermines and destroys everything, and that does that purposefully.
If we can descend from the realm of ideas down to history and reality. I would say the time between World War I and World War II was one of history’s biggest testing of ideas, and really the most dramatic kinds of ideas that helped us understand the nature of good and evil. I just want to ask you a question about good and evil. Churchill, in many ways, was not a good man. Stalin, as you’ve documented extensively, was a horrible man. But you can make the case that both were necessary for stopping an even worse human being in Hitler. So to what degree do you need monsters to fight monsters? Do you need bad men to be able to fight off greater evils?
He’s a rather slight guy, but he’s got a spine of steel, and there’s more than a bit of what’s a monstrous in him. And Jocko Willink is like that, and Joe Rogan is like that, and you’re like that.
I mean, it was very common when I was teaching both at Harvard and at the University of Toronto for the students in my personality class where we studied Solzhenitsyn, who’s actually an existential psychologist in many ways and a deep one, none of them knew anything about the Soviet atrocities. None of them knew anything about what happened in Ukraine and the death of 6 million productive people, had no idea that the communists killed tens of millions of people in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution.
I think what we’re doing, this is happening on Twitter continually, is we’re giving the 5% of psychopaths a radically disproportionate voice. And what they’re doing is there’s a bunch of them on the left, and they’re all, we’re so compassionate, and there’s a bunch of them on the right, and at the moment they’re all, we’re so Christian and free speech oriented. It’s like, no, you’re not. You’re narcissistic psychopaths, and that’s your camouflage. And you hide behind your anonymity and you use fractious and divisive language to attract fools and to elevate your social status and your clout. And not only that, to gain, what would you say, satisfaction for your sadistic impulses.
And it’s an ugly place to inhabit, that’s for sure. But it’s also the case that a very tiny minority of seriously bad actors can have a disproportionate influence. And one of the things I’ve always hoped for for social media channels is that they separate the anonymous accounts from the verified accounts. They should just be in different categories. People who will say what they think and take the hits to their reputation, anonymous types. If you want to see what the anonymous types say, you can see it. But don’t be confusing them with actual people because they’re not the same. We know that people behave more badly when they’re anonymous. That’s a very well-established psychological finding. Well, and I think the danger to our culture is substantive. I think the reason that perhaps the reason that everything started to go sideways pretty seriously around 2015 is because we invented these new modes of communication. We have no idea how to police them. And so the psychopathic manipulators, they have free reign. About 30% of the internet is pornography.
A huge amount of internet traffic is outright criminal. And there’s a penumbra around that’s psychopathic, narcissistic troublemaking trolls. And that might constitute the bulk of the interactions online. And it’s partly because people can’t be held responsible, so the free riders have free reign.
If you keep them in prison until they’re in the middle of their late twenties, most of them stop. And the easiest way to understand that might just be delayed maturation. So are most people salvageable? Yes, definitely. Is everyone salvageable? Well, at some point it becomes, first of all, they have to want to be salvaged. That’s a problem. But then it also becomes something like, well, how much resources are you going to devote to that? The farther down the rabbit hole you’ve gone, the more energy it takes to haul you up. So there comes a point where the probability that you’ll be able to get enough resources devoted to you to rescue you from the pit of hell that you’ve dug is zero. And that’s a very sad thing. And it’s very hard to be around someone who’s in that situation, very, very hard.
Okay, well, where are you when you’re as far away from that as you could possibly get? What does that mean? And it does have something to do with play, as far as I’m concerned. I think the antithesis of tyranny is play. So that took me a long time to figure out that specifically. So that was very dark. I spent a lot of time studying the worst behaviors that I could discover abstractly in books, but also in my clinical practice and in my observations of people. And so that’s rough. More recently, I was very ill and in a tremendous amount of pain that lasted pretty much without any break for three years. And what was particularly useful to me then was the strength of my relationships, my immediate relationships, my friendships. Also, the relationships that I had established more broadly with people.
Because by the time I became ill, I was reasonably well known and people were very supportive when I was having trouble, and that was very helpful. But it’s certainly the case that it was the connections I had, particularly with my family, but also with my friends, that were the saving grace. And that’s something to know. I mean, it’s necessary to bear the burdens of the world on your own shoulders, that’s for sure, the burdens of your own existence and whatever other responsibilities you can mount. But that by no means, means that you can or should do it alone. And so you might say, well, welcoming the adversity of life as a redemptive challenge is a task that’s beyond the ability of the typical person or even maybe of anyone. But then when you think, well, you’re not alone, maybe you’re not alone socially, you’re not alone familial, maybe you’re not alone metaphysically as well, there’s an insistence.
And I think it’s true. There’s an insistence, for example, in the old and the new testament alike, that the more darkness you’re willing to voluntarily encounter, the more likely it is that the spirit of Abraham and the patriarchs will walk with you. And I think that’s right. I think it’s sort of technically true in that the best parts of yourself make themselves manifest. If you want to think about it that way, the best parts of yourself, whatever that means, make themselves manifest when you’re contending actively and voluntarily with the most difficult challenges. Why wouldn’t it be that way? And then you could think, well, that’s yourself. It’s like, well, are the best unrevealed parts of you yourself? Well, no, they’re a kind of metaphysical reality. They’re not yet manifest. They only exist in potential. They transcend anything you’re currently capable of, but they have an existence. You could call that yourself.
But it was Jung’s contention, for example, with regards to such terminology that the reason we use the term self instead of God is because when God was dispensed with, let’s say, by the processes Nietzsche described, we just found the same thing deep within the instinctive realm. Let’s say we found it at the bottom…
That’s the burning bush. And bush is a tree. That’s life. That’s the tree of life. And the fact that it’s on fire is that’s life exaggerated because everything that’s alive is on fire. And so what calls to Moses is the spirit of being itself, and it tracks him off the beaten track, and he decides to go investigate. So Moses is everyone who goes off the beaten track to investigate. And so as he investigates, he delves more and more deeply until he starts to understand that he’s now walking on sacred ground. So he takes off his shoes, and that’s a symbolic reference of identity transformation. He’s no longer walking the same path. He no longer has the same identity. He’s in a state of flux. And that’s when what happens is that he continues to interact with this calling and Moses asks what it is that’s being revealed, and God says, I’m the spirit of being itself.
That’s basically the answer. I am what I am. It’s a more complex utterance than that. I am what I will be. I am what was becoming. It’s all of that at the same time, it’s the spirit of being that’s speaking to him, the spirit of being and becoming. And it tells Moses that he now, because he’s delved so deeply into something so compelling, his identity has transformed and he’s become the leader who can speak truth to power. And so he allies himself with his brother Aaron, who’s the political arm and who can communicate, and he goes back to Egypt to confront the tyrant. And that’s an indication of that idea that if you wrestle with life properly, that the spirit of being and becoming walks with you. And it’s like, how can that not be true? Because the contrary would be that there would be no growth in challenge. Well, you have to be infinitely nihilistic to believe that.
He refuses to lose faith. And the way the story ends is that Job gets everything back and more. So that’s a dissent and assent story. And a cynic might say, “Well, the ends don’t justify the means.” And I would say, “Fair enough.” But that’s a pretty shallow interpretation of the story. What it indicates instead is that if you’re fortunate, because let’s not forget that, and you optimize your attitude even in the face of adversity, that it’s not infrequently the case that your fortunes will reverse. And I’ve found that in many situations, the journalists whose goal was most malicious in relationship to me, who were most concerned with improving their own, what would you say? Fostering their own notoriety and gaining social status at my expense, were the ones who did me the greatest favor. Those were the interviews that went viral. And so that’s interesting because they were definitely the places where the most disaster was at hand. And I felt that in the aftermath every time that happened, my whole family was destabilized for two months because things… It wasn’t obvious at all which way the dice were going to roll.
This was Sisyphus on steroids. It was very difficult to maintain hope in that, because I would do what I could. There were times when it took me like an hour and a half in the morning to stand up. I’d do all that and more or less put myself back into something remotely resembling human by the end of the day. And then I knew perfectly well, exhausted, if I fell asleep that I was going to be right at the bottom of the bloody hill again. And so after a couple of years of that, it was definitely the fact that I had a family that carried me through that.
We’re very, very… There’s no difference between ourselves and the people that we love. And there might be no difference between ourselves and everyone everywhere, but we can at least realize that, to begin with, in the form of the people that we love. And I hope I’m better at that than I was. I think I’m better at it than I was. I’m a lot more grateful for just ordinariness than I was because when I first recovered, I remember, I first started to recover I was standing in this pharmacy waiting for a prescription in a little town, and they weren’t being particularly efficient about it.
And so I was in that, standing in the aisle for 20 minutes, and I thought, “I’m not on fire. I could just stand here for the rest of my life, just not being in pain and enjoying that.” And that would have been something that before that would have been, I would have been impatient and raring to go because I didn’t have 20 minutes to stand in the middle of an aisle. And I thought, “Well, if you’re just standing there and you’re not on fire, things are a lot better than they might be.” And I certainly, I know that, and I think I remember it almost all the time.
That was like Dante’s Inferno level down. It was a long-term, psychiatric inpatient ward. Some of the people had been there for 30 years. It made One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest look like a romantic comedy. And she had come back to see if she could take some of those people for a walk, and was trying to find out how to get permission to do it. Better than other people. Some people are more intelligent, some people are more beautiful, some people are more athletic. Maybe it’s possible for everyone at all levels of attainment to strive towards the good. And maybe those talents that are given to people unfairly don’t privilege them in relationship to their moral conduct. And I think that’s true. There’s no evidence, for example, that there’s any correlation whatsoever between intelligence and morality. You’re not better because you’re smart. And what that also implies is if you’re smart, you can be a lot better at being worse.
Look, here’s a developmental sequence for you, naive and trusting, hurt and cynical. Okay, well, is hurt and cynical better than naive and trusting? It’s like, yeah, probably. Is that where it ends? How about cynical and trusting as step three? And then the trust becomes courage. It’s like, yeah, I’ll put my hand out for you, but it’s not because I’m a fool. And I think that’s right, because that’s the re-instantiation of that initial trust that makes childhood magical and paradisal. But it’s the admixture of that with wisdom. It’s like, yeah, we could walk together uphill, but that doesn’t mean, and I’ll presume that that’s your aim, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to watch.
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:08 – Nietzsche
- 7:49 – Power and propaganda
- 12:55 – Nazism
- 17:55 – Religion
- 34:19 – Communism
- 40:04 – Hero myth
- 42:13 – Belief in God
- 52:25 – Advice for young people
- 1:05:03 – Sex
- 1:25:01 – Good and evil
- 1:37:47 – Psychopathy
- 1:51:16 – Hardship
- 2:03:32 – Pain and gratitude
- 2:14:33 – Truth
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Jordan Peterson. His second time on this, The Lex Fridman Podcast.
The following is a conversation with Jordan Peterson. His second time on this, The Lex Fridman Podcast.
Nietzsche
Lex Fridman
You have given a set of lectures on Nietzsche as part of the new Peterson Academy, and the lectures were powerful. There’s some element of the contradictions, the tensions, the drama, the way you like, lock in on an idea, but then are struggling with that idea, all of that, that feels like it’s a Nietzschean.
You have given a set of lectures on Nietzsche as part of the new Peterson Academy, and the lectures were powerful. There’s some element of the contradictions, the tensions, the drama, the way you like, lock in on an idea, but then are struggling with that idea, all of that, that feels like it’s a Nietzschean.
Jordan Peterson
Well, he’s a big influence on me stylistically and in terms of the way I approached writing, and also many of the people that were other influences of mine were very influenced by him. So I was blown away when I first came across his writings. They’re so intellectually dense that I don’t know if there’s anything that approximates that. Dostoevsky maybe, although he’s much more wordy. Nietzsche is very succinct partly he was so ill because he would think all day he couldn’t spend a lot of time writing. And he condenses writings into very short while this Aphoristic style he had, and it’s really something to strive for. And then he’s also an exciting writer like Dostoevsky and dynamic and romantic in that emotional way. And so it’s really something, and I really enjoyed doing that. I did that lecture that you described, that lecture series is on the first half of Beyond Good and Evil, which is a stunning book. And that was really fun to take pieces of it and then to describe what they mean and how they’ve echoed across the decades since he wrote them. And yeah, it’s been great.
Well, he’s a big influence on me stylistically and in terms of the way I approached writing, and also many of the people that were other influences of mine were very influenced by him. So I was blown away when I first came across his writings. They’re so intellectually dense that I don’t know if there’s anything that approximates that. Dostoevsky maybe, although he’s much more wordy. Nietzsche is very succinct partly he was so ill because he would think all day he couldn’t spend a lot of time writing. And he condenses writings into very short while this Aphoristic style he had, and it’s really something to strive for. And then he’s also an exciting writer like Dostoevsky and dynamic and romantic in that emotional way. And so it’s really something, and I really enjoyed doing that. I did that lecture that you described, that lecture series is on the first half of Beyond Good and Evil, which is a stunning book. And that was really fun to take pieces of it and then to describe what they mean and how they’ve echoed across the decades since he wrote them. And yeah, it’s been great.
Lex Fridman
Taking each sentence seriously and deconstructing it and really struggling with it. I think underpinning that approach to writing requires deep respect for the person. I think if we approach writing with that kind of respect, you can take Orwell, you can take a lot of writers and really dig in on singular sentences.
Taking each sentence seriously and deconstructing it and really struggling with it. I think underpinning that approach to writing requires deep respect for the person. I think if we approach writing with that kind of respect, you can take Orwell, you can take a lot of writers and really dig in on singular sentences.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah, well, those are the great writers because the greatest writers virtually everything they wrote is worth attending to. And I think Nietzsche is in some ways the ultimate exemplar of that because often when I read a book, I’ll mark one way or another, I often fold the corner of the page over to indicate something that I’ve found that’s worth remembering. I couldn’t do that with a book like Beyond Good and Evil because every page ends up marked. And that’s in marked contrast, so to speak, to many of the books I read now where it’s quite frequently now that I’ll read a book and there won’t be an idea in it that I haven’t come across before. And with a thinker like Nietzsche, that’s just not the case at the sentence level. And I don’t think there’s anyone that I know of who did that to a greater extent than he did.
Yeah, well, those are the great writers because the greatest writers virtually everything they wrote is worth attending to. And I think Nietzsche is in some ways the ultimate exemplar of that because often when I read a book, I’ll mark one way or another, I often fold the corner of the page over to indicate something that I’ve found that’s worth remembering. I couldn’t do that with a book like Beyond Good and Evil because every page ends up marked. And that’s in marked contrast, so to speak, to many of the books I read now where it’s quite frequently now that I’ll read a book and there won’t be an idea in it that I haven’t come across before. And with a thinker like Nietzsche, that’s just not the case at the sentence level. And I don’t think there’s anyone that I know of who did that to a greater extent than he did.
So there’s other people whose thought is of equivalent value. I’ve returned recently, and I’m going to do a course on to the work of this Romanian historian of religions, Mircea Eliade, who’s not nearly as well known as he should be, and whose work, by the way, is a real antidote to the postmodern, nihilistic, Marxist stream of literary interpretation that the universities as a whole have adopted. And Eliade is like that too. I used this book called The Sacred and the Profane quite extensively in a book that I’m releasing in mid-November, We Who Wrestle with God, and it’s of the same sort. It’s endlessly analyzable. Eliade walked through the whole history of religious ideas and he had the intellect that enabled him to do that. And everything he wrote is dreamlike in its density. So every sentence or paragraph is evocative in an image-rich manner. And that also, what would you say deepens and broadens the scope.
That’s part of often what distinguishes writing that has a literary end from writing that’s more merely technical. The literary writings have this imagistic and dreamlike reference space around them. It takes a long time to turn a complex image into something semantic. And so if you’re writing evokes deep imagery, it has a depth that can’t be captured merely in words. And the great romantic poetic philosophers, Nietzsche is a very good example, Dostoevsky is a good example, so is Mircea Eliade, they have that quality and it’s a good way of thinking about it. It’s kind of interesting from the perspective of technical analysis of intelligence, and there’s a good book called The User Illusion, which is the best book on consciousness that I ever read. It explains the manner in which our communication is understandable in this manner. So imagine that when you’re communicating something, you’re trying to change the way that your target audience perceives and acts in the world.
So that’s an embodied issue, but you’re using words which obviously aren’t equivalent to the actions themselves. You can imagine that the words are surrounded by a cloud of images that they evoke and that the images can be translated into actions. And the greatest writing uses words in a manner that evokes images that profoundly affects perception and action. And so I would take the manner in which I act and behave, I would translate that into a set of images. My dreams do that for me, for example. Then I compress them into words. I toss you the words, you decompose them, decompress them into the images and then into the actions. And that’s what happens in a meaningful conversation. It’s a very good way of understanding how we communicate linguistically.
Lex Fridman
So if the words spring to the full visual complexity and then that can then transform itself into action.
So if the words spring to the full visual complexity and then that can then transform itself into action.
Jordan Peterson
And change in perception because-
And change in perception because-
Lex Fridman
Change in perception. Yeah.
Change in perception. Yeah.
Jordan Peterson
Well, those are both relevant and it’s an important thing to understand because the classic empiricists make the presumption, and it’s an erroneous presumption that perception is a value-free enterprise. And they assume that partly because they think of perception as something passive. You just turn your head and you look at the world and there it is. It’s like perception is not passive. There is no perception without action ever, ever. And that’s a weird thing to understand because even when you’re looking at something like your eyes are moving back and forth, if they ever stop moving for a tenth of a second, you stop being able to see. So your eyes are jiggling back and forth just to keep them active. And then there’s involuntary movements of your eyes and then there’s voluntary movements of your eyes. What you’re doing with your eyes is very much like what a blind person would do if they were feeling out the contours of a object.
Well, those are both relevant and it’s an important thing to understand because the classic empiricists make the presumption, and it’s an erroneous presumption that perception is a value-free enterprise. And they assume that partly because they think of perception as something passive. You just turn your head and you look at the world and there it is. It’s like perception is not passive. There is no perception without action ever, ever. And that’s a weird thing to understand because even when you’re looking at something like your eyes are moving back and forth, if they ever stop moving for a tenth of a second, you stop being able to see. So your eyes are jiggling back and forth just to keep them active. And then there’s involuntary movements of your eyes and then there’s voluntary movements of your eyes. What you’re doing with your eyes is very much like what a blind person would do if they were feeling out the contours of a object.
You’re sampling and you’re only sampling a small element of the space that’s in front of you, and the element that you choose to sample is dependent on your aims and your goals. So it’s value saturated. And so all your perceptions are action predicated and partly what you’re doing when you’re communicating is therefore not only changing people’s actions, let’s say, but you’re also changing the strategy that they use to perceive. And so you change the way the world reveals itself for them. See, this is why it’s such a profound experience to read a particularly deep thinker because you could also think of your perceptions as the axioms of your thought. That’s a good way of thinking about it. A perception is like a… what would you say? It’s a thought that’s so set in concrete that you now see it rather than conceptualize it. A really profound thinker changes the way you perceive the world. That’s way deeper than just how you think about it or how you feel about it.
Power and propaganda
Lex Fridman
What about not just profound thinkers, but thinkers that deliver a powerful idea, for example, utopian ideas of Marx or utopian ideas, you could say dystopian ideas of Hitler? Those ideas are powerful and they can saturate all your perception with values and they focus you in a way where there’s only a certain set of actions.
What about not just profound thinkers, but thinkers that deliver a powerful idea, for example, utopian ideas of Marx or utopian ideas, you could say dystopian ideas of Hitler? Those ideas are powerful and they can saturate all your perception with values and they focus you in a way where there’s only a certain set of actions.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah, right. Even a certain set of emotions as well.
Yeah, right. Even a certain set of emotions as well.
Lex Fridman
And it’s intense and it’s direct, and they’re so powerful that they completely altered the perception and the words spring to life.
And it’s intense and it’s direct, and they’re so powerful that they completely altered the perception and the words spring to life.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah, it’s like a form of possession. So there’s two things you need to understand to make that clear. The first issue is that as we suggested or implied, that perception is action predicated, but action is goal predicated, the act towards goal. And these propagandistic thinkers that you described, they attempt to unify all possible goals into a coherent singularity. And there’s advantages of that. There’s the advantage of simplicity, for example, which is a major advantage. And there’s also the advantage of motivation. So if you provide people with a simple manner of integrating all their actions, you decrease their anxiety and you increase their motivation. That can be a good thing if the unifying idea that you’ve put forward is valid, but it’s the worst of all possible ideas if you put forward an invalid, unifying idea, and then you might say, well, how do you distinguish between a valid unifying idea and an invalid unifying idea?
Yeah, it’s like a form of possession. So there’s two things you need to understand to make that clear. The first issue is that as we suggested or implied, that perception is action predicated, but action is goal predicated, the act towards goal. And these propagandistic thinkers that you described, they attempt to unify all possible goals into a coherent singularity. And there’s advantages of that. There’s the advantage of simplicity, for example, which is a major advantage. And there’s also the advantage of motivation. So if you provide people with a simple manner of integrating all their actions, you decrease their anxiety and you increase their motivation. That can be a good thing if the unifying idea that you’ve put forward is valid, but it’s the worst of all possible ideas if you put forward an invalid, unifying idea, and then you might say, well, how do you distinguish between a valid unifying idea and an invalid unifying idea?
Now, Nietzsche was very interested in that, and I don’t think he got that exactly right. But the postmodernists, for example, especially the ones, and this is most of them with the Neo-Marxist bent, their presumption is that the fundamental unifying idea is power, that everything’s about compulsion and force essentially, and that that’s the only true unifying ethos of mankind, which is, I don’t know if there’s a worse idea than that. I mean, there are ideas that are potentially as dangerous. The nihilistic idea is pretty dangerous, although it’s more of a disintegrating notion than a unifying idea. The hedonistic idea that you live for pleasure, for example, that’s also very dangerous. But if you wanted to go for sheer pathology, the notion that, and this is Foucault in a nutshell and Marx for that matter, that power rules everything. Not only is that a terrible unifying idea, but it fully justifies your own use of power.
And I don’t mean the power Nietzsche talks about. His will to power was more his insistence that a human being is an expression of will rather than a mechanism of self-protection and security. He thought of the life force in human beings as something that strived not to protect itself, but to exhaust itself in being and becoming. It’s like an upward oriented motivational drive even towards meaning. Now he called it the will to power, and that had some unfortunate consequences, at least that’s how it’s translated. But he didn’t mean the power motivation that people like Foucault or Marx became so hung up on.
Lex Fridman
So it’s not power like you’re trying to destroy the other. It’s power, full flourishing of a human being, the creative force of a human being in that way.
So it’s not power like you’re trying to destroy the other. It’s power, full flourishing of a human being, the creative force of a human being in that way.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Well, you could imagine that… and you should, you could imagine that you could segregate competence and ability. Imagine that you and I were going to work on a project, we could organize our project in relationship to the ambition that we wanted to attain, and we can organize an agreement so that you were committed to the project voluntarily and so that I was committed to the project voluntarily. So that means that we would actually be united in our perceptions and our actions by the motivation of something approximating voluntary play. Now, you could also imagine another situation where I said, here’s our goal and you better help me, or I’m going to kill your family. Well, the probability is that you would be quite motivated to undertake my bidding. And so then you might say, well, that’s how the world works. It’s power and compulsion.
Yeah. Well, you could imagine that… and you should, you could imagine that you could segregate competence and ability. Imagine that you and I were going to work on a project, we could organize our project in relationship to the ambition that we wanted to attain, and we can organize an agreement so that you were committed to the project voluntarily and so that I was committed to the project voluntarily. So that means that we would actually be united in our perceptions and our actions by the motivation of something approximating voluntary play. Now, you could also imagine another situation where I said, here’s our goal and you better help me, or I’m going to kill your family. Well, the probability is that you would be quite motivated to undertake my bidding. And so then you might say, well, that’s how the world works. It’s power and compulsion.
But the truth of the matter is that you can force people to see things your way, let’s say, but it’s nowhere near as good as strategy even practically than the strategy that would be associated with something like voluntary joint agreement of pattern of movement strategy towards a goal. See, this is such an important thing to understand because it helps you start to understand the distinction between a unifying force that’s based on power and compulsion, and one that is much more in keeping, I would say with the ethos that governs western societies, free western societies, there’s really a qualitative difference, and it’s not some morally relativistic illusion.
Nazism
Lex Fridman
If we just look at the nuance of Nietzsche’s thought, the idea he first introduced in Thus Spoke Zarathustra of the Übermensch. That’s another one that’s very easy to misinterpret because it sounds awfully a lot like it’s about power. For example, in the 20th century, it was misrepresented and co-opted by Hitler to advocate for the extermination of the inferior non-Aryan races.
If we just look at the nuance of Nietzsche’s thought, the idea he first introduced in Thus Spoke Zarathustra of the Übermensch. That’s another one that’s very easy to misinterpret because it sounds awfully a lot like it’s about power. For example, in the 20th century, it was misrepresented and co-opted by Hitler to advocate for the extermination of the inferior non-Aryan races.
Jordan Peterson
And the dominion of the superior Aryans. Yeah, yeah. Well, that was partly because Nietzsche’s work also was misrepresented by his sister after his death. But I also think that there’s a fundamental flaw in that Nietzschean conceptualization. So Nietzsche of course, famously announced the death of God, but he did that in a manner that was accompanied by dire warnings like Nietzsche said, because people tend to think of that as a triumphalist statement. But Nietzsche actually said that he really said something like the unifying ethos under which we’ve organized ourselves psychologically and socially has now been fatally undermined by, well, by the rationalist proclivity, by the empiricist proclivity. There’s a variety of reasons. Mostly it was conflict between the enlightenment view, let’s say, and the classic religious view, and that there will be dire consequences for that. And Nietzsche knew like Dostoevsky knew that, see, there’s a proclivity for the human psyche and for human societies to move towards something approximating a unity because the cost of disunity is high.
And the dominion of the superior Aryans. Yeah, yeah. Well, that was partly because Nietzsche’s work also was misrepresented by his sister after his death. But I also think that there’s a fundamental flaw in that Nietzschean conceptualization. So Nietzsche of course, famously announced the death of God, but he did that in a manner that was accompanied by dire warnings like Nietzsche said, because people tend to think of that as a triumphalist statement. But Nietzsche actually said that he really said something like the unifying ethos under which we’ve organized ourselves psychologically and socially has now been fatally undermined by, well, by the rationalist proclivity, by the empiricist proclivity. There’s a variety of reasons. Mostly it was conflict between the enlightenment view, let’s say, and the classic religious view, and that there will be dire consequences for that. And Nietzsche knew like Dostoevsky knew that, see, there’s a proclivity for the human psyche and for human societies to move towards something approximating a unity because the cost of disunity is high.
Fractionation of your goals, so that means you’re less motivated to move forward than you might be because there’s many things competing for your attention. And also anxiety, because anxiety actually signals something like goal conflict. So there’s an inescapable proclivity of value systems to unite. Now, if you kill the thing that’s uniting them, that’s the death of God, they either fractionate and you get confusion, anxiety and hopelessness, or you get social disunity or and you get social disunity or something else arises out of the abyss to constitute that unifying force. And Nietzsche said specifically that he believed that one of those manifestations would be that of communism and that that would kill… he said this in Will to Power, that that would kill tens of millions of people in the upcoming 20th century.
He could see that coming 50 years earlier. And Dostoevsky did the same thing in his book, Demons. So this is the thing that the areligious have to contend with. It’s a real conundrum because I mean, you could dispute the idea that our value systems tend towards a unity and society does as well because otherwise we’re disunified. But the cost of that disunity, as I said, is goal confusion, anxiety, and hopelessness. So it’s like a real cost. So you could dispense with the notion of unity altogether, and the Postmodernists did that to some degree, but they pulled off a sleight of hand too where they replaced it by power. Now, Nietzsche did. He’s responsible for that to some degree because Nietzsche said with his conception of the Übermensch, let’s say, is that human beings would have to create their own values because the value structure that had descended from on high was now shunted aside.
But there’s a major problem with that, many major problems. The psychoanalysts were the first people who really figured this out after Nietzsche, because imagine that we don’t have a relationship with the transcendental anymore that orients us. Okay, now we have to turn to ourselves. Now, if we were a unity, a clear unity within ourselves, let’s say, then we could turn to ourselves for that discovery. But if we’re a fractionated plurality internally, then when we turn to ourselves, we turn to a fractionated plurality. Well, that was Freud’s observation. It’s like, well, how can you make your own values when you’re not the master in your own house?
You’re a war of competing motivations, or maybe you’re someone who’s dominated by the will to force and compulsion. And so why do you think that you can rely on yourself as the source of values? And why do you think you’re wise enough to consult with yourself to find out what those values are or what they should be say in the course of a single life? I mean, it’s difficult to organize your own personal relationship like one relationship in the course of your life, let alone to try to imagine that out of whole cloth you could construct an ethos that would be psychologically and socially stabilizing and last over the long run. And of course, Marx people like that, the people who reduce human motivation to a single axis, they had the intellectual hubris to imagine that they could do that. Postmodernists are a good example of that as well.
Religion
Lex Fridman
Okay. But if we lay on the table, religion, communism, Nazism, they are all unifying ethos. They’re unifying ideas, but they’re also horribly dividing ideas. They both unify and divide. Religion has also divided people because in the nuances of how the different peoples wrestle with God, they have come to different conclusions, and then they use those conclusions that perhaps the people in power use those conclusions to then start wars, to start hatred, to divide.
Okay. But if we lay on the table, religion, communism, Nazism, they are all unifying ethos. They’re unifying ideas, but they’re also horribly dividing ideas. They both unify and divide. Religion has also divided people because in the nuances of how the different peoples wrestle with God, they have come to different conclusions, and then they use those conclusions that perhaps the people in power use those conclusions to then start wars, to start hatred, to divide.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Well, it’s one of the key sub-themes in the gospels is the sub-theme of the Pharisees. And so the fundamental enemies of Christ in the gospels are the Pharisees and the scribes and the lawyers. So what does that mean? The Pharisees are religious hypocrites. The scribes are academics who worship their own intellect, and the lawyers are the legal minds who use the law as a weapon. And so they’re the enemy of the Redeemer. That’s a subplot in the gospel stories, and that actually all means something. The Pharisaic problem is that the best of all possible ideas can be used by the worst actors in the worst possible way. And maybe this is an existential conundrum, is that the most evil people use the best possible ideas to the worst possible ends. And then you have the conundrum of how do you separate out, let’s say, the genuine religious people from those who use the religious enterprise only for their own machinations.
Yeah. Well, it’s one of the key sub-themes in the gospels is the sub-theme of the Pharisees. And so the fundamental enemies of Christ in the gospels are the Pharisees and the scribes and the lawyers. So what does that mean? The Pharisees are religious hypocrites. The scribes are academics who worship their own intellect, and the lawyers are the legal minds who use the law as a weapon. And so they’re the enemy of the Redeemer. That’s a subplot in the gospel stories, and that actually all means something. The Pharisaic problem is that the best of all possible ideas can be used by the worst actors in the worst possible way. And maybe this is an existential conundrum, is that the most evil people use the best possible ideas to the worst possible ends. And then you have the conundrum of how do you separate out, let’s say, the genuine religious people from those who use the religious enterprise only for their own machinations.
We’re seeing this happen online. One of the things that you’re seeing happening online, I’m sure you’ve noticed this, especially on the right wing psychopathic troll side of the distribution, is the weaponization of a certain form of Christian ideation. And that’s often marked at least online by the presence of, what would you say, cliches like Christ is king, which has a certain religious meaning, but a completely different meaning in this sphere of emerging right wing pathology, “right wing”. The political dimension isn’t the right dimension of analysis, but it’s definitely the case that the best possible ideas can be used for the worst possible purposes. And that also brings up another specter, which is like, well, is there any reliable and valid way of distinguishing truly beneficial, unifying ideas from those that are pathological? And so that’s another thing that I tried to detail out in these lectures, but also in this new book, it’s like, how do you tell the good actors from the bad actors at the most fundamental level of analysis?
Lex Fridman
And good ideas from the bad ideas, and you lecture on truth that Nietzsche also struggled with, so how do you know that communism is a bad idea versus it’s a good idea implemented by bad actors?
And good ideas from the bad ideas, and you lecture on truth that Nietzsche also struggled with, so how do you know that communism is a bad idea versus it’s a good idea implemented by bad actors?
Jordan Peterson
Right. That’s a more subtle variant of the religious problem. And that’s what the communists say all the time, the modern day communists like, “Real communism has never been tried,” and you could say, I suppose with some justification, you could say that real Christianity has never been tried because we always fall short of the ideal mark. My rejoinder to the communists is something like every single time it’s been implemented, wherever it’s been implemented regardless of the culture and the background of the people who’ve implemented it, it’s had exactly the same catastrophic consequences. It’s like, I don’t know how many examples you need of that, but I believe we’ve generated sufficient examples so that that case is basically resolved. Now, the general rejoinder to that is it’s really something like, “Well, if I was in charge of the communist enterprise, the utopia would’ve come about,” but that’s also a form of dangerous pretense.
Right. That’s a more subtle variant of the religious problem. And that’s what the communists say all the time, the modern day communists like, “Real communism has never been tried,” and you could say, I suppose with some justification, you could say that real Christianity has never been tried because we always fall short of the ideal mark. My rejoinder to the communists is something like every single time it’s been implemented, wherever it’s been implemented regardless of the culture and the background of the people who’ve implemented it, it’s had exactly the same catastrophic consequences. It’s like, I don’t know how many examples you need of that, but I believe we’ve generated sufficient examples so that that case is basically resolved. Now, the general rejoinder to that is it’s really something like, “Well, if I was in charge of the communist enterprise, the utopia would’ve come about,” but that’s also a form of dangerous pretense.
Part of the way… See, that problem is actually resolved to some degree in the notion of… in the developing notion of sacrifice that emerges in the western canon over thousands and thousands of years. So one of the suggestions, for example, and this is something exemplified in the passion story, is that you can tell the valid holder of an idea because that holder will take the responsibility for the consequences of his idea onto himself. And that’s why, for example, you see one way of conceptualizing Christ in the gospel story is as the ultimate sacrifice to God. So you might ask, well, what’s the ultimate sacrifice? And there are variants of the answer to that. One form of ultimate sacrifice is the sacrifice of a child, the offering of a child, and the other is the offering of the self. And the story of Christ brings both of those together because he’s the son of God that’s offered to God.
And so it’s a marketable resolution of that tension between ultimate sacrifice, ultimate because once you’re a parent, most parents would rather sacrifice themselves than their children. So you have something that becomes of even more value than yourself. But the sacrifice of self is also a very high order level of sacrifice. Christ is an archetype of the pattern of being that’s predicated on the decision to take… to offer everything up to the highest value, that pattern of self-sacrifice. And I think part of the reason that’s valid is because the person who undertakes to do that pays the price themselves. It’s not externalized. They’re not trying to change anyone else except maybe by example. It’s your problem. Like Solzhenitsyn pointed that out too when he was struggling with the idea of good versus evil, and you see this in more sophisticated literature.
In really unsophisticated literature or drama, there’s a good guy and the bad guy and the good guy’s all good, and the bad guy’s all bad. And in more sophisticated literature, the good and bad are abstracted. You can think of them as spirits. And then those spirits possess all the characters in the complex drama to a greater or lesser degree and that battle is fought out both socially and internally. In the high order religious conceptualizations in the West, if they culminate, let’s say in the Christian story, the notion is that battle between good and evil is fundamentally played out as an internal drama.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So for a religious ethos, the battle between good and evil is fought within each individual human heart.
Yeah. So for a religious ethos, the battle between good and evil is fought within each individual human heart.
Jordan Peterson
Right. It’s your moral duty to constrain evil within yourself. And while there’s more to it than that, because there’s also the insistence that if you do that, that makes you the most effective possible like warrior, let’s say, against evil itself in the social world, that you start with the battle that occurs within you in the soul, let’s say. The soul becomes the battleground between the forces of good and evil. There’s an idea there too, which is if that battle is undertaken successfully, then it doesn’t have to be played out in the social world as actual conflict. You can rectify the conflict internally without it having to be played out as fate as Jung put it.
Right. It’s your moral duty to constrain evil within yourself. And while there’s more to it than that, because there’s also the insistence that if you do that, that makes you the most effective possible like warrior, let’s say, against evil itself in the social world, that you start with the battle that occurs within you in the soul, let’s say. The soul becomes the battleground between the forces of good and evil. There’s an idea there too, which is if that battle is undertaken successfully, then it doesn’t have to be played out in the social world as actual conflict. You can rectify the conflict internally without it having to be played out as fate as Jung put it.
Lex Fridman
So what would you say to Nietzsche who called Christianity the slave morality, and his critique of religion in that way was slave morality versus master morality, and then you put an Übermensch into that?
So what would you say to Nietzsche who called Christianity the slave morality, and his critique of religion in that way was slave morality versus master morality, and then you put an Übermensch into that?
Jordan Peterson
Well see, I would say that the woke phenomenon is the manifestation of the slave morality that Nietzsche criticized and that there are elements of Christianity that can be gerrymandered to support that mode of perception and conception. But I think he was wrong and he was wrong in his essential criticism of Christianity in that regard. Now, it’s complicated with Nietzsche because Nietzsche never criticizes the gospel stories directly. What he basically criticizes is something like the pathologies of institutionalized religion. And I would say most particularly of the, what would you say, of the sort of casually too nice Protestant form, that’s a thumbnail sketch and perhaps somewhat unfair.
Well see, I would say that the woke phenomenon is the manifestation of the slave morality that Nietzsche criticized and that there are elements of Christianity that can be gerrymandered to support that mode of perception and conception. But I think he was wrong and he was wrong in his essential criticism of Christianity in that regard. Now, it’s complicated with Nietzsche because Nietzsche never criticizes the gospel stories directly. What he basically criticizes is something like the pathologies of institutionalized religion. And I would say most particularly of the, what would you say, of the sort of casually too nice Protestant form, that’s a thumbnail sketch and perhaps somewhat unfair.
But given the alignment, let’s say, of the more mainstream Protestant movements with the woke mob, I don’t think it’s an absurd criticism. It’s something like the degeneration of Christianity into the notion that good and harmless are the same thing, or good and empathic are the same thing, which is simply not true and far too simplified. And I also think Nietzsche was extremely wrong in his presumption that human beings should take it to themselves to construct their own values. I think he made a colossal error in that presumption.
Lex Fridman
And that is the idea of the Übermensch, that the great individual, the best of us should create our own values.
And that is the idea of the Übermensch, that the great individual, the best of us should create our own values.
Jordan Peterson
Well, and I think the reason that he was wrong about that is that, so when God gives instructions to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, he basically tells them that they can do anything they want in the walled garden. So that’s the kind of balance between order and nature that makes up the human environment. Human beings have the freedom vouchsafe to them by God to do anything they want in the garden except to mess with the most fundamental rule. So God says to people, “You’re not to eat of the fruit of the tree, of the knowledge of good and evil,” which fundamentally means there is an implicit moral order and you’re to abide by it. Your freedom stops at the foundation. And you can think about that. I’d be interested even in your ideas about this as an engineer, let’s say, is that there is an ethos that’s implicit in being itself, and your ethos has to be a reflection of that, and that isn’t under your control.
Well, and I think the reason that he was wrong about that is that, so when God gives instructions to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, he basically tells them that they can do anything they want in the walled garden. So that’s the kind of balance between order and nature that makes up the human environment. Human beings have the freedom vouchsafe to them by God to do anything they want in the garden except to mess with the most fundamental rule. So God says to people, “You’re not to eat of the fruit of the tree, of the knowledge of good and evil,” which fundamentally means there is an implicit moral order and you’re to abide by it. Your freedom stops at the foundation. And you can think about that. I’d be interested even in your ideas about this as an engineer, let’s say, is that there is an ethos that’s implicit in being itself, and your ethos has to be a reflection of that, and that isn’t under your control.
You can’t gerrymander the foundation because your foundational beliefs have to put you in harmony like musical harmony with the actual structure of reality as such. So I can give you an example of that. So our goal insofar as we’re conducting ourselves properly, is to have the kind of interesting conversation that allows both of us to express ourselves in a manner that enables us to learn and grow, such that we can share that with everyone who’s listening. And if our aim is true and upward, then that’s what we’re doing. Well, that means that we’re going to have to match ourselves to a pattern of interaction, and that’s marked for us emotionally. Like you and I both know this, if we’re doing this right…
Jordan Peterson
…marked for us emotionally. Like you and I both know this, if we’re doing this right, we’re going to be interested in the conversation. We’re not going to be looking at our watch. We’re not going to be thinking about what we’re aiming at. We’re just going to communicate. Now, the religious interpretation of that would be that we were doing something like making the redemptive logos manifest between us in dialogue, and that’s something that can be shared.
…marked for us emotionally. Like you and I both know this, if we’re doing this right, we’re going to be interested in the conversation. We’re not going to be looking at our watch. We’re not going to be thinking about what we’re aiming at. We’re just going to communicate. Now, the religious interpretation of that would be that we were doing something like making the redemptive logos manifest between us in dialogue, and that’s something that can be shared.
To do that, we have to align with that pattern. I can’t decide that there’s some arbitrary way that I’m going to play you. I mean, I could do that if I was a psychopathic manipulator. But to do that optimally, I’m not going to impose a certain A priori aim, let’s say, on our communication and manipulate you into that. So the constraints on my ethos reflect the actual structure of the world.
This is the communist presumptions. It’s like, we’re going to burn everything down and we’re going to start from scratch. And we’ve got these axiomatic presumptions, and we’re going to put them into place. And we’re going to socialize people so they now think and live like communists from day one. And human beings are infinitely malleable, and we can use a rational set of presuppositions to decide what sort of beings they should be.
The transhumanists are doing this too. It’s like, no, there’s a pattern of being that you have to fall into alignment with. I think it’s the pattern of being, by the way, that if you fall into alignment with, it gives you hope, it protects you from anxiety, and it gives you a sense of harmony with your surroundings and with other people. And none of that’s arbitrary.
Lex Fridman
But don’t you think we both arrived to this conversation with rigid axioms? Maybe we’re blind to them, but in the same way that the Marxists came with very rigid axioms about the way the world is and the way it should be. Aren’t we coming to that?
But don’t you think we both arrived to this conversation with rigid axioms? Maybe we’re blind to them, but in the same way that the Marxists came with very rigid axioms about the way the world is and the way it should be. Aren’t we coming to that?
Jordan Peterson
Well, we definitely come to the conversation with a hierarchy of foundational axioms. And I would say the more sophisticated you are as a thinker, the deeper the level at which you’re willing to play. So imagine first that you have presumptions of different depth. There’s more predicated on the more fundamental axioms, and then that there’s a space of play around those.
Well, we definitely come to the conversation with a hierarchy of foundational axioms. And I would say the more sophisticated you are as a thinker, the deeper the level at which you’re willing to play. So imagine first that you have presumptions of different depth. There’s more predicated on the more fundamental axioms, and then that there’s a space of play around those.
And that space of play is going to depend on the sophistication of the player, obviously. But those who are capable of engaging in deeper conversations talk about more fundamental things with more play. Now, we have to come to the conversation with a certain degree of structure, because we wouldn’t be able to understand each other or communicate if a lot of things weren’t already assumed or taken for granted.
Lex Fridman
How rigid is the hierarchy of axioms that religion provides? This is what I’m trying to understand, the rigidity of that hierarchy.
How rigid is the hierarchy of axioms that religion provides? This is what I’m trying to understand, the rigidity of that hierarchy.
Jordan Peterson
It’s as rigid as play.
It’s as rigid as play.
Lex Fridman
Well, play is not rigid at all.
Well, play is not rigid at all.
Jordan Peterson
No, no, no, no, no, no. It’s got a rigidity.
No, no, no, no, no, no. It’s got a rigidity.
Lex Fridman
There’s some constraints.
There’s some constraints.
Jordan Peterson
It took me about 40 years to figure out the answer to that question. I’m serious about that. It wasn’t a random answer. So play is very rigid in some ways. If you and I go out to play basketball or chess, there are rules and you can’t break the rules because then you’re no longer in the game. But then there’s a dynamism within those rules that’s… Well, with chess, it’s virtually infinite. I mean, I think, what is it?
It took me about 40 years to figure out the answer to that question. I’m serious about that. It wasn’t a random answer. So play is very rigid in some ways. If you and I go out to play basketball or chess, there are rules and you can’t break the rules because then you’re no longer in the game. But then there’s a dynamism within those rules that’s… Well, with chess, it’s virtually infinite. I mean, I think, what is it?
There’s more patterns of potential games on a chessboard than there are subatomic particles in the observable universe. It’s an insane space. So it’s not like there’s not freedom within it. But it’s a weird paradox in a way, isn’t it? Because music is like this too, is that there are definitely rules. You can’t throw a basketball into a chess board and still be playing chess. But weirdly enough, if you adhere to the rules, the realm of freedom increases rather than decreasing.
I think you can make the same case for a playful conversation. It’s like we’re playing by certain rules and a lot of them are implicit, but that doesn’t mean that… It might mean the reverse of constraint. Because in this seminar, for example, that I was referring to, the Exodus Seminar and then the Gospel Seminar, everybody in this seminar, there’s about eight of us, played fair.
Nobody used power. Nobody tried to prove they were right. They put forward their points, but they were like, “Here’s a way of looking at that. Assess it.” They were also doing it genuinely. It’s like, this is what I’ve concluded about say this story. And I’m going to make a case for it, but I’d like to hear what you have to say because maybe you can change it, you can extend it, you can find a flaw in it.
Well, that’s a conversation that has flow and that’s engaging and that other people will listen to as well. See, I think that one of the things that we can conclude now, and we can do this even from a neuroscientific basis, is that that sense of engaged meaning is a marker not only for the emergence of harmony between you and your environment, but for the emergence of that harmony in a way that is developmentally rich, that moves you upward towards…
What would you say? Well, I think towards a more effective entropic state. That’s actually the technical answer to that. But it makes you more than you are, and there’s a directionality in that.
Communism
Lex Fridman
The reason I like talking about communism because it has clearly been shown as a set of ideas to be destructive to humanity. But I would like to understand from an engineering perspective the characteristics of communism versus religion where you could identify religious thought is going to lead to a better human being, a better society and communist Marxist thought does not.
The reason I like talking about communism because it has clearly been shown as a set of ideas to be destructive to humanity. But I would like to understand from an engineering perspective the characteristics of communism versus religion where you could identify religious thought is going to lead to a better human being, a better society and communist Marxist thought does not.
Because there’s ambiguity, there’s room for play in communism and Marxism, because they had a utopian sense of where everybody’s headed, don’t know how it’s going to happen. Maybe revolution is required. But after the revolution is done, we’ll figure it out. And there’s an underlying assumption that maybe human beings are good and they’ll figure it out once you remove the oppressor.
I mean, all these ideas, until you put them into practice, it can be quite convincing if you were in the 19th century. If I was reading, which is fascinating, the 19th century produced such powerful ideas, Marx and Nietzsche.
Jordan Peterson
Fascism too, for that matter.
Fascism too, for that matter.
Lex Fridman
Fascism. So if I was sitting there, especially if I’m feeling shitty about myself, a lot of these ideas are pretty powerful as a way to plug the nihilist hole.
Fascism. So if I was sitting there, especially if I’m feeling shitty about myself, a lot of these ideas are pretty powerful as a way to plug the nihilist hole.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah, right, absolutely. Well, and some of them may actually have an appropriate scope of application. It could be that some of the foundational axioms of communism, socialism/communism, are actually functional in a sufficiently small social group, maybe a tribal group even. I’m not sure this is correct, but I have a suspicion that the pervasive attractiveness of some of the radical left ideas that we’re talking about are pervasive precisely because they are functional within say families, but also within the small tribal groups that people might’ve originally evolved into.
Yeah, right, absolutely. Well, and some of them may actually have an appropriate scope of application. It could be that some of the foundational axioms of communism, socialism/communism, are actually functional in a sufficiently small social group, maybe a tribal group even. I’m not sure this is correct, but I have a suspicion that the pervasive attractiveness of some of the radical left ideas that we’re talking about are pervasive precisely because they are functional within say families, but also within the small tribal groups that people might’ve originally evolved into.
And that once we become civilized, so we produce societies that are united even among people who don’t know one another, different principles have to apply as a consequence of scale. So that’s partly an engineering response, but I think there’s a deeper way of going after the communist problem. So I think part of the fundamental problem with the communist axioms is the notion that the world of complex social interactions can be simplified sufficiently so that centralized planning authorities can deal with it.
And I think the best way to think about the free exchange rejoinder to that presumption is no, the sum total of human interactions in a large civilization are so immense that you need a distributed network of cognition in order to compute the proper way forward. And so what you do is you give each actor their domain of individual choice so that they can maximize their own movement forward.
And you allow the aggregate direction to emerge from that rather than trying to impose it from the top down, which I think is computationally impossible. So that might be one engineering reason why the communist solution doesn’t work. Like I read in Solzhenitsyn, for example, that the Central Soviet authorities often had to make 200 pricing decisions a day. Now, if you’ve ever started a business or created a product and had to wrestle with the problem of pricing, you’d become aware of just how intractable that is.
How do you calculate worth? Well, there’s the central existential problem of life. How do you calculate worth? It’s not something like a central authority can sit down and just manage. There is a lot of inputs that go into a pricing decision. And the free market answer to that is something like, well, if you get the price right, people will buy it and you’ll survive.
Lex Fridman
This is a fascinating way to describe how ideas fail. So communism perhaps fails because just like with people who believe the earth is flat, when you look outside, it looks flat, but you can’t see beyond the horizon, I guess. In the same way with communism, communism seems like a great idea in my family and people I love, but it doesn’t scale.
This is a fascinating way to describe how ideas fail. So communism perhaps fails because just like with people who believe the earth is flat, when you look outside, it looks flat, but you can’t see beyond the horizon, I guess. In the same way with communism, communism seems like a great idea in my family and people I love, but it doesn’t scale.
Jordan Peterson
And it doesn’t iterate, and that’s a form of scaling too.
And it doesn’t iterate, and that’s a form of scaling too.
Lex Fridman
Right. Well, I mean, whatever ways it breaks down, it doesn’t scale. And you’re saying religious though is a thing that might scale.
Right. Well, I mean, whatever ways it breaks down, it doesn’t scale. And you’re saying religious though is a thing that might scale.
Jordan Peterson
I would say religious thought is the record of those ideas that have in fact scaled. Right, right.
I would say religious thought is the record of those ideas that have in fact scaled. Right, right.
Lex Fridman
And iterated.
And iterated.
Jordan Peterson
And iterated.
And iterated.
Lex Fridman
Does religious thought iterate? I mean, there’s a fundamental conservative aspect to religious thought, tradition.
Does religious thought iterate? I mean, there’s a fundamental conservative aspect to religious thought, tradition.
Jordan Peterson
This is why I like Mircea Eliade, for example, who I referred to earlier. One of the things Eliade did and very effectively, and people like Joseph Campbell, who in some ways were popularizers of Eliade’s ideas and Carl Jung’s, what they really did was devote themselves to an analysis of those ideas that scaled and iterated across the largest possible spans of time.
This is why I like Mircea Eliade, for example, who I referred to earlier. One of the things Eliade did and very effectively, and people like Joseph Campbell, who in some ways were popularizers of Eliade’s ideas and Carl Jung’s, what they really did was devote themselves to an analysis of those ideas that scaled and iterated across the largest possible spans of time.
And so Eliade and Jung, Erich Neumann and Campbell, they were looking and Campbell, they were looking at patterns of narrative that were common across religious traditions that had spanned millennia and found many patterns. The hero’s myth, for example, is one of those patterns. And it’s, I think, the evidence that it has its reflection in human neurophysiology and neuropsychology is incontrovertible.
And so these foundational narratives, they last. They’re common across multiple religious traditions. They unite. They work psychologically, but they also reflect the underlying neurophysiological architecture. So I can give you an example of that. So the hero myth is really a quest myth. And a quest myth is really a story of exploration and expansion of adaptation.
Hero myth
So Bilbo the Hobbit, he’s kind of an ordinary every man. He lives in a very constrained and orderly and secure world. And then the quest call comes and he goes out and he expands his personality and develops his wisdom. And that’s reflected in human neuropsychological architecture at a very low level, way below cognition. So one of the most fundamental elements of the mammalian brain, and even in lower animal forms, is the hypothalamus.
It’s the root of primary motivation. So it governs lust, and it regulates your breathing, and it regulates your hunger, and it regulates your thirst, and it regulates your temperature. Like really low level biological necessities are regulated by the hypothalamus. When you get hungry, it’s the hypothalamus. When you’re activated in a defensively aggressive manner, that’s the hypothalamus.
Half the hypothalamus is the origin of the dopaminergic tracts, and they subsume exploration. And so you could think of the human motivational reality as a domain that’s governed by axiomatic motivational states, love, sex, defensive aggression, hunger, and another domain that’s governed by exploration. And the rule would be something like when your basic motivational states are sated, explore.
And that’s not cognitive. Like I said, this is deep, deep brain architecture. It’s extraordinarily ancient. And the exploration story is something like go out into the unknown and take the risks because the information that you discover and the skills you develop will be worthwhile, even in sating the basic motivational drives. And then you want to learn to do that in a iterative manner so it sustains across time, and you want to do it in a way that unites you with other people.
And there’s a pattern to that, and I do think that’s the pattern that we strive to encapsulate in our deep religious narratives. And I think that in many ways we’ve done that successfully.
Belief in God
Lex Fridman
What is the believe in God, how does that fit in? What does it mean to believe in God?
What is the believe in God, how does that fit in? What does it mean to believe in God?
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so in one of the stories that I cover in We Who Wrestle with God, which I only recently begun to take apart say in the last two years, is the story of Abraham. It’s a very cool story, and it’s also related, by the way, to your question about what makes communism wrong. And Dostoevsky knew this. Not precisely the Abraham story, but the same reason. In Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky made a very telling observation.
Okay, so in one of the stories that I cover in We Who Wrestle with God, which I only recently begun to take apart say in the last two years, is the story of Abraham. It’s a very cool story, and it’s also related, by the way, to your question about what makes communism wrong. And Dostoevsky knew this. Not precisely the Abraham story, but the same reason. In Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky made a very telling observation.
So he speaks in the voice of a cynical nihilistic and bitter bureaucrat who’s been a failure, who’s talking cynically about the nature of human beings, but also very accurately. And one of the things he points out with regards to modern utopianism is that human beings are very strange creatures.
And that if you gave them what the socialist utopians want to give them, so let’s say all your needs are taken care of, all your material needs are taken care of and even indefinitely, Dostoevsky’s claim was, well, you don’t understand human beings very well. Because if you put them in an environment that was that comfortable, they would purposefully go insane just to break it into bits just so something interesting would happen.
Right. And he says it’s the human proclivity to curse and complain. He says this in quite a cynic and caustic manner, but he’s pointing to something deep, which is that we’re not built for comfort and security. We’re not infants. We’re not after satiation. So then you might ask, well, what the hell are we after then? That’s what the Abraham story addresses. Abraham is the first true individual in the biblical narrative.
So you could think about his story as the archetypal story of the developing individual. So you said, well, what’s God? Well, in the Abraham story, God has characterized a lot of different ways in the classic religious texts. Like the Bible is actually a compilation of different characterizations of the divine with the insistence that they reflect an underlying unity. In the story of Abraham, the divine is the call to adventure.
So Abraham has the socialist utopia at hand. He’s from a wealthy family, and he has everything he needs. And he actually doesn’t do anything until he’s in his 70s. Now, hypothetically, people in those times lived much longer. But a voice comes to Abraham and it tells him something very specific. It says, “Leave your zone of comfort. Leave your parents. Leave your tent. Leave your community. Leave your tribe. Leave your land. Go out into the world.”
And Abraham thinks, well, why? I’ve got naked slave girls peeling grapes and feeding them to me. It’s like, what do I need an adventure for? And God tells them, and this is the covenant, by the way, part of the covenant that the God of the Israelites makes with his people. It’s very, very specific. It’s very brilliant. He says, “If you follow the voice of adventure, you’ll become a blessing to yourself.”
So that’s a good deal because people generally live at odds with themselves. And he says, God says, “That’s not all. You’ll become a blessing to yourself in a way that furthers your reputation among people and validly, so that you’ll accomplish things that were real and people will know it. And you’ll be held high in their esteem and that will be valid.” So that’s a pretty good deal because social people would like to be regarded as of utility and worth by others.
And so that’s a good deal. And God says, “That’s not all. You’ll establish something of lasting permanent and deep value.” That’s why Abraham becomes the father of nations. And finally, he caps it off and he says, “There’s a better element even to it. There’s a capstone. You’ll do all three of those things in a way that’s maximally beneficial to everyone else.” And so the divinity in the Abrahamic story is making a claim.
He says, first of all, there’s a drive that you should attend to, so the spirit of adventure that calls you out of your zone of comfort. Now, if you attend to that and you make the sacrifices necessary to follow that path, then the following benefits will accrue to you. Your life will be a blessing. Everyone will hold you in high esteem. You’ll establish something of permanent value, and you’ll do it in a way that’s maximally beneficial to everyone else.
And so think about what this means biologically or from an engineering standpoint. It means that the instinct to develop that characterizes outward moving children, let’s say, or adults is the same instinct that allows for psychological stability, that allows for movement upward in a social hierarchy that establishes something iterable, and that does that in a manner that allows everyone else to partake in the same process.
Well, that’s a good deal. I can’t see how it cannot be true, because the alternative hypothesis would be that the spirit that moves you beyond yourself to develop, the spirit of a curious child, let’s say, what, is that antithetical to your own esteem? Is that antithetical to other people’s best interest? Is it not the thing that increases the probability that you’ll do something permanent? That’s a stupid theory.
Lex Fridman
So God is a call to adventure with some constraints.
So God is a call to adventure with some constraints.
Jordan Peterson
A call to true adventure.
A call to true adventure.
Lex Fridman
To true adventure.
To true adventure.
Jordan Peterson
True adventure. Yeah. And then that’s a good observation because that begs the question, what constitutes the most true adventure? Well, that’s not fully fleshed out until, at least from the Christian perspective, let’s say, that’s not fully fleshed out until the gospels, because the Passion of Christ is the… This is the perfectly reasonable way of looking at it. The Passion of Christ is the truest adventure of Abraham.
True adventure. Yeah. And then that’s a good observation because that begs the question, what constitutes the most true adventure? Well, that’s not fully fleshed out until, at least from the Christian perspective, let’s say, that’s not fully fleshed out until the gospels, because the Passion of Christ is the… This is the perfectly reasonable way of looking at it. The Passion of Christ is the truest adventure of Abraham.
That’s a terrible thing, A, because the passion story is a catastrophic tragedy, although it obviously has its redemptive elements. But one of the things that’s implied there is that there’s no distinction between the true adventure of life and taking on the pathway of maximal responsibility and burden. And I can’t see how that cannot be true. Because the counter hypothesis is, well, Lex, the best thing for you to do in your life is to shrink from all challenge and hide, to remain infantile, to remain secure, not to ever push yourself beyond your limits, not to take any risks. Well, no one thinks that’s true.
Lex Fridman
So basically, the maximally worthwhile adventure could possibly be highly correlated with the hardest possible available adventure.
So basically, the maximally worthwhile adventure could possibly be highly correlated with the hardest possible available adventure.
Jordan Peterson
The hardest possible available adventure voluntarily undertaken.
The hardest possible available adventure voluntarily undertaken.
Lex Fridman
Does it have to be voluntary?
Does it have to be voluntary?
Jordan Peterson
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman
How do you define voluntarily?
How do you define voluntarily?
Jordan Peterson
Well, here’s an example of that. That’s a good question too. The night before the crucifixion, which in principle he knows is coming, he asks God to relieve him of his burden, and understandably so. I mean, that’s the scene famously in which he’s literally sweating blood because he knows what’s coming. And the Romans designed crucifixion to be the most agonizing, humiliating, and disgusting possible death. Right. So there was every reason to be apprehensive about that.
Well, here’s an example of that. That’s a good question too. The night before the crucifixion, which in principle he knows is coming, he asks God to relieve him of his burden, and understandably so. I mean, that’s the scene famously in which he’s literally sweating blood because he knows what’s coming. And the Romans designed crucifixion to be the most agonizing, humiliating, and disgusting possible death. Right. So there was every reason to be apprehensive about that.
And you might say, well, could you undertake that voluntarily as an adventure? And the answer to that is something like, well, what’s your relationship with death? That’s a problem you have to solve. And you could fight it and you could be bitter about it. And there’s reasons for that, especially if it’s painful and degrading. But the alternative is something like… Well, it’s what’s fleshed out in religious imagery always.
It’s very difficult to cast into words. It’s like, no, you welcome the struggle. That’s why I called the book, We Who Wrestle with God. You welcome the struggle. And Lex, I don’t see how you can come to terms with life without construing it as something like, bring it on. Welcome the struggle. I can’t see that there’s a limit to that. It’s like, well, I welcome the struggle until it gets difficult.
Lex Fridman
So there’s not a bell curve, like the struggle of moderation. Basically, you have to welcome whatever as hard as it gets, and the crucifixion in that way is a symbol.
So there’s not a bell curve, like the struggle of moderation. Basically, you have to welcome whatever as hard as it gets, and the crucifixion in that way is a symbol.
Jordan Peterson
Of that. Well, it’s worse than that in some ways because the crucifixion exemplifies the worst possible death. But that isn’t the only element of the struggle. Because mythologically, classically, after Christ’s death, he harrows hell. And what that means, as far as I can tell psychologically, is that you’re not only required, let’s say, to take on the full existential burden of life and to welcome it regardless of what it is and to maintain your upward aim despite all temptations to the contrary, but you also have to confront the root of malevolence itself.
Of that. Well, it’s worse than that in some ways because the crucifixion exemplifies the worst possible death. But that isn’t the only element of the struggle. Because mythologically, classically, after Christ’s death, he harrows hell. And what that means, as far as I can tell psychologically, is that you’re not only required, let’s say, to take on the full existential burden of life and to welcome it regardless of what it is and to maintain your upward aim despite all temptations to the contrary, but you also have to confront the root of malevolence itself.
So it’s not merely tragedy. And I think the malevolence is actually worse. The reason I think that is because I know the literature on post-traumatic stress disorder, and most people who encounter, let’s say, a challenge that’s so brutal that it fragments them, it isn’t mere suffering that does that to people. It’s an encounter with malevolence that does that to people.
Their own sometimes often, by the way. Soldier will go out into a battlefield and find out that there’s a part of him that really enjoys the mayhem, and that conceptualization doesn’t fit in well with everything he thinks he knows about himself and humanity. And after that contact with that dark part of himself, he never recovers. That happens to people, and it happens to people who encounter bad actors in the world too.
If you’re a naive person and the right narcissistic psychopath comes your way, you are in mortal trouble because you might die, but that’s not where the trouble ends.
Advice for young people
Lex Fridman
If there’s a young man in their 20s listening to this, how do they escape the pull of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground? With the eyes open to the world, how do they select the adventure?
If there’s a young man in their 20s listening to this, how do they escape the pull of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground? With the eyes open to the world, how do they select the adventure?
Jordan Peterson
So there’s other characterizations of the divine say in the Old Testament story. So one pattern of characterization that I think is really relevant to that question is the conception of God as calling and conscience. Okay, so what does it mean? It’s a description of the manner in which your destiny announces itself to you. I’m using that terminology, and it’s distinguishable say from Nietzsche’s notion that you create your own values.
So there’s other characterizations of the divine say in the Old Testament story. So one pattern of characterization that I think is really relevant to that question is the conception of God as calling and conscience. Okay, so what does it mean? It’s a description of the manner in which your destiny announces itself to you. I’m using that terminology, and it’s distinguishable say from Nietzsche’s notion that you create your own values.
It’s like part of the way you can tell that that’s wrong is that you can’t voluntarily gerrymander your own interests. You find some things interesting, and that seems natural and autonomous, and other things you don’t find interesting and you can’t really force yourself to be interested in them. So what is the domain of interest that makes itself manifest to you? Well, it’s like an autonomous spirit. It’s like certain things in your field of perception are illuminated to you.
You think, “Oh, that’s interesting. That’s compelling. That’s gripping.” Rudolf Otto, who studied the phenomenology of religious experience, describe that as numinous. The thing grips you because compelled by it, and maybe it’s also somewhat anxiety provoking. It’s the same reaction like a cat has to a dog. When the cat’s hair stands on end, that’s an awe response. And so there’s going to be things in your phenomenological field that pull you forward, compel you.
That’s like the voice of positive emotion and enthusiasm. Things draw you into the world. It might be love. It might be aesthetic interest. It might be friendship. It might be social status. It might be duty and industriousness. There’s various domains of interest that shine for people. That’s on the positive side. God is calling. That would be akin to the spirit of adventure for Abraham. But there’s also God as conscience, and this is a useful thing to know too.
Certain things bother you. They take root within you and they turn your thoughts towards certain issues. Like there are things you’re interested in that you’ve pursued your whole life. There are things I’m interested in that I felt as a moral compulsion. And so you could think and I think the way you can think about it technically is that something pulls you forward so that you move ahead and you develop.
And then another voice, this a voice of negative emotion, says while you’re moving forward, stay on this narrow pathway. And it’ll mark deviations, and it marks deviations with shame and guilt and anxiety, regret. And that actually has a voice. Don’t do that. Well, why not? Well, you’re wandering off the straight narrow path. So the divine marks the pathway forward and reveals it, but then puts up the constraints of conscience. And the divine in the Old Testament is portrayed not least as the dynamic between calling and conscience.
Lex Fridman
What do you do with the negative emotions? You didn’t mention envy. There’s some really dark ones that can really pull you into some bad places, envy, fear.
What do you do with the negative emotions? You didn’t mention envy. There’s some really dark ones that can really pull you into some bad places, envy, fear.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah, envy is a really bad one. Pride and envy are among the worst. Those are the sins of Cain, by the way, in the story of Cain and Abel, because Cain fails because his sacrifices are insufficient. He doesn’t offer his best. And so he’s rejected and that makes him bitter and unhappy. And he goes to complain to God, and God says to him two things. God tells him, “If your sacrifices were appropriate, you’d be accepted.” It’s a brutal thing. It’s a brutal rejoinder. And he also says, “You can’t blame your misery on your failure.
Yeah, envy is a really bad one. Pride and envy are among the worst. Those are the sins of Cain, by the way, in the story of Cain and Abel, because Cain fails because his sacrifices are insufficient. He doesn’t offer his best. And so he’s rejected and that makes him bitter and unhappy. And he goes to complain to God, and God says to him two things. God tells him, “If your sacrifices were appropriate, you’d be accepted.” It’s a brutal thing. It’s a brutal rejoinder. And he also says, “You can’t blame your misery on your failure.
You could learn from your failure. When you failed, you invited in the spirit of envy and resentment, and you allowed it to possess you. And that’s why you’re miserable.” And so Cain is embittered by that response, and that’s when he kills Abel. You might say, well, how do you fortify yourself against that pathway of resentment? Part of classic religious practice is aimed to do that precisely. What’s the antithesis of envy? Gratitude. That’s something you can practice. And I mean, literally practice.
Lex Fridman
I think envy is one of the biggest enemies for a young person because basically you’re starting from nowhere. Life is hard. You’ve achieved nothing. And you’re striving and you’re failing constantly because…
I think envy is one of the biggest enemies for a young person because basically you’re starting from nowhere. Life is hard. You’ve achieved nothing. And you’re striving and you’re failing constantly because…
Jordan Peterson
And you see other people whom you think aren’t having the same problem.
And you see other people whom you think aren’t having the same problem.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, and they succeed. And they could be your neighbor, they could be succeeding by a little bit, or somebody on the internet succeeding by a lot. And I think that that can really pull a person down. That kind of envy can really destroy a person.
Yeah, and they succeed. And they could be your neighbor, they could be succeeding by a little bit, or somebody on the internet succeeding by a lot. And I think that that can really pull a person down. That kind of envy can really destroy a person.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, the gratitude element would be something like, well, yeah, you don’t know anything and you’re at the bottom, but you’re not 80. One of the best predictors of wealth in the United States is age. So then you might say, well, who’s got it better, the old rich guy or the young poor guy? And I would say most old rich guys would trade their wealth for youth. So it’s…
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, the gratitude element would be something like, well, yeah, you don’t know anything and you’re at the bottom, but you’re not 80. One of the best predictors of wealth in the United States is age. So then you might say, well, who’s got it better, the old rich guy or the young poor guy? And I would say most old rich guys would trade their wealth for youth. So it’s…
Jordan Peterson
Old rich guys would trade their wealth for youth. So it’s not exactly clear at all at any stage who’s got the upper hand, who’s got the advantage? And you could say, “Well, I’ve got all these burdens in front of me because I’m young and oh my God.” Or you could say, “Every dragon has its treasure.” And that’s actually a pattern of perception. I’m not saying that people don’t have their challenges. They certainly do. But discriminating between a challenge and an opportunity is very, very difficult. And learning to see a challenge as an opportunity, that’s the beginning of wisdom.
Old rich guys would trade their wealth for youth. So it’s not exactly clear at all at any stage who’s got the upper hand, who’s got the advantage? And you could say, “Well, I’ve got all these burdens in front of me because I’m young and oh my God.” Or you could say, “Every dragon has its treasure.” And that’s actually a pattern of perception. I’m not saying that people don’t have their challenges. They certainly do. But discriminating between a challenge and an opportunity is very, very difficult. And learning to see a challenge as an opportunity, that’s the beginning of wisdom.
Lex Fridman
It’s interesting. I don’t know how it works. Maybe you can elucidate, but when you have envy towards somebody, if you just celebrate them, so gratitude, but actually as opposed to sort of ignoring and being grateful for the things you have, literally celebrate that person. It transforms … It lights the way. I don’t know why that is exactly.
It’s interesting. I don’t know how it works. Maybe you can elucidate, but when you have envy towards somebody, if you just celebrate them, so gratitude, but actually as opposed to sort of ignoring and being grateful for the things you have, literally celebrate that person. It transforms … It lights the way. I don’t know why that is exactly.
Jordan Peterson
Absolutely. The only reason you’re envious is because you see someone who has something that you want. Okay, so let’s think about it. Well, first of all, the fact that they have it means that in principle, you could get it. At least someone has. So that’s a pretty good deal. And then you might say, “Well, the fact that I’m envious of that person means that I actually want something.” And then you might think, “Well, what am I envious of? I’m envious of their attractiveness to women.” It’s like, okay, well now you know something about yourself. You know that one true motivation that’s making itself manifest to you is that you wish that you would be the sort of person who is attractive to women. Now, of course, that’s an extremely common longing among men, period. But particularly among young men. It’s like, well, what makes you so sure you couldn’t have that?
Absolutely. The only reason you’re envious is because you see someone who has something that you want. Okay, so let’s think about it. Well, first of all, the fact that they have it means that in principle, you could get it. At least someone has. So that’s a pretty good deal. And then you might say, “Well, the fact that I’m envious of that person means that I actually want something.” And then you might think, “Well, what am I envious of? I’m envious of their attractiveness to women.” It’s like, okay, well now you know something about yourself. You know that one true motivation that’s making itself manifest to you is that you wish that you would be the sort of person who is attractive to women. Now, of course, that’s an extremely common longing among men, period. But particularly among young men. It’s like, well, what makes you so sure you couldn’t have that?
Well, how about, here’s an answer. You don’t have enough faith in yourself. And maybe you don’t have enough faith in, well, I would say the divine. You don’t believe that the world is characterized by enough potentiality so that even miserable you has a crack at the brass ring. I talked about this actually practically in one of my previous books, because I wrote a chapter called Compare Yourself to Who You Are and Not to Someone Else at the Present Time. Well, why? Well, your best benchmark for tomorrow is you today. And you might not be able to have what someone else has on the particular axis you’re comparing yourself with them on, but you could make an incremental improvement over your current state regardless of the direction that you’re aiming.
And it is the case, and this is a law. The return on incremental improvement is exponential or geometric and not linear. So even if you start … This is why the hero is always born in a lowly place, mythologically. Christ, who redeems the world is born in a manger with the animals to poverty parents in the middle of a God-forsaken desert in a non-descript time and place, isolated. Well, why? Well, because everyone young struggles with their insufficiency. But that doesn’t mean that great things can’t make themselves manifest. And part of the insistence in the biblical text, for example, is that it’s incumbent on you to have the courage to have faith in yourself and in the spirit of reality, the essence of reality, regardless of how you construe the evidence at hand. Right. Look at me, I’m so useless. I don’t know anything. I don’t have anything. It’s hopeless. I don’t have it within me. The world couldn’t offer me that possibility. Well, what the hell do you know about that?
This is what job figures out in the midst of his suffering in the Book of Job, because Job is tortured terribly by God, who makes a bet with Satan himself to bring him down. And Job’s decision in the face of his intense suffering is, “I’m not going to lose faith in my essential goodness, and I’m not going to lose faith in the essential goodness of being itself, regardless of how terrible the face it’s showing to me at the moment happens to be.” And I think, okay, what do you make of that claim? Well, let’s look at it practically.
You’re being tortured by the arbitrariness of life. That’s horrible. Now you lose faith in yourself and you become cynical about being. So are you infinitely worse off instantly? And then you might say, “Well yeah,” but it’s really asking a lot of people that they maintain faith even in their darkest hours. It’s like, yeah, that might be asking everything from people. But then you also might ask … This is a very strange question. If you were brought into being by something that was essentially good, wouldn’t that thing that brought you into being demand that you make the best in yourself manifest? And wouldn’t it be precisely when you most need that it be that you’d be desperate enough to risk what it would take to let it emerge?
Lex Fridman
So you kind of make it seem that reason could be the thing that takes you out of a place of darkness. Finding that calling through reason. I think it’s also possible when reason fails you to just take the leap. Navigate not by reason, but by finding the thing that scares you. The risk. Take the risk, take the leap, and then figure it out while you’re in the air.
So you kind of make it seem that reason could be the thing that takes you out of a place of darkness. Finding that calling through reason. I think it’s also possible when reason fails you to just take the leap. Navigate not by reason, but by finding the thing that scares you. The risk. Take the risk, take the leap, and then figure it out while you’re in the air.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Well, I think that’s always part of a heroic adventure is that ability to cut the Gordian knot. But you could also ask from an engineering perspective, okay, what are the axioms that make a decision like that possible?” And the answer would be something like, I’m going to make the presumption that if I move forward in good faith, whatever happens to me will be the best thing that could possibly happen, no matter what it is. And I think that’s actually how you make an alliance with truth. And I also think that truth is an adventure. And the way you make an alliance with truth is by assuming that whatever happens to you, if you are living in truth, is the best thing that could happen, even if you can’t see that at any given moment. Because otherwise you’d say that truth would be just the handmaiden of advantage. Well, I’m going to say something truthful, and I pay a price. Well, that means I shouldn’t have said it. Well, possibly, but that’s not the only possible standard of evaluation. Because what you’re doing is you’re making the outcome, your deity. Well, I’d just reversed that and say, no, no. Truth is the deity. The outcome is variable, but that doesn’t eradicate the initial axiom. Where’s the constant? What’s the constant?
Yeah. Well, I think that’s always part of a heroic adventure is that ability to cut the Gordian knot. But you could also ask from an engineering perspective, okay, what are the axioms that make a decision like that possible?” And the answer would be something like, I’m going to make the presumption that if I move forward in good faith, whatever happens to me will be the best thing that could possibly happen, no matter what it is. And I think that’s actually how you make an alliance with truth. And I also think that truth is an adventure. And the way you make an alliance with truth is by assuming that whatever happens to you, if you are living in truth, is the best thing that could happen, even if you can’t see that at any given moment. Because otherwise you’d say that truth would be just the handmaiden of advantage. Well, I’m going to say something truthful, and I pay a price. Well, that means I shouldn’t have said it. Well, possibly, but that’s not the only possible standard of evaluation. Because what you’re doing is you’re making the outcome, your deity. Well, I’d just reversed that and say, no, no. Truth is the deity. The outcome is variable, but that doesn’t eradicate the initial axiom. Where’s the constant? What’s the constant?
Sex
Lex Fridman
It may be when you said Abraham was being fed by naked ladies-
It may be when you said Abraham was being fed by naked ladies-
Jordan Peterson
That’s an interpolation, obviously, but would’ve been out of keeping for the times.
That’s an interpolation, obviously, but would’ve been out of keeping for the times.
Lex Fridman
But it does make me think sort of in stark contrast in Nietzsche’s own life, that perhaps getting laid early on in life as a useful starter. Step one, get laid, and then go for adventure. There’s some basic satiation of base desires.
But it does make me think sort of in stark contrast in Nietzsche’s own life, that perhaps getting laid early on in life as a useful starter. Step one, get laid, and then go for adventure. There’s some basic satiation of base desires.
Jordan Peterson
So I think it’s perfectly reasonable to bring the sexual element in because it’s a powerful motivating force, and it has to be integrated. I don’t think it’s adventure. It’s romantic adventure.
So I think it’s perfectly reasonable to bring the sexual element in because it’s a powerful motivating force, and it has to be integrated. I don’t think it’s adventure. It’s romantic adventure.
Lex Fridman
Right, but the lack of basic interaction, sexual interaction, I feel like is the engine that drives towards that cynicism of the incel in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground.
Right, but the lack of basic interaction, sexual interaction, I feel like is the engine that drives towards that cynicism of the incel in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground.
Jordan Peterson
There’s very little doubt about that. We know perfectly well anthropologically that the most unstable social situation you can generate is young men with no access to women. That’s not good. They’ll do anything, anything to reverse that situation. So that’s very dangerous.
There’s very little doubt about that. We know perfectly well anthropologically that the most unstable social situation you can generate is young men with no access to women. That’s not good. They’ll do anything, anything to reverse that situation. So that’s very dangerous.
But then I would also say there’s every suggestion that the pathway of adventure itself is the best pathway to romantic attractiveness. And we know this, in some ways in very blunt manner. The Google boys, the engineers who are too … What would you say? Naively oriented towards empirical truth to note when they’re being politically incorrect, they wrote a great book called A Billion Wicked Thoughts, which I really like. It’s a very good book. And it’s engineers as psychologists. And so they’ll say all sorts of things that no one with any sense would ever say that happen to be true. And they studied the pattern of pornographic fantasy, and women like pornographic stories, not images. So women’s use of pornography is literary. Who are the main protagonists in female pornographic fantasy? Pirates, werewolves, vampires, surgeons, billionaires. Tony Stark.
And so the basic pornographic narrative is Beauty and the Beast. Those five categories. Terrible, aggressive male, tamable by the right relationship, hot erotic attraction. And so I would say to the young men who, and I have many times to the young men who are locked in isolation, it’s first of all, “Join the bloody club.” Because the default value of a 15 year-old male on the mating market is zero. And there’s reason for that. Zero is a bit of an exaggeration, but not much. And the reason for that is, well, what the hell do you know? You’re not good for anything. You have potential and maybe plenty, and hopefully that’ll be made manifest, but you shouldn’t be all upset because you’re the same loser as everyone else your age has always been since the beginning of time.
But then you might ask, “Well, what should I do about it?” and the answer is, get yourself together. Stand up straight with your shoulders back, take on some adventure, find your calling, abide by your conscience, put yourself together and you’ll become attractive. And we know this is … Look, we know this is true. The correlation between male sexual opportunity and relative masculine status is about 0.6. That’s higher than the correlation between intelligence and academic achievement. I don’t think that there’s a larger correlation between two independent phenomena in the entire social science and health literature than the correlation between relative male social status and reproductive success. It’s by far the most fundamental determinant.
Lex Fridman
What’s the cause and effect there?
What’s the cause and effect there?
Jordan Peterson
It’s a loop. Men are motivated to attain social status because it confers upon them reproductive success. And that’s not only cognitively, but biologically. I’ll give you an example of this.
It’s a loop. Men are motivated to attain social status because it confers upon them reproductive success. And that’s not only cognitively, but biologically. I’ll give you an example of this.
There’s a documentary I watch from time to time, which I think is the most brilliant documentary I’ve ever seen. It’s called Crumb, and it’s the story of this underground cartoonist. Robert Crumb, who in high school was in the category of males for whom a date was not only not likely, but unimaginable. So he was at the bottom of the bottom rung, and almost all the reactions he got from females wasn’t just no, it was like, “Are you out of your mind?” With that contempt. And then he became successful. And so the documentary is super interesting because it tracks the utter pathology of his sexual fantasies because he was bitter and resentful. And if you want to understand the psychology of serial sexual killers and the like, and you watch Crumb, you’ll find out a lot more about that than anybody with any sense would want to know.
But then he makes this transition, and partly because he does take the heroic adventure path, and he actually has a family and children, and he is actually a pretty functional person as opposed to his brothers, one of whom commits suicide, and one of whom is literally a repeat sexual offender. It’s a brutal documentary. But what he did in his adolescence after being rejected was he found what he was interested in. He was a very good artist. He was very interested in music, and he started to pursue those single-mindedly, and he became successful. And as soon as he became successful, and the documentary tracks this beautifully, he’s immediately attractive to women. And then you might ask too, even if you’re cynical, it’s like, “Well, why do I have to perform for women?” And the answer to that is something like, why the hell should they have anything to do with you if you’re useless? They’re going to have infants. They don’t need another one.
Partly the reason that women are hypergamous, they want males who are of higher status than they are, is because they’re trying to redress the reproductive burden. And it’s substantial. The female of any species is the sex that devotes more to the reproductive function. That’s a more fundamental definition than chromosomal differentiation. And that’s taken to its ultimate extreme with humans. And so of course women are going to want someone around that’s useful, because the cost of sex for them is an 18 year-old period of dependency with an infant. So I think the adventure comes first.
Lex Fridman
Heroic adventure comes first.
Heroic adventure comes first.
Jordan Peterson
Well, it’s complex. Because the other problem, let’s say with the Crumb boys, is that their mother was extremely pathological and they didn’t get a lot of genuine feminine nurturance and affection.
Well, it’s complex. Because the other problem, let’s say with the Crumb boys, is that their mother was extremely pathological and they didn’t get a lot of genuine feminine nurturance and affection.
Lex Fridman
Of course. The family and society are not going to help you most of the time with a heroic adventure, right? They’re going to be a barrier versus a catalyst.
Of course. The family and society are not going to help you most of the time with a heroic adventure, right? They’re going to be a barrier versus a catalyst.
Jordan Peterson
Well, in good families they’re both. Because they put up constraints on your behavior. I’ve interviewed a lot of successful people about their calling, let’s say, because I do that with all my podcast guests. How did the path that you took to success make itself manifest? And the pattern’s very typical. Almost all the people that I’ve interviewed had a mother and a father. Now, it’s not invariant, but I’d say it’s there in 99% of the time. It’s really high. And both of the parents, or at least one of them, but often both were very encouraging of the person’s interests and pathway to development.
Well, in good families they’re both. Because they put up constraints on your behavior. I’ve interviewed a lot of successful people about their calling, let’s say, because I do that with all my podcast guests. How did the path that you took to success make itself manifest? And the pattern’s very typical. Almost all the people that I’ve interviewed had a mother and a father. Now, it’s not invariant, but I’d say it’s there in 99% of the time. It’s really high. And both of the parents, or at least one of them, but often both were very encouraging of the person’s interests and pathway to development.
Lex Fridman
That’s fascinating. I’ve heard you analyze it that way before, and I had a reaction to that idea, because you focused on the positive of the parents. I feel like it was the … Maybe I see biographies differently, but it feels like the struggle within the family was the catalyst for greatness in a lot of biographies. Maybe I’m misinterpreting it, but I just-
That’s fascinating. I’ve heard you analyze it that way before, and I had a reaction to that idea, because you focused on the positive of the parents. I feel like it was the … Maybe I see biographies differently, but it feels like the struggle within the family was the catalyst for greatness in a lot of biographies. Maybe I’m misinterpreting it, but I just-
Jordan Peterson
No, no. I think that that’s a reflection, maybe … Correct me if I’m wrong. I think that’s a reflection of that dynamic between positive and negative emotion. Like my son, for example, who’s doing just fine, he’s firing on all cylinders as far as I’m concerned. He has a nice family, he gets along with his wife, he’s a really good musician, he’s got a company he’s running well. He’s a delight to be around. He was a relatively disagreeable infant. He was tough-minded, and he didn’t take no for an answer. And so there was some tussle in regulating his behavior. He spent a lot of time when he was two sitting on the steps trying to get his act together. And so that was the constraint. But that wasn’t something that was … It’s an opposition to him away because it was in opposition to the immediate manifestation of his hedonistic desires, but it was also an impetus to further development.
No, no. I think that that’s a reflection, maybe … Correct me if I’m wrong. I think that’s a reflection of that dynamic between positive and negative emotion. Like my son, for example, who’s doing just fine, he’s firing on all cylinders as far as I’m concerned. He has a nice family, he gets along with his wife, he’s a really good musician, he’s got a company he’s running well. He’s a delight to be around. He was a relatively disagreeable infant. He was tough-minded, and he didn’t take no for an answer. And so there was some tussle in regulating his behavior. He spent a lot of time when he was two sitting on the steps trying to get his act together. And so that was the constraint. But that wasn’t something that was … It’s an opposition to him away because it was in opposition to the immediate manifestation of his hedonistic desires, but it was also an impetus to further development.
The rule for me when he was on the stairs was as soon as you’re willing to be a civilized human being, you can get off the stairs. And you might think, well, that’s nothing but arbitrary superego, patriarchal oppressive constraint. Or you could say, “Well, no, what I’m actually doing is facilitating his cortical maturation.” Because when a child misbehaves, it’s usually because they’re under the domination of some primordial emotional or motivational impulse. They’re angry, they’re over-enthusiastic, they’re upset, they’re selfish. It’s narrow self-centeredness expressed in a immature manner.
Lex Fridman
But see … Okay. Tell me if I’m wrong, but it feels like the engine of greatness, at least on the male side of things, has often been trying to prove the father wrong, or trying to gain the acceptance of the father. So that tension, where the parent is not encouraging like you mentioned, but is basically saying, “No, you won’t be able to do this.”
But see … Okay. Tell me if I’m wrong, but it feels like the engine of greatness, at least on the male side of things, has often been trying to prove the father wrong, or trying to gain the acceptance of the father. So that tension, where the parent is not encouraging like you mentioned, but is basically saying, “No, you won’t be able to do this.”
Jordan Peterson
Okay. So my observation as a psychologist has been that it’s very, very difficult for someone to get their act together unless they have at least one figure in their life that’s encouraging and shows them the pathway forward. So you can have a lot of adversity in your life, and if you have one person around who’s a good model and you’re neurologically intact, you can latch onto that model.
Okay. So my observation as a psychologist has been that it’s very, very difficult for someone to get their act together unless they have at least one figure in their life that’s encouraging and shows them the pathway forward. So you can have a lot of adversity in your life, and if you have one person around who’s a good model and you’re neurologically intact, you can latch onto that model.
Now, you can also find that model in books, and people do that sometimes. I’ve interviewed people who had pretty fragmented childhoods, who turned to books and found the pattern that guided them in, let’s say, the adventures of the heroes of the past, because that’s a good way of thinking about it. And I read a book called Angela’s Ashes that was written by an Irish author, Frank McCourt. Fantastic book, beautiful book. And his father was an alcoholic of gargantuan proportions. An Irish drinker who drank every cent that came into the family and many of whose children died in poverty.
And what Frank did is a testament to the human spirit, is he sort of divided his father conceptually into two elements. There was sober morning father who was encouraging and with whom he had a relationship, and then there was drunk and useless later afternoon and evening father, and he rejected the negative and he amplified his relationship with the positive. Now, he had other things going for him, but he did a very good job of discriminating.
And partly the question that you’re raising is to what degree is it useful to have a beneficial adversary? Yeah, struggle-free progress is not possible. And I think there are situations under which where you might be motivated to prove someone in your immediate circle wrong, but then that also implies that at some level, for some reason, you actually care about their judgment. You just didn’t write them off completely.
Lex Fridman
Well, that’s why I say there’s an archetype of a young man trying to gain the approval of his father. And I think that repeats itself in a bunch of biographies that I’ve read. I don’t know. There must have been an engine somewhere that they found of approval of encouragement. Maybe in books, maybe in the mother, or maybe the role of the parents is flipped.
Well, that’s why I say there’s an archetype of a young man trying to gain the approval of his father. And I think that repeats itself in a bunch of biographies that I’ve read. I don’t know. There must have been an engine somewhere that they found of approval of encouragement. Maybe in books, maybe in the mother, or maybe the role of the parents is flipped.
Jordan Peterson
Well, my father was hard to please. Very.
Well, my father was hard to please. Very.
Lex Fridman
Did you ever succeed?
Did you ever succeed?
Jordan Peterson
Yes, but it wasn’t easy, ever.
Yes, but it wasn’t easy, ever.
Lex Fridman
When was the moment when you succeeded?
When was the moment when you succeeded?
Jordan Peterson
Pretty late. Like 40, maybe later.
Pretty late. Like 40, maybe later.
Lex Fridman
Was it gradual, or a moment when a shift happened?
Was it gradual, or a moment when a shift happened?
Jordan Peterson
My father was always willing to approve of the things I did that were good, although he was not effusive by any stretch of the imagination, and the standards were very high. Now, I was probably fortunate for me. And it does bear on the question you’re asking. If you want someone to motivate you optimally … God, it’s complicated because there has to be a temperamental dance between the two people. What you really want is for someone to apply the highest possible standards to you that you’re capable of reaching. And that’s a vicious dance, because you have to have a relationship with your child to do that properly. Because if you want to be optimally motivating as a father, you keep your children on the edge. It’s like, you might not reward something in your child that you would think would be good in someone else because you think they could do better. And so my father was pretty clear about the idea that he always expected me to do better, and was that troublesome? It was like I felt often when I was young that there was no pleasing him, but I also knew that that wasn’t right. See, I actually knew that wasn’t right. Because I could remember, especially I think when I was very young, that I did things that he was pleased about. I knew that was possible. So it wasn’t unpredictable and arbitrary. It was just difficult.
My father was always willing to approve of the things I did that were good, although he was not effusive by any stretch of the imagination, and the standards were very high. Now, I was probably fortunate for me. And it does bear on the question you’re asking. If you want someone to motivate you optimally … God, it’s complicated because there has to be a temperamental dance between the two people. What you really want is for someone to apply the highest possible standards to you that you’re capable of reaching. And that’s a vicious dance, because you have to have a relationship with your child to do that properly. Because if you want to be optimally motivating as a father, you keep your children on the edge. It’s like, you might not reward something in your child that you would think would be good in someone else because you think they could do better. And so my father was pretty clear about the idea that he always expected me to do better, and was that troublesome? It was like I felt often when I was young that there was no pleasing him, but I also knew that that wasn’t right. See, I actually knew that wasn’t right. Because I could remember, especially I think when I was very young, that I did things that he was pleased about. I knew that was possible. So it wasn’t unpredictable and arbitrary. It was just difficult.
Lex Fridman
It sounds like he’s hit a pretty good optimal. But for each individual human that optimal differs, and that’s what’s hard.
It sounds like he’s hit a pretty good optimal. But for each individual human that optimal differs, and that’s what’s hard.
Jordan Peterson
Well, that’s why you have to have a relationship with your children. You have to know them. Well, with yourself too, and with your wife. You can’t hit that optimal … That optimal is probably love, because love isn’t just acceptance. Love is acceptance and encouragement. And it’s not just that either. It’s also, “No, don’t do that. That’s beneath you. You’re capable of more.” And how harsh should that be? That’s a really hard question. If you really love someone, you’re not going to put up with their stupidity. “Don’t do that.” One of the rules I had with my little kids was don’t do anything that makes you look like an idiot in public. Why? Because I don’t want you disgracing yourself. Why not? Because I like you. I think you’re great, and you’re not going to act like a bloody fool in public so that people get the wrong idea about you. No.
Well, that’s why you have to have a relationship with your children. You have to know them. Well, with yourself too, and with your wife. You can’t hit that optimal … That optimal is probably love, because love isn’t just acceptance. Love is acceptance and encouragement. And it’s not just that either. It’s also, “No, don’t do that. That’s beneath you. You’re capable of more.” And how harsh should that be? That’s a really hard question. If you really love someone, you’re not going to put up with their stupidity. “Don’t do that.” One of the rules I had with my little kids was don’t do anything that makes you look like an idiot in public. Why? Because I don’t want you disgracing yourself. Why not? Because I like you. I think you’re great, and you’re not going to act like a bloody fool in public so that people get the wrong idea about you. No.
Lex Fridman
What about inside a relationship? A successful relationship. How much challenge, how much peace? Is a successful relationship one that is easy or one that is challenging?
What about inside a relationship? A successful relationship. How much challenge, how much peace? Is a successful relationship one that is easy or one that is challenging?
Jordan Peterson
I would say to some degree that depends on your temperament. My wife is quite a provocative person, and there are times when I, I suppose … Do I wish that … There are times when I casually wish that she was easier to get along with, but as soon as I think about it I don’t think that. Because I’ve always liked her. We were friends ever since we were little kids, and she’s plays rough, and I like that, as it turns out. Now, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a pain from time to time. And that is going to be a temperamental issue to some degree, and an issue of negotiation. She plays rough, but fair. And the fair part has been establishing that it’s been part of our ongoing negotiation.
I would say to some degree that depends on your temperament. My wife is quite a provocative person, and there are times when I, I suppose … Do I wish that … There are times when I casually wish that she was easier to get along with, but as soon as I think about it I don’t think that. Because I’ve always liked her. We were friends ever since we were little kids, and she’s plays rough, and I like that, as it turns out. Now, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a pain from time to time. And that is going to be a temperamental issue to some degree, and an issue of negotiation. She plays rough, but fair. And the fair part has been establishing that it’s been part of our ongoing negotiation.
Lex Fridman
And part of it is in the play, you get to find out about yourself or what your temperament is. I don’t think that’s clear until it’s tested.
And part of it is in the play, you get to find out about yourself or what your temperament is. I don’t think that’s clear until it’s tested.
Jordan Peterson
Oh, definitely not. Definitely not. You find out all sorts of things about yourself in a relationship, that’s for sure. Well, and partly the reason that there is provocativeness, especially from women in relationship to men, is they want to test them out. It’s like … Can you hold your temper when someone’s bothering you? Well, why would a woman want to know that? Well, maybe she doesn’t want you to snap and hurt her kids. And so how’s she going to find that out? Ask you? Well, you’re going to say, “Well, I’d never do that.” It’s like, “Never eh? Let’s find out if it’s never.” So we don’t know how people test each other out in relationships, or why exactly, but it’s intense and necessary.
Oh, definitely not. Definitely not. You find out all sorts of things about yourself in a relationship, that’s for sure. Well, and partly the reason that there is provocativeness, especially from women in relationship to men, is they want to test them out. It’s like … Can you hold your temper when someone’s bothering you? Well, why would a woman want to know that? Well, maybe she doesn’t want you to snap and hurt her kids. And so how’s she going to find that out? Ask you? Well, you’re going to say, “Well, I’d never do that.” It’s like, “Never eh? Let’s find out if it’s never.” So we don’t know how people test each other out in relationships, or why exactly, but it’s intense and necessary.
Lex Fridman
What’s your and what’s in general should a man’s relationship with temper be?
What’s your and what’s in general should a man’s relationship with temper be?
Jordan Peterson
You should have one and you should be able to regulate it. That’s part of that attractiveness of the monstrous that characterizes women’s fantasies. And Nietzsche pointed this out too-
You should have one and you should be able to regulate it. That’s part of that attractiveness of the monstrous that characterizes women’s fantasies. And Nietzsche pointed this out too-
Lex Fridman
Pirates.
Pirates.
Jordan Peterson
To go back to Nietzsche.
To go back to Nietzsche.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jordan Peterson
One of Nietzsche’s claims was that most of what passes for morality is nothing but cowardice. I’d never cheat on my wife. Is there anybody asking you to that you actually find attractive, or are there dozens of people asking you to that you find attractive? It’s like, “Well, I would never cheat.” It’s like, “No, you just don’t have the opportunity.” Now, I’m not saying that everyone’s in that position that they would cheat even if they had the opportunity, because that’s not true. And it’s the same with regards to, “Oh, I’m a peaceful man.” It’s like, “No, you’re not. You’re just a weak coward. You wouldn’t dare to have a confrontation, physical or metaphysical, and you’re passing it off as morality because you don’t want to come to terms with the fact of your own weakness and cowardice.”
One of Nietzsche’s claims was that most of what passes for morality is nothing but cowardice. I’d never cheat on my wife. Is there anybody asking you to that you actually find attractive, or are there dozens of people asking you to that you find attractive? It’s like, “Well, I would never cheat.” It’s like, “No, you just don’t have the opportunity.” Now, I’m not saying that everyone’s in that position that they would cheat even if they had the opportunity, because that’s not true. And it’s the same with regards to, “Oh, I’m a peaceful man.” It’s like, “No, you’re not. You’re just a weak coward. You wouldn’t dare to have a confrontation, physical or metaphysical, and you’re passing it off as morality because you don’t want to come to terms with the fact of your own weakness and cowardice.”
And part of what I would say is twisted pseudo-Christian morality that Nietzsche was criticizing was exactly of that sort, and it tied into resentment and envy. And he tied that in explicitly said that failure in life masked by the morality that’s nothing but weak cowardice turns to the resentment that undermines and destroys everything, and that does that purposefully.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I think it was criticizing under the facade of niceness, there’s an ocean of resentment.
Yeah, I think it was criticizing under the facade of niceness, there’s an ocean of resentment.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah, that’s for sure. For sure. That’s also the danger of being two forthcoming with people. See, this is another thing, let’s say, about my wife, who’s not particularly agreeable. She’s not particularly agreeable, but she’s not resentful, and that’s because she doesn’t give things away that she isn’t willing to. And if you’re agreeable and nice and you’re conflict avoidant, you’ll push yourself too far to please the other person, and then that makes you bitter and resentful. So that’s not helpful.
Yeah, that’s for sure. For sure. That’s also the danger of being two forthcoming with people. See, this is another thing, let’s say, about my wife, who’s not particularly agreeable. She’s not particularly agreeable, but she’s not resentful, and that’s because she doesn’t give things away that she isn’t willing to. And if you’re agreeable and nice and you’re conflict avoidant, you’ll push yourself too far to please the other person, and then that makes you bitter and resentful. So that’s not helpful.
Lex Fridman
Do you think you’ll be in trouble for saying this on a podcast later?
Do you think you’ll be in trouble for saying this on a podcast later?
Jordan Peterson
No, no. We know each other pretty well. And like I said, it’s a trait that I find admirable. It’s provocative and challenging.
No, no. We know each other pretty well. And like I said, it’s a trait that I find admirable. It’s provocative and challenging.
Lex Fridman
And it seems to work.
And it seems to work.
Jordan Peterson
Well, we’ve been together 50 years, so …
Well, we’ve been together 50 years, so …
Good and evil
Lex Fridman
Quick pause, bathroom break.
Quick pause, bathroom break.
If we can descend from the realm of ideas down to history and reality. I would say the time between World War I and World War II was one of history’s biggest testing of ideas, and really the most dramatic kinds of ideas that helped us understand the nature of good and evil. I just want to ask you a question about good and evil. Churchill, in many ways, was not a good man. Stalin, as you’ve documented extensively, was a horrible man. But you can make the case that both were necessary for stopping an even worse human being in Hitler. So to what degree do you need monsters to fight monsters? Do you need bad men to be able to fight off greater evils?
Jordan Peterson
It’s everything in its proper place is the answer to that. We might think that our life would be easier without fear, let’s say. We might say that our life would be easier without anger or pain, but the truth of the matter is that those things are beneficial, even though they can cause great suffering, but they have to be in their proper place. And that capacity that could in one context be a terrible force for evil can in the proper context be the most potent force for good. A good man has to be formidable. And partly what that means, as far as I can tell, is that you have to be able to say no. And no means … I thought a lot about no working as a clinician, because I did a lot of strategic counseling with my clients in a lot of extremely difficult situations, and I learned to take apart what no meant-
It’s everything in its proper place is the answer to that. We might think that our life would be easier without fear, let’s say. We might say that our life would be easier without anger or pain, but the truth of the matter is that those things are beneficial, even though they can cause great suffering, but they have to be in their proper place. And that capacity that could in one context be a terrible force for evil can in the proper context be the most potent force for good. A good man has to be formidable. And partly what that means, as far as I can tell, is that you have to be able to say no. And no means … I thought a lot about no working as a clinician, because I did a lot of strategic counseling with my clients in a lot of extremely difficult situations, and I learned to take apart what no meant-
Jordan Peterson
… called situations, and I learned to take apart what no meant. And also when dealing with my own children, because I used no sparingly because it’s a powerful weapon, let’s say, but I meant it. And with my kids, what it meant was if you continue that pattern of behavior, something you do not like will happen to you with 100% certainty. And when that’s the case and you’re willing to implement it, you don’t have to do it very often. With regards to monstrosity, it’s like weak men aren’t good. They’re just weak. That’s Nietzsche’s observation. That’s partly, again, why he was tempted to place the will to power, let’s say, and to deal with that notion in a manner that when it was tied with the revaluation of all values was counterproductive. Counterproductive in the final analysis. It’s not like there wasn’t something to what he was driving at. Formidable men are admirable and you know, don’t mess with them. Douglas Murray is a good example of that.
… called situations, and I learned to take apart what no meant. And also when dealing with my own children, because I used no sparingly because it’s a powerful weapon, let’s say, but I meant it. And with my kids, what it meant was if you continue that pattern of behavior, something you do not like will happen to you with 100% certainty. And when that’s the case and you’re willing to implement it, you don’t have to do it very often. With regards to monstrosity, it’s like weak men aren’t good. They’re just weak. That’s Nietzsche’s observation. That’s partly, again, why he was tempted to place the will to power, let’s say, and to deal with that notion in a manner that when it was tied with the revaluation of all values was counterproductive. Counterproductive in the final analysis. It’s not like there wasn’t something to what he was driving at. Formidable men are admirable and you know, don’t mess with them. Douglas Murray is a good example of that.
He’s a rather slight guy, but he’s got a spine of steel, and there’s more than a bit of what’s a monstrous in him. And Jocko Willink is like that, and Joe Rogan is like that, and you’re like that.
Lex Fridman
But there’s a different level. I mean, if you look, to me, Churchill might represent the thing you’re talking about, but World War II Hitler would not be stopped without Stalin.
But there’s a different level. I mean, if you look, to me, Churchill might represent the thing you’re talking about, but World War II Hitler would not be stopped without Stalin.
Jordan Peterson
Well, I wonder. Yes, yes.
Well, I wonder. Yes, yes.
Lex Fridman
And if I may insert into this picture of complexity, Hitler would’ve not stopped until he enslaved and exterminated the entirety of the Slavic people, the Jewish people, the Slavic people, the gypsies, everybody who was not Aryan. But then Stalin in the mass rape of German women by the Red Army as they marched towards Berlin is a kind of manifestation, the full monstrosity that a person can be.
And if I may insert into this picture of complexity, Hitler would’ve not stopped until he enslaved and exterminated the entirety of the Slavic people, the Jewish people, the Slavic people, the gypsies, everybody who was not Aryan. But then Stalin in the mass rape of German women by the Red Army as they marched towards Berlin is a kind of manifestation, the full monstrosity that a person can be.
Jordan Peterson
You can easily be in a situation, you can easily, unfortunately find yourself in a situation where all you have in front of you are a variety of bad options. That’s partly why, if you have any sense, you try to conduct yourself very carefully in life because you don’t want to be in a position where you’ve made so many mistakes that all the options left to you are terrible. So you said, well, was it necessary to ally with Stalin? Well, it’s very difficult to second guess the trajectory of something as complex as World War II, but we could say casually, at least as Westerners have in general, that that alliance was necessary. Now, I think the mistake that the West made in the aftermath of World War II was in not dealing as forthrightly with the catastrophes of communism as an ideology as we did with fascism. And that’s especially true of the intellectuals in the universities.
You can easily be in a situation, you can easily, unfortunately find yourself in a situation where all you have in front of you are a variety of bad options. That’s partly why, if you have any sense, you try to conduct yourself very carefully in life because you don’t want to be in a position where you’ve made so many mistakes that all the options left to you are terrible. So you said, well, was it necessary to ally with Stalin? Well, it’s very difficult to second guess the trajectory of something as complex as World War II, but we could say casually, at least as Westerners have in general, that that alliance was necessary. Now, I think the mistake that the West made in the aftermath of World War II was in not dealing as forthrightly with the catastrophes of communism as an ideology as we did with fascism. And that’s especially true of the intellectuals in the universities.
I mean, it was very common when I was teaching both at Harvard and at the University of Toronto for the students in my personality class where we studied Solzhenitsyn, who’s actually an existential psychologist in many ways and a deep one, none of them knew anything about the Soviet atrocities. None of them knew anything about what happened in Ukraine and the death of 6 million productive people, had no idea that the communists killed tens of millions of people in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution.
Lex Fridman
They know even less about Mao and the Great Leap Forward.
They know even less about Mao and the Great Leap Forward.
Jordan Peterson
Right. Which some estimates are a hundred million people. Now when your error bars are in the tens of millions, well, that’s a real indication of a cataclysm. And nobody knows how many people died from direct oppression or indirect in the Soviet Union. 20 million, it seems like a reasonable estimate. Solzhenitsyn’s upper was higher than that.
Right. Which some estimates are a hundred million people. Now when your error bars are in the tens of millions, well, that’s a real indication of a cataclysm. And nobody knows how many people died from direct oppression or indirect in the Soviet Union. 20 million, it seems like a reasonable estimate. Solzhenitsyn’s upper was higher than that.
Lex Fridman
And how do you measure the intellectual output that was suppressed and killed off the number of intellectuals, artists and writers that were put into the gulags.
And how do you measure the intellectual output that was suppressed and killed off the number of intellectuals, artists and writers that were put into the gulags.
Jordan Peterson
Well, farmers for that matter, and anyone who was willing to tell the truth, right? Absolutely. So, yeah, catastrophic. And so I think the West’s failure wasn’t so much allying with Stalin. I mean, it was Douglas MacArthur who wanted to continue. He thought we should just take the Soviets out after the Second World War, and they removed them from any position of authority where such a thing might be made possible and people were tired, but was MacArthur wrong? Well, he certainly wasn’t wrong in his insistence that Stalin was as big a monster as Hitler or bigger. So the valorization of the radical leftist proclivity is the sin of the West, I think more intensely than allying with Stalin.
Well, farmers for that matter, and anyone who was willing to tell the truth, right? Absolutely. So, yeah, catastrophic. And so I think the West’s failure wasn’t so much allying with Stalin. I mean, it was Douglas MacArthur who wanted to continue. He thought we should just take the Soviets out after the Second World War, and they removed them from any position of authority where such a thing might be made possible and people were tired, but was MacArthur wrong? Well, he certainly wasn’t wrong in his insistence that Stalin was as big a monster as Hitler or bigger. So the valorization of the radical leftist proclivity is the sin of the West, I think more intensely than allying with Stalin.
Lex Fridman
Tricky nuanced topic. But if we look at the modern day and the threat of communism Marxism in the United States, to me it’s disrespectful to the atrocities of the 20th century to call somebody like Kamala Harris a communist. But I see the sort of escalation of the extremeness of language being used when you call somebody like Donald Trump a fascist, that it makes total sense to then use similar extreme terminology for somebody like Kamala Harris. But maybe I could ask your evaluation. If you look at the political landscape today, somebody like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Tricky nuanced topic. But if we look at the modern day and the threat of communism Marxism in the United States, to me it’s disrespectful to the atrocities of the 20th century to call somebody like Kamala Harris a communist. But I see the sort of escalation of the extremeness of language being used when you call somebody like Donald Trump a fascist, that it makes total sense to then use similar extreme terminology for somebody like Kamala Harris. But maybe I could ask your evaluation. If you look at the political landscape today, somebody like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Jordan Peterson
Okay. Well, the first thing I would say is that I think that viewing the political landscape of today as a political landscape is actually wrong. I think it’s not the right frame of reference because what I see happening are a very small percentage of dark tetrad personality types. So Machiavellian, manipulative, narcissistic, wanting undeserved attention, psychopathic that makes them predatory parasites and sadistic, because that goes along with the other three. That’s about in the serious manifestation, that’s probably three to 5% of the population, and they’re generally kept under pretty decent control by civilized people and stable social interactions. I think that their imaginations are disinhibited by cost-free social media communication. So they gain disproportionate influence. Now, these people want undeserved recognition and social status and everything that goes along with it, and they don’t care how they get it, because when I say they want that, I mean that’s all they want.
Okay. Well, the first thing I would say is that I think that viewing the political landscape of today as a political landscape is actually wrong. I think it’s not the right frame of reference because what I see happening are a very small percentage of dark tetrad personality types. So Machiavellian, manipulative, narcissistic, wanting undeserved attention, psychopathic that makes them predatory parasites and sadistic, because that goes along with the other three. That’s about in the serious manifestation, that’s probably three to 5% of the population, and they’re generally kept under pretty decent control by civilized people and stable social interactions. I think that their imaginations are disinhibited by cost-free social media communication. So they gain disproportionate influence. Now, these people want undeserved recognition and social status and everything that goes along with it, and they don’t care how they get it, because when I say they want that, I mean that’s all they want.
Lex Fridman
So in the realm of social media, you mentioned, yes, but are you also suggesting that they’re overrepresented in the realm of politics, politicians and so on?
So in the realm of social media, you mentioned, yes, but are you also suggesting that they’re overrepresented in the realm of politics, politicians and so on?
Jordan Peterson
They’re overrepresented in the realm of fractious political discourse because they can use ideas. First of all, they can use, let’s say, the benevolent ideas of the right and the benevolent ideas of the left, either one, and switch back and forth for that matter as a camouflage for what they’re actually up to.
They’re overrepresented in the realm of fractious political discourse because they can use ideas. First of all, they can use, let’s say, the benevolent ideas of the right and the benevolent ideas of the left, either one, and switch back and forth for that matter as a camouflage for what they’re actually up to.
Lex Fridman
You’ve interviewed a lot of people and you have a really powerful mind. You have a good read on people. So how do you know when you’re sitting across from a psychopath?
You’ve interviewed a lot of people and you have a really powerful mind. You have a good read on people. So how do you know when you’re sitting across from a psychopath?
Jordan Peterson
I wouldn’t say that I do know. In normal social circumstances, we have evolved mechanisms to keep people like that under control. Let’s say that you and I have a series of interactions and you screw me over once. I’m not going to forget that. Now, I might not write you off because of the one time, but if it happens three times, it’s like we’re not going to play together anymore. And in normal times, most of our social networks are connected and interacting. So if you ripped me off three times and I noted that, I’m going to tell everybody I know and they’re going to tell everybody they know, and soon everyone will know, and that’s the end of your tricks. But that assumes that we know who you are and we’re in continual communication. Well, all of that’s gone online. So anonymity does that and so does the amplification of emotional intensity by the social media platforms and their algorithms.
I wouldn’t say that I do know. In normal social circumstances, we have evolved mechanisms to keep people like that under control. Let’s say that you and I have a series of interactions and you screw me over once. I’m not going to forget that. Now, I might not write you off because of the one time, but if it happens three times, it’s like we’re not going to play together anymore. And in normal times, most of our social networks are connected and interacting. So if you ripped me off three times and I noted that, I’m going to tell everybody I know and they’re going to tell everybody they know, and soon everyone will know, and that’s the end of your tricks. But that assumes that we know who you are and we’re in continual communication. Well, all of that’s gone online. So anonymity does that and so does the amplification of emotional intensity by the social media platforms and their algorithms.
I think what we’re doing, this is happening on Twitter continually, is we’re giving the 5% of psychopaths a radically disproportionate voice. And what they’re doing is there’s a bunch of them on the left, and they’re all, we’re so compassionate, and there’s a bunch of them on the right, and at the moment they’re all, we’re so Christian and free speech oriented. It’s like, no, you’re not. You’re narcissistic psychopaths, and that’s your camouflage. And you hide behind your anonymity and you use fractious and divisive language to attract fools and to elevate your social status and your clout. And not only that, to gain, what would you say, satisfaction for your sadistic impulses.
Lex Fridman
See, the problem is it’s hard to tell who is the psychopath and who is a heterodox truth seeker.
See, the problem is it’s hard to tell who is the psychopath and who is a heterodox truth seeker.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Well, if you were charitable about Tucker Carlson’s recent interview, you’d say that was exactly the conundrum he faced. And it is hard. I’ve thought about, for example, interviewing Andrew Tate, and I thought, I don’t think so. And then I thought, why? I figured it’s not obvious to me at all that he wouldn’t charm me. So I knew this guy, Robert Hare. Robert Hare was the world’s foremost authority on psychopathy. He established the field of clinical analysis of psychopathic behavior, and Hare was a pretty agreeable guy. So he would give people the benefit of the doubt, and he interviewed hundreds of serious psychopaths, like imprisoned violent offenders. And he told me in one of our conversations that every time he sat down with a violent offender psychopath, and he had a measure for psychopathy that was a clinical checklist, so he could identify the psychopaths from just the say, run-of-the-mill criminals. Every time he sat down with them, they pulled the wool over his eyes, and he videotaped the interviews. And it wasn’t until later when he was reviewing the videos that he could see what they were doing, but in person, their tricks were more sophisticated than his detection ability.
Yeah. Well, if you were charitable about Tucker Carlson’s recent interview, you’d say that was exactly the conundrum he faced. And it is hard. I’ve thought about, for example, interviewing Andrew Tate, and I thought, I don’t think so. And then I thought, why? I figured it’s not obvious to me at all that he wouldn’t charm me. So I knew this guy, Robert Hare. Robert Hare was the world’s foremost authority on psychopathy. He established the field of clinical analysis of psychopathic behavior, and Hare was a pretty agreeable guy. So he would give people the benefit of the doubt, and he interviewed hundreds of serious psychopaths, like imprisoned violent offenders. And he told me in one of our conversations that every time he sat down with a violent offender psychopath, and he had a measure for psychopathy that was a clinical checklist, so he could identify the psychopaths from just the say, run-of-the-mill criminals. Every time he sat down with them, they pulled the wool over his eyes, and he videotaped the interviews. And it wasn’t until later when he was reviewing the videos that he could see what they were doing, but in person, their tricks were more sophisticated than his detection ability.
Psychopathy
Lex Fridman
Well, okay, this is fascinating because again, you’re a great interviewer. I would love it if you interviewed somebody like Putin. So this idea that you are a fool in the face of psychopathy just doesn’t jive with me.
Well, okay, this is fascinating because again, you’re a great interviewer. I would love it if you interviewed somebody like Putin. So this idea that you are a fool in the face of psychopathy just doesn’t jive with me.
Jordan Peterson
I’m an agreeable guy. That’s the problem. I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt.
I’m an agreeable guy. That’s the problem. I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt.
Lex Fridman
Right. But that’s good because the way you reveal psychopathy is by being agreeable, not weak, but seeking with empathy to understand the other person. And in the details in the little nuanced ways that they struggle with questions, the psychopathy is revealed just to separate the two things. So one over-representation, psychopathy online with anonymity. That’s a serious fascinating problem. But in the interview one-on-one, I don’t know if the job of a human being in conversation is to not talk to psychopaths, but to talk… How would you interview Hitler?
Right. But that’s good because the way you reveal psychopathy is by being agreeable, not weak, but seeking with empathy to understand the other person. And in the details in the little nuanced ways that they struggle with questions, the psychopathy is revealed just to separate the two things. So one over-representation, psychopathy online with anonymity. That’s a serious fascinating problem. But in the interview one-on-one, I don’t know if the job of a human being in conversation is to not talk to psychopaths, but to talk… How would you interview Hitler?
Jordan Peterson
Well, I’ve had very difficult clinical interviews with people in my clinical practice.
Well, I’ve had very difficult clinical interviews with people in my clinical practice.
Lex Fridman
How do you approach that?
How do you approach that?
Jordan Peterson
Well, I really probably approach that the way I approach most conversations. And it’s something like, I’m going to assume that you’re playing a straight game, but I’m going to watch, and if you throw the odd crooked maneuver in, then I’ll note it. And after you do it three times, I’ll think, okay, I see. I thought we were playing one game, but we’re actually playing another one. And if I’m smart enough to pick that up, that usually works out quite successfully for me. But I’m not always smart enough to pick that up.
Well, I really probably approach that the way I approach most conversations. And it’s something like, I’m going to assume that you’re playing a straight game, but I’m going to watch, and if you throw the odd crooked maneuver in, then I’ll note it. And after you do it three times, I’ll think, okay, I see. I thought we were playing one game, but we’re actually playing another one. And if I’m smart enough to pick that up, that usually works out quite successfully for me. But I’m not always smart enough to pick that up.
Lex Fridman
But see, here’s the nice thing. There’s the one-on-one conversation that’s not recorded is different than one that’s listened by a lot of people because I would venture to… I trust the intelligence of the viewer and the listener to detect even better than you.
But see, here’s the nice thing. There’s the one-on-one conversation that’s not recorded is different than one that’s listened by a lot of people because I would venture to… I trust the intelligence of the viewer and the listener to detect even better than you.
Jordan Peterson
Yes. And I think that’s true, by the way.
Yes. And I think that’s true, by the way.
Lex Fridman
To detect this psychopathy.
To detect this psychopathy.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. I’ve had the odd interview with people that I wasn’t happy with having organized because I felt that I had brought their ideas to a wider audience than might’ve been appropriate. But my conclusion and the conclusion of my producers and the people I talked to was that we could run the interview, the discussion and let the audience sort it out. And I would say they do. I think as a general rule of thumb, that’s true. And I also think that the long form interviews are particularly good at that because it’s not that easy to maintain a manipulative stance, especially if you’re empty for two and a half hours. So you get tired, you get irritable, you show that you lose the track, you’re going to start leaking out your mistakes.
Yeah. I’ve had the odd interview with people that I wasn’t happy with having organized because I felt that I had brought their ideas to a wider audience than might’ve been appropriate. But my conclusion and the conclusion of my producers and the people I talked to was that we could run the interview, the discussion and let the audience sort it out. And I would say they do. I think as a general rule of thumb, that’s true. And I also think that the long form interviews are particularly good at that because it’s not that easy to maintain a manipulative stance, especially if you’re empty for two and a half hours. So you get tired, you get irritable, you show that you lose the track, you’re going to start leaking out your mistakes.
Lex Fridman
And that actually is the case for all the world leaders. I would say one hour is too short. Something happens at two hour plus mark where you start to leak. And I trust in the intelligence of the listener to detect that.
And that actually is the case for all the world leaders. I would say one hour is too short. Something happens at two hour plus mark where you start to leak. And I trust in the intelligence of the listener to detect that.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. And it might be the intelligence of the distributed crowd. And I mean, that’s what I’ve seen with the YouTube interviews is that it’s hard to fool people as such over a protracted period of time. And I guess it’s partly because everybody brings a slightly different set of falsehood detectors to the table. And if you aggregate that, it’s pretty damn accurate.
Yeah. And it might be the intelligence of the distributed crowd. And I mean, that’s what I’ve seen with the YouTube interviews is that it’s hard to fool people as such over a protracted period of time. And I guess it’s partly because everybody brings a slightly different set of falsehood detectors to the table. And if you aggregate that, it’s pretty damn accurate.
Lex Fridman
But of course, it’s complicated because ideas of Nazi ideology spread in the twenties. There was a real battle between Marxism and Nazism.
But of course, it’s complicated because ideas of Nazi ideology spread in the twenties. There was a real battle between Marxism and Nazism.
Jordan Peterson
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Lex Fridman
And I believe there’s some attempts at censorship of Nazi ideology. Censorship very often does the opposite. It gives the fringe ideologies power if they’re being censored, because that’s an indication that the man in power doesn’t want the truth to be hurt, this kind of idea. And that just puts fuel to the fire.
And I believe there’s some attempts at censorship of Nazi ideology. Censorship very often does the opposite. It gives the fringe ideologies power if they’re being censored, because that’s an indication that the man in power doesn’t want the truth to be hurt, this kind of idea. And that just puts fuel to the fire.
Jordan Peterson
It also motivates the paranoid types because one of the reasons that paranoia spirals out of control is because paranoid people almost inevitably end up being persecuted because they’re so touchy and so suspicious that people start to walk on eggshells around them as if there are things going on behind the scenes. And so then they get more distrustful and more paranoid, and eventually they start misbehaving so badly that they are actually persecuted often by legal authorities, and it’s down the rabbit hole they go. And so Musk is betting on that to some degree. Right? He believes that free expression on Twitter X will sort itself out and be of net benefit. And I follow a lot of really bad accounts on X because I like to keep an eye on the pathology of the left, let’s say, and the pathology of the right thinking, at least in my clinical way, that I’m watching the psychopaths dance around and try to do what their subversion.
It also motivates the paranoid types because one of the reasons that paranoia spirals out of control is because paranoid people almost inevitably end up being persecuted because they’re so touchy and so suspicious that people start to walk on eggshells around them as if there are things going on behind the scenes. And so then they get more distrustful and more paranoid, and eventually they start misbehaving so badly that they are actually persecuted often by legal authorities, and it’s down the rabbit hole they go. And so Musk is betting on that to some degree. Right? He believes that free expression on Twitter X will sort itself out and be of net benefit. And I follow a lot of really bad accounts on X because I like to keep an eye on the pathology of the left, let’s say, and the pathology of the right thinking, at least in my clinical way, that I’m watching the psychopaths dance around and try to do what their subversion.
And it’s an ugly place to inhabit, that’s for sure. But it’s also the case that a very tiny minority of seriously bad actors can have a disproportionate influence. And one of the things I’ve always hoped for for social media channels is that they separate the anonymous accounts from the verified accounts. They should just be in different categories. People who will say what they think and take the hits to their reputation, anonymous types. If you want to see what the anonymous types say, you can see it. But don’t be confusing them with actual people because they’re not the same. We know that people behave more badly when they’re anonymous. That’s a very well-established psychological finding. Well, and I think the danger to our culture is substantive. I think the reason that perhaps the reason that everything started to go sideways pretty seriously around 2015 is because we invented these new modes of communication. We have no idea how to police them. And so the psychopathic manipulators, they have free reign. About 30% of the internet is pornography.
A huge amount of internet traffic is outright criminal. And there’s a penumbra around that’s psychopathic, narcissistic troublemaking trolls. And that might constitute the bulk of the interactions online. And it’s partly because people can’t be held responsible, so the free riders have free reign.
Lex Fridman
It’s a fascinating technical challenge of how to make our society resilient to the psychopaths on the left and the right.
It’s a fascinating technical challenge of how to make our society resilient to the psychopaths on the left and the right.
Jordan Peterson
It might be the fundamental problem of the age, given the amplification of communication by our social networks.
It might be the fundamental problem of the age, given the amplification of communication by our social networks.
Lex Fridman
And so to generalize across psychopaths, you could also think about bots which behave similar to psychopaths in their certainty and not caring. They’re maximizing some function. They’re not caring about anything else. Attention. Yeah.
And so to generalize across psychopaths, you could also think about bots which behave similar to psychopaths in their certainty and not caring. They’re maximizing some function. They’re not caring about anything else. Attention. Yeah.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Short-term attention, even worse. Yeah, because that’s another problem. If the algorithms are maximizing for the grip of short-term attention, they’re acting like immature agents of attention. Right? And so then imagine the worst-case scenario is negative emotion garners more attention and short-term gratification garners more attention. So then you’re maximizing for the grip of short-term attention by negative emotion. I mean, that’s not going to be a principle. We were talking earlier about unsustainable, unifying axioms, that’s definitely one of them. Maximize for the spread of negative attention, negative emotion that garners short-term attention. Jesus, brutal.
Yeah. Short-term attention, even worse. Yeah, because that’s another problem. If the algorithms are maximizing for the grip of short-term attention, they’re acting like immature agents of attention. Right? And so then imagine the worst-case scenario is negative emotion garners more attention and short-term gratification garners more attention. So then you’re maximizing for the grip of short-term attention by negative emotion. I mean, that’s not going to be a principle. We were talking earlier about unsustainable, unifying axioms, that’s definitely one of them. Maximize for the spread of negative attention, negative emotion that garners short-term attention. Jesus, brutal.
Lex Fridman
I tend to not think there’s that many psychopaths. So maybe to push back a little bit, it feels like there’s a small number of psychopaths.
I tend to not think there’s that many psychopaths. So maybe to push back a little bit, it feels like there’s a small number of psychopaths.
Jordan Peterson
Three to 5% is the estimate worldwide.
Three to 5% is the estimate worldwide.
Lex Fridman
In terms of humans, sure. But in terms of the pattern of stuff we see online, my hope is that a lot of people on the extreme left and extreme right, or just the trolls in general are just young people kind of going through the similar stuff that we’ve been talking about, trying on the cynicism and the resentment. There’s a drug aspect to it, there’s a pull to that to talk about shit somebody, to take somebody down. I mean, there is some pleasure in that. There’s a dark pull towards that. And I think-
In terms of humans, sure. But in terms of the pattern of stuff we see online, my hope is that a lot of people on the extreme left and extreme right, or just the trolls in general are just young people kind of going through the similar stuff that we’ve been talking about, trying on the cynicism and the resentment. There’s a drug aspect to it, there’s a pull to that to talk about shit somebody, to take somebody down. I mean, there is some pleasure in that. There’s a dark pull towards that. And I think-
Jordan Peterson
That’s the sadistic pull.
That’s the sadistic pull.
Lex Fridman
And I think a lot of people, I mean, you see, when you say sadistic, it makes it sound like some kind of, it’s a pathology.
And I think a lot of people, I mean, you see, when you say sadistic, it makes it sound like some kind of, it’s a pathology.
Jordan Peterson
It’s pleasure in the suffering of others.
It’s pleasure in the suffering of others.
Lex Fridman
Right. But I just think that all of us have the capacity for that. All humans have the capacity for that.
Right. But I just think that all of us have the capacity for that. All humans have the capacity for that.
Jordan Peterson
Some more than others, but everyone to some degree.
Some more than others, but everyone to some degree.
Lex Fridman
And when you’re young, you don’t understand the full implications of that on your own self. So if you participate in taking other people down, that’s going to have a cost on your own development as a human being. It’s going to take you towards a Dostoevsky’s, notes from underground in the basement, cynical, all that kind of stuff.
And when you’re young, you don’t understand the full implications of that on your own self. So if you participate in taking other people down, that’s going to have a cost on your own development as a human being. It’s going to take you towards a Dostoevsky’s, notes from underground in the basement, cynical, all that kind of stuff.
Jordan Peterson
Alone.
Alone.
Lex Fridman
Which is why a lot of young people try it out. The reason is, you get older and older, you realize that there’s a huge cost to that. So you don’t do it. But there’s young people that… So I would like to sort of believe and hope that a large number of people who are trolls are just trying out the derision.
Which is why a lot of young people try it out. The reason is, you get older and older, you realize that there’s a huge cost to that. So you don’t do it. But there’s young people that… So I would like to sort of believe and hope that a large number of people who are trolls are just trying out the derision.
Jordan Peterson
No doubt.
No doubt.
Lex Fridman
So they can be saved, they could be helped. They could be shown that there’s more growth, there’s more flourishing to celebrating other people and actually criticizing ideas, but not in the way of derision LOL, but by formulating your own self in the world by formulating your ideas in a strong, powerful way, and also removing the cloak of anonymity and just standing behind your ideas and carrying the responsibility of those ideas. Yeah.
So they can be saved, they could be helped. They could be shown that there’s more growth, there’s more flourishing to celebrating other people and actually criticizing ideas, but not in the way of derision LOL, but by formulating your own self in the world by formulating your ideas in a strong, powerful way, and also removing the cloak of anonymity and just standing behind your ideas and carrying the responsibility of those ideas. Yeah.
Jordan Peterson
I think all of that is right. I think the idea that that’s more likely to occur among young people, that’s clear. People as they mature, get more agreeable and conscientious. So we actually know that what you said is true technically. It’s definitely the case that there’s an innate tilt towards pleasure in that sort of behavior. And it is associated to some degree with dominance, striving. And I do think it’s true, as you pointed out, that many of the people who are toying with that pattern can be socialized out of it. In fact, maybe most people, even the repeat criminal types tend to desist in their late twenties. So 1% of the criminals commit 65% of the crimes. Imagine that that 1% are the people that you’re really concerned with. They often have stable patterns of offending that emerged very, very young, like even in infancy and continued through adolescence and into adulthood.
I think all of that is right. I think the idea that that’s more likely to occur among young people, that’s clear. People as they mature, get more agreeable and conscientious. So we actually know that what you said is true technically. It’s definitely the case that there’s an innate tilt towards pleasure in that sort of behavior. And it is associated to some degree with dominance, striving. And I do think it’s true, as you pointed out, that many of the people who are toying with that pattern can be socialized out of it. In fact, maybe most people, even the repeat criminal types tend to desist in their late twenties. So 1% of the criminals commit 65% of the crimes. Imagine that that 1% are the people that you’re really concerned with. They often have stable patterns of offending that emerged very, very young, like even in infancy and continued through adolescence and into adulthood.
If you keep them in prison until they’re in the middle of their late twenties, most of them stop. And the easiest way to understand that might just be delayed maturation. So are most people salvageable? Yes, definitely. Is everyone salvageable? Well, at some point it becomes, first of all, they have to want to be salvaged. That’s a problem. But then it also becomes something like, well, how much resources are you going to devote to that? The farther down the rabbit hole you’ve gone, the more energy it takes to haul you up. So there comes a point where the probability that you’ll be able to get enough resources devoted to you to rescue you from the pit of hell that you’ve dug is zero. And that’s a very sad thing. And it’s very hard to be around someone who’s in that situation, very, very hard.
Lex Fridman
And it seems that it’s more likely that the leaders of movements are going to be psychopaths, and the followers of movements are going to be the people that we’re mentioning that are kind of lost themselves to the ideology of the movement.
And it seems that it’s more likely that the leaders of movements are going to be psychopaths, and the followers of movements are going to be the people that we’re mentioning that are kind of lost themselves to the ideology of the movement.
Jordan Peterson
Well, we know that what you said is true even historically, to a large degree, because Germany was successfully de-Nazified. And it’s not like everybody who participated in every element of the Nazi movement was brought to justice. Not in the least. The same thing happened in Japan. So to some degree, the same thing happened in South Africa. Right? And it’s the case, for example, also in the stories that we were referring to earlier, the biblical stories that patriarchs of the Bible, most of them are pretty bad people when they first start out. Jacob is the one who becomes Israel. He’s a major player in the biblical narrative, and he’s a pretty bad actor when he first starts out. He’s a mama’s boy. He’s a liar. He steals from his own brother, and in a major way, he deceives his father. He’s a coward, and yet he turns his life around.
Well, we know that what you said is true even historically, to a large degree, because Germany was successfully de-Nazified. And it’s not like everybody who participated in every element of the Nazi movement was brought to justice. Not in the least. The same thing happened in Japan. So to some degree, the same thing happened in South Africa. Right? And it’s the case, for example, also in the stories that we were referring to earlier, the biblical stories that patriarchs of the Bible, most of them are pretty bad people when they first start out. Jacob is the one who becomes Israel. He’s a major player in the biblical narrative, and he’s a pretty bad actor when he first starts out. He’s a mama’s boy. He’s a liar. He steals from his own brother, and in a major way, he deceives his father. He’s a coward, and yet he turns his life around.
Lex Fridman
So be careful the leaders you idolize in worship, but then it’s not always clear to know who is the good and who’s the evil.
So be careful the leaders you idolize in worship, but then it’s not always clear to know who is the good and who’s the evil.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hardship
Lex Fridman
It’s hard. You have been through some dark places in your mind, over your life. What have been some of your darker hours, and how did you find the light?
It’s hard. You have been through some dark places in your mind, over your life. What have been some of your darker hours, and how did you find the light?
Jordan Peterson
Well, I would say I started contending with the problem of evil very young, 13 or 14. And that was my main motivation of study for 30 years, I guess, something like that. At the end of that 30 years, I became more and more interested in fleshing out the alternative. Once I became convinced that evil existed, and that was very young, I always believed that if you could understand something well enough that you could formulate a solution to it. But it turns out that seeing evil and understanding that it exists is less complicated than a technical description of its opposite, what is good. You can say, well, it’s not that for sure. It’s not Auschwitz. How about we start there? It’s as far from Auschwitz as you can get. It’s as far from enjoying being an Auschwitz camp guard as you can get.
Well, I would say I started contending with the problem of evil very young, 13 or 14. And that was my main motivation of study for 30 years, I guess, something like that. At the end of that 30 years, I became more and more interested in fleshing out the alternative. Once I became convinced that evil existed, and that was very young, I always believed that if you could understand something well enough that you could formulate a solution to it. But it turns out that seeing evil and understanding that it exists is less complicated than a technical description of its opposite, what is good. You can say, well, it’s not that for sure. It’s not Auschwitz. How about we start there? It’s as far from Auschwitz as you can get. It’s as far from enjoying being an Auschwitz camp guard as you can get.
Okay, well, where are you when you’re as far away from that as you could possibly get? What does that mean? And it does have something to do with play, as far as I’m concerned. I think the antithesis of tyranny is play. So that took me a long time to figure out that specifically. So that was very dark. I spent a lot of time studying the worst behaviors that I could discover abstractly in books, but also in my clinical practice and in my observations of people. And so that’s rough. More recently, I was very ill and in a tremendous amount of pain that lasted pretty much without any break for three years. And what was particularly useful to me then was the strength of my relationships, my immediate relationships, my friendships. Also, the relationships that I had established more broadly with people.
Because by the time I became ill, I was reasonably well known and people were very supportive when I was having trouble, and that was very helpful. But it’s certainly the case that it was the connections I had, particularly with my family, but also with my friends, that were the saving grace. And that’s something to know. I mean, it’s necessary to bear the burdens of the world on your own shoulders, that’s for sure, the burdens of your own existence and whatever other responsibilities you can mount. But that by no means, means that you can or should do it alone. And so you might say, well, welcoming the adversity of life as a redemptive challenge is a task that’s beyond the ability of the typical person or even maybe of anyone. But then when you think, well, you’re not alone, maybe you’re not alone socially, you’re not alone familial, maybe you’re not alone metaphysically as well, there’s an insistence.
And I think it’s true. There’s an insistence, for example, in the old and the new testament alike, that the more darkness you’re willing to voluntarily encounter, the more likely it is that the spirit of Abraham and the patriarchs will walk with you. And I think that’s right. I think it’s sort of technically true in that the best parts of yourself make themselves manifest. If you want to think about it that way, the best parts of yourself, whatever that means, make themselves manifest when you’re contending actively and voluntarily with the most difficult challenges. Why wouldn’t it be that way? And then you could think, well, that’s yourself. It’s like, well, are the best unrevealed parts of you yourself? Well, no, they’re a kind of metaphysical reality. They’re not yet manifest. They only exist in potential. They transcend anything you’re currently capable of, but they have an existence. You could call that yourself.
But it was Jung’s contention, for example, with regards to such terminology that the reason we use the term self instead of God is because when God was dispensed with, let’s say, by the processes Nietzsche described, we just found the same thing deep within the instinctive realm. Let’s say we found it at the bottom…
Jordan Peterson
Deep within the instinctive realm, let’s say, we found it at the bottom of the things instead of at the top. It’s like it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter fundamentally. What matters is whether or not that’s a reality. And I think it’s the fundamental reality because I do think that the deeper you delve into things… This is what happens to Moses when he encounters the burning bush. So Moses is just going about his life. He’s a shepherd, he’s an adult. He has wives, he has children, he has responsibilities. He’s left his home and he’s established himself. And so things are pretty good for Moses. And then he’s out by Mount Horeb in that story, but it’s the central mountain of the world. It’s the same mountain as Sinai, which is the place where heaven and earth touch. And he sees something that grabs his attention, right?
Deep within the instinctive realm, let’s say, we found it at the bottom of the things instead of at the top. It’s like it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter fundamentally. What matters is whether or not that’s a reality. And I think it’s the fundamental reality because I do think that the deeper you delve into things… This is what happens to Moses when he encounters the burning bush. So Moses is just going about his life. He’s a shepherd, he’s an adult. He has wives, he has children, he has responsibilities. He’s left his home and he’s established himself. And so things are pretty good for Moses. And then he’s out by Mount Horeb in that story, but it’s the central mountain of the world. It’s the same mountain as Sinai, which is the place where heaven and earth touch. And he sees something that grabs his attention, right?
That’s the burning bush. And bush is a tree. That’s life. That’s the tree of life. And the fact that it’s on fire is that’s life exaggerated because everything that’s alive is on fire. And so what calls to Moses is the spirit of being itself, and it tracks him off the beaten track, and he decides to go investigate. So Moses is everyone who goes off the beaten track to investigate. And so as he investigates, he delves more and more deeply until he starts to understand that he’s now walking on sacred ground. So he takes off his shoes, and that’s a symbolic reference of identity transformation. He’s no longer walking the same path. He no longer has the same identity. He’s in a state of flux. And that’s when what happens is that he continues to interact with this calling and Moses asks what it is that’s being revealed, and God says, I’m the spirit of being itself.
That’s basically the answer. I am what I am. It’s a more complex utterance than that. I am what I will be. I am what was becoming. It’s all of that at the same time, it’s the spirit of being that’s speaking to him, the spirit of being and becoming. And it tells Moses that he now, because he’s delved so deeply into something so compelling, his identity has transformed and he’s become the leader who can speak truth to power. And so he allies himself with his brother Aaron, who’s the political arm and who can communicate, and he goes back to Egypt to confront the tyrant. And that’s an indication of that idea that if you wrestle with life properly, that the spirit of being and becoming walks with you. And it’s like, how can that not be true? Because the contrary would be that there would be no growth in challenge. Well, you have to be infinitely nihilistic to believe that.
Lex Fridman
It’s obvious, but it’s also just fascinating that hardship is the thing that ends up being the catalyst for delving deeply.
It’s obvious, but it’s also just fascinating that hardship is the thing that ends up being the catalyst for delving deeply.
Jordan Peterson
It’s hardship voluntarily undertaken. And it’s crucially true. Look, if you bring someone into therapy, let’s say they’re afraid of elevators and you trick them into getting near an elevator, you’ll make them worse. But if you negotiate with them so that they voluntarily move towards the elevator on their own recognizance, they’ll overcome their fear and they become generally braver, but it has to be voluntary.
It’s hardship voluntarily undertaken. And it’s crucially true. Look, if you bring someone into therapy, let’s say they’re afraid of elevators and you trick them into getting near an elevator, you’ll make them worse. But if you negotiate with them so that they voluntarily move towards the elevator on their own recognizance, they’ll overcome their fear and they become generally braver, but it has to be voluntary.
Lex Fridman
See, I got to push back and explore with you the question of voluntarily. Let’s look at Nietzsche. He suffered through several health issues throughout his life, migraines, eyesight issues, digestive problems, depression with suicidal thoughts, and yet he is one of the greatest minds in the history of humanity. So were these problems that he was suffering, arguably involuntarily, a feature or a bug?
See, I got to push back and explore with you the question of voluntarily. Let’s look at Nietzsche. He suffered through several health issues throughout his life, migraines, eyesight issues, digestive problems, depression with suicidal thoughts, and yet he is one of the greatest minds in the history of humanity. So were these problems that he was suffering, arguably involuntarily, a feature or a bug?
Jordan Peterson
That’s a good question. The same thing happens in the story of Job. Because Job is a good man. God himself admits it. And Satan comes along and says to God, “I see you’re pretty proud of your man there, Job.” God says, “Yeah, he’s doing pretty well.” And Satan says, “I think it’s just because things are easy for him. Let me have a crack at him and see what happens.” And God says, “Yeah, I think you’re wrong. Do your worst.” Right? And that’s how people feel when those slings and arrows come at them, let’s say like Nietzsche. Well Job’s response to that… Now the story is set up so that what befalls Job is actually quite arbitrary, these catastrophes that you’re describing. The volunteerism in Job is his refusal to despair even in the face of that adversity. And that seems like something like an expression of voluntary free will.
That’s a good question. The same thing happens in the story of Job. Because Job is a good man. God himself admits it. And Satan comes along and says to God, “I see you’re pretty proud of your man there, Job.” God says, “Yeah, he’s doing pretty well.” And Satan says, “I think it’s just because things are easy for him. Let me have a crack at him and see what happens.” And God says, “Yeah, I think you’re wrong. Do your worst.” Right? And that’s how people feel when those slings and arrows come at them, let’s say like Nietzsche. Well Job’s response to that… Now the story is set up so that what befalls Job is actually quite arbitrary, these catastrophes that you’re describing. The volunteerism in Job is his refusal to despair even in the face of that adversity. And that seems like something like an expression of voluntary free will.
He refuses to lose faith. And the way the story ends is that Job gets everything back and more. So that’s a dissent and assent story. And a cynic might say, “Well, the ends don’t justify the means.” And I would say, “Fair enough.” But that’s a pretty shallow interpretation of the story. What it indicates instead is that if you’re fortunate, because let’s not forget that, and you optimize your attitude even in the face of adversity, that it’s not infrequently the case that your fortunes will reverse. And I’ve found that in many situations, the journalists whose goal was most malicious in relationship to me, who were most concerned with improving their own, what would you say? Fostering their own notoriety and gaining social status at my expense, were the ones who did me the greatest favor. Those were the interviews that went viral. And so that’s interesting because they were definitely the places where the most disaster was at hand. And I felt that in the aftermath every time that happened, my whole family was destabilized for two months because things… It wasn’t obvious at all which way the dice were going to roll.
Lex Fridman
But you leaned into that. So in a sense that there’s this kind of a transformation from the involuntary to the voluntary, basically saying, “Bring it on.” That act of bring it on turns the involuntary hardship into voluntary hardship.
But you leaned into that. So in a sense that there’s this kind of a transformation from the involuntary to the voluntary, basically saying, “Bring it on.” That act of bring it on turns the involuntary hardship into voluntary hardship.
Jordan Peterson
Well, not necessarily, let’s say, but you could say that’s your best bet. Well, I’m never going to say that you can transcend all catastrophe with the right attitude, because that’s just too much to say. But I could say that in a dire situation, there’s always an element of choice. And if you make the right choices, you improve the degree, you improve your chances of success to the maximal possible degree.
Well, not necessarily, let’s say, but you could say that’s your best bet. Well, I’m never going to say that you can transcend all catastrophe with the right attitude, because that’s just too much to say. But I could say that in a dire situation, there’s always an element of choice. And if you make the right choices, you improve the degree, you improve your chances of success to the maximal possible degree.
Lex Fridman
It might be too much to say, but nevertheless could be true. Viktor Frankl, Marcus Aurelius.
It might be too much to say, but nevertheless could be true. Viktor Frankl, Marcus Aurelius.
Jordan Peterson
Well, that’s what the resurrection story proclaims, is that even under the imaginable circumstances, the fundamental finale is the victory of the good. And that seems to me to be true.
Well, that’s what the resurrection story proclaims, is that even under the imaginable circumstances, the fundamental finale is the victory of the good. And that seems to me to be true.
Pain and gratitude
Lex Fridman
Do you have regrets when you look back at your life in the full analysis of it?
Do you have regrets when you look back at your life in the full analysis of it?
Jordan Peterson
Well, as I said, I was very ill for about three years, and it was seriously brutal. This is no lie. Every single minute of that three years was worse than any single time I’d ever experienced in my entire life up to that. So that was rough.
Well, as I said, I was very ill for about three years, and it was seriously brutal. This is no lie. Every single minute of that three years was worse than any single time I’d ever experienced in my entire life up to that. So that was rough.
Lex Fridman
Was the roughest the physical or the psychological?
Was the roughest the physical or the psychological?
Jordan Peterson
Pain.
Pain.
Lex Fridman
Just literal pain?
Just literal pain?
Jordan Peterson
Yep. Yeah, I was walking like 10 to 12 miles a day, rain or shine, winter, didn’t matter, not good. And it was worse than that because as the day progressed, my pain levels would fall until by 10, 11 at night when I was starting to get tired. I was approaching, what would you say? I was approaching something like an ordinary bad day, but as soon as I went to sleep, then the clock was reset and all the pain came back. And so it wasn’t just that I was in pain, it was that sleep itself became an enemy. And that’s really rough, man, because sleep is where you take refuge, you’re worn out, you’re tired, and you go to sleep and you wake up and it’s generally, it’s something approximating a new day.
Yep. Yeah, I was walking like 10 to 12 miles a day, rain or shine, winter, didn’t matter, not good. And it was worse than that because as the day progressed, my pain levels would fall until by 10, 11 at night when I was starting to get tired. I was approaching, what would you say? I was approaching something like an ordinary bad day, but as soon as I went to sleep, then the clock was reset and all the pain came back. And so it wasn’t just that I was in pain, it was that sleep itself became an enemy. And that’s really rough, man, because sleep is where you take refuge, you’re worn out, you’re tired, and you go to sleep and you wake up and it’s generally, it’s something approximating a new day.
This was Sisyphus on steroids. It was very difficult to maintain hope in that, because I would do what I could. There were times when it took me like an hour and a half in the morning to stand up. I’d do all that and more or less put myself back into something remotely resembling human by the end of the day. And then I knew perfectly well, exhausted, if I fell asleep that I was going to be right at the bottom of the bloody hill again. And so after a couple of years of that, it was definitely the fact that I had a family that carried me through that.
Lex Fridman
What did you learn about yourself, about yourself, and about the human mind from that, from all of those days?
What did you learn about yourself, about yourself, and about the human mind from that, from all of those days?
Jordan Peterson
Well, I think I learned more gratitude for the people I had around me. And I learned how fortunate I was to have that and how crucial that was. My wife learned something similar. She was diagnosed with a form of cancer that, as far as we know, killed every single person who ever had it except her. It’s quite rare. And her experience was that what really gave her hope and played at least a role in saving her was the realization of the depth of love that her son, in particular, had for her. And that says nothing about her relationship with Mikhaila, with her daughter. It just so happened that it was the revelation of that love, that it made Tammy understand the value of her life in a way that she wouldn’t have realized of her own accord.
Well, I think I learned more gratitude for the people I had around me. And I learned how fortunate I was to have that and how crucial that was. My wife learned something similar. She was diagnosed with a form of cancer that, as far as we know, killed every single person who ever had it except her. It’s quite rare. And her experience was that what really gave her hope and played at least a role in saving her was the realization of the depth of love that her son, in particular, had for her. And that says nothing about her relationship with Mikhaila, with her daughter. It just so happened that it was the revelation of that love, that it made Tammy understand the value of her life in a way that she wouldn’t have realized of her own accord.
We’re very, very… There’s no difference between ourselves and the people that we love. And there might be no difference between ourselves and everyone everywhere, but we can at least realize that, to begin with, in the form of the people that we love. And I hope I’m better at that than I was. I think I’m better at it than I was. I’m a lot more grateful for just ordinariness than I was because when I first recovered, I remember, I first started to recover I was standing in this pharmacy waiting for a prescription in a little town, and they weren’t being particularly efficient about it.
And so I was in that, standing in the aisle for 20 minutes, and I thought, “I’m not on fire. I could just stand here for the rest of my life, just not being in pain and enjoying that.” And that would have been something that before that would have been, I would have been impatient and raring to go because I didn’t have 20 minutes to stand in the middle of an aisle. And I thought, “Well, if you’re just standing there and you’re not on fire, things are a lot better than they might be.” And I certainly, I know that, and I think I remember it almost all the time.
Lex Fridman
You gain a greater ability to appreciate the mundane moments of life.
You gain a greater ability to appreciate the mundane moments of life.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah, definitely. The miracle of the mundane, right?
Yeah, definitely. The miracle of the mundane, right?
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jordan Peterson
I think Nietzsche had that because he was very ill. And so I suspect he had… And he was regarded by the inhabitants of the village that he lived in, near the end of his life, as something approximating a saint. He apparently conducted himself very admirably despite all his suffering.
I think Nietzsche had that because he was very ill. And so I suspect he had… And he was regarded by the inhabitants of the village that he lived in, near the end of his life, as something approximating a saint. He apparently conducted himself very admirably despite all his suffering.
Lex Fridman
But that still, there’s this tension, as there is in much of Nietzsche’s work, between the miracle of the mundane, appreciating the miracle of the mundane versus fearing the tyranny of the mediocre.
But that still, there’s this tension, as there is in much of Nietzsche’s work, between the miracle of the mundane, appreciating the miracle of the mundane versus fearing the tyranny of the mediocre.
Jordan Peterson
It’s more the mediocre and resentful.
It’s more the mediocre and resentful.
Lex Fridman
Yes, but that’s you giving him a pass or seeing the good.
Yes, but that’s you giving him a pass or seeing the good.
Jordan Peterson
Well, fair enough.
Well, fair enough.
Lex Fridman
There’s a kind of… I mean, the tyranny of the mediocre, I always hated this idea that some people are better than others, and I understand it, but it’s a dangerous idea.
There’s a kind of… I mean, the tyranny of the mediocre, I always hated this idea that some people are better than others, and I understand it, but it’s a dangerous idea.
Jordan Peterson
This is why I like the story of Cain and Abel, I would say. Because Cain is mediocre, but that’s because he refuses to do his best. It’s not something intrinsic to him. And I actually think that’s the right formulation because I had people in my clinical practice who were, they were lost in many dimensions from the perspective of comparison. One woman I remember in particular who, man, she had a lot to contend with, she was not educated, she was not intelligent. She had a brutal family, terrible history of psychiatric hospitalization. And when I met her at a hospital, she was an outpatient from the psychiatric ward, and she had been in there with people that she thought were worse off than her, and they were. And that was a long way down.
This is why I like the story of Cain and Abel, I would say. Because Cain is mediocre, but that’s because he refuses to do his best. It’s not something intrinsic to him. And I actually think that’s the right formulation because I had people in my clinical practice who were, they were lost in many dimensions from the perspective of comparison. One woman I remember in particular who, man, she had a lot to contend with, she was not educated, she was not intelligent. She had a brutal family, terrible history of psychiatric hospitalization. And when I met her at a hospital, she was an outpatient from the psychiatric ward, and she had been in there with people that she thought were worse off than her, and they were. And that was a long way down.
That was like Dante’s Inferno level down. It was a long-term, psychiatric inpatient ward. Some of the people had been there for 30 years. It made One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest look like a romantic comedy. And she had come back to see if she could take some of those people for a walk, and was trying to find out how to get permission to do it. Better than other people. Some people are more intelligent, some people are more beautiful, some people are more athletic. Maybe it’s possible for everyone at all levels of attainment to strive towards the good. And maybe those talents that are given to people unfairly don’t privilege them in relationship to their moral conduct. And I think that’s true. There’s no evidence, for example, that there’s any correlation whatsoever between intelligence and morality. You’re not better because you’re smart. And what that also implies is if you’re smart, you can be a lot better at being worse.
Lex Fridman
I think, for myself, I’m just afraid of dismissing people because of my perception of them.
I think, for myself, I’m just afraid of dismissing people because of my perception of them.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Well, that’s why we have that metaphysical presumption that everybody’s made in the image of God. Despite that immense diversity of apparent ability, there’s that underlying metaphysical assumption that, yeah, we all vary in our perceived and actual utility in relationship to any proximal goal, but all of that’s independent of the question of axiomatic worth. And preposterous as that notion appears to be, it seems to me that societies that accept it as a fundamental axiomatic presumption are always the societies that you’d want to live in if you had a choice. And that to me is an existence proof for the utility of the presumption. And also, if you treat people like that in your life, every encounter you have, you make the assumption that it’s a radical equality of worth despite individual variance in ability, something like that, man, your interactions go way better. I mean, everyone wants to be treated that way.
Yeah. Well, that’s why we have that metaphysical presumption that everybody’s made in the image of God. Despite that immense diversity of apparent ability, there’s that underlying metaphysical assumption that, yeah, we all vary in our perceived and actual utility in relationship to any proximal goal, but all of that’s independent of the question of axiomatic worth. And preposterous as that notion appears to be, it seems to me that societies that accept it as a fundamental axiomatic presumption are always the societies that you’d want to live in if you had a choice. And that to me is an existence proof for the utility of the presumption. And also, if you treat people like that in your life, every encounter you have, you make the assumption that it’s a radical equality of worth despite individual variance in ability, something like that, man, your interactions go way better. I mean, everyone wants to be treated that way.
Look, here’s a developmental sequence for you, naive and trusting, hurt and cynical. Okay, well, is hurt and cynical better than naive and trusting? It’s like, yeah, probably. Is that where it ends? How about cynical and trusting as step three? And then the trust becomes courage. It’s like, yeah, I’ll put my hand out for you, but it’s not because I’m a fool. And I think that’s right, because that’s the re-instantiation of that initial trust that makes childhood magical and paradisal. But it’s the admixture of that with wisdom. It’s like, yeah, we could walk together uphill, but that doesn’t mean, and I’ll presume that that’s your aim, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to watch.
Lex Fridman
What’s a better life, cynical and safe or hopeful and vulnerable to be hurt?
What’s a better life, cynical and safe or hopeful and vulnerable to be hurt?
Jordan Peterson
Oh, you can’t dispense with vulnerable to be hurt. That’s the other realization. It’s like you’re going to stake your life on something. You could stake your life on security, but it’s not going to help. You don’t have that option.
Oh, you can’t dispense with vulnerable to be hurt. That’s the other realization. It’s like you’re going to stake your life on something. You could stake your life on security, but it’s not going to help. You don’t have that option.
Lex Fridman
So what do you do when you’re betrayed ultimately by some people you come across.
So what do you do when you’re betrayed ultimately by some people you come across.
Jordan Peterson
Grieve and look elsewhere. Do what you can to forgive, and not least, so you lighten your own burden. Maybe do what you can to help the person who betrayed you. And if that all proves impossible, then wash your hands of it and move on to the next adventure.
Grieve and look elsewhere. Do what you can to forgive, and not least, so you lighten your own burden. Maybe do what you can to help the person who betrayed you. And if that all proves impossible, then wash your hands of it and move on to the next adventure.
Lex Fridman
And do it again.
And do it again.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Truth
Lex Fridman
Boy, this life, something else. So we’ve been talking about some heavy, difficult topics, and you’ve talked about truth in your Nietzsche lectures and elsewhere. When you think, when you write, when you speak, how do you find what is true? Hemingway said, “All you have to do is write one true sentence.” How do you do that?
Boy, this life, something else. So we’ve been talking about some heavy, difficult topics, and you’ve talked about truth in your Nietzsche lectures and elsewhere. When you think, when you write, when you speak, how do you find what is true? Hemingway said, “All you have to do is write one true sentence.” How do you do that?
Jordan Peterson
Well, I would say first that you practice that. It’s like that question is something. And Hemingway knew this at least to some degree, and he certainly wrote about it, is that you have to orient your life upward as completely as you can, because otherwise you can’t distinguish between truth and falsehood. It has to be a practice. Now and for me, I started to become serious about that practice when I realized that it was the immorality of the individual, the resentful, craven, deceitful immorality of the individual that led to the terrible atrocities that humans engage in that make us doubt even our own worth. I became completely convinced of that. That the fundamental root cause of evil, let’s say, wasn’t economic or sociological, that it was spiritual, just psychological, and that if that was the case, you had an existential responsibility to aim upward and to tell the truth, and that everything depends on that. And I became convinced of that. And so then… Look, you set your path with your orientation. That’s how your perceptions work. As soon as you have a goal, a pathway opens up to you and you can see it. And the world divides itself into obstacles and things that move you forward. And so the pathway that’s in front of you depends on your aim. The things you perceive are concretizations of your aim. If your aim is untrue, then you won’t be able to tell the difference between truth and falsehood. And you might say, “Well, how do you know your aim is true?” It’s like, well, you course correct continually, and you can aim towards the ultimate. Are you ever sure that your aim is the right direction? You become increasingly accurate in your apprehension.
Well, I would say first that you practice that. It’s like that question is something. And Hemingway knew this at least to some degree, and he certainly wrote about it, is that you have to orient your life upward as completely as you can, because otherwise you can’t distinguish between truth and falsehood. It has to be a practice. Now and for me, I started to become serious about that practice when I realized that it was the immorality of the individual, the resentful, craven, deceitful immorality of the individual that led to the terrible atrocities that humans engage in that make us doubt even our own worth. I became completely convinced of that. That the fundamental root cause of evil, let’s say, wasn’t economic or sociological, that it was spiritual, just psychological, and that if that was the case, you had an existential responsibility to aim upward and to tell the truth, and that everything depends on that. And I became convinced of that. And so then… Look, you set your path with your orientation. That’s how your perceptions work. As soon as you have a goal, a pathway opens up to you and you can see it. And the world divides itself into obstacles and things that move you forward. And so the pathway that’s in front of you depends on your aim. The things you perceive are concretizations of your aim. If your aim is untrue, then you won’t be able to tell the difference between truth and falsehood. And you might say, “Well, how do you know your aim is true?” It’s like, well, you course correct continually, and you can aim towards the ultimate. Are you ever sure that your aim is the right direction? You become increasingly accurate in your apprehension.
Lex Fridman
Is it part of the process to cross the line, to go outside the Overton Window, to dip a toe outside the Overton Window for a bit?
Is it part of the process to cross the line, to go outside the Overton Window, to dip a toe outside the Overton Window for a bit?
Jordan Peterson
Of course. That’s what you do in part in play. I was at the Comedy Mothership, and every single comedian was completely reprehensible. All they were doing was saying things that you can’t say. Well, but it was in play. What I’m trying to do in my lectures is I’m on the edge. I have a question I’m trying to address, and I’m trying to figure it out. I don’t know where the conversation is going. Truly, it’s an exploration, and I think the reason that the audiences respond is because they can feel that, it’s a high wire act, and I could fail. My lectures have degrees of success. Sometimes I get real fortunate and there’s a perfect narrative arc. I have a question, I’m investigating it. It comes to a punchline conclusion just at the right time, and it’s like the whole act is complete, and sometimes it’s more fragmented. But I can tell when the audience is engaged because everyone’s silent, except maybe when they’re laughing.
Of course. That’s what you do in part in play. I was at the Comedy Mothership, and every single comedian was completely reprehensible. All they were doing was saying things that you can’t say. Well, but it was in play. What I’m trying to do in my lectures is I’m on the edge. I have a question I’m trying to address, and I’m trying to figure it out. I don’t know where the conversation is going. Truly, it’s an exploration, and I think the reason that the audiences respond is because they can feel that, it’s a high wire act, and I could fail. My lectures have degrees of success. Sometimes I get real fortunate and there’s a perfect narrative arc. I have a question, I’m investigating it. It comes to a punchline conclusion just at the right time, and it’s like the whole act is complete, and sometimes it’s more fragmented. But I can tell when the audience is engaged because everyone’s silent, except maybe when they’re laughing.
Lex Fridman
There’s a sense that you’re arguing with yourself when you’re lecturing. It’s beautiful. It’s really beautiful and powerful to watch. Nietzsche does the same. There’s contradictions in what you’re saying. There’s a struggle, what you’re saying. But I do think that when you’re doing the same on the internet, you get punished for the deviations. You get punished for the exploration, especially when that explores outside the Overton Window.
There’s a sense that you’re arguing with yourself when you’re lecturing. It’s beautiful. It’s really beautiful and powerful to watch. Nietzsche does the same. There’s contradictions in what you’re saying. There’s a struggle, what you’re saying. But I do think that when you’re doing the same on the internet, you get punished for the deviations. You get punished for the exploration, especially when that explores outside the Overton Window.
Jordan Peterson
Look, if you’re going to play hard in a conversation to explore, you’re going to say things that are edgy, that are going to cause trouble, and they might be wrong. And that’s another reason why free speech protection is so important. You actually have to protect the right, let’s say, in the optimal circumstance, you have to protect the right of well-meaning people to be wrong. Now, you probably have to go beyond that to truly protect it, you have to even protect the right of people who aren’t meaning well to be wrong. And we also need that because we’re not always well-meaning. The alternative to that protection would be the insistence that people only say what was 100% right all the time.
Look, if you’re going to play hard in a conversation to explore, you’re going to say things that are edgy, that are going to cause trouble, and they might be wrong. And that’s another reason why free speech protection is so important. You actually have to protect the right, let’s say, in the optimal circumstance, you have to protect the right of well-meaning people to be wrong. Now, you probably have to go beyond that to truly protect it, you have to even protect the right of people who aren’t meaning well to be wrong. And we also need that because we’re not always well-meaning. The alternative to that protection would be the insistence that people only say what was 100% right all the time.
Lex Fridman
I’m also, I guess this is a call to our fellow humans not to reduce a person to a particular statement, which is what the internet tends to want to do.
I’m also, I guess this is a call to our fellow humans not to reduce a person to a particular statement, which is what the internet tends to want to do.
Jordan Peterson
Especially if it’s the worst thing they ever said.
Especially if it’s the worst thing they ever said.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Because God… Well, anyone judged by that standard is doomed unless they’re silent.
Yeah. Because God… Well, anyone judged by that standard is doomed unless they’re silent.
Lex Fridman
But it also just makes you not want to play.
But it also just makes you not want to play.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah, right?
Yeah, right?
Lex Fridman
Not want to take radical thought experiments and carry out to the natural that conclusion.
Not want to take radical thought experiments and carry out to the natural that conclusion.
Jordan Peterson
Well, that’s kind of the definition of a totalitarian state.
Well, that’s kind of the definition of a totalitarian state.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Jordan Peterson
No one’s playing in a totalitarian state, ever.
No one’s playing in a totalitarian state, ever.
Lex Fridman
But in this case, it’s an emergent one-
But in this case, it’s an emergent one-
Jordan Peterson
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
… with psychopaths roaming the landscape, the barbarians.
… with psychopaths roaming the landscape, the barbarians.
Jordan Peterson
That might be the general pattern of totalitarianism.
That might be the general pattern of totalitarianism.
Lex Fridman
Well, in totalitarianism, there’s usually one psychopath, not multiple.
Well, in totalitarianism, there’s usually one psychopath, not multiple.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Well, everyone else is complicit, at least in their silence.
Yeah. Well, everyone else is complicit, at least in their silence.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Does the study of the pathology of psychopaths online wear on you?
Yeah. Does the study of the pathology of psychopaths online wear on you?
Jordan Peterson
Yes, definitely.
Yes, definitely.
Lex Fridman
Do you ever consider doing less of that?
Do you ever consider doing less of that?
Jordan Peterson
Yes. Yes. Definitely. Probably I experienced most of that on X, but that’s also where I find most of my guests. That’s also where I get a sense of the zeitgeist, which is necessary. For example, if you’re going to be a podcast host, it’s necessary for me to make my lectures on point and up to date to get a sampling of the current moment. You have to be of the moment, in many ways, to function at a high level. There’s a price to be paid for that because you’re exposed to everything in a sense.
Yes. Yes. Definitely. Probably I experienced most of that on X, but that’s also where I find most of my guests. That’s also where I get a sense of the zeitgeist, which is necessary. For example, if you’re going to be a podcast host, it’s necessary for me to make my lectures on point and up to date to get a sampling of the current moment. You have to be of the moment, in many ways, to function at a high level. There’s a price to be paid for that because you’re exposed to everything in a sense.
Lex Fridman
You can also over sample the darkness.
You can also over sample the darkness.
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Lex Fridman
And it can make you more and more cynical. It’s a danger, right?
And it can make you more and more cynical. It’s a danger, right?
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Yeah. Well, luckily for me, I have many things that counterbalance that, the familial relationships we talked about, the friendships, and then also all of the public things I do are positive. The lecture tours, for example, which I’m on a lot, they’re basically 100% positive, so I’m very well buttressed against that-
Yeah. Yeah. Well, luckily for me, I have many things that counterbalance that, the familial relationships we talked about, the friendships, and then also all of the public things I do are positive. The lecture tours, for example, which I’m on a lot, they’re basically 100% positive, so I’m very well buttressed against that-
Lex Fridman
That’s great to hear.
That’s great to hear.
Jordan Peterson
… darker element.
… darker element.
Lex Fridman
As a fan in the arena, watching the gladiators fight, your mind is too important to be lost to the cynical, to the battles with the abyss.
As a fan in the arena, watching the gladiators fight, your mind is too important to be lost to the cynical, to the battles with the abyss.
Jordan Peterson
You have a moral obligation too, to maintain a positive orientation. It’s a moral obligation. The future is, of course, rife with contradictory possibilities, and I suppose in some ways, the more rapid the rate of transformation, the more possibility for good and for evil is making itself manifest at any moment. But it looks like the best way to ensure that the future is everything we wish it would be is to maintain faith that that is the direction that will prevail. And I think that’s a form of moral commitment, when it’s not just naive optimism.
You have a moral obligation too, to maintain a positive orientation. It’s a moral obligation. The future is, of course, rife with contradictory possibilities, and I suppose in some ways, the more rapid the rate of transformation, the more possibility for good and for evil is making itself manifest at any moment. But it looks like the best way to ensure that the future is everything we wish it would be is to maintain faith that that is the direction that will prevail. And I think that’s a form of moral commitment, when it’s not just naive optimism.
Lex Fridman
Well, Jordan, thank you for being courageous and being the light amid the darkness for many, many people. And thank you for once again talking today.
Well, Jordan, thank you for being courageous and being the light amid the darkness for many, many people. And thank you for once again talking today.
Jordan Peterson
Thanks very much for the invitation and for the conversation. It’s always a pleasure to see you. You’re doing a pretty decent job yourself about there, illuminating dark corners and bringing people upward. You’ve got a remarkable thing going with your podcast, and you’re very good at it.
Thanks very much for the invitation and for the conversation. It’s always a pleasure to see you. You’re doing a pretty decent job yourself about there, illuminating dark corners and bringing people upward. You’ve got a remarkable thing going with your podcast, and you’re very good at it.
Lex Fridman
Thank you, Jordan. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jordan Peterson. To support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you some words from Friedrich Nietzsche. “I would like to learn more to see as beautiful, that which is necessary in things. Then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful.” Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.
Thank you, Jordan. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jordan Peterson. To support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you some words from Friedrich Nietzsche. “I would like to learn more to see as beautiful, that which is necessary in things. Then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful.” Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.
Transcript for Cursor Team: Future of Programming with AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #447
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And so that’s everything from giving you visual differentiation of the actual tokens in the code so you can scan it quickly to letting you navigate around the code base, sort of like you’re navigating around the internet with hyperlinks, you’re going to definitions of things you’re using to error checking to catch rudimentary bugs. And so traditionally that’s what a code editor has meant. And I think that what a code editor is is going to change a lot over the next 10 years as what it means to build software maybe starts to look a bit different.
I think that the next big moment where everything kind of clicked together was actually getting early access to GPT-IV. So it was sort of end of 2022 was when we were tinkering with that model and the step-upping capabilities felt enormous. And previous to that, we had been working on a couple of different projects. Because of Copilot, because of scaling odds, because of our prior interest in the technology, we had been tinkering around with tools for programmers, but things that are very specific. So we were building tools for financial professionals who have to work within a Jupyter Notebook or playing around with can you do static analysis with these models?
And then the step-up in GPT- IV felt like, look, that really made concrete the theoretical gains that we had predicted before. It felt like you could build a lot more just immediately at that point in time. And also if we were being consistent, it really felt like this wasn’t just going to be a point solution thing. This was going to be all of programming was going to flow through these models and it felt like that demanded a different type of programming environment, a different type of programming. And so we set off to build that sort of larger vision around then.
When we started Cursor, you really felt this frustration that models… You could see models getting better, but the Copilot experience had not changed. It was like, man, these guys, the ceiling is getting higher, why are they not making new things? They should be making new things. Where’s all the alpha features? There were no alpha features. I’m sure it was selling well. I’m sure it was a great business, but it didn’t feel… I’m one of these people that really want to try and use new things and there was no new thing for a very long while.
And the second thing Cursor is pretty good at right now too is helping you sometimes jump ahead of the AI and tell it what to do and go from instructions to code. And on both of those we’ve done a lot of work on making the editing experience for those things ergonomic and also making those things smart and fast.
So the idea was you just press Tab, it would go 18 lines down and then show you the next edit and you would press Tab, so as long as you could keep pressing Tab. And so the internal competition was, how many Tabs can we make someone press? Once you have the idea, more abstractly, the thing to think about is how are the edits zero entropy? So once you’ve expressed your intent and the edit is… There’s no new bits of information to finish your thought, but you still have to type some characters to make the computer understand what you’re actually thinking, then maybe the model should just sort of read your mind and all the zero entropy bits should just be like tabbed away. That was sort of the abstract version.
Then the next iteration of it, which is sort of funny, you would hold the, on Mac, the option button. So it would sort of highlight a region of code to show you that there might be something coming. So maybe in this example, the input and the value would all get blue. And the blue was to highlight that the AI had a suggestion for you. So instead of directly showing you the thing, it would just hint that the AI had a suggestion and if you really wanted to see it, you would hold the option button and then you would see the new suggestion. And if you release the option button, you would then see your original code.
Or sometimes if you’re making a website for example, the easiest way to show to the AI what you want is not to tell it what to do but drag things around or draw things, and maybe eventually we will get to brain machine interfaces or whatever and you can understand what you’re thinking. And so I think natural language will have a place. I think it will definitely not be the way most people program most of the time.
So what we do is instead of using what speculative decoding normally does, which is using a really small model to predict these draft tokens that your larger model will then go in and verify, with code edits, we have a very strong prior of what the existing code will look like and that prior is literally the same exact code. So you can do is you can just feed chunks of the original code back into the model, and then the model will just pretty much agree most of the time that, “Okay, I’m just going to spit this code back out.” And so you can process all of those lines in parallel and you just do this with sufficiently many chunks. And then eventually you’ll reach a point of disagreement where the model will now predict text that is different from the ground truth original code. It’ll generate those tokens and then we will decide after enough tokens match the original code to re- start speculating in chunks of code.
What this actually ends up looking like is just a much faster version of normal editing code. So it looks like a much faster version of the model rewriting all the code. So we can use the same exact interface that we use for diffs, but it will just stream down a lot faster.
And so for instance, one of the most popular agent benchmarks, SWE-Bench, is really, really contaminated in the training data of these foundation models. And so if you ask these foundation models to do a SWE-Bench problem, but you actually don’t give them the context of a code base, they can hallucinate the right file pass, they can hallucinate the right function names. And so it’s also just the public aspect of these things is tricky.
And we have this one system internally that we call Preempt, which helps us with that a little bit. And I think it was built for the era before where we had 8,000 token contact windows. And it’s a little bit similar to when you’re making a website. You want it to work on mobile, you want it to work on a desktop screen, and you have this dynamic information which you don’t have. For example, if you’re designing a print magazine, you know exactly where you can put stuff. But when you have a website or when you have a prompt, you have these inputs and then you need to format them to always work, even if the input is really big, then you might have to cut something down. And so the idea was, okay, let’s take some inspiration. What’s the best way to design websites? Well, the thing that we really like is React and the declarative approach where you use JSX in JavaScript, and then you declare, “This is what I want and I think this has higher priority or this has higher Z index than something else.”
And then you have this rendering engine in web design. It’s like Chrome, and in our case it’s a preempt renderer, which then fits everything onto the page. And as you declare, decide what you want and then it figures out what you want. And so we have found that to be quite helpful and I think the role of it has shifted over time where initially it was to fit to these small context windows. Now it’s really useful because it helps us with splitting up the data that goes into the prompt and the actual rendering of it. And so it’s easier to debug because you can change the rendering of the prompt and then try it on old prompts because you have the raw data that went into the prompt, and then you can see, “Did my change actually improve it for this entire eval set?”
Because if maybe you’re making the API, you should also edit the client and the server that is using the API and the other one resolving the API. So that would be cool as both there’s the phase where you’re writing a prompt and there’s… Before you even click, “Enter,” maybe we can help resolve some of the uncertainty.
And so for a lot of programming, I think you actually want a system that’s instant, that gives you an initial version instantly back and then you can iterate super, super quickly.
Instead, if you have already done that and you stored the keys and values and you keep that in the GPU, then when I… Let’s say I have to sort it for the last N tokens. If I now want to compute the output token for the N+1nth token, I don’t need to pass those first N tokens through the entire model because I already have all those keys and values. And so you just need to do the forward pass through that last token. And then when you’re doing attention, you’re reusing those keys and values that have been computed, which is the only kind of sequential part or sequentially dependent part of the transformer.
And one way to think about this, the model knows internally has some uncertainty over which of the key things is correct or which of the key things does the human wants? When we RL our Cursor Tab model, one of the things we’re doing is we’re predicting which of the 100 different suggestions the model produces is more amenable for humans? Which of them do humans more like than other things? Maybe there’s something where the model can predict very far ahead versus a little bit, maybe somewhere in the middle. And then you can give a reward to the things that humans would like more and punish the things that it would like, and then train the model to output the suggestions that humans would like more. You have these RL loops that are very useful that exploit these passive K curves. Aman, maybe can go into even more detail.
And so then that’s memory bandwidth, and how can we make this faster? We can try to compress the size of these keys and values. So multi-query attention is the most aggressive of these. Where normally with multi-head attention, you have some number of, quote, unquote, “attention heads” and some number of query heads. Multi-query just preserves the query heads, gets rid of all the key value heads. So there’s only one kind of key value head, and there’s all the remaining query heads. With group query, you instead preserve all the query heads and then your keys and values are… There are fewer heads for the keys and values, but you’re not reducing it to just one. But anyways, the whole point here is you’re just reducing the size of your KV cache.
But another way you can improve performance is by letting the model iterate and get feedback. And so one very important piece of feedback when you’re a programmer is the language server, which is this thing, it exists for most different languages, and there’s a separate language server per language. And it can tell you, “You’re using the wrong type here,” and then gives you an error, or it can allow you to go to definition and sort of understands the structure of your code. So language servers are extensions developed by… There is a TypeScript language server developed by the TypeScript people, a Rust language server developed by the Rust people, and then they all interface over the language server protocol to VS Code. So that VS Code doesn’t need to have all of the different languages built into VS Code but rather you can use the existing compiler infrastructure.
And so when you try to push one of these things that really don’t exist very much online, like for example, the Cursor Tab objective of predicting the next edit given the edits done so far, the brittleness kind of shows. And then bug detection is another great example, where there aren’t really that many examples of actually detecting real bugs and then proposing fixes and the models just kind of really struggle at it. But I think it’s a question of transferring the model in the same way that you get this fantastic transfer from pre-trained models just on code in general to the Cursor Tab objective. You’ll see a very, very similar thing with generalized models that are really good at code to bug detection. It just takes a little bit of kind nudging in that direction.
Part of it is maybe the cultural knowledge of why is a staff engineer is good because they know that three years ago someone wrote a really sketchy piece of code that took the server down and as opposed to maybe you just… This thing is an experiment. So a few bugs are fine, you’re just trying to experiment and get the feel of the thing. And so if the model gets really annoying when you’re writing an experiment, that’s really bad, but if you’re writing something for super production, you’re writing a database. You’re writing code in Postgres or Linux or whatever. You’re Linus Torvalds. It’s sort of unacceptable to have even an edge case and just having the calibration of how paranoid is the user and like-
It could also be that there are two different product form factors here. It could be that you have a really specialty model that’s quite fast that’s running in the background and trying to spot bugs. And it might be that sometimes sort of to Arvid’s earlier example about some nefarious input box bug. It might be that sometimes you want to like… You know there’s a bug, you’re not just checking hypothesis free, you’re like, “This is a problem, I really want to solve it,” and you zap that with tons and tons and tons of compute, and you’re willing to put in $50 to solve that bug or something even more.
I just sit back, I read the code, I was like, “This is correct. I tested it, it’s correct.” I was like, “I want to tip.” I want a button that goes, “Here’s $5.” One that’s really good just to support the company and support what the interface is. And the other is that probably sends a strong signal like good job. So there’s this much stronger signal than just accepting the code. You just actually send a strong good job. That and for bug finding, obviously, there’s a lot of people that would pay a huge amount of money for a bug bounty thing, right? You guys think about that?
So one of the technical challenges is always making sure that the local index, the local code base state is the same as the state that is on the server. The way, technically, we ended up doing that is, for every single file you can keep this hash, and then for every folder you can keep a hash, which is the hash of all of its children. You can recursively do that until the top. Why do something complicated? One thing you could do is you could keep a hash for every file and every minute, you could try to download the hashes that are on the server, figure out what are the files that don’t exist on the server. Maybe you just created a new file, maybe you just deleted a file, maybe you checked out a new branch, and try to reconcile the state between the client and the server.
But that introduces absolutely ginormous network overhead both on the client side. Nobody really wants us to hammer their WiFi all the time if you’re using Cursor. But also, it would introduce ginormous overhead on the database. It would be reading these tens of terabytes database, approaching 20 terabytes or something data base every second. That’s just crazy. You definitely don’t want to do that. So what you do, you just try to reconcile the single hash, which is at the root of the project. And then if something mismatches, then you go, you find where all the things disagree. Maybe you look at the children and see if the hashes match. If the hashes don’t match, go look at their children and so on. But you only do that in the scenario where things don’t match. For most people, most of the time, the hashes match.
So more and more of the world’s information and data will flow through one or two centralized actors. And then there are worries about, there can be traditional hacker attempts, but it also creates this scary part where if all of the world’s information is flowing through one node in plaintext, you can have surveillance in very bad ways. Sometimes that will happen for… Initially, will be good reasons. People will want to try to protect against bad actors using AI models in bad ways, and then you will add in some surveillance code. And then someone else will come in and you’re on a slippery slope, and then you start doing bad things with a lot of the world’s data. So I am very hopeful that we can solve homomorphic encryption for-
I think that there are also cool academic ideas, stuff we’ve tried out internally, but also the field is grappling with writ large about, can you get language models to a place where you can actually just have the model itself understand a new corpus of information? The most popular talked about version of this is can you make the context windows infinite? Then if you make the context windows infinite, can you make the model actually pay attention to the infinite context? And then after you can make it pay attention to the infinite context to make it somewhat feasible to actually do it, can you then do caching for that infinite context? You don’t have to recompute that all the time. But there are other cool ideas that are being tried, that are a little bit more analogous to fine-tuning of actually learning this information in the weights of the model. It might be that you actually get a qualitative lead different type of understanding if you do it more at the weight level than if you do it at the in-context learning level.
I think the jury’s still a little bit out on how this is all going to work in the end? But in the interim, us as a company, we are really excited about better retrieval systems and picking the parts of the code base that are most relevant to what you’re doing, and we could do that a lot better.
It’s an open research question, one that we’re quite interested in. And then there’s also uncertainty of, do you want the model to be the thing that end-to-end is doing everything, i.e. it’s doing the retrieval in its internals and then answering a question, creating the code, or do you want to separate the retrieval from the frontier model, where maybe you’ll get some really capable models that are much better than the best open source ones in a handful of months? And then you’ll want to separately train a really good open source model to be the retriever, to be the thing that feeds in the context to these larger models.
So you could either get ground truth ones, which might be difficult or you could do what you hinted at or suggested using synthetic data, i.e. having the model ask questions about various recent pieces of the code. So you take the pieces of the code, then prompt the model or have a model propose a question for that piece of code, and then add those as instruction fine-tuning data points. And then in theory, this might unlock the model’s ability to answer questions about that code base.
So the really interesting thing I like about this is there are some problems that perhaps require 100 trillion parameter model intelligence trained on 100 trillion tokens. But that’s maybe 1%, maybe 0.1% of all queries. So are you going to spend all of this effort, all of this compute training a model that costs that much and then run it so infrequently? It feels completely wasteful when instead you get the model that can… You train the model that is capable of doing the 99.9% of queries, then you have a way of inference time running it longer for those few people that really, really want max intelligence.
So what people do in all these papers is they sample a bunch of outputs from the language model, and then use the process reward models to grade all those generations alongside maybe some other heuristics and then use that to choose the best answer. The really interesting thing that people think might work and people want to work is tree search with these process reward models. Because if you really can grade every single step of the chain of thought, then you can branch out and explore multiple paths of this chain of thought and then use these process reward models to evaluate how good is this branch that you’re taking.
o1 is not part of the default Cursor experience in any way up, and we still haven’t found a way to yet integrate it into the editor in a way that we reach for every hour, maybe even every day. So I think that the jury’s still out on how to use the model, and we haven’t seen examples yet of people releasing things where it seems really clear like, oh, that’s now the use case. The obvious one to turn to is maybe this can make it easier for you to have these background things running, to have these models and loops, to have these models be agentic. But we’re still discovering,
This approach is not going to get you a more capable model than the original one that has produced the tokens, but it’s really useful for if there’s some capability you want to elicit from some really expensive high-latency model. You can then distill that down into some smaller task-specific model.
The second kind is when one direction of the problem is easier than the reverse. So a great example of this is bug detection, like we mentioned earlier, where it’s a lot easier to introduce reasonable-looking bugs than it is to actually detect them. And this is probably the case for humans too. And so what you can do, is you can get a model that’s not trained in that much data, that’s not that smart, to introduce a bunch of bugs and code. And then you can use that to then train… Use the synthetic data to train a model that can be really good at detecting bugs.
The last category I think is, I guess the main one that it feels like the big labs are doing for synthetic data, which is producing text with language models that can then be verified easily. So extreme example of this is if you have a verification system that can detect if language is Shakespeare level, and then you have a bunch of monkeys typing and typewriters. You can eventually get enough training data to train a Shakespeare-level language model.
And I mean this is very much the case for math where verification is actually really, really easy for formal languages. And then what you can do, is you can have an okay model, generate a ton of rollouts, and then choose the ones that you know have actually proved the ground truth theorems, and train that further.
There’s similar things you can do for code with lead code like problems, where if you have some set of tests that you know correspond to if something passes these tests, it actually solved problem. You could do the same thing where you verify that it’s passed the test and then train the model in the outputs that have passed the tests.
I think it’s going to be a little tricky getting this to work in all domains, or just in general. Having the perfect verifier feels really, really hard to do with just open-ended miscellaneous tasks. You give the model or more long horizon tasks, even in coding.
RLAIF is interesting because you’re depending on… This is actually, it’s depending on the constraint that verification is actually a decent bit easier than generation. Because it feels like, okay, what are you doing? Are you using this language model to look at the language model outputs and then prove the language model? But no, it actually may work if the language model has a much easier time verifying some solution than it does generating it. Then you actually could perhaps get this kind of recursive loop. But I don’t think it’s going to look exactly like that.
The other thing you could do, that we kind of do, is a little bit of a mix of RLAIF and RLHF, where usually the model is actually quite correct and this is the case of precursor tap picking between two possible generations of what is the better one. And then it just needs a little bit of human nudging with only on the order 50, 100 examples to align that prior the model has with exactly with what you want.
It looks different than I think normal RLHF where you’re usually training these reward models in tons of examples.
Speaking of how fast things have been going, let’s talk about scaling laws. So for people who don’t know, maybe it’s good to talk about this whole idea of scaling laws. What are they, where’d you think stand, and where do you think things are going?
And I think there are a lot more dimensions to these curves than what we originally used, of just compute number of parameters and data. Like inference compute is the obvious one. I think context length is another obvious one. So let’s say you care about the two things of inference compute and then context window, maybe the thing you want to train, is some kind of SSM. Because they’re much, much cheaper and faster at super, super long context. And even if, maybe it was 10 X more scaling properties during training, meaning you spend 10 X more compute to train the thing to get the same level of capabilities, it’s worth it. Because you care most about that inference budget for really long context windows. So it’ll be interesting to see how people play with all these dimensions.
But if you really care about it, maybe the thing to do is what Gamma did, which is let’s not just train on tokens, let’s literally train on minimizing the KL divergence with the distribution of gemma 27B, right? So knowledge distillation there. And you’re spending the compute of literally training this 27 billion parameter model on all these tokens, just to get out this, I don’t know, smaller model.
Or maybe going a step further, like the next generation of models, having these things… Like getting model parallelism to work, and scaling it on thousands of, or maybe tens of thousands of V100s, which I think GBDE-III may have been. There’s just so much engineering effort that has to go into all of these things to make it work. If you really brought that cost down to maybe not zero, but just made it 10 X easier, made it super easy for someone with really fantastic ideas, to immediately get to the version of the new architecture they dreamed up, that is getting 50, 40% utilization on their GPUs, I think that would just speed up research by a ton.
It’s much harder to be really specific when you’re talking in the text box. And if you’re necessarily just going to communicate with a thing like you would be communicating with an engineering department, you’re actually advocating tons of really important decisions to this bot. And this kind of gets at, fundamentally, what engineering is. I think that some people who are a little bit more removed from engineering might think of it as the spec is completely written out and then the engineers just come and they just implement. And it’s just about making the thing happen in code and making the thing exist. But I think a lot of the best engineering, the engineering we enjoy, involves tons of tiny micro decisions about what exactly you’re building, and about really hard trade-offs between speed and cost and just all the other things involved in a system. As long as humans are actually the ones designing the software and the ones specifying what they want to be built, and it’s not just like company run by all AIs, we think you’ll really want the human in a driver’s seat dictating these decisions.
And so the jury’s still out on what that looks like. I think that one weird idea for what that could look like, is it could look like you can control the level of abstraction you view a code base at. And you can point at specific parts of a code base that… Like, maybe you digest a code base by looking at it in the form of pseudocode. And you can actually edit that pseudocode too, and then have changes get made down at the sort of formal programming level. And you can gesture at any piece of logic in your software component of programming. You keep the inflow text editing component of programming, you keep the control of, you can even go down into the code, you can go at higher levels of abstraction, while also giving you these big productivity gains.
And so I think it’s going to be a really, really fun time for people who build software. I think that the skills will probably change too. I think that people’s taste and creative ideas will be magnified. And it will be maybe less, a little bit, about boilerplate text editing. Maybe even a little bit less about carefulness, which I think is really important today if you’re a programmer. I think it’ll be a lot more fun.
“To start, we’re building the engineer of the future, a human AI programmer that’s an order of magnitude more effective than any one engineer. This hybrid engineer will have effortless control over their code base and no low entropy keystrokes. They will iterate at the speed of their judgment, even in the most complex systems. Using a combination of AI and human ingenuity they will outsmart and out engineer the best pure AI systems. We are a group of researchers and engineers.
We build software and models to invent at the edge of what’s useful and what’s possible. Our work has already improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of programmers.”
And on the way to that, we’ll at least make programming more fun. So thank you for talking today.
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 0:59 – Code editor basics
- 3:09 – GitHub Copilot
- 10:27 – Cursor
- 16:54 – Cursor Tab
- 23:08 – Code diff
- 31:20 – ML details
- 36:54 – GPT vs Claude
- 43:28 – Prompt engineering
- 50:54 – AI agents
- 1:04:51 – Running code in background
- 1:09:31 – Debugging
- 1:14:58 – Dangerous code
- 1:26:09 – Branching file systems
- 1:29:20 – Scaling challenges
- 1:43:32 – Context
- 1:48:39 – OpenAI o1
- 2:00:01 – Synthetic data
- 2:03:48 – RLHF vs RLAIF
- 2:05:34 – Fields Medal for AI
- 2:08:17 – Scaling laws
- 2:17:06 – The future of programming
Introduction
Lex
The following is a conversation with the founding members of the Cursor team, Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark, and Aman Sanger. Cursor is a code editor based on VS Code that adds a lot of powerful features for AI-assisted coding. It has captivated the attention and excitement of the programming and AI communities. So I thought this is an excellent opportunity to dive deep into the role of AI in programming. This is a super technical conversation that is bigger than just about one code editor. It’s about the future of programming and in general, the future of human AI collaboration in designing and engineering complicated and powerful systems. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Michael, Sualeh, Arvid and Aman.
The following is a conversation with the founding members of the Cursor team, Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark, and Aman Sanger. Cursor is a code editor based on VS Code that adds a lot of powerful features for AI-assisted coding. It has captivated the attention and excitement of the programming and AI communities. So I thought this is an excellent opportunity to dive deep into the role of AI in programming. This is a super technical conversation that is bigger than just about one code editor. It’s about the future of programming and in general, the future of human AI collaboration in designing and engineering complicated and powerful systems. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Michael, Sualeh, Arvid and Aman.
Code editor basics
Lex
All right, this is awesome. We have Michael, Aman, Sualeh, Arvid here from the Cursor team. First up, big ridiculous question. What’s the point of a code editor?
All right, this is awesome. We have Michael, Aman, Sualeh, Arvid here from the Cursor team. First up, big ridiculous question. What’s the point of a code editor?
Michael
So the code editor is largely the place where you build software and today or for a long time, that’s meant the place where you text edit a formal programming language. And for people who aren’t programmers, the way to think of a code editor is a really souped up word processor for programmers, where the reason it’s souped up is code has a lot of structure. And so the “word processor,” the code editor can actually do a lot for you that word processors sort of in the writing space haven’t been able to do for people editing texts there.
So the code editor is largely the place where you build software and today or for a long time, that’s meant the place where you text edit a formal programming language. And for people who aren’t programmers, the way to think of a code editor is a really souped up word processor for programmers, where the reason it’s souped up is code has a lot of structure. And so the “word processor,” the code editor can actually do a lot for you that word processors sort of in the writing space haven’t been able to do for people editing texts there.
And so that’s everything from giving you visual differentiation of the actual tokens in the code so you can scan it quickly to letting you navigate around the code base, sort of like you’re navigating around the internet with hyperlinks, you’re going to definitions of things you’re using to error checking to catch rudimentary bugs. And so traditionally that’s what a code editor has meant. And I think that what a code editor is is going to change a lot over the next 10 years as what it means to build software maybe starts to look a bit different.
Lex
I think also a code editor should just be fun.
I think also a code editor should just be fun.
Arvid
Yes, that is very important. That is very important. And it’s actually sort of an underrated aspect of how we decide what to build. A lot of the things that we build and then we try them out, we do an experiment and then we actually throw them out because they’re not fun. And so a big part of being fun is being fast a lot of the time. Fast is fun.
Yes, that is very important. That is very important. And it’s actually sort of an underrated aspect of how we decide what to build. A lot of the things that we build and then we try them out, we do an experiment and then we actually throw them out because they’re not fun. And so a big part of being fun is being fast a lot of the time. Fast is fun.
Lex
Yeah, fast is… That should be a T-shirt.
Yeah, fast is… That should be a T-shirt.
Michael
Fundamentally, I think one of the things that draws a lot of people to building stuff on computers is this insane iteration speed, where in other disciplines you might be sort of gate capped by resources or the ability… Even the ability to get a large group together and coding is this amazing thing where it’s you and the computer and that alone, you can build really cool stuff really quickly.
Fundamentally, I think one of the things that draws a lot of people to building stuff on computers is this insane iteration speed, where in other disciplines you might be sort of gate capped by resources or the ability… Even the ability to get a large group together and coding is this amazing thing where it’s you and the computer and that alone, you can build really cool stuff really quickly.
GitHub Copilot
Lex
So for people who don’t know, Cursor is this super cool new editor that’s a fork of VS Code. It would be interesting to get your explanation of your own journey of editors. I think all of you were big fans of VS Code with Copilot. How did you arrive to VS Code and how did that lead to your journey with Cursor?
So for people who don’t know, Cursor is this super cool new editor that’s a fork of VS Code. It would be interesting to get your explanation of your own journey of editors. I think all of you were big fans of VS Code with Copilot. How did you arrive to VS Code and how did that lead to your journey with Cursor?
Aman
Yeah, so I think a lot of us… Well, all of us were originally [inaudible 00:03:39] users.
Yeah, so I think a lot of us… Well, all of us were originally [inaudible 00:03:39] users.
Sualeh
Pure Vim.
Pure Vim.
Aman
Pure Vim. Yeah. No Neovim, just Pure Vim and a terminal. And at least for myself, it was around the time that Copilot came out, so 2021 that I really wanted to try it. So I went into VS Code, the only code editor in which it was available, and even though I really enjoyed using Vim, just the experience of Copilot with VS Code was more than good enough to convince me to switch. And so that kind of was the default until we started working on Cursor.
Pure Vim. Yeah. No Neovim, just Pure Vim and a terminal. And at least for myself, it was around the time that Copilot came out, so 2021 that I really wanted to try it. So I went into VS Code, the only code editor in which it was available, and even though I really enjoyed using Vim, just the experience of Copilot with VS Code was more than good enough to convince me to switch. And so that kind of was the default until we started working on Cursor.
Lex
And maybe we should explain what Copilot does. It’s a really nice auto complete. As you start writing a thing, it suggests one or two or three lines how to complete the thing. And there’s a fun experience in that. You know like when you have a close friendship and your friend completes your sentences? When it’s done well, there’s an intimate feeling. There’s probably a better word than intimate, but there’s a cool feeling of holy shit, it gets me. And then there’s an unpleasant feeling when it doesn’t get you. And so there’s that kind of friction. But I would say for a lot of people, the feeling that it gets me overpowers that it doesn’t.
And maybe we should explain what Copilot does. It’s a really nice auto complete. As you start writing a thing, it suggests one or two or three lines how to complete the thing. And there’s a fun experience in that. You know like when you have a close friendship and your friend completes your sentences? When it’s done well, there’s an intimate feeling. There’s probably a better word than intimate, but there’s a cool feeling of holy shit, it gets me. And then there’s an unpleasant feeling when it doesn’t get you. And so there’s that kind of friction. But I would say for a lot of people, the feeling that it gets me overpowers that it doesn’t.
Arvid
And I think actually one of the underrated aspects of Github Copilot is that even when it’s wrong, it’s a little bit annoying, but it’s not that bad because you just type another character and then maybe then it gets you, or you type another character and then it gets you. So even when it’s wrong, it’s not that bad.
And I think actually one of the underrated aspects of Github Copilot is that even when it’s wrong, it’s a little bit annoying, but it’s not that bad because you just type another character and then maybe then it gets you, or you type another character and then it gets you. So even when it’s wrong, it’s not that bad.
Sualeh
You can sort of iterate and fix it. I mean, the other underrated part of Copilot for me was just the first real AI product. So the first language model consumer product.
You can sort of iterate and fix it. I mean, the other underrated part of Copilot for me was just the first real AI product. So the first language model consumer product.
Lex
So Copilot was kind of like the first killer app for LMs.
So Copilot was kind of like the first killer app for LMs.
Michael
Yeah. And the beta was out in 2021.
Yeah. And the beta was out in 2021.
Lex
Right. Okay. So what’s the origin story of Cursor?
Right. Okay. So what’s the origin story of Cursor?
Michael
So around 2020, the scaling loss papers came out from OpenAI and that was a moment where this looked like clear predictable progress for the field where even if we didn’t have any more ideas, it looked like you could make these models a lot better if you had more compute and more data.
So around 2020, the scaling loss papers came out from OpenAI and that was a moment where this looked like clear predictable progress for the field where even if we didn’t have any more ideas, it looked like you could make these models a lot better if you had more compute and more data.
Lex
By the way, we’ll probably talk for three to four hours on the topic of scaling loss. But just to summarize, it’s a paper in a set of papers in a set of ideas that say bigger might be better for model size and data size in the realm of machine learning.
By the way, we’ll probably talk for three to four hours on the topic of scaling loss. But just to summarize, it’s a paper in a set of papers in a set of ideas that say bigger might be better for model size and data size in the realm of machine learning.
Sualeh
It’s bigger and better, but predictably better.
It’s bigger and better, but predictably better.
Lex
Okay, that’s another topic of conversation.
Okay, that’s another topic of conversation.
Arvid
Yes. Yeah.
Yes. Yeah.
Michael
So around that time for some of us, there were a lot of conceptual conversations about what’s this going to look like? What’s the story going to be for all these different knowledge worker fields about how they’re going to be made better by this technology getting better? And then I think there were a couple of moments where the theoretical gains predicted in that paper started to feel really concrete and it started to feel like a moment where you could actually go and not do a PhD if you wanted to do useful work in AI. It actually felt like now there was this whole set of systems one could build that were really useful. And I think that the first moment we already talked about a little bit, which was playing with the early beta of Copilot, that was awesome and magical.
So around that time for some of us, there were a lot of conceptual conversations about what’s this going to look like? What’s the story going to be for all these different knowledge worker fields about how they’re going to be made better by this technology getting better? And then I think there were a couple of moments where the theoretical gains predicted in that paper started to feel really concrete and it started to feel like a moment where you could actually go and not do a PhD if you wanted to do useful work in AI. It actually felt like now there was this whole set of systems one could build that were really useful. And I think that the first moment we already talked about a little bit, which was playing with the early beta of Copilot, that was awesome and magical.
I think that the next big moment where everything kind of clicked together was actually getting early access to GPT-IV. So it was sort of end of 2022 was when we were tinkering with that model and the step-upping capabilities felt enormous. And previous to that, we had been working on a couple of different projects. Because of Copilot, because of scaling odds, because of our prior interest in the technology, we had been tinkering around with tools for programmers, but things that are very specific. So we were building tools for financial professionals who have to work within a Jupyter Notebook or playing around with can you do static analysis with these models?
And then the step-up in GPT- IV felt like, look, that really made concrete the theoretical gains that we had predicted before. It felt like you could build a lot more just immediately at that point in time. And also if we were being consistent, it really felt like this wasn’t just going to be a point solution thing. This was going to be all of programming was going to flow through these models and it felt like that demanded a different type of programming environment, a different type of programming. And so we set off to build that sort of larger vision around then.
Sualeh
There’s one that I distinctly remember. So my roommate is an IMO Gold winner and there’s a competition in the US called the PUTNAM, which is sort of the IMO for college people and it’s this math competition. It’s exceptionally good. So Shengtong and Aman I remember, sort of June of 2022, had this bet on whether the 2024 June or July you were going to win a gold medal in the IMO with models.
There’s one that I distinctly remember. So my roommate is an IMO Gold winner and there’s a competition in the US called the PUTNAM, which is sort of the IMO for college people and it’s this math competition. It’s exceptionally good. So Shengtong and Aman I remember, sort of June of 2022, had this bet on whether the 2024 June or July you were going to win a gold medal in the IMO with models.
Lex
IMO is the International Math Olympiad.
IMO is the International Math Olympiad.
Sualeh
Yeah, IMO is International Math Olympiad. And so Arvid and I are both also competing in it. So it was sort of personal and I remember thinking, Matt, this is not going to happen. Even though I sort of believed in progress, I thought IMO Gold, Aman is delusional. And to be honest, I mean, I was, to be clear, very wrong. But that was maybe the most prescient bet in the group.
Yeah, IMO is International Math Olympiad. And so Arvid and I are both also competing in it. So it was sort of personal and I remember thinking, Matt, this is not going to happen. Even though I sort of believed in progress, I thought IMO Gold, Aman is delusional. And to be honest, I mean, I was, to be clear, very wrong. But that was maybe the most prescient bet in the group.
Lex
So the new results from DeepMind, it turned out that you were correct.
So the new results from DeepMind, it turned out that you were correct.
Arvid
Technically not.
Technically not.
Aman
Technically incorrect but one point away.
Technically incorrect but one point away.
Michael
Aman was very enthusiastic about this stuff back then and before, Aman had this scaling loss T-shirt that he would wear around where it had the charts and the formulas on it.
Aman was very enthusiastic about this stuff back then and before, Aman had this scaling loss T-shirt that he would wear around where it had the charts and the formulas on it.
Lex
So you felt the AGI or you felt the scaling loss.
So you felt the AGI or you felt the scaling loss.
Aman
Yeah, I distinctly remember there was this one conversation I had with Michael before I hadn’t thought super deeply and critically about scaling laws and he kind of posed the question, why isn’t scaling all you need or why isn’t scaling going to result in massive gains in progress? And I think I went through the stages of grief. There is anger, denial, and then finally at the end just thinking about it, acceptance. And I think I’ve been quite hopeful and optimistic about progress since. I think one thing I’ll caveat is I think it also depends on which domains you’re going to see progress. Math is a great domain especially formal theorem proving because you get this fantastic signal of actually verifying if the thing was correct. And so this means something like RL can work really, really well and I think you could have systems that are perhaps very superhuman in math and still not technically have AGI.
Yeah, I distinctly remember there was this one conversation I had with Michael before I hadn’t thought super deeply and critically about scaling laws and he kind of posed the question, why isn’t scaling all you need or why isn’t scaling going to result in massive gains in progress? And I think I went through the stages of grief. There is anger, denial, and then finally at the end just thinking about it, acceptance. And I think I’ve been quite hopeful and optimistic about progress since. I think one thing I’ll caveat is I think it also depends on which domains you’re going to see progress. Math is a great domain especially formal theorem proving because you get this fantastic signal of actually verifying if the thing was correct. And so this means something like RL can work really, really well and I think you could have systems that are perhaps very superhuman in math and still not technically have AGI.
Cursor
Lex
Okay, so can we take it all the way to Cursor. And what is Cursor? It’s a fork of VS Code and VS Code is one of the most popular editors for a long time. Everybody fell in love with it. Everybody left Vim, I left DMAX for it. Sorry. So unified in some fundamental way the developer community. And then you look at the space of things, you look at the scaling laws, AI is becoming amazing and you decided okay, it’s not enough to just write an extension via VS Code because there’s a lot of limitations to that. If AI is going to keep getting better and better and better, we need to really rethink how the AI is going to be part of the editing process. And so you decided to fork VS Code and start to build a lot of the amazing features we’ll be able to talk about. But what was that decision like? Because there’s a lot of extensions, including Copilot, of VS Code that are doing sort of AI type stuff. What was the decision like to just fork VS Code?
Okay, so can we take it all the way to Cursor. And what is Cursor? It’s a fork of VS Code and VS Code is one of the most popular editors for a long time. Everybody fell in love with it. Everybody left Vim, I left DMAX for it. Sorry. So unified in some fundamental way the developer community. And then you look at the space of things, you look at the scaling laws, AI is becoming amazing and you decided okay, it’s not enough to just write an extension via VS Code because there’s a lot of limitations to that. If AI is going to keep getting better and better and better, we need to really rethink how the AI is going to be part of the editing process. And so you decided to fork VS Code and start to build a lot of the amazing features we’ll be able to talk about. But what was that decision like? Because there’s a lot of extensions, including Copilot, of VS Code that are doing sort of AI type stuff. What was the decision like to just fork VS Code?
Michael
So the decision to do an editor seemed kind of self-evident to us for at least what we wanted to do and achieve because when we started working on the editor, the idea was these models are going to get much better, their capabilities are going to improve and it’s going to entirely change how you build software, both in a you will have big productivity gains but also radical and now the active building software is going to change a lot. And so you’re very limited in the control you have over a code editor if you’re a plugin to an existing coding environment and we didn’t want to get locked in by those limitations. We wanted to be able to just build the most useful stuff.
So the decision to do an editor seemed kind of self-evident to us for at least what we wanted to do and achieve because when we started working on the editor, the idea was these models are going to get much better, their capabilities are going to improve and it’s going to entirely change how you build software, both in a you will have big productivity gains but also radical and now the active building software is going to change a lot. And so you’re very limited in the control you have over a code editor if you’re a plugin to an existing coding environment and we didn’t want to get locked in by those limitations. We wanted to be able to just build the most useful stuff.
Lex
Okay. Well then the natural question is, VS Code is kind of with Copilot a competitor, so how do you win? Is it basically just the speed and the quality of the features?
Okay. Well then the natural question is, VS Code is kind of with Copilot a competitor, so how do you win? Is it basically just the speed and the quality of the features?
Aman
Yeah, I mean I think this is a space that is quite interesting, perhaps quite unique where if you look at previous tech waves, maybe there’s kind of one major thing that happened and it unlocked a new wave of companies, but every single year, every single model capability or jump you get in model capabilities, you now unlock this new wave of features, things that are possible, especially in programming. And so I think in AI programming, being even just a few months ahead, let alone a year ahead makes your product much, much, much more useful. I think the Cursor a year from now will need to make the Cursor of today look obsolete. And I think Microsoft has done a number of fantastic things, but I don’t think they’re in a great place to really keep innovating and pushing on this in the way that a startup can.
Yeah, I mean I think this is a space that is quite interesting, perhaps quite unique where if you look at previous tech waves, maybe there’s kind of one major thing that happened and it unlocked a new wave of companies, but every single year, every single model capability or jump you get in model capabilities, you now unlock this new wave of features, things that are possible, especially in programming. And so I think in AI programming, being even just a few months ahead, let alone a year ahead makes your product much, much, much more useful. I think the Cursor a year from now will need to make the Cursor of today look obsolete. And I think Microsoft has done a number of fantastic things, but I don’t think they’re in a great place to really keep innovating and pushing on this in the way that a startup can.
Lex
Just rapidly implementing features.
Just rapidly implementing features.
Aman
Yeah. And kind of doing the research experimentation necessary to really push the ceiling.
Yeah. And kind of doing the research experimentation necessary to really push the ceiling.
Sualeh
I don’t know if I think of it in terms of features as I think of it in terms of capabilities for programmers. As the new O1 model came out, and I’m sure there are going to be more models of different types, like longer context and maybe faster, there’s all these crazy ideas that you can try and hopefully 10% of the crazy ideas will make it into something kind of cool and useful and we want people to have that sooner. To rephrase, an underrated fact is we’re making it for ourself.
I don’t know if I think of it in terms of features as I think of it in terms of capabilities for programmers. As the new O1 model came out, and I’m sure there are going to be more models of different types, like longer context and maybe faster, there’s all these crazy ideas that you can try and hopefully 10% of the crazy ideas will make it into something kind of cool and useful and we want people to have that sooner. To rephrase, an underrated fact is we’re making it for ourself.
When we started Cursor, you really felt this frustration that models… You could see models getting better, but the Copilot experience had not changed. It was like, man, these guys, the ceiling is getting higher, why are they not making new things? They should be making new things. Where’s all the alpha features? There were no alpha features. I’m sure it was selling well. I’m sure it was a great business, but it didn’t feel… I’m one of these people that really want to try and use new things and there was no new thing for a very long while.
Lex
Yeah, it’s interesting. I don’t know how you put that into words, but when you compare a Cursor with Copilot, Copilot pretty quickly started to feel stale for some reason.
Yeah, it’s interesting. I don’t know how you put that into words, but when you compare a Cursor with Copilot, Copilot pretty quickly started to feel stale for some reason.
Arvid
Yeah, I think one thing that I think helps us is that we’re sort of doing it all in one where we’re developing the UX and the way you interact with the model at the same time as we’re developing how we actually make the model give better answers. So how you build up the prompt or how do you find the context and for a Cursor Tab, how do you train the model? So I think that helps us to have all of it the same people working on the entire experience [inaudible 00:15:17] .
Yeah, I think one thing that I think helps us is that we’re sort of doing it all in one where we’re developing the UX and the way you interact with the model at the same time as we’re developing how we actually make the model give better answers. So how you build up the prompt or how do you find the context and for a Cursor Tab, how do you train the model? So I think that helps us to have all of it the same people working on the entire experience [inaudible 00:15:17] .
Sualeh
Yeah, it’s like the person making the UI and the person training the model sit like 18 feet away-
Yeah, it’s like the person making the UI and the person training the model sit like 18 feet away-
Aman
Often the same person even.
Often the same person even.
Sualeh
Yeah, often even the same person. You can create things that are sort of not possible if you’re not talking, you’re not experimenting.
Yeah, often even the same person. You can create things that are sort of not possible if you’re not talking, you’re not experimenting.
Lex
And you’re using, like you said, Cursor to write Cursor?
And you’re using, like you said, Cursor to write Cursor?
Arvid
Of course.
Of course.
Michael
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
Lex
Well let’s talk about some of these features. Let’s talk about the all-knowing the all-powerful praise be to the Tab, auto complete on steroids basically. So how does Tab work? What is Tab?
Well let’s talk about some of these features. Let’s talk about the all-knowing the all-powerful praise be to the Tab, auto complete on steroids basically. So how does Tab work? What is Tab?
Michael
To highlight and summarize at a high level, I’d say that there are two things that Cursor is pretty good at right now. There are other things that it does, but two things that it helps programmers with. One is this idea of looking over your shoulder and being a really fast colleague who can kind of jump ahead of you and type and figure out what you’re going to do next. And that was the original idea behind… That was kind of the kernel of the idea behind a good auto complete was predicting what you’re going to do next, but you can make that concept even more ambitious by not just predicting the characters after your Cursor but actually predicting the next entire change you’re going to make, the next diff, next place you’re going to jump to.
To highlight and summarize at a high level, I’d say that there are two things that Cursor is pretty good at right now. There are other things that it does, but two things that it helps programmers with. One is this idea of looking over your shoulder and being a really fast colleague who can kind of jump ahead of you and type and figure out what you’re going to do next. And that was the original idea behind… That was kind of the kernel of the idea behind a good auto complete was predicting what you’re going to do next, but you can make that concept even more ambitious by not just predicting the characters after your Cursor but actually predicting the next entire change you’re going to make, the next diff, next place you’re going to jump to.
And the second thing Cursor is pretty good at right now too is helping you sometimes jump ahead of the AI and tell it what to do and go from instructions to code. And on both of those we’ve done a lot of work on making the editing experience for those things ergonomic and also making those things smart and fast.
Cursor Tab
Sualeh
One of the things we really wanted was we wanted the model to be able to edit code for us. That was kind of a wish and we had multiple attempts at it before we had a good model that could edit code for you. Then after we had a good model, I think there’ve been a lot of effort to make the inference fast for having a good experience, and we’ve been starting to incorporate… I mean, Michael sort of mentioned this ability to jump to different places and that jump to different places I think came from a feeling of once you accept an edit, it’s like man, it should be just really obvious where to go next. It’s like I’d made this change, the model should just know that the next place to go to is 18 lines down. If you’re a WIM user, you could press 18JJ or whatever, but why am I doing this? The model should just know it.
One of the things we really wanted was we wanted the model to be able to edit code for us. That was kind of a wish and we had multiple attempts at it before we had a good model that could edit code for you. Then after we had a good model, I think there’ve been a lot of effort to make the inference fast for having a good experience, and we’ve been starting to incorporate… I mean, Michael sort of mentioned this ability to jump to different places and that jump to different places I think came from a feeling of once you accept an edit, it’s like man, it should be just really obvious where to go next. It’s like I’d made this change, the model should just know that the next place to go to is 18 lines down. If you’re a WIM user, you could press 18JJ or whatever, but why am I doing this? The model should just know it.
So the idea was you just press Tab, it would go 18 lines down and then show you the next edit and you would press Tab, so as long as you could keep pressing Tab. And so the internal competition was, how many Tabs can we make someone press? Once you have the idea, more abstractly, the thing to think about is how are the edits zero entropy? So once you’ve expressed your intent and the edit is… There’s no new bits of information to finish your thought, but you still have to type some characters to make the computer understand what you’re actually thinking, then maybe the model should just sort of read your mind and all the zero entropy bits should just be like tabbed away. That was sort of the abstract version.
Aman
There’s this interesting thing where if you look at language model loss on different domains, I believe the bits per byte, which is a kind of character normalize loss for code is lower than language, which means in general there are a lot of tokens in code that are super predictable, a lot of characters that are super predictable. And this is I think even magnified when you’re not just trying to auto complete code, but predicting what the user’s going to do next in their editing of existing code. And so the goal of Cursor Tab is let’s eliminate all the low entropy actions you take inside of the editor. When the intent is effectively determined, let’s just jump you forward in time, skip you forward.
There’s this interesting thing where if you look at language model loss on different domains, I believe the bits per byte, which is a kind of character normalize loss for code is lower than language, which means in general there are a lot of tokens in code that are super predictable, a lot of characters that are super predictable. And this is I think even magnified when you’re not just trying to auto complete code, but predicting what the user’s going to do next in their editing of existing code. And so the goal of Cursor Tab is let’s eliminate all the low entropy actions you take inside of the editor. When the intent is effectively determined, let’s just jump you forward in time, skip you forward.
Lex
Well, what’s the intuition and what’s the technical details of how to do next Cursor prediction? That jump, that’s not so intuitive I think to people.
Well, what’s the intuition and what’s the technical details of how to do next Cursor prediction? That jump, that’s not so intuitive I think to people.
Aman
Yeah. I think I can speak to a few of the details on how to make these things work. They’re incredibly low latency, so you need to train small models on this task. In particular, they’re incredibly pre-fill token hungry. What that means is they have these really, really long prompts where they see a lot of your code and they’re not actually generating that many tokens. And so the perfect fit for that is using a sparse model, meaning an MOE model. So that was one breakthrough we made that substantially improved its performance at longer context. The other being a variant of speculative decoding that we built out called speculative edits. These are two, I think, important pieces of what make it quite high quality and very fast.
Yeah. I think I can speak to a few of the details on how to make these things work. They’re incredibly low latency, so you need to train small models on this task. In particular, they’re incredibly pre-fill token hungry. What that means is they have these really, really long prompts where they see a lot of your code and they’re not actually generating that many tokens. And so the perfect fit for that is using a sparse model, meaning an MOE model. So that was one breakthrough we made that substantially improved its performance at longer context. The other being a variant of speculative decoding that we built out called speculative edits. These are two, I think, important pieces of what make it quite high quality and very fast.
Lex
Okay, so MOE [inaudible 00:20:22], the input is huge, the output is small.
Okay, so MOE [inaudible 00:20:22], the input is huge, the output is small.
Aman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex
Okay. So what else can you say about how to make… Does caching play a role-
Okay. So what else can you say about how to make… Does caching play a role-
Aman
Oh, caching plays a huge role. Because you’re dealing with this many input tokens, if every single keystroke that you’re typing in a given line you had to rerun the model on all of those tokens passed in, you’re just going to one, significantly degrade latency, two, you’re going to kill your GPUs with load. So you need to design the actual prompts you use for the model such that they’re caching aware. And then yeah, you need to reuse the KV cache across requests just so that you’re spending less work, less compute.
Oh, caching plays a huge role. Because you’re dealing with this many input tokens, if every single keystroke that you’re typing in a given line you had to rerun the model on all of those tokens passed in, you’re just going to one, significantly degrade latency, two, you’re going to kill your GPUs with load. So you need to design the actual prompts you use for the model such that they’re caching aware. And then yeah, you need to reuse the KV cache across requests just so that you’re spending less work, less compute.
Lex
Again, what are the things that Tab is supposed to be able to do in the near term, just to linger on that? Generate code, fill empty space, also edit code across multiple lines and then jump to different locations inside the same file and then-
Again, what are the things that Tab is supposed to be able to do in the near term, just to linger on that? Generate code, fill empty space, also edit code across multiple lines and then jump to different locations inside the same file and then-
Sualeh
Hopefully jump to different files also. So if you make an edit in one file and maybe you have to go to another file to finish your thought, it should go to the second file also.
Hopefully jump to different files also. So if you make an edit in one file and maybe you have to go to another file to finish your thought, it should go to the second file also.
Arvid
The full generalization is next action prediction. Sometimes you need to run a command in the terminal and it should be able to suggest the command based on the code that you wrote too, or sometimes you actually need to… It suggests something, but it’s hard for you to know if it’s correct because you actually need some more information to learn. You need to know the type to be able to verify that it’s correct. And so maybe it should actually take you to a place that’s the definition of something and then take you back so that you have all the requisite knowledge to be able to accept the next completion.
The full generalization is next action prediction. Sometimes you need to run a command in the terminal and it should be able to suggest the command based on the code that you wrote too, or sometimes you actually need to… It suggests something, but it’s hard for you to know if it’s correct because you actually need some more information to learn. You need to know the type to be able to verify that it’s correct. And so maybe it should actually take you to a place that’s the definition of something and then take you back so that you have all the requisite knowledge to be able to accept the next completion.
Lex
So providing the human the knowledge.
So providing the human the knowledge.
Arvid
Yes.
Yes.
Lex
Right.
Right.
Arvid
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex
I just gotten to know a guy named Primeagen who I believe has an… You can order coffee via SSH.
I just gotten to know a guy named Primeagen who I believe has an… You can order coffee via SSH.
Aman
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
Arvid
We did that.
We did that.
Sualeh
We did that.
We did that.
Lex
So can also the model do that and provide you with caffeine? Okay. So that’s the general framework.
So can also the model do that and provide you with caffeine? Okay. So that’s the general framework.
Michael
Yeah. And the magic moment would be if… Programming is this weird discipline where sometimes the next five minutes, not always, but sometimes the next five minutes of what you’re going to do is actually predictable from the stuff you’ve done recently. And so can you get to a world where that next five minutes either happens by you disengaging and it taking you through? Or maybe a little bit more of just you seeing next step what it’s going to do and you’re like, okay, that’s good, that’s good, that’s good, that’s good, and you can just sort of tap, tap through these big changes.
Yeah. And the magic moment would be if… Programming is this weird discipline where sometimes the next five minutes, not always, but sometimes the next five minutes of what you’re going to do is actually predictable from the stuff you’ve done recently. And so can you get to a world where that next five minutes either happens by you disengaging and it taking you through? Or maybe a little bit more of just you seeing next step what it’s going to do and you’re like, okay, that’s good, that’s good, that’s good, that’s good, and you can just sort of tap, tap through these big changes.
Code diff
Lex
As we’re talking about this, I should mention one of the really cool and noticeable things about Cursor is that there’s this whole diff interface situation going on. So the model suggests with the red and the green of here’s how we’re going to modify the code, and in the chat window you can apply and it shows you the diff and you can accept the diff. So maybe can you speak to whatever direction of that?
As we’re talking about this, I should mention one of the really cool and noticeable things about Cursor is that there’s this whole diff interface situation going on. So the model suggests with the red and the green of here’s how we’re going to modify the code, and in the chat window you can apply and it shows you the diff and you can accept the diff. So maybe can you speak to whatever direction of that?
Sualeh
We’ll probably have four or five different kinds of diffs. So we have optimized the diff for the auto complete, so that has a different diff interface than when you’re reviewing larger blocks of code. And then we’re trying to optimize another diff thing for when you’re doing multiple different files. And at a high level, the difference is for when you’re doing auto- complete, it should be really, really fast to read. Actually it should be really fast to read in all situations, but in auto-complete your eyes are focused in one area, you can’t be in too many… The humans can’t look in too many different places.
We’ll probably have four or five different kinds of diffs. So we have optimized the diff for the auto complete, so that has a different diff interface than when you’re reviewing larger blocks of code. And then we’re trying to optimize another diff thing for when you’re doing multiple different files. And at a high level, the difference is for when you’re doing auto- complete, it should be really, really fast to read. Actually it should be really fast to read in all situations, but in auto-complete your eyes are focused in one area, you can’t be in too many… The humans can’t look in too many different places.
Lex
So you’re talking about on the interface side?
So you’re talking about on the interface side?
Sualeh
On the interface side. So it currently has this box on this side. So we have the current box, and it you tries to delete code in some place and tries to add other code, it tries to show you a box on the side.
On the interface side. So it currently has this box on this side. So we have the current box, and it you tries to delete code in some place and tries to add other code, it tries to show you a box on the side.
Aman
You can maybe show it if we pull it up in Cursor.com. This is what we’re talking.
You can maybe show it if we pull it up in Cursor.com. This is what we’re talking.
Sualeh
So that box-
So that box-
Aman
Exactly here.
Exactly here.
Sualeh
It was like three or four different attempts at trying to make this thing work where first the attempt was this blue crossed out line. So before it was a box on the side, it used to show you the code to delete by showing you Google Docs style, you would see a line through it and then you would see the new code. That was super distracting. And then we tried many different… There was deletions, there was trying the red highlight.
It was like three or four different attempts at trying to make this thing work where first the attempt was this blue crossed out line. So before it was a box on the side, it used to show you the code to delete by showing you Google Docs style, you would see a line through it and then you would see the new code. That was super distracting. And then we tried many different… There was deletions, there was trying the red highlight.
Then the next iteration of it, which is sort of funny, you would hold the, on Mac, the option button. So it would sort of highlight a region of code to show you that there might be something coming. So maybe in this example, the input and the value would all get blue. And the blue was to highlight that the AI had a suggestion for you. So instead of directly showing you the thing, it would just hint that the AI had a suggestion and if you really wanted to see it, you would hold the option button and then you would see the new suggestion. And if you release the option button, you would then see your original code.
Lex
So by the way, that’s pretty nice, but you have to know to hold the option button.
So by the way, that’s pretty nice, but you have to know to hold the option button.
Aman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex
And by the way, I’m not a Mac user, but I got it. Option. It’s a button I guess you people have.
And by the way, I’m not a Mac user, but I got it. Option. It’s a button I guess you people have.
Sualeh
Again, it’s just not intuitive. I think that’s the key thing.
Again, it’s just not intuitive. I think that’s the key thing.
Aman
And there’s a chance this is also not the final version of it.
And there’s a chance this is also not the final version of it.
Arvid
I am personally very excited for making a lot of improvements in this area. We often talk about it as the verification problem where these diffs are great for small edits. For large edits or when it’s multiple files or something, it’s actually a little bit prohibitive to review these diffs. So there are a couple of different ideas here. One idea that we have is, okay, parts of the diffs are important. They have a lot of information. And then parts of the diff are just very low entropy. They’re the same thing over and over again. And so maybe you can highlight the important pieces and then gray out the not so important pieces. Or maybe you can have a model that looks at the diff and sees, oh, there’s a likely bug here. I will mark this with a little red squiggly and say, you should probably review this part of the diff. Ideas in that vein I think are exciting.
I am personally very excited for making a lot of improvements in this area. We often talk about it as the verification problem where these diffs are great for small edits. For large edits or when it’s multiple files or something, it’s actually a little bit prohibitive to review these diffs. So there are a couple of different ideas here. One idea that we have is, okay, parts of the diffs are important. They have a lot of information. And then parts of the diff are just very low entropy. They’re the same thing over and over again. And so maybe you can highlight the important pieces and then gray out the not so important pieces. Or maybe you can have a model that looks at the diff and sees, oh, there’s a likely bug here. I will mark this with a little red squiggly and say, you should probably review this part of the diff. Ideas in that vein I think are exciting.
Lex
Yeah, that’s a really fascinating space of UX design engineering. So you’re basically trying to guide the human programmer through all the things they need to read and nothing more, optimally.
Yeah, that’s a really fascinating space of UX design engineering. So you’re basically trying to guide the human programmer through all the things they need to read and nothing more, optimally.
Arvid
And you want an intelligent model to do it. Currently, diff algorithms, they’re just like normal algorithms. There’s no intelligence. There’s intelligence that went into designing the algorithm, but then you don’t care if it’s about this thing or this thing as you want the model to do this.
And you want an intelligent model to do it. Currently, diff algorithms, they’re just like normal algorithms. There’s no intelligence. There’s intelligence that went into designing the algorithm, but then you don’t care if it’s about this thing or this thing as you want the model to do this.
Sualeh
So I think the general question is like, man, these models are going to get much smarter. As the models get much smarter, changes they will be able to propose are much bigger. So as the changes gets bigger and bigger and bigger, the humans have to do more and more and more verification work. It gets more and more and more… You need to help them out. I don’t want to spend all my time reviewing code.
So I think the general question is like, man, these models are going to get much smarter. As the models get much smarter, changes they will be able to propose are much bigger. So as the changes gets bigger and bigger and bigger, the humans have to do more and more and more verification work. It gets more and more and more… You need to help them out. I don’t want to spend all my time reviewing code.
Lex
Can you say a little more across multiple files [inaudible 00:28:19]?
Can you say a little more across multiple files [inaudible 00:28:19]?
Aman
Yeah. I mean, so GitHub tries to solve this with code review. When you’re doing code review, you’re reviewing multiple diffs across multiple files. But like Arvid said earlier, I think you can do much better than code review. Code review kind of sucks. You spend a lot of time trying to grok this code that’s often quite unfamiliar to you and it often doesn’t even actually catch that many bugs. And I think you can significantly improve that review experience using language models, for example, using the kinds of tricks that Arvid had described of maybe pointing you towards the regions that actually matter. I think also if the code is produced by these language models and it’s not produced by someone else… The code review experience is design for both the reviewer and the person that produced the code. In the case where the person that produced the code is a language model, you don’t have to care that much about their experience and you can design the entire thing around the reviewer such that the reviewer’s job is as fun, as easy, as productive as possible. I think that feels like the issue with just naively trying to make these things look like code review. I think you can be a lot more creative and push the boundary on what’s possible.
Yeah. I mean, so GitHub tries to solve this with code review. When you’re doing code review, you’re reviewing multiple diffs across multiple files. But like Arvid said earlier, I think you can do much better than code review. Code review kind of sucks. You spend a lot of time trying to grok this code that’s often quite unfamiliar to you and it often doesn’t even actually catch that many bugs. And I think you can significantly improve that review experience using language models, for example, using the kinds of tricks that Arvid had described of maybe pointing you towards the regions that actually matter. I think also if the code is produced by these language models and it’s not produced by someone else… The code review experience is design for both the reviewer and the person that produced the code. In the case where the person that produced the code is a language model, you don’t have to care that much about their experience and you can design the entire thing around the reviewer such that the reviewer’s job is as fun, as easy, as productive as possible. I think that feels like the issue with just naively trying to make these things look like code review. I think you can be a lot more creative and push the boundary on what’s possible.
Arvid
And just one idea there is, I think ordering matters. Generally, when you review a PR, you have this list of files and you’re reviewing them from top to bottom, but actually, you actually want to understand this part first because that came logically first, and then you want to understand the next part and you don’t want to have to figure out that yourself, you want a model to.
And just one idea there is, I think ordering matters. Generally, when you review a PR, you have this list of files and you’re reviewing them from top to bottom, but actually, you actually want to understand this part first because that came logically first, and then you want to understand the next part and you don’t want to have to figure out that yourself, you want a model to.
Arvid
And you don’t want to have to figure out that yourself. You want a model to guide you through the thing.
And you don’t want to have to figure out that yourself. You want a model to guide you through the thing.
Lex
And is the step of creation going to be more and more natural language, is the goal versus with actual writing the book?
And is the step of creation going to be more and more natural language, is the goal versus with actual writing the book?
Arvid
I think sometimes. I don’t think it’s going to be the case that all of programming will be natural language, and the reason for that is if I’m pair programming with Sualeh and Sualeh is at the computer and the keyboard, and sometimes if I’m driving, I want to say to Sualeh, “Hey, implement this function,” and that works. And then sometimes it’s just so annoying to explain to Sualeh what I want him to do, and so I actually take over the keyboard and I show him. I write part of the example and then it makes sense and that’s the easiest way to communicate. And so I think that’s also the case for AI. Sometimes the easiest way to communicate with the AI will be to show an example and then it goes and does the thing everywhere else.
I think sometimes. I don’t think it’s going to be the case that all of programming will be natural language, and the reason for that is if I’m pair programming with Sualeh and Sualeh is at the computer and the keyboard, and sometimes if I’m driving, I want to say to Sualeh, “Hey, implement this function,” and that works. And then sometimes it’s just so annoying to explain to Sualeh what I want him to do, and so I actually take over the keyboard and I show him. I write part of the example and then it makes sense and that’s the easiest way to communicate. And so I think that’s also the case for AI. Sometimes the easiest way to communicate with the AI will be to show an example and then it goes and does the thing everywhere else.
Or sometimes if you’re making a website for example, the easiest way to show to the AI what you want is not to tell it what to do but drag things around or draw things, and maybe eventually we will get to brain machine interfaces or whatever and you can understand what you’re thinking. And so I think natural language will have a place. I think it will definitely not be the way most people program most of the time.
ML details
Lex
I’m really feeling the AGI with this editor. It feels like there’s a lot of machine learning going on underneath. Tell me about some of the ML stuff that makes it all work?
I’m really feeling the AGI with this editor. It feels like there’s a lot of machine learning going on underneath. Tell me about some of the ML stuff that makes it all work?
Aman
Where Cursor really works via this ensemble of custom models that we’ve trained alongside the frontier models that are fantastic at the reasoning intense things. And so Cursor Tab for example, is a great example of where you can specialize this model to be, even better than even frontier models if you look at evals on the task we set it at. The other domain, which it’s surprising that it requires custom models but it’s necessary and works quite well, is in Apply. So I think these models are… The frontier models are quite good at sketching out plans for code and generating rough sketches of the change, but actually, creating diffs is quite hard for frontier models, for your training models. You try to do this with Sonnet, with o1, any frontier model and it really messes up stupid things like counting line numbers, especially in super, super large files. And so what we’ve done to alleviate this is we let the model sketch out this rough code block that indicates what the change will be and we train a model to then Apply that change to the file.
Where Cursor really works via this ensemble of custom models that we’ve trained alongside the frontier models that are fantastic at the reasoning intense things. And so Cursor Tab for example, is a great example of where you can specialize this model to be, even better than even frontier models if you look at evals on the task we set it at. The other domain, which it’s surprising that it requires custom models but it’s necessary and works quite well, is in Apply. So I think these models are… The frontier models are quite good at sketching out plans for code and generating rough sketches of the change, but actually, creating diffs is quite hard for frontier models, for your training models. You try to do this with Sonnet, with o1, any frontier model and it really messes up stupid things like counting line numbers, especially in super, super large files. And so what we’ve done to alleviate this is we let the model sketch out this rough code block that indicates what the change will be and we train a model to then Apply that change to the file.
Lex
And we should say that Apply is the model looks at your code, it gives you a really damn good suggestion of what new things to do. And the seemingly for humans trivial step of combining the two, you’re saying is not so trivial.
And we should say that Apply is the model looks at your code, it gives you a really damn good suggestion of what new things to do. And the seemingly for humans trivial step of combining the two, you’re saying is not so trivial.
Sualeh
Contrary to popular perception, it is not a deterministic algorithm.
Contrary to popular perception, it is not a deterministic algorithm.
Aman
Yeah, I think you see shallow copies of apply elsewhere and it just breaks most of the time because you think you can try to do some deterministic matching and then it fails at least 40% of the time and that just results in a terrible product experience. I think in general, this regime of you are going to get smarter and smarter models. So one other thing that Apply lets you do is it lets you use fewer tokens with the most intelligent models. This is both expensive in terms of latency for generating all these tokens and cost. So you can give this very, very rough sketch and then have your model models go and implement it because it’s a much easier task to implement this very, very sketched out code. And I think that this regime will continue where you can use smarter and smarter models to do the planning and then maybe the implementation details can be handled by the less intelligent ones. Perhaps you’ll have maybe o1, maybe it’ll be even more capable models given an even higher level plan that is recursively applied by sauna and then the apply model.
Yeah, I think you see shallow copies of apply elsewhere and it just breaks most of the time because you think you can try to do some deterministic matching and then it fails at least 40% of the time and that just results in a terrible product experience. I think in general, this regime of you are going to get smarter and smarter models. So one other thing that Apply lets you do is it lets you use fewer tokens with the most intelligent models. This is both expensive in terms of latency for generating all these tokens and cost. So you can give this very, very rough sketch and then have your model models go and implement it because it’s a much easier task to implement this very, very sketched out code. And I think that this regime will continue where you can use smarter and smarter models to do the planning and then maybe the implementation details can be handled by the less intelligent ones. Perhaps you’ll have maybe o1, maybe it’ll be even more capable models given an even higher level plan that is recursively applied by sauna and then the apply model.
Sualeh
Maybe we should talk about how to make it fast if you like. Fast is always an interesting detail.
Maybe we should talk about how to make it fast if you like. Fast is always an interesting detail.
Arvid
Fast is good.
Fast is good.
Lex
Yeah, how do you make it fast?
Yeah, how do you make it fast?
Aman
Yeah, so one big component of making it fast is speculative edits. So speculative edits are a variant of speculative decoding, and maybe it’d be helpful to briefly describe speculative decoding. With speculative decoding, what you do is you can take advantage of the fact that most of the time, and I’ll add the caveat that it would be when you’re memory bound in language model generation, if you process multiple tokens at once, it is faster than generating one token at a time. So this is the same reason why if you look at tokens per second with prompt tokens versus generated tokens, it’s much much faster for prompt tokens.
Yeah, so one big component of making it fast is speculative edits. So speculative edits are a variant of speculative decoding, and maybe it’d be helpful to briefly describe speculative decoding. With speculative decoding, what you do is you can take advantage of the fact that most of the time, and I’ll add the caveat that it would be when you’re memory bound in language model generation, if you process multiple tokens at once, it is faster than generating one token at a time. So this is the same reason why if you look at tokens per second with prompt tokens versus generated tokens, it’s much much faster for prompt tokens.
So what we do is instead of using what speculative decoding normally does, which is using a really small model to predict these draft tokens that your larger model will then go in and verify, with code edits, we have a very strong prior of what the existing code will look like and that prior is literally the same exact code. So you can do is you can just feed chunks of the original code back into the model, and then the model will just pretty much agree most of the time that, “Okay, I’m just going to spit this code back out.” And so you can process all of those lines in parallel and you just do this with sufficiently many chunks. And then eventually you’ll reach a point of disagreement where the model will now predict text that is different from the ground truth original code. It’ll generate those tokens and then we will decide after enough tokens match the original code to re- start speculating in chunks of code.
What this actually ends up looking like is just a much faster version of normal editing code. So it looks like a much faster version of the model rewriting all the code. So we can use the same exact interface that we use for diffs, but it will just stream down a lot faster.
Sualeh
And then the advantage is that while it’s streaming, you can just also start reviewing the code before it’s done so there’s no big loading screen. Maybe that is part of the advantage.
And then the advantage is that while it’s streaming, you can just also start reviewing the code before it’s done so there’s no big loading screen. Maybe that is part of the advantage.
Lex
So the human can start reading before the thing is done.
So the human can start reading before the thing is done.
Sualeh
I think the interesting riff here is something like… I feel like speculation is a fairly common idea nowadays. It’s not only in language models. There’s obviously speculation in CPUs and there’s speculation for databases and there’s speculation all over the place.
I think the interesting riff here is something like… I feel like speculation is a fairly common idea nowadays. It’s not only in language models. There’s obviously speculation in CPUs and there’s speculation for databases and there’s speculation all over the place.
GPT vs Claude
Lex
Well, let me ask the ridiculous question of which LLM is better at coding? GPT, Claude, who wins in the context of programming? And I’m sure the answer is much more nuanced because it sounds like every single part of this involves a different model.
Well, let me ask the ridiculous question of which LLM is better at coding? GPT, Claude, who wins in the context of programming? And I’m sure the answer is much more nuanced because it sounds like every single part of this involves a different model.
Aman
I think there’s no model that Pareto dominates others, meaning it is better in all categories that we think matter, the categories being speed, ability to edit code, ability to process lots of code, long context, a couple of other things and coding capabilities. The one that I’d say right now is just net best is Sonnet. I think this is a consensus opinion. o1’s really interesting and it’s really good at reasoning. So if you give it really hard programming interview style problems or lead code problems, it can do quite well on them, but it doesn’t feel like it understands your rough intent as well as Sonnet does. If you look at a lot of the other frontier models, one qualm I have is it feels like they’re not necessarily over… I’m not saying they train on benchmarks, but they perform really well in benchmarks relative to everything that’s in the middle. So if you tried on all these benchmarks and things that are in the distribution of the benchmarks they’re evaluated on, they’ll do really well. But when you push them a little bit outside of that, Sonnet is I think the one that does best at maintaining that same capability. You have the same capability in the benchmark as when you try to instruct it to do anything with coding.
I think there’s no model that Pareto dominates others, meaning it is better in all categories that we think matter, the categories being speed, ability to edit code, ability to process lots of code, long context, a couple of other things and coding capabilities. The one that I’d say right now is just net best is Sonnet. I think this is a consensus opinion. o1’s really interesting and it’s really good at reasoning. So if you give it really hard programming interview style problems or lead code problems, it can do quite well on them, but it doesn’t feel like it understands your rough intent as well as Sonnet does. If you look at a lot of the other frontier models, one qualm I have is it feels like they’re not necessarily over… I’m not saying they train on benchmarks, but they perform really well in benchmarks relative to everything that’s in the middle. So if you tried on all these benchmarks and things that are in the distribution of the benchmarks they’re evaluated on, they’ll do really well. But when you push them a little bit outside of that, Sonnet is I think the one that does best at maintaining that same capability. You have the same capability in the benchmark as when you try to instruct it to do anything with coding.
Lex
Another ridiculous question is the difference between the normal programming experience versus what benchmarks represent? Where do benchmarks fall short, do you think, when we’re evaluating these models?
Another ridiculous question is the difference between the normal programming experience versus what benchmarks represent? Where do benchmarks fall short, do you think, when we’re evaluating these models?
Sualeh
By the way, that’s a really, really hard, critically important detail of how different benchmarks are versus real coding, where real coding, it’s not interview style coding. Humans are saying half-broken English sometimes and sometimes you’re saying, “Oh, do what I did before.” Sometimes you’re saying, “Go add this thing and then do this other thing for me and then make this UI element.” And then it’s just a lot of things are context dependent. You really want to understand the human and then do what the human wants, as opposed to this… Maybe the way to put it abstractly is the interview problems are very well specified. They lean a lot on specification while the human stuff is less specified.
By the way, that’s a really, really hard, critically important detail of how different benchmarks are versus real coding, where real coding, it’s not interview style coding. Humans are saying half-broken English sometimes and sometimes you’re saying, “Oh, do what I did before.” Sometimes you’re saying, “Go add this thing and then do this other thing for me and then make this UI element.” And then it’s just a lot of things are context dependent. You really want to understand the human and then do what the human wants, as opposed to this… Maybe the way to put it abstractly is the interview problems are very well specified. They lean a lot on specification while the human stuff is less specified.
Michael
I think that this benchmark question is both complicated by what Sualeh just mentioned, and then also what Aman was getting into is that even if you… There’s this problem of the skew between what can you actually model in a benchmark versus real programming, and that can be sometimes hard to encapsulate because it’s real programming’s very messy and sometimes things aren’t super well specified what’s correct or what isn’t. But then it’s also doubly hard because of this public benchmark problem. And that’s both because public benchmarks are sometimes hill climbed on, then it’s really, really hard to also get the data from the public benchmarks out of the models.
I think that this benchmark question is both complicated by what Sualeh just mentioned, and then also what Aman was getting into is that even if you… There’s this problem of the skew between what can you actually model in a benchmark versus real programming, and that can be sometimes hard to encapsulate because it’s real programming’s very messy and sometimes things aren’t super well specified what’s correct or what isn’t. But then it’s also doubly hard because of this public benchmark problem. And that’s both because public benchmarks are sometimes hill climbed on, then it’s really, really hard to also get the data from the public benchmarks out of the models.
And so for instance, one of the most popular agent benchmarks, SWE-Bench, is really, really contaminated in the training data of these foundation models. And so if you ask these foundation models to do a SWE-Bench problem, but you actually don’t give them the context of a code base, they can hallucinate the right file pass, they can hallucinate the right function names. And so it’s also just the public aspect of these things is tricky.
Aman
In that case, it could be trained on the literal issues or pull requests themselves, and maybe the labs will start to do a better job or they’ve already done a good job at decontaminating those things, but they’re not going to omit the actual training data of the repository itself. These are all some of the most popular Python repositories. SimPy is one example. I don’t think they’re going to handicap their models on SimPy and all these popular Python repositories in order to get true evaluation scores in these benchmarks.
In that case, it could be trained on the literal issues or pull requests themselves, and maybe the labs will start to do a better job or they’ve already done a good job at decontaminating those things, but they’re not going to omit the actual training data of the repository itself. These are all some of the most popular Python repositories. SimPy is one example. I don’t think they’re going to handicap their models on SimPy and all these popular Python repositories in order to get true evaluation scores in these benchmarks.
Michael
I think that given the dirts in benchmarks, there have been a few interesting crutches that places that build systems with these models or build these models actually use to get a sense of are they going the right direction or not. And in a lot of places, people will actually just have humans play with the things and give qualitative feedback on these. One or two of the foundation model companies, they have people who that’s a big part of their role. And internally, we also qualitatively assess these models and actually lean on that a lot in addition to private emails that we have.
I think that given the dirts in benchmarks, there have been a few interesting crutches that places that build systems with these models or build these models actually use to get a sense of are they going the right direction or not. And in a lot of places, people will actually just have humans play with the things and give qualitative feedback on these. One or two of the foundation model companies, they have people who that’s a big part of their role. And internally, we also qualitatively assess these models and actually lean on that a lot in addition to private emails that we have.
Arvid
It’s like the vibe.
It’s like the vibe.
Lex
The vibe, yeah, the vibe.
The vibe, yeah, the vibe.
Arvid
It’s like the vibe.
It’s like the vibe.
Lex
The vibe benchmark, human benchmark, the humans. You pull in the humans to do a vibe check.
The vibe benchmark, human benchmark, the humans. You pull in the humans to do a vibe check.
Arvid
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex
Okay. That’s what I do. Just reading online forums and Reddit and X. Well, I don’t know how to properly load in people’s opinions because they’ll say things like, “I feel like Claude or GPT has gotten dumber,” or something. They’ll say, “I feel like…” And then I sometimes feel like that too, but I wonder if it’s the model’s problem or mine.
Okay. That’s what I do. Just reading online forums and Reddit and X. Well, I don’t know how to properly load in people’s opinions because they’ll say things like, “I feel like Claude or GPT has gotten dumber,” or something. They’ll say, “I feel like…” And then I sometimes feel like that too, but I wonder if it’s the model’s problem or mine.
Aman
With Claude, there’s an interesting take I heard where I think AWS has different chips and I suspect they have slightly different numerics than Nvidia GPUs, and someone speculated that Claude’s degraded performance had to do with maybe using the quantized version that existed on AWS Bedrock versus whatever was running on Anthropics GPUs.
With Claude, there’s an interesting take I heard where I think AWS has different chips and I suspect they have slightly different numerics than Nvidia GPUs, and someone speculated that Claude’s degraded performance had to do with maybe using the quantized version that existed on AWS Bedrock versus whatever was running on Anthropics GPUs.
Lex
I interview a bunch of people that have conspiracy theories. I’m glad you spoke to this conspiracy.
I interview a bunch of people that have conspiracy theories. I’m glad you spoke to this conspiracy.
Sualeh
Well, it’s not like conspiracy theory as much as humans. Humans are humans and there’s these details-
Well, it’s not like conspiracy theory as much as humans. Humans are humans and there’s these details-
Lex
Yes.
Yes.
Sualeh
And you’re doing this queasy amount of flops and chips are messy and man, you can just have bugs. It’s hard to overstate how hard bugs are to avoid.
And you’re doing this queasy amount of flops and chips are messy and man, you can just have bugs. It’s hard to overstate how hard bugs are to avoid.
Prompt engineering
Lex
What’s the role of a good prompt in all of this? We mentioned that benchmarks have really structured, well-formulated prompts. What should a human be doing to maximize success and what’s the importance of what the humans… You wrote a blog post on… You called it Prompt Design.
What’s the role of a good prompt in all of this? We mentioned that benchmarks have really structured, well-formulated prompts. What should a human be doing to maximize success and what’s the importance of what the humans… You wrote a blog post on… You called it Prompt Design.
Arvid
Yeah, I think it depends on which model you’re using, and all of them are slightly different and they respond differently to different prompts, but I think the original GPT-4 and the original [inaudible 00:44:07] models last year, they were quite sensitive to the prompts, and they also had a very small context window. And so we have all of these pieces of information around the code base that would maybe be relevant in the prompt. You have the docs, you have the files that you add, you have the conversation history, and then there’s a problem like how do you decide what you actually put in the prompt and when you have a limited space? And even for today’s models, even when you have long context, filling out the entire context window means that it’s slower. It means that sometimes the model actually gets confused and some models get more confused than others.
Yeah, I think it depends on which model you’re using, and all of them are slightly different and they respond differently to different prompts, but I think the original GPT-4 and the original [inaudible 00:44:07] models last year, they were quite sensitive to the prompts, and they also had a very small context window. And so we have all of these pieces of information around the code base that would maybe be relevant in the prompt. You have the docs, you have the files that you add, you have the conversation history, and then there’s a problem like how do you decide what you actually put in the prompt and when you have a limited space? And even for today’s models, even when you have long context, filling out the entire context window means that it’s slower. It means that sometimes the model actually gets confused and some models get more confused than others.
And we have this one system internally that we call Preempt, which helps us with that a little bit. And I think it was built for the era before where we had 8,000 token contact windows. And it’s a little bit similar to when you’re making a website. You want it to work on mobile, you want it to work on a desktop screen, and you have this dynamic information which you don’t have. For example, if you’re designing a print magazine, you know exactly where you can put stuff. But when you have a website or when you have a prompt, you have these inputs and then you need to format them to always work, even if the input is really big, then you might have to cut something down. And so the idea was, okay, let’s take some inspiration. What’s the best way to design websites? Well, the thing that we really like is React and the declarative approach where you use JSX in JavaScript, and then you declare, “This is what I want and I think this has higher priority or this has higher Z index than something else.”
And then you have this rendering engine in web design. It’s like Chrome, and in our case it’s a preempt renderer, which then fits everything onto the page. And as you declare, decide what you want and then it figures out what you want. And so we have found that to be quite helpful and I think the role of it has shifted over time where initially it was to fit to these small context windows. Now it’s really useful because it helps us with splitting up the data that goes into the prompt and the actual rendering of it. And so it’s easier to debug because you can change the rendering of the prompt and then try it on old prompts because you have the raw data that went into the prompt, and then you can see, “Did my change actually improve it for this entire eval set?”
Lex
So do you literally prompt with JSX?
So do you literally prompt with JSX?
Aman
Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes.
Arvid
Yeah. So it looks like react. There are components. We have one component that’s a file component and it takes in the cursor. Usually there’s one line where the cursor is in your file and that’s probably the most important line because that’s the one you’re looking at. And so then you can give priorities. So that line has the highest priority, and then you subtract one for every line that is farther away. And then eventually when it’s rendered, it figures out how many lines can actually fit and it centers around that thing.
Yeah. So it looks like react. There are components. We have one component that’s a file component and it takes in the cursor. Usually there’s one line where the cursor is in your file and that’s probably the most important line because that’s the one you’re looking at. And so then you can give priorities. So that line has the highest priority, and then you subtract one for every line that is farther away. And then eventually when it’s rendered, it figures out how many lines can actually fit and it centers around that thing.
Lex
That’s amazing.
That’s amazing.
Aman
And you can do other fancy things where if you have lots of code blocks from the entire code base, you could use retrieval and things like embedding and re-ranking scores to add priorities for you through these components.
And you can do other fancy things where if you have lots of code blocks from the entire code base, you could use retrieval and things like embedding and re-ranking scores to add priorities for you through these components.
Lex
So should humans when they ask questions, also try to use something like that? Would it be beneficial to write JSX in the problem or the whole idea is this should be loose and messy?
So should humans when they ask questions, also try to use something like that? Would it be beneficial to write JSX in the problem or the whole idea is this should be loose and messy?
Arvid
I think our goal is that you should just do whatever is the most natural thing for you, and then our job is to figure out how do we actually retrieve the relative event things so that your thinking actually makes sense?
I think our goal is that you should just do whatever is the most natural thing for you, and then our job is to figure out how do we actually retrieve the relative event things so that your thinking actually makes sense?
Lex
Well, this is the discussion I had with Aravind of Perplexity is his whole idea is you should let the person be as lazy as he wants. That’s a beautiful thing, but I feel like you’re allowed to ask more of programmers, right?
Well, this is the discussion I had with Aravind of Perplexity is his whole idea is you should let the person be as lazy as he wants. That’s a beautiful thing, but I feel like you’re allowed to ask more of programmers, right?
Arvid
Yes.
Yes.
Lex
So if you say, “Just do what you want,” humans are lazy. There’s a tension between just being lazy versus provide more as be prompted… Almost like the system pressuring you or inspiring you to be articulate. Not in terms of the grammar of the sentences, but in terms of the depth of thoughts that you convey inside the prompts.
So if you say, “Just do what you want,” humans are lazy. There’s a tension between just being lazy versus provide more as be prompted… Almost like the system pressuring you or inspiring you to be articulate. Not in terms of the grammar of the sentences, but in terms of the depth of thoughts that you convey inside the prompts.
Aman
I think even as a system gets closer to some level of perfection, often when you ask the model for something, not enough intent is conveyed to know what to do. And there are a few ways to resolve that intent. One is the simple thing of having the model just ask you, “I’m not sure how to do these parts based on your query. Could you clarify that?” I think the other could be maybe if there are five or six possible generations, “Given the uncertainty present in your query so far, why don’t we just actually show you all of those and let you pick them?”
I think even as a system gets closer to some level of perfection, often when you ask the model for something, not enough intent is conveyed to know what to do. And there are a few ways to resolve that intent. One is the simple thing of having the model just ask you, “I’m not sure how to do these parts based on your query. Could you clarify that?” I think the other could be maybe if there are five or six possible generations, “Given the uncertainty present in your query so far, why don’t we just actually show you all of those and let you pick them?”
Lex
How hard is it for the model to choose to talk back versus generally… It’s hard, how deal with the uncertainty. Do I choose to ask for more information to reduce the ambiguity?
How hard is it for the model to choose to talk back versus generally… It’s hard, how deal with the uncertainty. Do I choose to ask for more information to reduce the ambiguity?
Sualeh
So one of the things we do, it’s like a recent addition, is try to suggest files that you can add. And while you’re typing, one can guess what the uncertainty is and maybe suggest that maybe you’re writing your API and we can guess using the commits that you’ve made previously in the same file that the client and the server is super useful and there’s a hard technical problem of how do you resolve it across all commits? Which files are the most important given your current prompt? And we’re still initial version is ruled out and I’m sure we can make it much more accurate. It’s very experimental, but then the idea is we show you, do you just want to add this file, this file, this file also to tell the model to edit those files for you?
So one of the things we do, it’s like a recent addition, is try to suggest files that you can add. And while you’re typing, one can guess what the uncertainty is and maybe suggest that maybe you’re writing your API and we can guess using the commits that you’ve made previously in the same file that the client and the server is super useful and there’s a hard technical problem of how do you resolve it across all commits? Which files are the most important given your current prompt? And we’re still initial version is ruled out and I’m sure we can make it much more accurate. It’s very experimental, but then the idea is we show you, do you just want to add this file, this file, this file also to tell the model to edit those files for you?
Because if maybe you’re making the API, you should also edit the client and the server that is using the API and the other one resolving the API. So that would be cool as both there’s the phase where you’re writing a prompt and there’s… Before you even click, “Enter,” maybe we can help resolve some of the uncertainty.
AI agents
Lex
To what degree do you use agentic approaches? How useful are agents?
To what degree do you use agentic approaches? How useful are agents?
Arvid
We think agents are really, really cool.
We think agents are really, really cool.
Lex
Okay.
Okay.
Arvid
I think agents, it’s like resembles like a human… You can feel that you’re getting closer to AGI because you see a demo where it acts as a human would and it’s really, really cool. I think agents are not yet super useful for many things. I think we’re getting close to where they will actually be useful. And so I think there are certain types of tasks where having an agent would be really nice. I would love to have an agent. For example, if we have a bug where you sometimes can’t Command+C and Command+V inside our chat input box, and that’s a task that’s super well specified. I just want to say in two sentences, “This does not work, please fix it.” And then I would love to have an agent that just goes off, does it, and then a day later, I come back and I review the thing.
I think agents, it’s like resembles like a human… You can feel that you’re getting closer to AGI because you see a demo where it acts as a human would and it’s really, really cool. I think agents are not yet super useful for many things. I think we’re getting close to where they will actually be useful. And so I think there are certain types of tasks where having an agent would be really nice. I would love to have an agent. For example, if we have a bug where you sometimes can’t Command+C and Command+V inside our chat input box, and that’s a task that’s super well specified. I just want to say in two sentences, “This does not work, please fix it.” And then I would love to have an agent that just goes off, does it, and then a day later, I come back and I review the thing.
Lex
You mean it goes, finds the right file?
You mean it goes, finds the right file?
Arvid
Yeah, it finds the right files, it tries to reproduce the bug, it fixes the bug and then it verifies that it’s correct. And this could be a process that takes a long time. And so I think I would love to have that. And then I think a lot of programming, there is often this belief that agents will take over all of programming. I don’t think we think that that’s the case because a lot of programming, a lot of the value is in iterating, or you don’t actually want to specify something upfront because you don’t really know what you want until you have seen an initial version and then you want to iterate on that and then you provide more information.
Yeah, it finds the right files, it tries to reproduce the bug, it fixes the bug and then it verifies that it’s correct. And this could be a process that takes a long time. And so I think I would love to have that. And then I think a lot of programming, there is often this belief that agents will take over all of programming. I don’t think we think that that’s the case because a lot of programming, a lot of the value is in iterating, or you don’t actually want to specify something upfront because you don’t really know what you want until you have seen an initial version and then you want to iterate on that and then you provide more information.
And so for a lot of programming, I think you actually want a system that’s instant, that gives you an initial version instantly back and then you can iterate super, super quickly.
Lex
What about something like that recently came out, replica agent, that does also setting up the development environment and solving software packages, configuring everything, configuring the databases and actually deploying the app. Is that also in the set of things you dream about?
What about something like that recently came out, replica agent, that does also setting up the development environment and solving software packages, configuring everything, configuring the databases and actually deploying the app. Is that also in the set of things you dream about?
Arvid
I think so. I think that would be really cool. For certain types of programming, it would be really cool.
I think so. I think that would be really cool. For certain types of programming, it would be really cool.
Lex
Is that within scope of Cursor?
Is that within scope of Cursor?
Arvid
Yeah, we aren’t actively working on it right now, but it’s definitely… We want to make the programmer’s life easier and more fun and some things are just really tedious and you need to go through a bunch of steps and you want to delegate that to an agent. And then some things you can actually have an agent in the background while you’re working. Let’s say you have a PR that’s both backend and frontend, and you’re working in the frontend and then you can have a background agent that doesn’t work and figure out what you’re doing. And then when you get to the backend part of your PR, then you have some initial piece of code that you can iterate on. And so that would also be really cool.
Yeah, we aren’t actively working on it right now, but it’s definitely… We want to make the programmer’s life easier and more fun and some things are just really tedious and you need to go through a bunch of steps and you want to delegate that to an agent. And then some things you can actually have an agent in the background while you’re working. Let’s say you have a PR that’s both backend and frontend, and you’re working in the frontend and then you can have a background agent that doesn’t work and figure out what you’re doing. And then when you get to the backend part of your PR, then you have some initial piece of code that you can iterate on. And so that would also be really cool.
Lex
One of the things we already talked about is speed, but I wonder if we can just linger on that some more in the various places that the technical details involved in making this thing really fast. So every single aspect of Cursor, most aspects of Cursor feel really fast. Like I mentioned, the Apply is probably the slowest thing. And for me from… I’m sorry, the pain on Arvid’s face as I say that.
One of the things we already talked about is speed, but I wonder if we can just linger on that some more in the various places that the technical details involved in making this thing really fast. So every single aspect of Cursor, most aspects of Cursor feel really fast. Like I mentioned, the Apply is probably the slowest thing. And for me from… I’m sorry, the pain on Arvid’s face as I say that.
Arvid
I know. It’s a pain. It’s a pain that we’re feeling and we’re working on fixing it.
I know. It’s a pain. It’s a pain that we’re feeling and we’re working on fixing it.
Lex
Yeah, it says something that feels… I don’t know what it is, like one second or two seconds, that feels slow. That means that actually shows that everything else is just really, really fast. So is there some technical details about how to make some of these models, how to make the chat fast, how to make the diffs fast? Is there something that just jumps to mind?
Yeah, it says something that feels… I don’t know what it is, like one second or two seconds, that feels slow. That means that actually shows that everything else is just really, really fast. So is there some technical details about how to make some of these models, how to make the chat fast, how to make the diffs fast? Is there something that just jumps to mind?
Aman
Yeah. So we can go over a lot of the strategies that we use. One interesting thing is cache warming. And so what you can do is if as the user’s typing, you can have… You’re probably going to use some piece of context and you can know that before the user’s done typing. So as we discussed before, reusing the KV cache results in lower latency, lower costs, cross requests. So as the user starts typing, you can immediately warm the cache with let’s say the current file contents, and then when they press enter, there’s very few tokens it actually has to pre-fill and compute before starting the generation. This will significantly lower TTFT.
Yeah. So we can go over a lot of the strategies that we use. One interesting thing is cache warming. And so what you can do is if as the user’s typing, you can have… You’re probably going to use some piece of context and you can know that before the user’s done typing. So as we discussed before, reusing the KV cache results in lower latency, lower costs, cross requests. So as the user starts typing, you can immediately warm the cache with let’s say the current file contents, and then when they press enter, there’s very few tokens it actually has to pre-fill and compute before starting the generation. This will significantly lower TTFT.
Lex
Can you explain how KV cache works?
Can you explain how KV cache works?
Aman
Yeah, so the way transformers work.
Yeah, so the way transformers work.
Lex
I like it.
I like it.
Aman
One of the mechanisms that allow transformers to not just independently… The mechanism that allows transformers to not just independently look at each token, but see previous tokens are the keys and values to attention. And generally, the way attention works is you have at your current token some query, and then you’ve all the keys and values of all your previous tokens, which are some kind of representation that the model stores internally of all the previous tokens in the prompt. And by default, when you’re doing a chat, the model has to, for every single token, do this forward pass through the entire model. That’s a lot of matrix multiplies that happen, and that is really, really slow.
One of the mechanisms that allow transformers to not just independently… The mechanism that allows transformers to not just independently look at each token, but see previous tokens are the keys and values to attention. And generally, the way attention works is you have at your current token some query, and then you’ve all the keys and values of all your previous tokens, which are some kind of representation that the model stores internally of all the previous tokens in the prompt. And by default, when you’re doing a chat, the model has to, for every single token, do this forward pass through the entire model. That’s a lot of matrix multiplies that happen, and that is really, really slow.
Instead, if you have already done that and you stored the keys and values and you keep that in the GPU, then when I… Let’s say I have to sort it for the last N tokens. If I now want to compute the output token for the N+1nth token, I don’t need to pass those first N tokens through the entire model because I already have all those keys and values. And so you just need to do the forward pass through that last token. And then when you’re doing attention, you’re reusing those keys and values that have been computed, which is the only kind of sequential part or sequentially dependent part of the transformer.
Lex
Is there higher level caching of caching of the prompts or that kind of stuff that could help?
Is there higher level caching of caching of the prompts or that kind of stuff that could help?
Aman
I see. Yeah. There’s other types of caching you can do. One interesting thing that you can do for Cursor Tab is you can basically predict ahead as if the user would’ve accepted the suggestion and then trigger another request. And so then you’ve cached, you’ve done the speculative. It’s a mix of speculation and caching, right? Because speculating what would happen if they accepted it. And then you have this value that is cached this suggestion. And then when they press tab, the next one would be waiting for them immediately. It’s a clever heuristic/trick that uses a higher level caching and can give the… It feels fast despite there not actually being any changes in the model.
I see. Yeah. There’s other types of caching you can do. One interesting thing that you can do for Cursor Tab is you can basically predict ahead as if the user would’ve accepted the suggestion and then trigger another request. And so then you’ve cached, you’ve done the speculative. It’s a mix of speculation and caching, right? Because speculating what would happen if they accepted it. And then you have this value that is cached this suggestion. And then when they press tab, the next one would be waiting for them immediately. It’s a clever heuristic/trick that uses a higher level caching and can give the… It feels fast despite there not actually being any changes in the model.
Sualeh
And if you can make the KV cache smaller, one of the advantages you get is like maybe you can speculate even more. Maybe you can guess, “Here’s the 10 things that could be useful, predict the next 10,” and then it’s possible the user hits the one of the 10. It’s much higher chance than the user hits the exact one that you showed them. Maybe they type in other character and hit something else in the cache. So there’s all these tricks where… The general phenomena here is, I think it’s also super useful for RL is maybe a single sample from the model isn’t very good, but if you predict 10 different things, turns out that one of the 10 that’s right is the probability is much higher. There’s these passive K curves and part of RL, what RL does is you can exploit this passive K phenomena to make many different predictions.
And if you can make the KV cache smaller, one of the advantages you get is like maybe you can speculate even more. Maybe you can guess, “Here’s the 10 things that could be useful, predict the next 10,” and then it’s possible the user hits the one of the 10. It’s much higher chance than the user hits the exact one that you showed them. Maybe they type in other character and hit something else in the cache. So there’s all these tricks where… The general phenomena here is, I think it’s also super useful for RL is maybe a single sample from the model isn’t very good, but if you predict 10 different things, turns out that one of the 10 that’s right is the probability is much higher. There’s these passive K curves and part of RL, what RL does is you can exploit this passive K phenomena to make many different predictions.
And one way to think about this, the model knows internally has some uncertainty over which of the key things is correct or which of the key things does the human wants? When we RL our Cursor Tab model, one of the things we’re doing is we’re predicting which of the 100 different suggestions the model produces is more amenable for humans? Which of them do humans more like than other things? Maybe there’s something where the model can predict very far ahead versus a little bit, maybe somewhere in the middle. And then you can give a reward to the things that humans would like more and punish the things that it would like, and then train the model to output the suggestions that humans would like more. You have these RL loops that are very useful that exploit these passive K curves. Aman, maybe can go into even more detail.
Aman
Yeah, it is a little different than speed, but technically, you tie it back in because you can get away with the smaller model if you RL your smaller model and it gets the same performance as the bigger one.
Yeah, it is a little different than speed, but technically, you tie it back in because you can get away with the smaller model if you RL your smaller model and it gets the same performance as the bigger one.
Aman
… as the bigger one. So while I was mentioning stuff about KV, about reducing the size of your KV cache, there are other techniques there as well that are really helpful for speed. So kind of back in the day, all the way two years ago, people mainly use multi-head attention, and I think there’s been a migration towards more efficient attention schemes like group query or multi-query attention, and this is really helpful for then with larger batch sizes being able to generate the tokens much faster. The interesting thing here is this now has no effect on that time to first token pre-fill speed. The thing this matters for is now generating tokens. And why is that? Because when you’re generating tokens, instead of being bottlenecked by doing these super parallelizable matrix multiplies across all your tokens, you’re bottlenecked by how quickly… For a long context with large batch sizes, by how quickly you can read those cache, keys, and values.
… as the bigger one. So while I was mentioning stuff about KV, about reducing the size of your KV cache, there are other techniques there as well that are really helpful for speed. So kind of back in the day, all the way two years ago, people mainly use multi-head attention, and I think there’s been a migration towards more efficient attention schemes like group query or multi-query attention, and this is really helpful for then with larger batch sizes being able to generate the tokens much faster. The interesting thing here is this now has no effect on that time to first token pre-fill speed. The thing this matters for is now generating tokens. And why is that? Because when you’re generating tokens, instead of being bottlenecked by doing these super parallelizable matrix multiplies across all your tokens, you’re bottlenecked by how quickly… For a long context with large batch sizes, by how quickly you can read those cache, keys, and values.
And so then that’s memory bandwidth, and how can we make this faster? We can try to compress the size of these keys and values. So multi-query attention is the most aggressive of these. Where normally with multi-head attention, you have some number of, quote, unquote, “attention heads” and some number of query heads. Multi-query just preserves the query heads, gets rid of all the key value heads. So there’s only one kind of key value head, and there’s all the remaining query heads. With group query, you instead preserve all the query heads and then your keys and values are… There are fewer heads for the keys and values, but you’re not reducing it to just one. But anyways, the whole point here is you’re just reducing the size of your KV cache.
Arvid
And then there is MLA.
And then there is MLA.
Aman
Yeah, multi-latent. That’s a little more complicated. And the way that this works is it kind of turns the entirety of your keys and values across all your heads into this one latent vector that has then kind of expanded in for its time.
Yeah, multi-latent. That’s a little more complicated. And the way that this works is it kind of turns the entirety of your keys and values across all your heads into this one latent vector that has then kind of expanded in for its time.
Sualeh
But MLA is from this company called DeepSeek. It’s quite an interesting algorithm. Maybe the key idea is in both MQA and in other places, what you’re doing is you’re reducing the number of KV heads. And the advantage you get from that is there’s less of them, but maybe the theory is that you actually want a lot of different… You want each of the keys and values to actually be different. So one way to reduce the size is you keep one big shared vector for all the keys and values and then you have smaller vectors for every single token. So that you can store the only the smaller thing as some sort of low-rank reduction, and the low-rank reduction, well, that… At the end of the time, when you eventually want to compute the final thing, remember that your memory band, which means that you still have some compute left that you can use for these things. And if you can expand the latent vector back out and somehow this is far more efficient because you’re reducing… For example, maybe you’re reducing vec 32 or something like the size of the vector that you’re keeping.
But MLA is from this company called DeepSeek. It’s quite an interesting algorithm. Maybe the key idea is in both MQA and in other places, what you’re doing is you’re reducing the number of KV heads. And the advantage you get from that is there’s less of them, but maybe the theory is that you actually want a lot of different… You want each of the keys and values to actually be different. So one way to reduce the size is you keep one big shared vector for all the keys and values and then you have smaller vectors for every single token. So that you can store the only the smaller thing as some sort of low-rank reduction, and the low-rank reduction, well, that… At the end of the time, when you eventually want to compute the final thing, remember that your memory band, which means that you still have some compute left that you can use for these things. And if you can expand the latent vector back out and somehow this is far more efficient because you’re reducing… For example, maybe you’re reducing vec 32 or something like the size of the vector that you’re keeping.
Aman
Yeah, there’s perhaps some richness in having a separate set of keys and values and query that kind of pairwise match up versus compressing that all into one in that interaction at least.
Yeah, there’s perhaps some richness in having a separate set of keys and values and query that kind of pairwise match up versus compressing that all into one in that interaction at least.
Lex
Okay, and all of that is dealing with being memory bound. I mean, ultimately, how does that map to the user experience? Trying to get the-
Okay, and all of that is dealing with being memory bound. I mean, ultimately, how does that map to the user experience? Trying to get the-
Aman
Yeah. The two things that it maps to is you can now make your cache a lot larger because you’ve less space allocated for the KV cache. You can maybe cache a lot more aggressively in a lot more things, so you get more cache hits, which are helpful for reducing the time to first token for the reasons that were kind of described earlier. And then the second being, when you start doing inference with more and more requests and larger and larger batch sizes, you don’t see much of a slowdown as it’s generating the tokens at the speed of that.
Yeah. The two things that it maps to is you can now make your cache a lot larger because you’ve less space allocated for the KV cache. You can maybe cache a lot more aggressively in a lot more things, so you get more cache hits, which are helpful for reducing the time to first token for the reasons that were kind of described earlier. And then the second being, when you start doing inference with more and more requests and larger and larger batch sizes, you don’t see much of a slowdown as it’s generating the tokens at the speed of that.
Sualeh
Well, it also allows you to make your prompt bigger for certain-
Well, it also allows you to make your prompt bigger for certain-
Aman
Yeah. Yeah, so the size of your KV cache is both the size of all your prompts multiplied by the number of prompts being processed in parallel. So you could increase either those dimensions, right? The batch size or the size of your prompts without degrading the latency of generating tokens.
Yeah. Yeah, so the size of your KV cache is both the size of all your prompts multiplied by the number of prompts being processed in parallel. So you could increase either those dimensions, right? The batch size or the size of your prompts without degrading the latency of generating tokens.
Running code in background
Lex
Arvid, you wrote a blog post Shadow Workspace: Iterating on Code in the Background. So what’s going on [inaudible 01:04:59]?
Arvid, you wrote a blog post Shadow Workspace: Iterating on Code in the Background. So what’s going on [inaudible 01:04:59]?
Arvid
So to be clear, we want there to be a lot of stuff happening in the background, and we’re experimenting with a lot of things. Right now, we don’t have much stuff happening other than the cache warming or figuring out the right context that goes into your command key prompts for example. But the idea is if you can actually spend computation in the background, then you can help the user maybe at a slightly longer time horizon than just predicting the next few lines that you’re going to make. But actually in the next 10 minutes, what are you going to make? And by doing it in background, you can spend more computation doing that. And so the idea of the Shadow Workspace that we implemented, and we use it internally for experiments is that to actually get advantage of doing stuff in the background, you want some kind of feedback signal to give back to the model because otherwise you can get higher performance by just letting the model think for longer, and so o1 is a good example of that.
So to be clear, we want there to be a lot of stuff happening in the background, and we’re experimenting with a lot of things. Right now, we don’t have much stuff happening other than the cache warming or figuring out the right context that goes into your command key prompts for example. But the idea is if you can actually spend computation in the background, then you can help the user maybe at a slightly longer time horizon than just predicting the next few lines that you’re going to make. But actually in the next 10 minutes, what are you going to make? And by doing it in background, you can spend more computation doing that. And so the idea of the Shadow Workspace that we implemented, and we use it internally for experiments is that to actually get advantage of doing stuff in the background, you want some kind of feedback signal to give back to the model because otherwise you can get higher performance by just letting the model think for longer, and so o1 is a good example of that.
But another way you can improve performance is by letting the model iterate and get feedback. And so one very important piece of feedback when you’re a programmer is the language server, which is this thing, it exists for most different languages, and there’s a separate language server per language. And it can tell you, “You’re using the wrong type here,” and then gives you an error, or it can allow you to go to definition and sort of understands the structure of your code. So language servers are extensions developed by… There is a TypeScript language server developed by the TypeScript people, a Rust language server developed by the Rust people, and then they all interface over the language server protocol to VS Code. So that VS Code doesn’t need to have all of the different languages built into VS Code but rather you can use the existing compiler infrastructure.
Lex
For linting purposes, what-
For linting purposes, what-
Arvid
It’s for linting. It’s for going to definition and for seeing the right types that you’re using.
It’s for linting. It’s for going to definition and for seeing the right types that you’re using.
Lex
So it’s doing type checking also.
So it’s doing type checking also.
Arvid
Yes, type checking and going to references. And that’s like when you’re working in a big project, you kind of need that. If you don’t have that, it’s really hard to code in a big project.
Yes, type checking and going to references. And that’s like when you’re working in a big project, you kind of need that. If you don’t have that, it’s really hard to code in a big project.
Lex
Can you say, again, how that’s being used inside Cursor, the language server protocol communication thing?
Can you say, again, how that’s being used inside Cursor, the language server protocol communication thing?
Arvid
So it’s being used in Cursor to show to the programmer just like in VS Code, but then the idea is you want to show that same information to the models, the IM models, and you want to do that in a way that doesn’t affect the user because you want to do it in background. And so the idea behind the Shadow Workspace was, okay, one way we can do this is we spawn a separate window of Cursor that’s hidden, and so you can set this flag in it and like turn it’s hidden. There is a window but you don’t actually see it. And inside of this window, the AI agents can modify code however they want as long as they don’t save it because it’s still the same folder and then can get feedback from the linters and go to definition and iterate on their code.
So it’s being used in Cursor to show to the programmer just like in VS Code, but then the idea is you want to show that same information to the models, the IM models, and you want to do that in a way that doesn’t affect the user because you want to do it in background. And so the idea behind the Shadow Workspace was, okay, one way we can do this is we spawn a separate window of Cursor that’s hidden, and so you can set this flag in it and like turn it’s hidden. There is a window but you don’t actually see it. And inside of this window, the AI agents can modify code however they want as long as they don’t save it because it’s still the same folder and then can get feedback from the linters and go to definition and iterate on their code.
Lex
So literally run everything in the background as if… Right, maybe even run the code.
So literally run everything in the background as if… Right, maybe even run the code.
Arvid
So that’s the eventual version and that’s what you want. And a lot of the blog post is actually about how do you make that happen because it’s a little bit tricky. You want it to be on the user’s machine so that it exactly mirrors the user’s environment. And then on Linux, you can do this cool thing where you can actually mirror the file system and have the AI make changes to the files, and it thinks that it’s operating on the file level, but actually, that’s stored in memory and you can create this kernel-like extension to make it work. Whereas on Mac and Windows, it’s a little bit more difficult, but it’s a fun technical problem, so that’s why.
So that’s the eventual version and that’s what you want. And a lot of the blog post is actually about how do you make that happen because it’s a little bit tricky. You want it to be on the user’s machine so that it exactly mirrors the user’s environment. And then on Linux, you can do this cool thing where you can actually mirror the file system and have the AI make changes to the files, and it thinks that it’s operating on the file level, but actually, that’s stored in memory and you can create this kernel-like extension to make it work. Whereas on Mac and Windows, it’s a little bit more difficult, but it’s a fun technical problem, so that’s why.
Aman
One may be hacky but interesting idea that I like is holding a lock on saving. And so basically, you can then have the language model kind of hold the lock on saving to disk and then instead of you operating in the ground truth version of the files that are saved to disk, you actually are operating what was the Shadow Workspace before and these unsaved things that only exist in memory that you still get linter errors for, and you can code in. And then when you try to maybe run code, it’s just like there’s a small warning that there’s a lock, and then you kind of will take back the lock from the language server if you’re trying to do things concurrently or from the Shadow Workspace if you’re trying to do things concurrently.
One may be hacky but interesting idea that I like is holding a lock on saving. And so basically, you can then have the language model kind of hold the lock on saving to disk and then instead of you operating in the ground truth version of the files that are saved to disk, you actually are operating what was the Shadow Workspace before and these unsaved things that only exist in memory that you still get linter errors for, and you can code in. And then when you try to maybe run code, it’s just like there’s a small warning that there’s a lock, and then you kind of will take back the lock from the language server if you’re trying to do things concurrently or from the Shadow Workspace if you’re trying to do things concurrently.
Debugging
Lex
That’s such an exciting future by the way. It’s a bit of a tangent, but to allow a model to change files, it’s scary for people but it’s really cool, to be able to just let the agent do a set of tasks and you come back the next day and kind of observe like it’s a colleague or something like that.
That’s such an exciting future by the way. It’s a bit of a tangent, but to allow a model to change files, it’s scary for people but it’s really cool, to be able to just let the agent do a set of tasks and you come back the next day and kind of observe like it’s a colleague or something like that.
Aman
And I think there may be different versions of runability where, for the simple things where you’re doing things in the span of a few minutes on behalf of the user as they’re programming, it makes sense to make something work locally in their machine. I think for the more aggressive things where you’re making larger changes that take longer periods of time, you’ll probably want to do this in some sandbox remote environment and that’s another incredibly tricky problem of how do you exactly reproduce or mostly reproduce to the point of it being effectively equivalent for running code the user’s environment with this remote sandbox.
And I think there may be different versions of runability where, for the simple things where you’re doing things in the span of a few minutes on behalf of the user as they’re programming, it makes sense to make something work locally in their machine. I think for the more aggressive things where you’re making larger changes that take longer periods of time, you’ll probably want to do this in some sandbox remote environment and that’s another incredibly tricky problem of how do you exactly reproduce or mostly reproduce to the point of it being effectively equivalent for running code the user’s environment with this remote sandbox.
Sualeh
I’m curious what kind of agents you want for coding? Do you want them to find bugs? Do you want them to implement new features? What agents do you want?
I’m curious what kind of agents you want for coding? Do you want them to find bugs? Do you want them to implement new features? What agents do you want?
Lex
So by the way, when I think about agents, I don’t think just about coding. I think so for this particular podcast, there’s video editing and a lot of… If you look in Adobe, a lot… There’s code behind. It’s very poorly documented code, but you can interact with Premiere, for example, using code, and basically all the uploading, everything I do on YouTube, everything as you could probably imagine, I do all of that through code and including translation and overdubbing, all of this. So I envision all of those kinds of tasks. So automating many of the tasks that don’t have to do directly with the editing, so that. Okay, that’s what I was thinking about. But in terms of coding, I would be fundamentally thinking about bug finding, many levels of kind of bug finding and also bug finding like logical bugs, not logical like spiritual bugs or something. Ones like big directions of implementation, that kind of stuff.
So by the way, when I think about agents, I don’t think just about coding. I think so for this particular podcast, there’s video editing and a lot of… If you look in Adobe, a lot… There’s code behind. It’s very poorly documented code, but you can interact with Premiere, for example, using code, and basically all the uploading, everything I do on YouTube, everything as you could probably imagine, I do all of that through code and including translation and overdubbing, all of this. So I envision all of those kinds of tasks. So automating many of the tasks that don’t have to do directly with the editing, so that. Okay, that’s what I was thinking about. But in terms of coding, I would be fundamentally thinking about bug finding, many levels of kind of bug finding and also bug finding like logical bugs, not logical like spiritual bugs or something. Ones like big directions of implementation, that kind of stuff.
Sualeh
Magical [inaudible 01:11:39] and bug finding.
Magical [inaudible 01:11:39] and bug finding.
Aman
Yeah. I mean, it’s really interesting that these models are so bad at bug finding when just naively prompted to find a bug. They’re incredibly poorly calibrated.
Yeah. I mean, it’s really interesting that these models are so bad at bug finding when just naively prompted to find a bug. They’re incredibly poorly calibrated.
Arvid
Even the smartest models.
Even the smartest models.
Aman
Exactly, even o1.
Exactly, even o1.
Lex
How do you explain that? Is there a good intuition?
How do you explain that? Is there a good intuition?
Aman
I think these models are really strong reflection of the pre-training distribution, and I do think they generalize as the loss gets lower and lower, but I don’t think the loss and the scale is quite… The loss is low enough such that they’re really fully generalizing on code. The things that we use these things for, the frontier models that they’re quite good at, are really code generation and question answering. And these things exist in massive quantities in pre-training with all of the code in GitHub on the scale of many, many trillions of tokens and questions and answers on things like stack overflow and maybe GitHub issues.
I think these models are really strong reflection of the pre-training distribution, and I do think they generalize as the loss gets lower and lower, but I don’t think the loss and the scale is quite… The loss is low enough such that they’re really fully generalizing on code. The things that we use these things for, the frontier models that they’re quite good at, are really code generation and question answering. And these things exist in massive quantities in pre-training with all of the code in GitHub on the scale of many, many trillions of tokens and questions and answers on things like stack overflow and maybe GitHub issues.
And so when you try to push one of these things that really don’t exist very much online, like for example, the Cursor Tab objective of predicting the next edit given the edits done so far, the brittleness kind of shows. And then bug detection is another great example, where there aren’t really that many examples of actually detecting real bugs and then proposing fixes and the models just kind of really struggle at it. But I think it’s a question of transferring the model in the same way that you get this fantastic transfer from pre-trained models just on code in general to the Cursor Tab objective. You’ll see a very, very similar thing with generalized models that are really good at code to bug detection. It just takes a little bit of kind nudging in that direction.
Sualeh
Look to be clear, I think they sort of understand code really well. While they’re being pre-trained, the representation that’s being built up almost certainly like somewhere in the stream, the model knows that maybe there’s something sketchy going on. It sort of has some sketchiness but actually eliciting the sketchiness to actually… Part of it is that humans are really calibrated on which bugs are really important. It’s not just actually saying there’s something sketchy. It’s like it’s this sketchy trivial, it’s this sketchy like you’re going to take the server down.
Look to be clear, I think they sort of understand code really well. While they’re being pre-trained, the representation that’s being built up almost certainly like somewhere in the stream, the model knows that maybe there’s something sketchy going on. It sort of has some sketchiness but actually eliciting the sketchiness to actually… Part of it is that humans are really calibrated on which bugs are really important. It’s not just actually saying there’s something sketchy. It’s like it’s this sketchy trivial, it’s this sketchy like you’re going to take the server down.
Part of it is maybe the cultural knowledge of why is a staff engineer is good because they know that three years ago someone wrote a really sketchy piece of code that took the server down and as opposed to maybe you just… This thing is an experiment. So a few bugs are fine, you’re just trying to experiment and get the feel of the thing. And so if the model gets really annoying when you’re writing an experiment, that’s really bad, but if you’re writing something for super production, you’re writing a database. You’re writing code in Postgres or Linux or whatever. You’re Linus Torvalds. It’s sort of unacceptable to have even an edge case and just having the calibration of how paranoid is the user and like-
Aman
But even then if you’re putting in a maximum paranoia, it still just doesn’t quite get it.
But even then if you’re putting in a maximum paranoia, it still just doesn’t quite get it.
Sualeh
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Dangerous code
Lex
I mean, but this is hard for humans too to understand which line of code is important, which is not. I think one of your principles on a website says if a code can do a lot of damage, one should add a comment that say, “This line of code is dangerous.”
I mean, but this is hard for humans too to understand which line of code is important, which is not. I think one of your principles on a website says if a code can do a lot of damage, one should add a comment that say, “This line of code is dangerous.”
Arvid
And all caps, repeated 10 times.
And all caps, repeated 10 times.
Lex
No, you say for every single line of code inside the function you have to… And that’s quite profound, that says something about human beings because the engineers move on, even the same person might just forget how it can sink the Titanic a single function. You might not intuit that quite clearly by looking at the single piece of code.
No, you say for every single line of code inside the function you have to… And that’s quite profound, that says something about human beings because the engineers move on, even the same person might just forget how it can sink the Titanic a single function. You might not intuit that quite clearly by looking at the single piece of code.
Arvid
Yeah. And I think that one is partially also for today’s AI models where if you actually write dangerous, dangerous, dangerous in every single line, the models will pay more attention to that and will be more likely to find bugs in that region.
Yeah. And I think that one is partially also for today’s AI models where if you actually write dangerous, dangerous, dangerous in every single line, the models will pay more attention to that and will be more likely to find bugs in that region.
Lex
That’s actually just straight up a really good practice of labeling code of how much damages can do.
That’s actually just straight up a really good practice of labeling code of how much damages can do.
Arvid
Yeah. I mean, it’s controversial. Some people think it’s ugly. Sualeh does not like it.
Yeah. I mean, it’s controversial. Some people think it’s ugly. Sualeh does not like it.
Sualeh
Well, I think it’s… In fact, I actually think this is one of the things I learned from Arvid is sort of aesthetically I don’t like it, but I think there’s certainly something where it’s useful for the models and humans just forget a lot, and it’s really easy to make a small mistake and cause… Just bring down the server. Of course, we test a lot and whatever, but there’s always these things that you have to be very careful.
Well, I think it’s… In fact, I actually think this is one of the things I learned from Arvid is sort of aesthetically I don’t like it, but I think there’s certainly something where it’s useful for the models and humans just forget a lot, and it’s really easy to make a small mistake and cause… Just bring down the server. Of course, we test a lot and whatever, but there’s always these things that you have to be very careful.
Aman
Yeah, like with just normal docstrings, I think people will often just skim it when making a change and think, “Oh, I know how to do this,” and you really need to point it out to them so that doesn’t slip through.
Yeah, like with just normal docstrings, I think people will often just skim it when making a change and think, “Oh, I know how to do this,” and you really need to point it out to them so that doesn’t slip through.
Lex
Yeah. You have to be reminded that you could do a lot of damage that’s like we don’t really think about that. You think about, “Okay, how do I figure out how this works so I can improve it?” You don’t think about the other direction that it could-
Yeah. You have to be reminded that you could do a lot of damage that’s like we don’t really think about that. You think about, “Okay, how do I figure out how this works so I can improve it?” You don’t think about the other direction that it could-
Arvid
Until we have formal verification for everything, then you can do whatever you want and you know for certain that you have not introduced a bug if the proof pass.
Until we have formal verification for everything, then you can do whatever you want and you know for certain that you have not introduced a bug if the proof pass.
Aman
Well, concretely, what do you think that future would look like?
Well, concretely, what do you think that future would look like?
Arvid
I think people will just not write to tests anymore, and the model will suggest… You write a function, the model will suggest a spec, and you review the spec. And in the meantime, smart reasoning model computes a proof that the implementation follows the spec, and I think that happens for most functions.
I think people will just not write to tests anymore, and the model will suggest… You write a function, the model will suggest a spec, and you review the spec. And in the meantime, smart reasoning model computes a proof that the implementation follows the spec, and I think that happens for most functions.
Michael
Do you think this gets at a little bit some of the stuff you were talking about earlier with the difficulty of specifying intent for what you want with software, where sometimes it might be because the intent is really hard to specify, it’s also then going to be really hard to prove that it’s actually matching whatever your intent is?
Do you think this gets at a little bit some of the stuff you were talking about earlier with the difficulty of specifying intent for what you want with software, where sometimes it might be because the intent is really hard to specify, it’s also then going to be really hard to prove that it’s actually matching whatever your intent is?
Arvid
You think that spec is hard to generate?
You think that spec is hard to generate?
Michael
Yeah, or just for a given spec, maybe you can… I think there is a question of, can you actually do the formal verification? Is that possible? I think that there’s more to dig into there, but then also-
Yeah, or just for a given spec, maybe you can… I think there is a question of, can you actually do the formal verification? Is that possible? I think that there’s more to dig into there, but then also-
Arvid
Even if you have the spec?
Even if you have the spec?
Sualeh
If you have the spec-
If you have the spec-
Michael
Even if you have the spec, is the spec written in natural language? Or is it-
Even if you have the spec, is the spec written in natural language? Or is it-
Arvid
No, [inaudible 01:18:21] the spec would be formal.
No, [inaudible 01:18:21] the spec would be formal.
Aman
But how easier would that be [inaudible 01:18:26]?
But how easier would that be [inaudible 01:18:26]?
Michael
Okay. So then I think that you care about things that are not going to be easily well specified in the spec language.
Okay. So then I think that you care about things that are not going to be easily well specified in the spec language.
Arvid
I see, I see.
I see, I see.
Michael
Would be maybe an argument against formal verification is all you need.
Would be maybe an argument against formal verification is all you need.
Aman
The worry is there’s this massive document-
The worry is there’s this massive document-
Michael
[inaudible 01:18:39] replacing something like unit tests, sure.
[inaudible 01:18:39] replacing something like unit tests, sure.
Arvid
Yeah, yeah. I think you can probably also evolve the spec languages to capture some of the things that they don’t really capture right now. I don’t know. I think it’s very exciting.
Yeah, yeah. I think you can probably also evolve the spec languages to capture some of the things that they don’t really capture right now. I don’t know. I think it’s very exciting.
Lex
And you’re speaking not just about single functions, you’re speaking about entire code bases.
And you’re speaking not just about single functions, you’re speaking about entire code bases.
Arvid
I think entire code bases is harder, but that is what I would love to have and I think it should be possible. And because you can even… There’s a lot of work recently where you can prove formally verified down to the hardware, so through the… You formally verify the C code and then you formally verify through the GCC compiler and then through the Verilog down to the hardware. And that’s incredibly big system, but it actually works. And I think big code bases are sort of similar in that and they’re like multi-layered system. And if you can decompose it and formally verify each part, then I think it should be possible. I think this specification problem is a real problem, but…
I think entire code bases is harder, but that is what I would love to have and I think it should be possible. And because you can even… There’s a lot of work recently where you can prove formally verified down to the hardware, so through the… You formally verify the C code and then you formally verify through the GCC compiler and then through the Verilog down to the hardware. And that’s incredibly big system, but it actually works. And I think big code bases are sort of similar in that and they’re like multi-layered system. And if you can decompose it and formally verify each part, then I think it should be possible. I think this specification problem is a real problem, but…
Aman
How do you handle side effects or how do you handle, I guess, external dependencies like calling the Stripe API?
How do you handle side effects or how do you handle, I guess, external dependencies like calling the Stripe API?
Sualeh
Maybe Stripe would write a spec for their API.
Maybe Stripe would write a spec for their API.
Aman
But you can’t do this for everything. Can you do this for everything you use? How do you do it for… If there’s a language… Maybe people will use language models as primitives in the programs they write, and there’s a dependence on it and how do you now include that?
But you can’t do this for everything. Can you do this for everything you use? How do you do it for… If there’s a language… Maybe people will use language models as primitives in the programs they write, and there’s a dependence on it and how do you now include that?
Arvid
I think you might be able to prove that still.
I think you might be able to prove that still.
Aman
Prove what about language models?
Prove what about language models?
Arvid
I think it feels possible that you could actually prove that a language model is aligned for example, or you can prove that it actually gives the right answer.
I think it feels possible that you could actually prove that a language model is aligned for example, or you can prove that it actually gives the right answer.
Sualeh
That’s the dream.
That’s the dream.
Lex
Yeah, that is… I mean, if it’s possible. That’s your I have a dream speech. If it’s possible, that will certainly help with making sure your code doesn’t have bugs and making sure AI doesn’t destroy all human civilization. So the full spectrum of AI safety to just bug finding. So you said the models struggle with bug finding. What’s the hope?
Yeah, that is… I mean, if it’s possible. That’s your I have a dream speech. If it’s possible, that will certainly help with making sure your code doesn’t have bugs and making sure AI doesn’t destroy all human civilization. So the full spectrum of AI safety to just bug finding. So you said the models struggle with bug finding. What’s the hope?
Sualeh
My hope initially is, and I can let Michael chime in too, but it was like it should first help with the stupid bugs. It should query quickly, catch the stupid bugs off by one error is like… Sometimes you write something in a comment and do the other way. It’s very common. I do this. I write less than in a comment and I maybe write the greater than or something like that. And the model is like, “Yeah, you looks sketchy. You sure you want to do that?” But eventually, it should be able to catch harder bugs too.
My hope initially is, and I can let Michael chime in too, but it was like it should first help with the stupid bugs. It should query quickly, catch the stupid bugs off by one error is like… Sometimes you write something in a comment and do the other way. It’s very common. I do this. I write less than in a comment and I maybe write the greater than or something like that. And the model is like, “Yeah, you looks sketchy. You sure you want to do that?” But eventually, it should be able to catch harder bugs too.
Michael
Yeah. And I think that it’s also important to note that this is… Having good bug, finding models feels necessary to get to the highest reaches of having AI do more and more programming for you, where you’re going to… If AI is building more and more of the system for you, you need to not just generate but also verify. And without that, some of the problems that we’ve talked about before with programming, with these models will just become untenable. So it’s not just for humans like you write a bug, I write a bug, find the bug for me, but it’s also being able to verify the AI’s code and check it is really important.
Yeah. And I think that it’s also important to note that this is… Having good bug, finding models feels necessary to get to the highest reaches of having AI do more and more programming for you, where you’re going to… If AI is building more and more of the system for you, you need to not just generate but also verify. And without that, some of the problems that we’ve talked about before with programming, with these models will just become untenable. So it’s not just for humans like you write a bug, I write a bug, find the bug for me, but it’s also being able to verify the AI’s code and check it is really important.
Arvid
Yeah. And then how do you actually do this? We have had a lot of contentious dinner discussions of how do you actually train a bug model, but one very popular idea is it’s kind of potentially easy to introduce a bug than actually finding the bug. And so you can train a model to introduce bugs in existing code and then you can train a reverse bug model then that can find bugs using this synthetic data. So that’s one example, but there are lots of ideas for how to [inaudible 01:22:22].
Yeah. And then how do you actually do this? We have had a lot of contentious dinner discussions of how do you actually train a bug model, but one very popular idea is it’s kind of potentially easy to introduce a bug than actually finding the bug. And so you can train a model to introduce bugs in existing code and then you can train a reverse bug model then that can find bugs using this synthetic data. So that’s one example, but there are lots of ideas for how to [inaudible 01:22:22].
Michael
You can also do a bunch of work not even at the model level of taking the biggest models and then maybe giving them access to a lot of information that’s not just the code. It’s kind of a hard problem to stare at a file and be like, “Where’s the bug?” And that’s hard for humans often, right? And so often you have to run the code and being able to see things like traces and step through a debugger, there’s another whole other direction where it tends toward that.
You can also do a bunch of work not even at the model level of taking the biggest models and then maybe giving them access to a lot of information that’s not just the code. It’s kind of a hard problem to stare at a file and be like, “Where’s the bug?” And that’s hard for humans often, right? And so often you have to run the code and being able to see things like traces and step through a debugger, there’s another whole other direction where it tends toward that.
It could also be that there are two different product form factors here. It could be that you have a really specialty model that’s quite fast that’s running in the background and trying to spot bugs. And it might be that sometimes sort of to Arvid’s earlier example about some nefarious input box bug. It might be that sometimes you want to like… You know there’s a bug, you’re not just checking hypothesis free, you’re like, “This is a problem, I really want to solve it,” and you zap that with tons and tons and tons of compute, and you’re willing to put in $50 to solve that bug or something even more.
Lex
Have you thought about integrating money into this whole thing? I would pay probably a large amount of money if you found a bug or even generated code that I really appreciated. I had a moment a few days ago when I started using Cursor where it generated perfect three functions for interacting with the YouTube API to update captions for localization in different languages. The API documentation is not very good and the code across, if I… I googled it for a while. I couldn’t find exactly, there’s a lot of confusing information, and Cursor generated perfectly.
Have you thought about integrating money into this whole thing? I would pay probably a large amount of money if you found a bug or even generated code that I really appreciated. I had a moment a few days ago when I started using Cursor where it generated perfect three functions for interacting with the YouTube API to update captions for localization in different languages. The API documentation is not very good and the code across, if I… I googled it for a while. I couldn’t find exactly, there’s a lot of confusing information, and Cursor generated perfectly.
I just sit back, I read the code, I was like, “This is correct. I tested it, it’s correct.” I was like, “I want to tip.” I want a button that goes, “Here’s $5.” One that’s really good just to support the company and support what the interface is. And the other is that probably sends a strong signal like good job. So there’s this much stronger signal than just accepting the code. You just actually send a strong good job. That and for bug finding, obviously, there’s a lot of people that would pay a huge amount of money for a bug bounty thing, right? You guys think about that?
Arvid
Yeah, it’s a controversial idea inside the company. I think it sort of depends on how much you believe in humanity almost. I think it would be really cool if you spend nothing to try to find a bug. And if it doesn’t find a bug, you spend $0. And then if it does find a bug and you click accept, then it also shows in parentheses like $1. And so you spend $1 to accept the bug. And then of course, there’s a worry like okay, “We spent a lot of computation, maybe people will just copy paste.” I think that’s a worry. Then there is also the worry that introducing money into the product makes it… It doesn’t feel as fun anymore. You have to think about money. And all you want to think about is the code, and so maybe it actually makes more sense to separate it out, and you pay some fee every month, and then you get all of these things for free.
Yeah, it’s a controversial idea inside the company. I think it sort of depends on how much you believe in humanity almost. I think it would be really cool if you spend nothing to try to find a bug. And if it doesn’t find a bug, you spend $0. And then if it does find a bug and you click accept, then it also shows in parentheses like $1. And so you spend $1 to accept the bug. And then of course, there’s a worry like okay, “We spent a lot of computation, maybe people will just copy paste.” I think that’s a worry. Then there is also the worry that introducing money into the product makes it… It doesn’t feel as fun anymore. You have to think about money. And all you want to think about is the code, and so maybe it actually makes more sense to separate it out, and you pay some fee every month, and then you get all of these things for free.
Lex
But there could be a tipping component which is not like it cost this-
But there could be a tipping component which is not like it cost this-
Arvid
Yes, but it still has that dollar symbol. I think it’s fine, but I also see the point where maybe you don’t want to introduce it.
Yes, but it still has that dollar symbol. I think it’s fine, but I also see the point where maybe you don’t want to introduce it.
Aman
Yeah, I was going to say the moment that feels like people do this is when they share it. When they have this fantastic example, they just share it with their friends.
Yeah, I was going to say the moment that feels like people do this is when they share it. When they have this fantastic example, they just share it with their friends.
Michael
There is also a potential world where there’s a technical solution to this like honor system problem too, where if we can get to a place where we understand the output of the system more, I mean, to the stuff we were talking about with error checking with the LSP and then also running the code. But if you could get to a place where you could actually somehow verify, “Oh, I have fixed the bug,” maybe then the bounty system doesn’t need to rely on the honor system too.
There is also a potential world where there’s a technical solution to this like honor system problem too, where if we can get to a place where we understand the output of the system more, I mean, to the stuff we were talking about with error checking with the LSP and then also running the code. But if you could get to a place where you could actually somehow verify, “Oh, I have fixed the bug,” maybe then the bounty system doesn’t need to rely on the honor system too.
Branching file systems
Lex
How much interaction is there between the terminal and the code? How much information is gained from if you run the code in the terminal? Can you do a loop where it runs the code and suggests how to change the code? If the code and runtime gets an error? Is right now there’s separate worlds completely? I know you can do control K inside the terminal to help you write the code.
How much interaction is there between the terminal and the code? How much information is gained from if you run the code in the terminal? Can you do a loop where it runs the code and suggests how to change the code? If the code and runtime gets an error? Is right now there’s separate worlds completely? I know you can do control K inside the terminal to help you write the code.
Aman
You can use terminal context as well inside of check command K kind of everything. We don’t have the looping part yet, so we suspect something like this could make a lot of sense. There’s a question of whether it happens in the foreground too or if it happens in the background like what we’ve been discussing.
You can use terminal context as well inside of check command K kind of everything. We don’t have the looping part yet, so we suspect something like this could make a lot of sense. There’s a question of whether it happens in the foreground too or if it happens in the background like what we’ve been discussing.
Lex
Sure. The background’s pretty cool. I could be running the code in different ways. Plus there’s a database side to this, which how do you protect it from not modifying the database, but okay.
Sure. The background’s pretty cool. I could be running the code in different ways. Plus there’s a database side to this, which how do you protect it from not modifying the database, but okay.
Sualeh
I mean, there’s certainly cool solutions there. There’s this new API that is being developed for… It’s not in AWS, but it certainly… I think it’s in PlanetScale. I don’t know if PlanetScale was the first one to you add it. It’s this ability sort of add branches to a database, which is like if you’re working on a feature and you want to test against the broad database, but you don’t actually want to test against the broad database, you could sort of add a branch to the database. And the way they do that is they add a branch to the write-ahead log. And there’s obviously a lot of technical complexity in doing it correctly. I guess database companies need new things to do. They have good databases now. And I think turbopuffer, which is one of the databases we use, is going to add maybe branching to the write-ahead log. So maybe the AI agents will use branching, they’ll test against some branch, and it’s sort of going to be a requirement for the database to support branching or something.
I mean, there’s certainly cool solutions there. There’s this new API that is being developed for… It’s not in AWS, but it certainly… I think it’s in PlanetScale. I don’t know if PlanetScale was the first one to you add it. It’s this ability sort of add branches to a database, which is like if you’re working on a feature and you want to test against the broad database, but you don’t actually want to test against the broad database, you could sort of add a branch to the database. And the way they do that is they add a branch to the write-ahead log. And there’s obviously a lot of technical complexity in doing it correctly. I guess database companies need new things to do. They have good databases now. And I think turbopuffer, which is one of the databases we use, is going to add maybe branching to the write-ahead log. So maybe the AI agents will use branching, they’ll test against some branch, and it’s sort of going to be a requirement for the database to support branching or something.
Aman
It would be really interesting if you could branch a file system, right?
It would be really interesting if you could branch a file system, right?
Sualeh
Yeah. I feel like everything needs branching. It’s like-
Yeah. I feel like everything needs branching. It’s like-
Aman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex
Yeah. The problem with the multiverse, right? If you branch on everything that’s like a lot.
Yeah. The problem with the multiverse, right? If you branch on everything that’s like a lot.
Sualeh
There’s obviously these super clever algorithms to make sure that you don’t actually use a lot of space or CPU or whatever.
There’s obviously these super clever algorithms to make sure that you don’t actually use a lot of space or CPU or whatever.
Lex
Okay. This is a good place to ask about infrastructure. So you guys mostly use AWS, what are some interesting details? What are some interesting challenges? Why’d you choose AWS? Why is AWS still winning? Hashtag.
Okay. This is a good place to ask about infrastructure. So you guys mostly use AWS, what are some interesting details? What are some interesting challenges? Why’d you choose AWS? Why is AWS still winning? Hashtag.
Arvid
AWS is just really, really good. It is really good. Whenever you use an AWS product, you just know that it’s going to work. It might be absolute hell to go through the steps to set it up.
AWS is just really, really good. It is really good. Whenever you use an AWS product, you just know that it’s going to work. It might be absolute hell to go through the steps to set it up.
Lex
Why is the interface so horrible?
Why is the interface so horrible?
Sualeh
Because it’s-
Because it’s-
Arvid
It’s just so good. It doesn’t need to-
It’s just so good. It doesn’t need to-
Lex
It’s the nature of winning.
It’s the nature of winning.
Sualeh
I think it’s exactly. It’s just nature they’re winning.
I think it’s exactly. It’s just nature they’re winning.
Arvid
Yeah, yeah. But AWS we can always trust, it will always work. And if there is a problem, it’s probably your problem. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. But AWS we can always trust, it will always work. And if there is a problem, it’s probably your problem. Yeah.
Scaling challenges
Lex
Okay. Is there some interesting challenges to… You guys are pretty new startup to scaling, to so many people and-
Okay. Is there some interesting challenges to… You guys are pretty new startup to scaling, to so many people and-
Michael
Yeah, I think that it has been an interesting journey adding each extra zero to the request per second. You run into all of these with the general components you’re using for caching and databases, run into issues as you make things bigger and bigger, and now we’re at the scale where we get into overflows on our tables and things like that. And then also there have been some custom systems that we’ve built. For instance, our retrieval system for computing, a semantic index of your code base and answering questions about a code base that have, continually, I feel like been one of the trickier things to scale.
Yeah, I think that it has been an interesting journey adding each extra zero to the request per second. You run into all of these with the general components you’re using for caching and databases, run into issues as you make things bigger and bigger, and now we’re at the scale where we get into overflows on our tables and things like that. And then also there have been some custom systems that we’ve built. For instance, our retrieval system for computing, a semantic index of your code base and answering questions about a code base that have, continually, I feel like been one of the trickier things to scale.
Michael
… that have continually, I feel like, been one of the trickier things to scale.
… that have continually, I feel like, been one of the trickier things to scale.
Sualeh
I have a few friends who are super senior engineers and one of their lines is, it’s very hard to predict where systems will break when you scale them. You can try to predict in advance, but there’s always something weird that’s going to happen when you add these extras here. You thought through everything, which you didn’t actually think through everything. But I think for that particular system, we’ve… So for concrete details, the thing we do is obviously we upload when… We chunk up all of your code, and then we send up the code for embedding and we embed the code. And then we store the embeddings in a database, but we don’t actually store any of the code. And then there’s reasons around making sure that we don’t introduce client bugs because we’re very, very paranoid about client bugs. We store much of the details on the server. Everything is encrypted.
I have a few friends who are super senior engineers and one of their lines is, it’s very hard to predict where systems will break when you scale them. You can try to predict in advance, but there’s always something weird that’s going to happen when you add these extras here. You thought through everything, which you didn’t actually think through everything. But I think for that particular system, we’ve… So for concrete details, the thing we do is obviously we upload when… We chunk up all of your code, and then we send up the code for embedding and we embed the code. And then we store the embeddings in a database, but we don’t actually store any of the code. And then there’s reasons around making sure that we don’t introduce client bugs because we’re very, very paranoid about client bugs. We store much of the details on the server. Everything is encrypted.
So one of the technical challenges is always making sure that the local index, the local code base state is the same as the state that is on the server. The way, technically, we ended up doing that is, for every single file you can keep this hash, and then for every folder you can keep a hash, which is the hash of all of its children. You can recursively do that until the top. Why do something complicated? One thing you could do is you could keep a hash for every file and every minute, you could try to download the hashes that are on the server, figure out what are the files that don’t exist on the server. Maybe you just created a new file, maybe you just deleted a file, maybe you checked out a new branch, and try to reconcile the state between the client and the server.
But that introduces absolutely ginormous network overhead both on the client side. Nobody really wants us to hammer their WiFi all the time if you’re using Cursor. But also, it would introduce ginormous overhead on the database. It would be reading these tens of terabytes database, approaching 20 terabytes or something data base every second. That’s just crazy. You definitely don’t want to do that. So what you do, you just try to reconcile the single hash, which is at the root of the project. And then if something mismatches, then you go, you find where all the things disagree. Maybe you look at the children and see if the hashes match. If the hashes don’t match, go look at their children and so on. But you only do that in the scenario where things don’t match. For most people, most of the time, the hashes match.
Lex
So it’s like a hierarchical reconciliation-
So it’s like a hierarchical reconciliation-
Sualeh
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex
… of hashes-
… of hashes-
Sualeh
Something like that.
Something like that.
Aman
Yeah, it’s called a Merkle tree.
Yeah, it’s called a Merkle tree.
Lex
Yeah, Merkle. Yeah. Yeah, this is cool to see that you have to think through all these problems.
Yeah, Merkle. Yeah. Yeah, this is cool to see that you have to think through all these problems.
Sualeh
The reason it’s gotten hard is just because the number of people using it and some of your customers have really, really large code bases to the point where… We originally reordered dark code base, which is big, but it’s just not the size of some company that’s been there for 20 years and has a ginormous number of files and you want to scale that across programmers. There’s all these details where building the simple thing is easy, but scaling it to a lot of people, a lot of companies is obviously a difficult problem, which is independent of, actually… so that there’s part of this scaling. Our current solution is also coming up with new ideas that, obviously, we’re working on, but then scaling all of that in the last few weeks, months.
The reason it’s gotten hard is just because the number of people using it and some of your customers have really, really large code bases to the point where… We originally reordered dark code base, which is big, but it’s just not the size of some company that’s been there for 20 years and has a ginormous number of files and you want to scale that across programmers. There’s all these details where building the simple thing is easy, but scaling it to a lot of people, a lot of companies is obviously a difficult problem, which is independent of, actually… so that there’s part of this scaling. Our current solution is also coming up with new ideas that, obviously, we’re working on, but then scaling all of that in the last few weeks, months.
Aman
Yeah. There are a lot of clever things, additional things that go into this indexing system. For example, the bottleneck in terms of costs is not soaring things in the vector database or the database. It’s actually embedding the code. You don’t want to re-embed the code base for every single person in a company that is using the same exact code except for maybe they’re a different branch with a few different files or they’ve made a few local changes. Because again, embeddings are the bottleneck, you can do this one clever trick and not have to worry about the complexity of dealing with branches and the other databases where you just have some cash on the actual vectors computed from the hash of a given chunk. So this means that when the nth person at a company goes and embed their code base, it’s really, really fast. You do all this without actually storing any code on our servers at all. No code data is stored. We just store the vectors in the vector database and the vector cache.
Yeah. There are a lot of clever things, additional things that go into this indexing system. For example, the bottleneck in terms of costs is not soaring things in the vector database or the database. It’s actually embedding the code. You don’t want to re-embed the code base for every single person in a company that is using the same exact code except for maybe they’re a different branch with a few different files or they’ve made a few local changes. Because again, embeddings are the bottleneck, you can do this one clever trick and not have to worry about the complexity of dealing with branches and the other databases where you just have some cash on the actual vectors computed from the hash of a given chunk. So this means that when the nth person at a company goes and embed their code base, it’s really, really fast. You do all this without actually storing any code on our servers at all. No code data is stored. We just store the vectors in the vector database and the vector cache.
Lex
What’s the biggest gains at this time you get from indexing the code base? Just out of curiosity, what benefit do users have? It seems like longer term, there’ll be more and more benefit, but in the short term, just asking questions of the code base, what’s the usefulness of that?
What’s the biggest gains at this time you get from indexing the code base? Just out of curiosity, what benefit do users have? It seems like longer term, there’ll be more and more benefit, but in the short term, just asking questions of the code base, what’s the usefulness of that?
Arvid
I think the most obvious one is just, you want to find out where something is happening in your large code base, and you have a fuzzy memory of, “Okay, I want to find the place where we do X,” but you don’t exactly know what to search for in a normal text search. So you ask a chat, you hit command enter to ask with the code base chat. And then very often, it finds the right place that you were thinking of.
I think the most obvious one is just, you want to find out where something is happening in your large code base, and you have a fuzzy memory of, “Okay, I want to find the place where we do X,” but you don’t exactly know what to search for in a normal text search. So you ask a chat, you hit command enter to ask with the code base chat. And then very often, it finds the right place that you were thinking of.
Aman
Like you mentioned, in the future, I think there’s only going to get more and more powerful, where we’re working a lot on improving the quality of our retrieval. I think the ceiling for that is really, really much higher than people give the credit for.
Like you mentioned, in the future, I think there’s only going to get more and more powerful, where we’re working a lot on improving the quality of our retrieval. I think the ceiling for that is really, really much higher than people give the credit for.
Lex
One question that’s good to ask here, have you considered and why haven’t you much done local stuff to where you can do the… It seems like everything was just discussed as exceptionally difficult to do. To go to the cloud, you have to think about all these things with the caching and the large code base where a large number of programmers are using the same code base. You have to figure out the puzzle of that. A lot of it, most software just does this heavy computational stuff locally. So have you considered doing embeddings locally?
One question that’s good to ask here, have you considered and why haven’t you much done local stuff to where you can do the… It seems like everything was just discussed as exceptionally difficult to do. To go to the cloud, you have to think about all these things with the caching and the large code base where a large number of programmers are using the same code base. You have to figure out the puzzle of that. A lot of it, most software just does this heavy computational stuff locally. So have you considered doing embeddings locally?
Arvid
Yeah, we thought about it, and I think it would be cool to do it locally. I think it’s just really hard. One thing to keep in mind is that some of our users use the latest MacBook Pro, but most of our users, more than 80% of our users are in Windows machines, which many of them are not very powerful. So local models really only works on the latest computers, and it’s also a big overhead to build that in. So even if we would like to do that, it’s currently not something that we are able to focus on. I think there are some people that do that, and I think that’s great, but especially as models get bigger and bigger and you want to do fancier things with bigger models, it becomes even harder to do it locally.
Yeah, we thought about it, and I think it would be cool to do it locally. I think it’s just really hard. One thing to keep in mind is that some of our users use the latest MacBook Pro, but most of our users, more than 80% of our users are in Windows machines, which many of them are not very powerful. So local models really only works on the latest computers, and it’s also a big overhead to build that in. So even if we would like to do that, it’s currently not something that we are able to focus on. I think there are some people that do that, and I think that’s great, but especially as models get bigger and bigger and you want to do fancier things with bigger models, it becomes even harder to do it locally.
Sualeh
Yeah. It’s not a problem of weaker computers. It’s just that for example, if you’re some big company, you have big company code base. It’s just really hard to process big company code base even on the beefiest MacBook Pros. It’s not even a matter of if you’re just a student or something. I think if you’re the best programmer at a big company, you’re still going to have a horrible experience. If you do everything locally where you could do it and scrape by, but again, it wouldn’t be fun anymore.
Yeah. It’s not a problem of weaker computers. It’s just that for example, if you’re some big company, you have big company code base. It’s just really hard to process big company code base even on the beefiest MacBook Pros. It’s not even a matter of if you’re just a student or something. I think if you’re the best programmer at a big company, you’re still going to have a horrible experience. If you do everything locally where you could do it and scrape by, but again, it wouldn’t be fun anymore.
Aman
Yeah. Like at approximate nearest neighbors and this massive code base is going to just eat up your memory and your CPU, and it’s based off of that. That’s just that. Let’s talk about also the modeling side where, as Arvid said, there are these massive headwinds against local models where one, things that seem to move towards MOEs, which one benefit is maybe their more memory bandwidth bound, which plays in favor of local versus using GPUs or using Nvidia GPUs. But the downside is, these models are just bigger in total, and they’re going to need to fit, often not even on a single node but multiple nodes. There’s no way that’s going to fit inside of even really good MacBooks. I think especially for coding, it’s not a question as much of, does it clear some bar of the model’s good enough to do these things and then we’re satisfied? Which may be the case for other problems and maybe where local models shine, but people are always going to want the best, the most intelligent, the most capable things, and that’s going to be really, really hard to run for almost all people, locally.
Yeah. Like at approximate nearest neighbors and this massive code base is going to just eat up your memory and your CPU, and it’s based off of that. That’s just that. Let’s talk about also the modeling side where, as Arvid said, there are these massive headwinds against local models where one, things that seem to move towards MOEs, which one benefit is maybe their more memory bandwidth bound, which plays in favor of local versus using GPUs or using Nvidia GPUs. But the downside is, these models are just bigger in total, and they’re going to need to fit, often not even on a single node but multiple nodes. There’s no way that’s going to fit inside of even really good MacBooks. I think especially for coding, it’s not a question as much of, does it clear some bar of the model’s good enough to do these things and then we’re satisfied? Which may be the case for other problems and maybe where local models shine, but people are always going to want the best, the most intelligent, the most capable things, and that’s going to be really, really hard to run for almost all people, locally.
Sualeh
Don’t you want the most capable model? You want [inaudible 01:38:55] too?
Don’t you want the most capable model? You want [inaudible 01:38:55] too?
Aman
And also o1-
And also o1-
Lex
I like how you’re pitching me.
I like how you’re pitching me.
Aman
o1 is another-
o1 is another-
Lex
Would you be satisfied with an inferior model? Listen, yes, I’m one of those, but there’s some people that like to do stuff locally, especially like… Really, there’s a whole obviously open source movement that resists. It’s good that they exist actually because you want to resist the power centers that are growing our-
Would you be satisfied with an inferior model? Listen, yes, I’m one of those, but there’s some people that like to do stuff locally, especially like… Really, there’s a whole obviously open source movement that resists. It’s good that they exist actually because you want to resist the power centers that are growing our-
Arvid
There’s actually an alternative to local models that I am particularly fond of. I think it’s still very much in the research stage, but you could imagine to do homomorphic encryption for language model inference. So you encrypt your input on your local machine, then you send that up, and then the server can use loss of computation. They can run models that you cannot run locally on this encrypted data, but they cannot see what the data is, and then they send back the answer and you decrypt the answer and only you can see the answer. So I think that’s still very much research and all of it is about trying to make the overhead lower because right now, the overhead is really big, but if you can make that happen, I think that would be really, really cool, and I think it would be really, really impactful because I think one thing that’s actually worrisome is that, as these models get better and better, they’re going to become more and more economically useful.
There’s actually an alternative to local models that I am particularly fond of. I think it’s still very much in the research stage, but you could imagine to do homomorphic encryption for language model inference. So you encrypt your input on your local machine, then you send that up, and then the server can use loss of computation. They can run models that you cannot run locally on this encrypted data, but they cannot see what the data is, and then they send back the answer and you decrypt the answer and only you can see the answer. So I think that’s still very much research and all of it is about trying to make the overhead lower because right now, the overhead is really big, but if you can make that happen, I think that would be really, really cool, and I think it would be really, really impactful because I think one thing that’s actually worrisome is that, as these models get better and better, they’re going to become more and more economically useful.
So more and more of the world’s information and data will flow through one or two centralized actors. And then there are worries about, there can be traditional hacker attempts, but it also creates this scary part where if all of the world’s information is flowing through one node in plaintext, you can have surveillance in very bad ways. Sometimes that will happen for… Initially, will be good reasons. People will want to try to protect against bad actors using AI models in bad ways, and then you will add in some surveillance code. And then someone else will come in and you’re on a slippery slope, and then you start doing bad things with a lot of the world’s data. So I am very hopeful that we can solve homomorphic encryption for-
Lex
Yeah, and-
Yeah, and-
Arvid
… language model inference.
… language model inference.
Lex
… doing privacy, preserving machine learning. But I would say, that’s the challenge we have with all software these days. It’s like there’s so many features that can be provided from the cloud and all us increasingly rely on it and make our life awesome. But there’s downsides, and that’s why you rely on really good security to protect from basic attacks. But there’s also only a small set of companies that are controlling that data, and they obviously have leverage and they could be infiltrated in all kinds of ways. That’s the world we live in. So it’s-
… doing privacy, preserving machine learning. But I would say, that’s the challenge we have with all software these days. It’s like there’s so many features that can be provided from the cloud and all us increasingly rely on it and make our life awesome. But there’s downsides, and that’s why you rely on really good security to protect from basic attacks. But there’s also only a small set of companies that are controlling that data, and they obviously have leverage and they could be infiltrated in all kinds of ways. That’s the world we live in. So it’s-
Sualeh
Yeah, the thing I’m just actually quite worried about is the world where… Anthropic has this responsible scaling policy where we’re the low ASLs, which is the Anthropic security level or whatever of the models. But as we get to ASL-3, ASL-4, whatever models which are very powerful… But for mostly reasonable security reasons, you would want to monitor all the prompts. But I think that’s reasonable and understandable where everyone is coming from. But man, it’d be really horrible if all the world’s information is monitored that heavily, it’s way too centralized. It’s like this really fine line you’re walking where on the one side, you don’t want the models to go rogue. On the other side, humans like… I don’t know if I trust all the world’s information to pass through three model providers.
Yeah, the thing I’m just actually quite worried about is the world where… Anthropic has this responsible scaling policy where we’re the low ASLs, which is the Anthropic security level or whatever of the models. But as we get to ASL-3, ASL-4, whatever models which are very powerful… But for mostly reasonable security reasons, you would want to monitor all the prompts. But I think that’s reasonable and understandable where everyone is coming from. But man, it’d be really horrible if all the world’s information is monitored that heavily, it’s way too centralized. It’s like this really fine line you’re walking where on the one side, you don’t want the models to go rogue. On the other side, humans like… I don’t know if I trust all the world’s information to pass through three model providers.
Aman
Why do you think it’s different than cloud providers?
Why do you think it’s different than cloud providers?
Arvid
Because I think a lot of this data would never have gone to the cloud providers in the first place where this is often… You want to give more data to the AI models, you want to give personal data that you would never have put online in the first place to these companies or to these models. It also centralizes control where right now, for cloud, you can often use your own encryption keys, and AWS can’t really do much. But here, it’s just centralized actors that see the exact plain text of everything.
Because I think a lot of this data would never have gone to the cloud providers in the first place where this is often… You want to give more data to the AI models, you want to give personal data that you would never have put online in the first place to these companies or to these models. It also centralizes control where right now, for cloud, you can often use your own encryption keys, and AWS can’t really do much. But here, it’s just centralized actors that see the exact plain text of everything.
Context
Lex
Yeah. On the topic of a context, that’s actually been a friction for me. When I’m writing code in Python, there’s a bunch of stuff imported. You could probably intuit the kind of stuff I would like to include in the context. How hard is it to auto figure out the context?
Yeah. On the topic of a context, that’s actually been a friction for me. When I’m writing code in Python, there’s a bunch of stuff imported. You could probably intuit the kind of stuff I would like to include in the context. How hard is it to auto figure out the context?
Michael
It’s tricky. I think we can do a lot better at computing the context automatically in the future. One thing that’s important to note is, there are trade-offs with including automatic context. So the more context you include for these models, first of all, the slower they are and the more expensive those requests are, which means you can then do less model calls and do less fancy stuff in the background. Also, for a lot of these models, they get confused if you have a lot of information in the prompt. So the bar for accuracy and for relevance of the context you include should be quite high. Already, we do some automatic context in some places within the product. It’s definitely something we want to get a lot better at. I think that there are a lot of cool ideas to try there, both on the learning better retrieval systems, like better embedding models, better rerankers.
It’s tricky. I think we can do a lot better at computing the context automatically in the future. One thing that’s important to note is, there are trade-offs with including automatic context. So the more context you include for these models, first of all, the slower they are and the more expensive those requests are, which means you can then do less model calls and do less fancy stuff in the background. Also, for a lot of these models, they get confused if you have a lot of information in the prompt. So the bar for accuracy and for relevance of the context you include should be quite high. Already, we do some automatic context in some places within the product. It’s definitely something we want to get a lot better at. I think that there are a lot of cool ideas to try there, both on the learning better retrieval systems, like better embedding models, better rerankers.
I think that there are also cool academic ideas, stuff we’ve tried out internally, but also the field is grappling with writ large about, can you get language models to a place where you can actually just have the model itself understand a new corpus of information? The most popular talked about version of this is can you make the context windows infinite? Then if you make the context windows infinite, can you make the model actually pay attention to the infinite context? And then after you can make it pay attention to the infinite context to make it somewhat feasible to actually do it, can you then do caching for that infinite context? You don’t have to recompute that all the time. But there are other cool ideas that are being tried, that are a little bit more analogous to fine-tuning of actually learning this information in the weights of the model. It might be that you actually get a qualitative lead different type of understanding if you do it more at the weight level than if you do it at the in-context learning level.
I think the jury’s still a little bit out on how this is all going to work in the end? But in the interim, us as a company, we are really excited about better retrieval systems and picking the parts of the code base that are most relevant to what you’re doing, and we could do that a lot better.
Aman
One interesting proof of concept for the learning this knowledge directly in the weights is with VS Code. So we’re in a VS Code fork and VS Code. The code is all public. So these models in pre-training have seen all the code. They’ve probably also seen questions and answers about it. And then they’ve been fine-tuned and RLHFed to be able to answer questions about code in general. So when you ask it a question about VS Code, sometimes it’ll hallucinate, but sometimes it actually does a pretty good job at answering the question. I think this is just by… It happens to be okay, but what if you could actually specifically train or post-train a model such that it really was built to understand this code base?
One interesting proof of concept for the learning this knowledge directly in the weights is with VS Code. So we’re in a VS Code fork and VS Code. The code is all public. So these models in pre-training have seen all the code. They’ve probably also seen questions and answers about it. And then they’ve been fine-tuned and RLHFed to be able to answer questions about code in general. So when you ask it a question about VS Code, sometimes it’ll hallucinate, but sometimes it actually does a pretty good job at answering the question. I think this is just by… It happens to be okay, but what if you could actually specifically train or post-train a model such that it really was built to understand this code base?
It’s an open research question, one that we’re quite interested in. And then there’s also uncertainty of, do you want the model to be the thing that end-to-end is doing everything, i.e. it’s doing the retrieval in its internals and then answering a question, creating the code, or do you want to separate the retrieval from the frontier model, where maybe you’ll get some really capable models that are much better than the best open source ones in a handful of months? And then you’ll want to separately train a really good open source model to be the retriever, to be the thing that feeds in the context to these larger models.
Lex
Can you speak a little more to post-training a model to understand the code base? What do you mean by that? Is this a synthetic data direction? Is this-
Can you speak a little more to post-training a model to understand the code base? What do you mean by that? Is this a synthetic data direction? Is this-
Aman
Yeah, there are many possible ways you could try doing it. There’s certainly no shortage of ideas. It’s just a question of going in and trying all of them and being empirical about which one works best. One very naive thing is to try to replicate what’s done with VS Code and these frontier models. So let’s continue pre-training. Some kind of continued pre-training that includes general code data but also throws in of the data of some particular repository that you care about. And then in post-training, meaning in… Let’s just start with instruction fine-tuning. You have a normal instruction fine-tuning data set about code. Then you throw in a lot of questions about code in that repository.
Yeah, there are many possible ways you could try doing it. There’s certainly no shortage of ideas. It’s just a question of going in and trying all of them and being empirical about which one works best. One very naive thing is to try to replicate what’s done with VS Code and these frontier models. So let’s continue pre-training. Some kind of continued pre-training that includes general code data but also throws in of the data of some particular repository that you care about. And then in post-training, meaning in… Let’s just start with instruction fine-tuning. You have a normal instruction fine-tuning data set about code. Then you throw in a lot of questions about code in that repository.
So you could either get ground truth ones, which might be difficult or you could do what you hinted at or suggested using synthetic data, i.e. having the model ask questions about various recent pieces of the code. So you take the pieces of the code, then prompt the model or have a model propose a question for that piece of code, and then add those as instruction fine-tuning data points. And then in theory, this might unlock the model’s ability to answer questions about that code base.
OpenAI o1
Lex
Let me ask you about OpenAI o1. What do you think is the role of that kind of test time compute system in programming?
Let me ask you about OpenAI o1. What do you think is the role of that kind of test time compute system in programming?
Aman
I think test time compute is really, really interesting. So there’s been the pre-training regime which will, as you scale up the amount of data and the size of your model, get you better and better performance both on loss and then on downstream benchmarks and just general performance. So we use it for coding or other tasks. We’re starting to hit a bit of a data wall. Meaning, it’s going to be hard to continue scaling up this regime. So scaling up test time compute is an interesting way, if now increasing the number of inference time flops that we use but still getting… Yeah, as you increase the number of flops you use inference time getting corresponding improvements in the performance of these models. Traditionally, we just had to literally train a bigger model that always used that many more flops, but now, we could perhaps use the same size model and run it for longer to be able to get an answer at the quality of a much larger model.
I think test time compute is really, really interesting. So there’s been the pre-training regime which will, as you scale up the amount of data and the size of your model, get you better and better performance both on loss and then on downstream benchmarks and just general performance. So we use it for coding or other tasks. We’re starting to hit a bit of a data wall. Meaning, it’s going to be hard to continue scaling up this regime. So scaling up test time compute is an interesting way, if now increasing the number of inference time flops that we use but still getting… Yeah, as you increase the number of flops you use inference time getting corresponding improvements in the performance of these models. Traditionally, we just had to literally train a bigger model that always used that many more flops, but now, we could perhaps use the same size model and run it for longer to be able to get an answer at the quality of a much larger model.
So the really interesting thing I like about this is there are some problems that perhaps require 100 trillion parameter model intelligence trained on 100 trillion tokens. But that’s maybe 1%, maybe 0.1% of all queries. So are you going to spend all of this effort, all of this compute training a model that costs that much and then run it so infrequently? It feels completely wasteful when instead you get the model that can… You train the model that is capable of doing the 99.9% of queries, then you have a way of inference time running it longer for those few people that really, really want max intelligence.
Lex
How do you figure out which problem requires what level of intelligence? Is that possible to dynamically figure out when to use GPT-4, when to use a small model and when you need the o1?
How do you figure out which problem requires what level of intelligence? Is that possible to dynamically figure out when to use GPT-4, when to use a small model and when you need the o1?
Aman
Yeah, that’s an open research problem, certainly. I don’t think anyone’s actually cracked this model routing problem quite well. We have initial implementations of this for something like Cursor Tab, but at the level of going between 4o sonnet to o1, it’s a bit trickier. There’s also a question like, what level of intelligence do you need to determine if the thing is too hard for the four level model? Maybe you need the o1 level model. It’s really unclear.
Yeah, that’s an open research problem, certainly. I don’t think anyone’s actually cracked this model routing problem quite well. We have initial implementations of this for something like Cursor Tab, but at the level of going between 4o sonnet to o1, it’s a bit trickier. There’s also a question like, what level of intelligence do you need to determine if the thing is too hard for the four level model? Maybe you need the o1 level model. It’s really unclear.
Lex
But you mentioned this. So there’s a pre-training process then there’s post-training, and then there’s test time compute. Is that fair to separate? Where’s the biggest gains?
But you mentioned this. So there’s a pre-training process then there’s post-training, and then there’s test time compute. Is that fair to separate? Where’s the biggest gains?
Aman
Well, it’s weird because test time compute, there’s a whole training strategy needed to get test time compute to work. The other really weird thing about this is outside of the big labs and maybe even just OpenAI, no one really knows how it works. There’ve been some really interesting papers that show hints of what they might be doing. So perhaps they’re doing something with tree search using process reward models. But yeah, I think the issue is we don’t quite know exactly what it looks like, so it would be hard to comment on where it fits in. I would put it in post-training, but maybe the compute spent for this kind of… forgetting test time compute to work for a model is going to dwarf pre-training eventually.
Well, it’s weird because test time compute, there’s a whole training strategy needed to get test time compute to work. The other really weird thing about this is outside of the big labs and maybe even just OpenAI, no one really knows how it works. There’ve been some really interesting papers that show hints of what they might be doing. So perhaps they’re doing something with tree search using process reward models. But yeah, I think the issue is we don’t quite know exactly what it looks like, so it would be hard to comment on where it fits in. I would put it in post-training, but maybe the compute spent for this kind of… forgetting test time compute to work for a model is going to dwarf pre-training eventually.
Lex
So we don’t even know if o1 is using just chain of thought or we don’t know how they’re using any of these? We don’t know anything?
So we don’t even know if o1 is using just chain of thought or we don’t know how they’re using any of these? We don’t know anything?
Aman
It’s fun to speculate.
It’s fun to speculate.
Lex
If you were to build a competing model, what would you do?
If you were to build a competing model, what would you do?
Aman
Yeah. So one thing to do would be, I think you probably need to train a process reward model, which is… So maybe we can get into reward models and outcome reward models versus process reward models. Outcome reward models are the traditional reward models that people are trained for language modeling, and it’s just looking at the final thing. So if you’re doing some math problem, let’s look at that final thing. You’ve done everything and let’s assign a grade to it, how likely we think… What’s the reward for this outcome? Process reward models instead try to grade the chain of thought. So OpenAI had preliminary paper on this, I think, last summer where they use human labelers to get this pretty large several hundred thousand data set of creating chains of thought. Ultimately, it feels like I haven’t seen anything interesting in the ways that people use process reward models outside of just using it as a means of affecting how we choose between a bunch of samples.
Yeah. So one thing to do would be, I think you probably need to train a process reward model, which is… So maybe we can get into reward models and outcome reward models versus process reward models. Outcome reward models are the traditional reward models that people are trained for language modeling, and it’s just looking at the final thing. So if you’re doing some math problem, let’s look at that final thing. You’ve done everything and let’s assign a grade to it, how likely we think… What’s the reward for this outcome? Process reward models instead try to grade the chain of thought. So OpenAI had preliminary paper on this, I think, last summer where they use human labelers to get this pretty large several hundred thousand data set of creating chains of thought. Ultimately, it feels like I haven’t seen anything interesting in the ways that people use process reward models outside of just using it as a means of affecting how we choose between a bunch of samples.
So what people do in all these papers is they sample a bunch of outputs from the language model, and then use the process reward models to grade all those generations alongside maybe some other heuristics and then use that to choose the best answer. The really interesting thing that people think might work and people want to work is tree search with these process reward models. Because if you really can grade every single step of the chain of thought, then you can branch out and explore multiple paths of this chain of thought and then use these process reward models to evaluate how good is this branch that you’re taking.
Lex
Yeah. When the quality of the branch is somehow strongly correlated with the quality of the outcome at the very end, so you have a good model of knowing which branch to take. So not just in the short term, in the long term?
Yeah. When the quality of the branch is somehow strongly correlated with the quality of the outcome at the very end, so you have a good model of knowing which branch to take. So not just in the short term, in the long term?
Aman
Yeah. The interesting work that I think has been done is figuring out how to properly train the process… Or the interesting work that has been open sourced and people I think talk about is how to train the process reward models, maybe in a more automated way. I could be wrong here, could not be mentioning some papers. I haven’t seen anything super that seems to work really well for using the process reward models creatively to do tree search and code.
Yeah. The interesting work that I think has been done is figuring out how to properly train the process… Or the interesting work that has been open sourced and people I think talk about is how to train the process reward models, maybe in a more automated way. I could be wrong here, could not be mentioning some papers. I haven’t seen anything super that seems to work really well for using the process reward models creatively to do tree search and code.
Lex
This is an AI safety, maybe a bit of a philosophy question. So OpenAI says that they’re hiding the chain of thought from the user, and they’ve said that that was a difficult decision to make. Instead of showing the chain of thought, they’re asking the model to summarize the chain of thought. They’re also in the background saying they’re going to monitor the chain of thought to make sure the model is not trying to manipulate the user, which is a fascinating possibility. But anyway, what do you think about hiding the chain of thought?
This is an AI safety, maybe a bit of a philosophy question. So OpenAI says that they’re hiding the chain of thought from the user, and they’ve said that that was a difficult decision to make. Instead of showing the chain of thought, they’re asking the model to summarize the chain of thought. They’re also in the background saying they’re going to monitor the chain of thought to make sure the model is not trying to manipulate the user, which is a fascinating possibility. But anyway, what do you think about hiding the chain of thought?
Michael
One consideration for OpenAI, and this is completely speculative, could be that they want to make it hard for people to distill these capabilities out of their model. It might actually be easier if you had access to that hidden chain of thought to replicate the technology, because pretty important data, like seeing the steps that the model took to get to the final results.
One consideration for OpenAI, and this is completely speculative, could be that they want to make it hard for people to distill these capabilities out of their model. It might actually be easier if you had access to that hidden chain of thought to replicate the technology, because pretty important data, like seeing the steps that the model took to get to the final results.
Lex
So you could probably train on that also?
So you could probably train on that also?
Michael
And there was a mirror situation with this, with some of the large language model providers, and also this is speculation, but some of these APIs used to offer easy access to log probabilities for all the tokens that they’re generating and also log probabilities over the prompt tokens. And then some of these APIs took those away. Again, complete speculation, but one of the thoughts is that the reason those were taken away is if you have access to log probabilities similar to this hidden chain of thought, that can give you even more information to try and distill these capabilities out of the APIs, out of these biggest models and to models you control. As an asterisk on also the previous discussion about us integrating o1, I think that we’re still learning how to use this model. So we made o1 available in Cursor because when we got the model, we were really interested in trying it out. I think a lot of programmers are going to be interested in trying it out.
And there was a mirror situation with this, with some of the large language model providers, and also this is speculation, but some of these APIs used to offer easy access to log probabilities for all the tokens that they’re generating and also log probabilities over the prompt tokens. And then some of these APIs took those away. Again, complete speculation, but one of the thoughts is that the reason those were taken away is if you have access to log probabilities similar to this hidden chain of thought, that can give you even more information to try and distill these capabilities out of the APIs, out of these biggest models and to models you control. As an asterisk on also the previous discussion about us integrating o1, I think that we’re still learning how to use this model. So we made o1 available in Cursor because when we got the model, we were really interested in trying it out. I think a lot of programmers are going to be interested in trying it out.
o1 is not part of the default Cursor experience in any way up, and we still haven’t found a way to yet integrate it into the editor in a way that we reach for every hour, maybe even every day. So I think that the jury’s still out on how to use the model, and we haven’t seen examples yet of people releasing things where it seems really clear like, oh, that’s now the use case. The obvious one to turn to is maybe this can make it easier for you to have these background things running, to have these models and loops, to have these models be agentic. But we’re still discovering,
Sualeh
To be clear, we have ideas. We just need to try and get something incredibly useful before we put it out there.
To be clear, we have ideas. We just need to try and get something incredibly useful before we put it out there.
Aman
But it has these significant limitations. Even barring capabilities, it does not stream. That means it’s really, really painful to use for things where you want to supervise the output. Instead, you’re just waiting for the wall text to show up. Also, it does feel like the early innings of test time, compute and search where it’s just a very, very much a v0, and there’s so many things that don’t feel quite right. I suspect in parallel to people increasing the amount of pre-training data and the size of the models and pre-training and finding tricks there, you’ll now have this other thread of getting search to work better and better.
But it has these significant limitations. Even barring capabilities, it does not stream. That means it’s really, really painful to use for things where you want to supervise the output. Instead, you’re just waiting for the wall text to show up. Also, it does feel like the early innings of test time, compute and search where it’s just a very, very much a v0, and there’s so many things that don’t feel quite right. I suspect in parallel to people increasing the amount of pre-training data and the size of the models and pre-training and finding tricks there, you’ll now have this other thread of getting search to work better and better.
Lex
So let me ask you about strawberry tomorrow eyes. So it looks like GitHub Copilot might be integrating o1 in some kind of way, and I think some of the comments are saying, does this mean Cursor is done? I think I saw one comment saying that.
So let me ask you about strawberry tomorrow eyes. So it looks like GitHub Copilot might be integrating o1 in some kind of way, and I think some of the comments are saying, does this mean Cursor is done? I think I saw one comment saying that.
Arvid
It’s a time to shut down Cursor. Yeah.
It’s a time to shut down Cursor. Yeah.
Lex
Time to shut down Cursor.
Time to shut down Cursor.
Arvid
[inaudible 01:58:38].
[inaudible 01:58:38].
Lex
Thank you. So is it time to shut down Cursor?
Thank you. So is it time to shut down Cursor?
Michael
I think this space is a little bit different from past software spaces over the 2010s, where I think that the ceiling here is really, really, really incredibly high. So I think that the best product in three to four years will just be soon much more useful than the best product today. You can wax poetic about moats this and brand that and this is our advantage, but I think in the end, just if you stop innovating on the product, you will lose. That’s also great for startups, that’s great for people trying to enter this market because it means you have an opportunity to win against people who have lots of users already by just building something better. So I think over the next few years, it’s just about building the best product, building the best system. That both comes down to the modeling engine side of things, and it also comes down to the editing experience.
I think this space is a little bit different from past software spaces over the 2010s, where I think that the ceiling here is really, really, really incredibly high. So I think that the best product in three to four years will just be soon much more useful than the best product today. You can wax poetic about moats this and brand that and this is our advantage, but I think in the end, just if you stop innovating on the product, you will lose. That’s also great for startups, that’s great for people trying to enter this market because it means you have an opportunity to win against people who have lots of users already by just building something better. So I think over the next few years, it’s just about building the best product, building the best system. That both comes down to the modeling engine side of things, and it also comes down to the editing experience.
Aman
Yeah, I think most of the additional value from Cursor versus everything else out there is not just integrating the new model fast like o1. It comes from all of the depth that goes into these custom models that you don’t realize are working for you in every facet of the product, as well as the really thoughtful UX with every single feature.
Yeah, I think most of the additional value from Cursor versus everything else out there is not just integrating the new model fast like o1. It comes from all of the depth that goes into these custom models that you don’t realize are working for you in every facet of the product, as well as the really thoughtful UX with every single feature.
Synthetic data
Lex
All right. From that profound answer-
All right. From that profound answer-
Lex
All right, from that profound answer, let’s descend back down to the technical. You mentioned you have a taxonomy of synthetic data.
All right, from that profound answer, let’s descend back down to the technical. You mentioned you have a taxonomy of synthetic data.
Aman
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
Lex
Can you please explain?
Can you please explain?
Aman
Yeah, I think there are three main kinds of synthetic data. So what is synthetic data, first? So there’s normal data, like non-synthetic data, which is just data that’s naturally created, i.e. usually it’ll be from humans having done things. So from some human process you get this data. Synthetic data, the first one would be distillation. So having a language model, output tokens or probability distributions over tokens, and then you can train some less capable model on this.
Yeah, I think there are three main kinds of synthetic data. So what is synthetic data, first? So there’s normal data, like non-synthetic data, which is just data that’s naturally created, i.e. usually it’ll be from humans having done things. So from some human process you get this data. Synthetic data, the first one would be distillation. So having a language model, output tokens or probability distributions over tokens, and then you can train some less capable model on this.
This approach is not going to get you a more capable model than the original one that has produced the tokens, but it’s really useful for if there’s some capability you want to elicit from some really expensive high-latency model. You can then distill that down into some smaller task-specific model.
The second kind is when one direction of the problem is easier than the reverse. So a great example of this is bug detection, like we mentioned earlier, where it’s a lot easier to introduce reasonable-looking bugs than it is to actually detect them. And this is probably the case for humans too. And so what you can do, is you can get a model that’s not trained in that much data, that’s not that smart, to introduce a bunch of bugs and code. And then you can use that to then train… Use the synthetic data to train a model that can be really good at detecting bugs.
The last category I think is, I guess the main one that it feels like the big labs are doing for synthetic data, which is producing text with language models that can then be verified easily. So extreme example of this is if you have a verification system that can detect if language is Shakespeare level, and then you have a bunch of monkeys typing and typewriters. You can eventually get enough training data to train a Shakespeare-level language model.
And I mean this is very much the case for math where verification is actually really, really easy for formal languages. And then what you can do, is you can have an okay model, generate a ton of rollouts, and then choose the ones that you know have actually proved the ground truth theorems, and train that further.
There’s similar things you can do for code with lead code like problems, where if you have some set of tests that you know correspond to if something passes these tests, it actually solved problem. You could do the same thing where you verify that it’s passed the test and then train the model in the outputs that have passed the tests.
I think it’s going to be a little tricky getting this to work in all domains, or just in general. Having the perfect verifier feels really, really hard to do with just open-ended miscellaneous tasks. You give the model or more long horizon tasks, even in coding.
Lex
That’s because you’re not as optimistic as Arvid. But yeah, so yeah, that third category requires having a verifier.
That’s because you’re not as optimistic as Arvid. But yeah, so yeah, that third category requires having a verifier.
Aman
Verification, it feels like it’s best when you know for a fact that it’s correct. And then it wouldn’t be like using a language model to verify. It would be using tests or formal systems.
Verification, it feels like it’s best when you know for a fact that it’s correct. And then it wouldn’t be like using a language model to verify. It would be using tests or formal systems.
Michael
Or running the thing too. Doing the human form of verification, where you just do manual quality control.
Or running the thing too. Doing the human form of verification, where you just do manual quality control.
Aman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael
But the language model version of that, where it’s running the thing and it actually understands the output.
But the language model version of that, where it’s running the thing and it actually understands the output.
Aman
Yeah. No, that’s-
Yeah. No, that’s-
Michael
I’m sure it’s somewhere in between.
I’m sure it’s somewhere in between.
Aman
Yeah. I think that’s the category that is most likely to result in massive gains.
Yeah. I think that’s the category that is most likely to result in massive gains.
RLHF vs RLAIF
Lex
What about RL with feedback side RLHF versus RLAIF? What’s the role of that in getting better performance on the models?
What about RL with feedback side RLHF versus RLAIF? What’s the role of that in getting better performance on the models?
Aman
Yeah. So RLHF is when the reward model you use is trained from some labels you’ve collected from humans giving feedback. I think this works if you have the ability to get a ton of human feedback for this kind of task that you care about.
Yeah. So RLHF is when the reward model you use is trained from some labels you’ve collected from humans giving feedback. I think this works if you have the ability to get a ton of human feedback for this kind of task that you care about.
RLAIF is interesting because you’re depending on… This is actually, it’s depending on the constraint that verification is actually a decent bit easier than generation. Because it feels like, okay, what are you doing? Are you using this language model to look at the language model outputs and then prove the language model? But no, it actually may work if the language model has a much easier time verifying some solution than it does generating it. Then you actually could perhaps get this kind of recursive loop. But I don’t think it’s going to look exactly like that.
The other thing you could do, that we kind of do, is a little bit of a mix of RLAIF and RLHF, where usually the model is actually quite correct and this is the case of precursor tap picking between two possible generations of what is the better one. And then it just needs a little bit of human nudging with only on the order 50, 100 examples to align that prior the model has with exactly with what you want.
It looks different than I think normal RLHF where you’re usually training these reward models in tons of examples.
Fields Medal for AI
Lex
What’s your intuition when you compare generation and verification or generation and ranking? Is ranking way easier than generation?
What’s your intuition when you compare generation and verification or generation and ranking? Is ranking way easier than generation?
Aman
My intuition would just say, yeah, it should be. This is going back to… Like, if you believe P does not equal NP, then there’s this massive class of problems that are much, much easier to verify given proof, than actually proving it.
My intuition would just say, yeah, it should be. This is going back to… Like, if you believe P does not equal NP, then there’s this massive class of problems that are much, much easier to verify given proof, than actually proving it.
Lex
I wonder if the same thing will prove P not equal to NP or P equal to NP.
I wonder if the same thing will prove P not equal to NP or P equal to NP.
Arvid
That would be really cool.
That would be really cool.
Lex
That’d be a whatever Field’s Medal by AI. Who gets the credit? Another the open philosophical question.
That’d be a whatever Field’s Medal by AI. Who gets the credit? Another the open philosophical question.
Michael
Whoever prompted it.
Whoever prompted it.
Sualeh
I’m actually surprisingly curious what a good bet for one AI will get the Field’s Medal will be. I actually don’t have-
I’m actually surprisingly curious what a good bet for one AI will get the Field’s Medal will be. I actually don’t have-
Michael
Isn’t this Aman’s specialty?
Isn’t this Aman’s specialty?
Sualeh
I don’t know what Aman’s bet here is.
I don’t know what Aman’s bet here is.
Lex
Oh, sorry, Nobel Prize or Field’s Medal first?
Oh, sorry, Nobel Prize or Field’s Medal first?
Sualeh
Field’s Medal-
Field’s Medal-
Aman
Oh, Field’s Medal level?
Oh, Field’s Medal level?
Arvid
Field’s Medal comes first, I think.
Field’s Medal comes first, I think.
Sualeh
[inaudible 02:06:41].
[inaudible 02:06:41].
Lex
Field’s Medal comes first. Well, you would say that, of course.
Field’s Medal comes first. Well, you would say that, of course.
Arvid
But it’s also this isolated system you verify and…
But it’s also this isolated system you verify and…
Lex
Sure.
Sure.
Sualeh
I don’t even know if I-
I don’t even know if I-
Arvid
You don’t need to do [inaudible 02:06:50].
You don’t need to do [inaudible 02:06:50].
Aman
I feel like I have much more to do there. It felt like the path to get to IMO was a little bit more clear. Because it already could get a few IMO problems and there was a bunch of low-hanging fruit, given the literature at the time, of what tactics people could take. I think I’m, one, much less versed in the space of theorem proving now. And two, less intuition about how close we are to solving these really, really hard open problems.
I feel like I have much more to do there. It felt like the path to get to IMO was a little bit more clear. Because it already could get a few IMO problems and there was a bunch of low-hanging fruit, given the literature at the time, of what tactics people could take. I think I’m, one, much less versed in the space of theorem proving now. And two, less intuition about how close we are to solving these really, really hard open problems.
Lex
So you think you’ll be Field’s Medal first? It won’t be in physics or in-
So you think you’ll be Field’s Medal first? It won’t be in physics or in-
Sualeh
Oh, 100%. I think that’s probably more likely. It is probably much more likely that it’ll get in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well I think it both to… I don’t know, BSD, which is a Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, or [inaudible 02:07:33] iPods, or any one of these hard math problems are just actually really hard. It’s sort of unclear what the path to get even a solution looks like. We don’t even know what a path looks like, let alone [inaudible 02:07:47].
Oh, 100%. I think that’s probably more likely. It is probably much more likely that it’ll get in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well I think it both to… I don’t know, BSD, which is a Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, or [inaudible 02:07:33] iPods, or any one of these hard math problems are just actually really hard. It’s sort of unclear what the path to get even a solution looks like. We don’t even know what a path looks like, let alone [inaudible 02:07:47].
Arvid
And you don’t buy the idea this is just like an isolated system and you can actually have a good reward system, and it feels like it’s easier to train for that.
And you don’t buy the idea this is just like an isolated system and you can actually have a good reward system, and it feels like it’s easier to train for that.
Aman
I think we might get Field’s Medal before AGI.
I think we might get Field’s Medal before AGI.
Sualeh
I mean, I’d be very happy. I’d be very happy. But I don’t know if I… I think 2028, 2030.
I mean, I’d be very happy. I’d be very happy. But I don’t know if I… I think 2028, 2030.
Lex
For Field’s Medal?
For Field’s Medal?
Sualeh
Field’s Medal.
Field’s Medal.
Lex
All right. It feels like forever from now, given how fast things have been going.
All right. It feels like forever from now, given how fast things have been going.
Scaling laws
Speaking of how fast things have been going, let’s talk about scaling laws. So for people who don’t know, maybe it’s good to talk about this whole idea of scaling laws. What are they, where’d you think stand, and where do you think things are going?
Aman
I think it was interesting. The original scaling laws paper by open AI was slightly wrong. Because I think of some issues they did with learning right schedules. And then Chinchilla showed a more correct version. And then from then people have again deviated from doing the compute optimal thing. Because people start now optimizing more so for making the thing work really well given an inference budget.
I think it was interesting. The original scaling laws paper by open AI was slightly wrong. Because I think of some issues they did with learning right schedules. And then Chinchilla showed a more correct version. And then from then people have again deviated from doing the compute optimal thing. Because people start now optimizing more so for making the thing work really well given an inference budget.
And I think there are a lot more dimensions to these curves than what we originally used, of just compute number of parameters and data. Like inference compute is the obvious one. I think context length is another obvious one. So let’s say you care about the two things of inference compute and then context window, maybe the thing you want to train, is some kind of SSM. Because they’re much, much cheaper and faster at super, super long context. And even if, maybe it was 10 X more scaling properties during training, meaning you spend 10 X more compute to train the thing to get the same level of capabilities, it’s worth it. Because you care most about that inference budget for really long context windows. So it’ll be interesting to see how people play with all these dimensions.
Lex
So yeah, I mean you speak to the multiple dimensions, obviously. The original conception was just looking at the variables of the size of the model as measured by parameters, and the size of the data as measured by the number of tokens, and looking at the ratio of the two.
So yeah, I mean you speak to the multiple dimensions, obviously. The original conception was just looking at the variables of the size of the model as measured by parameters, and the size of the data as measured by the number of tokens, and looking at the ratio of the two.
Aman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex
And it’s kind of a compelling notion that there is a number, or at least a minimum. And it seems like one was emerging. Do you still believe that there is a kind of bigger is better?
And it’s kind of a compelling notion that there is a number, or at least a minimum. And it seems like one was emerging. Do you still believe that there is a kind of bigger is better?
Aman
I mean I think bigger is certainly better for just raw performance.
I mean I think bigger is certainly better for just raw performance.
Sualeh
And raw intelligence.
And raw intelligence.
Aman
And raw intelligence. I think the path that people might take, is… I’m particularly bullish on distillation. And how many knobs can you turn to, if we spend a ton, ton of money on training, get the most capable cheap model. Really, really caring as much as you can. Because the naive version of caring as much as you can about inference time compute, is what people have already done with the Llama models. Or just over-training the shit out of 7B models on way, way, way more tokens than is essential optimal.
And raw intelligence. I think the path that people might take, is… I’m particularly bullish on distillation. And how many knobs can you turn to, if we spend a ton, ton of money on training, get the most capable cheap model. Really, really caring as much as you can. Because the naive version of caring as much as you can about inference time compute, is what people have already done with the Llama models. Or just over-training the shit out of 7B models on way, way, way more tokens than is essential optimal.
But if you really care about it, maybe the thing to do is what Gamma did, which is let’s not just train on tokens, let’s literally train on minimizing the KL divergence with the distribution of gemma 27B, right? So knowledge distillation there. And you’re spending the compute of literally training this 27 billion parameter model on all these tokens, just to get out this, I don’t know, smaller model.
Lex
And the distillation gives you just a faster model, smaller means faster.
And the distillation gives you just a faster model, smaller means faster.
Aman
Yeah. Distillation in theory is, I think, getting out more signal from the data that you’re training on. And it’s perhaps another way of getting over, not completely over, but partially helping with the data wall. Where you only have so much data to train on, let’s train this really, really big model on all these tokens and we’ll distill it into this smaller one. And maybe we can get more signal per token for this much smaller model than we would’ve originally if we trained it.
Yeah. Distillation in theory is, I think, getting out more signal from the data that you’re training on. And it’s perhaps another way of getting over, not completely over, but partially helping with the data wall. Where you only have so much data to train on, let’s train this really, really big model on all these tokens and we’ll distill it into this smaller one. And maybe we can get more signal per token for this much smaller model than we would’ve originally if we trained it.
Lex
So if I gave you $10 trillion, how would you spend it? I mean you can’t buy an island or whatever. How would you allocate it in terms of improving the big model versus maybe paying for HF in the RLHF? Or-
So if I gave you $10 trillion, how would you spend it? I mean you can’t buy an island or whatever. How would you allocate it in terms of improving the big model versus maybe paying for HF in the RLHF? Or-
Aman
Yeah, yeah. I think there’s a lot of these secrets and details about training these large models that I just don’t know, and are only privy to the large labs. And the issue is, I would waste a lot of that money if I even attempted this, because I wouldn’t know those things. Suspending a lot of disbelief and assuming you had the know- how, or if you’re saying you have to operate with the limited information you have now-
Yeah, yeah. I think there’s a lot of these secrets and details about training these large models that I just don’t know, and are only privy to the large labs. And the issue is, I would waste a lot of that money if I even attempted this, because I wouldn’t know those things. Suspending a lot of disbelief and assuming you had the know- how, or if you’re saying you have to operate with the limited information you have now-
Lex
No, no, no. Actually, I would say you swoop in and you get all the information, all the little heuristics, all the little parameters, all the parameters that define how the thing is trained.
No, no, no. Actually, I would say you swoop in and you get all the information, all the little heuristics, all the little parameters, all the parameters that define how the thing is trained.
Aman
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Lex
If we look in how to invest money for the next five years in terms of maximizing what you called raw intelligence-
If we look in how to invest money for the next five years in terms of maximizing what you called raw intelligence-
Sualeh
I mean, isn’t the answer really simple? You just try to get as much compute as possible. At the end of the day all you need to buy, is the GPUs. And then the researchers can find all… You can tune whether you want to pre-train a big model or a small model.
I mean, isn’t the answer really simple? You just try to get as much compute as possible. At the end of the day all you need to buy, is the GPUs. And then the researchers can find all… You can tune whether you want to pre-train a big model or a small model.
Aman
Well this gets into the question of are you really limited by compute and money, or are you limited by these other things?
Well this gets into the question of are you really limited by compute and money, or are you limited by these other things?
Sualeh
I’m more privy to Arvid’s belief that we’re sort of idea-limited, but there’s always that like-
I’m more privy to Arvid’s belief that we’re sort of idea-limited, but there’s always that like-
Arvid
But if you have a lot of compute, you can run a lot of experiments.
But if you have a lot of compute, you can run a lot of experiments.
Lex
So you would run a lot of experiments versus use that compute to trend a gigantic model?
So you would run a lot of experiments versus use that compute to trend a gigantic model?
Arvid
I would, but I do believe that we are limited in terms of ideas that we have.
I would, but I do believe that we are limited in terms of ideas that we have.
Aman
I think yeah, because even with all this compute and all the data you could collect in the world, I think you really are ultimately limited by not even ideas, but just really good engineering. Even with all the capital in the world, would you really be able to assemble… There aren’t that many people in the world who really can make the difference here. And there’s so much work that goes into research that is just pure, really, really hard engineering work. As a very hand-wavy example, if you look at the original Transformer paper, how much work was joining together a lot of these really interesting concepts embedded in the literature, versus then going in and writing all the codes, maybe the CUDA kernels, maybe whatever else. I don’t know if it ran them GPUs or TPUs. Originally such that it actually saturated the GPU performance. Getting GNOME Azure to go in and do all this code. And GNOME is probably one of the best engineers in the world.
I think yeah, because even with all this compute and all the data you could collect in the world, I think you really are ultimately limited by not even ideas, but just really good engineering. Even with all the capital in the world, would you really be able to assemble… There aren’t that many people in the world who really can make the difference here. And there’s so much work that goes into research that is just pure, really, really hard engineering work. As a very hand-wavy example, if you look at the original Transformer paper, how much work was joining together a lot of these really interesting concepts embedded in the literature, versus then going in and writing all the codes, maybe the CUDA kernels, maybe whatever else. I don’t know if it ran them GPUs or TPUs. Originally such that it actually saturated the GPU performance. Getting GNOME Azure to go in and do all this code. And GNOME is probably one of the best engineers in the world.
Or maybe going a step further, like the next generation of models, having these things… Like getting model parallelism to work, and scaling it on thousands of, or maybe tens of thousands of V100s, which I think GBDE-III may have been. There’s just so much engineering effort that has to go into all of these things to make it work. If you really brought that cost down to maybe not zero, but just made it 10 X easier, made it super easy for someone with really fantastic ideas, to immediately get to the version of the new architecture they dreamed up, that is getting 50, 40% utilization on their GPUs, I think that would just speed up research by a ton.
Sualeh
I mean I think if you see a clear path to improvement, you should always take the low-hanging fruit first, right? I think probably OpenAI and all the other labs that did the right thing to pick off the low-hanging fruit. Where the low-hanging fruit is like, you could scale up to a GPT-4.25 scale and you just keep scaling, and things keep getting better. And as long as… There’s no point of experimenting with new ideas when everything is working. And you should sort of bang on and to try to get as much as much juice out of the possible. And then maybe when you really need new ideas for… I think if you’re spending $10 trillion, you probably want to spend some… Then actually reevaluate probably your idea a little bit at that point.
I mean I think if you see a clear path to improvement, you should always take the low-hanging fruit first, right? I think probably OpenAI and all the other labs that did the right thing to pick off the low-hanging fruit. Where the low-hanging fruit is like, you could scale up to a GPT-4.25 scale and you just keep scaling, and things keep getting better. And as long as… There’s no point of experimenting with new ideas when everything is working. And you should sort of bang on and to try to get as much as much juice out of the possible. And then maybe when you really need new ideas for… I think if you’re spending $10 trillion, you probably want to spend some… Then actually reevaluate probably your idea a little bit at that point.
Aman
I think all of us believe new ideas are probably needed to get all the way there to AGI. And all of us also probably believe there exist ways of testing out those ideas at smaller scales, and being fairly confident that they’ll play out. It’s just quite difficult for the labs in their current position to dedicate their very limited research and engineering talent to exploring all these other ideas, when there’s this core thing that will probably improve performance for some decent amount of time.
I think all of us believe new ideas are probably needed to get all the way there to AGI. And all of us also probably believe there exist ways of testing out those ideas at smaller scales, and being fairly confident that they’ll play out. It’s just quite difficult for the labs in their current position to dedicate their very limited research and engineering talent to exploring all these other ideas, when there’s this core thing that will probably improve performance for some decent amount of time.
The future of programming
Lex
But also, these big labs like winning. So they’re just going wild. Okay, so big question, looking out into the future: You’re now at the center of the programming world. How do you think programming, the nature of programming changes in the next few months, in the next year, in the next two years and the next five years, 10 years?
But also, these big labs like winning. So they’re just going wild. Okay, so big question, looking out into the future: You’re now at the center of the programming world. How do you think programming, the nature of programming changes in the next few months, in the next year, in the next two years and the next five years, 10 years?
Michael
I think we’re really excited about a future where the programmer is in the driver’s seat for a long time. And you’ve heard us talk about this a little bit, but one that emphasizes speed and agency for the programmer and control. The ability to modify anything you want to modify, the ability to iterate really fast on what you’re building. And this is a little different, I think, than where some people are jumping to in the space, where I think one idea that’s captivated people, is can you talk to your computer? Can you have it build software for you? As if you’re talking to an engineering department or an engineer over Slack. And can it just be this sort of isolated text box? And part of the reason we’re not excited about that, is some of the stuff we’ve talked about with latency, but then a big piece, a reason we’re not excited about that, is because that comes with giving up a lot of control.
I think we’re really excited about a future where the programmer is in the driver’s seat for a long time. And you’ve heard us talk about this a little bit, but one that emphasizes speed and agency for the programmer and control. The ability to modify anything you want to modify, the ability to iterate really fast on what you’re building. And this is a little different, I think, than where some people are jumping to in the space, where I think one idea that’s captivated people, is can you talk to your computer? Can you have it build software for you? As if you’re talking to an engineering department or an engineer over Slack. And can it just be this sort of isolated text box? And part of the reason we’re not excited about that, is some of the stuff we’ve talked about with latency, but then a big piece, a reason we’re not excited about that, is because that comes with giving up a lot of control.
It’s much harder to be really specific when you’re talking in the text box. And if you’re necessarily just going to communicate with a thing like you would be communicating with an engineering department, you’re actually advocating tons of really important decisions to this bot. And this kind of gets at, fundamentally, what engineering is. I think that some people who are a little bit more removed from engineering might think of it as the spec is completely written out and then the engineers just come and they just implement. And it’s just about making the thing happen in code and making the thing exist. But I think a lot of the best engineering, the engineering we enjoy, involves tons of tiny micro decisions about what exactly you’re building, and about really hard trade-offs between speed and cost and just all the other things involved in a system. As long as humans are actually the ones designing the software and the ones specifying what they want to be built, and it’s not just like company run by all AIs, we think you’ll really want the human in a driver’s seat dictating these decisions.
And so the jury’s still out on what that looks like. I think that one weird idea for what that could look like, is it could look like you can control the level of abstraction you view a code base at. And you can point at specific parts of a code base that… Like, maybe you digest a code base by looking at it in the form of pseudocode. And you can actually edit that pseudocode too, and then have changes get made down at the sort of formal programming level. And you can gesture at any piece of logic in your software component of programming. You keep the inflow text editing component of programming, you keep the control of, you can even go down into the code, you can go at higher levels of abstraction, while also giving you these big productivity gains.
Lex
It’d be nice if you can go up and down the abstraction stack.
It’d be nice if you can go up and down the abstraction stack.
Michael
Yeah. And there are a lot of details to figure out there that’s sort of like a fuzzy idea. Time will tell if it actually works. But these principles of control and speed in the human in the driver’s seat, we think are really important. We think for some things like Arvid mentioned before, for some styles of programming, you can hand it off chatbot-style. If you have a bug that’s really well specified. But that’s not most of programming, and that’s also not most of the programming we think a lot of people value.
Yeah. And there are a lot of details to figure out there that’s sort of like a fuzzy idea. Time will tell if it actually works. But these principles of control and speed in the human in the driver’s seat, we think are really important. We think for some things like Arvid mentioned before, for some styles of programming, you can hand it off chatbot-style. If you have a bug that’s really well specified. But that’s not most of programming, and that’s also not most of the programming we think a lot of people value.
Lex
What about the fundamental skill of programming? There’s a lot of people, like young people right now kind of scared, because they love programming, but they’re scared about, “Will I be able to have a future if I pursue this career path?” Do you think the very skill of programming will change fundamentally?
What about the fundamental skill of programming? There’s a lot of people, like young people right now kind of scared, because they love programming, but they’re scared about, “Will I be able to have a future if I pursue this career path?” Do you think the very skill of programming will change fundamentally?
Michael
I actually think this is a really, really exciting time to be building software. We remember what programming was like in 2013, 2012, whatever it was. And there was just so much more cruft and boilerplate and looking up something really gnarly. And that stuff still exists. It’s definitely not at zero. But programming today is way more fun than back then. It’s like we’re really getting down to the delight concentration. And all the things that really draw people to programming, for instance, this element of being able to build things really fast and speed and also individual control, all those are just being turned up a ton.
I actually think this is a really, really exciting time to be building software. We remember what programming was like in 2013, 2012, whatever it was. And there was just so much more cruft and boilerplate and looking up something really gnarly. And that stuff still exists. It’s definitely not at zero. But programming today is way more fun than back then. It’s like we’re really getting down to the delight concentration. And all the things that really draw people to programming, for instance, this element of being able to build things really fast and speed and also individual control, all those are just being turned up a ton.
And so I think it’s going to be a really, really fun time for people who build software. I think that the skills will probably change too. I think that people’s taste and creative ideas will be magnified. And it will be maybe less, a little bit, about boilerplate text editing. Maybe even a little bit less about carefulness, which I think is really important today if you’re a programmer. I think it’ll be a lot more fun.
Lex
What do you guys think?
What do you guys think?
Arvid
I agree. I’m very excited to be able to change… One thing that happened recently, was we wanted to do a relatively big migration to our code base. We were using AsyncLocalStorage in Node.js, which is known to be not very performant, and we wanted to migrate to a context object. And this is a big migration and affects the entire code base. [inaudible 02:22:38] and I spent, I don’t know, five days working through this, even with today’s AI tools. And I am really excited for a future where I can just show a couple of examples and then the AI applies that to all of the locations. And then it highlights, “Oh, this is a new example, what should I do?” And then I show exactly what to do there. And then that can be done in 10 minutes. And then you can iterate much, much faster. Then you don’t have to think as much upfront and stand at the blackboard and think, “Exactly how are we going to do this, because the cost is so high?” But you can just try something first and you realize, “Oh, this is not actually exactly what I want.” And then you can change it instantly again after. And so yeah, I think being a programmer in the future is going to be a lot of fun.
I agree. I’m very excited to be able to change… One thing that happened recently, was we wanted to do a relatively big migration to our code base. We were using AsyncLocalStorage in Node.js, which is known to be not very performant, and we wanted to migrate to a context object. And this is a big migration and affects the entire code base. [inaudible 02:22:38] and I spent, I don’t know, five days working through this, even with today’s AI tools. And I am really excited for a future where I can just show a couple of examples and then the AI applies that to all of the locations. And then it highlights, “Oh, this is a new example, what should I do?” And then I show exactly what to do there. And then that can be done in 10 minutes. And then you can iterate much, much faster. Then you don’t have to think as much upfront and stand at the blackboard and think, “Exactly how are we going to do this, because the cost is so high?” But you can just try something first and you realize, “Oh, this is not actually exactly what I want.” And then you can change it instantly again after. And so yeah, I think being a programmer in the future is going to be a lot of fun.
Aman
Yeah, I really like that point about… It feels like a lot of the time with programming, there are two ways you can go about it. One is you think really hard, carefully upfront about the best possible way to do it and then you spend your limited time of engineering to actually implement it. But I must refer just getting in the code and taking a crack at seeing how it lays out and then iterating really quickly on that. That feels more fun.
Yeah, I really like that point about… It feels like a lot of the time with programming, there are two ways you can go about it. One is you think really hard, carefully upfront about the best possible way to do it and then you spend your limited time of engineering to actually implement it. But I must refer just getting in the code and taking a crack at seeing how it lays out and then iterating really quickly on that. That feels more fun.
Lex
Yeah, just speaking to generate the boilerplate, is great. So you just focus on the nuanced, difficult design decisions. Migration, I feel like this is a cool one. It seems like a larger language models is able to basically translate for one program language to another. Or translate, migrate in the general sense of what migrate is. But that’s in the current moment. So mean the fear has to do with, okay, as these models get better and better, then you’re doing less and less creative decisions. And is it going to kind of move to a place where you’re operating in the design space of natural language where natural language is the main programming language? And I guess I could ask that by way of advice. If somebody’s interested in programming now, what do you think they should learn? You guys started in some Java and I forget the… Oh, some PHP.
Yeah, just speaking to generate the boilerplate, is great. So you just focus on the nuanced, difficult design decisions. Migration, I feel like this is a cool one. It seems like a larger language models is able to basically translate for one program language to another. Or translate, migrate in the general sense of what migrate is. But that’s in the current moment. So mean the fear has to do with, okay, as these models get better and better, then you’re doing less and less creative decisions. And is it going to kind of move to a place where you’re operating in the design space of natural language where natural language is the main programming language? And I guess I could ask that by way of advice. If somebody’s interested in programming now, what do you think they should learn? You guys started in some Java and I forget the… Oh, some PHP.
Michael
PHP.
PHP.
Arvid
PHP.
PHP.
Michael
Objective-C.
Objective-C.
Lex
Objective-C. There you go. I mean in the end, we all know JavaScript was going to win and not TypeScript. It’s going to be like vanilla JavaScript. It’s just going to eat the world and maybe live with PHP. And I mean it also brings up the question of, I think Don Knuth has this idea that some percent of the population is geeks, and there’s a particular kind of psychology in mind required for programming. And it feels like more and more that expands the kind of person that should be able to, can do great programming, might expand.
Objective-C. There you go. I mean in the end, we all know JavaScript was going to win and not TypeScript. It’s going to be like vanilla JavaScript. It’s just going to eat the world and maybe live with PHP. And I mean it also brings up the question of, I think Don Knuth has this idea that some percent of the population is geeks, and there’s a particular kind of psychology in mind required for programming. And it feels like more and more that expands the kind of person that should be able to, can do great programming, might expand.
Aman
I think different people do programming for different reasons. But I think the true, maybe the best programmers, are the ones that really love, just absolutely love programming. For example, there are folks on our team who literally when they get back from work, they go and then they boot up cursor and then they start coding on their side projects for the entire night. And they stay up until 3:00 a.m. doing that. And when they’re sad, they said, “I just really need to code.” And I think there’s that level of programmer where this obsession and love of programming, I think makes, really, the best programmers. And I think these types of people will really get into the details of how things work.
I think different people do programming for different reasons. But I think the true, maybe the best programmers, are the ones that really love, just absolutely love programming. For example, there are folks on our team who literally when they get back from work, they go and then they boot up cursor and then they start coding on their side projects for the entire night. And they stay up until 3:00 a.m. doing that. And when they’re sad, they said, “I just really need to code.” And I think there’s that level of programmer where this obsession and love of programming, I think makes, really, the best programmers. And I think these types of people will really get into the details of how things work.
Lex
I guess the question I’m asking, that exact programmer, let’s think about that person. When the super tab, the super awesome praise be the tab succeeds, and you keep pressing tab-
I guess the question I’m asking, that exact programmer, let’s think about that person. When the super tab, the super awesome praise be the tab succeeds, and you keep pressing tab-
Sualeh
That person in the team loves cursor tab more than anybody else, right?
That person in the team loves cursor tab more than anybody else, right?
Arvid
Yeah. And it’s also not just… Pressing tab is just pressing tab. That’s the easy way to say it in the catchphrase. But what you’re actually doing when you’re pressing tab, is that you’re injecting intent all the time while you’re doing it. Sometimes you’re rejecting it, sometimes you’re typing a few more characters. And that’s the way that you’re sort of shaping the things that’s being created. And I think programming will change a lot to just, “What is it that you want to make?”
Yeah. And it’s also not just… Pressing tab is just pressing tab. That’s the easy way to say it in the catchphrase. But what you’re actually doing when you’re pressing tab, is that you’re injecting intent all the time while you’re doing it. Sometimes you’re rejecting it, sometimes you’re typing a few more characters. And that’s the way that you’re sort of shaping the things that’s being created. And I think programming will change a lot to just, “What is it that you want to make?”
Sualeh
It’s sort of higher bandwidth. The communication to the computer just becomes higher and higher bandwidth as opposed to just typing as much lower bandwidth than communicating intent.
It’s sort of higher bandwidth. The communication to the computer just becomes higher and higher bandwidth as opposed to just typing as much lower bandwidth than communicating intent.
Lex
I mean, this goes to your manifesto titled Engineering Genius. “We are an applied research lab building extraordinary productive human AI systems.” So speaking to this hybrid element.
I mean, this goes to your manifesto titled Engineering Genius. “We are an applied research lab building extraordinary productive human AI systems.” So speaking to this hybrid element.
“To start, we’re building the engineer of the future, a human AI programmer that’s an order of magnitude more effective than any one engineer. This hybrid engineer will have effortless control over their code base and no low entropy keystrokes. They will iterate at the speed of their judgment, even in the most complex systems. Using a combination of AI and human ingenuity they will outsmart and out engineer the best pure AI systems. We are a group of researchers and engineers.
We build software and models to invent at the edge of what’s useful and what’s possible. Our work has already improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of programmers.”
And on the way to that, we’ll at least make programming more fun. So thank you for talking today.
Arvid
Thank you.
Thank you.
Michael
Thanks for having us.
Thanks for having us.
Aman
Thank you.
Thank you.
Sualeh
Thank you.
Thank you.
Lex
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Michael, Sualeh, Arvid and Aman. To support this podcast. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with a random, funny and perhaps profound programming code I saw on Reddit. Nothing is as permanent as a temporary solution that works. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Michael, Sualeh, Arvid and Aman. To support this podcast. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with a random, funny and perhaps profound programming code I saw on Reddit. Nothing is as permanent as a temporary solution that works. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Transcript for Ed Barnhart: Maya, Aztec, Inca, and Lost Civilizations of South America | Lex Fridman Podcast #446
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #446 with Ed Barnhart.
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And I think that led to figuring out, “Hey, we could actually grow certain things.” And gardens turned into crops, turned into intensive crops, and then people were allowed to gather in bigger groups and survive in a single area. They didn’t have to roam around anymore and that’s where we get the first sedentary communities, which means they stayed in the same place all year long. For the vast majority of human existence, we’ve been nomadic and we’ve done these wider or tighter nomadic circles depending on the geographic region where they’d know, “Okay, we’ll be in the summer in the mountains because berries and things, and then in the winter we’ll be down here and we’ll hunt,” but they’d move. So once humans figured out how to stay in a place, I think there, that’s the initial trigger to what would become civilization.
And now the thing that seems like madness but might be true is that it could have been as early as 60. A lot of the DNA things are suggesting that the very first migration could have come across as early as 60. And when I was a younger archeologist, it was heresy to go beyond this 12,500. You were a wacko if you said that, but now it’s really very clear that they came over at least by 30,000 and the bridge opened and closed, then open and closed.
Most of those guys have O-blood type and they’re haplogroup D, which is the oldest one that entered the U.S. And what are they doing down there? I do believe they came across the Bering Strait. We have no real evidence to say they came in mass across Oceania. So they made it probably by boat along the coast all the way to South America.
Some of them, Caral is one of the most famous ones just north of Lima, we’ve known about it for a couple of decades now, how old it is. But every time I visit there, it’s like I visited the moon. There’s absolutely nobody there, not for miles. It’s amazing how such a discovery was made, and yet still nobody goes to see it. It’s not easy to get to.
Caral was one of these sites because the coast of Peru has, some of those pyramids that were made by the Moche are full of gold and beautiful ceramics, things that you can sell for big money. But Caral was found a long time ago, but the archeologist was like, “God, no gold, no ceramics. Forget about it. This place is no good. We can’t sell anything here.” And then about the 1970s or ’80s, somebody said, “Hey, no ceramics. Is that older than the invention of ceramics? Shit, we better go take another look at that place.”
I think a lot of the things that are interpreted as baby sacrifices, Coral’s evidence being one of them, I think it’s more about the tragic nature of infant mortality. In the past, it was a lot more common. There were cultures that didn’t even really properly name their kid until they got to five, because chances were they were going to die. And so I think a lot of these babies that we find in these ceremonial contexts that are interpreted as sacrifices, I think they’re putting them in special places because they mourn the death of their kids, and it just happened a lot more frequently then.
Now, that being said, remember we were just talking about Huaca Prieta and this one that’s almost 6000 BC now, is the first one, that one’s a funny case. We just talked about all these lofty goals, but actually I’m pretty sure that Huaca Prieta’s first pyramid was about capping a smelly pile of trash. I think everybody piled up their trash in the middle of town and it stunk. It’s on the coast. It stunk like fish. And somebody said, “If we just bury this thing with dirt, it won’t smell anymore.” And then it was a big mound where people could get up and talk to everybody and then said, “Well, it’s squishy. If we cap it with clay, then it will really not smell.” I really think that the very first pyramids in Peru were about trash management. Talk about deflating, huh?
It used to be archeology that was just the end all, be all. Civilization starts with the invention of agriculture. And we can’t have sedentary communities until people learn how to farm. But that’s been discounted. Peru was a big part of that. That area of Caral, it’s connected to another city on the coast called Aspero. Aspero starts about the same time, but they’re all about fishing. They have no farming. And Caral, who’s upriver from them, is farming, but funny enough, they’re not really farming food. They’re farming cotton and they’re making nets and they’re trading the nets with the people on the coast for the fish. So it’s not as simple as, it’s just agriculture anymore. But it is, I think, still rooted in, how can we feed more people than just our family? How can we together create a food abundance so we’re no longer scared about running out of food?
He also likes to sever people’s heads off and carry them around, but he’s the fanged deity and he’s there. He shows up in Chavín de Juantar, the capital of that Chavín culture, and he keeps showing up through every culture, even thousands of miles away throughout the next two millennium, right up to the Inca. The Inca have a creator deity they call Viracocha, but Viracocha is the fanged deity. When we do see him, by the time you get to Inca, they do this almost Islamic thing where they say you can’t understand the face of Viracocha. So when they do put him in a cosmogram, they’ll make him just a blob, like he’s just unknowable, but he’s at the very top. I think we’re misunderstanding a lot of things that we used to say were deities as just supernatural beings.
If we flip the mirror on Christianity and take a look at it, which of course, Christianity is monotheistic, right? It would be heresy to say otherwise, but who are all these other characters? Who are all these angels and demons and Jesus Christ? I don’t even know who the Holy Spirit is, but he’s some sort of supernatural being. But it’s that monotheistic system has lots of things that have supernatural powers that are not God. That’s where I think the crux of us misunderstanding ancient Andean art is.
He’s got circular eyes, he’s got a fanged mouth. He’s got claws on his hands and feet. He’s a humanoid, but he also has snakes coming off of his head like hair and snakes coming off of his belt. And then not so much in Chavín, but as it goes forward, he starts carting around severed heads, human severed heads. So they’re like, in the old literature, the Moche will call him the decapitator deity, but then they have these other like, “Oh, here’s the crab deity and here’s the fox deity.” But if you look at them, the crab deity is just that guy’s face coming off of a crab, and the fox deity is that guy’s face coming off of a fox.
So I think on that particular instance, I explain it similar to what Zeus did. You know how Zeus was able to turn into whatever animal he wanted to get with the woman he wanted, and he showed up in all sorts of forms, but he was always Zeus. I think that the fanged deity manifests himself through people and animals throughout the art and that there are missing stories of mythology that we don’t have anymore.
But the thing that most cracks me up that shows his softer side is the fanged deity has a little puppy. He has a puppy that’s just dancing around his feet and jumping up on him in various scenes. They see him again and again. Sometimes he’s in these healing sex scenes. In fact, I tracked that puppy from other contexts to these sex scenes where a priest was having sex with somebody in a house and a fanged deity, and there’s a puppy just scratching at the door like, “Hey, you forgot me.” And then finally, one day I found one with the puppy having sex with the woman instead of the fanged deity. I was like, “Oh, he really is very involved in this. What is this weird puppy?”
So when the music starts, that’s bringing those spirits in and people don’t see them unless they’ve imbibed the San Pedro cactus juice, which is this hallucinogen, which is in the Amazon side, it was Ayahuasca. On the coast, it was San Pedro cactus, but that’s what allows you to actually see that other world.
Ayahuasca traditionally, they’d take a blow gun and just shoot it up your nose or up your ass, but a lot of times up your nose and when it shoots up your nose, the first thing that happens is just this gush of snot comes out of you. And there are stone depictions of people uncontrollably snotting on the backside of this temple from 3,000 years ago.
Again, it’s not stone built and it’s been under the forest forever. So it’s very torn up, but it’s there. Brazil is big on cattle farming more than ever now, and a thing that I think is completed now is Brazil and Bolivia partnered together and built a highway all the way across and opened up a whole bunch more land, which has found more of these what we call like geometric earthworks. So there’s more and more evidence of these civilizations. It’s not, it could be there. It’s there for sure.
And when I took a trip into the Amazon, I went from Manaus, up the river, the Black River a couple of days, and went and met some different communities. And I asked them about this black earth, and they were like, “Yeah, that’s why we’re here. Sometimes we move our village, but when we move, we look for the terra preta, and that’s where we’re going to put our village, because that’s a place that all of our gardens work. The other places, they don’t.”
There’s where I disagree with him. I think these were independent civilizations that grew up in their own ways, that they were not seeded by some more advanced civilization from the past, and that they all hold things in common because they have this common ancestry of… In his early books, he suggested it’s Atlantis. I don’t think he suggests that anymore, but he still hangs on to the single advanced, now completely lost civilization. And archeologists, all of our ideas are theories. Very few of them are facts, and we could have the story wrong, but one thing we’re real good at is finding stuff. We find fish scales, so I find it just too big a pill to swallow that there was a civilization that was that technologically advanced and that large that we can’t even find a potsherd from.
Another thing that starts fights, that when nobody even fought, is illness. Illness in the Amazon and all of the ancient Americas wasn’t seen as a biological thing, it was a spiritual thing. So if somebody in your village gets sick, the question is asked, “Well, what spirit is menacing him and who called it out on him?” And then, the rumor starts, “Well, I bet you it was Joe over there in that other community. He’s still pissed off for that time when we stole his daughter, and we ought to go over there and kill Joe, and then he’ll get better.” And so this round of never-ending violence, like Hatfields & McCoys had that thing, and the people of New Guinea also do that. So there are certain areas, mostly wooded areas, now that I think about it, where people just hide out and they attack each other as a cultural institution.
There’s a culture that’s some called the Mokaya, not Maya, but they’re on the Pacific coast, where Guatemala and Mexico connect. It’s called the Soconusco. And those are the first people that are really going to be culturally Maya, and they’re interacting with the culture that has traditionally been seen as Mexico’s mother culture, which is the Olmec. They’re kind of the same thing as we were talking about in South America, where the Maya, the original Maya, there’s not a whole lot to indicate that they have a religion. But the Olmec have this religion they develop, and they start exporting it. And you see the Maya become more and more involved in the religion that’s being created by the Olmec, who are to the north of them, in the swamps of what we call the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
The Olmec are really bringing the religion part, but the other areas are bringing technology, ceramic technology, making hematite mirrors, making tools out of obsidian and other stone types. So you’ve got the Olmec in the middle, where Mexico gets skinny, and it gets swampy down there. That’s called the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. That’s where the Olmec are. Then, you’ve got the Maya to the east of them. Then, you have the Valley of Oaxaca, where the people called the Zapotecs, they’re rising up. And then, you have the Valley of Mexico, which will eventually become the Aztecs, but not for millennia. All those areas are interacting with each other.
There’s five planets we can see visibly. So they started watching, like, “Why are just those seven moving differently than the rest?” And those are the things that they keyed on mathematically. The Sun, of course, was also involved in the agricultural cycle, so that was important in and of itself. But the planets, we can see them coming up with ideas, definitely doing the math, and seeing that there is a repeated cycle, and then coming up with mythology around them, like Venus for them was associated with war, and they had very ritualized times to go to war that had something to do with Venus.
Sometimes, in the classic period Maya, it was the first appearance of Venus as the Morning Star. That was a good time to go to battle with your neighbors. And when it became the post-classic, with Chichén Itzá being the capital of the Yucatan, then it looks like, if you watch Venus day after day, it goes slowly up every day, and then when it hits its highest point as Morning Star in the morning, it goes down to the Earth like three times as fast. All of a sudden, it just shoots down and hits the Earth. And so the people of post-classic Maya civilization saw that as the gods shooting a spear into the Earth, and that was a good time to attack your neighbors. That was like war time, when the spear is going to hit the earth.
That’s how they figured out kind of the Holy Grail of ancient astronomy. How good were they was whether they could see the procession of the equinoxes, the fact that we’re just barely wobbling, and there’s a 26,000-year period where the stars as that backdrop will spin all the way around and come back. It’s 26,000 years. But the Maya we’re able to figure out, “Wait, it’s moving one degree every 72 years,” and did a calculation based on where it should be in the ancient past, and they were using constellations. They’re showing us they know by saying like, “This planet’s in this constellation right now, and 33,000 years ago, it would be in this constellation.”
Everybody in the highlands knows what their birthday is in that calendar, knows what it means about their personality and the kind of jobs that they’re supposed to do. Each one of those days has their own spirit and what’s supposed to happen in those days. The Maya collectively call them the Mom, the Grandmother, Grandfather spirits, and they talk to each one of those days, and they pray to them. There’s now an association of some 8,000 people that are called [inaudible 01:31:33], that are daykeepers who are keeping the days, and they’re also like community psychologists, almost. People come to them and say, “You know, my life is mixed up. What’s wrong here?” “Well, let’s ask the Mom. Okay, well, it looks like you’re not doing this or that, or you know what, you’re an accountant? You’re not supposed to be an accountant. You’re supposed to be a midwife. What are you doing? You’re living your life wrong. You’re a Kibʼ. You need to start being a Kibʼ person.”
And so it should be there’s 1s, there’s 20s, there’s 400s, there’s 8,000s, there’s 160,000s. It goes just like our 10s, 100s, 1,000s, 10,000s, but it’s times 20. So they have days, months of 20 days, and then they have these years that should be, by their math, 400, but it’s only 360. And that throws the whole thing out of whack going further up. Then, they have a 20-year period and a 400- year period. 400 years to their calendar, but by that time, it’s only 396 years in our reckoning. So it’s mysterious that it’s… Why did they tweak it at the year to be only 360 days? That doesn’t follow any astronomy, that’s not the human cycle.
And they have a creation story called the and the Popol Vuh, and the Popol Vuh is clear as day that the third creation ends with the help of these heroes called the Hero Twins, and the fourth creation begins. And so on the Maya monuments, we see them doing the math through the Long Count, and we can calculate it back very exactly. It happened, the fourth creation started on August 11th 3114 BC. And it doesn’t say it’s day one, it says it’s the last day of the 13th baktun of the third creation, which leads us to believe that a creation is only 13 baktuns long.
Above that, there’s the piktun, then there’s the kalabatun, then there’s alawatun, and it goes on and on. And these are like 160,000 years, huge increments of time. Whenever they want to do that, and they talk about a long period of time, they start putting 13s in all of those increments, those higher increments. And I think what they’re saying is they’re making an esoteric statement about the never-ending nature of time. That’s what I think they’re telling us in those texts, that time goes on forever, magically.
One of the weird things is that the Aztecs, who we talked to a lot at contact, they also had the concept of multiple creations before us, but they were real clear to the Spanish that they weren’t all the same time element. Some of them were in the three hundreds of years, some of them were in the seven hundreds of years, but they were not the same time period. So our mathematical logic that if the third creation was 13, this one must be third creation, or also be 13, it’s in direct opposition to what the Aztecs told us about the nature of creations. They’re different time periods.
But it is funny how oftentimes these Maya horoscopes, for lack of a better word, do hit the mark. There was some student who surveyed like 300 people with the app I made and asked them about their Greek sign and their Maya sign, and his conclusion for his term paper was that the Maya one was working way better, which that’s fascinating. At least that’s fun. But no, I think I’m too much of a scientist to believe that. I just don’t have any foundation in science that would allow us to believe that the month in which we were born in a cycle sets our personality and destiny.
The big key is that the Maya still speak that same language. There are millions of Maya people who are speaking a version of Maya. Now there’s where I get confused, that we’ve got a single writing system that is intelligible, we’ve broken the code, so we know that it’s basically the same writing system from the top of the Yucatan into Guatemala and El Salvador. But we have 33 Maya languages today that are mutually unintelligible. And we backwards project the language of what they spoke back then that the glyphs are in to something called Chʼoltiʼ, which is a combination of Chʼortiʼ and Ch’ol, two of those languages.
But it doesn’t work for me at all. If there was one language, maybe two back then, how did it flower into 33 mutually unintelligible languages in just 500 years during acculturation and horrible infectious diseases that killed 90% of the population? How did that happen? So we’re missing something huge here. I think it’s more like Chinese, where Chinese letters, writing can be read in multiple languages and still understood. I don’t know exactly the mechanics of how that would happen, but it just seems impossible that there are more languages, not less languages, in the Maya area after the last 500 years that they’ve been through.
His two key examples were a picture of a dog with a symbol over it and a picture of a turkey with a symbol over it. And the dog, a dog in Yucatec is tzul. So he saw two symbols and he said, “This one’s probably tzul and this one’s ul”. And then the Turkey was kutz, so it would be ku ending in tz. And he showed how, look, this is, this is tzul. Those two things that should be tz are the same symbol. And that began this process of unraveling the syllables that we’re still working on today.
There’s also, the big one is Harappan. For a long time we used to say there were five independent scripts on the planet, and those were Chinese, Cuneiform, which is Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Maya, and then Harappan, which is from Northern India. That’s the only one that we’ve never cracked. And now all the epigraphers, the people, that’s the term, epigraphy is translating these languages, they’re all ganging up on Harappan and want to kick it off the list because we can’t break it. It had a big enough symbol set, but no one’s been able to crack it. And now they’re saying it’s just an elaborate symbol set and doesn’t reflect the spoken word.
They also encoded language in there. They had entire libraries in Cusco where Spanish conquistadors were brought through, and the caretakers of the libraries would just, they’d say, “Pull that one down, read that one to me.” And he’d pull it out and just read a history of something that happened 200 years earlier. So it was definitely writing.
But in the 1570s, one head of the church there had all of the people that could read them called quipucamayocs, gathered up, had them read all of their quipus and transcribe them into Spanish books, and then had the quipus burned and those people murdered.
But then on a much simpler level, there’s llama herders who keep a string in their pocket and they’ve got the knots equaling how many llamas they have, and then they have subcategories of information like, this one’s sick, we’ve lost these ones, this one’s pregnant. So they have these more simple and more mathematical quipus, but they’re using them to affect as a record.
There was the site that I mapped for my dissertation and spent years in the jungle there, Palenque, had a lord’s title named Fire Lord. That was one of the generals of their army. And we could tell that position changed over time. So there was one guy named Chak Suutz’ who was the Fire Lord for the early part of a reign of a king called Ahkal Moʼ Nahb. Then by the time he carves this other panel, there’s another guy in the position of K’ak Ajaw, which was the Fire Lord. And so he had-
But then when Chichen Itza falls, there’s a new city that’s architecture looks a lot like Chichen Itza. It’s called Mayapan. But it has what is called the League of Mayapan. And it has a council of representatives from the communities from all around the Yucatan. And it is basically a democracy. It is a Maya democracy that happens. The individuals from all around the Yucatan are there. Each family has their own council house at Mayapan, though they live back at their place. It’s kind of like a Maya Congress.
So yeah, we have Preclassic is like the origins of civilization. They’re starting to build cities. They’re starting to create their calendar. They’re starting to create these wonderful works of art. And the Classic period, if you look at 10 different textbooks for the Maya, you’ll get 10 different dates that wiggle around in there. But basically that’s the age of kings to me. That’s when these cities decide that they’re going to organize themselves around elite royal families that have this magical blood that can contact their ancestors that are directly in contact with the gods. The Maya never contact their gods directly. They contact their ancestors who are up there who act like liaisons to the gods.
And so the Maya age of kings has these dynasties sprouting up where these people have basically snowed the rest of the people, that they’ve got a special quality of their blood and only their offspring can do the same trick and talk to the gods, where everybody, every Joe Maya can let their blood and burn it and contact their ancestor. But Joe Maya’s dad is just a corn farmer who lives down below and he’s got no influence over the gods. But the rulers, their spirits go down briefly, but then they go up into the heavens and reside where the gods are and act as liaisons. So that’s the validation for this kingship that happens for about 400 years.
I know we say 250 to 900, which is kind of the encompassing edges of it, but it’s interesting that it’s actually specifically the ninth bakʼtun of their history. The ninth bakʼtun begins in like 426, and it ends in like 829. So it’s a 400-year period of time. And before that, there were no kings. And after that, there really aren’t kings. They’re heads of councils. So I call it the age of kings, where everybody’s following the directives of basically a despot. And for a while, that’s great. Cities build up, populations happening. I see it as kind of a cult of personality moment too. Strong, charismatic leaders inspire people to do great things together.
But eventually happens all the time with power, too much power corrupts. All of a sudden there’s this unwieldy huge elite class that has to be treated special by everybody else. And they start saying, “Well, I think we should fight with those guys and you guys should go take these things.” And people eventually get sick of it and they walk away from these cities, and that’s how we get the mysterious Maya collapse where all these cities are just gone.
And it seems like right there around between 800 and 900, a lot of the elites that were on top, most of it was in the rainforests of northern Guatemala, they move. They move in two directions. Some of them move into the highlands of Guatemala, and some of them move up into the Yucatan. The city of Chichen Itza becomes the next big capital in Yucatan. But the word Itza is actually a word describing the people who lived around Lake Peten Itza in northern Guatemala. And all of the Maya are super clear about that, that the Itza came in as immigrants with these new ideas and created Chichen Itza. So the elites who were no longer welcome in their cities just moved and set up shops somewhere else.
I remember really stark evidence in Copán, Honduras. Copán was this beautiful city, lineage of 17 kings. But the last kings and the last elite burials that we dig from the city center, the teeth are the telling part. They get this thing, when you’re growing up and you’re not getting enough food seasonally, it shows up in the enamel of your teeth. It’s called dental hypoplasia. And if somebody’s seasonally starving, it gets these lines in their teeth. And that last generation of Maya before they left Copán, even the rich people are seasonally starving. So there’s a problem there for sure.
But I also think, it’s a weird thing, it was not an empire. It was a group of independent city states like Greece. Some of them were allied, some of them were enemies. There was a huge civil war that settled out about the end of the Classic period. So if it was Europe, the victors would’ve taken over, the losers would’ve beat it and gone wherever they went. But when they abandoned these cities that were independent still, they all left both the guys that won and the guys that lost the war. So it couldn’t be just as simple as spoils go to the victor.
It’s such a wide area. Not everybody was starving like the people in the Copán Valley. So I personally think it was calendrically timed. It is interesting to note that that ninth period, that ninth 400-year period ends right then. And I think a lot of people, I can’t prove it archeologically, but I think a lot of people said we’re coming to the end of a great cycle and we need to renew. We need to change what we’re doing.
When you talk to the Maya today, like at the end of this 2012 thing, if you actually talk to Maya, say, “What happens at the end of a big cycle here?” They say cycles are a time of renewal and transformation, that it is all of our obligation to change our lives at the end of cycles. That change is coming. We can either be part of it or we can get steamrolled by it.
The Aztecs did this neat thing called the New Fire Ceremony every 52 years, which was the biggest their calendar would go. They’d burn down perfectly good temples. And they’d burn down their houses sometimes. And they would just, everybody in society would perform this, what they call the New Fire Ceremony, and they would renew the world. So I think my personal theory is that the Maya decided at the end of the ninth bakʼtun that it was time to renew the world.
But then they show up late game, and they become mercenaries. They just start working for communities in the Valley of Mexico. And this takes place in the 1300s. So about 200 years before Cortez shows up, the Aztecs show up to the Valley of Mexico. And they make themselves this indispensable group of mercenaries. They do the dirty work. All the civilized communities around Lake Texcoco, which is now Mexico City, it’s all dried up, but those guys were too civilized to fight with each other. But they could hire the Aztecs to do their dirty stuff. So the Aztecs did that and really changed the politics in the game of the Valley of Mexico.
So one of these kings that they were working for really liked them and decided, I’m going to make the Aztecs part of our ancestry. I’m going to give them my daughter to marry the head of the Aztecs. And the Aztecs sacrificed her. And that really pissed that guy off. So he took his whole army and ran the Aztecs out for a while. They say they live in this horrible desert section eating lizards.
But then one of their priests say, “We’re going to walk around the lake, and my visions say that where we see an eagle sitting on a cactus with a snake in its mouth is where we will build our capital.” And they see that, but it’s out on an island in the lake. And he said, “Well, I don’t know, that’s the place.” So they build up an island, they go to that island, and then they just start piling up lake muck until they make a whole city there in the middle of the lake. They make an island city. And all of this occurs in about a hundred years. So they show up about 1300. The capital of Tenochtitlan, as they called it, is really established. And from there, they quickly take over the entire valley. They make what they call the Triple Alliance, which is the two other big communities of the lake are now their allies, but they’re not really allies. The Aztecs were brutal. Those guys agreed to shut up and let the Aztecs run the show. And then the Aztecs spread like a wildfire all the way down into the Maya area. Everywhere they go, they rename everybody’s towns and make them pay tribute.
The first thing they’d do is they’d show up with a bunch of merchants. There was a merchant class who were also military. They were really the people who assessed where they were going to attack next. They’d go in with a bunch of Aztec products and say, “We’d like to trade with you.” But all the time, they were assessing their military prowess, what products they had that they could take. And then soon after the pochteca were there would come the military with the reconnaissance.
But then right next to the temple, on either side were the two temples of the warriors. One was the Eagle Warrior clan, the other one was the Jaguar Warrior clan. And they were symbolically in competition with each other, though a unified force. I guess probably an analogy between the Navy and the Air Force. They had a good-natured competition of who was better, but they were the same force. So those were their symbolic warriors.
The same sort of thing happened with the Aztec that there was, Mesoamerica really didn’t have huge standing armies, but the Aztec put this army together and they intimidated people. They didn’t actually have to use it a lot. It was used to great effect in the valley of Mexico and for the rest of Mesoamerica it was mostly the fear factor.
They had this just grotesque, violent bent, but in the same way, they also absolutely loved flower gardens and poetry and music and dance. The same Aztec king who would order the hearts of a thousand people extracted also would stand up at dinner parties to recite his own poetry or the poetry of famous statesmen that had come before him. And they spent money on things like flower gardens. All of the causeways leading to the Aztec capitol had beautiful flower gardens and they had a museum and they had an aquarium and a zoo, and they had an opera and they had a ballet. And these things existed together. There was not, in the Aztec mind, any conflict between witnessing someone’s heart getting ripped out one moment, and in the evening we’d go to the ballet.
But they’d actually tie this paper onto their penis, cut it, and then dance. So the blood splattered, but it was them cutting themselves. It was different than killing a bunch of other people for it. It was a auto-sacrifice, we call it. Still very macabre, but very different than deciding a whole bunch of other people should die. It was a self-sacrifice thing.
So they decided this one poor sucker group, not that far away, called the Tlaxcallans, that they were never going to make peace with them so that they could go close by every year and just have a little symbolic war with the Tlaxcallans and haul them back for a sacrifice. Cortes met those guys and he was like, here are people who hate their guts. I’ll just use these guys. So we say, oh, Cortes took over the Aztec world. It was Cortes and 20,000 super pissed-off, Tlaxcallans.
But Pedro Alvarado is left back in town in charge and they’re doing another one of these huge Aztec buffets and parties to honor them. And it happens. The guy says, “Hey, do you like dinner?” Like, oh yeah, it’s a nice dinner. “Well, it’s humans. You’re eating humans. See, I told you they were good.” And Alvarado just freaks out and he has the guards close the doors and he murders everyone in the party. Women, children, nobody has weapons. He just murders everyone.
And that’s what spazzes the Aztecs out to eventually murder Montezuma who was their captive and then try to murder all of them. And it was all Pedro Alvarado’s fault for freaking out about eating humans.
And if your mayor here agrees, then he can have a town. He can have a house in Cusco. But then the very next month, a big work crew would show up and they’d start building agricultural terraces and storage units. And every month with the agricultural excess, they would have big parties and everybody would eat. So people lived well in the Inca Empire. It was a rough beginning, but everybody who agreed to be part of it immediately had access to a whole bunch of resources and security they never had.
They’d send the Khipukamayuq, the guys who would weave or knot the khipus as accountants, and they would go through and say what everybody did. Okay, you’re a good farmer. You’re going to farm. You are a good weaver. You’re going to weave. All the men here are going to take a turn at being part of the army. And then they sent independent Khipukamayuqs too. Every community had five or six that were not allowed to work with each other, and they all had to independently send their Khipus back to Cusco. And if there were accounting discrepancies that were called to Cusco to figure out who was lying about what.
We’ll go dig up your dog. And they were like, but the kids really want to help you. So their kids came out and this was like their puppy, and it died less than a year ago. When we got to it, one of them just grabbed up a bone and he was like, [inaudible 02:40:59] like little bitty bones. Yay. What a weird attitude. That’s your dead dog there. But they have a different relationship with the dead.
I think they melted them together. And there are weird places when you really look at closely to these stones, which I’ve done a number of times. I’m going back next month to Machu Picchu and especially Cusco. I walk around in the alleys where these 500 to a thousand-year-old walls are still there. And I see things like the crystals in the andesite are almost stitched together along the seams. The andesite around it is melted and the crystals haven’t. And there are other places where there are weird wipes on the wall. It’s just melted. Like somebody took a rag and wiped it while it was soft. Lots of talk about soft stones turning hard too. I haven’t been able to prove it. This is one of these end of my archeological career chapters. I’m either going to prove myself wrong or prove it, but I think they used acids. My dad’s a chemist and he told me a long time ago that there’s no way, there’s no naturally occurring acids. But my current theory, actually, I got the idea initially from the show Breaking Bad.
I don’t know if you ever saw that show, but there’s a point in which they’re trying to dissolve a body and they’re using hydrofluoric acid and it goes right through the ceiling. That hydrofluoric acid is so fascinating. It won’t go through plastic, and you can also bring it in inert parts and then combine it. The Inca made tons of jewelry out of fluorite. Fluorite is big in the Andes, and they also mined a lot of things for gold and silver. And the byproduct of that mining is sulfuric acid.
You put sulfuric acid and fluorite together and it’s hydrofluoric acid, and that will burn through andesite or anything. And if you learned how to do it judiciously and you didn’t care whether servants lost an arm or two, then you could actually use them to fuse these together. And I think they’re fused together. I asked the city of Cusco if I could take some core samples, and they said, go away, gringo. Don’t touch our walls. So actually this next time I’m going to go try to talk to the more Quechua authorities in a place called Ollantaytambo and maybe I can convince them, but right now, they just think I’m a weird-ass gringo who wants to put holes in their walls.
So we’ve got these two clusters. The very first major community in North America is in the most unlikely place. It’s in Northern Louisiana. People think I’m crazy when I say this, but there is a pyramid in Northern Louisiana, a big one at a site called Poverty Point that is 3,500 years old. So it’s the same age as the pyramids in Egypt, and it is a giant thing just poking out of the bayous of Louisiana. And people don’t believe me when I say it, but it’s there.
But in their full living form, they did have cores of dirt, but then they also had kind of clay caps. So they had terraces. They had whole complexes of buildings up on top. There were kings that lived up there. There’s the biggest of the Mississippian cities is called Cahokia, and it’s right outside of St. Louis.
And it was huge. It had a population of 20,000 people and pyramids all over the place, a huge palisade wall around it. It was absolutely gigantic, a thriving metropolis. And we in America have kind of a collective amnesia. We never hear about these massive civilizations. Cahokia was the big first city, but then it spread from the Mississippi all the way to the Atlantic. There were hundreds and hundreds of these big cities that had five to 10,000 people each.
I’m not talking about just archeology. We find him in archeology now. But Hernando de Soto landed in Florida and went for three years from, he went up into the Carolinas and over down into Alabama and Louisiana, and he’s the first one to see the Mississippi up there. But for three years he went through city after city after city, unfortunately decimating them, eating all their corn, giving them diseases. But the documentation’s clearly there. He met collectively, millions of people in a very sophisticated and uniform civilization.
But the numbers, it’s a shameful part of history, and it wasn’t something that Europe perpetrated on them. Medical science at that time was still the four humors theory, that people were made of yellow bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm. And we did things like, well, you’ve got to bleed him. He’ll feel better then. So we had no idea what an infectious disease was, but the reality was that this horde of diseases hit everyone. And the numbers are now saying in the first 50 years that 90% of everybody was dead, and that the number of people has increased as well as far as our estimates. We’re thinking it’s somewhere around 150 million people and 90% of them died. And with them, all their knowledge. Just, I mean, imagine the moment where who dies when things get bad? It’s the young and the old. So all the knowledge keepers die suddenly.
The children die. This next generation that’s half taught and now completely demoralized thinking that this is a spiritual attack, that their gods hate them, that the only way out of it is to accept this new Christianity. But they don’t want to have to bring kids into this world where everybody’s dying. And even if they do, they can’t teach them what the old people were going to teach them because the old people are gone and didn’t finish the transmission. So in a single terrible moment in human history, the generation loses all their knowledge. So a lot of the things these people knew just blipped out.
They attacked the Viking settlement every day and did not give them an inch until they decided it was just worthless and they left it. The Vikings attacked Ireland, and they just found a bunch of monasteries full of gold with a bunch of guys going, “We’re men of God, we don’t fight.” And the Vikings were like, “This is great. That’s great. This will be easy, then. We’ll just loot all these Easter eggs.” But the Native Americans in Canada were not having it. They kicked their ass. In fact, Leif Erickson’s brother Thor died there. The natives killed him. He was supposed to be in charge of expanding the settlement, but they just killed him.
In fact, there was a really poignant story I read of a Spanish priest in the Amazon, in the Brazilian northern part of the Amazon where he made this utopian community and he was bringing people in that were getting sick, and he wrote, “I’m baptizing everyone. I have baptized 10,000 people a day, and yet God’s still killing them. Why is he doing this to them? They’re doing everything that I ask them to do. They are submitting to the will of God.” But this guy doesn’t realize that the same bowl of holy water that he’s baptizing them in, he’s just wiping the disease on everybody’s faces. He’s accelerating it when he doesn’t even realize. He thinks he’s saving them, but he’s actually killing them. That’s a tragedy. That’s not just like spoils go to the victor stuff. That’s just straight up tragedy.
Statistically speaking, the universe is way too big. We can’t be the only sentient beings. There’s got to be somebody else out there. Whether they care about us, that’s a question. I’ve been on Ancient Aliens a number of times. I show up and I’m an educator. I mean, refusing to be part of the conversation is an immediate fail in my book. But there was one time where they asked me at the end, “Do you have anything else do you want to say?” And I said, “Well, y’all’s premise is that aliens came down a long time ago and they gave humanity these wonderful gifts of science and medicine, engineering, all these things. Today we also have a lot of stories of the aliens coming down, but now all they’re doing is mutilating cows and sodomizing rednecks.” Like whatever we did, we super pissed them off apparently.”
I think we’re wasting our time thinking that we can reverse this. We’re delusional. I’m all for electric cars and being good stewards of the environment, but we are wasting our time not technologically adapting to what’s about to happen. We’re spending too much time pretending, the average American thinks if we all just drive electric cars, we’ll be okay. That’s bullshit. That’s not going to happen. We need to start making technologies that desalinize water, a host of things that we need to use our technological capacity to accept it and adapt, instead of Pollyanna thinking we can make it go away.
What I’m really trying to do with this too, it’s specifically the Americas. I want to be part of the reawakening that there were these great civilizations here, especially North America. I think that we have a group amnesia that there was no great civilizations here before Europe showed up. That’s simply not true. I think it should be part of our history books. In fact, I have a program called Before the Americas that would introduce as part of a American history, the part before European contact. And I think that kids in the K through 12 level should grow up not being told this fallacy that no one was here before we showed up in 1492. And one of these days I’m going to find a funder to help us put together Before the Americas and we’re going to make it part of the curriculum for every kid in the U.S. to know the full history of this country.
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 1:39 – Lost civilizations
- 8:43 – Hunter-gatherers
- 12:16 – First humans in the Americas
- 22:07 – South America
- 27:36 – Pyramids
- 34:40 – Religion
- 47:44 – Shamanism
- 49:41 – Ayahuasca
- 55:54 – Lost City of Z
- 1:00:48 – Graham Hancock
- 1:07:51 – Uncontacted tribes
- 1:13:51 – Maya civilization
- 1:29:40 – Mayan calendar
- 1:44:57 – Flood myths
- 2:13:25 – Aztecs
- 2:30:52 – Inca Empire
- 2:48:52 – Early humans in North America
- 2:54:50 – Columbus
- 2:59:26 – Vikings
- 3:03:35 – Aliens
- 3:08:02 – Earth in 10,000 years
- 3:24:12 – Hope for the future
Introduction
Ed Barnhart
For the vast majority of human existence, we’ve been nomadic and we’ve done these wider or tighter nomadic circles, depending on the geographic region, but they’d move. So once humans figured out how to stay in a place, that’s the initial trigger to what would become civilization.
For the vast majority of human existence, we’ve been nomadic and we’ve done these wider or tighter nomadic circles, depending on the geographic region, but they’d move. So once humans figured out how to stay in a place, that’s the initial trigger to what would become civilization.
Lex Fridman
I think you said beauty and blood went hand in hand for the Aztec.
I think you said beauty and blood went hand in hand for the Aztec.
Ed Barnhart
What I meant by that is they were absolutely comfortable with human sacrifice and ripping people’s hearts out. They had this just grotesque, violent bend, but in the same way, they also absolutely loved flower gardens and poetry and music and dance. The same Aztec king who would order the hearts of 1,000 people extracted also would stand up at dinner parties to recite his own poetry. But they were really just surgical about it. They’d use a thick obsidian knife where they could just break the ribs right along the sternum and then push the sternum down, pull up, and just [inaudible 00:01:11].
What I meant by that is they were absolutely comfortable with human sacrifice and ripping people’s hearts out. They had this just grotesque, violent bend, but in the same way, they also absolutely loved flower gardens and poetry and music and dance. The same Aztec king who would order the hearts of 1,000 people extracted also would stand up at dinner parties to recite his own poetry. But they were really just surgical about it. They’d use a thick obsidian knife where they could just break the ribs right along the sternum and then push the sternum down, pull up, and just [inaudible 00:01:11].
Lex Fridman
While the person was alive?
While the person was alive?
Ed Barnhart
Yep, while the person was alive.
Yep, while the person was alive.
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Ed Barnhart, an archeologist specializing in ancient civilizations of South America, Mesoamerica, and North America. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Ed Barnhart.
The following is a conversation with Ed Barnhart, an archeologist specializing in ancient civilizations of South America, Mesoamerica, and North America. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Ed Barnhart.
Lost civilizations
Lex Fridman
Do you think there are lost civilizations in the history of humans on earth which we don’t know anything about?
Do you think there are lost civilizations in the history of humans on earth which we don’t know anything about?
Ed Barnhart
Yes, I do. And in fact, we have found some civilizations that we had no idea about just in my lifetime. I mean, we’ve got Gobekli Tepe and we’ve got the stuff that’s going on in the Amazon, and there’s some other less startling things that we had no idea existed and push our dates back and gave us whole new civilizations we had no idea about. So yeah, it’s happened and I think it’ll happen again.
Yes, I do. And in fact, we have found some civilizations that we had no idea about just in my lifetime. I mean, we’ve got Gobekli Tepe and we’ve got the stuff that’s going on in the Amazon, and there’s some other less startling things that we had no idea existed and push our dates back and gave us whole new civilizations we had no idea about. So yeah, it’s happened and I think it’ll happen again.
Lex Fridman
Do you think there’s a loss civilization in the Amazon that the Amazon jungle has eaten up or is hiding the evidence of?
Do you think there’s a loss civilization in the Amazon that the Amazon jungle has eaten up or is hiding the evidence of?
Ed Barnhart
Yes, I do. And we’re beginning to find it. There are these huge, what we call geoglyphs, these mound groups that are in geometric patterns. I think that the average Joe, when they hear the word civilization, they think of something that looks like Rome. And I don’t think we’re ever going to find anything that looks like Rome in the Amazon. I think a lot of things there, I mean, wherever you are on the planet, you use your natural resources. And in the Amazon, there’s not a whole lot of stone. What stone is there is deep, deep, deep. So a lot of their things were built out of dirt and trees and feathers and textiles.
Yes, I do. And we’re beginning to find it. There are these huge, what we call geoglyphs, these mound groups that are in geometric patterns. I think that the average Joe, when they hear the word civilization, they think of something that looks like Rome. And I don’t think we’re ever going to find anything that looks like Rome in the Amazon. I think a lot of things there, I mean, wherever you are on the planet, you use your natural resources. And in the Amazon, there’s not a whole lot of stone. What stone is there is deep, deep, deep. So a lot of their things were built out of dirt and trees and feathers and textiles.
Lex Fridman
But is it possible that all that land that’s not covered by trees is actually hiding stone, for example, some architecture, some things that are just very difficult to find for archeologists.
But is it possible that all that land that’s not covered by trees is actually hiding stone, for example, some architecture, some things that are just very difficult to find for archeologists.
Ed Barnhart
I think at the base of the Andes where the Amazon connects to the Andes, there’s a lot of potential there because that’s where the stone actually starts poking up. When you get down into the basin, stone is meters and meters under the ground except for a stray cliff here and there where the river dug deep. And even then only in the dry season, because that river rises over 100 feet every year.
I think at the base of the Andes where the Amazon connects to the Andes, there’s a lot of potential there because that’s where the stone actually starts poking up. When you get down into the basin, stone is meters and meters under the ground except for a stray cliff here and there where the river dug deep. And even then only in the dry season, because that river rises over 100 feet every year.
Lex Fridman
Well, that’s one of the things, having visited that area, just interacting with waterfalls and seeing the water, I was humbled by the power of water to shape landscapes and probably erase history in the context that we’re talking about of civilizations. Water can just make everything disappear over a period of centuries and millennia, and so if there’s something existed a very long time ago, thousands of years ago, it’s very possible it was just eaten up by nature.
Well, that’s one of the things, having visited that area, just interacting with waterfalls and seeing the water, I was humbled by the power of water to shape landscapes and probably erase history in the context that we’re talking about of civilizations. Water can just make everything disappear over a period of centuries and millennia, and so if there’s something existed a very long time ago, thousands of years ago, it’s very possible it was just eaten up by nature.
Ed Barnhart
Absolutely. In fact, in my opinion, that’s almost a certainty in a lot of places. The Grand Canyon was dug by water. There’s this wimpy little river in it right now, and you can’t possibly imagine that it dug that, but it did. The power of nature and geology is really magical. And when it comes to ancient civilizations that could be from a long time ago, there’s probably a lot that are just under the ocean, and just the wave action have destroyed them and what they haven’t destroyed buried deep.
Absolutely. In fact, in my opinion, that’s almost a certainty in a lot of places. The Grand Canyon was dug by water. There’s this wimpy little river in it right now, and you can’t possibly imagine that it dug that, but it did. The power of nature and geology is really magical. And when it comes to ancient civilizations that could be from a long time ago, there’s probably a lot that are just under the ocean, and just the wave action have destroyed them and what they haven’t destroyed buried deep.
Lex Fridman
Under the ocean. So you think Atlantis ever existed?
Under the ocean. So you think Atlantis ever existed?
Ed Barnhart
I don’t think that Atlantis existed. I do think it was one of Plato’s many parables talking about putting it in an interesting story as a teaching device in his school. If one did exist or a shadow of it, my money would be on Akrotiri. Akrotiri is what’s left of a big city that was on the island of Santorini, and when their volcano blew up, it blew up most of the city and shot chunks of it so vast that 70 miles away in Crete there are chunks of Santorini in their cliff. So it blasted what was ever there. But what’s left on the side of the crater Akrotiri is strangely advanced for its age. And so if there’s anything that’s a model for Atlantis, as Plato explained it, it’s Akrotiri.
I don’t think that Atlantis existed. I do think it was one of Plato’s many parables talking about putting it in an interesting story as a teaching device in his school. If one did exist or a shadow of it, my money would be on Akrotiri. Akrotiri is what’s left of a big city that was on the island of Santorini, and when their volcano blew up, it blew up most of the city and shot chunks of it so vast that 70 miles away in Crete there are chunks of Santorini in their cliff. So it blasted what was ever there. But what’s left on the side of the crater Akrotiri is strangely advanced for its age. And so if there’s anything that’s a model for Atlantis, as Plato explained it, it’s Akrotiri.
Lex Fridman
Akrotiri, the ancient Greek city, it says, “The settlement was destroyed in the Theran eruption sometime in the 16th century BCE and buried in volcanic ash, which preserved the remains of the frescoes and many objects and artworks.” So we don’t know how advanced that civilization was.
Akrotiri, the ancient Greek city, it says, “The settlement was destroyed in the Theran eruption sometime in the 16th century BCE and buried in volcanic ash, which preserved the remains of the frescoes and many objects and artworks.” So we don’t know how advanced that civilization was.
Ed Barnhart
No, but we can walk around the ruins and see that it’s got streets, it’s got plumbing, it’s got little sconces for torches at night. It was a vibrant city with a lot of, especially in terms of hydraulic engineering, it’s very advanced for being 3,500 years old.
No, but we can walk around the ruins and see that it’s got streets, it’s got plumbing, it’s got little sconces for torches at night. It was a vibrant city with a lot of, especially in terms of hydraulic engineering, it’s very advanced for being 3,500 years old.
Lex Fridman
So if you check it out, here’s an image of the excavation. What a project.
So if you check it out, here’s an image of the excavation. What a project.
Ed Barnhart
It’s an amazing place and you can tell that it’s just part of it because it’s pretty close to where the crater begins. So the city itself was probably much larger.
It’s an amazing place and you can tell that it’s just part of it because it’s pretty close to where the crater begins. So the city itself was probably much larger.
Lex Fridman
So in this case, there’s a lot of evidence, but like we said, there could be civilizations that there is very little evidence of because of the natural environment that destroys all the evidence.
So in this case, there’s a lot of evidence, but like we said, there could be civilizations that there is very little evidence of because of the natural environment that destroys all the evidence.
Ed Barnhart
Right. And I think Akrotiri’s actually a great example of that because here we have the side that did preserve, that looks amazing, but we know there was more of the city that was completely obliterated. It was shot. Chunks of that city are probably in the walls of Crete 70 miles away, and Plato says that it sunk. It was on an island and it sunk. Well, that’s exactly what happened to Akrotiri.
Right. And I think Akrotiri’s actually a great example of that because here we have the side that did preserve, that looks amazing, but we know there was more of the city that was completely obliterated. It was shot. Chunks of that city are probably in the walls of Crete 70 miles away, and Plato says that it sunk. It was on an island and it sunk. Well, that’s exactly what happened to Akrotiri.
Lex Fridman
Do you think this is what Plato was referring to?
Do you think this is what Plato was referring to?
Ed Barnhart
If it does exist, at least the model of it, I think this is probably what he was talking about.
If it does exist, at least the model of it, I think this is probably what he was talking about.
Lex Fridman
And there could be other civilizations of which Plato has never written that we have no record of?
And there could be other civilizations of which Plato has never written that we have no record of?
Ed Barnhart
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman
And it’s humbling to think that entire civilizations with all the dreams, the hope, the technological innovation, the wars, the conflicts, the political tensions, all of that, the social interactions, the hierarchies, all of that, the art can be just destroyed like that and forgotten, completely lost to ancient history.
And it’s humbling to think that entire civilizations with all the dreams, the hope, the technological innovation, the wars, the conflicts, the political tensions, all of that, the social interactions, the hierarchies, all of that, the art can be just destroyed like that and forgotten, completely lost to ancient history.
Ed Barnhart
I reflect upon that often as an archeologist. I think about this great country that I live in and love and all the things we’ve achieved, but we’re a baby historically speaking. We’ve been around 200 years. Heck, a lot of the cities I study in Central and South America, they had a run of 800, 1,000 years, and now they’re ruins. But we’re barely getting started in terms of historical civilizations.
I reflect upon that often as an archeologist. I think about this great country that I live in and love and all the things we’ve achieved, but we’re a baby historically speaking. We’ve been around 200 years. Heck, a lot of the cities I study in Central and South America, they had a run of 800, 1,000 years, and now they’re ruins. But we’re barely getting started in terms of historical civilizations.
Hunter-gatherers
Lex Fridman
So humans, homo sapiens evolved, but they didn’t start civilizations right away. There was a long period of time when they did not form these complex societies. So how do we, let’s say, 300,000 years ago in Africa, actually go from there to creating civilizations?
So humans, homo sapiens evolved, but they didn’t start civilizations right away. There was a long period of time when they did not form these complex societies. So how do we, let’s say, 300,000 years ago in Africa, actually go from there to creating civilizations?
Ed Barnhart
I think that a lot of human evolution had to do with the pressures that their environment put upon them. And a lot of things start changing right around 12,000 years ago, and that’s when our last ice age really ended. I think there was a whole lot of things that just pressured them into, especially, finding new ways of subsistence. Here in the Americas, a huge thing that happened was all the megafauna went away. When the climate changed enough, the mammoths died out and the bison died out, and they had to come up with different ways of doing things. We were hunters and gatherers, and we had things we got from hunting, and we got things we got from gathering. And in the Americas, when the things that they were used to hunting went away and they had to make do with rabbits, the gathering started to be a much more important thing.
I think that a lot of human evolution had to do with the pressures that their environment put upon them. And a lot of things start changing right around 12,000 years ago, and that’s when our last ice age really ended. I think there was a whole lot of things that just pressured them into, especially, finding new ways of subsistence. Here in the Americas, a huge thing that happened was all the megafauna went away. When the climate changed enough, the mammoths died out and the bison died out, and they had to come up with different ways of doing things. We were hunters and gatherers, and we had things we got from hunting, and we got things we got from gathering. And in the Americas, when the things that they were used to hunting went away and they had to make do with rabbits, the gathering started to be a much more important thing.
And I think that led to figuring out, “Hey, we could actually grow certain things.” And gardens turned into crops, turned into intensive crops, and then people were allowed to gather in bigger groups and survive in a single area. They didn’t have to roam around anymore and that’s where we get the first sedentary communities, which means they stayed in the same place all year long. For the vast majority of human existence, we’ve been nomadic and we’ve done these wider or tighter nomadic circles depending on the geographic region where they’d know, “Okay, we’ll be in the summer in the mountains because berries and things, and then in the winter we’ll be down here and we’ll hunt,” but they’d move. So once humans figured out how to stay in a place, I think there, that’s the initial trigger to what would become civilization.
Lex Fridman
There’s a lot of questions I want to ask here. What do you think is the motivation for societies? Is it the carrot or the stick? So you said, is it when resources run out, when the old way of life is no longer feeding everybody, then you have to figure stuff out? Or is it more the carrot of there’s always this human spirit that wants to explore, that wants to maybe impress the rest of the village or something like this with the new discovery they made in venturing out and coming out with different ideas or technological innovation, let’s call it?
There’s a lot of questions I want to ask here. What do you think is the motivation for societies? Is it the carrot or the stick? So you said, is it when resources run out, when the old way of life is no longer feeding everybody, then you have to figure stuff out? Or is it more the carrot of there’s always this human spirit that wants to explore, that wants to maybe impress the rest of the village or something like this with the new discovery they made in venturing out and coming out with different ideas or technological innovation, let’s call it?
Ed Barnhart
Well, I have an explorer’s heart, so I’m biased. I do think that we have an innate desire to see what’s on the horizon and to impress other people with our achievements, things like that. We’re social beings. That’s really the edge that humans have, is our ability to work together. So I think that it’s much more the carrot than the stick. When things get ugly, the stick comes out, but usually the carrot does the job.
Well, I have an explorer’s heart, so I’m biased. I do think that we have an innate desire to see what’s on the horizon and to impress other people with our achievements, things like that. We’re social beings. That’s really the edge that humans have, is our ability to work together. So I think that it’s much more the carrot than the stick. When things get ugly, the stick comes out, but usually the carrot does the job.
First humans in the Americas
Lex Fridman
The really interesting story is how the first people came to the Americas. To me, that’s pretty gangster, to go from Asia all the way potentially during the ice Age or maybe at the end of the ice age or during that whole period not knowing what the world looks like going into the unknown. Can you talk to that process? How did the first people come to the Americas?
The really interesting story is how the first people came to the Americas. To me, that’s pretty gangster, to go from Asia all the way potentially during the ice Age or maybe at the end of the ice age or during that whole period not knowing what the world looks like going into the unknown. Can you talk to that process? How did the first people come to the Americas?
Ed Barnhart
Well, first off, I agree with you, that was pretty gangster. That’s a hard place to live. I listened to some of your podcasts, that guy, Jordan Jonas, he cut the mustard, but I wouldn’t have made it crossing there.
Well, first off, I agree with you, that was pretty gangster. That’s a hard place to live. I listened to some of your podcasts, that guy, Jordan Jonas, he cut the mustard, but I wouldn’t have made it crossing there.
Lex Fridman
Well, there you go. The fact that those guys exist, that somebody like Jordan Jonas exists, people that survive and thrive in these harsh conditions, that’s an indication that it’s possible. So when do you think and how did the first people come?
Well, there you go. The fact that those guys exist, that somebody like Jordan Jonas exists, people that survive and thrive in these harsh conditions, that’s an indication that it’s possible. So when do you think and how did the first people come?
Ed Barnhart
The traditional theories are still somewhat valid, or at least on the table, that when that land bridge occurred, that nomadic hunters just followed the game like they always had and the game went across there because there was no barrier, and they followed them across. The thing that has changed is how early that happened. DNA has been a total game changer for archeology. We get all these evolutionary tracks that we could never see before. When I was a young archeologist, I would’ve never dreamed we’d have the information we have now and that information, a lot of it’s coming out of Texas A&M. We see the traditional 12,500 years ago that there was a migration, but now we’re seeing one that’s almost certainly happening closer to 30,000 years ago.
The traditional theories are still somewhat valid, or at least on the table, that when that land bridge occurred, that nomadic hunters just followed the game like they always had and the game went across there because there was no barrier, and they followed them across. The thing that has changed is how early that happened. DNA has been a total game changer for archeology. We get all these evolutionary tracks that we could never see before. When I was a young archeologist, I would’ve never dreamed we’d have the information we have now and that information, a lot of it’s coming out of Texas A&M. We see the traditional 12,500 years ago that there was a migration, but now we’re seeing one that’s almost certainly happening closer to 30,000 years ago.
And now the thing that seems like madness but might be true is that it could have been as early as 60. A lot of the DNA things are suggesting that the very first migration could have come across as early as 60. And when I was a younger archeologist, it was heresy to go beyond this 12,500. You were a wacko if you said that, but now it’s really very clear that they came over at least by 30,000 and the bridge opened and closed, then open and closed.
Lex Fridman
That’s during the Ice Age?
That’s during the Ice Age?
Ed Barnhart
Right.
Right.
Lex Fridman
I mean, that’s crazy, right? That is crazy.
I mean, that’s crazy, right? That is crazy.
Ed Barnhart
Yeah. I mean, they didn’t roll in and immediately make New York, but there were people. And there were definitely not people here before that, which is fascinating. When the bridge closed, DNA mutated, and so we have specific kinds of haplogroups that are here in the Americas that don’t exist otherwise, and that same haplogroup game has been showing us more and more that people came across Siberia. It’s not Africa. It’s not Western Europe. Those are still, they’ve become fringe theories, but they’re not totally eradicated. DNA is a developing science as well, and I think we all need to keep that in mind, that it’s not like they just cracked the code and now we know all the answers. And sometimes, like in any science, a breakthrough puts us two steps backwards, not forwards. So I think we don’t need to have too much faith in the models that are now being created through DNA, but they are pointing in the direction of everybody came across from Siberia, that all Native American people are of Asiatic descent.
Yeah. I mean, they didn’t roll in and immediately make New York, but there were people. And there were definitely not people here before that, which is fascinating. When the bridge closed, DNA mutated, and so we have specific kinds of haplogroups that are here in the Americas that don’t exist otherwise, and that same haplogroup game has been showing us more and more that people came across Siberia. It’s not Africa. It’s not Western Europe. Those are still, they’ve become fringe theories, but they’re not totally eradicated. DNA is a developing science as well, and I think we all need to keep that in mind, that it’s not like they just cracked the code and now we know all the answers. And sometimes, like in any science, a breakthrough puts us two steps backwards, not forwards. So I think we don’t need to have too much faith in the models that are now being created through DNA, but they are pointing in the direction of everybody came across from Siberia, that all Native American people are of Asiatic descent.
Lex Fridman
Do you think it was a gradual process? If it’s like 30,000 to 60,000 years ago, was it just gradual movement of these nomadic tribes as they follow the animals? Or was it like one explorer that pushed the tribe to just go, go, go, go, and go maybe across 100 years travel all the way across maybe into North America, where Canada is now, and then big leaps in movement versus gradual movement?
Do you think it was a gradual process? If it’s like 30,000 to 60,000 years ago, was it just gradual movement of these nomadic tribes as they follow the animals? Or was it like one explorer that pushed the tribe to just go, go, go, go, and go maybe across 100 years travel all the way across maybe into North America, where Canada is now, and then big leaps in movement versus gradual movement?
Ed Barnhart
I think it was big leaps. Now, this is just mostly guess, I’ll admit, but I think that much in the way that a lot of our evolutionary models talk about punctuated equilibrium, that there are big moments of change and then it settles out into a more slow and steady pattern, and then something big will happen again. I do think that the early people went as far as they could go, and there were certain colonies that just got isolated for thousands of years. One of the fascinating things that DNA is showing us, which actually blood types were showing us way before that, is that the oldest people in the Americas are in South America, the ones that got separated early and didn’t mix their DNA, like the people in the Amazon.
I think it was big leaps. Now, this is just mostly guess, I’ll admit, but I think that much in the way that a lot of our evolutionary models talk about punctuated equilibrium, that there are big moments of change and then it settles out into a more slow and steady pattern, and then something big will happen again. I do think that the early people went as far as they could go, and there were certain colonies that just got isolated for thousands of years. One of the fascinating things that DNA is showing us, which actually blood types were showing us way before that, is that the oldest people in the Americas are in South America, the ones that got separated early and didn’t mix their DNA, like the people in the Amazon.
Most of those guys have O-blood type and they’re haplogroup D, which is the oldest one that entered the U.S. And what are they doing down there? I do believe they came across the Bering Strait. We have no real evidence to say they came in mass across Oceania. So they made it probably by boat along the coast all the way to South America.
Lex Fridman
So there’s some kind of cultural engine that drove them to explore. So if you had to bet all your money, it happened like tens of thousands of years ago, but in a very rapid pace. There’s these explorers. They went all the way to South America and there established their more stable existence. And from there, South America, Mesoamerica, North America was gradually expanded into that area?
So there’s some kind of cultural engine that drove them to explore. So if you had to bet all your money, it happened like tens of thousands of years ago, but in a very rapid pace. There’s these explorers. They went all the way to South America and there established their more stable existence. And from there, South America, Mesoamerica, North America was gradually expanded into that area?
Ed Barnhart
I think the next waves came down and did North America and Central America, and the very first wave made it all the way down to South America and got isolated there.
I think the next waves came down and did North America and Central America, and the very first wave made it all the way down to South America and got isolated there.
Lex Fridman
Isolated.
Isolated.
Ed Barnhart
And then mixed in with the next groups that came.
And then mixed in with the next groups that came.
Lex Fridman
That’s fascinating.
That’s fascinating.
Ed Barnhart
There’s an interesting correlate in Europe where today everybody feels like Celtic people are from Ireland, but actually Celtic people started in Eastern Europe and it was the entire area. And when Rome swept everything and Rome was now the ruler of the day, it was only that far edge of the Celtic world, Ireland, that they were like, “Ah, we’re not going to mess with those guys on that island. We’ll leave them be.” So now it looks like that’s the heart of Celtic tradition, but actually it’s the fringe.
There’s an interesting correlate in Europe where today everybody feels like Celtic people are from Ireland, but actually Celtic people started in Eastern Europe and it was the entire area. And when Rome swept everything and Rome was now the ruler of the day, it was only that far edge of the Celtic world, Ireland, that they were like, “Ah, we’re not going to mess with those guys on that island. We’ll leave them be.” So now it looks like that’s the heart of Celtic tradition, but actually it’s the fringe.
Lex Fridman
So if it is 60,000 years ago, these are really early humans?
So if it is 60,000 years ago, these are really early humans?
Ed Barnhart
Yeah. And there were consistent things that have been coming out for decades about very old carbon-14 dates in the Amazon and in the Andes area that everybody just dismissed as, “No, it didn’t get a date of 40,000 years.” But I think we’re going to come back around to start readdressing some of these based on new evidence at hand.
Yeah. And there were consistent things that have been coming out for decades about very old carbon-14 dates in the Amazon and in the Andes area that everybody just dismissed as, “No, it didn’t get a date of 40,000 years.” But I think we’re going to come back around to start readdressing some of these based on new evidence at hand.
Lex Fridman
And that’s the interesting thing. The early human spread throughout the world and then, like you said, perhaps have gotten isolated, and then civilizations sprung from there, and they all have similar elements even though they were isolated. That’s really interesting. That’s really interesting that there’s multiple cradles of civilization, not just one. One good idea, those ideas naturally come up. Those structures naturally come up.
And that’s the interesting thing. The early human spread throughout the world and then, like you said, perhaps have gotten isolated, and then civilizations sprung from there, and they all have similar elements even though they were isolated. That’s really interesting. That’s really interesting that there’s multiple cradles of civilization, not just one. One good idea, those ideas naturally come up. Those structures naturally come up.
Ed Barnhart
And I wonder whether the similarities that all those cradles have, it could be a shared much deeper past that they all have, or it could be a more Star Trek thing where Captain Kirk was always talking about the theory of parallel human development, that humans across the universe go through certain stages of development and that, that could be the answer to it.
And I wonder whether the similarities that all those cradles have, it could be a shared much deeper past that they all have, or it could be a more Star Trek thing where Captain Kirk was always talking about the theory of parallel human development, that humans across the universe go through certain stages of development and that, that could be the answer to it.
Lex Fridman
Which one do you lean on? Which one do you lean towards?
Which one do you lean on? Which one do you lean towards?
Ed Barnhart
I think it’s a case by case thing. I think if we look globally, I’d lean much more towards the human parallel development. But if I look just to the Americas and we have a shorter time period where the things that become major civilizations, now, I’ll say up to 30,000 years ago, which is still a blip in the time of humans, I think that there were shared things that those people came over with from Asia and that, as they got separated, that they had core values that then turned into things like religion and cultural customs that we can see. I’m a big proponent that there are commonalities in all the cultures of the Americas that lead back to and point to a single distant origin.
I think it’s a case by case thing. I think if we look globally, I’d lean much more towards the human parallel development. But if I look just to the Americas and we have a shorter time period where the things that become major civilizations, now, I’ll say up to 30,000 years ago, which is still a blip in the time of humans, I think that there were shared things that those people came over with from Asia and that, as they got separated, that they had core values that then turned into things like religion and cultural customs that we can see. I’m a big proponent that there are commonalities in all the cultures of the Americas that lead back to and point to a single distant origin.
South America
Lex Fridman
You’ve spoken about the lost cradle of civilization, South America. South America is not often talked about as one of the cradles of civilization, South America, Mesoamerica. Can you explain?
You’ve spoken about the lost cradle of civilization, South America. South America is not often talked about as one of the cradles of civilization, South America, Mesoamerica. Can you explain?
Ed Barnhart
Well, we have very early stuff in South America. You’re right. Especially as an American, our country’s so big and we are so far removed from these places, we don’t even think about it. But more and more we’re seeing things that predate the earliest stuff that we like to talk about, like Egypt and Mesopotamia. It’s all on the Peruvian coast that we have these cradles of civilization. Someday we might start talking about the Amazon more and more, but right now what we’ve got are things that date back into the 3000s BCE along the coast of Peru. And there are big stone-built pyramids and temples, and they’re amazingly isolated, even now that we’ve found them.
Well, we have very early stuff in South America. You’re right. Especially as an American, our country’s so big and we are so far removed from these places, we don’t even think about it. But more and more we’re seeing things that predate the earliest stuff that we like to talk about, like Egypt and Mesopotamia. It’s all on the Peruvian coast that we have these cradles of civilization. Someday we might start talking about the Amazon more and more, but right now what we’ve got are things that date back into the 3000s BCE along the coast of Peru. And there are big stone-built pyramids and temples, and they’re amazingly isolated, even now that we’ve found them.
Some of them, Caral is one of the most famous ones just north of Lima, we’ve known about it for a couple of decades now, how old it is. But every time I visit there, it’s like I visited the moon. There’s absolutely nobody there, not for miles. It’s amazing how such a discovery was made, and yet still nobody goes to see it. It’s not easy to get to.
Lex Fridman
So you think there’s a bunch of locations like that? Some may not have been discovered in the Peru area.
So you think there’s a bunch of locations like that? Some may not have been discovered in the Peru area.
Ed Barnhart
Oh, there are so many. Peru has tons. That desert gets really ugly quick and it buries things completely. There are so many pyramids out there that are still completely untouched. When people hear the name pyramids, they think of Egypt immediately. Egypt has got about 140 pyramids, and we have pretty much found them all. Peru has thousands, thousands of pyramids, and not all of them were built of stone. Some of them were Adobe bricks, which have weathered terribly, so now they’re not exciting places to visit today. What’s funny too, we started off talking about whether I think there’s a lost civilization out there, there are definitely things that are still to be discovered, but there are some things that were discovered 100 years ago and archeologists, or back then they call themselves antiquarians, just passed over.
Oh, there are so many. Peru has tons. That desert gets really ugly quick and it buries things completely. There are so many pyramids out there that are still completely untouched. When people hear the name pyramids, they think of Egypt immediately. Egypt has got about 140 pyramids, and we have pretty much found them all. Peru has thousands, thousands of pyramids, and not all of them were built of stone. Some of them were Adobe bricks, which have weathered terribly, so now they’re not exciting places to visit today. What’s funny too, we started off talking about whether I think there’s a lost civilization out there, there are definitely things that are still to be discovered, but there are some things that were discovered 100 years ago and archeologists, or back then they call themselves antiquarians, just passed over.
Caral was one of these sites because the coast of Peru has, some of those pyramids that were made by the Moche are full of gold and beautiful ceramics, things that you can sell for big money. But Caral was found a long time ago, but the archeologist was like, “God, no gold, no ceramics. Forget about it. This place is no good. We can’t sell anything here.” And then about the 1970s or ’80s, somebody said, “Hey, no ceramics. Is that older than the invention of ceramics? Shit, we better go take another look at that place.”
Lex Fridman
So what’s the dating on Caral?
So what’s the dating on Caral?
Ed Barnhart
Caral, I think, starts at about 3200 BCE, and it lasts as a major civilization with a lot of other cities around it until about 1800 BCE.
Caral, I think, starts at about 3200 BCE, and it lasts as a major civilization with a lot of other cities around it until about 1800 BCE.
Lex Fridman
So what’s the story behind looking at some of these images? What’s the story about constructions like that? What was the idea of that thing? Isn’t that amazing?
So what’s the story behind looking at some of these images? What’s the story about constructions like that? What was the idea of that thing? Isn’t that amazing?
Ed Barnhart
Gosh, it should be some sort of, I’ll be a flaky archeologist like, “This is a place where rituals took place.”
Gosh, it should be some sort of, I’ll be a flaky archeologist like, “This is a place where rituals took place.”
Lex Fridman
It could mean a million [inaudible 00:26:09].
It could mean a million [inaudible 00:26:09].
Ed Barnhart
So many things we say are so just painfully vague, and that’s about what we got. A place like this, I know the one we’re looking at here, I’ve been here a couple of times, in the pyramid behind it, the rubble’s built in a way where the building won’t rock apart. This is a very earthquake-prone place, but the buildings haven’t fallen because they make these net baskets of rocks inside that all wiggle around and don’t allow the building to fall down. And inside these, we’ve also found a couple of things that were babies, that were human babies that were buried in there. There’s a lot of people that see that and go, “Oh, look at that. They were sacrificing babies, these monsters.”
So many things we say are so just painfully vague, and that’s about what we got. A place like this, I know the one we’re looking at here, I’ve been here a couple of times, in the pyramid behind it, the rubble’s built in a way where the building won’t rock apart. This is a very earthquake-prone place, but the buildings haven’t fallen because they make these net baskets of rocks inside that all wiggle around and don’t allow the building to fall down. And inside these, we’ve also found a couple of things that were babies, that were human babies that were buried in there. There’s a lot of people that see that and go, “Oh, look at that. They were sacrificing babies, these monsters.”
I think a lot of the things that are interpreted as baby sacrifices, Coral’s evidence being one of them, I think it’s more about the tragic nature of infant mortality. In the past, it was a lot more common. There were cultures that didn’t even really properly name their kid until they got to five, because chances were they were going to die. And so I think a lot of these babies that we find in these ceremonial contexts that are interpreted as sacrifices, I think they’re putting them in special places because they mourn the death of their kids, and it just happened a lot more frequently then.
Pyramids
Lex Fridman
One of the things you said that really surprised me is that pyramids were built in Peru possibly hundreds of years before they were built in Egypt. Is that true?
One of the things you said that really surprised me is that pyramids were built in Peru possibly hundreds of years before they were built in Egypt. Is that true?
Ed Barnhart
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Lex Fridman
That’s crazy.
That’s crazy.
Ed Barnhart
In fact, there’s one that’s now pushing 6000 BCE. That’s thousands of years before the stuff in Egypt. And that one’s called Huaca Prieta. And it was not an Egyptian pyramid, but it was a pyramid and it was thousands of years before.
In fact, there’s one that’s now pushing 6000 BCE. That’s thousands of years before the stuff in Egypt. And that one’s called Huaca Prieta. And it was not an Egyptian pyramid, but it was a pyramid and it was thousands of years before.
Lex Fridman
What do you think is the motivation to build a pyramid? The fact that it can withstand the elements structurally, that kind of thing? Why do humans build pyramids and why do they build it in all kinds of different locations in the world?
What do you think is the motivation to build a pyramid? The fact that it can withstand the elements structurally, that kind of thing? Why do humans build pyramids and why do they build it in all kinds of different locations in the world?
Ed Barnhart
Well, my rude answer is pretty boring, really. A lot of people ask me, “Why are there pyramids all over the planet? Is that a coincidence?” I think that when people wanted to build a big building without rebar or cement, you end up building something with a fat base that goes up to a skinny top, and that turns into a pyramid. Any kid who’s playing with blocks on the floor builds a couple towers and his brother knocks them down, and if he wants one that’s going to stay and be tall, he ends up making something with a fat base and a tiny top. And I think that building something big and tall together is one of those human things like, “We built that. That will be here after we’re gone. People will remember who we were.” If there’s any human commonality, it’s fear of our own deaths and that we were nothing and no one will ever remember us. I think that the first big monuments like that were probably a group of people saying, “We’re going to do something that people will remember forever.”
Well, my rude answer is pretty boring, really. A lot of people ask me, “Why are there pyramids all over the planet? Is that a coincidence?” I think that when people wanted to build a big building without rebar or cement, you end up building something with a fat base that goes up to a skinny top, and that turns into a pyramid. Any kid who’s playing with blocks on the floor builds a couple towers and his brother knocks them down, and if he wants one that’s going to stay and be tall, he ends up making something with a fat base and a tiny top. And I think that building something big and tall together is one of those human things like, “We built that. That will be here after we’re gone. People will remember who we were.” If there’s any human commonality, it’s fear of our own deaths and that we were nothing and no one will ever remember us. I think that the first big monuments like that were probably a group of people saying, “We’re going to do something that people will remember forever.”
Now, that being said, remember we were just talking about Huaca Prieta and this one that’s almost 6000 BC now, is the first one, that one’s a funny case. We just talked about all these lofty goals, but actually I’m pretty sure that Huaca Prieta’s first pyramid was about capping a smelly pile of trash. I think everybody piled up their trash in the middle of town and it stunk. It’s on the coast. It stunk like fish. And somebody said, “If we just bury this thing with dirt, it won’t smell anymore.” And then it was a big mound where people could get up and talk to everybody and then said, “Well, it’s squishy. If we cap it with clay, then it will really not smell.” I really think that the very first pyramids in Peru were about trash management. Talk about deflating, huh?
Lex Fridman
Yeah. But then they probably saw it and they were impressed and humbled by the enormity of the construction, and they were like, maybe the next guy thought, “Maybe we should keep building these kinds of things.”
Yeah. But then they probably saw it and they were impressed and humbled by the enormity of the construction, and they were like, maybe the next guy thought, “Maybe we should keep building these kinds of things.”
Ed Barnhart
Yeah. Not to jump ahead, but in North America, where they also made pyramids, there’s this interesting evolution where there were these piles of shells along rivers and along the coastlines. People ate a lot of shells. That was an easy thing to collect and eat. So these piles of shells would be near communities, and they probably became landmarks, but eventually they started burying their dead inside those too. Probably, again, about stink and about, “Well, we don’t want the dogs to eat them. Maybe we’ll put them in the middle of the shell pile.” But then that all of a sudden became this, ” That’s where my grandfather’s body is. That’s where great-grandfather’s body is.” And all of a sudden people started being attached to place, not just for the resources, but for the shared memories of their ancestors. So when the very first pyramid was built in the Ohio area by the Adena people, it was built out of dirt, but it’s full of bodies. And I think it’s an echo of an old thing where they used to be putting bodies in shell mounds.
Yeah. Not to jump ahead, but in North America, where they also made pyramids, there’s this interesting evolution where there were these piles of shells along rivers and along the coastlines. People ate a lot of shells. That was an easy thing to collect and eat. So these piles of shells would be near communities, and they probably became landmarks, but eventually they started burying their dead inside those too. Probably, again, about stink and about, “Well, we don’t want the dogs to eat them. Maybe we’ll put them in the middle of the shell pile.” But then that all of a sudden became this, ” That’s where my grandfather’s body is. That’s where great-grandfather’s body is.” And all of a sudden people started being attached to place, not just for the resources, but for the shared memories of their ancestors. So when the very first pyramid was built in the Ohio area by the Adena people, it was built out of dirt, but it’s full of bodies. And I think it’s an echo of an old thing where they used to be putting bodies in shell mounds.
Lex Fridman
So where and who were the first civilizations in South America, Mesoamerica?
So where and who were the first civilizations in South America, Mesoamerica?
Ed Barnhart
Well, I think we’re still piecing that together. Coming back to the first things we talked about, I think we’re still missing a lot of stuff, especially in South America. It just keeps getting older and older. Part of the reason it’s hard to answer that question is, at what point do we consider people a civilization or a culture? We have in the Americas this long period of time that we call the Paleo-Indian time where they were hunting megafauna. And then when those went away, we get into this even longer period of time called The Archaic, where they’re just hunters and gatherers. Sometimes somebody’s coming up with a cool different kind of arrowhead. They go back and forth with different hunting tools, but really nothing changes for thousands of years and then finally they start developing into these larger groups, which for the most part has to do with agriculture.
Well, I think we’re still piecing that together. Coming back to the first things we talked about, I think we’re still missing a lot of stuff, especially in South America. It just keeps getting older and older. Part of the reason it’s hard to answer that question is, at what point do we consider people a civilization or a culture? We have in the Americas this long period of time that we call the Paleo-Indian time where they were hunting megafauna. And then when those went away, we get into this even longer period of time called The Archaic, where they’re just hunters and gatherers. Sometimes somebody’s coming up with a cool different kind of arrowhead. They go back and forth with different hunting tools, but really nothing changes for thousands of years and then finally they start developing into these larger groups, which for the most part has to do with agriculture.
It used to be archeology that was just the end all, be all. Civilization starts with the invention of agriculture. And we can’t have sedentary communities until people learn how to farm. But that’s been discounted. Peru was a big part of that. That area of Caral, it’s connected to another city on the coast called Aspero. Aspero starts about the same time, but they’re all about fishing. They have no farming. And Caral, who’s upriver from them, is farming, but funny enough, they’re not really farming food. They’re farming cotton and they’re making nets and they’re trading the nets with the people on the coast for the fish. So it’s not as simple as, it’s just agriculture anymore. But it is, I think, still rooted in, how can we feed more people than just our family? How can we together create a food abundance so we’re no longer scared about running out of food?
Lex Fridman
So is it possible, which is something you’ve argued, that civilization started in the Amazon, in the jungle versus the coast?
So is it possible, which is something you’ve argued, that civilization started in the Amazon, in the jungle versus the coast?
Ed Barnhart
I do think so. I think religion in South America began in the Amazon. I think there were people there, very old. Actually, the earliest pottery in all of the Americas, all these places that we have civilizations that grew up, you know where the oldest pottery is? The middle of the Amazon.
I do think so. I think religion in South America began in the Amazon. I think there were people there, very old. Actually, the earliest pottery in all of the Americas, all these places that we have civilizations that grew up, you know where the oldest pottery is? The middle of the Amazon.
Religion
Lex Fridman
So there’s interesting cultures developing in the Amazon. So religion, you would say, preceded civilization?
So there’s interesting cultures developing in the Amazon. So religion, you would say, preceded civilization?
Ed Barnhart
In South America, Caral and Aspero that I was just talking about, it’s weird what a dearth of art and any evidence of religion we have. We have those pyramids and things that we call temples, but we don’t really know what went on in there. And there’s no…
In South America, Caral and Aspero that I was just talking about, it’s weird what a dearth of art and any evidence of religion we have. We have those pyramids and things that we call temples, but we don’t really know what went on in there. And there’s no…
Ed Barnhart
… Things that we call temples, but we don’t really know what went on in there, and there’s no hints of religious iconography, ceremonies, nothing like that. The first stuff that we get is right when that culture ends, about 1800 BCE. This culture called Chavin starts up and their main temple is up in the Andes in this place of path of least resistance between the Amazon and the coast. It’s about three days walk either way, from this place where this temple is. That’s where we start seeing the very first religious iconography and it’s all over the temples. There are things that are definitely from the coast, but the iconography are all jaguars and snakes and crocodiles, and those don’t come from the coast. All of those things are coming out of the Amazon.
… Things that we call temples, but we don’t really know what went on in there, and there’s no hints of religious iconography, ceremonies, nothing like that. The first stuff that we get is right when that culture ends, about 1800 BCE. This culture called Chavin starts up and their main temple is up in the Andes in this place of path of least resistance between the Amazon and the coast. It’s about three days walk either way, from this place where this temple is. That’s where we start seeing the very first religious iconography and it’s all over the temples. There are things that are definitely from the coast, but the iconography are all jaguars and snakes and crocodiles, and those don’t come from the coast. All of those things are coming out of the Amazon.
Lex Fridman
Religion is a really powerful idea. Religions are one of the most powerful ideas. There are the strongest myths that tie people together. And to you, it’s possible that this powerful idea in South America started in the Amazon.
Religion is a really powerful idea. Religions are one of the most powerful ideas. There are the strongest myths that tie people together. And to you, it’s possible that this powerful idea in South America started in the Amazon.
Ed Barnhart
I do. I do think it did, and you’re right, ideas are more powerful than weapons, but archeology can’t see them at all. Sometimes we can see ideas manifesting in the things they create and lead to, but there’s an interpretation problem. Are we right about what idea created this? Those are things that archeology just can’t get at.
I do. I do think it did, and you’re right, ideas are more powerful than weapons, but archeology can’t see them at all. Sometimes we can see ideas manifesting in the things they create and lead to, but there’s an interpretation problem. Are we right about what idea created this? Those are things that archeology just can’t get at.
Lex Fridman
That’s one of the challenges of archeology and looking into ancient histories. You’re trying to not just understand what they were doing in terms of architecture, but understand what was going on inside their mind.
That’s one of the challenges of archeology and looking into ancient histories. You’re trying to not just understand what they were doing in terms of architecture, but understand what was going on inside their mind.
Ed Barnhart
That’s really what I’m in it for, trying to understand these people and it’s real detective work, and we know we’re dealing with a totally flawed record. We only have what could preserve the test of time. If we look around this room here, if 2,000 years of weathering happened in this room, what would be left and what would we think happened here?
That’s really what I’m in it for, trying to understand these people and it’s real detective work, and we know we’re dealing with a totally flawed record. We only have what could preserve the test of time. If we look around this room here, if 2,000 years of weathering happened in this room, what would be left and what would we think happened here?
Lex Fridman
Right, right, but not in this room, but if you look at thousands of rooms like it, maybe you can start to piece things together about the different ideologies that ruled the world, the religion, the different ideas. Tell me about this fanged deity. One of your more controversial ideas is that you believe that the religions, there’s a thread that connects the different civilizations, the societies of the Andean region and the religion they practiced is more monotheistic than is currently believed in the mainstream.
Right, right, but not in this room, but if you look at thousands of rooms like it, maybe you can start to piece things together about the different ideologies that ruled the world, the religion, the different ideas. Tell me about this fanged deity. One of your more controversial ideas is that you believe that the religions, there’s a thread that connects the different civilizations, the societies of the Andean region and the religion they practiced is more monotheistic than is currently believed in the mainstream.
Ed Barnhart
That is exactly what I think, and I think it’s all about this fanged deity who somewhere, thousands of years ago, crawled his way out of the Amazon up into the Andes and a religion took hold. That could have been a combination of ideas from the coast and the Amazon. But he is the one creator deity, in my opinion, through all of these cultures. And the people in the Amazon still talk about him there. His name is Viho Masse in some groups, but they say that his emissaries on earth are the jaguars and that he is the creator deity.
That is exactly what I think, and I think it’s all about this fanged deity who somewhere, thousands of years ago, crawled his way out of the Amazon up into the Andes and a religion took hold. That could have been a combination of ideas from the coast and the Amazon. But he is the one creator deity, in my opinion, through all of these cultures. And the people in the Amazon still talk about him there. His name is Viho Masse in some groups, but they say that his emissaries on earth are the jaguars and that he is the creator deity.
Lex Fridman
Why is the current mainstream belief is that a lot of the religions are not monotheistic?
Why is the current mainstream belief is that a lot of the religions are not monotheistic?
Ed Barnhart
Well, there are bona fide pantheons. Greece had one, Egypt had one, Mesopotamia had one. Lots of the early religions of the old world were pantheons, and I think that was part of the problem. The earliest archeologists walked in there with a preconceived notion that ancient cultures have pantheons. And so they went to the art looking for them, and they came up with things like the shark god and the moon goddess and the sun God, and all these things. But when I look at the art, and I was trained by a person right here in Austin, Texas as an art historian, you follow certain diagnostic traits through art to see the development over time. And when I look at it and use that methodology, there’s a single face with goggle eyes and fangs and claws on his hands and feet and snakes coming off of his head and off of his belt. He’s got really identifiable traits.
Well, there are bona fide pantheons. Greece had one, Egypt had one, Mesopotamia had one. Lots of the early religions of the old world were pantheons, and I think that was part of the problem. The earliest archeologists walked in there with a preconceived notion that ancient cultures have pantheons. And so they went to the art looking for them, and they came up with things like the shark god and the moon goddess and the sun God, and all these things. But when I look at the art, and I was trained by a person right here in Austin, Texas as an art historian, you follow certain diagnostic traits through art to see the development over time. And when I look at it and use that methodology, there’s a single face with goggle eyes and fangs and claws on his hands and feet and snakes coming off of his head and off of his belt. He’s got really identifiable traits.
He also likes to sever people’s heads off and carry them around, but he’s the fanged deity and he’s there. He shows up in Chavín de Juantar, the capital of that Chavín culture, and he keeps showing up through every culture, even thousands of miles away throughout the next two millennium, right up to the Inca. The Inca have a creator deity they call Viracocha, but Viracocha is the fanged deity. When we do see him, by the time you get to Inca, they do this almost Islamic thing where they say you can’t understand the face of Viracocha. So when they do put him in a cosmogram, they’ll make him just a blob, like he’s just unknowable, but he’s at the very top. I think we’re misunderstanding a lot of things that we used to say were deities as just supernatural beings.
If we flip the mirror on Christianity and take a look at it, which of course, Christianity is monotheistic, right? It would be heresy to say otherwise, but who are all these other characters? Who are all these angels and demons and Jesus Christ? I don’t even know who the Holy Spirit is, but he’s some sort of supernatural being. But it’s that monotheistic system has lots of things that have supernatural powers that are not God. That’s where I think the crux of us misunderstanding ancient Andean art is.
Lex Fridman
So what is the process of analyzing art through time that try to figure out what the important entities are for that culture? Do you just see what shows up over and over and over and over?
So what is the process of analyzing art through time that try to figure out what the important entities are for that culture? Do you just see what shows up over and over and over and over?
Ed Barnhart
Well, certainly without the advent of writing, depictions in art have all sorts of meanings encoded in them, and there are certain, what we call diagnostic elements. We can pull apart the same sort of thing like in the Greek pantheon, you know by their dress and what they’re holding, what the different gods are. You can tell Hades from Zeus by the different things they’re holding lightning bolts or tridents or whatever. So they all have these diagnostic elements to them. So that’s how art history goes about analyzing art over time. Once we can put it in a chronological sequence, then we can say, “Okay, here’s a deity here in Chavín culture.” Now we move forward 500 years. Now we’re in Moche and Nazca culture. Where are the deities here? And what I see is that same guy with not just one or two traits, but a whole package of them that shows up again and again and again for thousands of years in each one of these cultures.
Well, certainly without the advent of writing, depictions in art have all sorts of meanings encoded in them, and there are certain, what we call diagnostic elements. We can pull apart the same sort of thing like in the Greek pantheon, you know by their dress and what they’re holding, what the different gods are. You can tell Hades from Zeus by the different things they’re holding lightning bolts or tridents or whatever. So they all have these diagnostic elements to them. So that’s how art history goes about analyzing art over time. Once we can put it in a chronological sequence, then we can say, “Okay, here’s a deity here in Chavín culture.” Now we move forward 500 years. Now we’re in Moche and Nazca culture. Where are the deities here? And what I see is that same guy with not just one or two traits, but a whole package of them that shows up again and again and again for thousands of years in each one of these cultures.
He’s got circular eyes, he’s got a fanged mouth. He’s got claws on his hands and feet. He’s a humanoid, but he also has snakes coming off of his head like hair and snakes coming off of his belt. And then not so much in Chavín, but as it goes forward, he starts carting around severed heads, human severed heads. So they’re like, in the old literature, the Moche will call him the decapitator deity, but then they have these other like, “Oh, here’s the crab deity and here’s the fox deity.” But if you look at them, the crab deity is just that guy’s face coming off of a crab, and the fox deity is that guy’s face coming off of a fox.
So I think on that particular instance, I explain it similar to what Zeus did. You know how Zeus was able to turn into whatever animal he wanted to get with the woman he wanted, and he showed up in all sorts of forms, but he was always Zeus. I think that the fanged deity manifests himself through people and animals throughout the art and that there are missing stories of mythology that we don’t have anymore.
Lex Fridman
And across hundreds of years, thousands of years from Chavín to Moja to Inca, as you’re saying.
And across hundreds of years, thousands of years from Chavín to Moja to Inca, as you’re saying.
Ed Barnhart
Right. Wari has them too, Tiahuanaco, that famous place, Pumapunku, he’s all over there.
Right. Wari has them too, Tiahuanaco, that famous place, Pumapunku, he’s all over there.
Lex Fridman
I wonder how those ideas spread and morph of this fanged deity?
I wonder how those ideas spread and morph of this fanged deity?
Ed Barnhart
I think people walked and proselytized and places like Chavín, there’s a later one in Inca times called Pachacamac that are pilgrimage places where people come in to be healed if they’re sick, but also just to pay homage to the powers that be. So Chavín was a place where people from the Amazon and people from the coast were all coming together. In fact, we saw it in the archeology there. There’s these interesting labyrinths under the pyramids with the fanged deity all over them that have… One labyrinth will have all pottery. The next labyrinth will have a bunch of animal bones. The next one will have a bunch of things made out of stone. So people are showing up and giving this tribute and they’re learning and then they’re going back to their communities. So I think it dispersed from certain pilgrimage spots and became just like pilgrimage spots do. Somebody goes back and they build a temple to the fanged deity.
I think people walked and proselytized and places like Chavín, there’s a later one in Inca times called Pachacamac that are pilgrimage places where people come in to be healed if they’re sick, but also just to pay homage to the powers that be. So Chavín was a place where people from the Amazon and people from the coast were all coming together. In fact, we saw it in the archeology there. There’s these interesting labyrinths under the pyramids with the fanged deity all over them that have… One labyrinth will have all pottery. The next labyrinth will have a bunch of animal bones. The next one will have a bunch of things made out of stone. So people are showing up and giving this tribute and they’re learning and then they’re going back to their communities. So I think it dispersed from certain pilgrimage spots and became just like pilgrimage spots do. Somebody goes back and they build a temple to the fanged deity.
Lex Fridman
Do we know much about the relationship they had with the fanged deity and their conception of the powers of the fanged deity? Were they afraid of the fanged deities and all-knowing God? Is it something that brings joy and harvest or is it something that you’re supposed to be afraid of and sacrifice animals and humans to keep at bay?
Do we know much about the relationship they had with the fanged deity and their conception of the powers of the fanged deity? Were they afraid of the fanged deities and all-knowing God? Is it something that brings joy and harvest or is it something that you’re supposed to be afraid of and sacrifice animals and humans to keep at bay?
Ed Barnhart
I think he had two sides of the coin. A lot of the Hindu gods are… One aspect is terrible, the other aspect is lovely. I think he had that same sorts of qualities because we do see him as a fierce warrior taking people’s heads off, and he is a jaguar, which in and of itself implies a certain power and ferocity, but then there are other funny things about him. He is definitely involved in a lot of healing ceremonies and a lot of those healing ceremonies are involved with sex acts. When it comes to the Moche, there’s this whole group of sexual pottery where priests are having sex with women or men, and some of them show their faces transforming into that fanged deity, he is acting through them.
I think he had two sides of the coin. A lot of the Hindu gods are… One aspect is terrible, the other aspect is lovely. I think he had that same sorts of qualities because we do see him as a fierce warrior taking people’s heads off, and he is a jaguar, which in and of itself implies a certain power and ferocity, but then there are other funny things about him. He is definitely involved in a lot of healing ceremonies and a lot of those healing ceremonies are involved with sex acts. When it comes to the Moche, there’s this whole group of sexual pottery where priests are having sex with women or men, and some of them show their faces transforming into that fanged deity, he is acting through them.
But the thing that most cracks me up that shows his softer side is the fanged deity has a little puppy. He has a puppy that’s just dancing around his feet and jumping up on him in various scenes. They see him again and again. Sometimes he’s in these healing sex scenes. In fact, I tracked that puppy from other contexts to these sex scenes where a priest was having sex with somebody in a house and a fanged deity, and there’s a puppy just scratching at the door like, “Hey, you forgot me.” And then finally, one day I found one with the puppy having sex with the woman instead of the fanged deity. I was like, “Oh, he really is very involved in this. What is this weird puppy?”
Lex Fridman
Okay.
Okay.
Ed Barnhart
So yeah, he likes to take heads off, but he also has a puppy he adores.
So yeah, he likes to take heads off, but he also has a puppy he adores.
Shamanism
Lex Fridman
This awesomely makes sense now because I saw the opening of a paper you wrote 30 years ago on shamanism and Mocha civilization. It reads, “The Mocha are the major focus of this paper. Sex puppies and headhunting will be shown to be related to ancient Mocha shamanism.” So now I understand. I was like, “Well, the puppies.”
This awesomely makes sense now because I saw the opening of a paper you wrote 30 years ago on shamanism and Mocha civilization. It reads, “The Mocha are the major focus of this paper. Sex puppies and headhunting will be shown to be related to ancient Mocha shamanism.” So now I understand. I was like, “Well, the puppies.”
Ed Barnhart
Puppies, yeah, it’s true.
Puppies, yeah, it’s true.
Lex Fridman
And the headhunting. That’s the decapitator.
And the headhunting. That’s the decapitator.
Ed Barnhart
And I’ve added rock and roll to that list since actually. Rock and roll music is also a big part of it.
And I’ve added rock and roll to that list since actually. Rock and roll music is also a big part of it.
Lex Fridman
Oh, interesting.
Oh, interesting.
Ed Barnhart
They call spirits down. There’s this whole spirit world. There’s the ancestors and the people that drink San Pedro cactus juice, they don’t talk about the fanged deity anymore. I think Christianity in 500 years has somewhat put him in the back. It was unpopular to have a pagan deity. So they don’t talk about him much anymore though he’s still around. They’re around Trujillo. They call him Iopec. But music, in the Amazon, they play flute. Sometimes a chorus of women sing and that’s supposed to bring the spirits down into the ceremony. There’s a spirit that’s hurting the person that’s sick, and then the priest or the shaman or the corundero, whatever you want to call him, has his own posse of spirits that are going to help him figure out what’s going on.
They call spirits down. There’s this whole spirit world. There’s the ancestors and the people that drink San Pedro cactus juice, they don’t talk about the fanged deity anymore. I think Christianity in 500 years has somewhat put him in the back. It was unpopular to have a pagan deity. So they don’t talk about him much anymore though he’s still around. They’re around Trujillo. They call him Iopec. But music, in the Amazon, they play flute. Sometimes a chorus of women sing and that’s supposed to bring the spirits down into the ceremony. There’s a spirit that’s hurting the person that’s sick, and then the priest or the shaman or the corundero, whatever you want to call him, has his own posse of spirits that are going to help him figure out what’s going on.
So when the music starts, that’s bringing those spirits in and people don’t see them unless they’ve imbibed the San Pedro cactus juice, which is this hallucinogen, which is in the Amazon side, it was Ayahuasca. On the coast, it was San Pedro cactus, but that’s what allows you to actually see that other world.
Ayahuasca
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I went to the Amazon recently and did Ayahuasca, a very high dose of it.
Yeah. I went to the Amazon recently and did Ayahuasca, a very high dose of it.
Ed Barnhart
Bold move.
Bold move.
Lex Fridman
When in Rome. How far back does that go?
When in Rome. How far back does that go?
Ed Barnhart
Oh, I think longer than anybody can remember, but it’s a natural plant that’s been there forever. I think that it’s thousands and thousands of years. That’s another thing Chavín de Juantara was talking about where I think the things came, the religion came from the Amazon. There’s this wall on the backside that faces the Amazon side. So if you’re entering the city from the Amazon path, you see this wall first, and it’s a bunch of faces that some of them are humans. Some of them are total jaguar and some of them are transforming in-between. But there’s a group of them that are midway through transformation and they show their nostrils leaking out this snot that’s coming down their face. San Pedro doesn’t do that to you, but Ayahuasca does.
Oh, I think longer than anybody can remember, but it’s a natural plant that’s been there forever. I think that it’s thousands and thousands of years. That’s another thing Chavín de Juantara was talking about where I think the things came, the religion came from the Amazon. There’s this wall on the backside that faces the Amazon side. So if you’re entering the city from the Amazon path, you see this wall first, and it’s a bunch of faces that some of them are humans. Some of them are total jaguar and some of them are transforming in-between. But there’s a group of them that are midway through transformation and they show their nostrils leaking out this snot that’s coming down their face. San Pedro doesn’t do that to you, but Ayahuasca does.
Ayahuasca traditionally, they’d take a blow gun and just shoot it up your nose or up your ass, but a lot of times up your nose and when it shoots up your nose, the first thing that happens is just this gush of snot comes out of you. And there are stone depictions of people uncontrollably snotting on the backside of this temple from 3,000 years ago.
Lex Fridman
So that you think could have been a big component of the development of religion and shamanism?
So that you think could have been a big component of the development of religion and shamanism?
Ed Barnhart
I think that hallucinogens opened the mind then like they opened the mind now.
I think that hallucinogens opened the mind then like they opened the mind now.
Lex Fridman
Do you think that the stoned ape theory, do you think that actually could have been an actual catalyst for the formation of civilization?
Do you think that the stoned ape theory, do you think that actually could have been an actual catalyst for the formation of civilization?
Ed Barnhart
In the Americas, yes, I do, though hallucinogens are not part of every ancient tradition in the world. In fact, strangely, the majority of plants that are actually psychotropic, not just mood altering, are from here in the Americas. There are very few drugs that will make you hallucinate outside of the Americas. Of course, now they’re global and they can be grown all over the place. But originally speaking, very, very few were outside of the Americas. So they were part of the experience here in a way that they just couldn’t be in other places.
In the Americas, yes, I do, though hallucinogens are not part of every ancient tradition in the world. In fact, strangely, the majority of plants that are actually psychotropic, not just mood altering, are from here in the Americas. There are very few drugs that will make you hallucinate outside of the Americas. Of course, now they’re global and they can be grown all over the place. But originally speaking, very, very few were outside of the Americas. So they were part of the experience here in a way that they just couldn’t be in other places.
Lex Fridman
I wonder to what degree they were just part of a ritual and the creative force behind art versus literally the method by which you come up with ideas that define as civilization. It’s the degree to which they had a role in the formation of civilizations. It’s fun to think about psychedelics being a critical role in formation of civilizations.
I wonder to what degree they were just part of a ritual and the creative force behind art versus literally the method by which you come up with ideas that define as civilization. It’s the degree to which they had a role in the formation of civilizations. It’s fun to think about psychedelics being a critical role in formation of civilizations.
Ed Barnhart
I think in terms of South America, they probably really were.
I think in terms of South America, they probably really were.
Lex Fridman
It’s possible.
It’s possible.
Ed Barnhart
In North America where we’re in a more northern climb here, and there are less of them, not so much, at least in terms of psychedelics, things like tobacco was always a big part of it. There’s more than one way to reach a hallucinatory state. The hard way is starvation, sleep deprivation. And for the Maya, for example, would go sleep deprivation, starvation, and then they’d cut themselves very badly. And that loss of blood, we believe triggered hallucinations and visions. Nothing to do with drugs. I would much prefer the drugs route.
In North America where we’re in a more northern climb here, and there are less of them, not so much, at least in terms of psychedelics, things like tobacco was always a big part of it. There’s more than one way to reach a hallucinatory state. The hard way is starvation, sleep deprivation. And for the Maya, for example, would go sleep deprivation, starvation, and then they’d cut themselves very badly. And that loss of blood, we believe triggered hallucinations and visions. Nothing to do with drugs. I would much prefer the drugs route.
Lex Fridman
It’s the result. The tools aren’t the thing that creates insight. It’s the result.
It’s the result. The tools aren’t the thing that creates insight. It’s the result.
Ed Barnhart
Hallucinogens are poisoning us. They’re killing us. It’s a near death state and people of the Americas believed sleeping was entering that other world, death. You entered this other world and that when you took this mighty dose of poison, it was helping you enter that other world for a period of time.
Hallucinogens are poisoning us. They’re killing us. It’s a near death state and people of the Americas believed sleeping was entering that other world, death. You entered this other world and that when you took this mighty dose of poison, it was helping you enter that other world for a period of time.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, as Tom Waits said in that one song, “I like my town with a little drop of poison.” So maybe that poison is a good catalyst for invention. So who were the early first mother cultures, mother civilizations in South America? If we look chronologically, is there a label we can put on the first peoples that emerged?
Yeah, as Tom Waits said in that one song, “I like my town with a little drop of poison.” So maybe that poison is a good catalyst for invention. So who were the early first mother cultures, mother civilizations in South America? If we look chronologically, is there a label we can put on the first peoples that emerged?
Ed Barnhart
That picture is evolving. Forever, it was just the Chavin people that we’ve been talking about. The ones with all the first depictions of religious art were the mother culture, and they certainly did transmit a lot of stuff, but then all of a sudden, we find Kerala. The next one that we’ve barely even begun looking at, but it’s probably older than Kerala, is Sachin culture. I was just poking around there last year and just from the bus on the highway, I could see, “That’s a pyramid out there. Oh, there’s another one.” And I know how old the stuff we have studied there is. It’s again, 3000 BC. We’re just barely beginning to understand them. Kerala frustrates me to no end, the lack of art there. We’ve got stones and bones and not even ceramics to go on, and they didn’t have the courtesy to leave me a bunch of art I can interpret. So I don’t know what those people believed.
That picture is evolving. Forever, it was just the Chavin people that we’ve been talking about. The ones with all the first depictions of religious art were the mother culture, and they certainly did transmit a lot of stuff, but then all of a sudden, we find Kerala. The next one that we’ve barely even begun looking at, but it’s probably older than Kerala, is Sachin culture. I was just poking around there last year and just from the bus on the highway, I could see, “That’s a pyramid out there. Oh, there’s another one.” And I know how old the stuff we have studied there is. It’s again, 3000 BC. We’re just barely beginning to understand them. Kerala frustrates me to no end, the lack of art there. We’ve got stones and bones and not even ceramics to go on, and they didn’t have the courtesy to leave me a bunch of art I can interpret. So I don’t know what those people believed.
Lex Fridman
Right. So one of the ways to understand what people believe is looking at the art, the stories told through the art, and then hopefully deciphering if they were doing any kind of writing.
Right. So one of the ways to understand what people believe is looking at the art, the stories told through the art, and then hopefully deciphering if they were doing any kind of writing.
Ed Barnhart
That’s our most fruitful place to try to get at this elusive ideas.
That’s our most fruitful place to try to get at this elusive ideas.
Lost City of Z
Lex Fridman
And it sucks when they don’t have art. If we just go back to the Amazon, you’ve mentioned that it’s possible that there’s a law civilization that existed in the Amazon, so it’s carried a lot of names. Lost City of Z or El Dorado. Do you think it’s possible it existed?
And it sucks when they don’t have art. If we just go back to the Amazon, you’ve mentioned that it’s possible that there’s a law civilization that existed in the Amazon, so it’s carried a lot of names. Lost City of Z or El Dorado. Do you think it’s possible it existed?
Ed Barnhart
Well, City of Z and El Dorado are in pretty different places. El Dorado, the ideas of where it is center around towards Columbia.
Well, City of Z and El Dorado are in pretty different places. El Dorado, the ideas of where it is center around towards Columbia.
Lex Fridman
Okay.
Okay.
Ed Barnhart
And the City of Z is named after a region of Brazil called the Xingu. And so those are an America worth of distance apart. People don’t really think about it on the map, but the entire United States would fit inside the Amazon. That’s how big that place is. And these two are on either end, but both of them have evidence of civilizations. It’s lowland and it floods all the time. So what they did is they’d make these big mounds and then they’d make huge causeways between mounds so they could walk through their cities while they were seasonally inundated. And a bunch of that stuff has been found in the Xingu area, like huge areas that would support tens of thousands of people.
And the City of Z is named after a region of Brazil called the Xingu. And so those are an America worth of distance apart. People don’t really think about it on the map, but the entire United States would fit inside the Amazon. That’s how big that place is. And these two are on either end, but both of them have evidence of civilizations. It’s lowland and it floods all the time. So what they did is they’d make these big mounds and then they’d make huge causeways between mounds so they could walk through their cities while they were seasonally inundated. And a bunch of that stuff has been found in the Xingu area, like huge areas that would support tens of thousands of people.
Again, it’s not stone built and it’s been under the forest forever. So it’s very torn up, but it’s there. Brazil is big on cattle farming more than ever now, and a thing that I think is completed now is Brazil and Bolivia partnered together and built a highway all the way across and opened up a whole bunch more land, which has found more of these what we call like geometric earthworks. So there’s more and more evidence of these civilizations. It’s not, it could be there. It’s there for sure.
Lex Fridman
By the way, the people who are trying to protect the rainforest really hate the highway. One of the things I learned is if you build a road, loggers will come-
By the way, the people who are trying to protect the rainforest really hate the highway. One of the things I learned is if you build a road, loggers will come-
Ed Barnhart
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
And they will start cutting stuff down. Now, from an archeology perspective, if you cut down trees, you get to discover things. But from a protective, very precious rainforest perspective, it’s obviously the opposite way. But it is interesting, I’ve seen where loggers cut through the forest and when they leave, the forest heals itself very quickly.
And they will start cutting stuff down. Now, from an archeology perspective, if you cut down trees, you get to discover things. But from a protective, very precious rainforest perspective, it’s obviously the opposite way. But it is interesting, I’ve seen where loggers cut through the forest and when they leave, the forest heals itself very quickly.
Ed Barnhart
So quickly.
So quickly.
Lex Fridman
And you just think that across decades, you expand that to centuries and you could see how a civilization could be completely swallowed up by the rainforest.
And you just think that across decades, you expand that to centuries and you could see how a civilization could be completely swallowed up by the rainforest.
Ed Barnhart
And it happened for sure in the Amazon. One of the ways that we’re trying to push the frontier of where people were in the Amazon, because yes, the trees and just the biomass have eaten so much evidence, but they’re finding more and more of these places that they call terra preta, which is black earth, and they’re huge swaths of it. So I guess the anthropology term is anthropogenic landscapes. And what they’re saying is that that really dark earth couldn’t have just got that way through natural forest processes, that sometime in the distant past that forest wasn’t there and there was major farming and human activity to the point where they totally turned the soil black and it’s much more enriched.
And it happened for sure in the Amazon. One of the ways that we’re trying to push the frontier of where people were in the Amazon, because yes, the trees and just the biomass have eaten so much evidence, but they’re finding more and more of these places that they call terra preta, which is black earth, and they’re huge swaths of it. So I guess the anthropology term is anthropogenic landscapes. And what they’re saying is that that really dark earth couldn’t have just got that way through natural forest processes, that sometime in the distant past that forest wasn’t there and there was major farming and human activity to the point where they totally turned the soil black and it’s much more enriched.
And when I took a trip into the Amazon, I went from Manaus, up the river, the Black River a couple of days, and went and met some different communities. And I asked them about this black earth, and they were like, “Yeah, that’s why we’re here. Sometimes we move our village, but when we move, we look for the terra preta, and that’s where we’re going to put our village, because that’s a place that all of our gardens work. The other places, they don’t.”
Lex Fridman
One of the things you talked about, literally just you have to ask the right question. And the stories, all the secrets are carried by the people and they’ll tell you.
One of the things you talked about, literally just you have to ask the right question. And the stories, all the secrets are carried by the people and they’ll tell you.
Ed Barnhart
Yeah, there’s so many of them. A thing that excites the world about archeology right now is Gobekli Tepe, and this 10,000, now Karahan Tepe is 11,000. The whole area is called the Tas Tepler. We only found it a couple of decades ago, but it was just an archeologist rowing through the area and ask a sheep herder, “Hey, you guys know where anything ancient is?” “Oh yeah, let me show you this.” And then all of a sudden we’ve got a lost civilization. And the shepherds always knew where it was. Just nobody asked them.
Yeah, there’s so many of them. A thing that excites the world about archeology right now is Gobekli Tepe, and this 10,000, now Karahan Tepe is 11,000. The whole area is called the Tas Tepler. We only found it a couple of decades ago, but it was just an archeologist rowing through the area and ask a sheep herder, “Hey, you guys know where anything ancient is?” “Oh yeah, let me show you this.” And then all of a sudden we’ve got a lost civilization. And the shepherds always knew where it was. Just nobody asked them.
Graham Hancock
Lex Fridman
So speaking of Gobekli Tepe, what do you think about the work of Graham Hancock, who also believes that there’s a lost civilization in the Amazon?
So speaking of Gobekli Tepe, what do you think about the work of Graham Hancock, who also believes that there’s a lost civilization in the Amazon?
Ed Barnhart
Well, I’ve met Graham, and personally I like him. He’s a nice guy, got a nice sense of humor, and I think he’s smart. And I also think he is a very good researcher. He and I are working on the same set of facts. The differences are interpretations. I do not believe Graham’s idea that a single, now lost ancient civilization seeded the rest of them. I just don’t see that on a number of levels, artifact wise, technology wise, art, historical analysis. So I think his research is great. I think that he’s very well-read, in fact, better read than a lot of my colleagues, but his conclusions I disagree with. And he and I have talked about this and had a very civil and normal conversation about it and agree to disagree without spitting any venom at any point in the conversation.
Well, I’ve met Graham, and personally I like him. He’s a nice guy, got a nice sense of humor, and I think he’s smart. And I also think he is a very good researcher. He and I are working on the same set of facts. The differences are interpretations. I do not believe Graham’s idea that a single, now lost ancient civilization seeded the rest of them. I just don’t see that on a number of levels, artifact wise, technology wise, art, historical analysis. So I think his research is great. I think that he’s very well-read, in fact, better read than a lot of my colleagues, but his conclusions I disagree with. And he and I have talked about this and had a very civil and normal conversation about it and agree to disagree without spitting any venom at any point in the conversation.
Lex Fridman
That would be a fun argument to be a fly on the wall for. So he’s proposed that it’s possible that the Amazon jungle is a man-made garden. So it was planted there by advanced ancient civilization. Is there any degree to which that could be possible?
That would be a fun argument to be a fly on the wall for. So he’s proposed that it’s possible that the Amazon jungle is a man-made garden. So it was planted there by advanced ancient civilization. Is there any degree to which that could be possible?
Ed Barnhart
Frankly, I agree with him. It’s just like what I was just talking about. It’s the conclusion part that we differ from.
Frankly, I agree with him. It’s just like what I was just talking about. It’s the conclusion part that we differ from.
Lex Fridman
Sure.
Sure.
Ed Barnhart
But the facts that he’s basing that on are that terra preta are the huge geometric earthworks, are the ever-increasing evidence of them. They are now from the bottom of Bolivia to Guyana. They’re everywhere. Every time we open up the jungle, we find these big works. So yes, there was a vast civilization that was there. How advanced they were is a question and also a perspective thing. Graham really focuses in on what we don’t know and what could be.
But the facts that he’s basing that on are that terra preta are the huge geometric earthworks, are the ever-increasing evidence of them. They are now from the bottom of Bolivia to Guyana. They’re everywhere. Every time we open up the jungle, we find these big works. So yes, there was a vast civilization that was there. How advanced they were is a question and also a perspective thing. Graham really focuses in on what we don’t know and what could be.
Lex Fridman
Just to educate me, what’s the key idea that he’s proposing that you disagree with? Is it it was the level of advancement the civilization was, or how large and centralized it was?
Just to educate me, what’s the key idea that he’s proposing that you disagree with? Is it it was the level of advancement the civilization was, or how large and centralized it was?
Ed Barnhart
My main point of disagreement is that his… And his ideas evolve like everybody’s. No scientist or researcher in anything has an idea at the beginning of their career and holds it till the day they die. His ideas are evolving, but his ideas remain. A core of them are that there was a very advanced single ancient civilization that was utterly destroyed by climactic conditions, and the younger Dryas hypothesis is part of that. Most recently, he used to not say that. Now he’s into this meteor thing, but he believes that that civilization was destroyed, but that members of it escaped this cataclysm and then spread out all over the world to seed all of the world’s civilizations for the next revival.
My main point of disagreement is that his… And his ideas evolve like everybody’s. No scientist or researcher in anything has an idea at the beginning of their career and holds it till the day they die. His ideas are evolving, but his ideas remain. A core of them are that there was a very advanced single ancient civilization that was utterly destroyed by climactic conditions, and the younger Dryas hypothesis is part of that. Most recently, he used to not say that. Now he’s into this meteor thing, but he believes that that civilization was destroyed, but that members of it escaped this cataclysm and then spread out all over the world to seed all of the world’s civilizations for the next revival.
There’s where I disagree with him. I think these were independent civilizations that grew up in their own ways, that they were not seeded by some more advanced civilization from the past, and that they all hold things in common because they have this common ancestry of… In his early books, he suggested it’s Atlantis. I don’t think he suggests that anymore, but he still hangs on to the single advanced, now completely lost civilization. And archeologists, all of our ideas are theories. Very few of them are facts, and we could have the story wrong, but one thing we’re real good at is finding stuff. We find fish scales, so I find it just too big a pill to swallow that there was a civilization that was that technologically advanced and that large that we can’t even find a potsherd from.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, and of course, it is a compelling story that there’s a single civilization from which all of this came from, because the alternative is the idea that we came across the Bering Strait from Asia went all the way down to South America and got isolated and created all these marvelous, sophisticated civilizations and ideas, including religious ideas that look similar to other… Everybody has a flood myth.
Yeah, and of course, it is a compelling story that there’s a single civilization from which all of this came from, because the alternative is the idea that we came across the Bering Strait from Asia went all the way down to South America and got isolated and created all these marvelous, sophisticated civilizations and ideas, including religious ideas that look similar to other… Everybody has a flood myth.
Ed Barnhart
Right.
Right.
Lex Fridman
So there’s a lot of similarities, everybody building pyramids, but there could be a lot of other explanations. And for even if it’s a simple compelling explanation, that has to be evidence for it, and what would that evidence look like?
So there’s a lot of similarities, everybody building pyramids, but there could be a lot of other explanations. And for even if it’s a simple compelling explanation, that has to be evidence for it, and what would that evidence look like?
Ed Barnhart
Well, that’s the bottom line.
Well, that’s the bottom line.
Lex Fridman
That’s tough.
That’s tough.
Ed Barnhart
Everything’s theories were… And as responsible scientists, we’re trying to disprove our theories. We are not supposed to be trying to prove our theories. That’s one more foot out of the science box that archeology often steps. We’re supposed to be disproving what we think is happening, not proving it.
Everything’s theories were… And as responsible scientists, we’re trying to disprove our theories. We are not supposed to be trying to prove our theories. That’s one more foot out of the science box that archeology often steps. We’re supposed to be disproving what we think is happening, not proving it.
Lex Fridman
You don’t want to lean into the mystery too much. It’s such a weird discipline because you’re operating in… It’s really in a dark room. You’re feeling around a dark room. So it’s mostly mystery. I would say a lot of sciences operate in a mostly well-lit room. It’s like a dark corner and you’re figuring out a way to light it. But yeah, in archeology, most of it is a mystery. Right?
You don’t want to lean into the mystery too much. It’s such a weird discipline because you’re operating in… It’s really in a dark room. You’re feeling around a dark room. So it’s mostly mystery. I would say a lot of sciences operate in a mostly well-lit room. It’s like a dark corner and you’re figuring out a way to light it. But yeah, in archeology, most of it is a mystery. Right?
Ed Barnhart
Yes, it’s job security. I like that part. But I do also try to always remind myself that every paradigm shifting idea that humans have ever had began as heresy and lunacy. That guy was crazy up to the second. He was brilliant. And so we got to keep our minds open to the things that sound outlandish, because one of them eventually is going to lead us to the big paradigm shift. And if we are busy burning books of ideas that we don’t like, that’s where we close our minds to the possibility of advancing things.
Yes, it’s job security. I like that part. But I do also try to always remind myself that every paradigm shifting idea that humans have ever had began as heresy and lunacy. That guy was crazy up to the second. He was brilliant. And so we got to keep our minds open to the things that sound outlandish, because one of them eventually is going to lead us to the big paradigm shift. And if we are busy burning books of ideas that we don’t like, that’s where we close our minds to the possibility of advancing things.
Uncontacted tribes
Lex Fridman
I really love that, and I really appreciate that you’re saying that. One of the fascinating things about just the Amazon to me is that there’s still a large number of uncontacted tribes. To rewind back into ancient history, you can imagine all of these tribes that existed in the Amazon that were isolated, very distinct from each other. Can you speak to this, your understanding of these tribes and their history that are still here today?
I really love that, and I really appreciate that you’re saying that. One of the fascinating things about just the Amazon to me is that there’s still a large number of uncontacted tribes. To rewind back into ancient history, you can imagine all of these tribes that existed in the Amazon that were isolated, very distinct from each other. Can you speak to this, your understanding of these tribes and their history that are still here today?
Ed Barnhart
Well, a lot of them are these… By uncontacted, we mean we don’t know anything about these guys. We know roughly where they are, but places like Ecuador have very responsible policies where no one’s allowed to go contact them. So we have a dearth of information. If they walk out of the jungle and talk to us, that’s one thing, but we don’t go out and there looking for them, but they do seem frozen in time, and I don’t think any of us have a good estimation of how long they’ve been like that. But we were saying earlier that humans change based on pressures of their environment. Mother necessity is oftentimes how we invent things or why we change, it’s pressure. And one thing the Amazon is, once you figure out how not to die in it, it’s a paradise of food. Food’s fallen from the sky all the time there, and once you learn to adapt to that environment, you’ve got very little need. There’s no pressure to make anything else. Things are working.
Well, a lot of them are these… By uncontacted, we mean we don’t know anything about these guys. We know roughly where they are, but places like Ecuador have very responsible policies where no one’s allowed to go contact them. So we have a dearth of information. If they walk out of the jungle and talk to us, that’s one thing, but we don’t go out and there looking for them, but they do seem frozen in time, and I don’t think any of us have a good estimation of how long they’ve been like that. But we were saying earlier that humans change based on pressures of their environment. Mother necessity is oftentimes how we invent things or why we change, it’s pressure. And one thing the Amazon is, once you figure out how not to die in it, it’s a paradise of food. Food’s fallen from the sky all the time there, and once you learn to adapt to that environment, you’ve got very little need. There’s no pressure to make anything else. Things are working.
Lex Fridman
So for the modern humans that come across these uncontacted tribes, one of the things they document and notice is the propensity of these tribes for violence. So they get very aggressive in attacking whoever they come across.
So for the modern humans that come across these uncontacted tribes, one of the things they document and notice is the propensity of these tribes for violence. So they get very aggressive in attacking whoever they come across.
Ed Barnhart
And not just foreigners. They attack each other. The Yanomamo are famous for just having never ending feuds with each other.
And not just foreigners. They attack each other. The Yanomamo are famous for just having never ending feuds with each other.
Lex Fridman
What do you think is the philosophy behind that?
What do you think is the philosophy behind that?
Ed Barnhart
I’m a relatively peaceful person, but I’ve got the monster in me like everybody does.
I’m a relatively peaceful person, but I’ve got the monster in me like everybody does.
Ed Barnhart
I’ve got the monster in me, like everybody does. And I think that these, it’s cultural norms that become institutionalized. For the Yąnomamö, they really, part of the right of passage to be a man is to go kill or maim somebody from an outer village. And they go in there, they oftentimes, the way they don’t let inbreeding set in and ruin everybody, not that they think of it scientifically, but they typically go and steal women from far-off communities, and that starts a big fight.
I’ve got the monster in me, like everybody does. And I think that these, it’s cultural norms that become institutionalized. For the Yąnomamö, they really, part of the right of passage to be a man is to go kill or maim somebody from an outer village. And they go in there, they oftentimes, the way they don’t let inbreeding set in and ruin everybody, not that they think of it scientifically, but they typically go and steal women from far-off communities, and that starts a big fight.
Another thing that starts fights, that when nobody even fought, is illness. Illness in the Amazon and all of the ancient Americas wasn’t seen as a biological thing, it was a spiritual thing. So if somebody in your village gets sick, the question is asked, “Well, what spirit is menacing him and who called it out on him?” And then, the rumor starts, “Well, I bet you it was Joe over there in that other community. He’s still pissed off for that time when we stole his daughter, and we ought to go over there and kill Joe, and then he’ll get better.” And so this round of never-ending violence, like Hatfields & McCoys had that thing, and the people of New Guinea also do that. So there are certain areas, mostly wooded areas, now that I think about it, where people just hide out and they attack each other as a cultural institution.
Lex Fridman
It’s such a tricky thing to do, to study an uncontacted tribe, without obviously contacting them, to figure out their language, their philosophy of mind, how they communicate, the hierarchy they operate under.
It’s such a tricky thing to do, to study an uncontacted tribe, without obviously contacting them, to figure out their language, their philosophy of mind, how they communicate, the hierarchy they operate under.
Ed Barnhart
And yeah, there was a fascinating story in Peru, I guess it was probably like eight years ago or something. But there was a ranger from one of the biology stations who, just in the by and by of protecting his area, met one of these uncontacted tribes and befriended someone. Not the whole tribe, but he made some friends who would meet him in the woods, not in their community. And he started to learn their language over a couple years. And so he was this kind of important guy who actually could be the first translator to talk to these people. And one day, a couple of them just came out of the woods, and just plugged him with arrows, and just killed him, and then they went back in the woods. Like, “That’s the one guy who understands what we’re saying, we should kill him and move our village.”
And yeah, there was a fascinating story in Peru, I guess it was probably like eight years ago or something. But there was a ranger from one of the biology stations who, just in the by and by of protecting his area, met one of these uncontacted tribes and befriended someone. Not the whole tribe, but he made some friends who would meet him in the woods, not in their community. And he started to learn their language over a couple years. And so he was this kind of important guy who actually could be the first translator to talk to these people. And one day, a couple of them just came out of the woods, and just plugged him with arrows, and just killed him, and then they went back in the woods. Like, “That’s the one guy who understands what we’re saying, we should kill him and move our village.”
Lex Fridman
So those folks really lean into the, as you said, the monster versus the puppy.
So those folks really lean into the, as you said, the monster versus the puppy.
Ed Barnhart
You know, everybody’s got it, I think. I think we need to listen to our better angels, because if we don’t, we, as a human species, can easily devolve into just using violence against others to get what we want. It’s a daily choice we make not to be savages.
You know, everybody’s got it, I think. I think we need to listen to our better angels, because if we don’t, we, as a human species, can easily devolve into just using violence against others to get what we want. It’s a daily choice we make not to be savages.
Lex Fridman
Which is a fascinating thing to remember. We’re kind of thinking civilized society, we’ve moved past all that, but it can be summoned, like in 1984, the two minutes of hate. With the right words, that primal thing can be summoned, and directed, and lead to a lot of destruction.
Which is a fascinating thing to remember. We’re kind of thinking civilized society, we’ve moved past all that, but it can be summoned, like in 1984, the two minutes of hate. With the right words, that primal thing can be summoned, and directed, and lead to a lot of destruction.
Ed Barnhart
And our sports are really based on taking those kinds of urges and channeling them positive, where somebody’s not dead at the end of it.
And our sports are really based on taking those kinds of urges and channeling them positive, where somebody’s not dead at the end of it.
Maya civilization
Lex Fridman
Yep. So at which point did what we now call the Maya Civilization arise?
Yep. So at which point did what we now call the Maya Civilization arise?
Ed Barnhart
That’s another complicated one, another group living mostly in a jungle that we have barely begun to explore. You know, the truth is a lot of the questions in the Amazon and what we’re talking about now is the Patan and the mountains there. Those aren’t places archeologists want to live, they’re horrible. I mean, I’ve been there. I don’t want to live in a tent and eat rations. I want to live in a nice town. So a lot of the places where the answers are, we still really haven’t gotten there, because it takes a special person to be educated enough to know what they’re looking at, and tough enough to want to be there. I’ve done my tour of duty, I’m now in a nice little podcast studio. But seriously, the Maya, the first hint that we see people who are culturally Maya, very close to where the time period for that Chavin culture, is about 1800 BCE.
That’s another complicated one, another group living mostly in a jungle that we have barely begun to explore. You know, the truth is a lot of the questions in the Amazon and what we’re talking about now is the Patan and the mountains there. Those aren’t places archeologists want to live, they’re horrible. I mean, I’ve been there. I don’t want to live in a tent and eat rations. I want to live in a nice town. So a lot of the places where the answers are, we still really haven’t gotten there, because it takes a special person to be educated enough to know what they’re looking at, and tough enough to want to be there. I’ve done my tour of duty, I’m now in a nice little podcast studio. But seriously, the Maya, the first hint that we see people who are culturally Maya, very close to where the time period for that Chavin culture, is about 1800 BCE.
There’s a culture that’s some called the Mokaya, not Maya, but they’re on the Pacific coast, where Guatemala and Mexico connect. It’s called the Soconusco. And those are the first people that are really going to be culturally Maya, and they’re interacting with the culture that has traditionally been seen as Mexico’s mother culture, which is the Olmec. They’re kind of the same thing as we were talking about in South America, where the Maya, the original Maya, there’s not a whole lot to indicate that they have a religion. But the Olmec have this religion they develop, and they start exporting it. And you see the Maya become more and more involved in the religion that’s being created by the Olmec, who are to the north of them, in the swamps of what we call the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
Lex Fridman
I have a lot of questions to ask here about just natural stupid confusion I have. So first, did the Maya or the Olmec come first, and are they distinct groups? How do you maintain a distinct civilization when you’re so close together?
I have a lot of questions to ask here about just natural stupid confusion I have. So first, did the Maya or the Olmec come first, and are they distinct groups? How do you maintain a distinct civilization when you’re so close together?
Ed Barnhart
I just finished filming a whole thing on the Olmecs and their interaction with the Maya for The Great Courses. I’m thrilled for it to come out next spring. I think they co-evolved. Archeology, in this regard, is the worst enemy of this. So we put these names on cultures, we talk about how they evolve from one to another, we draw these lines where there aren’t any. We make these time periods that a culture magically transforms into somebody with another name, where I’m pretty sure they didn’t care about any of those names. But the Maya and the Olmec are two parts of a larger interaction sphere that’s happening in Mesoamerica, a very dynamic time.
I just finished filming a whole thing on the Olmecs and their interaction with the Maya for The Great Courses. I’m thrilled for it to come out next spring. I think they co-evolved. Archeology, in this regard, is the worst enemy of this. So we put these names on cultures, we talk about how they evolve from one to another, we draw these lines where there aren’t any. We make these time periods that a culture magically transforms into somebody with another name, where I’m pretty sure they didn’t care about any of those names. But the Maya and the Olmec are two parts of a larger interaction sphere that’s happening in Mesoamerica, a very dynamic time.
The Olmec are really bringing the religion part, but the other areas are bringing technology, ceramic technology, making hematite mirrors, making tools out of obsidian and other stone types. So you’ve got the Olmec in the middle, where Mexico gets skinny, and it gets swampy down there. That’s called the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. That’s where the Olmec are. Then, you’ve got the Maya to the east of them. Then, you have the Valley of Oaxaca, where the people called the Zapotecs, they’re rising up. And then, you have the Valley of Mexico, which will eventually become the Aztecs, but not for millennia. All those areas are interacting with each other.
Lex Fridman
Can we just also draw some more lines?
Can we just also draw some more lines?
Ed Barnhart
Yeah, sure.
Yeah, sure.
Lex Fridman
So what is Mesoamerica and what is South America? And what you just said, the Olmecs and the Maya, can we just linger on the geography that we’re talking about here in the… What is this, like 1000 BC?
So what is Mesoamerica and what is South America? And what you just said, the Olmecs and the Maya, can we just linger on the geography that we’re talking about here in the… What is this, like 1000 BC?
Ed Barnhart
Yeah, the time period we’re talking about, where the Olmec are there, 1000 BC is a great midpoint of it. I’d say it starts about 1800 BCE, and by 500 BCE, the Olmec are gone, and a whole new wave of civilization and population increase happened. In terms of Mesoamerica, looking at your map here, I’d say about halfway through the Chihuahua Desert, up there in the top left, that’s about the boundary of Mesoamerica. There’s this big desert where almost nobody lives, and once you get north enough, you get into the ancestral Pueblo people of what’s now America, the Four Corners area. They’re not Mesoamerican, they have different lives.
Yeah, the time period we’re talking about, where the Olmec are there, 1000 BC is a great midpoint of it. I’d say it starts about 1800 BCE, and by 500 BCE, the Olmec are gone, and a whole new wave of civilization and population increase happened. In terms of Mesoamerica, looking at your map here, I’d say about halfway through the Chihuahua Desert, up there in the top left, that’s about the boundary of Mesoamerica. There’s this big desert where almost nobody lives, and once you get north enough, you get into the ancestral Pueblo people of what’s now America, the Four Corners area. They’re not Mesoamerican, they have different lives.
Lex Fridman
Where does modern Mexico end?
Where does modern Mexico end?
Ed Barnhart
Modern Mexico ends, right, you see the name Maya there with the white line around it?
Modern Mexico ends, right, you see the name Maya there with the white line around it?
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ed Barnhart
That’s Guatemala, so Guatemala cuts off most of Mexico from Central America.
That’s Guatemala, so Guatemala cuts off most of Mexico from Central America.
Lex Fridman
Got it.
Got it.
Ed Barnhart
But Mesoamerica only goes about halfway through Honduras, and then it’s really kind of a no man’s land. Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, they really, they’re neither. They’re not Mesoamerica, they’re not South America. They’re more South America, because they’ve got some gold there. But then, basically, you get on the other side of Panama, and you’re fully in South America, with two distinct groups, too. You’ve got the guys that are on the Andes, on the west coast, and then you have the Amazon.
But Mesoamerica only goes about halfway through Honduras, and then it’s really kind of a no man’s land. Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, they really, they’re neither. They’re not Mesoamerica, they’re not South America. They’re more South America, because they’ve got some gold there. But then, basically, you get on the other side of Panama, and you’re fully in South America, with two distinct groups, too. You’ve got the guys that are on the Andes, on the west coast, and then you have the Amazon.
Lex Fridman
So the Andes and the Amazon are very distinct.
So the Andes and the Amazon are very distinct.
Ed Barnhart
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
So when you refer to the Andean region, is that referring to the Andes and the Amazon, or just the Andes?
So when you refer to the Andean region, is that referring to the Andes and the Amazon, or just the Andes?
Ed Barnhart
Just the Andes and the coast to the Pacific there. That’s Andean civilization.
Just the Andes and the coast to the Pacific there. That’s Andean civilization.
Lex Fridman
So did Maya make it to the Andes, the Andean region?
So did Maya make it to the Andes, the Andean region?
Ed Barnhart
Not that archeology can prove, but it’s almost certain that they interacted with each other. Number one, it’s just, it’s biased to think that these people couldn’t travel as widely as people on the other side of the planet did, but there’s all sorts of hints like that first ceramics I was talking about, that the Maya made, they show up strangely sophisticated technologically already. And down in Ecuador, they had them for 1,000 years before. So a lot of people, myself included, think that the idea of ceramics actually came from South America to the Maya.
Not that archeology can prove, but it’s almost certain that they interacted with each other. Number one, it’s just, it’s biased to think that these people couldn’t travel as widely as people on the other side of the planet did, but there’s all sorts of hints like that first ceramics I was talking about, that the Maya made, they show up strangely sophisticated technologically already. And down in Ecuador, they had them for 1,000 years before. So a lot of people, myself included, think that the idea of ceramics actually came from South America to the Maya.
Lex Fridman
Did the Maya get seeded by the second wave across the Bering Strait, or did that initial wave of people that came and populated South America, were they the ancestors of the Maya? How did the migration happen here? Do we understand that?
Did the Maya get seeded by the second wave across the Bering Strait, or did that initial wave of people that came and populated South America, were they the ancestors of the Maya? How did the migration happen here? Do we understand that?
Ed Barnhart
We’re still piecing it together. You know, I’d be lying if I told you I had the answers. But we do have evidence of Maya stature people. They were small people. Generally speaking, people that grow up in the forest are smaller and people that grow up in the open plains are taller, probably about just generations of people that hit their head on a branch or not.
We’re still piecing it together. You know, I’d be lying if I told you I had the answers. But we do have evidence of Maya stature people. They were small people. Generally speaking, people that grow up in the forest are smaller and people that grow up in the open plains are taller, probably about just generations of people that hit their head on a branch or not.
Lex Fridman
You’re joking, but there could be something to that.
You’re joking, but there could be something to that.
Ed Barnhart
I think there’s some truth to it. I mean, the Pygmies are small and the people on the plains in Africa are big. The North American Indians are tall and the Maya are small. There is definitely a pattern of smaller people in the forests. But anyway, there’s a cave in the Yucatan called Loltun Cave that has hand prints in the cave. It’s somebody who put their hand on the cave and spit charcoal around their hand, like a negative print. We can date that charcoal, and it comes from 10,000 years ago, and the hands are all small. It’s typical Old Mexico. I walked right up to these things and could put my hand… I didn’t mess with them, but I put my hand next to these hands, and they’re all smaller than my Northern European hand, and so either it was a bunch of kids who were in this cave 10,000 years ago, or it was people of Maya stature who did it.
I think there’s some truth to it. I mean, the Pygmies are small and the people on the plains in Africa are big. The North American Indians are tall and the Maya are small. There is definitely a pattern of smaller people in the forests. But anyway, there’s a cave in the Yucatan called Loltun Cave that has hand prints in the cave. It’s somebody who put their hand on the cave and spit charcoal around their hand, like a negative print. We can date that charcoal, and it comes from 10,000 years ago, and the hands are all small. It’s typical Old Mexico. I walked right up to these things and could put my hand… I didn’t mess with them, but I put my hand next to these hands, and they’re all smaller than my Northern European hand, and so either it was a bunch of kids who were in this cave 10,000 years ago, or it was people of Maya stature who did it.
Lex Fridman
It’s so cool that you can date the charcoal, and it’s so cool that 10,000 years ago there are people leaving [inaudible 01:22:37]-
It’s so cool that you can date the charcoal, and it’s so cool that 10,000 years ago there are people leaving [inaudible 01:22:37]-
Ed Barnhart
And actually, we have one that’s I think 2,000 years older now, just a couple years ago, again in Yucatan, in a cave, they found a woman they named Naia now, and she’s like 12,000 years old.
And actually, we have one that’s I think 2,000 years older now, just a couple years ago, again in Yucatan, in a cave, they found a woman they named Naia now, and she’s like 12,000 years old.
Lex Fridman
So the best guess maybe that you have is it goes across the Bering Strait to South America, possibly the Amazon, develop a lot of cool ideas in the Amazon, and started drifting back up into Mesoamerica?
So the best guess maybe that you have is it goes across the Bering Strait to South America, possibly the Amazon, develop a lot of cool ideas in the Amazon, and started drifting back up into Mesoamerica?
Ed Barnhart
Was kind of a co-evolution, the technology of ceramics I think got there through an interaction with-
Was kind of a co-evolution, the technology of ceramics I think got there through an interaction with-
Lex Fridman
See, the interesting thing is that the Maya didn’t really have religion, didn’t have as a vibrant religious set of ideas, and they borrowed it from the Olmec.
See, the interesting thing is that the Maya didn’t really have religion, didn’t have as a vibrant religious set of ideas, and they borrowed it from the Olmec.
Ed Barnhart
I’ve been doing a deep dive on this for this Olmec course that I just did, and it really does seem like these other cultures that have jade, and hematite, and obsidian, the Olmec had none of that stuff. They were living in a swamp, and building things out of dirt, but they were importing those materials from those areas, carving them into all sorts of religious iconography, and then exporting them back to them.
I’ve been doing a deep dive on this for this Olmec course that I just did, and it really does seem like these other cultures that have jade, and hematite, and obsidian, the Olmec had none of that stuff. They were living in a swamp, and building things out of dirt, but they were importing those materials from those areas, carving them into all sorts of religious iconography, and then exporting them back to them.
Lex Fridman
And still, the fanged deity show up [inaudible 01:23:58]-
And still, the fanged deity show up [inaudible 01:23:58]-
Ed Barnhart
No, the fanged deity is nowhere in Central America and Mesoamerica, that’s why… There’s jaguars, there’s jaguar iconography, but it’s not the same thing. This whole jaguar transformer deity does not exist there. They do have a pantheon.
No, the fanged deity is nowhere in Central America and Mesoamerica, that’s why… There’s jaguars, there’s jaguar iconography, but it’s not the same thing. This whole jaguar transformer deity does not exist there. They do have a pantheon.
Lex Fridman
So the Maya, the Olmecs are the interesting peoples of the regions. I’d love to ask questions about who were they? So one question I’m curious about, what was their sense when they looked up at the stars? What was their conception of the cosmos?
So the Maya, the Olmecs are the interesting peoples of the regions. I’d love to ask questions about who were they? So one question I’m curious about, what was their sense when they looked up at the stars? What was their conception of the cosmos?
Ed Barnhart
That’s a question I’ve spent my entire career trying to answer. I think that they saw it as proof of the cyclical nature of life, and certainly, they saw, like every ancient group did, like, “Are those the gods? Why are those things far away?” But I think that the Maya especially looked at it with a much more mathematical mind than most did. And so they watched these things move every night, and if you do that even today, you notice that all the stars move in tandem. They’re just this blanket, they’re like this curtain behind me. They’re the stage upon which some very important players are dancing, and that’s the Moon, the Sun and the planets.
That’s a question I’ve spent my entire career trying to answer. I think that they saw it as proof of the cyclical nature of life, and certainly, they saw, like every ancient group did, like, “Are those the gods? Why are those things far away?” But I think that the Maya especially looked at it with a much more mathematical mind than most did. And so they watched these things move every night, and if you do that even today, you notice that all the stars move in tandem. They’re just this blanket, they’re like this curtain behind me. They’re the stage upon which some very important players are dancing, and that’s the Moon, the Sun and the planets.
There’s five planets we can see visibly. So they started watching, like, “Why are just those seven moving differently than the rest?” And those are the things that they keyed on mathematically. The Sun, of course, was also involved in the agricultural cycle, so that was important in and of itself. But the planets, we can see them coming up with ideas, definitely doing the math, and seeing that there is a repeated cycle, and then coming up with mythology around them, like Venus for them was associated with war, and they had very ritualized times to go to war that had something to do with Venus.
Sometimes, in the classic period Maya, it was the first appearance of Venus as the Morning Star. That was a good time to go to battle with your neighbors. And when it became the post-classic, with Chichén Itzá being the capital of the Yucatan, then it looks like, if you watch Venus day after day, it goes slowly up every day, and then when it hits its highest point as Morning Star in the morning, it goes down to the Earth like three times as fast. All of a sudden, it just shoots down and hits the Earth. And so the people of post-classic Maya civilization saw that as the gods shooting a spear into the Earth, and that was a good time to attack your neighbors. That was like war time, when the spear is going to hit the earth.
Lex Fridman
All right, so this is fascinating. They just had at the foundation, a sense that life, existence at the various timescales is cyclical.
All right, so this is fascinating. They just had at the foundation, a sense that life, existence at the various timescales is cyclical.
Ed Barnhart
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
That’s a starting point, and then you just look out there, and if you’re extremely precise, which is fascinating, how precise they were, you can just measure the cycles.
That’s a starting point, and then you just look out there, and if you’re extremely precise, which is fascinating, how precise they were, you can just measure the cycles.
Ed Barnhart
Yeah, and they did it really well. Now, of course, they are the only ones to develop a fully-elaborated writing system in all of the Americas. The South America had the quipu, but it’s so different than our writing. We’re still trying to figure out what the heck it is. We know there’s math there, too. But they had the ability to take a lifetime worth of measurements and hand it to the next generation, who would then do it more and do it more.
Yeah, and they did it really well. Now, of course, they are the only ones to develop a fully-elaborated writing system in all of the Americas. The South America had the quipu, but it’s so different than our writing. We’re still trying to figure out what the heck it is. We know there’s math there, too. But they had the ability to take a lifetime worth of measurements and hand it to the next generation, who would then do it more and do it more.
That’s how they figured out kind of the Holy Grail of ancient astronomy. How good were they was whether they could see the procession of the equinoxes, the fact that we’re just barely wobbling, and there’s a 26,000-year period where the stars as that backdrop will spin all the way around and come back. It’s 26,000 years. But the Maya we’re able to figure out, “Wait, it’s moving one degree every 72 years,” and did a calculation based on where it should be in the ancient past, and they were using constellations. They’re showing us they know by saying like, “This planet’s in this constellation right now, and 33,000 years ago, it would be in this constellation.”
Lex Fridman
It’s just fascinating that they were able to figure this out. I would love to sort understand the details of the scientific community, if you can call it that.
It’s just fascinating that they were able to figure this out. I would love to sort understand the details of the scientific community, if you can call it that.
Ed Barnhart
I think we absolutely could, and that’s actually one of the things that I’m hoping to move the needle on in my generation, with my career, is to give these cultures the respect they deserve, as standing toe to toe with the rest of our ancient civilizations we respect. There are things that should be called science that are not being called science at the moment. Their math is incredible, their hydraulic engineering is incredible, their chemistry is incredible, and so I hope to talk about these things differently, as a way to get people to recognize the achievements in a different way.
I think we absolutely could, and that’s actually one of the things that I’m hoping to move the needle on in my generation, with my career, is to give these cultures the respect they deserve, as standing toe to toe with the rest of our ancient civilizations we respect. There are things that should be called science that are not being called science at the moment. Their math is incredible, their hydraulic engineering is incredible, their chemistry is incredible, and so I hope to talk about these things differently, as a way to get people to recognize the achievements in a different way.
Mayan calendar
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I mean, unquestionably incredible scientific work in the astronomy sense, especially here. Can you speak to all the sophisticated aspects of the Mayan calendar that they’ve developed?
Yeah, I mean, unquestionably incredible scientific work in the astronomy sense, especially here. Can you speak to all the sophisticated aspects of the Mayan calendar that they’ve developed?
Ed Barnhart
Don’t know, you got another five hours?
Don’t know, you got another five hours?
Lex Fridman
Let’s go.
Let’s go.
Ed Barnhart
No, I’m kidding.
No, I’m kidding.
Lex Fridman
I should say that you also gave me the 2024 Mayan calendar.
I should say that you also gave me the 2024 Mayan calendar.
Ed Barnhart
Yeah, I do this just to show the world that calendar system is evergreen. It can go into the future or the past for billions of years in the system they made, just like our system is.
Yeah, I do this just to show the world that calendar system is evergreen. It can go into the future or the past for billions of years in the system they made, just like our system is.
Lex Fridman
So can you speak to the three components here as I’m reading? The Tzolk’in, the Haab, and the Long Count, what are these fascinating components of the calendar?
So can you speak to the three components here as I’m reading? The Tzolk’in, the Haab, and the Long Count, what are these fascinating components of the calendar?
Ed Barnhart
It’s neat how obsessed… They were really math nerds. It wasn’t good enough for them to just make one cycle to describe time. They had all these cycles that interlocked into each other, like cogs in a machine, though they never thought of it like that. But the Tzolk’in is their oldest one, and the one that still endures today. There are millions of Maya people that are living their lives based on a 260-day count. No weeks, no months. It’s just 13 numbers combined with 20 day names, for a total of 260 days, and then it goes again.
It’s neat how obsessed… They were really math nerds. It wasn’t good enough for them to just make one cycle to describe time. They had all these cycles that interlocked into each other, like cogs in a machine, though they never thought of it like that. But the Tzolk’in is their oldest one, and the one that still endures today. There are millions of Maya people that are living their lives based on a 260-day count. No weeks, no months. It’s just 13 numbers combined with 20 day names, for a total of 260 days, and then it goes again.
Everybody in the highlands knows what their birthday is in that calendar, knows what it means about their personality and the kind of jobs that they’re supposed to do. Each one of those days has their own spirit and what’s supposed to happen in those days. The Maya collectively call them the Mom, the Grandmother, Grandfather spirits, and they talk to each one of those days, and they pray to them. There’s now an association of some 8,000 people that are called [inaudible 01:31:33], that are daykeepers who are keeping the days, and they’re also like community psychologists, almost. People come to them and say, “You know, my life is mixed up. What’s wrong here?” “Well, let’s ask the Mom. Okay, well, it looks like you’re not doing this or that, or you know what, you’re an accountant? You’re not supposed to be an accountant. You’re supposed to be a midwife. What are you doing? You’re living your life wrong. You’re a Kibʼ. You need to start being a Kibʼ person.”
Lex Fridman
So they take extremely seriously the day on which you’re born, what that means, the spirit that embodies that day?
So they take extremely seriously the day on which you’re born, what that means, the spirit that embodies that day?
Ed Barnhart
Right. Like, I’m Kibʼ, I’m 13, Kibʼ, and it’s funny how accurate a lot of them are. Mine is basically, is I’m an irresponsible husband and parent, but people like me, so my family still prospers. Like, well, God, that’s horribly accurate.
Right. Like, I’m Kibʼ, I’m 13, Kibʼ, and it’s funny how accurate a lot of them are. Mine is basically, is I’m an irresponsible husband and parent, but people like me, so my family still prospers. Like, well, God, that’s horribly accurate.
Lex Fridman
I mean, some of it is also the chicken or the egg. If you truly believe, if you’ve structured society where this calendar is truly sacred, then it kind of like, the spirit does manifest itself in the life of the people that is born on that spirit’s day.
I mean, some of it is also the chicken or the egg. If you truly believe, if you’ve structured society where this calendar is truly sacred, then it kind of like, the spirit does manifest itself in the life of the people that is born on that spirit’s day.
Ed Barnhart
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman
It’s interesting.
It’s interesting.
Ed Barnhart
And the Maya really feel this, in this system. So that’s the core system. This 260-day calendar was the very first calendar they made thousands of years ago, and it’s the one that’s most important today.
And the Maya really feel this, in this system. So that’s the core system. This 260-day calendar was the very first calendar they made thousands of years ago, and it’s the one that’s most important today.
Lex Fridman
Why 260 days, by the way? Is there a reasoning behind it?
Why 260 days, by the way? Is there a reasoning behind it?
Ed Barnhart
Most Maya agree with this today, and who knows what the original architects, thousands of years ago were thinking, but it’s nine months, it’s the human gestation period. So if you conceived on the day 13, monkey, chances are your kid’s coming out on or near 13, monkey, and I think it’s beautiful. I mean, if that’s right, that means the Maya and the people of Mesoamerica will all share it together, when they thought about, “We need a count of time for us,” they didn’t look up into the heavens, they looked into their bodies. “What’s the first cycle that we actually go through as humans?” and they picked this nine-month thing. It really is our cycle, and no other culture on the planet looked inside themselves to create their calendar like that.
Most Maya agree with this today, and who knows what the original architects, thousands of years ago were thinking, but it’s nine months, it’s the human gestation period. So if you conceived on the day 13, monkey, chances are your kid’s coming out on or near 13, monkey, and I think it’s beautiful. I mean, if that’s right, that means the Maya and the people of Mesoamerica will all share it together, when they thought about, “We need a count of time for us,” they didn’t look up into the heavens, they looked into their bodies. “What’s the first cycle that we actually go through as humans?” and they picked this nine-month thing. It really is our cycle, and no other culture on the planet looked inside themselves to create their calendar like that.
Lex Fridman
So that’s the oldest one and the sacred one that still carries through to today. What’s the second one, the Haab?
So that’s the oldest one and the sacred one that still carries through to today. What’s the second one, the Haab?
Ed Barnhart
The Haab is the solar calendar, the one that everybody on the planet eventually comes up with. We know it’s second, though, because when they start talking about it, they use all the symbols and the numbers from the 260 one. They say, “Well, we need a solar one, too. Let’s just keep counting this another 105 days, and we’ll get to 365.”
The Haab is the solar calendar, the one that everybody on the planet eventually comes up with. We know it’s second, though, because when they start talking about it, they use all the symbols and the numbers from the 260 one. They say, “Well, we need a solar one, too. Let’s just keep counting this another 105 days, and we’ll get to 365.”
Lex Fridman
Oh, interesting. They kind of carry the same.
Oh, interesting. They kind of carry the same.
Ed Barnhart
Right.
Right.
Lex Fridman
Got it, got it, got it, got it. And that’s useful, for all the sort of agriculture, all those kind of reasons?
Got it, got it, got it, got it. And that’s useful, for all the sort of agriculture, all those kind of reasons?
Ed Barnhart
Right. Though, interestingly, they never put a leap year in. The Haab is also called the vague year, because it’s just 365, which means every year, they’re off a quarter of a day, and eventually, it starts really adding up. In fact, it’s even caused modern problems. In this calendar here, I just do the straight math from 1,000 years ago. And so I place the beginning of the solar year differently than some Maya groups do, especially the guys in the highlands of Eastern Guatemala. They write me nasty emails saying, “I don’t know what time the year is,” but their relatives changed it in the 1950s, because their agricultural cycle was so far off. They moved it 60 days back to make it in the spring again, but it drifts, which is strange, because it’s not a very good thing for the agricultural cycle. It’s one of these mysteries we still don’t have an explanation for.
Right. Though, interestingly, they never put a leap year in. The Haab is also called the vague year, because it’s just 365, which means every year, they’re off a quarter of a day, and eventually, it starts really adding up. In fact, it’s even caused modern problems. In this calendar here, I just do the straight math from 1,000 years ago. And so I place the beginning of the solar year differently than some Maya groups do, especially the guys in the highlands of Eastern Guatemala. They write me nasty emails saying, “I don’t know what time the year is,” but their relatives changed it in the 1950s, because their agricultural cycle was so far off. They moved it 60 days back to make it in the spring again, but it drifts, which is strange, because it’s not a very good thing for the agricultural cycle. It’s one of these mysteries we still don’t have an explanation for.
Lex Fridman
So that’s the Haab, and then what’s the Long Count?
So that’s the Haab, and then what’s the Long Count?
Ed Barnhart
The Long Count’s their really mysterious, cool one, because it’s a linear count of days, which are not like them. It’s a bunch of cycles, like ours. You know, our weeks are a cycle, our months are a cycle, but it’s weird in that its estimation of the year in the Long Count system is only 360 days, so it’s miserably off a solar year. They count in base 20, so like we count in 10s, we’re decimal, they count in base 20 vigesimal.
The Long Count’s their really mysterious, cool one, because it’s a linear count of days, which are not like them. It’s a bunch of cycles, like ours. You know, our weeks are a cycle, our months are a cycle, but it’s weird in that its estimation of the year in the Long Count system is only 360 days, so it’s miserably off a solar year. They count in base 20, so like we count in 10s, we’re decimal, they count in base 20 vigesimal.
And so it should be there’s 1s, there’s 20s, there’s 400s, there’s 8,000s, there’s 160,000s. It goes just like our 10s, 100s, 1,000s, 10,000s, but it’s times 20. So they have days, months of 20 days, and then they have these years that should be, by their math, 400, but it’s only 360. And that throws the whole thing out of whack going further up. Then, they have a 20-year period and a 400- year period. 400 years to their calendar, but by that time, it’s only 396 years in our reckoning. So it’s mysterious that it’s… Why did they tweak it at the year to be only 360 days? That doesn’t follow any astronomy, that’s not the human cycle.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, but it’s interesting that they build up towards thinking about very long periods of time, like baktuns is 144,000 days.
Yeah, but it’s interesting that they build up towards thinking about very long periods of time, like baktuns is 144,000 days.
Ed Barnhart
Right, ar a baktuns is 400 of the Long Count’s years, so it’s kind of like our millennium. You know, we think it’s a big deal when we hit a millennium or a century. They have a 20-year period that they do a lot of celebrations on, called a k’atun, and then they have the 400 baktun, which is the big one. That’s like their millennium, and 13 of those baktuns occurred in the creation before us. They also think that the world has had multiple creations. They’re not alone in that. There’s lots of ancient civilizations who say that, but we’re technically in the fourth creation.
Right, ar a baktuns is 400 of the Long Count’s years, so it’s kind of like our millennium. You know, we think it’s a big deal when we hit a millennium or a century. They have a 20-year period that they do a lot of celebrations on, called a k’atun, and then they have the 400 baktun, which is the big one. That’s like their millennium, and 13 of those baktuns occurred in the creation before us. They also think that the world has had multiple creations. They’re not alone in that. There’s lots of ancient civilizations who say that, but we’re technically in the fourth creation.
And they have a creation story called the and the Popol Vuh, and the Popol Vuh is clear as day that the third creation ends with the help of these heroes called the Hero Twins, and the fourth creation begins. And so on the Maya monuments, we see them doing the math through the Long Count, and we can calculate it back very exactly. It happened, the fourth creation started on August 11th 3114 BC. And it doesn’t say it’s day one, it says it’s the last day of the 13th baktun of the third creation, which leads us to believe that a creation is only 13 baktuns long.
Lex Fridman
Right, and this would be the fourth creation? The calendar starts-
Right, and this would be the fourth creation? The calendar starts-
Ed Barnhart
This is the fourth creation. But if you do the math, going from 3114 BC, and count 13 baktuns forward, you get to 2012.
This is the fourth creation. But if you do the math, going from 3114 BC, and count 13 baktuns forward, you get to 2012.
Lex Fridman
And hence, the very popular notion, the 2012… Whenever that was December, something like-
And hence, the very popular notion, the 2012… Whenever that was December, something like-
Ed Barnhart
December 21st 2012.
December 21st 2012.
Lex Fridman
… will be the end of the world.
… will be the end of the world.
Ed Barnhart
Right.
Right.
Lex Fridman
So can you explain this?
So can you explain this?
Ed Barnhart
Those were very fruitful years for me. I had so many lectures around the country that it’s like Garrett Morris in Saturday Night Live. The apocalypse was very, very good to me.
Those were very fruitful years for me. I had so many lectures around the country that it’s like Garrett Morris in Saturday Night Live. The apocalypse was very, very good to me.
Lex Fridman
Ah, yeah, but that is pretty interesting. So technically, it would be, what, in the fifth? No.
Ah, yeah, but that is pretty interesting. So technically, it would be, what, in the fifth? No.
Ed Barnhart
Yeah, technically we’d be in the fifth, though my argument was that, actually, if you look through all the corpus of Maya mathematics and calendars, they never say anything like that. In fact, there’s a handful of dates that tell us that the fourth creation does continue farther on, that that baktun place should have 20 baktuns in it, like their counting system would dictate, not 13. And there’s a place in Palenque, there’s a place in the Dresden Codex, and one other place I’m forgetting, that all talk about time after 2012. So how does that happen? It’s a conflict.
Yeah, technically we’d be in the fifth, though my argument was that, actually, if you look through all the corpus of Maya mathematics and calendars, they never say anything like that. In fact, there’s a handful of dates that tell us that the fourth creation does continue farther on, that that baktun place should have 20 baktuns in it, like their counting system would dictate, not 13. And there’s a place in Palenque, there’s a place in the Dresden Codex, and one other place I’m forgetting, that all talk about time after 2012. So how does that happen? It’s a conflict.
Lex Fridman
Is there supposed to be an overlap of the… So it’s like 13 is the core of it, and it’s 20 long?
Is there supposed to be an overlap of the… So it’s like 13 is the core of it, and it’s 20 long?
Ed Barnhart
They love the number 13, it’s all over the place. It’s a magic number to them. My explanation, which I admit is not very solid, but I think that the magical deeds of the Hero Twins, in their creation story, at the end of the third creation, hit the magical reset button, and that it just restarted time right there, because of their magic, but that was not to say that the natural baktun cycle should be 13. And there are certain texts that go way forward in time or way backward in time, and whenever they want to do that, there are higher increments than just the baktun.
They love the number 13, it’s all over the place. It’s a magic number to them. My explanation, which I admit is not very solid, but I think that the magical deeds of the Hero Twins, in their creation story, at the end of the third creation, hit the magical reset button, and that it just restarted time right there, because of their magic, but that was not to say that the natural baktun cycle should be 13. And there are certain texts that go way forward in time or way backward in time, and whenever they want to do that, there are higher increments than just the baktun.
Above that, there’s the piktun, then there’s the kalabatun, then there’s alawatun, and it goes on and on. And these are like 160,000 years, huge increments of time. Whenever they want to do that, and they talk about a long period of time, they start putting 13s in all of those increments, those higher increments. And I think what they’re saying is they’re making an esoteric statement about the never-ending nature of time. That’s what I think they’re telling us in those texts, that time goes on forever, magically.
Lex Fridman
But they still had a conception that it didn’t go on forever before, right? That there was other civilizations that came before in there, and this is the fourth creation?
But they still had a conception that it didn’t go on forever before, right? That there was other civilizations that came before in there, and this is the fourth creation?
Ed Barnhart
This is the fourth creation, and the gods made everybody. The first ones made of mud and they melted. The second ones were made of sticks, but they were jerks to the animals. The third ones were like us, but flawed in some other way. And then, we’re finally made of the blood of the gods and corn. We’re made out of corn, so we’re perfect. And as it explains to us, the Popol Vuh does, we got it right this time. There’s no reason to believe that this creation has a set duration.
This is the fourth creation, and the gods made everybody. The first ones made of mud and they melted. The second ones were made of sticks, but they were jerks to the animals. The third ones were like us, but flawed in some other way. And then, we’re finally made of the blood of the gods and corn. We’re made out of corn, so we’re perfect. And as it explains to us, the Popol Vuh does, we got it right this time. There’s no reason to believe that this creation has a set duration.
One of the weird things is that the Aztecs, who we talked to a lot at contact, they also had the concept of multiple creations before us, but they were real clear to the Spanish that they weren’t all the same time element. Some of them were in the three hundreds of years, some of them were in the seven hundreds of years, but they were not the same time period. So our mathematical logic that if the third creation was 13, this one must be third creation, or also be 13, it’s in direct opposition to what the Aztecs told us about the nature of creations. They’re different time periods.
Lex Fridman
Why do you think there was the myth of the previous creations? Did they have some kind of long, multi-generational memory of prior civilizations?
Why do you think there was the myth of the previous creations? Did they have some kind of long, multi-generational memory of prior civilizations?
Ed Barnhart
It may have had some echo in the flood myths.
It may have had some echo in the flood myths.
Lex Fridman
Right, so same? It’s the same kind of major myths carried through long periods of time?
Right, so same? It’s the same kind of major myths carried through long periods of time?
Ed Barnhart
There’s a lot of different opinions about it. And if they were all 13, if we have 5 creations, like the Aztecs said, and they were all 13, they would come up to roughly 25,000 something years, which is very close to that processional cycle. So some people are like, “They designed it all to be one completion of the procession of the equinoxes.” I don’t believe that one, but that one sure sounds good, doesn’t it?
There’s a lot of different opinions about it. And if they were all 13, if we have 5 creations, like the Aztecs said, and they were all 13, they would come up to roughly 25,000 something years, which is very close to that processional cycle. So some people are like, “They designed it all to be one completion of the procession of the equinoxes.” I don’t believe that one, but that one sure sounds good, doesn’t it?
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ed Barnhart
That’s going to get a lot of internet hits.
That’s going to get a lot of internet hits.
Flood myths
Lex Fridman
And one of the things I do obviously wonder about is why-
And one of the things I do obviously wonder about is why-
Lex Fridman
Wonder about is why the flood myth is part of most societies and most religions.
Wonder about is why the flood myth is part of most societies and most religions.
Ed Barnhart
I think that one’s pretty easy. It’s the end of the ice age, when the bathtub filled back up.
I think that one’s pretty easy. It’s the end of the ice age, when the bathtub filled back up.
Lex Fridman
So it’s just the ice age bathtub refilling.
So it’s just the ice age bathtub refilling.
Ed Barnhart
It’s the seas filling back up.
It’s the seas filling back up.
Lex Fridman
And they, without really understanding what happened, they just carried that story.
And they, without really understanding what happened, they just carried that story.
Ed Barnhart
Everybody knows that everybody’s nice coastal village went under water and they had to seek higher ground.
Everybody knows that everybody’s nice coastal village went under water and they had to seek higher ground.
Lex Fridman
And then just like people talking about the weather, everybody was talking about the weather for many generations as the sea level was going up, and then that myth carried.
And then just like people talking about the weather, everybody was talking about the weather for many generations as the sea level was going up, and then that myth carried.
Ed Barnhart
“Why do we live here, grandpa?” “Well, we used to live over there, but then the water came.”
“Why do we live here, grandpa?” “Well, we used to live over there, but then the water came.”
Lex Fridman
And then many grandpas later is just kind of permeates every idea.
And then many grandpas later is just kind of permeates every idea.
Ed Barnhart
It becomes mythology, but global mythology. So that one, there’s a lot of things I don’t have a reasonable explanation for, but the flood myth is almost certainly the rise in sea level.
It becomes mythology, but global mythology. So that one, there’s a lot of things I don’t have a reasonable explanation for, but the flood myth is almost certainly the rise in sea level.
Lex Fridman
So this idea that every day represents, carries a spirit. There’s modern day astrology. Most people kind of consider astrology this maybe a bit unscientific woo-woo type of set of beliefs, but do you think there’s some wisdom that astrology carries? From your scholarship of the Maya calendar, do you think if we carry that to the astrological perspective on the world, do you think there’s some wisdom there?
So this idea that every day represents, carries a spirit. There’s modern day astrology. Most people kind of consider astrology this maybe a bit unscientific woo-woo type of set of beliefs, but do you think there’s some wisdom that astrology carries? From your scholarship of the Maya calendar, do you think if we carry that to the astrological perspective on the world, do you think there’s some wisdom there?
Ed Barnhart
I don’t know. I have a woo-woo part of me. I would like to believe that stuff. But I don’t think as a scientist, I cannot come up with a biological scientific reason why that would be true. And when you look at it objectively, I mean really? Is everybody born with the sign Scorpio a moody person? That’s just objectively not true.
I don’t know. I have a woo-woo part of me. I would like to believe that stuff. But I don’t think as a scientist, I cannot come up with a biological scientific reason why that would be true. And when you look at it objectively, I mean really? Is everybody born with the sign Scorpio a moody person? That’s just objectively not true.
But it is funny how oftentimes these Maya horoscopes, for lack of a better word, do hit the mark. There was some student who surveyed like 300 people with the app I made and asked them about their Greek sign and their Maya sign, and his conclusion for his term paper was that the Maya one was working way better, which that’s fascinating. At least that’s fun. But no, I think I’m too much of a scientist to believe that. I just don’t have any foundation in science that would allow us to believe that the month in which we were born in a cycle sets our personality and destiny.
Lex Fridman
I agree. And yet there’s so much mystery all around us that … What I do like is the inbuilt humility to that worldview, that there’s this whole, you can call it a spiritual world, but a world that we don’t quite understand. And then you can wonder about what is the wisdom that that world carries. And then you can construct all kinds of systems to try to interpret that, and then there is where the human hubris can come in. But it’s good to be humbled by how little we know, I suppose.
I agree. And yet there’s so much mystery all around us that … What I do like is the inbuilt humility to that worldview, that there’s this whole, you can call it a spiritual world, but a world that we don’t quite understand. And then you can wonder about what is the wisdom that that world carries. And then you can construct all kinds of systems to try to interpret that, and then there is where the human hubris can come in. But it’s good to be humbled by how little we know, I suppose.
Ed Barnhart
I do love the mysteries of the world. And I would love to find an ancient civilization, but I don’t want to solve the mysteries of the world. I think they’re one of the things that make life worth living.
I do love the mysteries of the world. And I would love to find an ancient civilization, but I don’t want to solve the mysteries of the world. I think they’re one of the things that make life worth living.
Lex Fridman
That’s true. That’s true. You mentioned the Maya writing system. What are some interesting aspects of their language that they’ve used in the written language that they used?
That’s true. That’s true. You mentioned the Maya writing system. What are some interesting aspects of their language that they’ve used in the written language that they used?
Ed Barnhart
Well, one of the things that confound me as a guy who’s spent a better portion of my life studying it, I had the honor of being the student of Linda Schele right here at the University of Texas at Austin. She got the group together who broke the Maya code of hieroglyphics in the 1970s. So I learned from the best and loved every minute of it. I miss Linda.
Well, one of the things that confound me as a guy who’s spent a better portion of my life studying it, I had the honor of being the student of Linda Schele right here at the University of Texas at Austin. She got the group together who broke the Maya code of hieroglyphics in the 1970s. So I learned from the best and loved every minute of it. I miss Linda.
Lex Fridman
Can you speak to that code actually, the hieroglyphic code and what it takes to break it?
Can you speak to that code actually, the hieroglyphic code and what it takes to break it?
Ed Barnhart
Oh boy, what a thing. We had kind of a Rosetta Stone. We had a page out of Diego de Landa’s book. A priest who was converting the Maya in Yucatan asked his informants about their writing system and what every sound meant. And he was convinced they had an alphabet like we do. So he got this Maya guy, sat down in Spanish, and he said, “Okay, you’re going to write all the symbols right here in my book. Write an ah here, write a be here, write a ce here.” And that guy just wrote all of the sounds that the priest told him to write. They were actually syllables. They were vowel consonant combinations. They weren’t an alphabet, but that turned into our Rosetta Stone of sorts.
Oh boy, what a thing. We had kind of a Rosetta Stone. We had a page out of Diego de Landa’s book. A priest who was converting the Maya in Yucatan asked his informants about their writing system and what every sound meant. And he was convinced they had an alphabet like we do. So he got this Maya guy, sat down in Spanish, and he said, “Okay, you’re going to write all the symbols right here in my book. Write an ah here, write a be here, write a ce here.” And that guy just wrote all of the sounds that the priest told him to write. They were actually syllables. They were vowel consonant combinations. They weren’t an alphabet, but that turned into our Rosetta Stone of sorts.
The big key is that the Maya still speak that same language. There are millions of Maya people who are speaking a version of Maya. Now there’s where I get confused, that we’ve got a single writing system that is intelligible, we’ve broken the code, so we know that it’s basically the same writing system from the top of the Yucatan into Guatemala and El Salvador. But we have 33 Maya languages today that are mutually unintelligible. And we backwards project the language of what they spoke back then that the glyphs are in to something called Chʼoltiʼ, which is a combination of Chʼortiʼ and Ch’ol, two of those languages.
But it doesn’t work for me at all. If there was one language, maybe two back then, how did it flower into 33 mutually unintelligible languages in just 500 years during acculturation and horrible infectious diseases that killed 90% of the population? How did that happen? So we’re missing something huge here. I think it’s more like Chinese, where Chinese letters, writing can be read in multiple languages and still understood. I don’t know exactly the mechanics of how that would happen, but it just seems impossible that there are more languages, not less languages, in the Maya area after the last 500 years that they’ve been through.
Lex Fridman
So you think that there’s some kind of process of either rapidly generating dialects or there always has been these dialects, or I should say they’re distinct languages, even though there was a common writing system?
So you think that there’s some kind of process of either rapidly generating dialects or there always has been these dialects, or I should say they’re distinct languages, even though there was a common writing system?
Ed Barnhart
There must have been a way that multiple languages understood the same writing system. Or maybe there was something like Latin. You know how there was a period in Europe where most people were illiterate and there was this priesthood who all understood Latin and they wrote in Latin? Maybe the hieroglyphs represent a kind of Latin in the ancient Maya world.
There must have been a way that multiple languages understood the same writing system. Or maybe there was something like Latin. You know how there was a period in Europe where most people were illiterate and there was this priesthood who all understood Latin and they wrote in Latin? Maybe the hieroglyphs represent a kind of Latin in the ancient Maya world.
Lex Fridman
But we don’t really know, and there’s not clear evidence to fill in the gaps of how it’s possible to have that.
But we don’t really know, and there’s not clear evidence to fill in the gaps of how it’s possible to have that.
Ed Barnhart
Right. But we did realize, it was actually a Russian scholar named Yuri Knorozov who broke the code. The Americans and the Europeans were absolutely sure that the written language was a dead language. But Yuri not knowing any of that, not being filled with all of those thoughts from America and Europe, went about it in the way that he was taught in his grad school in Moscow and just went to the dictionaries. And he looked at Yucatec language that they’re speaking today, and he applied it to the symbol system, and he knew that there were certain sounds. He used Landa’s alphabet.
Right. But we did realize, it was actually a Russian scholar named Yuri Knorozov who broke the code. The Americans and the Europeans were absolutely sure that the written language was a dead language. But Yuri not knowing any of that, not being filled with all of those thoughts from America and Europe, went about it in the way that he was taught in his grad school in Moscow and just went to the dictionaries. And he looked at Yucatec language that they’re speaking today, and he applied it to the symbol system, and he knew that there were certain sounds. He used Landa’s alphabet.
His two key examples were a picture of a dog with a symbol over it and a picture of a turkey with a symbol over it. And the dog, a dog in Yucatec is tzul. So he saw two symbols and he said, “This one’s probably tzul and this one’s ul”. And then the Turkey was kutz, so it would be ku ending in tz. And he showed how, look, this is, this is tzul. Those two things that should be tz are the same symbol. And that began this process of unraveling the syllables that we’re still working on today.
Lex Fridman
That’s fascinating. Just that decoding process is fascinating. How do you even figure that out? And there’s probably still, are you aware of any written languages that haven’t been decoded yet?
That’s fascinating. Just that decoding process is fascinating. How do you even figure that out? And there’s probably still, are you aware of any written languages that haven’t been decoded yet?
Ed Barnhart
Yeah, there’s a number of them. There’s Easter Island script. I was just talking to, we’ve apparently made a few advances there now. It’s called Rongorono. And we only have about maybe 25 examples of texts, but we’re beginning to break that.
Yeah, there’s a number of them. There’s Easter Island script. I was just talking to, we’ve apparently made a few advances there now. It’s called Rongorono. And we only have about maybe 25 examples of texts, but we’re beginning to break that.
There’s also, the big one is Harappan. For a long time we used to say there were five independent scripts on the planet, and those were Chinese, Cuneiform, which is Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Maya, and then Harappan, which is from Northern India. That’s the only one that we’ve never cracked. And now all the epigraphers, the people, that’s the term, epigraphy is translating these languages, they’re all ganging up on Harappan and want to kick it off the list because we can’t break it. It had a big enough symbol set, but no one’s been able to crack it. And now they’re saying it’s just an elaborate symbol set and doesn’t reflect the spoken word.
Lex Fridman
That’s a hypothesis, which would explain why it’s so difficult to break.
That’s a hypothesis, which would explain why it’s so difficult to break.
Ed Barnhart
But we could just be faced with a quitter generation. Maybe somebody will pick up the baton next generation.
But we could just be faced with a quitter generation. Maybe somebody will pick up the baton next generation.
Lex Fridman
Kids these days.
Kids these days.
Ed Barnhart
The other one that fascinates me is from the Americas. It’s the quipu. The Inca had the quipu, this knotted string records, but it was definitely encoding more than just math. We know the math. I can do the math quipus and figure out what they’re totaling of things. Yeah, there’s a quipu right there.
The other one that fascinates me is from the Americas. It’s the quipu. The Inca had the quipu, this knotted string records, but it was definitely encoding more than just math. We know the math. I can do the math quipus and figure out what they’re totaling of things. Yeah, there’s a quipu right there.
Lex Fridman
“Quipu are recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by a number of cultures in the region of Andean South America. A quipu usually consists of cotton or camelid fiber strings.” So there’s a set of strings and they’re supposed to what, to be saying something?
“Quipu are recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by a number of cultures in the region of Andean South America. A quipu usually consists of cotton or camelid fiber strings.” So there’s a set of strings and they’re supposed to what, to be saying something?
Ed Barnhart
There’s one long string that the little ones dangle off of. And each one of the dangling strings have sets of knots on them. And the knots, some of them are mathematical quipus, and those, we can just do the math. We can prove that it’s math.
There’s one long string that the little ones dangle off of. And each one of the dangling strings have sets of knots on them. And the knots, some of them are mathematical quipus, and those, we can just do the math. We can prove that it’s math.
They also encoded language in there. They had entire libraries in Cusco where Spanish conquistadors were brought through, and the caretakers of the libraries would just, they’d say, “Pull that one down, read that one to me.” And he’d pull it out and just read a history of something that happened 200 years earlier. So it was definitely writing.
But in the 1570s, one head of the church there had all of the people that could read them called quipucamayocs, gathered up, had them read all of their quipus and transcribe them into Spanish books, and then had the quipus burned and those people murdered.
Lex Fridman
Well, there you go.
Well, there you go.
Ed Barnhart
And so we can’t break the code still today, but we know it was absolutely a written language. Though it wasn’t written, it was weaved or knotted.
And so we can’t break the code still today, but we know it was absolutely a written language. Though it wasn’t written, it was weaved or knotted.
Lex Fridman
And there’s still some quipus available that could be-
And there’s still some quipus available that could be-
Ed Barnhart
I think now we’ve just crossed the 1,000 mark. So we have 1,000 quipus. There’s enough to break the code, and I think this generation might be the one that does it.
I think now we’ve just crossed the 1,000 mark. So we have 1,000 quipus. There’s enough to break the code, and I think this generation might be the one that does it.
Lex Fridman
It’s sad that so few have survived. 1,000 is good, but its-
It’s sad that so few have survived. 1,000 is good, but its-
Ed Barnhart
But see, Peru has barely scratched the surface with archeology. There’s so much out there. There was a priest I read about named Diego de Porres, who was one of the early people in Peru converting communities. And his chronicle is real clear that he wanted to teach this community of 3,000 people all the Spanish prayers, the important ones for them to be converted into Christianity. And he had the community’s quipucamayocs knot quipus for each person that told them that they could read them out and memorize the prayers. And if they were caught without their quipu in town, they were flogged. So he had 3,000 of the same quipu made and handed out to this community. If we find that community and find its cemetery, there is our Rosetta Stone.
But see, Peru has barely scratched the surface with archeology. There’s so much out there. There was a priest I read about named Diego de Porres, who was one of the early people in Peru converting communities. And his chronicle is real clear that he wanted to teach this community of 3,000 people all the Spanish prayers, the important ones for them to be converted into Christianity. And he had the community’s quipucamayocs knot quipus for each person that told them that they could read them out and memorize the prayers. And if they were caught without their quipu in town, they were flogged. So he had 3,000 of the same quipu made and handed out to this community. If we find that community and find its cemetery, there is our Rosetta Stone.
Lex Fridman
It is probably the case there is somebody in Peru and maybe a large community that knows this language that understands, and you just have to show up and ask them. And it’s like, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.”
It is probably the case there is somebody in Peru and maybe a large community that knows this language that understands, and you just have to show up and ask them. And it’s like, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.”
Ed Barnhart
There are some communities that are using them. There’s a couple of them that we had high hopes for, and then it was apparent that they were just making shit up. They didn’t actually know how to read it. They just knew it used to be read so they made a bunch of stuff about what it says, and they bring it out and they act like they can read it. But then when you ask them the details, they don’t know.
There are some communities that are using them. There’s a couple of them that we had high hopes for, and then it was apparent that they were just making shit up. They didn’t actually know how to read it. They just knew it used to be read so they made a bunch of stuff about what it says, and they bring it out and they act like they can read it. But then when you ask them the details, they don’t know.
But then on a much simpler level, there’s llama herders who keep a string in their pocket and they’ve got the knots equaling how many llamas they have, and then they have subcategories of information like, this one’s sick, we’ve lost these ones, this one’s pregnant. So they have these more simple and more mathematical quipus, but they’re using them to affect as a record.
Lex Fridman
Is it possible through archeology to know what the social organization of the Maya was? Maybe if there was a hierarchy, maybe what the political structure was, if there was a leader, different roles, priests, who had the power, who was powerless, who had certain kinds of roles, is it possible to know that?
Is it possible through archeology to know what the social organization of the Maya was? Maybe if there was a hierarchy, maybe what the political structure was, if there was a leader, different roles, priests, who had the power, who was powerless, who had certain kinds of roles, is it possible to know that?
Ed Barnhart
Actually because of hieroglyphs, yeah, we know a whole lot. There’s basic things that archeology, which is a very blunt tool, can figure out like this guy lives in a rich house, this guy lives in a poor house. But the hieroglyphs tell us specific stuff about who can rule, that it was hereditary, that hereditary rule was based on royal blood that could be burned and connect to the ancestors that lived up in the sky versus the one that’s lived in the underworld. It also told us things about hierarchy like that there were councils of lords underneath the king who each represented clans who had their own neighborhoods, and that there were revolving positions of authority.
Actually because of hieroglyphs, yeah, we know a whole lot. There’s basic things that archeology, which is a very blunt tool, can figure out like this guy lives in a rich house, this guy lives in a poor house. But the hieroglyphs tell us specific stuff about who can rule, that it was hereditary, that hereditary rule was based on royal blood that could be burned and connect to the ancestors that lived up in the sky versus the one that’s lived in the underworld. It also told us things about hierarchy like that there were councils of lords underneath the king who each represented clans who had their own neighborhoods, and that there were revolving positions of authority.
There was the site that I mapped for my dissertation and spent years in the jungle there, Palenque, had a lord’s title named Fire Lord. That was one of the generals of their army. And we could tell that position changed over time. So there was one guy named Chak Suutz’ who was the Fire Lord for the early part of a reign of a king called Ahkal Moʼ Nahb. Then by the time he carves this other panel, there’s another guy in the position of K’ak Ajaw, which was the Fire Lord. And so he had-
Lex Fridman
Got promoted or demoted?
Got promoted or demoted?
Ed Barnhart
Well, he could have been killed in the case of that. But then we have the interesting case of in the Postclassic, they shed the idea of kings. They don’t like kings anymore. That’s probably a big part of why the Classic disappearance and the abandonment of all those cities happened. People just got sick of kings. And so they turn into this more council system at Chichen Itza.
Well, he could have been killed in the case of that. But then we have the interesting case of in the Postclassic, they shed the idea of kings. They don’t like kings anymore. That’s probably a big part of why the Classic disappearance and the abandonment of all those cities happened. People just got sick of kings. And so they turn into this more council system at Chichen Itza.
But then when Chichen Itza falls, there’s a new city that’s architecture looks a lot like Chichen Itza. It’s called Mayapan. But it has what is called the League of Mayapan. And it has a council of representatives from the communities from all around the Yucatan. And it is basically a democracy. It is a Maya democracy that happens. The individuals from all around the Yucatan are there. Each family has their own council house at Mayapan, though they live back at their place. It’s kind of like a Maya Congress.
Lex Fridman
Representative of democracy.
Representative of democracy.
Ed Barnhart
It really was. And this happens in, I guess, 1250 AD that this Maya democracy happens. And we know the names of them, we know the families. And of course, they were humans, so eventually they screwed it all up. One family murdered another family and the whole city burned.
It really was. And this happens in, I guess, 1250 AD that this Maya democracy happens. And we know the names of them, we know the families. And of course, they were humans, so eventually they screwed it all up. One family murdered another family and the whole city burned.
Lex Fridman
And of course, it’s probably some fascinating corruption, which is hard to discover through-
And of course, it’s probably some fascinating corruption, which is hard to discover through-
Ed Barnhart
Part of it was the Aztecs screwing things up. The Aztecs came down with all sorts of, “We’ll buy everything you’re making.” And then eventually they were like, “Could we maybe buy some humans?” And then one family was like, “No.” And the other family was like, “I don’t know, they’re making us a lot of money.” So then they murdered each other, and the water supply got polluted, and then the city burned.
Part of it was the Aztecs screwing things up. The Aztecs came down with all sorts of, “We’ll buy everything you’re making.” And then eventually they were like, “Could we maybe buy some humans?” And then one family was like, “No.” And the other family was like, “I don’t know, they’re making us a lot of money.” So then they murdered each other, and the water supply got polluted, and then the city burned.
Lex Fridman
It seems like slavery, murder, and disease is a large component of the story of humans. You mentioned different periods in the Maya, the Classic, the Postclassic, the Preclassic, the Archaic. Can you just speak to that? So Archaic is before there was really a civilization?
It seems like slavery, murder, and disease is a large component of the story of humans. You mentioned different periods in the Maya, the Classic, the Postclassic, the Preclassic, the Archaic. Can you just speak to that? So Archaic is before there was really a civilization?
Ed Barnhart
Archaic’s pretty much when everybody’s hunter-gatherers.
Archaic’s pretty much when everybody’s hunter-gatherers.
Lex Fridman
So the Classic period was the golden age. And then the Preclassic is the interesting time that we were talking about. And the Postclassic is when the democracy came about.
So the Classic period was the golden age. And then the Preclassic is the interesting time that we were talking about. And the Postclassic is when the democracy came about.
Ed Barnhart
Well, midway through it. Reverted back to council systems. The Maya loved to be part of councils.
Well, midway through it. Reverted back to council systems. The Maya loved to be part of councils.
So yeah, we have Preclassic is like the origins of civilization. They’re starting to build cities. They’re starting to create their calendar. They’re starting to create these wonderful works of art. And the Classic period, if you look at 10 different textbooks for the Maya, you’ll get 10 different dates that wiggle around in there. But basically that’s the age of kings to me. That’s when these cities decide that they’re going to organize themselves around elite royal families that have this magical blood that can contact their ancestors that are directly in contact with the gods. The Maya never contact their gods directly. They contact their ancestors who are up there who act like liaisons to the gods.
And so the Maya age of kings has these dynasties sprouting up where these people have basically snowed the rest of the people, that they’ve got a special quality of their blood and only their offspring can do the same trick and talk to the gods, where everybody, every Joe Maya can let their blood and burn it and contact their ancestor. But Joe Maya’s dad is just a corn farmer who lives down below and he’s got no influence over the gods. But the rulers, their spirits go down briefly, but then they go up into the heavens and reside where the gods are and act as liaisons. So that’s the validation for this kingship that happens for about 400 years.
I know we say 250 to 900, which is kind of the encompassing edges of it, but it’s interesting that it’s actually specifically the ninth bakʼtun of their history. The ninth bakʼtun begins in like 426, and it ends in like 829. So it’s a 400-year period of time. And before that, there were no kings. And after that, there really aren’t kings. They’re heads of councils. So I call it the age of kings, where everybody’s following the directives of basically a despot. And for a while, that’s great. Cities build up, populations happening. I see it as kind of a cult of personality moment too. Strong, charismatic leaders inspire people to do great things together.
But eventually happens all the time with power, too much power corrupts. All of a sudden there’s this unwieldy huge elite class that has to be treated special by everybody else. And they start saying, “Well, I think we should fight with those guys and you guys should go take these things.” And people eventually get sick of it and they walk away from these cities, and that’s how we get the mysterious Maya collapse where all these cities are just gone.
Lex Fridman
That’s one of the great mysteries of the Maya civilization is that over a very short period of time, like a hundred years, it seems to have declined very rapidly. It collapsed. What do you think explains that? What happened?
That’s one of the great mysteries of the Maya civilization is that over a very short period of time, like a hundred years, it seems to have declined very rapidly. It collapsed. What do you think explains that? What happened?
Ed Barnhart
I think it’s a failing of archeology to properly see what was happening. I think that most of those cities populations moved no more than 20 to 40 kilometers out and started their own farm, and they lived in perishable houses. And all archeology signature sees is that nobody lives in the city center anymore. We don’t see a bunch of mass bodies. There’s no evidence of people getting sick. There are certain cities that fought with each other at the end, and we see that signature plain as day. We know when a city was attacked and burned. Mostly that didn’t happen. People moved and migrated.
I think it’s a failing of archeology to properly see what was happening. I think that most of those cities populations moved no more than 20 to 40 kilometers out and started their own farm, and they lived in perishable houses. And all archeology signature sees is that nobody lives in the city center anymore. We don’t see a bunch of mass bodies. There’s no evidence of people getting sick. There are certain cities that fought with each other at the end, and we see that signature plain as day. We know when a city was attacked and burned. Mostly that didn’t happen. People moved and migrated.
And it seems like right there around between 800 and 900, a lot of the elites that were on top, most of it was in the rainforests of northern Guatemala, they move. They move in two directions. Some of them move into the highlands of Guatemala, and some of them move up into the Yucatan. The city of Chichen Itza becomes the next big capital in Yucatan. But the word Itza is actually a word describing the people who lived around Lake Peten Itza in northern Guatemala. And all of the Maya are super clear about that, that the Itza came in as immigrants with these new ideas and created Chichen Itza. So the elites who were no longer welcome in their cities just moved and set up shops somewhere else.
Lex Fridman
So why was there a decline? What was maybe the catalyst? Was there a specific kind of events that started this? Was this an idea that kind of transformed the society?
So why was there a decline? What was maybe the catalyst? Was there a specific kind of events that started this? Was this an idea that kind of transformed the society?
Ed Barnhart
We are still debating that. I don’t think there is a single reason. I think humans are complicated. I think a lot of things led to this. One thing we can see archeologically is that every one of the cities became overpopulated. They were too popular. And we think that they pushed the limits of their capacity to feed and house people. We see it in lots of the cities at the end of the Classic period that people are seasonally starving.
We are still debating that. I don’t think there is a single reason. I think humans are complicated. I think a lot of things led to this. One thing we can see archeologically is that every one of the cities became overpopulated. They were too popular. And we think that they pushed the limits of their capacity to feed and house people. We see it in lots of the cities at the end of the Classic period that people are seasonally starving.
I remember really stark evidence in Copán, Honduras. Copán was this beautiful city, lineage of 17 kings. But the last kings and the last elite burials that we dig from the city center, the teeth are the telling part. They get this thing, when you’re growing up and you’re not getting enough food seasonally, it shows up in the enamel of your teeth. It’s called dental hypoplasia. And if somebody’s seasonally starving, it gets these lines in their teeth. And that last generation of Maya before they left Copán, even the rich people are seasonally starving. So there’s a problem there for sure.
But I also think, it’s a weird thing, it was not an empire. It was a group of independent city states like Greece. Some of them were allied, some of them were enemies. There was a huge civil war that settled out about the end of the Classic period. So if it was Europe, the victors would’ve taken over, the losers would’ve beat it and gone wherever they went. But when they abandoned these cities that were independent still, they all left both the guys that won and the guys that lost the war. So it couldn’t be just as simple as spoils go to the victor.
It’s such a wide area. Not everybody was starving like the people in the Copán Valley. So I personally think it was calendrically timed. It is interesting to note that that ninth period, that ninth 400-year period ends right then. And I think a lot of people, I can’t prove it archeologically, but I think a lot of people said we’re coming to the end of a great cycle and we need to renew. We need to change what we’re doing.
When you talk to the Maya today, like at the end of this 2012 thing, if you actually talk to Maya, say, “What happens at the end of a big cycle here?” They say cycles are a time of renewal and transformation, that it is all of our obligation to change our lives at the end of cycles. That change is coming. We can either be part of it or we can get steamrolled by it.
The Aztecs did this neat thing called the New Fire Ceremony every 52 years, which was the biggest their calendar would go. They’d burn down perfectly good temples. And they’d burn down their houses sometimes. And they would just, everybody in society would perform this, what they call the New Fire Ceremony, and they would renew the world. So I think my personal theory is that the Maya decided at the end of the ninth bakʼtun that it was time to renew the world.
Lex Fridman
I think this theory makes sense because they really internalized the calendar. That was a really big part of their culture, the sense of the cyclical nature of civilization.
I think this theory makes sense because they really internalized the calendar. That was a really big part of their culture, the sense of the cyclical nature of civilization.
Ed Barnhart
That’s what I think. I think that they created that calendar to perceive the cycle and to harmonize with it.
That’s what I think. I think that they created that calendar to perceive the cycle and to harmonize with it.
Aztecs
Lex Fridman
You mentioned the Aztec. What was the origin of the Aztec? Where did these people come from, at what time, and how?
You mentioned the Aztec. What was the origin of the Aztec? Where did these people come from, at what time, and how?
Ed Barnhart
Almost every one of the cultures we’re talking about now, we have two different versions of the answer to that question. We have the archeology version, and we have the Aztecs themselves. The Aztecs have this wonderful migration story where they say that they came from a place well to the north called Aztlán. And that they had this migration that went through kind of a hero’s journey where they go to this snake mountain place and they encounter the birth of the war god that they’ll worship after this. And how they stepped into the Valley of Mexico as the last, the lost brothers of everyone in the Valley of Mexico. They said that they all came from the north near Aztlán as a place, a cave with seven different passages called Chicomoztoc. And that all the people who spoke the language Nahuatl came from the cave. And most of them went early to the Valley of Mexico. And in the Aztecs’ story, they were just the lost tribe. They were the last brothers to come in.
Almost every one of the cultures we’re talking about now, we have two different versions of the answer to that question. We have the archeology version, and we have the Aztecs themselves. The Aztecs have this wonderful migration story where they say that they came from a place well to the north called Aztlán. And that they had this migration that went through kind of a hero’s journey where they go to this snake mountain place and they encounter the birth of the war god that they’ll worship after this. And how they stepped into the Valley of Mexico as the last, the lost brothers of everyone in the Valley of Mexico. They said that they all came from the north near Aztlán as a place, a cave with seven different passages called Chicomoztoc. And that all the people who spoke the language Nahuatl came from the cave. And most of them went early to the Valley of Mexico. And in the Aztecs’ story, they were just the lost tribe. They were the last brothers to come in.
But then they show up late game, and they become mercenaries. They just start working for communities in the Valley of Mexico. And this takes place in the 1300s. So about 200 years before Cortez shows up, the Aztecs show up to the Valley of Mexico. And they make themselves this indispensable group of mercenaries. They do the dirty work. All the civilized communities around Lake Texcoco, which is now Mexico City, it’s all dried up, but those guys were too civilized to fight with each other. But they could hire the Aztecs to do their dirty stuff. So the Aztecs did that and really changed the politics in the game of the Valley of Mexico.
Lex Fridman
The dirty stuff. They were the muscle.
The dirty stuff. They were the muscle.
Ed Barnhart
Yeah. They’d go in and they’d kill whoever you wanted killed, and now you’re the king of this area.
Yeah. They’d go in and they’d kill whoever you wanted killed, and now you’re the king of this area.
So one of these kings that they were working for really liked them and decided, I’m going to make the Aztecs part of our ancestry. I’m going to give them my daughter to marry the head of the Aztecs. And the Aztecs sacrificed her. And that really pissed that guy off. So he took his whole army and ran the Aztecs out for a while. They say they live in this horrible desert section eating lizards.
But then one of their priests say, “We’re going to walk around the lake, and my visions say that where we see an eagle sitting on a cactus with a snake in its mouth is where we will build our capital.” And they see that, but it’s out on an island in the lake. And he said, “Well, I don’t know, that’s the place.” So they build up an island, they go to that island, and then they just start piling up lake muck until they make a whole city there in the middle of the lake. They make an island city. And all of this occurs in about a hundred years. So they show up about 1300. The capital of Tenochtitlan, as they called it, is really established. And from there, they quickly take over the entire valley. They make what they call the Triple Alliance, which is the two other big communities of the lake are now their allies, but they’re not really allies. The Aztecs were brutal. Those guys agreed to shut up and let the Aztecs run the show. And then the Aztecs spread like a wildfire all the way down into the Maya area. Everywhere they go, they rename everybody’s towns and make them pay tribute.
Lex Fridman
Pretty short lasting civilization. Spread extremely quickly. Famous. What are some defining qualities that explain that?
Pretty short lasting civilization. Spread extremely quickly. Famous. What are some defining qualities that explain that?
Ed Barnhart
I think they were very much like they had an attitude like Attila the Hun. They just had no problem ripping your skin off. Everybody else had become too comfortable and too civilized. And the Aztecs were just mercenary. They told everybody, “We can either rip your heart out or you can work for us. And if you work for us, you’ll be just fine.” They’d go to every town they’d go to.
I think they were very much like they had an attitude like Attila the Hun. They just had no problem ripping your skin off. Everybody else had become too comfortable and too civilized. And the Aztecs were just mercenary. They told everybody, “We can either rip your heart out or you can work for us. And if you work for us, you’ll be just fine.” They’d go to every town they’d go to.
The first thing they’d do is they’d show up with a bunch of merchants. There was a merchant class who were also military. They were really the people who assessed where they were going to attack next. They’d go in with a bunch of Aztec products and say, “We’d like to trade with you.” But all the time, they were assessing their military prowess, what products they had that they could take. And then soon after the pochteca were there would come the military with the reconnaissance.
Lex Fridman
So the Aztec had a huge warrior class, as you’re saying. So can you linger on their whole relationship with war and violence?
So the Aztec had a huge warrior class, as you’re saying. So can you linger on their whole relationship with war and violence?
Ed Barnhart
They worshiped a war deity. Their main temple was the Templo Mayor. It had two temples up on top. One was Tlaloc the Rain God, who liked a lot of sacrifice himself. But then the other one was Huitzilopochtli. That translates “The hummingbird on the left.” But he’s the war god. I love that he’s a hummingbird. Maybe he’s fast and he comes from the magical side or something.
They worshiped a war deity. Their main temple was the Templo Mayor. It had two temples up on top. One was Tlaloc the Rain God, who liked a lot of sacrifice himself. But then the other one was Huitzilopochtli. That translates “The hummingbird on the left.” But he’s the war god. I love that he’s a hummingbird. Maybe he’s fast and he comes from the magical side or something.
But then right next to the temple, on either side were the two temples of the warriors. One was the Eagle Warrior clan, the other one was the Jaguar Warrior clan. And they were symbolically in competition with each other, though a unified force. I guess probably an analogy between the Navy and the Air Force. They had a good-natured competition of who was better, but they were the same force. So those were their symbolic warriors.
Ed Barnhart
Force. So those were their symbolic warriors dressed up in all of their finery, and they would come at people with these two forces, and it was very unlike anything that had happened before in Mesoamerica. Again, I think I could draw a parallel to what happened in Europe. The famous Henry V moment in Agincourt where his kind of ragtag army wipes out half of France’s aristocracy with the Longbow. Up until that moment, Europe had a very war is for the elite classes kind of attitude. And then after France lost half their aristocracy, then it was like, maybe we should be hiring from the villages.
Force. So those were their symbolic warriors dressed up in all of their finery, and they would come at people with these two forces, and it was very unlike anything that had happened before in Mesoamerica. Again, I think I could draw a parallel to what happened in Europe. The famous Henry V moment in Agincourt where his kind of ragtag army wipes out half of France’s aristocracy with the Longbow. Up until that moment, Europe had a very war is for the elite classes kind of attitude. And then after France lost half their aristocracy, then it was like, maybe we should be hiring from the villages.
The same sort of thing happened with the Aztec that there was, Mesoamerica really didn’t have huge standing armies, but the Aztec put this army together and they intimidated people. They didn’t actually have to use it a lot. It was used to great effect in the valley of Mexico and for the rest of Mesoamerica it was mostly the fear factor.
Lex Fridman
But there also seemed to be a celebration of violence. I think you said that beauty and blood went hand in hand for the Aztec, maybe like the Roman Empire, was it, they just had maybe a different relationship with violence, where that stood in the purpose of life, purpose of existence. Is that fair to say?
But there also seemed to be a celebration of violence. I think you said that beauty and blood went hand in hand for the Aztec, maybe like the Roman Empire, was it, they just had maybe a different relationship with violence, where that stood in the purpose of life, purpose of existence. Is that fair to say?
Ed Barnhart
I would hypothesize so. I mean, I think it’s one of the wonderful things about studying these ancient cultures, knowing what our human capacity is and the Aztecs, when I said that statement, what I meant by that is they were absolutely comfortable with human sacrifice and ripping people’s hearts out.
I would hypothesize so. I mean, I think it’s one of the wonderful things about studying these ancient cultures, knowing what our human capacity is and the Aztecs, when I said that statement, what I meant by that is they were absolutely comfortable with human sacrifice and ripping people’s hearts out.
They had this just grotesque, violent bent, but in the same way, they also absolutely loved flower gardens and poetry and music and dance. The same Aztec king who would order the hearts of a thousand people extracted also would stand up at dinner parties to recite his own poetry or the poetry of famous statesmen that had come before him. And they spent money on things like flower gardens. All of the causeways leading to the Aztec capitol had beautiful flower gardens and they had a museum and they had an aquarium and a zoo, and they had an opera and they had a ballet. And these things existed together. There was not, in the Aztec mind, any conflict between witnessing someone’s heart getting ripped out one moment, and in the evening we’d go to the ballet.
Lex Fridman
How does that contrast the relationship with war and violence with the other civilizations of Mesoamerica and South America, maybe the Maya? What was their relationship like with war?
How does that contrast the relationship with war and violence with the other civilizations of Mesoamerica and South America, maybe the Maya? What was their relationship like with war?
Ed Barnhart
The Maya were certainly influenced by the Aztec at the end, so we get a skewed perspective from the contact period accounts because the Maya were much more violent and sacrifice-oriented in their post-classic rendition. But in the classic period, it was mostly the priests and the king who were doing the sacrificing of themselves that we know that the Maya kings would cut their penises and then bleed that blood onto paper and the paper would burn and become the smoke through which they’d commune with their ancestors.
The Maya were certainly influenced by the Aztec at the end, so we get a skewed perspective from the contact period accounts because the Maya were much more violent and sacrifice-oriented in their post-classic rendition. But in the classic period, it was mostly the priests and the king who were doing the sacrificing of themselves that we know that the Maya kings would cut their penises and then bleed that blood onto paper and the paper would burn and become the smoke through which they’d commune with their ancestors.
But they’d actually tie this paper onto their penis, cut it, and then dance. So the blood splattered, but it was them cutting themselves. It was different than killing a bunch of other people for it. It was a auto-sacrifice, we call it. Still very macabre, but very different than deciding a whole bunch of other people should die. It was a self-sacrifice thing.
Lex Fridman
Can you speak to the sacrifice a bit more? Animal sacrifice, human sacrifice. What role did that play for the Maya, for the Aztec, for the different cultures here. Was that religious in nature?
Can you speak to the sacrifice a bit more? Animal sacrifice, human sacrifice. What role did that play for the Maya, for the Aztec, for the different cultures here. Was that religious in nature?
Ed Barnhart
It was absolutely religious in nature, and the Aztecs were of the opinion that the war God demanded people were captured and sacrificed and it had to be valuable people. There was a lot of… before they made that big standing army, they had just ritual battles that they would have and they’d take captives. In fact, all around Mesoamerica, they wanted captives so that they could bring them back and sacrifice them for the gods and the Aztecs deciding to specifically follow the war God, did this more than anybody. They did it so much and so successfully that they didn’t have any enemies nearby.
It was absolutely religious in nature, and the Aztecs were of the opinion that the war God demanded people were captured and sacrificed and it had to be valuable people. There was a lot of… before they made that big standing army, they had just ritual battles that they would have and they’d take captives. In fact, all around Mesoamerica, they wanted captives so that they could bring them back and sacrifice them for the gods and the Aztecs deciding to specifically follow the war God, did this more than anybody. They did it so much and so successfully that they didn’t have any enemies nearby.
So they decided this one poor sucker group, not that far away, called the Tlaxcallans, that they were never going to make peace with them so that they could go close by every year and just have a little symbolic war with the Tlaxcallans and haul them back for a sacrifice. Cortes met those guys and he was like, here are people who hate their guts. I’ll just use these guys. So we say, oh, Cortes took over the Aztec world. It was Cortes and 20,000 super pissed-off, Tlaxcallans.
Lex Fridman
And the actual sacrifice, so there would be kind of these ritual battles or is it chopping off people’s heads? Like, is there some interesting rituals around the sacrifice?
And the actual sacrifice, so there would be kind of these ritual battles or is it chopping off people’s heads? Like, is there some interesting rituals around the sacrifice?
Ed Barnhart
It’s mostly heart extraction, sometimes heads, but they bring them up on top of the temple so everybody can see it. And they had a specific stone where they would bend them over so their rib cage would come out and they’d use a thick obsidian knife, and they had a really, just, tried and true way to do it. They’d stab it in in a certain place close, and then they’d push down on the sternum as they ripped up on the rib cage. So they’d just make a place where they could just rip it right out.
It’s mostly heart extraction, sometimes heads, but they bring them up on top of the temple so everybody can see it. And they had a specific stone where they would bend them over so their rib cage would come out and they’d use a thick obsidian knife, and they had a really, just, tried and true way to do it. They’d stab it in in a certain place close, and then they’d push down on the sternum as they ripped up on the rib cage. So they’d just make a place where they could just rip it right out.
Lex Fridman
With their hand?
With their hand?
Ed Barnhart
Yeah, with their hand. But they were really just surgical about it. They’d use a thick obsidian knife where they could just break the ribs right along the sternum and then push the sternum down, pull up and just [inaudible 02:27:00].
Yeah, with their hand. But they were really just surgical about it. They’d use a thick obsidian knife where they could just break the ribs right along the sternum and then push the sternum down, pull up and just [inaudible 02:27:00].
Lex Fridman
While the person was alive?
While the person was alive?
Ed Barnhart
Yep. While the person was alive. And the Aztecs had this idea, there was a horrible drought that went on that almost ruined the entire valley, and they came to this conclusion that it’s because we haven’t been killing enough people. We’ve got to bump this up. And then when they did and they decided, they really took it out on the Tlaxcallans, it rained again. So it was proof positive that they should just keep doing that. And they ate people as well. They really did.
Yep. While the person was alive. And the Aztecs had this idea, there was a horrible drought that went on that almost ruined the entire valley, and they came to this conclusion that it’s because we haven’t been killing enough people. We’ve got to bump this up. And then when they did and they decided, they really took it out on the Tlaxcallans, it rained again. So it was proof positive that they should just keep doing that. And they ate people as well. They really did.
Lex Fridman
As part of the sacrifice or?
As part of the sacrifice or?
Ed Barnhart
After the sacrifice, then they would eat them. And this was part of the drought and the famine thing that started, but then it was just kind of the thing to do when Cortes got there, they were still having certain special feasts that involved humans and it really upset the Spanish that they would be tricked into eating human. Like, “Hey, you’re liking dinner? That was a human.”
After the sacrifice, then they would eat them. And this was part of the drought and the famine thing that started, but then it was just kind of the thing to do when Cortes got there, they were still having certain special feasts that involved humans and it really upset the Spanish that they would be tricked into eating human. Like, “Hey, you’re liking dinner? That was a human.”
Lex Fridman
So the idea, was it actually having a taste for human flesh or is it just these kinds of ideas of if you eat a person’s heart that you can get their spirit and their strength?
So the idea, was it actually having a taste for human flesh or is it just these kinds of ideas of if you eat a person’s heart that you can get their spirit and their strength?
Ed Barnhart
In the case of the Aztecs, it seemed like they just liked it. This guy, Sahagun, who was a very responsible chronicler, that was pretty specific, that there was a distribution thing. The elites got butts. The butts were the best part, so the butt cheeks, those are the best parts to eat. And then it went down the chain until some people just got fingers and toes.
In the case of the Aztecs, it seemed like they just liked it. This guy, Sahagun, who was a very responsible chronicler, that was pretty specific, that there was a distribution thing. The elites got butts. The butts were the best part, so the butt cheeks, those are the best parts to eat. And then it went down the chain until some people just got fingers and toes.
Lex Fridman
Literally bought taste for the Aztec. Boy. All right.
Literally bought taste for the Aztec. Boy. All right.
Ed Barnhart
They really did. They really did. In fact, that’s what caused the, have you heard of the Noche Triste? The sad night? The night that the Aztecs really go nuts on the Spanish and kick them out. It’s all triggered by this one guy, Pedro de Alvarado, who’s left in charge by Cortes. As Cortes goes to the coast and tries to talk to the New Force, talk him into being for him, which he does.
They really did. They really did. In fact, that’s what caused the, have you heard of the Noche Triste? The sad night? The night that the Aztecs really go nuts on the Spanish and kick them out. It’s all triggered by this one guy, Pedro de Alvarado, who’s left in charge by Cortes. As Cortes goes to the coast and tries to talk to the New Force, talk him into being for him, which he does.
But Pedro Alvarado is left back in town in charge and they’re doing another one of these huge Aztec buffets and parties to honor them. And it happens. The guy says, “Hey, do you like dinner?” Like, oh yeah, it’s a nice dinner. “Well, it’s humans. You’re eating humans. See, I told you they were good.” And Alvarado just freaks out and he has the guards close the doors and he murders everyone in the party. Women, children, nobody has weapons. He just murders everyone.
And that’s what spazzes the Aztecs out to eventually murder Montezuma who was their captive and then try to murder all of them. And it was all Pedro Alvarado’s fault for freaking out about eating humans.
Lex Fridman
Just a little practical joke.
Just a little practical joke.
Ed Barnhart
Yeah. It was just, they thought it was funny. He did not.
Yeah. It was just, they thought it was funny. He did not.
Lex Fridman
That’s fascinating. I didn’t realize. So I kind of assume that some level of cannibalism would have to do with eating the heart to gain the spirit of the person or something like this, but.
That’s fascinating. I didn’t realize. So I kind of assume that some level of cannibalism would have to do with eating the heart to gain the spirit of the person or something like this, but.
Ed Barnhart
In certain deer hunting rituals, things for sure. But the Aztecs, no, they just liked eating humans. It was part of the fear factor too. I mean, they could walk into a new town and be like, you guys could either send us a number of quetzal feathers every month or we could eat you.
In certain deer hunting rituals, things for sure. But the Aztecs, no, they just liked eating humans. It was part of the fear factor too. I mean, they could walk into a new town and be like, you guys could either send us a number of quetzal feathers every month or we could eat you.
Lex Fridman
So that’s psychological warfare and actual warfare. It worked and that’s how they spread quickly.
So that’s psychological warfare and actual warfare. It worked and that’s how they spread quickly.
Ed Barnhart
And they were just about to take over the Maya when the Spanish came and messed everything up, they had the Maya surrounded and they were about to take over the whole Yucatan.
And they were just about to take over the Maya when the Spanish came and messed everything up, they had the Maya surrounded and they were about to take over the whole Yucatan.
Inca Empire
Lex Fridman
So you think without the Spanish, there would be this Aztec empire that would last for a very long time.
So you think without the Spanish, there would be this Aztec empire that would last for a very long time.
Ed Barnhart
I think there would’ve been an Aztec empire. I think they would’ve finished dominating everybody, but they did it through hate and everybody hated the Aztecs.
I think there would’ve been an Aztec empire. I think they would’ve finished dominating everybody, but they did it through hate and everybody hated the Aztecs.
Lex Fridman
[inaudible 02:31:09].
[inaudible 02:31:09].
Ed Barnhart
So it wouldn’t have lasted forever. They were not ruling justly. They were ruling by force. And that can only go on so long before revolution happens. The Inca Empire, I think that would’ve gone on forever. Because they were really community oriented. Once the Inca took over, no one in the Inca Empire starved, they built architecture. Everyone was safe. It was the society that could have lasted a long time.
So it wouldn’t have lasted forever. They were not ruling justly. They were ruling by force. And that can only go on so long before revolution happens. The Inca Empire, I think that would’ve gone on forever. Because they were really community oriented. Once the Inca took over, no one in the Inca Empire starved, they built architecture. Everyone was safe. It was the society that could have lasted a long time.
Lex Fridman
What was the origin of the Inca Empire?
What was the origin of the Inca Empire?
Ed Barnhart
Well, it was bloody at first. Like most of them are, but once they started taking over, what they did is they Empire built. Everybody else had just raided their neighbors to get the resources, but everybody they raided, they turned them into the Inca Empire and they created this incredible Mit’a system where you took turns working and they created the road system so they could get groups of workers back and forth. So a town of let’s say 5,000 people, the Inca would roll up with an army of a hundred, 200,000 people and say, would you guys like to be part of the empire? Or would you like us to escort you to the edge of the empire?
Well, it was bloody at first. Like most of them are, but once they started taking over, what they did is they Empire built. Everybody else had just raided their neighbors to get the resources, but everybody they raided, they turned them into the Inca Empire and they created this incredible Mit’a system where you took turns working and they created the road system so they could get groups of workers back and forth. So a town of let’s say 5,000 people, the Inca would roll up with an army of a hundred, 200,000 people and say, would you guys like to be part of the empire? Or would you like us to escort you to the edge of the empire?
And if your mayor here agrees, then he can have a town. He can have a house in Cusco. But then the very next month, a big work crew would show up and they’d start building agricultural terraces and storage units. And every month with the agricultural excess, they would have big parties and everybody would eat. So people lived well in the Inca Empire. It was a rough beginning, but everybody who agreed to be part of it immediately had access to a whole bunch of resources and security they never had.
Lex Fridman
So they started in South America and Peru and Cusco. Cusco was the center of it.
So they started in South America and Peru and Cusco. Cusco was the center of it.
Ed Barnhart
Cusco in their language, Quechua, it means navel or belly button, and it’s up in the mountains, but there’s four quarters that they called their empire Tawantinsuyu, the land of four quarters. And the center of those four quarters was Cusco.
Cusco in their language, Quechua, it means navel or belly button, and it’s up in the mountains, but there’s four quarters that they called their empire Tawantinsuyu, the land of four quarters. And the center of those four quarters was Cusco.
Lex Fridman
It sprung to life in 1200 A.D.C.
It sprung to life in 1200 A.D.C.
Ed Barnhart
We backwards project what it was, but it was probably mid-twelve hundreds when the first Sapa Inca, the first ruler came in, but it was the, I think it’s the ninth one, [inaudible 02:33:45] Pachacuti who really started being an empire builder.
We backwards project what it was, but it was probably mid-twelve hundreds when the first Sapa Inca, the first ruler came in, but it was the, I think it’s the ninth one, [inaudible 02:33:45] Pachacuti who really started being an empire builder.
Lex Fridman
Part of that, what really defined the empire, as you said, roads, they build a massive road network.
Part of that, what really defined the empire, as you said, roads, they build a massive road network.
Ed Barnhart
Roads, and in the same way that the Roman strategy of building roads and infrastructure, and then every place they took over, they’d create certain key pieces of Roman architecture that kind of made that city Roman and they’d rename it something. The Inca did the same thing. They had certain signature Inca architecture that they would build in as the administrative part.
Roads, and in the same way that the Roman strategy of building roads and infrastructure, and then every place they took over, they’d create certain key pieces of Roman architecture that kind of made that city Roman and they’d rename it something. The Inca did the same thing. They had certain signature Inca architecture that they would build in as the administrative part.
They’d send the Khipukamayuq, the guys who would weave or knot the khipus as accountants, and they would go through and say what everybody did. Okay, you’re a good farmer. You’re going to farm. You are a good weaver. You’re going to weave. All the men here are going to take a turn at being part of the army. And then they sent independent Khipukamayuqs too. Every community had five or six that were not allowed to work with each other, and they all had to independently send their Khipus back to Cusco. And if there were accounting discrepancies that were called to Cusco to figure out who was lying about what.
Lex Fridman
So there’s a super sophisticated record-keeping system.
So there’s a super sophisticated record-keeping system.
Ed Barnhart
Yeah. And that was the Khipu and the Spanish recorded what they could and then burned them all.
Yeah. And that was the Khipu and the Spanish recorded what they could and then burned them all.
Lex Fridman
But that’s an interesting development for an empire because that allows you to really expand and have some kind of management, some level of control.
But that’s an interesting development for an empire because that allows you to really expand and have some kind of management, some level of control.
Ed Barnhart
They couldn’t, at the end, they were at least 10 million people and there was just no way to do that without some sort of sophisticated record-keeping system.
They couldn’t, at the end, they were at least 10 million people and there was just no way to do that without some sort of sophisticated record-keeping system.
Lex Fridman
If the Inca had to face Aztec, who wins?
If the Inca had to face Aztec, who wins?
Ed Barnhart
Inca.
Inca.
Lex Fridman
Inca.
Inca.
Ed Barnhart
I mean, the Aztecs were psychotic, but the Inca had just reserves for miles and they had that essential hearts and minds. There was only one thing that everybody got pissed off about when they joined the Inca Empire. For some reason, everything was owned communally except the llamas. The llamas were the kings. And so that was the one thing that some of them would stay in town just to be work llamas, but you don’t own your llama anymore. And people are really attached to their llamas. To this day they are like family members. So it’d be like everybody walked in and said, everybody’s family dog is now mine. [inaudible 02:36:23] really upset people on an emotional level.
I mean, the Aztecs were psychotic, but the Inca had just reserves for miles and they had that essential hearts and minds. There was only one thing that everybody got pissed off about when they joined the Inca Empire. For some reason, everything was owned communally except the llamas. The llamas were the kings. And so that was the one thing that some of them would stay in town just to be work llamas, but you don’t own your llama anymore. And people are really attached to their llamas. To this day they are like family members. So it’d be like everybody walked in and said, everybody’s family dog is now mine. [inaudible 02:36:23] really upset people on an emotional level.
Lex Fridman
Well, I mean, so llamas got domesticated at some point, probably. I don’t even know when, but early on.
Well, I mean, so llamas got domesticated at some point, probably. I don’t even know when, but early on.
Ed Barnhart
We have rock art that progresses to make it seem like a progression from people depicted hunting them to people depicted standing next to pregnant ones. So it was still in that archaic period at least that they became friends.
We have rock art that progresses to make it seem like a progression from people depicted hunting them to people depicted standing next to pregnant ones. So it was still in that archaic period at least that they became friends.
Lex Fridman
But if you roll in and you own them, that’s?
But if you roll in and you own them, that’s?
Ed Barnhart
Yeah, that pissed everybody off. For some reason, the Inca owned everybody’s llama instantly, and he would take anything he wanted. A lot of them would just get carted away that day, just sent to Cusco. And they’d also take their mummies. That was a weird thing. Everybody mourns, they’re dead, but the Inca just ceased to accept it. They would just, the mummies were still there. Okay, he’s dead, but look, he’s still got clothes. He’s at the party. Let’s put a beer in front of him. They just kept people as mummies. And so the ancestral mummies of every town, part of being absorbed into the empire was, okay, your most important mummies are now going to have their own beautiful house in Cusco, but they would physically bring those mummies to Cusco to make now Cusco the spiritual heart of their belief system.
Yeah, that pissed everybody off. For some reason, the Inca owned everybody’s llama instantly, and he would take anything he wanted. A lot of them would just get carted away that day, just sent to Cusco. And they’d also take their mummies. That was a weird thing. Everybody mourns, they’re dead, but the Inca just ceased to accept it. They would just, the mummies were still there. Okay, he’s dead, but look, he’s still got clothes. He’s at the party. Let’s put a beer in front of him. They just kept people as mummies. And so the ancestral mummies of every town, part of being absorbed into the empire was, okay, your most important mummies are now going to have their own beautiful house in Cusco, but they would physically bring those mummies to Cusco to make now Cusco the spiritual heart of their belief system.
Lex Fridman
I mean, I could see how that would piss people off, but it’s also a pretty powerful way to say, the ancestors that you idolize, that you respect are now in the capitol.
I mean, I could see how that would piss people off, but it’s also a pretty powerful way to say, the ancestors that you idolize, that you respect are now in the capitol.
Ed Barnhart
They’ve been elevated. We didn’t steal them. We have given them a new place of honor, and you’re welcome to come visit them all the time. And they did. They have these festivals where everyone from all corners of the Inca world would come to Cusco.
They’ve been elevated. We didn’t steal them. We have given them a new place of honor, and you’re welcome to come visit them all the time. And they did. They have these festivals where everyone from all corners of the Inca world would come to Cusco.
Lex Fridman
And which of the civilizations mummified people?
And which of the civilizations mummified people?
Ed Barnhart
The Incas for sure mummified people and even did some of that kind of Egyptian- esque taking out of organs and preparing the body. They put straw inside the cavity and mummify them, but the Maya didn’t do it at all. The Maya, in fact, on purpose would flood tombs with water so that the skin would float off the skeletons faster, and then they’d get back in there. It was jungly. So I think the bugs probably had part of it too. But then they would get back in there to get the bones. They’d open it back up and take the bones out and paint them with red Cinnabar, the one that I was in, in Copan, we had evidence that they had gone in there four different times, and the last couple times they only took the skull out and repainted it and then put it back in articulated on the skeleton. But they didn’t mummify. They on purpose would grossly float the bodies so they could get the skin off faster and get to the bones.
The Incas for sure mummified people and even did some of that kind of Egyptian- esque taking out of organs and preparing the body. They put straw inside the cavity and mummify them, but the Maya didn’t do it at all. The Maya, in fact, on purpose would flood tombs with water so that the skin would float off the skeletons faster, and then they’d get back in there. It was jungly. So I think the bugs probably had part of it too. But then they would get back in there to get the bones. They’d open it back up and take the bones out and paint them with red Cinnabar, the one that I was in, in Copan, we had evidence that they had gone in there four different times, and the last couple times they only took the skull out and repainted it and then put it back in articulated on the skeleton. But they didn’t mummify. They on purpose would grossly float the bodies so they could get the skin off faster and get to the bones.
Lex Fridman
But would they keep the bones?
But would they keep the bones?
Ed Barnhart
Yeah, they’d keep the bones and they’d pull the bones out occasionally and do rituals to them or commune with them and then put them back in.
Yeah, they’d keep the bones and they’d pull the bones out occasionally and do rituals to them or commune with them and then put them back in.
Lex Fridman
So there’s still a deep connection to the ancestors through the physical manifestation of the ancestors then, whether mummified or bone.
So there’s still a deep connection to the ancestors through the physical manifestation of the ancestors then, whether mummified or bone.
Ed Barnhart
And to this day, if you do an excavation here in the United States, Native American people don’t like it. They don’t like their graves, which is fine enough. I wouldn’t want somebody digging up my grandma either. But the Maya, they love it.
And to this day, if you do an excavation here in the United States, Native American people don’t like it. They don’t like their graves, which is fine enough. I wouldn’t want somebody digging up my grandma either. But the Maya, they love it.
Lex Fridman
They love it.
They love it.
Ed Barnhart
And every Maya person, if we find a grave, they’re like, yeah, look at that. Bones, cool. Can I touch? They’re not spooked about it at all. They think it’s exciting. I, one time, helped out a physical anthropologist in town in Copan to get a osteology collection together of various animals. So if we got bones from an excavation, we could see what kind of animal it was based on the collection. And this family said, well, our family dog died last year and we buried him in the backyard. You could go dig him up. And so we were like, okay, yeah, I mean, we do need a dog.
And every Maya person, if we find a grave, they’re like, yeah, look at that. Bones, cool. Can I touch? They’re not spooked about it at all. They think it’s exciting. I, one time, helped out a physical anthropologist in town in Copan to get a osteology collection together of various animals. So if we got bones from an excavation, we could see what kind of animal it was based on the collection. And this family said, well, our family dog died last year and we buried him in the backyard. You could go dig him up. And so we were like, okay, yeah, I mean, we do need a dog.
We’ll go dig up your dog. And they were like, but the kids really want to help you. So their kids came out and this was like their puppy, and it died less than a year ago. When we got to it, one of them just grabbed up a bone and he was like, [inaudible 02:40:59] like little bitty bones. Yay. What a weird attitude. That’s your dead dog there. But they have a different relationship with the dead.
Lex Fridman
In some sense that’s a beautiful attitude, right?
In some sense that’s a beautiful attitude, right?
Ed Barnhart
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Why pretend like we’re not mortal and this is just the process of it. And as you say it now, it kind of will be cool.
Why pretend like we’re not mortal and this is just the process of it. And as you say it now, it kind of will be cool.
Ed Barnhart
That’s what Day of the Dead is all about. And I love Day of the Dead. Halloween’s this creepy thing where they’re all monsters, but Day of the Dead is this beautiful time where we remember our ancestors. I convinced my kids after the movie Coco came out. Now we have an altar with all of our great-grandparents on the altar, and we talk about who they were and how they lived, and we put things on the altar that mattered in their life, and we remember them on that day and it turned something that was a weird eat too much candy and wear a monster mask thing into something beautiful where we discuss where we came from.
That’s what Day of the Dead is all about. And I love Day of the Dead. Halloween’s this creepy thing where they’re all monsters, but Day of the Dead is this beautiful time where we remember our ancestors. I convinced my kids after the movie Coco came out. Now we have an altar with all of our great-grandparents on the altar, and we talk about who they were and how they lived, and we put things on the altar that mattered in their life, and we remember them on that day and it turned something that was a weird eat too much candy and wear a monster mask thing into something beautiful where we discuss where we came from.
Lex Fridman
I have to ask about the giant stones the Inca has been able to somehow move and fit together perfectly. Do you understand? Is it understood how they were able to do that so well?
I have to ask about the giant stones the Inca has been able to somehow move and fit together perfectly. Do you understand? Is it understood how they were able to do that so well?
Ed Barnhart
No. The moving of it, I think that we have reasonable theories. There are ways to pivot large weights. There’s a great guy named Wally Wallington, a retired contractor here in the US who built Stonehenge in his backyard in Minnesota, single-handedly showing how you can move big stones. So I think Wally’s already figured out how to move them. It’s the perfectly fit so carefully fit together that you couldn’t even put a dime in between the stones. That’s the one that I think still has people baffled. The common archeological wisdom that you’d find out of a textbook is that they just kept pecking away at it with hammer stones and setting them and resetting them until they were perfect, which has to be bullshit, that there is no way that they just were that meticulous. I mean, everybody’s got a hammerstone. I personally think it’s acids.
No. The moving of it, I think that we have reasonable theories. There are ways to pivot large weights. There’s a great guy named Wally Wallington, a retired contractor here in the US who built Stonehenge in his backyard in Minnesota, single-handedly showing how you can move big stones. So I think Wally’s already figured out how to move them. It’s the perfectly fit so carefully fit together that you couldn’t even put a dime in between the stones. That’s the one that I think still has people baffled. The common archeological wisdom that you’d find out of a textbook is that they just kept pecking away at it with hammer stones and setting them and resetting them until they were perfect, which has to be bullshit, that there is no way that they just were that meticulous. I mean, everybody’s got a hammerstone. I personally think it’s acids.
I think they melted them together. And there are weird places when you really look at closely to these stones, which I’ve done a number of times. I’m going back next month to Machu Picchu and especially Cusco. I walk around in the alleys where these 500 to a thousand-year-old walls are still there. And I see things like the crystals in the andesite are almost stitched together along the seams. The andesite around it is melted and the crystals haven’t. And there are other places where there are weird wipes on the wall. It’s just melted. Like somebody took a rag and wiped it while it was soft. Lots of talk about soft stones turning hard too. I haven’t been able to prove it. This is one of these end of my archeological career chapters. I’m either going to prove myself wrong or prove it, but I think they used acids. My dad’s a chemist and he told me a long time ago that there’s no way, there’s no naturally occurring acids. But my current theory, actually, I got the idea initially from the show Breaking Bad.
I don’t know if you ever saw that show, but there’s a point in which they’re trying to dissolve a body and they’re using hydrofluoric acid and it goes right through the ceiling. That hydrofluoric acid is so fascinating. It won’t go through plastic, and you can also bring it in inert parts and then combine it. The Inca made tons of jewelry out of fluorite. Fluorite is big in the Andes, and they also mined a lot of things for gold and silver. And the byproduct of that mining is sulfuric acid.
You put sulfuric acid and fluorite together and it’s hydrofluoric acid, and that will burn through andesite or anything. And if you learned how to do it judiciously and you didn’t care whether servants lost an arm or two, then you could actually use them to fuse these together. And I think they’re fused together. I asked the city of Cusco if I could take some core samples, and they said, go away, gringo. Don’t touch our walls. So actually this next time I’m going to go try to talk to the more Quechua authorities in a place called Ollantaytambo and maybe I can convince them, but right now, they just think I’m a weird-ass gringo who wants to put holes in their walls.
Lex Fridman
That’s a fascinating theory. And so how could you get to the bottom of that? So getting core samples to see if there’s some kind of trace.
That’s a fascinating theory. And so how could you get to the bottom of that? So getting core samples to see if there’s some kind of trace.
Ed Barnhart
Chemists I’m working with say that if there was hydrofluoric acid in between these, that a core sample right along the seam, they can separate out the elements in there and detect whether there was actually elements of hydrofluoric acid. I wanted to go straight to burning rocks, but they were like, no, I mean we already know that’s true. I mean, yeah, we can burn some rocks, but it would happen. And that’s just chemistry. We got to prove that it would happen in the walls. So go get us samples. And that was before COVID and all sorts. You know how it is, you probably are the same guy where you’ve got a thousand ideas and the ones that are fruitful, you run with and the other ones you’ll get back to.
Chemists I’m working with say that if there was hydrofluoric acid in between these, that a core sample right along the seam, they can separate out the elements in there and detect whether there was actually elements of hydrofluoric acid. I wanted to go straight to burning rocks, but they were like, no, I mean we already know that’s true. I mean, yeah, we can burn some rocks, but it would happen. And that’s just chemistry. We got to prove that it would happen in the walls. So go get us samples. And that was before COVID and all sorts. You know how it is, you probably are the same guy where you’ve got a thousand ideas and the ones that are fruitful, you run with and the other ones you’ll get back to.
Lex Fridman
That’d be fascinating if true, and I hope you do show that it’s true or follow, either one.
That’d be fascinating if true, and I hope you do show that it’s true or follow, either one.
Ed Barnhart
I’ll try to disprove it.
I’ll try to disprove it.
Lex Fridman
Disprove it. Yeah. I wonder if we discount how much amazing stuff a collection of humans can do, because it just feels like if a large number of humans are just working a little bit chipping away at stuff. At scale, they can do miraculous things. So the question is, how can a large number of humans be motivated to do a thing? When we think about Stonehenge, some very challenging architectural construction, we don’t think about a large number of humans working together.
Disprove it. Yeah. I wonder if we discount how much amazing stuff a collection of humans can do, because it just feels like if a large number of humans are just working a little bit chipping away at stuff. At scale, they can do miraculous things. So the question is, how can a large number of humans be motivated to do a thing? When we think about Stonehenge, some very challenging architectural construction, we don’t think about a large number of humans working together.
Ed Barnhart
Well, that large number of humans are motivated to work together by a small number of administrators who are dynamic and convincing in some way or another.
Well, that large number of humans are motivated to work together by a small number of administrators who are dynamic and convincing in some way or another.
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Ed Barnhart
One of my favorite quotes is, and I’m probably going to misquote it here, but I think it’s Margaret Mead who said, never underestimate the power of small groups working together. And the truth is that those are the only people that have ever changed the world. That small dedicated groups of people are what changed the world, and they inspire big groups of people to embrace their vision.
One of my favorite quotes is, and I’m probably going to misquote it here, but I think it’s Margaret Mead who said, never underestimate the power of small groups working together. And the truth is that those are the only people that have ever changed the world. That small dedicated groups of people are what changed the world, and they inspire big groups of people to embrace their vision.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I think we sometimes underestimate how much humans can do across time and across scale.
Yeah, I think we sometimes underestimate how much humans can do across time and across scale.
Ed Barnhart
And we are way less capable than we used to be. I mean, the average human had all sorts of skills that at least I personally do not. I’m wearing a shirt, but I can’t make a shirt. That’s for somebody else to do.
And we are way less capable than we used to be. I mean, the average human had all sorts of skills that at least I personally do not. I’m wearing a shirt, but I can’t make a shirt. That’s for somebody else to do.
Early humans in North America
Lex Fridman
You’ve also lectured, which I really enjoyed, about North America. And also helped teach me that there was a lot more complex societies going on here for a long period of time. So maybe can we start at the beginning? Who were the early humans in North America?
You’ve also lectured, which I really enjoyed, about North America. And also helped teach me that there was a lot more complex societies going on here for a long period of time. So maybe can we start at the beginning? Who were the early humans in North America?
Ed Barnhart
Well, we go through that paleo Indian and archaic period for thousands of years. As we started this conversation, probably 30,000 years is a conservative now, humans first entered the Americas, but the first cultures we get here are mound-builders around the Mississippi and to the east, and then also a totally separate group in what we call the American Southwest now, the four Corners, who will develop into mostly the people we call the Pueblo people who are still there today, like Zuni and Hopi people.
Well, we go through that paleo Indian and archaic period for thousands of years. As we started this conversation, probably 30,000 years is a conservative now, humans first entered the Americas, but the first cultures we get here are mound-builders around the Mississippi and to the east, and then also a totally separate group in what we call the American Southwest now, the four Corners, who will develop into mostly the people we call the Pueblo people who are still there today, like Zuni and Hopi people.
So we’ve got these two clusters. The very first major community in North America is in the most unlikely place. It’s in Northern Louisiana. People think I’m crazy when I say this, but there is a pyramid in Northern Louisiana, a big one at a site called Poverty Point that is 3,500 years old. So it’s the same age as the pyramids in Egypt, and it is a giant thing just poking out of the bayous of Louisiana. And people don’t believe me when I say it, but it’s there.
Lex Fridman
The Mound Builders, what was that society like in comparison to everything else we’ve been talking about in Mesoamerica [inaudible 02:50:41].
The Mound Builders, what was that society like in comparison to everything else we’ve been talking about in Mesoamerica [inaudible 02:50:41].
Ed Barnhart
They evolved over thousands of years. We call them Mound Builders. This is something I object to. I think we should have a better… We do. The last version of them, we call them Mississippians now. But generally speaking, we call all these guys Mound Builders, but what they built were pyramids. They look like mounds now, and they didn’t build them out of stone. That’s kind of our just inherent western bias. Something that’s built out of stone is sophisticated, and something that’s built out of dirt is rudimentary.
They evolved over thousands of years. We call them Mound Builders. This is something I object to. I think we should have a better… We do. The last version of them, we call them Mississippians now. But generally speaking, we call all these guys Mound Builders, but what they built were pyramids. They look like mounds now, and they didn’t build them out of stone. That’s kind of our just inherent western bias. Something that’s built out of stone is sophisticated, and something that’s built out of dirt is rudimentary.
But in their full living form, they did have cores of dirt, but then they also had kind of clay caps. So they had terraces. They had whole complexes of buildings up on top. There were kings that lived up there. There’s the biggest of the Mississippian cities is called Cahokia, and it’s right outside of St. Louis.
And it was huge. It had a population of 20,000 people and pyramids all over the place, a huge palisade wall around it. It was absolutely gigantic, a thriving metropolis. And we in America have kind of a collective amnesia. We never hear about these massive civilizations. Cahokia was the big first city, but then it spread from the Mississippi all the way to the Atlantic. There were hundreds and hundreds of these big cities that had five to 10,000 people each.
Lex Fridman
Were they their own thing or was there some kind of thread connecting all of them.
Were they their own thing or was there some kind of thread connecting all of them.
Ed Barnhart
They had a unified religion and culture. They were, again, not an empire. So they were warring city-states. There were kind of territories that were owned by big kings, and then the cities around them were kind of the subsidiary lords and kings. And then one kingdom could either ally with a neighbor or have a fight. So they were kind of countries, I think for, yeah, we could safely say they were different countries within this patchwork that was Eastern United States. And it’s so weird that we don’t know this because it was clearly documented by the Spanish.
They had a unified religion and culture. They were, again, not an empire. So they were warring city-states. There were kind of territories that were owned by big kings, and then the cities around them were kind of the subsidiary lords and kings. And then one kingdom could either ally with a neighbor or have a fight. So they were kind of countries, I think for, yeah, we could safely say they were different countries within this patchwork that was Eastern United States. And it’s so weird that we don’t know this because it was clearly documented by the Spanish.
I’m not talking about just archeology. We find him in archeology now. But Hernando de Soto landed in Florida and went for three years from, he went up into the Carolinas and over down into Alabama and Louisiana, and he’s the first one to see the Mississippi up there. But for three years he went through city after city after city, unfortunately decimating them, eating all their corn, giving them diseases. But the documentation’s clearly there. He met collectively, millions of people in a very sophisticated and uniform civilization.
Lex Fridman
So it’s disease and stealing of resources. But was there explicit murdering going on?
So it’s disease and stealing of resources. But was there explicit murdering going on?
Ed Barnhart
Unfortunately, yeah. He was a murderer and a psycho and a liar. He snowed them that he was some kind of deity. Actually learned a trick from the Inca who he was with Pizarro in his first run and went back to Spain, was rich, had a wife, a castle. Then he got bored and he decided to have a reign of terror on Northern America for three years. But he had people burned at the stake. He had his dogs rip them apart. He was very, very brutal. He ruled that area through fear and had absolutely no respect for anybody. He made promises and broke them all the time. He was really a brutal man.
Unfortunately, yeah. He was a murderer and a psycho and a liar. He snowed them that he was some kind of deity. Actually learned a trick from the Inca who he was with Pizarro in his first run and went back to Spain, was rich, had a wife, a castle. Then he got bored and he decided to have a reign of terror on Northern America for three years. But he had people burned at the stake. He had his dogs rip them apart. He was very, very brutal. He ruled that area through fear and had absolutely no respect for anybody. He made promises and broke them all the time. He was really a brutal man.
Columbus
Lex Fridman
So this whole period when Christopher Columbus came, how did that change everything?
So this whole period when Christopher Columbus came, how did that change everything?
Ed Barnhart
Well, there’s a great anthropological body of literature.
Well, there’s a great anthropological body of literature.
Ed Barnhart
Anthropological body of literature. It’s called the Columbian Exchange based on Columbus. But it’s all this trade back and forth between the new world and the old world. And the old world got just wonderful stuff. All of a sudden their diet didn’t suck. All these vegetables came in. The new world got herd animals. It got pigs and cows and goats that it didn’t have, but it also got 13 infectious diseases. Europe had had wave after wave and kind of had herd immunity on a lot of things, but it didn’t actually go away. It just couldn’t spread like a wildfire through the community. So when they arrived to the Americas, all of a sudden these just a pile of horrible diseases hit people. I think in the first 20, 30 years, there were people who had contracted multiple deadly diseases at once and died of them.
Anthropological body of literature. It’s called the Columbian Exchange based on Columbus. But it’s all this trade back and forth between the new world and the old world. And the old world got just wonderful stuff. All of a sudden their diet didn’t suck. All these vegetables came in. The new world got herd animals. It got pigs and cows and goats that it didn’t have, but it also got 13 infectious diseases. Europe had had wave after wave and kind of had herd immunity on a lot of things, but it didn’t actually go away. It just couldn’t spread like a wildfire through the community. So when they arrived to the Americas, all of a sudden these just a pile of horrible diseases hit people. I think in the first 20, 30 years, there were people who had contracted multiple deadly diseases at once and died of them.
But the numbers, it’s a shameful part of history, and it wasn’t something that Europe perpetrated on them. Medical science at that time was still the four humors theory, that people were made of yellow bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm. And we did things like, well, you’ve got to bleed him. He’ll feel better then. So we had no idea what an infectious disease was, but the reality was that this horde of diseases hit everyone. And the numbers are now saying in the first 50 years that 90% of everybody was dead, and that the number of people has increased as well as far as our estimates. We’re thinking it’s somewhere around 150 million people and 90% of them died. And with them, all their knowledge. Just, I mean, imagine the moment where who dies when things get bad? It’s the young and the old. So all the knowledge keepers die suddenly.
The children die. This next generation that’s half taught and now completely demoralized thinking that this is a spiritual attack, that their gods hate them, that the only way out of it is to accept this new Christianity. But they don’t want to have to bring kids into this world where everybody’s dying. And even if they do, they can’t teach them what the old people were going to teach them because the old people are gone and didn’t finish the transmission. So in a single terrible moment in human history, the generation loses all their knowledge. So a lot of the things these people knew just blipped out.
Lex Fridman
But with that also, just the wisdom of the entire civilizations-
But with that also, just the wisdom of the entire civilizations-
Ed Barnhart
So much of-
So much of-
Lex Fridman
… fades away.
… fades away.
Ed Barnhart
… what they knew was just lost at that moment. We have the Maya who had those hieroglyphs and that we’ve learned a lot from that.
… what they knew was just lost at that moment. We have the Maya who had those hieroglyphs and that we’ve learned a lot from that.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. But not a significant integration of that wisdom into. So it wasn’t when the Europeans came, it wasn’t like the cultures were integrated. It was a story of domination. Of erasure, essentially.
Yeah. But not a significant integration of that wisdom into. So it wasn’t when the Europeans came, it wasn’t like the cultures were integrated. It was a story of domination. Of erasure, essentially.
Ed Barnhart
In North America, there’s a new term in the literature that I like. We call it the Mississippian Shatter zone. That Mississippian civilization was millions of people, but they got spread out all over the place over the next centuries. And now we have this Shatter zone where we have ruins, and the people that were actually from those ruins are somewhere else on a reservation far away. And I’m just about to talk to a Cherokee man who listened to some of the things I had to say and says, “All those Ho-Chunk things you were saying from that Ho-Chunk culture, my grandparents talk about this sort of thing too. Can I talk to you by phone and tell you about these things?” So we’ve got this Shatter zone where we’re going to try to put the puzzle back together, especially in terms of Mississippian religion. I really think we’re making headway in this generation, and it’s exciting to be part of piecing this old religion and its mythology back together.
In North America, there’s a new term in the literature that I like. We call it the Mississippian Shatter zone. That Mississippian civilization was millions of people, but they got spread out all over the place over the next centuries. And now we have this Shatter zone where we have ruins, and the people that were actually from those ruins are somewhere else on a reservation far away. And I’m just about to talk to a Cherokee man who listened to some of the things I had to say and says, “All those Ho-Chunk things you were saying from that Ho-Chunk culture, my grandparents talk about this sort of thing too. Can I talk to you by phone and tell you about these things?” So we’ve got this Shatter zone where we’re going to try to put the puzzle back together, especially in terms of Mississippian religion. I really think we’re making headway in this generation, and it’s exciting to be part of piecing this old religion and its mythology back together.
Vikings
Lex Fridman
Just as since a lot of people refer to Christopher Columbus as the person who discovered America, I read that the Vikings reached North America much earlier in 1000 C.E. And why do you think they didn’t expand and colonize?
Just as since a lot of people refer to Christopher Columbus as the person who discovered America, I read that the Vikings reached North America much earlier in 1000 C.E. And why do you think they didn’t expand and colonize?
Ed Barnhart
Because they got their ass kicked.
Because they got their ass kicked.
Lex Fridman
Okay. Simple.
Okay. Simple.
Ed Barnhart
It’s the truth. It is absolutely true that the Vikings were here. There’s a great site in Nova Scotia called L’Anse aux Meadows, which definitely has what’s left of a Viking colony. It was Leif Eric and his father Eric the Red, who they got kind of kicked out of Europe because they apparently couldn’t stop murdering people. And so they went to Greenland and then kind of island hopped over to Canada. But I think the culture that was in that area was named the Dorset, but they would have nothing to do with the Vikings.
It’s the truth. It is absolutely true that the Vikings were here. There’s a great site in Nova Scotia called L’Anse aux Meadows, which definitely has what’s left of a Viking colony. It was Leif Eric and his father Eric the Red, who they got kind of kicked out of Europe because they apparently couldn’t stop murdering people. And so they went to Greenland and then kind of island hopped over to Canada. But I think the culture that was in that area was named the Dorset, but they would have nothing to do with the Vikings.
They attacked the Viking settlement every day and did not give them an inch until they decided it was just worthless and they left it. The Vikings attacked Ireland, and they just found a bunch of monasteries full of gold with a bunch of guys going, “We’re men of God, we don’t fight.” And the Vikings were like, “This is great. That’s great. This will be easy, then. We’ll just loot all these Easter eggs.” But the Native Americans in Canada were not having it. They kicked their ass. In fact, Leif Erickson’s brother Thor died there. The natives killed him. He was supposed to be in charge of expanding the settlement, but they just killed him.
Lex Fridman
So a lot of the Native American cultures were also, I mean, they’re sophisticated, warring cultures also.
So a lot of the Native American cultures were also, I mean, they’re sophisticated, warring cultures also.
Ed Barnhart
Yes, they fought. Especially the Mississippians. Boy, they were tough. And so were the five nations. The Mohawk, the Huron, the ones that kicked the Vikings’ ass up there, they were probably Algonquin speakers. But they were connected just above the Great Lakes, but they were all very tough people.
Yes, they fought. Especially the Mississippians. Boy, they were tough. And so were the five nations. The Mohawk, the Huron, the ones that kicked the Vikings’ ass up there, they were probably Algonquin speakers. But they were connected just above the Great Lakes, but they were all very tough people.
Lex Fridman
When you think about the Spaniards and the Portuguese and the over a hundred million people that were killed, do you see that as a tragedy of history or is it just the way of history?
When you think about the Spaniards and the Portuguese and the over a hundred million people that were killed, do you see that as a tragedy of history or is it just the way of history?
Ed Barnhart
I think that the epidemics, I consider it a tragedy. That did not have to happen, and that was not a fair fight. Nobody knew what to do about it. There was just a tragic, perfect storm of events. I think that the Spanish and the Portuguese get unfairly maligned in what’s been called the Black Legend, that they just marched into America and murdered everyone. That’s not the fact. It was the diseases that murdered everyone.
I think that the epidemics, I consider it a tragedy. That did not have to happen, and that was not a fair fight. Nobody knew what to do about it. There was just a tragic, perfect storm of events. I think that the Spanish and the Portuguese get unfairly maligned in what’s been called the Black Legend, that they just marched into America and murdered everyone. That’s not the fact. It was the diseases that murdered everyone.
In fact, there was a really poignant story I read of a Spanish priest in the Amazon, in the Brazilian northern part of the Amazon where he made this utopian community and he was bringing people in that were getting sick, and he wrote, “I’m baptizing everyone. I have baptized 10,000 people a day, and yet God’s still killing them. Why is he doing this to them? They’re doing everything that I ask them to do. They are submitting to the will of God.” But this guy doesn’t realize that the same bowl of holy water that he’s baptizing them in, he’s just wiping the disease on everybody’s faces. He’s accelerating it when he doesn’t even realize. He thinks he’s saving them, but he’s actually killing them. That’s a tragedy. That’s not just like spoils go to the victor stuff. That’s just straight up tragedy.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah. But that one is hard to know what to do with, like Black Death. I mean infections, they don’t operate on normal human terms, right? They just go through entire populations. Back to wild ideas.
Yeah, yeah. But that one is hard to know what to do with, like Black Death. I mean infections, they don’t operate on normal human terms, right? They just go through entire populations. Back to wild ideas.
Aliens
Ed Barnhart
All right, just my style.
All right, just my style.
Lex Fridman
I mean we didn’t really talk about how life originated on Earth or how humans have evolved, and we did talk about that there could be just a lot of stuff in ancient history we haven’t even uncovered yet. Do you think it’s possible that other intelligent civilizations from outside of earth, aliens ever visited?
I mean we didn’t really talk about how life originated on Earth or how humans have evolved, and we did talk about that there could be just a lot of stuff in ancient history we haven’t even uncovered yet. Do you think it’s possible that other intelligent civilizations from outside of earth, aliens ever visited?
Ed Barnhart
You had me right until the ever visited thing. That one I’m not entirely sure about. I’m not sure whether we have any… We certainly have no archaeological proof that I would cite or contemplate as the evidence of such. But the guys that discovered DNA, Watson and Crick, Watson who actually habitually used hallucinogens to invigorate his thinking, he said that he thought that DNA on this planet was way too complex to have developed over the time period that it had at its disposal. And that his guess was that our DNA was somehow seeded from outside of our planet. And take that for what it is. But the guy who we respect on many other levels also said that. So that’s interesting. But in terms of aliens visiting us, I don’t know. It does smack of a kind of human hubris that we think we’re important enough for some advanced species to give a shit about us.
You had me right until the ever visited thing. That one I’m not entirely sure about. I’m not sure whether we have any… We certainly have no archaeological proof that I would cite or contemplate as the evidence of such. But the guys that discovered DNA, Watson and Crick, Watson who actually habitually used hallucinogens to invigorate his thinking, he said that he thought that DNA on this planet was way too complex to have developed over the time period that it had at its disposal. And that his guess was that our DNA was somehow seeded from outside of our planet. And take that for what it is. But the guy who we respect on many other levels also said that. So that’s interesting. But in terms of aliens visiting us, I don’t know. It does smack of a kind of human hubris that we think we’re important enough for some advanced species to give a shit about us.
Statistically speaking, the universe is way too big. We can’t be the only sentient beings. There’s got to be somebody else out there. Whether they care about us, that’s a question. I’ve been on Ancient Aliens a number of times. I show up and I’m an educator. I mean, refusing to be part of the conversation is an immediate fail in my book. But there was one time where they asked me at the end, “Do you have anything else do you want to say?” And I said, “Well, y’all’s premise is that aliens came down a long time ago and they gave humanity these wonderful gifts of science and medicine, engineering, all these things. Today we also have a lot of stories of the aliens coming down, but now all they’re doing is mutilating cows and sodomizing rednecks.” Like whatever we did, we super pissed them off apparently.”
Lex Fridman
The quality of the gifts has decreased rapidly. It’s an interesting thought you’ve mentioned. What archeologically would you have to see to be like, this might be an alien?
The quality of the gifts has decreased rapidly. It’s an interesting thought you’ve mentioned. What archeologically would you have to see to be like, this might be an alien?
Ed Barnhart
A technology that doesn’t belong there first and foremost. I mean, if we just run with the premise that somebody was capable of making a vehicle that could get them from somewhere far away to here, that was almost certainly mechanical. Now, I love the aliens thing where biomechanical is something that certainly could be and that would disintegrate. We wouldn’t see that at all, but I would expect some kind of technology that showed up out of the blue and changed things. That would be something. But I would think mechanical or a substance that’s not from here.
A technology that doesn’t belong there first and foremost. I mean, if we just run with the premise that somebody was capable of making a vehicle that could get them from somewhere far away to here, that was almost certainly mechanical. Now, I love the aliens thing where biomechanical is something that certainly could be and that would disintegrate. We wouldn’t see that at all, but I would expect some kind of technology that showed up out of the blue and changed things. That would be something. But I would think mechanical or a substance that’s not from here.
Lex Fridman
But of course we would only see the results of that mechanical. You mean literally a mechanical thing?
But of course we would only see the results of that mechanical. You mean literally a mechanical thing?
Ed Barnhart
Right. Some sort of thing like that. The typical thing people say is how did they move these giant stones? But just look at that on the face for a second. Aliens come from across the universe to meet humans, and the thing they tell them is how to move rocks? Are you fucking kidding me? I mean, give them antibiotics or a combustion engine or something. They came across the universe and they showed them how to move big rocks? I mean, that doesn’t make any sense. That just doesn’t make any sense.
Right. Some sort of thing like that. The typical thing people say is how did they move these giant stones? But just look at that on the face for a second. Aliens come from across the universe to meet humans, and the thing they tell them is how to move rocks? Are you fucking kidding me? I mean, give them antibiotics or a combustion engine or something. They came across the universe and they showed them how to move big rocks? I mean, that doesn’t make any sense. That just doesn’t make any sense.
Earth in 10,000 years
Lex Fridman
What do you think earth will look like 10,000 years from now?
What do you think earth will look like 10,000 years from now?
Ed Barnhart
That’s an interesting question. I think it will be a lot more automated or it’ll be a smoldering pile. There is a possibility we could end ourselves. There’s always that possibility that we’ve really opened Pandora’s box in some regards. I did listen to one of your podcast guests with what would happen in the case of nuclear war. That was chilling. Her opinion was certainly we would burn everything to a crisp within minutes apparently. So we have that capacity. That’s scary. That’s a possible future for us. But I’m an optimist. I’d like to think that guys like you are going to make friendly robots who make my job better.
That’s an interesting question. I think it will be a lot more automated or it’ll be a smoldering pile. There is a possibility we could end ourselves. There’s always that possibility that we’ve really opened Pandora’s box in some regards. I did listen to one of your podcast guests with what would happen in the case of nuclear war. That was chilling. Her opinion was certainly we would burn everything to a crisp within minutes apparently. So we have that capacity. That’s scary. That’s a possible future for us. But I’m an optimist. I’d like to think that guys like you are going to make friendly robots who make my job better.
Lex Fridman
But 1,000, 10,000 years is a long time. And technology is improving and becoming more advanced rapidly, and the rate of that improvement is increasing ever more so.
But 1,000, 10,000 years is a long time. And technology is improving and becoming more advanced rapidly, and the rate of that improvement is increasing ever more so.
Ed Barnhart
That’s the part that frightens me actually. I don’t know, does that frighten you?
That’s the part that frightens me actually. I don’t know, does that frighten you?
Lex Fridman
Yes. Terrifying.
Yes. Terrifying.
Ed Barnhart
I heard somebody say, I forget who it was. But systems of any kind, human systems, biological systems can be put on a graph that’s change over time and any graph that the change is way faster than the time and the line starts going straight up, that is a system in crisis. In almost any biological system that has that fast to change over that little of time, any other thing you’d describe it as a crisis. When you apply that chart to technologies change, it’s a crisis.
I heard somebody say, I forget who it was. But systems of any kind, human systems, biological systems can be put on a graph that’s change over time and any graph that the change is way faster than the time and the line starts going straight up, that is a system in crisis. In almost any biological system that has that fast to change over that little of time, any other thing you’d describe it as a crisis. When you apply that chart to technologies change, it’s a crisis.
Lex Fridman
From that perspective, absolutely. But I also have a faith in human ingenuity that we humans like to create a really difficult situation and then come up with ways to get out of that difficult situation. And in so doing innovate and create a lot of awesome stuff and sometimes cause a lot of suffering. But on the whole, on average, make a better world. But with nuclear weapons, the bad stuff might actually lead to the death of everybody.
From that perspective, absolutely. But I also have a faith in human ingenuity that we humans like to create a really difficult situation and then come up with ways to get out of that difficult situation. And in so doing innovate and create a lot of awesome stuff and sometimes cause a lot of suffering. But on the whole, on average, make a better world. But with nuclear weapons, the bad stuff might actually lead to the death of everybody.
Ed Barnhart
I guess there’s always that chance, but I am an optimist. I think you’re an optimist too. I think exactly as you just said. I think that the greatest capacity of humans is our ability to innovate. And we are never more innovative than when we’re under distress. I think that a lot of the developments of humans over the last thousands of years have been about we didn’t change the world when we were comfortable. It was when we were in crisis. Necessity is the mother of invention. But I think we’ll be all right. I think that this impending climate crisis is real and happening. I actually personally think that I’m going to answer a question that you didn’t even ask me.
I guess there’s always that chance, but I am an optimist. I think you’re an optimist too. I think exactly as you just said. I think that the greatest capacity of humans is our ability to innovate. And we are never more innovative than when we’re under distress. I think that a lot of the developments of humans over the last thousands of years have been about we didn’t change the world when we were comfortable. It was when we were in crisis. Necessity is the mother of invention. But I think we’ll be all right. I think that this impending climate crisis is real and happening. I actually personally think that I’m going to answer a question that you didn’t even ask me.
I think we’re wasting our time thinking that we can reverse this. We’re delusional. I’m all for electric cars and being good stewards of the environment, but we are wasting our time not technologically adapting to what’s about to happen. We’re spending too much time pretending, the average American thinks if we all just drive electric cars, we’ll be okay. That’s bullshit. That’s not going to happen. We need to start making technologies that desalinize water, a host of things that we need to use our technological capacity to accept it and adapt, instead of Pollyanna thinking we can make it go away.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, kind of accept that the world will change and a lot of big problems will arise and just develop technology that addresses them.
Yeah, kind of accept that the world will change and a lot of big problems will arise and just develop technology that addresses them.
Ed Barnhart
I think you have some guys that have their finger on the pulse there. We need to start thinking about how we’re going to survive this, not that we’re going to make it go away.
I think you have some guys that have their finger on the pulse there. We need to start thinking about how we’re going to survive this, not that we’re going to make it go away.
Lex Fridman
And not just survive, thrive. Again, we’re pretty innovative in that regard. But if some catastrophic thing happens or we just leave this planet, what do you think would be found by aforementioned alien civilizations when they visit? The anthropologists, the grad student anthropologists that visit Earth and study, how much of what we know, have, and love and think of as human civilization will be lost do you think?
And not just survive, thrive. Again, we’re pretty innovative in that regard. But if some catastrophic thing happens or we just leave this planet, what do you think would be found by aforementioned alien civilizations when they visit? The anthropologists, the grad student anthropologists that visit Earth and study, how much of what we know, have, and love and think of as human civilization will be lost do you think?
Ed Barnhart
Well, time moves on and things that are perishable perish. So you didn’t put a time element in there, but I would say that everything that can perish will, and whoever shows up here will be stuck with only the things that didn’t perish. So we’ll have buildings, plaques, but they won’t have any books. They won’t have any billboards. They’ll have the incomplete record I have. I one time did a talk in Sioux Falls and I said I drove in here and there was a big obelisk in front of the town. And everywhere I go, I see the names Lewis and Clark. And a thousand years from now, if I was an archeologist investigating this place, I would think that it was founded by the Egyptians and their kings were named Lewis and Clark. But the truth is, you know Lewis and Clark stayed one night here, but it’s just a big deal. So I would be so wrong about what I thought about your town based on what preserved.
Well, time moves on and things that are perishable perish. So you didn’t put a time element in there, but I would say that everything that can perish will, and whoever shows up here will be stuck with only the things that didn’t perish. So we’ll have buildings, plaques, but they won’t have any books. They won’t have any billboards. They’ll have the incomplete record I have. I one time did a talk in Sioux Falls and I said I drove in here and there was a big obelisk in front of the town. And everywhere I go, I see the names Lewis and Clark. And a thousand years from now, if I was an archeologist investigating this place, I would think that it was founded by the Egyptians and their kings were named Lewis and Clark. But the truth is, you know Lewis and Clark stayed one night here, but it’s just a big deal. So I would be so wrong about what I thought about your town based on what preserved.
Lex Fridman
It’s so beautiful as a thought experiment. What would archeologists be really wrong about? And what would they could possibly be right about?
It’s so beautiful as a thought experiment. What would archeologists be really wrong about? And what would they could possibly be right about?
Ed Barnhart
Washington D.C. was clearly made by a combination of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans because that’s what all the architecture is.
Washington D.C. was clearly made by a combination of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans because that’s what all the architecture is.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. And would they be able to reconstruct the important empires, the powerful empires, and the warring empires?
Yeah. And would they be able to reconstruct the important empires, the powerful empires, and the warring empires?
Ed Barnhart
For that matter, have me and my colleagues done that at all? I am almost certain that the Maya would just gut laugh at what I think I know what they were.
For that matter, have me and my colleagues done that at all? I am almost certain that the Maya would just gut laugh at what I think I know what they were.
Lex Fridman
I wonder, do you ever think about what we just as a human civilization are wrong about the most? Like mainstream archaeology. Just like a suspicion. What could we get completely wrong? Well, one way to get something wrong is totally lost civilization. An obviously gigantic civilization that was there along with the Maya or something like this in the 10,000 years ago.
I wonder, do you ever think about what we just as a human civilization are wrong about the most? Like mainstream archaeology. Just like a suspicion. What could we get completely wrong? Well, one way to get something wrong is totally lost civilization. An obviously gigantic civilization that was there along with the Maya or something like this in the 10,000 years ago.
Ed Barnhart
There’s certainly that. There could be things that were either wiped away or still hiding under the oceans that would completely change the way we think about things.
There’s certainly that. There could be things that were either wiped away or still hiding under the oceans that would completely change the way we think about things.
Lex Fridman
And everybody knew they existed and everybody interacted with them. It was [inaudible 03:15:31].
And everybody knew they existed and everybody interacted with them. It was [inaudible 03:15:31].
Ed Barnhart
I think it’s our estimation of their motivations that were probably most wrong on. My teacher Sheila a long time ago said, I’ve come up with all sorts of theories. I was always thinking about stuff. And she looked at me and she said, “If you don’t stop thinking like a western European and start trying to put yourself in the mindset of these people, you will never understand any of it.” Which I’ve always taken to heart. I mean, I really do. When I approach these things, I try to step out of my cultural assumptions, try to think like they would think as the best I could. And it’s very different. This whole, the Maya are cyclical, the whole sacrifice, we’re so obsessed with that. But that wasn’t an austere actual sacrifice on their part. They weren’t just, “Hey, let’s all get together and kill that guy that’s pissing us off.” I mean, they were giving the best of them. It was a different mentality. This was not brutal. This was a bonafide sacrifice on their part, a loss.
I think it’s our estimation of their motivations that were probably most wrong on. My teacher Sheila a long time ago said, I’ve come up with all sorts of theories. I was always thinking about stuff. And she looked at me and she said, “If you don’t stop thinking like a western European and start trying to put yourself in the mindset of these people, you will never understand any of it.” Which I’ve always taken to heart. I mean, I really do. When I approach these things, I try to step out of my cultural assumptions, try to think like they would think as the best I could. And it’s very different. This whole, the Maya are cyclical, the whole sacrifice, we’re so obsessed with that. But that wasn’t an austere actual sacrifice on their part. They weren’t just, “Hey, let’s all get together and kill that guy that’s pissing us off.” I mean, they were giving the best of them. It was a different mentality. This was not brutal. This was a bonafide sacrifice on their part, a loss.
Lex Fridman
Plus the whole mystery of the puppy that eventually starts having sex with [inaudible 03:16:44].
Plus the whole mystery of the puppy that eventually starts having sex with [inaudible 03:16:44].
Ed Barnhart
I’m going to unweave that one of these days.
I’m going to unweave that one of these days.
Lex Fridman
One of these days. Now that puppy appeared on Pottery?
One of these days. Now that puppy appeared on Pottery?
Ed Barnhart
All over Pottery. He’s everywhere. I got to write this book. This next year is the year I’m going to write my Fang deity book and I will have a whole chapter dedicated to the puppy.
All over Pottery. He’s everywhere. I got to write this book. This next year is the year I’m going to write my Fang deity book and I will have a whole chapter dedicated to the puppy.
Lex Fridman
The mystery solved. I mean, it could just be the birth of memes of humor. I don’t know. I mean, again, humor. You don’t know what the nature of their humor, of what their jokes are.
The mystery solved. I mean, it could just be the birth of memes of humor. I don’t know. I mean, again, humor. You don’t know what the nature of their humor, of what their jokes are.
Ed Barnhart
Oh, that’s a neat one too. And that’s so human. I’ll tell you a little side story here, that when I worked with the Maya people in Palenque, I spent three years making this map of the city and hiking through the jungle every day. And they would talk to each other in their own language. [Celtal 03:17:34] was the group I was working with. But I noticed after a while they were big jokers. They loved to make jokes and they would laugh at jokes, but then they would also, one of them would say something and the other ones would go, hoo hoo. And I eventually asked, “What is that? Why do you guys always make that hoo hoo noise?” And he said, “That’s because…” He made a really smart pun. It was like he said three different things at once. It was a turn of phrase that was smart. And they didn’t make laughs at that. They had a noise for when somebody said something just super clever. So there’s also that just clever turn of speech.
Oh, that’s a neat one too. And that’s so human. I’ll tell you a little side story here, that when I worked with the Maya people in Palenque, I spent three years making this map of the city and hiking through the jungle every day. And they would talk to each other in their own language. [Celtal 03:17:34] was the group I was working with. But I noticed after a while they were big jokers. They loved to make jokes and they would laugh at jokes, but then they would also, one of them would say something and the other ones would go, hoo hoo. And I eventually asked, “What is that? Why do you guys always make that hoo hoo noise?” And he said, “That’s because…” He made a really smart pun. It was like he said three different things at once. It was a turn of phrase that was smart. And they didn’t make laughs at that. They had a noise for when somebody said something just super clever. So there’s also that just clever turn of speech.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Wit.
Yeah. Wit.
Ed Barnhart
And I think about that when I’m a hieroglyphic translator. Here’s a beautiful thing that’s going to be like a poem or a political statement, and I’m just ploddingly looking in a dictionary of what that word means. There’s probably double, triple entendres all through this text. And the real meaning is the subtext. And I’m thinking they’re talking about corn and they’re talking about the nature of life.
And I think about that when I’m a hieroglyphic translator. Here’s a beautiful thing that’s going to be like a poem or a political statement, and I’m just ploddingly looking in a dictionary of what that word means. There’s probably double, triple entendres all through this text. And the real meaning is the subtext. And I’m thinking they’re talking about corn and they’re talking about the nature of life.
Lex Fridman
It could be satire, it could be as it was in the Soviet Union when there’s a dictator, maybe there’s an overpowering king. You’re not allowed to actually speak. You have to hide the thing you’re actually trying to say in the subtext, in all of that.
It could be satire, it could be as it was in the Soviet Union when there’s a dictator, maybe there’s an overpowering king. You’re not allowed to actually speak. You have to hide the thing you’re actually trying to say in the subtext, in all of that.
Ed Barnhart
There was a funny Maya ceramic that had, the ceramics are neat, because the monuments can be kind of broken records. I’m the king, I was born this time, I beat these people up. I married this woman, I died. But the ceramics will tell us things out of mythology stories. And there was this one with a rabbit looking at the merchant God. And nobody could translate the text. And finally this eastern European, actually a Ukrainian guy translated it and the rabbit’s saying to the merchant God, “Bend over and smell my ass.” And like, oh man, we were expecting this wonderful piece of mythology. But no, it translates bend over and smell my ass. That’s great. That’s human.
There was a funny Maya ceramic that had, the ceramics are neat, because the monuments can be kind of broken records. I’m the king, I was born this time, I beat these people up. I married this woman, I died. But the ceramics will tell us things out of mythology stories. And there was this one with a rabbit looking at the merchant God. And nobody could translate the text. And finally this eastern European, actually a Ukrainian guy translated it and the rabbit’s saying to the merchant God, “Bend over and smell my ass.” And like, oh man, we were expecting this wonderful piece of mythology. But no, it translates bend over and smell my ass. That’s great. That’s human.
Lex Fridman
As we mentioned previously, human nature does not change. You mentioned Palenque and mapping it. Just out of curiosity, what is that process like? It seems fascinating.
As we mentioned previously, human nature does not change. You mentioned Palenque and mapping it. Just out of curiosity, what is that process like? It seems fascinating.
Ed Barnhart
Oh, it was a great adventure. I loved it, but it was difficult. I woke up every morning thinking I will be hurt today somehow. I don’t know how. I don’t know badly, where on my body it will occur, but it’s going to happen. It was the jungle.
Oh, it was a great adventure. I loved it, but it was difficult. I woke up every morning thinking I will be hurt today somehow. I don’t know how. I don’t know badly, where on my body it will occur, but it’s going to happen. It was the jungle.
Lex Fridman
So in the jungle, what’s the process like? What do you have to do to map it?
So in the jungle, what’s the process like? What do you have to do to map it?
Ed Barnhart
Well, it was tricky too because it was also a national forest. So the forestry department didn’t want us to cut down anything more than we had to. So we basically just cut tunnels through the foliage and we’d map everything twice. The first thing we’d do is I’d go in, find a building, draw it on a piece of graph paper. And I’d say, “You guys go north. You guys go east, west. Find other buildings. And when you find them, pace back to this one.” And so I’d start making a map and I’d make the whole… One piece of graph paper was enough to. Then we’d bring the machine in, we’d bring the laser theodolite and get really accurate information. But on that piece of paper, I would write, “Don’t bring the machine this way. There’s a tree fall.” Or, “Stand on top of this building and you’ll see four different buildings at once from this one.”
Well, it was tricky too because it was also a national forest. So the forestry department didn’t want us to cut down anything more than we had to. So we basically just cut tunnels through the foliage and we’d map everything twice. The first thing we’d do is I’d go in, find a building, draw it on a piece of graph paper. And I’d say, “You guys go north. You guys go east, west. Find other buildings. And when you find them, pace back to this one.” And so I’d start making a map and I’d make the whole… One piece of graph paper was enough to. Then we’d bring the machine in, we’d bring the laser theodolite and get really accurate information. But on that piece of paper, I would write, “Don’t bring the machine this way. There’s a tree fall.” Or, “Stand on top of this building and you’ll see four different buildings at once from this one.”
Lex Fridman
And all of this is in dense jungle?
And all of this is in dense jungle?
Ed Barnhart
Right. And the deeper we got off the road, the deeper it was. Sometimes it would clear out, but certain places, if it was low, it would be such thick vegetation and it would grow back so fast. Sometimes we would cut just tunnels through tall grass and we’d come back five days later and they were gone. We couldn’t even find where our trails were. They would grow back that fast.
Right. And the deeper we got off the road, the deeper it was. Sometimes it would clear out, but certain places, if it was low, it would be such thick vegetation and it would grow back so fast. Sometimes we would cut just tunnels through tall grass and we’d come back five days later and they were gone. We couldn’t even find where our trails were. They would grow back that fast.
Lex Fridman
But you see the building, so you could see?
But you see the building, so you could see?
Ed Barnhart
Right. And that was the fun part. I mean, sometimes it would just be a little neighborhood with little low buildings no bigger than this table, but sometimes just five more meters in and I’m standing under a pyramid that nobody had ever mapped. Like, wow, I’ve just found another one. And some days on good days, we’d find three pyramids. And I felt that’s such a more exciting job than the typical excavation, say. All my buddies were all just in a hole for the whole week in the middle of the city. And where I’m dancing around through the jungle, I could find 10 buildings today. I might find a pyramid today. Who knows?
Right. And that was the fun part. I mean, sometimes it would just be a little neighborhood with little low buildings no bigger than this table, but sometimes just five more meters in and I’m standing under a pyramid that nobody had ever mapped. Like, wow, I’ve just found another one. And some days on good days, we’d find three pyramids. And I felt that’s such a more exciting job than the typical excavation, say. All my buddies were all just in a hole for the whole week in the middle of the city. And where I’m dancing around through the jungle, I could find 10 buildings today. I might find a pyramid today. Who knows?
Lex Fridman
What’s that feel like to find a pyramid or buildings that you are one of the only humans that are not from that civilization to ever see this thing? What’s that feel like?
What’s that feel like to find a pyramid or buildings that you are one of the only humans that are not from that civilization to ever see this thing? What’s that feel like?
Ed Barnhart
It’s great. I love that feeling. I am an explorer at heart, so finding something like that, when I was 25 years old, I found a whole Maya city. Got to name it, its name is Ma’ax Na. It’s off in the Belizean jungle. And that was just outrageous. I mean, it almost… That one almost depressed me. I had this great life ambition that I would find a lost city. And then I did it at 25 and I was like, God, now what do I do? I thought that was supposed to take me my whole life. I actually, I wrote a bunch of letters to NASA trying to get them to let me be the first archaeologist on Mars. I never got a single reply back. I’m sure I’m on NASA’s list as some weirdo.
It’s great. I love that feeling. I am an explorer at heart, so finding something like that, when I was 25 years old, I found a whole Maya city. Got to name it, its name is Ma’ax Na. It’s off in the Belizean jungle. And that was just outrageous. I mean, it almost… That one almost depressed me. I had this great life ambition that I would find a lost city. And then I did it at 25 and I was like, God, now what do I do? I thought that was supposed to take me my whole life. I actually, I wrote a bunch of letters to NASA trying to get them to let me be the first archaeologist on Mars. I never got a single reply back. I’m sure I’m on NASA’s list as some weirdo.
Lex Fridman
How’d you find a Mayan city?
How’d you find a Mayan city?
Ed Barnhart
I used a topography map of the area and I played the game. If I was a Maya, where would my favorite place to live in this big area be? I looked for the biggest mountain because they call all of their pyramids tune wheat stone mountains. I knew they loved mountains. And when I found that mountain, there were two others right next to it that made a triangle and they love those triads, and there were rivers in between them. And I thought, that’s it. That’s where I would build the city. And I hiked out there over two seasons with students. The other grad students were like, “He’s just having his students just wander in the jungle all day.” But I came back with a city.
I used a topography map of the area and I played the game. If I was a Maya, where would my favorite place to live in this big area be? I looked for the biggest mountain because they call all of their pyramids tune wheat stone mountains. I knew they loved mountains. And when I found that mountain, there were two others right next to it that made a triangle and they love those triads, and there were rivers in between them. And I thought, that’s it. That’s where I would build the city. And I hiked out there over two seasons with students. The other grad students were like, “He’s just having his students just wander in the jungle all day.” But I came back with a city.
Hope for the future
Lex Fridman
So given that you’ve looked into the deep past of humanity, what gives you hope about our future, maybe our deep future of this human civilization?
So given that you’ve looked into the deep past of humanity, what gives you hope about our future, maybe our deep future of this human civilization?
Ed Barnhart
That’s a good one, and I do have hope. I do have hope. I believe in the spirit of humankind. I as a person who have studied history, I kind of feel like history does kind of a sine wave. There’s highs and there’s lows, but no matter how low we go, we get up again and we climb. And I think that humanity will continue that. We will rise to the challenges. Now, some of the challenges may be created by ourselves as well, but we will adapt and overcome. That’s what we do.
That’s a good one, and I do have hope. I do have hope. I believe in the spirit of humankind. I as a person who have studied history, I kind of feel like history does kind of a sine wave. There’s highs and there’s lows, but no matter how low we go, we get up again and we climb. And I think that humanity will continue that. We will rise to the challenges. Now, some of the challenges may be created by ourselves as well, but we will adapt and overcome. That’s what we do.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, humans find a way, right? That’s the thing you see with history. Even when the empires collapse, the humans that come out of that, they pick themselves up and find another way. They build anew.
Yeah, humans find a way, right? That’s the thing you see with history. Even when the empires collapse, the humans that come out of that, they pick themselves up and find another way. They build anew.
Ed Barnhart
And the people I study believe in the cyclical nature of life. That you really can’t, life can’t continue without death being part of the cycle. We get our lows, we get our highs, but the cycle continues forever.
And the people I study believe in the cyclical nature of life. That you really can’t, life can’t continue without death being part of the cycle. We get our lows, we get our highs, but the cycle continues forever.
Lex Fridman
I should mention that you have a lot of great lectures on the great courses, but you have also an amazing podcast, ArchaeoEd. If people want to listen to it, this is a tough question, but what would you recommend? What episodes should they listen to? What’s the answer?
I should mention that you have a lot of great lectures on the great courses, but you have also an amazing podcast, ArchaeoEd. If people want to listen to it, this is a tough question, but what would you recommend? What episodes should they listen to? What’s the answer?
Ed Barnhart
Oh, that is a tough question.
Oh, that is a tough question.
Lex Fridman
What is the sampling? It’s like asking a chef what’s the best stuff on the menu?
What is the sampling? It’s like asking a chef what’s the best stuff on the menu?
Ed Barnhart
Well, different strokes for different folks. I do two different things on that podcast. Sometimes I just teach about cultures that you’ve never heard about. I love… I start off by saying, “It’s my podcast and I’ll talk about whatever the heck I want to talk about.” Sometimes I talk about really specific things like a tool type or an animal type, but my favorite ones have become when I just tell my stories of my adventures. I’ve got a lot of weird adventure stories and it’s been fun and they’ve been very well received. I can put my humor in there and I can talk about the things that went right, the things that went wrong. The adventures that I had are all part of this ArchaeoEd thing. ArchaeoEd’s kind of a double entendre. It’s me, I’m just Ed. But it’s also education.
Well, different strokes for different folks. I do two different things on that podcast. Sometimes I just teach about cultures that you’ve never heard about. I love… I start off by saying, “It’s my podcast and I’ll talk about whatever the heck I want to talk about.” Sometimes I talk about really specific things like a tool type or an animal type, but my favorite ones have become when I just tell my stories of my adventures. I’ve got a lot of weird adventure stories and it’s been fun and they’ve been very well received. I can put my humor in there and I can talk about the things that went right, the things that went wrong. The adventures that I had are all part of this ArchaeoEd thing. ArchaeoEd’s kind of a double entendre. It’s me, I’m just Ed. But it’s also education.
What I’m really trying to do with this too, it’s specifically the Americas. I want to be part of the reawakening that there were these great civilizations here, especially North America. I think that we have a group amnesia that there was no great civilizations here before Europe showed up. That’s simply not true. I think it should be part of our history books. In fact, I have a program called Before the Americas that would introduce as part of a American history, the part before European contact. And I think that kids in the K through 12 level should grow up not being told this fallacy that no one was here before we showed up in 1492. And one of these days I’m going to find a funder to help us put together Before the Americas and we’re going to make it part of the curriculum for every kid in the U.S. to know the full history of this country.
Lex Fridman
That’s a great project. Thank you so much. Thank you for talking today. Thank you for all the fascinating ideas that you put out into the world, and I can’t wait to hear your new course.
That’s a great project. Thank you so much. Thank you for talking today. Thank you for all the fascinating ideas that you put out into the world, and I can’t wait to hear your new course.
Ed Barnhart
Thank you so much, Lex. It was a real pleasure.
Thank you so much, Lex. It was a real pleasure.
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ed Barnhart. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you some words from Joseph Campbell. “Life is but a mask worn on the face of death, and is death then but another mask? How many can say, asks the Aztec poet, that there is or is not a truth beyond?” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ed Barnhart. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you some words from Joseph Campbell. “Life is but a mask worn on the face of death, and is death then but another mask? How many can say, asks the Aztec poet, that there is or is not a truth beyond?” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Transcript for Michael Saylor: Bitcoin, Inflation, and the Future of Money | Lex Fridman Podcast #276
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #276 with Michael Saylor.
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And probably not 1% of the people in the world could deliver a kilowatt-hour in a day. And the commercial value of a kilowatt-hour, the retail value is 11 cents today, and the wholesale value is 2 cents. And so you have to look at the contribution of politicians and philosophers and economists to the human condition, and it’s like at best to wash one way or the other. And then if you look at the contribution of John D. Rockefeller when he delivered you a barrel of oil, and the energy in oil, liquid energy. Or the contribution of Tesla, as we deliver electricity. And what’s the impact on the human condition if I have electric power, if I have chemical power, if I have wind energy? If I can actually set up a reservoir, create a dam, spin a turbine, and generate energy from a hydraulic source, that’s extraordinary. And so our ability to cross the ocean, our ability to grow food, our ability to live, it’s technology that gets the human race from a brutal life where life expectancy is 30, to a world where life expectancy is 80.
So the truth of the matter is, inflation is not a scalar. Inflation is an n-dimensional vector. Money velocity is not a scalar. Saying, “What’s the velocity of money?” Oh, it’s slow or it’s fast. It ignores the question of what medium is the money moving through? And the same way that, what’s the speed of sound? Okay, well, what is sound, right? Sound is a compression wave. It’s energy moving through a medium, but the speed is different. So for example, the speed of sound through air is different than the speed of sound through water. And sound moves faster through water, it moves faster through a solid, and it moves faster through a stiffer solid. So there isn’t one.
So it’s common sense, but most economics, most classical economics, it’s always taught with linear models, fairly simplistic linear models. And oftentimes, I’m really shocked today that the entire mainstream dialogue of economics has been captured by scalar arithmetic. For example, if you read any article in New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, right, they just refer to there’s an inflation number or the CPI, or the inflation rate is X. And if you look at all the historic studies of the impact of inflation, generally they’re all based upon the idea that inflation equals CPI, and then they try to extrapolate from that and you just get nowhere with it.
So the bond market had hyperinflation within minutes of these financial decisions. The asset market had hyperinflation. We had what you call a K-shaped recovery, what we affectionately call a K-shaped recovery. Main street shut down, Wall Street recovered all within six weeks. The inflation was in the assets, in the stocks, in the bonds. If you look today, you see that typical house, according to the Case-Shiller index today is up 19.2% year over year. So if you’re a first time home buyer, the inflation rate is 19%. The formal CPI announced a 7.9%. You can pretty much create any inflation rate you want by constructing a market basket, a weighted basket of products or services or assets that yield you the answer. I think that the fundamental failing of economists is, first of all, they don’t really have a term for asset inflation.
So I mean, if I said three years ago, you should go see 10 concerts a year, and the concert tickets now cost $200 each. Now it’s $2,000 a year to go see concerts. Now I’m in charge of calculating inflation. So I redefine your entertainment quota for the year to be eight Netflix streaming concerts, and now they don’t cost $2,000. They cost nothing, and there is no inflation, but you don’t get your concerts right? So the problem starts with continually changing the definition of the market basket, but in my opinion, that’s not the biggest problem. The more egregious problem is the fundamental idea that assets aren’t products or services. Assets can’t be inflated.
In fact, in that case, that was over the course of about 12 years. As the inflation rate ground down, the asset traded up. But the conventional view is, “Oh, that’s not a problem because it’s good that the bond is highly priced because we own the bond.” Or what’s the problem with the inflation rate in housing being 19%? It’s an awful problem for a 22-year-old that’s starting their first job, that’s saving money to buy a house. But it would be characterized as a benefit to society by a conventional economist who would say, “Well, housing asset values are higher because of interest rate fluctuation, and now the economy’s got more wealth.” And so that’s viewed as a benefit.
If you look at the S&P index, which is a market basket of scarce, desirable stocks, it returned about 10%. If you talk to 10% a year for a 100 years, the money supply is expanding at 7% a 100 years. If you actually talk to economists or you look at the economy and you ask the question, “How fast does the economy grow in its entirety year over year?” Generally about two to 3%, the sum total impact of all this technology and human ingenuity might get you a two and a half, 3% improvement a year.
Now, that gets you to start to ask a bunch of other fundamental questions. Like, if I borrow a billion dollars and pay 3% interest and the money supply expands at seven to 10% a year, and I ended up making a 10% return on a billion dollars investment, paying 3% interest, is that fair? And who suffered so that I could do that? Because in an environment where you’re just inflating the money supply and you’re holding the assets constant, it stands the reason that the price of all the assets is going to appreciate somewhat proportional to the money supply, and the difference in asset appreciation is going to be a function of the scarce, desirable quality of the assets, and to what extent can I make more of them, and to what extent are they truly limited in supply?
You go at 50,000 feet, you’re 150 degrees colder than sea level. That’s why you look at your instruments and instead of 80 degrees, you’re minus 70 degrees. Why is the temperature falling? Temperature’s falling because it’s not a closed system, it’s an open system. As the air expands, the density falls, the energy per cubic, whatever falls, and therefore the temperature falls. The heat’s falling out of the solution. So when you’re inflating, let’s say you’re inflating the money, the currency supply by 6%, you’re sucking 6% of the energy out of the fluid that the economy is using to function.
If I rebuild the entire supply chain in Pennsylvania and I hire a bunch of employees and then I unionize the employees, then not only am I… I idle the factory in the Far East, it goes to 50% capacity. So whatever it sells, it has to raise the price on, and then I drive up the cost of labor for every other manufacturer in the U.S. because I’m competing against them, right? I’m changing that condition. So everything gets less efficient, everything gets more expensive, and of course, the government couldn’t really pay for its policies and its wars with taxes. We didn’t pay for World War I with tax. We didn’t pay for World War II with tax. We didn’t pay for Vietnam with tax. In fact, when you trace this, what you realize is the government never pays for all of its policies with taxes. It pays for-
And so I think it’s an overconfidence that causes an over-exuberance in pursuit of policies. As the ambition of the government expands, so must the currency supply. I could say the money supply, but let’s say the currency supply. You can triple the number of pesos in the economy, but it doesn’t triple the amount of manufacturing capacity in the set economy, and it doesn’t triple the amount of assets in the economy. It just triples the pesos. So as you increase the currency supply, then the price of all those scarce desirable things will tend to go up rapidly. And the confidence of all of the institutions, the corporations and the individual actors and trading partners will collapse.
We need to introduce engineering and science techniques into economics if we want to further the human condition. All government policy is inflationary. And another pernicious myth is inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomena. A famous quote by Milton Friedman, I believe, it’s like, it’s a monetary phenomena that is inflation comes from expanding the currency supply. It’s a nice phrase and it’s oftentimes quoted by people that are anti-inflation. But again, it just signifies a lack of appreciation of what the issue is. If I had a currency which was completely non-inflationary, if I never printed another dollar and if I eliminated fractional reserve banking from the face of the earth, we’d still have inflation, and we’d have inflation as long as we have government that is capable of pursuing any kind of policies that are in themself inflationary, and generally, they all are.
So they will mismeasure just the horrific extent of the monetary policy in pursuit of the foreign policy and the domestic policy, which they overestimate their budget and their means to accomplish their ends, and they underestimate the cost. And they’re oblivious to the horrific damage that they do to the civilization because the mental models that they use that are conventionally taught are wrong. The mental model that it’s okay, we can print all this money because the velocity of the money is low because money velocity is a scalar and inflation is the scalar, and we don’t see 2% inflation yet, and the money velocity is low, and so it’s okay if we print trillions of dollars. Well, the money velocity was immediate. The velocity of money through the crypto economy is 10,000 times faster than the velocity of money through the consumer economy. I think Nic pointed out when you spoke to him, he said it takes two months for a credit card transaction to settle, right? So you spend a million dollars in the consumer economy, you can move it six times a year.
You put the million dollars into gold, gold will sit in a vault for a decade. Okay? So the velocity of money through gold is 0.1. You put the money in the stock market and you can trade it once a week. The settlement is T+2. Maybe you get to 2:1 leverage, you might get to a money velocity of 100 a year. In the stock market, you put your money into the crypto economy and these people are settling every four hours. And if you’re offshore, they’re trading with 20x leverage. So if you settle every day and you trade the 20x leverage, you just went to 7,000. So the velocity of the money varies. I think the politicians, they don’t really understand inflation and they don’t understand economics, but you can’t blame them because the economists don’t understand economics. Because if they did, they would be creating multivariate computer simulations where they actually put in the price of every piece of housing and every city in the world the full array of foods and the full array of products and the full array of assets.
And then on a monthly basis they would publish all those results. And that’s a high bandwidth requirement, and I think that people don’t really want to embrace it. There’s that phrase, you can’t tell people what to think, but you can tell them what to think about. The most pernicious thing is I get you to misunderstand the phenomena so that even when it’s happening to you, you don’t appreciate that it’s a bad thing and you think it’s a good thing. So if housing prices are going up 20% year over year, and I say this is great for the American public ’cause most of them are homeowners, then I have misrepresented a phenomena. Inflation is 20%, not 7%, and then I have misrepresented it as being a positive rather than a negative, and people will stare at it. And you could even show them their house on fire and they would perceive it as being great because it’s warming them up and they’re going to save on their heat cost.
Well, 2% means you have a useful life of it’s half life of 35 years. 2% is a half life of 35 years. That’s basically the half life of money in gold. If I store your life force in gold, under perfect circumstances, you have a useful life of 35 years. 0% is a useful life of forever. So 0% is immortal, 2% is 35 years average life expectancy. So the idea that you would think the life expectancy of the currency and the civilization should be 35 years instead of forever is a silly notion. But the tragic notion is it was 7 into 70 or 10 years.
The money has had a half life of 10 years except for the fact that in weak societies and Argentina or the like, the half-life of the money is three to four years; in Venezuela, one year. So the United States dollar and the United States economic system was the most successful economic system in the last 100 years in the world. We won every war. We were the world’s superpower. Our currency lost 99.7% of its value, and that means horrifically every other currency lost, right? In essence, the other ones were 99.9, except for most that were 100% because they all completely failed. And you’ve got a mainstream economic community that thinks that inflation is a number and 2% is desirable. It’s like, remember George Washington? You know how he died?
So when you’re actually inflating the money supply at 7% but you’re calling it 2% because you want to help the economy, you’re literally bleeding the free market to death. But the sad fact is George Washington went along with it ’cause he thought that they were going to do him good. And the majority of the society, most companies, most conventional thinkers, the working class, they go along with this because they think that someone has their best interest in mind. And the people that are bleeding them to death, they believe that prescription because their mental models are just so defective and they’re understanding of energy and engineering and the economics that are at play is crippled by these mental models.
If you look the Greek civilization, they built it around ports and seaports and water and created a trading network. The Romans were really good at harnessing all sorts of engineering. The aqueducts are a great example. If you go to any big city, you travel through cities in the Med, you find that the carrying capacity of the city or the island is 5,000 people without running water. And then if you can find a way to bring water to it it increases by a factor of 10. And so human flourishing is really only possible through that channeling of energy that eventually takes the form of air power. That ship, look at the intricacy of those sails. Just the model is intricate. Now, think about all of the experimentation that took place to figure out how many sails to put on that ship and how to rig them and how to repair them and how to operate them.
And if you look at the Romans, they persevered with artillery and they could stand off from 800 meters and blast you smithereens. You study the history of the Balearic slingers and you think we invented bullets, but they invented bullets to put in slings thousands of years ago that could have stood off 500 meters and put a hole in your head. And so there was never a time when humanity wasn’t vying to come up with an asymmetric form of projecting their own power via technology.
It’s a crystallization when we collapse into a lower energy state as a civilization and we give off massive amounts of energy. If you look at what Carnegie did, the richest man in the world created libraries everywhere at the time, and he gave away his entire fortune. And now we can give a better library to every six-year-old for nothing, and so what’s the value of giving a million books to 8 billion people? That’s the explosion in prosperity that comes from digital transformation. And when we do it with maps, I transform the map. I put it into a car. You get in the car and the car drives you where you want to go with the map. And how much better is that than a Rand McNally Atlas right here? It’s like a million times better.
So I think about this and I think you want to improve the human condition? You need people with postgraduate level education. You need PhDs, and I know this sounds kind of elitist, but you want to cure cancer and you want to go to the Stars fusion drive. We need new propulsion, right? We need extraordinary breakthroughs in every area of basic science, be it biology, or propulsion, or material science, or computer science. You’re not doing that with an undergraduate degree. You’re certainly not doing it with a high school education, but the cost of a PhD is like a million bucks. There’s like 10 million PhDs in the world. If you check it out. There’s 8 billion people in the world. How many people could get a PhD or would want to? Maybe not 8 billion, but a billion, 500 million. Let’s just say 500 million to a billion. How do you go from 10 million to a billion highly educated people, all of them specializing in, and I don’t have to tell you how many different fields of human endeavor there are. I mean, your life is interviewing these experts and there’s so many, right? It’s amazing. So how do I give a multimillion dollar education to a billion people? And there’s two choices. You can either endow a scholarship, in which case you pay $75,000 a year. Okay. 75, let’s pay a million dollars and a million dollars a person. I can do it that way. And you’re never, even if you had a trillion dollars, if you had $10 trillion to throw at the problem and we’ve just thrown $10 trillion at certain problems, you don’t solve the problem, right? If I put $10 trillion on the table and I said, educate everybody, give them all a PhD, you still wouldn’t solve the problem. Harvard University can’t educate 18,000 people simultaneously or 87,000 or 800,000 or 8 million. So you have to dematerialize the professor and dematerialize the experience. So you put it all as streaming on demand, computer generated education, and you create simulations where you need to create simulations and you upload it.
It’s like the human condition is being held back by 500,000 well-meaning average algebra teachers. I love them. I mean, please don’t take of offense if you’re an algebra teacher, but instead of 500,000 algebra teachers going through the same motion over and over again, what you need is one or five or 10 really good algebra teachers and they need to do it a billion times a day or a billion times a year for free. And if we do that, there’s no reason why you can’t give infinite education, certainly in science, technology, engineering, and math, right, infinite education to everybody with no constraint. And I think the same is true, right, with just about every other thing. If you want to bring joy to the world, you need digital music. If you want to bring enlightenment to the world, you need digital education. If you want to bring anything of consequence in the world, you got to digitally transform it and then you got to manufacture it, something like 100 times more efficiently as a start, but a million times more efficiently is probably optimal. That’s hopeful. Maybe you have a chance.
If you look at all of these space endeavors and everything, we’re thinking about getting to Mars, getting off the planet, getting to other worlds. Number one thing you got to do is you got to make a fundamental breakthrough in an engine. People dreamed about flying for thousands of years, but until the internal combustion engine, you didn’t have enough energy, enough power in a light enough package in order to solve the problem. And the human race has all sorts of those fundamental engines and materials and techniques that we need to master. And each one of them is a lifetime of experimentation, of someone capable of making a seminal contribution to the body of human knowledge.
So when we actually started developing CPUs, transistor gave way to CPUs. And if you look at the power, right, the bandwidth that we had on computers and Moore’s law, right? What if the efficiency of jet engines had doubled every three years, right, in the last 40 years where we be right now? Right. So I think that if you’re a business person, if you’re looking for a commercially viable application of your mind, then you have to find that S-curve. And ideally you have to find it in the first five, six, 10 years. But people always miss this. Let’s take Google Glass, right? Google Glass was an idea 2013. The year is 2022. And people were quite sure this was going to be a big thing but,-
So the reason that the digital revolution is so important is because the underlying platforms, the bandwidth and the performance of the components, and I say the components are the radio protocols, mobile protocols, the batteries, the CPUs, and the displays. Right. Those four components are pretty critical. They’re all critical in the creation of an iPhone. I wrote about it in the book, The Mobile Wave, and they catalyzed this entire mobile revolution. Because they have advanced and continue to advance, they created the very fertile environment for all these transformations. And the digital transformations themselves, right, they call for creativity in their own. Right.
I think the interesting thing about let’s take digital maps. Right. When you conceptualize something as a dematerialized map, right, it becomes a map because I can put it on a display like an iPad or I can put it in a car like a Tesla. But if you really want to figure it out, you can’t think like an engineer. You need to think like a fantasy writer. This is where it’s useful if you played Dungeons and Dragons and you read Lord of the Rings and you studied all the fantasy literature, because when I dematerialize the map, first I put 10 million pages of satellite imagery into the map. Right.
That’s a simple physical transform. But then I start to put telemetry into the map, and I keep track of the traffic rates on the roads, and I tell you whether you’ll be in a traffic jam if you drive that way, and I tell you which way to drive. And then I start to get feedback on where you’re going. And I tell you, the restaurant’s closed and people don’t like it anyway. And then I put an AI on top of it and I have it drive your car for you. And eventually the implication of digital transformation of maps is I get into a self-driving car and I say, take me someplace cool where I can eat.
So you might be better off to work on the aqueduct or to focus upon sales or something. So if I look at this today, I say there’s massive profound civilization advances to be made through digital transformation of information. And you can see them. This is not the story of today, right? It’s 10 years old, what we’ve been seeing.
So I don’t think every objective is equally practical. And I think the benefit of being an engineer or thinking about practical achievements is when the government pursues an impractical objective or when anybody, an entrepreneur, not so bad with an entrepreneur because they don’t have that much money to waste. When a government pursues an impractical objective, they squander trillions and trillions of dollars and achieve nothing. Whereas if they pursue a practical objective or if they simply get out of the way and do nothing and they allow the free market to pursue the practical objectives, then I think you can have profound impact on the human civilization.
And if I look at the world we’re in today, I think that there are multi- trillion 10, 20, $50 trillion worth of opportunities in the digital information realm yet to be obtained. But there’s hundreds of trillions of dollars of opportunities in the digital energy realm that not only are they not obtained, the majority of people don’t even know what digital energy is. Most of them would reject the concept. They’re not looking for it. They’re not expecting to find it. It’s inconceivable because it is a paradigm shift, but in fact, it’s completely practical. Right under our nose. It’s staring at us, and it could make the entire civilization work dramatically better in every respect.
There’s a building that’s probably 50 years old. There’s a company operating that disco or that club, which is five to 10 years old. There’s a person, a customer walking in there for an experience for a few hours. There’s music that’s oscillating at some kilohertz, and then there’s light.
So, how would you feel if the president of the United States said, “I really think Americans should all buy Apple stock,” especially if you worked at Google. But if you worked anywhere, you’d be like, “Why isn’t he saying buy mine?” Right? A security is a proprietary asset in some way, shape or form. And the whole nature of securities law, it starts from this ancient idea, thou shalt not lie, cheat or steal. Okay? If I’m going to sell you securities or I’m going to promote securities as a public figure or as an influencer or anybody else. If I create my own Yo-Yo coin or Mikey coin, and then there’s a million of them, and I tell you that I think that it’s a really good thing, and Mikey coin will go up forever and everybody buys Mikey coin and then I give 10 million to you and don’t tell the public, I’ve cheated them.
Maybe if I have Mikey coin and I think there’s only 2 million Mikey coin, and I swear to you there’s only 2 million, and then I get married and I have three kids and my third kid is in the hospital and my kid’s going to die and I have this ethical reason to print 500,000 more Mikey coin or else people are going to die, and everybody tells me it’s fine, I’ve still abused the investor, right? It’s an ethical challenge. If you look at ethics laws everywhere in the world, they all boil down to having a clause which says that if you’re a public figure, you can’t endorse a security. You can’t endorse something that would cause you to have a conflict of interest.
So, if you’re a mayor, a governor, a country, a public figure, an influencer, and you want to promote or promulgate or support something using any public influence or funds or resources you may have, it needs to be property. It can’t be security. So, it goes beyond that, right? I mean, would the Chinese want to support an American company? As soon as you look at what’s in the best interest of the human race, the civilization, you realize that if you want an ethical path forward, it needs to be based on common property, which is fair. And the way you get to a common property is through an open permissionless protocol. If it’s not open, if it’s proprietary and I know what the code says and you don’t know what the code says, that makes it a security.
If it’s permissioned, you’re not allowed on my network. Or if you can be censored or booted off my network, that also makes it a security. When I talk about property, I mean the challenge here is how do I create something that’s equivalent to a barrel of oil in cyberspace? And that means it has to be a non-sovereign bearer instrument, open, permissionless, not censorable, right? If I could do that, then I could deliver you 10,000 dematerialized barrels of oil and you would take settlement of them and you would know that you have possession of that property, irregardless of the opinion of any politician or any company or anybody else in the world.
That’s a really critical characteristic. And it actually is, it’s probably one of the fundamental things that makes Bitcoin special. Bitcoin isn’t just a crypto-asset network. It’s easy to create a crypto-asset network. It’s very hard to create an ethical crypto-asset network because you have to create one without any government or corporation or investor exercising into influence to make it successful.
If you consider every other thing you might own. A car, a house, a share of stock, gold, diamonds, property rights, intellectual property rights, movie rights, music rights. Anything imaginable, they would all be easier by orders and orders of magnitude to seize. So, digital property in the form of a set of private keys is by far the apex property of the human race. In terms of ethics, I want to make one more point. It’s like I might say to you, “Lex, I think Bitcoin is the best, most secure, most durable crypto asset network in the world, it’s going to go up forever and there’s nothing better in the world.
I might be right, I might be wrong, but the point is because it’s property, it’s ethical for me to say that. If I were to turn around and say, “Lex, I think the same about MicroStrategy stock, MSTR, that’s a security. Okay? If I’m wrong about that, I have civil liability or other liability because I could go to a board meeting tomorrow and I could actually propose we issue a million more shares of MicroStrategy stock. Whereas the thing that makes Bitcoin ethical for me to even promote is the knowledge that I can’t change it. If I knew that I could make it 42 million instead of 21 million and I had the button back here, then I have a different degree of ethical responsibility.
Now, I could tell you your life will be better if you buy Bitcoin, and it might not. You might go buy Bitcoin, you might lose the keys and be bankrupt and your life ends and your life is not better because you bought Bitcoin. But it wouldn’t be my ethical liability any more than if I were to say, “Lex, I think you ought to get a farm. I think you should be a farmer. I think a chicken in every pot, you should get a horse. I think you’d be better.” I mean, they’re all opinions expressed about property, which may or may not be right that you may or may not agree with. But in a legal sense, if we read the law, if we understand securities law… And I would say most people in the crypto industry, they didn’t take companies public and so they’re not really focused on the securities law. They don’t even know the securities law.
If you focus on the securities law, that would say you just can’t legally sell this stuff to the general public or promote it without a full set of continuing disclosures signed off on by a regulator. So, there’s a fairly bright line there with regard to securities, but when you get to the secondary issue, it’s how do you actually build a world based on digital property if public figures can’t embrace it or endorse it? You see? So, you’re not going to build a better world based upon Twitter stock, if that’s your idea of property, because Twitter stock is a security, and Twitter stock is never going to be a non-sovereign bearer instrument in Russia, right? Or in China, it’s not even legal in China.
It’s not a global permissionless, open thing. It will never be trusted by the rest of the world, and legally it’s impractical. But would you really want to put a hundred trillion dollars worth of economic value on Twitter stock if there’s a board of directors and a CEO that could just get up and take half of it tomorrow? The answer is no. So, if you want to build a better world based on digital energy, you need to start with constructing a digital property, and I’m using property here-
And that’s why I use the illustration of you got the building, you got the light and you got the sound, and they’re all just energy moving at different frequencies. Now, Bitcoin is magical and it is truly the innovation. It’s like a singularity because it represents the first time in the history of the human race that we managed to create a digital property, properly understood. It’s easy to create something digital, right? Every coupon and every scan on Fortnite and Roblox and Apple TV credits and all these things, they’re all digital something, but they’re securities, right?
Shares of stock are securities. Whenever anybody transfers, when you transfer money on PayPal or Apple Pay, you’re transferring in essence, a security or an IOU. So, transferring a bearer instrument with final settlement in the internet domain or in cyberspace, that’s a critical thing. And anybody in the crypto world can do that. All the cryptos can do that. But what they can’t do, what 99% of them fail to do is be property. They’re securities.
The second important feature of the layer one is I need the money to last forever. I need the money indestructible, immortal. So, the bigger trick is not to move a billion dollars from here to Tokyo. The big trick is to move a billion dollars from here to the year 2140. And that’s what we want to solve with layer one. And the best real metaphor in New York City would be the granite or the schist. What you want is a city block of a bedrock. And how long has it been there? Millions of years it’s been there. And how fast do you want it to move? You don’t. In fact, the single thing that’s most important is that it not deflect. If it deflects a foot in a hundred years, it’s too much. If it deflects an inch in a hundred years, you might not want that.
So, the layer one of Bitcoin is a foundation upon which you put weight. How much weight can you put on it? You put a trillion, 10 trillion, a hundred trillion, a quadrillion. How much weight’s on the bedrock in Manhattan, right? Think about hundred story buildings. So, the real key there is the foundational asset needs to be there at all. The fact that you can create a hundred trillion dollars layer one that would stand for a hundred years, that is the revolutionary breakthrough first time.
And the fact that it’s ethical, right? It’s ethical and it’s common property, global, permissionless. Extremely unlikely that would happen. People tried 50 times before and they all failed. They tried 15,000 times after, and they’ve all been… They’ve all generally failed. 98% have failed and a couple have been less successful. But for the most part, that’s an extraordinary thing. Now-
The reason he’s using the term layer one is now that there’s a lot of ideas of layer two technologies that built on top of this bedrock that allow you to move a much larger number of transactions, sort of higher frequency, I don’t know how would terminology want to use, but basically be able to use now something that is based on Bitcoin to then buy stuff, be a consumer, to transfer money, to use it as currency. Just to define some terms.
And of course, it’s kind of simple. If I lower my security requirement by a factor of a million, I can probably move the stuff a million times faster. And that’s how Lightning works. It’s non-custodial because there’s no corporation or custodian or counterparty you’re trusting, right? There’s the risk of moving through the channel. But Lightning is an example of how I go from 350,000 transactions a day to 350 million transactions a day. So, on that layer two, you could move the Bitcoin in seconds for fractions of pennies.
Now, that’s not the end all, be all because the truth is there are a lot of open protocols. Lightning probably won’t be the only one. There’s an open market competition of other permissionless, open source protocols to do this work. And in theory, any other crypto network that was deemed to be property, deemed to be non-security, you could also think of as potentially a layer two to Bitcoin. There’s a debate about are there any and what are they? And we could leave that for a later time.
When Cash App supported Bitcoin, they made it very easy to buy it, and then they gave you the ability to withdraw. When PayPal or I think Robinhood let you buy it, they wouldn’t let you withdraw it and it was a big community uproar and people, they want these layer threes to make it possible to withdraw the Bitcoins. You can take it to your own private wallet and get it off the exchange. I think the answer to the question of, “Well, is corruption possible?” Is corruption is possible in all human institutions and all governments everywhere. The difference between digital property and physical property is when you own a building in Los Angeles and the city politics turn against you, you can’t move the building.
And when you own a share of a security that’s like a US traded security and you wish to move to some other country, you can’t take the security with you either. And when you own a bunch of gold and you try to get through the airport, they might not let you take it. So, Bitcoin is advantageous versus all those because you actually do have the option to withdraw your asset from the exchange. If you had Bitcoin with Fidelity and you had shares of stock with Fidelity, and if you had bonds and sovereign debt with Fidelity, and if you own some mutual funds and some other random limited partnerships with Fidelity, none of those things can be removed from the custodian. But the Bitcoin, you can take off the exchange, you can remove from the custodian.
Now, coming back to this digital energy issue, the real key point is the energy moves in milliseconds for free on layer threes. It moves in seconds or less than seconds on layer twos, it moves in minutes on the layer one. And I don’t think it makes any sense to even think about trying to solve all three problems on the layer one because it’s impossible to achieve the security and the incorruptibility and immortality if you try to build that much speed and that functionality and performance.
In fact, if you come back to the New York model, you really wanted a block of granite, a building and a company. That’s what makes the economy right? If I said to you, “You’re going to build a building, but you can only have one company in it for the life of the building,” it would be very fragile, very brittle. What company a hundred years ago is still relevant today? You want all three layers because they all oscillate at different frequencies. And there’s a tendency to think, “Well, it’s got to be this L1 or that L1.” Not really. And sometimes people think, “Well, I don’t really want any L3.”
But companies, it’s not an even/or. Companies are better than crypto asset networks at certain things. If you want complexity, you want to implement complexity or you want to implement compliance or customer service. Companies do these things well. We know you couldn’t decentralize Apple or Netflix or even YouTube. The performance wouldn’t be there and the subtlety wouldn’t be there. And you can’t really legally decentralize certain forms of banking and insurance because they would become illegal in the political jurisdiction they’re in.
So, unless you’re a crypto anarchist and you believe in no companies and no nation states, which is just not very practical, not anytime soon. Once you allow that nation states will continue and companies have a role, then the layered architecture follows, and the free market determines who wins. For example, there are layer threes that let you acquire Bitcoin and withdraw Bitcoin. There are other applications that let you acquire but not withdraw it, and they don’t get the same market share, but they might give you some other advantage. There are certain layer threes, like Jack Dorsey’s Cash App where they just incorporated Lightning, an implementation of it.
And so all of these things create efficiency in the economy. And Lex, if you want to consider how much efficiency. If you gave me a billion dollars in 20 years, I couldn’t find a way to trade with another company or a counterparty in Nigeria. No amount of money. Give me %10 billion, I couldn’t do it because you get shut down at the banking level. You can’t link up a bank in Nigeria with a bank in the US. You get shut down at this credit card level because they don’t have the credit card, so they won’t clear. You get shut down at the compliance FCPA level because you wouldn’t be able to implement a system that interfaced with somebody else’s system if it’s not in the right political jurisdiction.
On the other hand, three entrepreneurs in Nigeria on the weekend could create a website that would trade in this Lightning economy using open protocols without asking anybody’s permission. So, you’re talking about something that’s like a million times cheaper, less friction, and faster to do it if you want to get money to move.
So I think that we’re probably going to be 36 months of software development. At the point that every Android phone and every iPhone has a Bitcoin wallet or a crypto wallet in it of sorts, that’s a big deal. If Apple embraced Lightning, that’s a big deal.
So I think when Jack looks at it, he’s very sensitive to the plight of everybody in Africa. If you look at Africans, you’re going to give them banks. You’re not going to put a bank branch on every corner. That’s an obscene waste of energy. You’re not going to run copper wires across the continent. That’s an obscene waste of energy. You’re not going to give them gold. So how are you going to provide people with a decent life?
The metaphor I think is relevant here, the biological metaphor, Lex, is type one diabetic. If you’re a type one diabetic, you can’t form fat. And if you can’t form fat, then you can’t store excess energy. Fat is the ultimate organic battery, and if you’ve got 30 pounds of it, you can go 60 days without eating. But if you can’t generate insulin, you can’t form fat cells. And if you can’t form fat cells and store energy, then you can eat yourself to death. You will eat and you will die. You’ll starve to death. So the lack of property rights is like being a type one diabetic. And so if you look at most people everywhere in the world, they don’t have property rights, they don’t have effective bank and their currency is broken.
What are the two things that in theory would serve as the equivalent of an organic battery or an economic battery to civilization? It would be I have a currency which holds its value and I can store it in a bank. So a risk-free currency derivative. I pay you your money, you take your life savings, you put it in a bank, you save up for your retirement, you live happily ever after. That’s the American dream, right? That’s the idyllic situation. The real situation is there are no banks. You can’t get a bank account. So I give you your pay in currency and then I double the supply and I give it to my cousin, or I give it to whatever cause I want or I use it to buy weapons. And then you find a loaf of bread costs triple next month as what it costs and your life savings is worthless.
And so in that environment, everybody’s ripped back to Stone Age barter. And the problem with that, even Stone Age barter, is you’re going to carry your life savings on your back. And what happens when the guy with a machine gun points it at your head and just takes your life savings? So I think from Jack’s point of view, he thinks that, this is maybe too strong, but these are my words, life is hopeless for a lot of people and Bitcoin is hope because it gives everyone an engineered monetary asset that’s a bearer instrument and it gives them a bank on their mobile phone and they don’t have to trust their government or another counterparty with their life force.
So there’s a secondary thing I think he’s interested in, which is… The first thing is the human rights issue. And the second thing would be the friction to trade cross borders is so great. You like AI. So I’ll give you a beautiful notion. Maybe one day there’ll be an artificially intelligent creature in cyberspace that is self-sufficient and rich.
And with something like digital property with Bitcoin and Lightning, you could do it. And on the other hand, with banks and credit cards, you couldn’t ever. So you can create things that are beautiful and lasting and what’s the difference in speed? Well, so I can either trade with everybody in the world at the speed of light, friction-free in 24 hours writing a Python script, or I can spend $100 billion to trade with a few million people in the world after it takes them six months of application. The impedance is like a 10,000,000 to one difference, and the metaphors are literally like launching something in orbit versus almost orbit or vacuum sealing something. Does it last forever and does it orbit forever or does it go up and come down and burn up? Right? And I think Jack is interested in putting freedom in orbit, right?
Let me ask you, just for educational purposes. Can you please explain to me what Web3 and the beef between Jack and Mark Andreessen is exactly? Did you see what happened? Sorry to have you analyze Twitter like it’s Shakespeare, but can you please explain to me why there was any drama over this topic?
So I’m going to put on my Bitcoin hat here. Right? If it’s driven by a venture capitalist, well, it’s a security. If there’s a CEO and a CTO, it’s a security. All these projects, they’re companies. Foundations are companies. Right? If you call them a project or a foundation, it doesn’t make it not a security. They’re all in essence, collections of individuals that are issuing equity in the form of a token. And if there’s a pre-mine, an IPO, an ICO, a foundation or any kind of protocol where there’s a group of engineers that have influence over it, then to a securities lawyer or to most Bitcoiners, and definitely to anybody that’s steeped in securities law, you look at it and say, “Well, that passes the Howey test.” It looks like a security. It should be sold to the public pursuant to disclosures and regulations, and you’re just ducking the IPO process. Right?
And so now we get back to the ethical issue. Well, the ethical issue is if you’re trading it as a commodity and representing it as a commodity, while truthfully it’s a security, then it’s a violation of ethics rules and it’s probably illegal.
Now, if the Head of the Marine Corps started promoting canoeing, you might think he’s wacky. Maybe that’s a waste of time and a distraction. But to the extent that canoeing is not a security, not a problem, unless you… Ultimately, the issue of decentralization is really a critical one.
So what you really want is a very, very simple idea. The simplest idea, I’m just going to keep track of who owns 21,000,000 parts of energy? And when someone proposes big functional upgrades, you don’t really want that development to go on to base layer. You want that development to go on to layer threes because now Cash App has a proprietary set of functionality and it’s a security. And if you’re going to promote the use of this thing, you’re not going to promote the layer three security because that’s an edge to a given entity and you’re trusting the counterparty. You’re going to promote the layer one or at most the layer two.
If there was a Satoshi sitting around, sitting on top of $50 billion worth of Bitcoin, I don’t think it would cripple Bitcoin as property, but I think it would undermine its digital property. And if I wanted to undermine a crypto asset network, I would do the opposite of all those things. I would launch one myself. I would sell 25% or 50% to the general public. I would pre-mine some stuff or early mine it and I would keep an influence on it. Those are all the opposite of what you would do in order to create common property. And so I see the entire story as Satoshi giving a gift of digital property to the human race and disappearing.
And the real critical thing was to allow the marketplace absent any powerful, interested actor, right? If Satoshi had held 1,000,000 coins and then stayed engaged for 10 more years, tweaking things in the background, there’d still be that question. But what we’ve got is really a beautiful thing. We’ve got a chain reaction in cyberspace or an ideology spreading virally in the world that has seasoned in a fair, ethical fashion. Sometimes it’s a very violent, brutal fashion with all the volatility, and there’s been a lot of sound and fury along the way.
So the risk has been bleeding off over time as the network monetized. I think the second question is, will it be banned? You couldn’t know. It literally could have been banned many times early on. In fact, 2013, I tweeted on the subject. I thought it would be banned. I made a very infamous tweet.
I would say that year one of institutional adoption is it started August 2020. That’s when MicroStrategy bought $250 million worth of Bitcoin and we put that out on the wire. We were the first publicly traded company to actually buy Bitcoin. I don’t think you could have found a $5 million purchase from a public company before we did that. So that was like a gun going off. And then in the next 12 months, Tesla bought Bitcoin, Square bought Bitcoin. I’d say now we’re in year two of institutional adoption. Should be 24 publicly traded Bitcoin miners by the end of this quarter. So you’re looking at 36 publicly traded companies, and you’ve got at least in the range of $50 billion of Bitcoin on the balance sheet of publicly traded companies and hundreds of billions of dollars of market cap of Bitcoin-exposed companies. So I would say the asset, decade one was entrepreneurial experimental. Decade two is a rotation from entrepreneurs to institutions and it’s becoming institutionalized. So maybe decade one, you go from zero to a trillion and in decade two you go from 1 trillion to 100 trillion.
I think there are opportunities for governments that are much more profound. If a government started to adopt Bitcoin as a Treasury Reserve asset, that’s much bigger than just an asset investment that’s 100X bigger. And you could imagine, that’s like a trillion dollar opportunity. Like any government that wanted to adopt it as a Treasury Reserve asset would probably generate a trillion or more of value. And then the thing that people think about is, “Well, will oil ever be priced in Bitcoin or any other export commodity?” I think there’s $1.8 trillion or more of export commodities in the world, and right now they’re all priced in dollars. I think that this is a colorful thing, but not really that relevant. You could sell all that stuff in dollars. The relevant decision that any institution makes, whether they’re a nonprofit, a university, a corporation, or a government, is what’s your Treasury Reserve asset? And if your Treasury Reserve asset is the peso, and if the peso is losing 20% or 30% of its value a year, then your balance sheet is collapsing within five years.
And if the Treasury Reserve asset is dollars in currency derivatives and US Treasuries, then you’re getting your seven… Right now it’s probably 15% or more monetary inflation. We’re running double the historic average. You could argue triple. Somewhere between double and triple depending upon what your metric is. So, do I think it’ll happen? I think that they’re conservative, but they have to be shocked, and I think there is a shock. The late Russian sanctions are a big shock that when the West sees $300 billion worth of Russian gold in currency derivatives, I think you got the famous quote by Putin that we have to rethink our Treasury strategies. And that pushes everybody toward a commodity strategy, “What commodities do I want to hold?” I think that’s got a lot of people thinking. I think it’s got the Chinese thinking. Everybody wants to be the reserve currency, so if I buy $50 billion worth of dollars every year, then I buy 500 billion over a decade and I probably pay $250 billion of inflation costs on the backs of my citizens in a decade.
So I think it’s a perfect storm. And if you put all these events together, what do they signify? They signify the rational conclusion for any person thinking about this is, “I’m not sure if I can trust my property. I don’t know if I have property rights. I don’t know if I can trust the bank. And if I’m politically at odds with the leader of my own country, I’m going to lose my property. And if I’m politically at odds with the owner of another country, I’m still going to lose my property. And when push comes to shove, the banks will freeze my assets and seize them.”
And I think that that is playing out in front of everybody in the world such that your logical response would be, “I’m going to convert my weak currency to a strong currency. Like, I’ll convert my peso and lira to the dollar. I’m going to convert my weak property to strong property. I’m going to sell my building Downtown Moscow, and I’d rather own a building in New York City. I’d rather own in a powerful nation than be stuck with a building in Nigeria or a building in Argentina or whatever. So I’m going to sell my weak properties to buy strong properties. I’m going to convert my physical assets to digital assets. I’d rather own a digital building than own a physical building, because if I had a billion dollar building in Moscow, who can I rent that to? But if I have a billion dollar digital building, I can rent it to anybody in any city in the world, anybody with money, and the maintenance cost is almost nothing, and I can hold it for 100 years.” So it’s an indestructible building.
And then finally, I want to move from having my assets in a bank with a counterparty to self-custody assets. It is not just Ukraine, but this is like the story in Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, South America. You don’t really want to be sitting with $10 million in a bank in Istanbul. The bank’s going to freeze your money, convert it to lira, devalue the lira, and then feed it back to you over 17 years, right?
So the fast money is attracted by the volatility. The volatility has been decreasing year by year by year. I think that it’s stabilizing. I don’t think we’ll see as much volatility in the future as we have in the past. I think that if we look at Bitcoin and model it as digital gold, the market cap goes to between 10 and 20 trillion. But remember, gold is defective property. Gold is dead money. You have a billion dollars of gold that sits in a vault for a decade, it’s very hard to mortgage the gold. It’s also very hard to rent the gold. You can’t loan the gold. No one’s going to create a business with your gold.
So gold doesn’t generate much of a yield. So for that reason, most people wouldn’t store a billion dollars for a decade in gold. They would buy a billion dollars of commercial real estate property. The reason why is because I can rent it and generate a yield on it that’s in excess of the maintenance cost. So if you consider digital property, that’s 100 to $200 trillion addressable market. So I would think it goes from 10 trillion to 100 trillion as people start to think of it as digital property.
Can we switch subjects to talk about the energy side of it-
I can also see the maintenance cost of the property falls. I get on Moore’s Law and I’m operating in cyberspace. So I got rid of Newton’s laws, I got rid of all the friction and all those problems, I tapped into the benefits of cyberspace. I created a global property. I started monetizing at different frequencies. And of course, now I can mortgage it to anybody in the world. You’re not going to be able to get a mortgage on a Turkish building from someone in South Africa. You have to find someone that’s local to the culture you’re in. So when you start to move from analog property to digital property, it’s not just a little bit better, it’s a lot better. And what I just described, Lex, is like the DeFi vision. It’s the beauty of DeFi flash loans, money moving at high velocity. At some point, if the hotel is dematerialized, then what’s the difference between renting a hotel room and loaning a block of stock? I’m just finding the highest best use of the thing.
But the difference, the fundamental difference is it could be companies anywhere in the world. So if a company in Singapore comes up with a better offering, then the capital is going to start to flow to Singapore. I can’t send 10 city blocks of LA to Singapore to rent during a festival, but I can send 10 blocks of Bitcoin to Singapore. So you’ve got a truly global market that’s functioning in this asset, and it’s their second order asset. For example, maybe you’re an American citizen and you own 10 Bitcoin and someone in Singapore will generate 27% yield in the Bitcoin but legally you can’t send the money to them or the Bitcoin to them, it doesn’t matter. Because the fact that that exists means that someone in Hong Kong will borrow the 10 Bitcoin from somebody in New York, and then they will put on the trade in Singapore, and that will create a demand for Bitcoin, which will drive up the price of Bitcoin, which will result in an effective tax-free yield for the person in the US that’s not even in the jurisdiction.
So there’s nothing that’s going on in Singapore to drive up the price of your land in LA. But there is something going on everywhere in the world to drive up the price of property in cyberspace if there’s only one digital Manhattan. And so there’s a dynamic there which is profound because it’s global. But now let’s go to the next extreme. I’m still giving you a fairly conventional idea, which is, let’s just loan the money fast on a global network and let’s just rent the hotel room fast in cyberspace. But let’s move to maybe a more innovative idea. The first generation of internet brought a lot of productivity, but there’s also just a lot of flaws in it. For example, Twitter is full of garbage. Instagram DMs are full of garbage. Your Twitter DMs are full of garbage. YouTube is full of scams. Every 15 minutes there’s a Michael Saylor Bitcoin giveaway spun up on YouTube. My Office 365 inbox is full of garbage, millions of spam messages. I’m running four different email filters. My company spends million dollars a year to fight denial of service attacks and all sorts of other security things.
There are denial of service attacks everywhere against everybody in cyberspace all the time. It’s extreme. And we’ll all beset with hostility, right? You’ve been a victim of it in Twitter. You go on Twitter and people post stuff they would never say to your face. And then if you look, you find out that the account was created three days ago and it’s not even a real person. So we’re beset with phishing attacks and scams and spam bots and garbage. Why? The answer is because the first generation of internet was digital information, and there’s no energy. There’s no conservation of energy in cyberspace. The thing that makes the universe work is conservation of energy.
If I went to a hotel room, I’d have to post a credit card. And then if I smash the place up, there’d be economic consequences, maybe there’d be criminal consequences, there might be reputational consequences. A lamp might fall on me. But in the worst case, I can only smash up one hotel room. Now imagine I could actually write a Python script to send myself to every hotel room in the world every minute, not post a credit card, and smash them all up anonymously.
The thing that makes the universe work is friction, speed of sound, speed of light, and the fact that ultimately it’s conservative. You’re either energy or you’re matter, but once you’ve used the energy, it’s gone, and you can’t do infinite everything. That’s missing in cyberspace right now. And if you look at all of the moral hazards and all of the product defects that we have in all of these products, most of them, 99% of them, could be cured if we introduced conservation of energy into cyberspace. That’s what you can do with high-speed, digital property, high-speed Bitcoin. And by high-speed, I mean not 20 transactions a day, I mean 20,000 transactions a day. So how do you do that? Well, I let everybody on Twitter post 1,000 or 10,000 satoshis via a Lightning badge, “Give me an orange check.” If you put up 20 bucks once in your life, you could give 300 million people an orange check. Right now you don’t have a blue check, Lex. You’re a famous person, I don’t know why you don’t have a blue check. Have you ever applied for a blue check?
Once you’ve done those two things, then you’re in a position to monetize malice. Monetize motion or malice for that matter, but let’s just say for the sake of argument you post something and 9,700 bots spin up and pitch their whatever scam. Right now you sit and you go report, report, report, report, report, report. And if you spend an hour, you get through half of them, you waste an hour of your life, and they just spin up another 97 gazillion because they’ve got a Python script spinning it up. So it’s hopeless. But on the other hand, if you report them, and they really are a bot, Twitter’s got a method to actually delete the account. They know that they’re bots. The problem is not they don’t know how to delete the account, the problem is there are no consequences when they delete the account. So if there are consequences, Twitter, they could just seize the $10 or seize the $20 because it’s a bot, it’s a malicious criminal act or whatever as a violation of the platform rules. You end up seizing $10,000, give half the money to the reporter, and half the money to the Twitter platform.
It’s 10% is good if you did it with conventional payment rails. But what you can’t do is the next idea, which is I want the orange badge to be used to give me safe passage through cyberspace tripping across every platform. So how do I solve the denial of service attacks against a website? I publish a website, you hit it with a million requests. Okay, now how do I deal with that? Well, I can lock you out and I can make it a zero trust website, and then you have to be coming at me through a trusted firewall or with a trusted credential. But that’s a pretty draconian thing. Or I could put it behind a Lightning wall. A Lightning wall would be I just challenge you, “Lex, you want to browse my website, you have to show me your 100,000 satoshis. Do you have 100,000 satoshis?”
Click. Okay. Now you click away 100 times or 1,000 times. And after 1,000 times, I’m like, “Well, now Lex, you’re getting offensive, I’m going to take a satoshi from you or 10 satoshis, a microtransaction. You want to hit me a million times? I’m taking all your satoshis and locking you out.” What you want to do is you want to go through 200 websites a day, and what you want every time you cross a domain, you need to be able to in a split second prove that you’ve got some asset. And now when you cross back, when you exit domain, you want to fetch your asset back.
So, how do I in a friction-free fashion browse through dozens or hundreds of websites, post a security deposit for safe passage, and then get it back? You couldn’t afford to pay a credit card fee each time. When you think about 2.5% as a transaction fee, it means you trade the money 40 times and it’s gone. It’s gone.
So I think you’ve got cryptocurrencies, Tether, Circle, most famous. I think you’ve got crypto platforms, and Ethereum is the most famous of the crypto platforms, the platform with smart contract functionality, et cetera. And then I think you’ve got just crypto securities. It’s just like my favorite whatever meme coin, and I love it because I love it, and it’s attached to my game or my company or my persona or my whatever. I think if you pushed me and said, “Well, what’s the second best?” I would say the world wants two things…
But then in the US right now, we have Circle and we have other companies that are licensed entities that are backed by cash and cash equivalents, but they’re not FDIC insured banks. There’s also a debate in Congress about whether state-chartered banks should be able to issue these things. And then we have Tether and others that are outside of the US jurisdiction. They’re probably not backed by cash and cash equivalents. They’re backed by stuff, and we don’t know what stuff. And then finally you have UST and DAI, which are algorithmic stablecoins, that are even more innovative, further outside the compliance framework. So if you ask who’s going to win, the question is really, I don’t know. Will the market decide or will the regulators decide? If the regulators get out of the way and the market [inaudible 03:27:03] Well then it’s an interesting discussion.
And then I think that all bets are off if the regulators get more heavy-handed with this. And I think you could have the same discussion with crypto properties, like the DeFi exchanges and the crypto exchanges, the SEC would like to regulate the crypto exchanges, they’d like to regulate the DeFi exchanges. That means they may regulate the crypto platforms, and at what rate and in what fashion? And so I think that I could give you an opinion if it was limited to competition under the current regulatory regime. But I think that the regulations are so fast moving and it’s so uncertain that you can’t make a decision without considering the potential actions of the regulators.
So the savings are properties. If you said, “What should I invest in?” I’d say, “Well, here’s a list of good companies, private companies. You could start your own company. That’s an investment.” If you said, “What should I trade?” Well, I’m trading as a proprietary thing. I don’t have any special insight into that. If you’re a good trader, you know you are. If you said to me, “What should you speculate in?” We talk about meme stocks and meme coins, and it sits up there, it sits right in the same space with what horse should you bet on and what sports team should you gamble on, and should you bet on black six times in a row and double down each time? It’s fun, but at the end of the day, it’s a speculation, right? You can’t build a civilization-
It’s just orders of magnitude more risky because of competition, because of ambition and because of regulation. And if you take the meme coins, it’s like when some rapper comes out with a meme coin, it’s like maybe it’ll peak when I hear about it. SHIB was created as the coin such that it had so many zeros after the decimal point that when you looked at it on the exchanges, it always showed zero, zero, zero, zero. And it wasn’t until six months after it got popular that they started expanding the display so you could see whether the price had changed.
So if I look at the constructive path forward, first, I think it’d be very constructive for corporations to embrace Bitcoin and build applications on top of it. You don’t need to fix it. There’s nothing wrong with it. When you put it on a layer two and a layer three, it moves a billion times a second at the speed of light. So every beautiful, cool DeFi application, every crypto application, everything you could imagine you might want to do, you can do with a legitimate company and a legitimate website or mobile application sitting on top of Bitcoin or lightning if you want to. So I think that to the extent that people do that, that’s going to be better for the world. If you consider what holds people back, I think it’s just misperceptions about what Bitcoin is. So I’m a big fan of just educating people. If you’re not going to commercialize it, then just educate people on what it is.
So for example, Bitcoin is the most efficient use of energy in the world by far. Right? Most people, they don’t necessarily perceive that or realize that, but if you were to take any metric energy intensity, you put $2 billion worth of electricity in the network every year and it’s worth $850 billion. There is no industry in the real world that is that energy efficient. Not only that energy efficient, it’s also the most sustainable industry. We do surveys, 58% of Bitcoin mining energy is sustainable. So there’s a very good story, in fact, every other industry, planes, trains, automobiles, construction, food, medicine, everything else, it’s less clean, less efficient. So-
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 1:43 – Grading our understanding
- 14:01 – Inflation
- 33:37 – Government
- 54:47 – War and power
- 1:05:57 – Dematerializing information
- 1:37:18 – Digital energy and assets
- 1:48:56 – Oil barrel vs Bitcoin
- 1:58:16 – Layers of Bitcoin
- 2:15:27 – Bitcoin’s role during wartime
- 2:20:11 – Jack Dorsey
- 2:36:31 – Bitcoin conflict of interest
- 2:43:13 – Satoshi Nakamoto
- 2:48:38 – Volatility
- 3:01:03 – Bitcoin price
- 3:13:19 – Twitter verification
- 3:22:16 – Second best crypto
- 3:27:58 – Dogecoin
- 3:32:31 – Elon Musk
- 3:38:00 – Advice for young people
- 3:49:27 – Mortality
- 3:52:32 – Meaning of life
Introduction
Michael Saylor
Remember George Washington, you know how he died? Well-meaning physicians bled him to death. And this was the most important patient in the country, maybe in the history of the country, and we bled him to death trying to help him. So when you’re actually inflating the money supply at 7%, but you’re calling it 2% because you want to help the economy, you’re literally bleeding the free market to death. But the sad fact is, George Washington went along with it because he thought that they were going to do him good. And the majority of the society, most companies, most conventional thinkers, the working class, they go along with this because they think that someone has their best interest in mind and the people that are bleeding them to death, they believe that prescription because their mental models are just so defective.
Remember George Washington, you know how he died? Well-meaning physicians bled him to death. And this was the most important patient in the country, maybe in the history of the country, and we bled him to death trying to help him. So when you’re actually inflating the money supply at 7%, but you’re calling it 2% because you want to help the economy, you’re literally bleeding the free market to death. But the sad fact is, George Washington went along with it because he thought that they were going to do him good. And the majority of the society, most companies, most conventional thinkers, the working class, they go along with this because they think that someone has their best interest in mind and the people that are bleeding them to death, they believe that prescription because their mental models are just so defective.
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Michael Saylor, one of the most prominent and brilliant Bitcoin proponents in the world. He is the CEO of MicroStrategy, founder of Saylor Academy, graduate of MIT. And Michael was one of the most fascinating and rigorous thinkers I’ve ever gotten a chance to explore ideas with. He can effortlessly zoom out to the big perspectives of human civilization and human history, and zoom back in to the technical details of blockchains, markets, governments and financial systems. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Michael Saylor.
The following is a conversation with Michael Saylor, one of the most prominent and brilliant Bitcoin proponents in the world. He is the CEO of MicroStrategy, founder of Saylor Academy, graduate of MIT. And Michael was one of the most fascinating and rigorous thinkers I’ve ever gotten a chance to explore ideas with. He can effortlessly zoom out to the big perspectives of human civilization and human history, and zoom back in to the technical details of blockchains, markets, governments and financial systems. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Michael Saylor.
Grading our understanding
Lex Fridman
Let’s start with a big question of truth and wisdom. When advanced humans or aliens or AI systems, let’s say, five to 10 centuries from now, look back at earth on this early 21st century, how much do you think they would say we understood about money and economics, or even about engineering, science, life, death, meaning, intelligence, consciousness, all the big interesting questions?
Let’s start with a big question of truth and wisdom. When advanced humans or aliens or AI systems, let’s say, five to 10 centuries from now, look back at earth on this early 21st century, how much do you think they would say we understood about money and economics, or even about engineering, science, life, death, meaning, intelligence, consciousness, all the big interesting questions?
Michael Saylor
I think they would probably give us a B minus on engineering, on all the engineering things, the hard sciences.
I think they would probably give us a B minus on engineering, on all the engineering things, the hard sciences.
Lex Fridman
A passing grade.
A passing grade.
Michael Saylor
We’re doing okay. We’re working our way through rockets and jets and electric cars and electricity, transport systems and nuclear power, and space flight and the like. And if you look at the walls that the great court at MIT, it’s full of all the great thinkers and they’re all pretty admirable. If you could be with Newton or Gauss or Madame Curie or Einstein, you would respect them. I would say they’d give us a D minus on economics, an F plus or a D minus.
We’re doing okay. We’re working our way through rockets and jets and electric cars and electricity, transport systems and nuclear power, and space flight and the like. And if you look at the walls that the great court at MIT, it’s full of all the great thinkers and they’re all pretty admirable. If you could be with Newton or Gauss or Madame Curie or Einstein, you would respect them. I would say they’d give us a D minus on economics, an F plus or a D minus.
Lex Fridman
You see, they have an optimistic vision. First of all, optimistic vision of engineering because everybody you’ve listed, not everybody, but most people you’ve listed is just over the past couple of centuries, and maybe stretches a little farther back. But mostly all the cool stuff we’ve done in engineering is the past couple of centuries.
You see, they have an optimistic vision. First of all, optimistic vision of engineering because everybody you’ve listed, not everybody, but most people you’ve listed is just over the past couple of centuries, and maybe stretches a little farther back. But mostly all the cool stuff we’ve done in engineering is the past couple of centuries.
Michael Saylor
Archimedes had his virtues. I studied the history of science at MIT, and I also studied aerospace engineering. And so I clearly have a bias in favor of science. And if I look at the past 10,000 years, and I consider all of the philosophy and the politics and their impact on the human condition, I think it’s a wash. For every politician that came up with a good idea, another politician came up with a bad idea. And it’s not clear to me that most of the political and philosophical contributions to the human race and the human conditions have advanced so much. I mean, we’re still taking guidance and admiring Aristotle and Plato and Seneca and the like. And on the other hand, if you think about what has made the human condition better, fire, water, harnessing of wind energy, try to row across an ocean, not easy.
Archimedes had his virtues. I studied the history of science at MIT, and I also studied aerospace engineering. And so I clearly have a bias in favor of science. And if I look at the past 10,000 years, and I consider all of the philosophy and the politics and their impact on the human condition, I think it’s a wash. For every politician that came up with a good idea, another politician came up with a bad idea. And it’s not clear to me that most of the political and philosophical contributions to the human race and the human conditions have advanced so much. I mean, we’re still taking guidance and admiring Aristotle and Plato and Seneca and the like. And on the other hand, if you think about what has made the human condition better, fire, water, harnessing of wind energy, try to row across an ocean, not easy.
Lex Fridman
And for people who are just listening or watching, there’s a beautiful sexy ship from 16th, 17th century.
And for people who are just listening or watching, there’s a beautiful sexy ship from 16th, 17th century.
Michael Saylor
This is a 19th century handmade model of a 17th century sailing ship, which is of the type that the Dutch East Indias Company used to sail the world and trade. So the original was made sometime in the 1600s. And then this model is made in the 19th century by individuals.
This is a 19th century handmade model of a 17th century sailing ship, which is of the type that the Dutch East Indias Company used to sail the world and trade. So the original was made sometime in the 1600s. And then this model is made in the 19th century by individuals.
Lex Fridman
Both the model and the ship itself is engineering at its best. And just imagine just like rockets flying out the space, how much hope this filled people with, exploring the unknown, going into the mystery, both the entrepreneurs and the business people and the engineers and just humans. What’s out there? What’s out there to be discovered?
Both the model and the ship itself is engineering at its best. And just imagine just like rockets flying out the space, how much hope this filled people with, exploring the unknown, going into the mystery, both the entrepreneurs and the business people and the engineers and just humans. What’s out there? What’s out there to be discovered?
Michael Saylor
Yeah, the metaphor of human beings leaving shore or sailing across the horizon, risking their lives in pursuit of a better life is an incredibly powerful one. In 1900, I suppose the average life expectancy is 50. During the Revolutionary War, while our founding fathers were fighting to establish life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, the constitution, average life expectancy was 32, somewhere between 32 and 36. So all the sound and the fury doesn’t make you live past 32, but what does? Antibiotics, conquest of infectious diseases. If we understand the science of infectious disease, sterilizing a knife and harnessing antibiotics gets you from 50 to 70, and that happened fast. That happens from 1900 to 1950 or something like that. And I think if you look at the human condition, you ever get on one of those rowing machines where they actually keep track of your watts output when you’re on the… 200 is a lot. Okay, 200 is a lot. So a kilowatt-hour is all the energy that a human, a trained athlete can deliver in a day.
Yeah, the metaphor of human beings leaving shore or sailing across the horizon, risking their lives in pursuit of a better life is an incredibly powerful one. In 1900, I suppose the average life expectancy is 50. During the Revolutionary War, while our founding fathers were fighting to establish life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, the constitution, average life expectancy was 32, somewhere between 32 and 36. So all the sound and the fury doesn’t make you live past 32, but what does? Antibiotics, conquest of infectious diseases. If we understand the science of infectious disease, sterilizing a knife and harnessing antibiotics gets you from 50 to 70, and that happened fast. That happens from 1900 to 1950 or something like that. And I think if you look at the human condition, you ever get on one of those rowing machines where they actually keep track of your watts output when you’re on the… 200 is a lot. Okay, 200 is a lot. So a kilowatt-hour is all the energy that a human, a trained athlete can deliver in a day.
And probably not 1% of the people in the world could deliver a kilowatt-hour in a day. And the commercial value of a kilowatt-hour, the retail value is 11 cents today, and the wholesale value is 2 cents. And so you have to look at the contribution of politicians and philosophers and economists to the human condition, and it’s like at best to wash one way or the other. And then if you look at the contribution of John D. Rockefeller when he delivered you a barrel of oil, and the energy in oil, liquid energy. Or the contribution of Tesla, as we deliver electricity. And what’s the impact on the human condition if I have electric power, if I have chemical power, if I have wind energy? If I can actually set up a reservoir, create a dam, spin a turbine, and generate energy from a hydraulic source, that’s extraordinary. And so our ability to cross the ocean, our ability to grow food, our ability to live, it’s technology that gets the human race from a brutal life where life expectancy is 30, to a world where life expectancy is 80.
Lex Fridman
You gave a D minus to the economists. So are they too, like the politicians, the wash in terms of there’s good ideas and bad ideas, and that tiny delta between good and bad is how you squeak pass the F plus onto the D minus territory?
You gave a D minus to the economists. So are they too, like the politicians, the wash in terms of there’s good ideas and bad ideas, and that tiny delta between good and bad is how you squeak pass the F plus onto the D minus territory?
Michael Saylor
I think most economic ideas are bad ideas.
I think most economic ideas are bad ideas.
Lex Fridman
Most?
Most?
Michael Saylor
Take us back to MIT and you want to solve a fluid dynamics problem. Design the shape of the hull of that ship. Or you want to design an airfoil, a wing. Or if you want to design an engine or a nozzle in a rocket ship, you wouldn’t do it with simple arithmetic, you wouldn’t do it with a scalar. There’s not a single number, right? It’s vector math. Computational fluid dynamics is n-dimensional, higher-level math, complicated stuff. So when an economist says the inflation rate is 2%, that’s a scalar. And when an economist says it’s not a problem to print more money because the velocity of the money is very low, monetary velocity is low. That’s another scalar. Okay.
Take us back to MIT and you want to solve a fluid dynamics problem. Design the shape of the hull of that ship. Or you want to design an airfoil, a wing. Or if you want to design an engine or a nozzle in a rocket ship, you wouldn’t do it with simple arithmetic, you wouldn’t do it with a scalar. There’s not a single number, right? It’s vector math. Computational fluid dynamics is n-dimensional, higher-level math, complicated stuff. So when an economist says the inflation rate is 2%, that’s a scalar. And when an economist says it’s not a problem to print more money because the velocity of the money is very low, monetary velocity is low. That’s another scalar. Okay.
So the truth of the matter is, inflation is not a scalar. Inflation is an n-dimensional vector. Money velocity is not a scalar. Saying, “What’s the velocity of money?” Oh, it’s slow or it’s fast. It ignores the question of what medium is the money moving through? And the same way that, what’s the speed of sound? Okay, well, what is sound, right? Sound is a compression wave. It’s energy moving through a medium, but the speed is different. So for example, the speed of sound through air is different than the speed of sound through water. And sound moves faster through water, it moves faster through a solid, and it moves faster through a stiffer solid. So there isn’t one.
Lex Fridman
What is the fundamental problem with the way economists reduce the world down to a model? Is it too simple or is it just even the first principles of constructing the model is wrong?
What is the fundamental problem with the way economists reduce the world down to a model? Is it too simple or is it just even the first principles of constructing the model is wrong?
Michael Saylor
I think that the fundamental problem is, if you see the world as a scalar, you simply pick the one number which supports whatever you want to do, and you ignore the universe of other consequences from your behavior.
I think that the fundamental problem is, if you see the world as a scalar, you simply pick the one number which supports whatever you want to do, and you ignore the universe of other consequences from your behavior.
Lex Fridman
In general, I don’t know if you’ve heard of Eric Watson has been talking about this with Gage Theory, so different kinds of approaches from the physics world, from the mathematical world to extend past this scalar view of economics. So Gage Theory is one way that comes from physics. Do you find that a way of exploring economics, interesting? So outside of cryptocurrency, outside of the extra technologies and so on, just analysis of how economics works, do you find that interesting?
In general, I don’t know if you’ve heard of Eric Watson has been talking about this with Gage Theory, so different kinds of approaches from the physics world, from the mathematical world to extend past this scalar view of economics. So Gage Theory is one way that comes from physics. Do you find that a way of exploring economics, interesting? So outside of cryptocurrency, outside of the extra technologies and so on, just analysis of how economics works, do you find that interesting?
Michael Saylor
Yeah, I think that if we’re going to want to really make any scientific progress in economics, we have to apply much more computationally intensive and richer forms of mathematics.
Yeah, I think that if we’re going to want to really make any scientific progress in economics, we have to apply much more computationally intensive and richer forms of mathematics.
Lex Fridman
So simulation perhaps, or…
So simulation perhaps, or…
Michael Saylor
Yeah. When I was at MIT I studied system dynamics. They taught it at the Sloan school. It was developed by Jay Forrester who was an extraordinary computer scientist. And when we created models of economic behavior, they were all multidimensional nonlinear models. So if you want to describe how anything works in the real world, you have to start with the concept of feedback. If I double the price of something, demand will fall and attempts to create supply will increase and there will be a delay before the capacity increases. There’ll be an instant demand change, and there’ll be rippling effects throughout every other segment of the economy downstream and upstream of such thing.
Yeah. When I was at MIT I studied system dynamics. They taught it at the Sloan school. It was developed by Jay Forrester who was an extraordinary computer scientist. And when we created models of economic behavior, they were all multidimensional nonlinear models. So if you want to describe how anything works in the real world, you have to start with the concept of feedback. If I double the price of something, demand will fall and attempts to create supply will increase and there will be a delay before the capacity increases. There’ll be an instant demand change, and there’ll be rippling effects throughout every other segment of the economy downstream and upstream of such thing.
So it’s common sense, but most economics, most classical economics, it’s always taught with linear models, fairly simplistic linear models. And oftentimes, I’m really shocked today that the entire mainstream dialogue of economics has been captured by scalar arithmetic. For example, if you read any article in New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, right, they just refer to there’s an inflation number or the CPI, or the inflation rate is X. And if you look at all the historic studies of the impact of inflation, generally they’re all based upon the idea that inflation equals CPI, and then they try to extrapolate from that and you just get nowhere with it.
Lex Fridman
So at the very least, we should be considering inflation and other economics concept is a nonlinear, dynamical system. So nonlinearity, and also just embracing the full complexity of just how the variables interact, maybe through simulation, maybe have some interesting models around that.
So at the very least, we should be considering inflation and other economics concept is a nonlinear, dynamical system. So nonlinearity, and also just embracing the full complexity of just how the variables interact, maybe through simulation, maybe have some interesting models around that.
Michael Saylor
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if somebody for once published a table of the change in price of every product, every service, and every asset and every place, over time?
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if somebody for once published a table of the change in price of every product, every service, and every asset and every place, over time?
Inflation
Lex Fridman
You said table. Some of that also is the task of visualization, how to extract from this complex set of numbers, patterns that somehow indicate something fundamental about what’s happening. So summarization of data is still important. Perhaps summarization not down to a single scale of value, but looking at that whole sea of numbers, you have to find patterns like what is inflation in a particular sector? What does it maybe change over time, maybe different geographical regions, things of that nature. I think that’s, I don’t know even what that task is. That’s what you could look at machine learning, you can look at AI with that perspective, which is how do you represent what’s happening efficiently, as efficiently as possible? That’s never going to be a single number, but it might be a compressed model that captures something beautiful, something fundamental about what’s happening.
You said table. Some of that also is the task of visualization, how to extract from this complex set of numbers, patterns that somehow indicate something fundamental about what’s happening. So summarization of data is still important. Perhaps summarization not down to a single scale of value, but looking at that whole sea of numbers, you have to find patterns like what is inflation in a particular sector? What does it maybe change over time, maybe different geographical regions, things of that nature. I think that’s, I don’t know even what that task is. That’s what you could look at machine learning, you can look at AI with that perspective, which is how do you represent what’s happening efficiently, as efficiently as possible? That’s never going to be a single number, but it might be a compressed model that captures something beautiful, something fundamental about what’s happening.
Michael Saylor
It’s an opportunity for sure. If we take, for example, during the pandemic, the response of the political apparatus was to lower interest rates to zero, and to start buying assets, in essence printing money. And the defense was, there’s no inflation. But of course you had one part of the economy where it was locked down, so it was illegal to buy anything. It was either illegal or it was impractical, so it would be impossible for demand to manifest. So of course, there is no inflation. On the other hand, there was instantaneous immediate inflation in another part of the economy, for example, you lowered the interest rates to zero. At one point, we saw the swap rate on a 30-year note go to 72 basis points. Okay. That means that the value of a long-dated bond immediately inflates.
It’s an opportunity for sure. If we take, for example, during the pandemic, the response of the political apparatus was to lower interest rates to zero, and to start buying assets, in essence printing money. And the defense was, there’s no inflation. But of course you had one part of the economy where it was locked down, so it was illegal to buy anything. It was either illegal or it was impractical, so it would be impossible for demand to manifest. So of course, there is no inflation. On the other hand, there was instantaneous immediate inflation in another part of the economy, for example, you lowered the interest rates to zero. At one point, we saw the swap rate on a 30-year note go to 72 basis points. Okay. That means that the value of a long-dated bond immediately inflates.
So the bond market had hyperinflation within minutes of these financial decisions. The asset market had hyperinflation. We had what you call a K-shaped recovery, what we affectionately call a K-shaped recovery. Main street shut down, Wall Street recovered all within six weeks. The inflation was in the assets, in the stocks, in the bonds. If you look today, you see that typical house, according to the Case-Shiller index today is up 19.2% year over year. So if you’re a first time home buyer, the inflation rate is 19%. The formal CPI announced a 7.9%. You can pretty much create any inflation rate you want by constructing a market basket, a weighted basket of products or services or assets that yield you the answer. I think that the fundamental failing of economists is, first of all, they don’t really have a term for asset inflation.
Lex Fridman
What’s an asset? What’s asset hyperinflation? You mentioned bottom market swap rate and asset is where the majority of the hyperinflation happen. What’s inflation? What’s hyperinflation? What’s an asset? What’s an asset market? I’m going to ask so many dumb questions.
What’s an asset? What’s asset hyperinflation? You mentioned bottom market swap rate and asset is where the majority of the hyperinflation happen. What’s inflation? What’s hyperinflation? What’s an asset? What’s an asset market? I’m going to ask so many dumb questions.
Michael Saylor
In the conventional economic world, you would treat inflation as the rate of increase in price of a market, basket of consumer products, defined by a government agency.
In the conventional economic world, you would treat inflation as the rate of increase in price of a market, basket of consumer products, defined by a government agency.
Lex Fridman
So they have traditional things that a regular consumer would be buying. The government selects like toilet paper, food toaster, refrigerated electronics, all that kind of stuff. And it’s like a representative basket of goods that lead to a content existence on this earth for a regular consumer.
So they have traditional things that a regular consumer would be buying. The government selects like toilet paper, food toaster, refrigerated electronics, all that kind of stuff. And it’s like a representative basket of goods that lead to a content existence on this earth for a regular consumer.
Michael Saylor
They define a synthetic metric. I mean, I’m going to say you should have a thousand square foot apartment and you should have a used car, and you should eat three hamburgers a week. Now, 10 years go by and the apartment costs more. I could adjust the market basket via, they call them hedonic adjustments. I could decide that it used to be a 1970 needed a thousand square feet, but in the year 2020, you only need 700 square feet because we’ve miniaturized televisions and we’ve got more efficient electric appliances. And because things have collapsed into the iPhone, you just don’t need as much space. So now it may be that the apartment costs 50% more, but after the hedonic adjustment, there is no inflation because I just downgraded the expectation of what a normal person should have.
They define a synthetic metric. I mean, I’m going to say you should have a thousand square foot apartment and you should have a used car, and you should eat three hamburgers a week. Now, 10 years go by and the apartment costs more. I could adjust the market basket via, they call them hedonic adjustments. I could decide that it used to be a 1970 needed a thousand square feet, but in the year 2020, you only need 700 square feet because we’ve miniaturized televisions and we’ve got more efficient electric appliances. And because things have collapsed into the iPhone, you just don’t need as much space. So now it may be that the apartment costs 50% more, but after the hedonic adjustment, there is no inflation because I just downgraded the expectation of what a normal person should have.
Lex Fridman
So the synthetic nature of the metric allows for manipulation by people in power.
So the synthetic nature of the metric allows for manipulation by people in power.
Michael Saylor
Pretty much. I guess, my criticism of economists is rather than embracing inflation based upon its fundamental idea, which is the rate at which the price of things go up. They’ve been captured by mainstream conventional thinking to immediately equate inflation to the government issued CPI or government issued PCE or government issued PPI measure, which was never the rate at which things go up. It’s simply the rate at which a synthetic basket of products and services the government wishes to track, go up. Now, the problem with that is two big things. One thing is the government gets to create the market basket, and so they keep changing what’s in the basket over time.
Pretty much. I guess, my criticism of economists is rather than embracing inflation based upon its fundamental idea, which is the rate at which the price of things go up. They’ve been captured by mainstream conventional thinking to immediately equate inflation to the government issued CPI or government issued PCE or government issued PPI measure, which was never the rate at which things go up. It’s simply the rate at which a synthetic basket of products and services the government wishes to track, go up. Now, the problem with that is two big things. One thing is the government gets to create the market basket, and so they keep changing what’s in the basket over time.
So I mean, if I said three years ago, you should go see 10 concerts a year, and the concert tickets now cost $200 each. Now it’s $2,000 a year to go see concerts. Now I’m in charge of calculating inflation. So I redefine your entertainment quota for the year to be eight Netflix streaming concerts, and now they don’t cost $2,000. They cost nothing, and there is no inflation, but you don’t get your concerts right? So the problem starts with continually changing the definition of the market basket, but in my opinion, that’s not the biggest problem. The more egregious problem is the fundamental idea that assets aren’t products or services. Assets can’t be inflated.
Lex Fridman
What’s an asset?
What’s an asset?
Michael Saylor
A house, a share of Apple stock, a bond, a Bitcoin is an asset or a Picasso painting.
A house, a share of Apple stock, a bond, a Bitcoin is an asset or a Picasso painting.
Lex Fridman
Not a consumable good, not an apple that you can eat.
Not a consumable good, not an apple that you can eat.
Michael Saylor
Right. If I throw away an asset, then I’m not on the hook to track the inflation rate for it. So what happens if I change the policy such that, let’s take the class example. A million dollar bond at a 5% interest rate gives you $50,000 a year in risk-free income. You might retire on $50,000 a year in a low cost jurisdiction. So the cost of social security or early retirement is $1 million when the interest rate is 5%. During the crisis of March of 2020, the interest rate went on a 10-year bond went to 50 basis points. So now the cost of that bond is $10 million. The cost of social security went from a million dollars to $10 million. So if you wanted to work your entire life, save money and then retire risk-free and live happily ever after on a $50,000 salary, living on a beach in Mexico, wherever you wanted to go, you had hyperinflation, the cost of your aspiration increased by a factor of 10 over the course of some amount of time.
Right. If I throw away an asset, then I’m not on the hook to track the inflation rate for it. So what happens if I change the policy such that, let’s take the class example. A million dollar bond at a 5% interest rate gives you $50,000 a year in risk-free income. You might retire on $50,000 a year in a low cost jurisdiction. So the cost of social security or early retirement is $1 million when the interest rate is 5%. During the crisis of March of 2020, the interest rate went on a 10-year bond went to 50 basis points. So now the cost of that bond is $10 million. The cost of social security went from a million dollars to $10 million. So if you wanted to work your entire life, save money and then retire risk-free and live happily ever after on a $50,000 salary, living on a beach in Mexico, wherever you wanted to go, you had hyperinflation, the cost of your aspiration increased by a factor of 10 over the course of some amount of time.
In fact, in that case, that was over the course of about 12 years. As the inflation rate ground down, the asset traded up. But the conventional view is, “Oh, that’s not a problem because it’s good that the bond is highly priced because we own the bond.” Or what’s the problem with the inflation rate in housing being 19%? It’s an awful problem for a 22-year-old that’s starting their first job, that’s saving money to buy a house. But it would be characterized as a benefit to society by a conventional economist who would say, “Well, housing asset values are higher because of interest rate fluctuation, and now the economy’s got more wealth.” And so that’s viewed as a benefit.
Lex Fridman
So what’s being missed here? The suffering of the average person or the struggle, the suffering, the pain of the average person, like metrics that captured that within the economic system. When you’re talking about-
So what’s being missed here? The suffering of the average person or the struggle, the suffering, the pain of the average person, like metrics that captured that within the economic system. When you’re talking about-
Michael Saylor
One way to say it is, a conventional view of inflation as CPI understates the human misery that’s inflicted upon the working class and on mainstream companies, by the political class. And so it’s a massive shift of wealth from the working class to the property class. It’s a massive shift to power from the free market to the centrally governed or the controlled market. It’s a massive shift to power from the people to the government. And maybe one more illustrative point here, Lex is, what do you think the inflation rate’s been for the past a 100 years?
One way to say it is, a conventional view of inflation as CPI understates the human misery that’s inflicted upon the working class and on mainstream companies, by the political class. And so it’s a massive shift of wealth from the working class to the property class. It’s a massive shift to power from the free market to the centrally governed or the controlled market. It’s a massive shift to power from the people to the government. And maybe one more illustrative point here, Lex is, what do you think the inflation rate’s been for the past a 100 years?
Lex Fridman
Oh, we talking about the scalar again?
Oh, we talking about the scalar again?
Michael Saylor
If you took a survey of everybody on the street and you asked them what do they think inflation was, what is it? You remember when Jerome Powell said, our target’s 2%, but we’re not there. If you go around the corner, I have posted the deed to this house sold in 1930, okay. And the number on that deed is $100,000, 1930. And if you go on Zillow and you get the Z estimate-
If you took a survey of everybody on the street and you asked them what do they think inflation was, what is it? You remember when Jerome Powell said, our target’s 2%, but we’re not there. If you go around the corner, I have posted the deed to this house sold in 1930, okay. And the number on that deed is $100,000, 1930. And if you go on Zillow and you get the Z estimate-
Lex Fridman
Is it higher than that? No?
Is it higher than that? No?
Michael Saylor
$30,500,000. So that’s 92 years, 1930 or 2022, and in 92 years, we’ve had 305X increase in price of the house. Now if you actually calculate, you come to a conclusion that the inflation rate was approximately 6.5% a year every year for 92 years. And there’s nobody in government, no conventional economists who would ever admit to an inflation rate of 7% a year in the US dollar over the last century. Now, if you dig deeper, I mean, one guy that’s done a great job working on this is Saifedean Ammous, who wrote the book, The Bitcoin Standard. And he notes that on average it looks like the inflation rate and the money supply is about 7% a year all the way up to the year 2020.
$30,500,000. So that’s 92 years, 1930 or 2022, and in 92 years, we’ve had 305X increase in price of the house. Now if you actually calculate, you come to a conclusion that the inflation rate was approximately 6.5% a year every year for 92 years. And there’s nobody in government, no conventional economists who would ever admit to an inflation rate of 7% a year in the US dollar over the last century. Now, if you dig deeper, I mean, one guy that’s done a great job working on this is Saifedean Ammous, who wrote the book, The Bitcoin Standard. And he notes that on average it looks like the inflation rate and the money supply is about 7% a year all the way up to the year 2020.
If you look at the S&P index, which is a market basket of scarce, desirable stocks, it returned about 10%. If you talk to 10% a year for a 100 years, the money supply is expanding at 7% a 100 years. If you actually talk to economists or you look at the economy and you ask the question, “How fast does the economy grow in its entirety year over year?” Generally about two to 3%, the sum total impact of all this technology and human ingenuity might get you a two and a half, 3% improvement a year.
Lex Fridman
As measured by GDP. Are you okay with that question?
As measured by GDP. Are you okay with that question?
Michael Saylor
I’m not sure I’d go that far yet, but I would just say that if you had the human race doing stuff, and if you ask the question, “How much more efficiently will we do the stuff next year than this year?” Or, “What’s the value of all of our innovations and inventions and investments in the past 12 months?” You’d be hard-pressed to say, we get 2% better. Typical investor thinks they’re 10% better every year. So if you look at what’s going on really, when you’re holding a million dollars of stocks and you’re getting a 10% gain a year, you’re really get a 7% expansion of the money supply. You’re getting a two or 3% gain under best circumstances. And another way to say that is, if the money supply stopped expanding at 7% a year, the S&P yield might be 3% and not 10%. It probably should be.
I’m not sure I’d go that far yet, but I would just say that if you had the human race doing stuff, and if you ask the question, “How much more efficiently will we do the stuff next year than this year?” Or, “What’s the value of all of our innovations and inventions and investments in the past 12 months?” You’d be hard-pressed to say, we get 2% better. Typical investor thinks they’re 10% better every year. So if you look at what’s going on really, when you’re holding a million dollars of stocks and you’re getting a 10% gain a year, you’re really get a 7% expansion of the money supply. You’re getting a two or 3% gain under best circumstances. And another way to say that is, if the money supply stopped expanding at 7% a year, the S&P yield might be 3% and not 10%. It probably should be.
Now, that gets you to start to ask a bunch of other fundamental questions. Like, if I borrow a billion dollars and pay 3% interest and the money supply expands at seven to 10% a year, and I ended up making a 10% return on a billion dollars investment, paying 3% interest, is that fair? And who suffered so that I could do that? Because in an environment where you’re just inflating the money supply and you’re holding the assets constant, it stands the reason that the price of all the assets is going to appreciate somewhat proportional to the money supply, and the difference in asset appreciation is going to be a function of the scarce, desirable quality of the assets, and to what extent can I make more of them, and to what extent are they truly limited in supply?
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So we will get to a lot of the words you said there, the scarcity and so connected to how limited they are and the value of those assets. But you also said, so the expansion of the money supply, which is put in other ways, is printing money. And so is that always bad? The expansion of the money supply, just to put some terms on the table so we understand them. You nonchalantly say it’s always on average expanding every year. The money supply is expanding every year by 7%. That’s a bad thing. That’s a universally bad thing.
Yeah. So we will get to a lot of the words you said there, the scarcity and so connected to how limited they are and the value of those assets. But you also said, so the expansion of the money supply, which is put in other ways, is printing money. And so is that always bad? The expansion of the money supply, just to put some terms on the table so we understand them. You nonchalantly say it’s always on average expanding every year. The money supply is expanding every year by 7%. That’s a bad thing. That’s a universally bad thing.
Michael Saylor
It’s awful. I guess to be precise, it’s the currency. I would say money is monetary energy or economic energy, and the economic energy has to find its way into a medium. So if you want to move it rapidly as a medium of exchange, it has to find its way into currency, but the money can also flow into property like a house or gold. If the money flows into property, it’ll probably hold its value much better. If the money flows into currency… If you had put a $100,000 in this house, you would have 305X return over 92 years. But if you had put the money a $100,000 into safe deposit box and buried it in the basement, you would’ve lost 99.7% of your wealth over the same time period. So the expansion of the currency creates a massive inefficiency in the society, what I’ll call an adiabatic lapse. What we’re doing is we’re bleeding the civilization to death.
It’s awful. I guess to be precise, it’s the currency. I would say money is monetary energy or economic energy, and the economic energy has to find its way into a medium. So if you want to move it rapidly as a medium of exchange, it has to find its way into currency, but the money can also flow into property like a house or gold. If the money flows into property, it’ll probably hold its value much better. If the money flows into currency… If you had put a $100,000 in this house, you would have 305X return over 92 years. But if you had put the money a $100,000 into safe deposit box and buried it in the basement, you would’ve lost 99.7% of your wealth over the same time period. So the expansion of the currency creates a massive inefficiency in the society, what I’ll call an adiabatic lapse. What we’re doing is we’re bleeding the civilization to death.
Lex Fridman
What’s the adiabatic… What’s that word?
What’s the adiabatic… What’s that word?
Michael Saylor
Adiabatic lapse.
Adiabatic lapse.
Lex Fridman
Adiabatic.
Adiabatic.
Michael Saylor
In aerospace engineering, you want to solve any problem. They start with the phrase assume an adiabatic system. And what that means is a closed system.
In aerospace engineering, you want to solve any problem. They start with the phrase assume an adiabatic system. And what that means is a closed system.
Lex Fridman
Okay.
Okay.
Michael Saylor
So-
So-
Lex Fridman
I’ve got it.
I’ve got it.
Michael Saylor
… I’ve got a container. And in that container, no air leaves and no air enters. No energy exits or enters. So it’s a closed system.
… I’ve got a container. And in that container, no air leaves and no air enters. No energy exits or enters. So it’s a closed system.
Lex Fridman
So you got the closed system lapse.
So you got the closed system lapse.
Michael Saylor
Okay, I’m going to use a-
Okay, I’m going to use a-
Lex Fridman
There’s a leak in the ship.
There’s a leak in the ship.
Michael Saylor
… physical metaphor for you, because you’re into jujitsu. You got 10 pints of blood in your body, and so before your next workout, I’m going to take one pint from you. Now you’re going to go exercise, but you’ve lost 10% of your blood. You’re not going to perform as well. It takes about one month for your body to replace the red blood platelets. So what if I tell you every month you got to show up and I’m going to bleed you? Okay, so if I’m draining the energy, I’m draining the blood from your body. You can’t perform. Adiabatic lapse is when you go up an altitude. Every thousand feet, you lose three degrees.
… physical metaphor for you, because you’re into jujitsu. You got 10 pints of blood in your body, and so before your next workout, I’m going to take one pint from you. Now you’re going to go exercise, but you’ve lost 10% of your blood. You’re not going to perform as well. It takes about one month for your body to replace the red blood platelets. So what if I tell you every month you got to show up and I’m going to bleed you? Okay, so if I’m draining the energy, I’m draining the blood from your body. You can’t perform. Adiabatic lapse is when you go up an altitude. Every thousand feet, you lose three degrees.
You go at 50,000 feet, you’re 150 degrees colder than sea level. That’s why you look at your instruments and instead of 80 degrees, you’re minus 70 degrees. Why is the temperature falling? Temperature’s falling because it’s not a closed system, it’s an open system. As the air expands, the density falls, the energy per cubic, whatever falls, and therefore the temperature falls. The heat’s falling out of the solution. So when you’re inflating, let’s say you’re inflating the money, the currency supply by 6%, you’re sucking 6% of the energy out of the fluid that the economy is using to function.
Lex Fridman
So the currency, this ocean of currency, that’s a nice way for the economy to function. It’s being inefficient when you expand the money supply, but it’s the liquid. I’m trying to find the right adjective here. It’s how you do transactions at a scale of billions.
So the currency, this ocean of currency, that’s a nice way for the economy to function. It’s being inefficient when you expand the money supply, but it’s the liquid. I’m trying to find the right adjective here. It’s how you do transactions at a scale of billions.
Michael Saylor
Currency is the asset we use to move monetary energy around, and you could use the dollar or you could use the peso or you could use the boulevard.
Currency is the asset we use to move monetary energy around, and you could use the dollar or you could use the peso or you could use the boulevard.
Lex Fridman
Selling houses and buying houses is much more inefficient, or you can’t transact between billions of people with houses.
Selling houses and buying houses is much more inefficient, or you can’t transact between billions of people with houses.
Michael Saylor
Yeah. Properties don’t make such good mediums of exchange. They make better stores of value and they have utility value if it’s a ship or a house or a plane or a bushel of corn.
Yeah. Properties don’t make such good mediums of exchange. They make better stores of value and they have utility value if it’s a ship or a house or a plane or a bushel of corn.
Government
Lex Fridman
Can we zoom out, keep zooming out into, we reach the origin of human civilization, but on the way ask, you gave economists a D minus. I’m not even going to ask you what you give to governments. Do you think their failure, economists and government failure is malevolence or incompetence?
Can we zoom out, keep zooming out into, we reach the origin of human civilization, but on the way ask, you gave economists a D minus. I’m not even going to ask you what you give to governments. Do you think their failure, economists and government failure is malevolence or incompetence?
Michael Saylor
I think policy makers are well-intentioned, but generally all government policy is inflationary and it’s inflammatory and inflationary. So what I-
I think policy makers are well-intentioned, but generally all government policy is inflationary and it’s inflammatory and inflationary. So what I-
Michael Saylor
… and all government, it’s inflammatory and inflationary. So what I mean by that is when you have a policy pursuing supply chain independence, if you have an energy policy, if you have a labor policy, if you have a trade policy, if you have any kind of foreign policy, a domestic policy, a manufacturing policy, every one of these, a medical policy, every one of these policies interferes with the free market and generally prevents some rational actor from doing it in a cheaper, more efficient way. So when you layer them on top of each other, they all have to be paid for. If you want to shut down the entire economy for a year, you have to pay for it, right? If you want to fight a war, you have to pay for it, right? If you don’t want to use oil or natural gas, you have to pay for it. If you don’t want to manufacture semiconductors in China and you want to manufacture them in the U.S., you got to pay for it.
… and all government, it’s inflammatory and inflationary. So what I mean by that is when you have a policy pursuing supply chain independence, if you have an energy policy, if you have a labor policy, if you have a trade policy, if you have any kind of foreign policy, a domestic policy, a manufacturing policy, every one of these, a medical policy, every one of these policies interferes with the free market and generally prevents some rational actor from doing it in a cheaper, more efficient way. So when you layer them on top of each other, they all have to be paid for. If you want to shut down the entire economy for a year, you have to pay for it, right? If you want to fight a war, you have to pay for it, right? If you don’t want to use oil or natural gas, you have to pay for it. If you don’t want to manufacture semiconductors in China and you want to manufacture them in the U.S., you got to pay for it.
If I rebuild the entire supply chain in Pennsylvania and I hire a bunch of employees and then I unionize the employees, then not only am I… I idle the factory in the Far East, it goes to 50% capacity. So whatever it sells, it has to raise the price on, and then I drive up the cost of labor for every other manufacturer in the U.S. because I’m competing against them, right? I’m changing that condition. So everything gets less efficient, everything gets more expensive, and of course, the government couldn’t really pay for its policies and its wars with taxes. We didn’t pay for World War I with tax. We didn’t pay for World War II with tax. We didn’t pay for Vietnam with tax. In fact, when you trace this, what you realize is the government never pays for all of its policies with taxes. It pays for-
Lex Fridman
Because it’s super painful to ask to raise the taxes to truly transparently pay for the things you’re doing with taxes, with taxpayer money because they feel the pain.
Because it’s super painful to ask to raise the taxes to truly transparently pay for the things you’re doing with taxes, with taxpayer money because they feel the pain.
Michael Saylor
That’s one interpretation or it’s just too transparent. If people understood the true cost-
That’s one interpretation or it’s just too transparent. If people understood the true cost-
Lex Fridman
Of war, they wouldn’t want to go to war.
Of war, they wouldn’t want to go to war.
Michael Saylor
If you were told that you would lose 95% of your assets and 90% of everything you will be ever will be taken from you, you might re-prioritize your thought about a given policy and you might not vote for that politician.
If you were told that you would lose 95% of your assets and 90% of everything you will be ever will be taken from you, you might re-prioritize your thought about a given policy and you might not vote for that politician.
Lex Fridman
But you’re still saying incompetence not malevolence. So fundamentally, government creates a bureaucracy of incompetence is how you look at it.
But you’re still saying incompetence not malevolence. So fundamentally, government creates a bureaucracy of incompetence is how you look at it.
Michael Saylor
I think a lack of humility, if people had more humility than they would realize-
I think a lack of humility, if people had more humility than they would realize-
Lex Fridman
Humility about how little they know, how little they understand about the function of complex systems.
Humility about how little they know, how little they understand about the function of complex systems.
Michael Saylor
It’s a phrase from Clint Eastwood’s movie Unforgiven where he says, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” I think that a lot of people overestimate what they can accomplish and experience in life causes you to reevaluate that. So I’ve done a lot of things in my life and generally, my mistakes were always my good ideas that I enthusiastically pursued to the detriment of my great ideas that required 150% of my attention to prosper. So I think people pursue too many good ideas, and they all sound good, but there’s just a limit to what you can accomplish. And everybody underestimates the challenges of implementing an idea, and they always overestimate the benefits of the pursuit of that.
It’s a phrase from Clint Eastwood’s movie Unforgiven where he says, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” I think that a lot of people overestimate what they can accomplish and experience in life causes you to reevaluate that. So I’ve done a lot of things in my life and generally, my mistakes were always my good ideas that I enthusiastically pursued to the detriment of my great ideas that required 150% of my attention to prosper. So I think people pursue too many good ideas, and they all sound good, but there’s just a limit to what you can accomplish. And everybody underestimates the challenges of implementing an idea, and they always overestimate the benefits of the pursuit of that.
And so I think it’s an overconfidence that causes an over-exuberance in pursuit of policies. As the ambition of the government expands, so must the currency supply. I could say the money supply, but let’s say the currency supply. You can triple the number of pesos in the economy, but it doesn’t triple the amount of manufacturing capacity in the set economy, and it doesn’t triple the amount of assets in the economy. It just triples the pesos. So as you increase the currency supply, then the price of all those scarce desirable things will tend to go up rapidly. And the confidence of all of the institutions, the corporations and the individual actors and trading partners will collapse.
Lex Fridman
If we take a tangent on a tangent, and we will return soon to the big human civilization question. So if government naturally wants to buy stuff it can’t afford, what’s the best form of government? Anarchism. Libertarianism. So there’s not even armies. There’s no borders that’s anarchism-
If we take a tangent on a tangent, and we will return soon to the big human civilization question. So if government naturally wants to buy stuff it can’t afford, what’s the best form of government? Anarchism. Libertarianism. So there’s not even armies. There’s no borders that’s anarchism-
Michael Saylor
The least.
The least.
Lex Fridman
The smallest possible, the less the-
The smallest possible, the less the-
Michael Saylor
The best government would be the least, and the debate will be over that.
The best government would be the least, and the debate will be over that.
Lex Fridman
When you think about this stuff, do you think about, “Okay, government is the way it is, I, as a person that can generate great ideas, how do I operate in this world?” Or do you also think about the big picture? If we start a new civilization somewhere on Mars, do you think about what’s the ultimate form of government? What’s at least a promising thing to try?
When you think about this stuff, do you think about, “Okay, government is the way it is, I, as a person that can generate great ideas, how do I operate in this world?” Or do you also think about the big picture? If we start a new civilization somewhere on Mars, do you think about what’s the ultimate form of government? What’s at least a promising thing to try?
Michael Saylor
I have laser eyes on my profile on-
I have laser eyes on my profile on-
Lex Fridman
Yes-
Yes-
Michael Saylor
… Twitter, Lex.
… Twitter, Lex.
Lex Fridman
… we’ve noticed. What does that mean?
… we’ve noticed. What does that mean?
Michael Saylor
And the significance of laser eyes is to focus on the thing that can make a difference.
And the significance of laser eyes is to focus on the thing that can make a difference.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Michael Saylor
And if I look at the civilization, I would say half the problems in the civilization are due to the fact that our understanding of economics and money is defective. Half, 50%, I don’t know, it’s worth $500 trillion worth of problems? Money represents all the economic energy and the civilization and it equates to all the products, all the services and all the assets that we have and whatever we’re going to have. So that’s half. The other half of the problems in the civilization are medical and military and political and philosophical and natural. And I think that there are a lot of different solutions to all those problems, and they are all honorable professions and they all merit a lifetime of consideration for the specialists in all those areas. I think that what I could offer its constructive is inflation is completely misunderstood. It’s a much bigger problem than we understand it to be.
And if I look at the civilization, I would say half the problems in the civilization are due to the fact that our understanding of economics and money is defective. Half, 50%, I don’t know, it’s worth $500 trillion worth of problems? Money represents all the economic energy and the civilization and it equates to all the products, all the services and all the assets that we have and whatever we’re going to have. So that’s half. The other half of the problems in the civilization are medical and military and political and philosophical and natural. And I think that there are a lot of different solutions to all those problems, and they are all honorable professions and they all merit a lifetime of consideration for the specialists in all those areas. I think that what I could offer its constructive is inflation is completely misunderstood. It’s a much bigger problem than we understand it to be.
We need to introduce engineering and science techniques into economics if we want to further the human condition. All government policy is inflationary. And another pernicious myth is inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomena. A famous quote by Milton Friedman, I believe, it’s like, it’s a monetary phenomena that is inflation comes from expanding the currency supply. It’s a nice phrase and it’s oftentimes quoted by people that are anti-inflation. But again, it just signifies a lack of appreciation of what the issue is. If I had a currency which was completely non-inflationary, if I never printed another dollar and if I eliminated fractional reserve banking from the face of the earth, we’d still have inflation, and we’d have inflation as long as we have government that is capable of pursuing any kind of policies that are in themself inflationary, and generally, they all are.
Lex Fridman
So in general, inflationary is the big characteristic of human nature that’s government collection of groups that have power over others and allocate other people’s resources will try to intentionally or not hide the costs of those allocations in some tricky ways. Whatever the options ever are available.
So in general, inflationary is the big characteristic of human nature that’s government collection of groups that have power over others and allocate other people’s resources will try to intentionally or not hide the costs of those allocations in some tricky ways. Whatever the options ever are available.
Michael Saylor
Hiding the cost is like the tertiary thing. The primary goal is the government will attempt to do good, right? And-
Hiding the cost is like the tertiary thing. The primary goal is the government will attempt to do good, right? And-
Lex Fridman
That’s the primary problem?
That’s the primary problem?
Michael Saylor
They will attempt to do good and they will do good imperfectly, and they will create oftentimes as much damage… more damage than the good they do. Most government policy will be iatrogenic. It will create more harm than good in the pursuit of it, but it is what it is. The secondary issue is they will unintentionally pay for it by expanding the currency supply without realizing that they’re actually paying for it in a suboptimal fashion. They’ll collapse their own currencies while they attempt to do good. The tertiary issue is they will mismeasure how badly they’re collapsing the currency. So for example, if you go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and look at the numbers printed by the Fed, they’ll say, “Oh, it looks like the dollar’s lost 95% of its purchasing power over 100 years.” They sort of fess up that there’s a problem, but they make it 95% loss over 100 years. What they don’t do is realize it’s a 99.7% loss over 80 years.
They will attempt to do good and they will do good imperfectly, and they will create oftentimes as much damage… more damage than the good they do. Most government policy will be iatrogenic. It will create more harm than good in the pursuit of it, but it is what it is. The secondary issue is they will unintentionally pay for it by expanding the currency supply without realizing that they’re actually paying for it in a suboptimal fashion. They’ll collapse their own currencies while they attempt to do good. The tertiary issue is they will mismeasure how badly they’re collapsing the currency. So for example, if you go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and look at the numbers printed by the Fed, they’ll say, “Oh, it looks like the dollar’s lost 95% of its purchasing power over 100 years.” They sort of fess up that there’s a problem, but they make it 95% loss over 100 years. What they don’t do is realize it’s a 99.7% loss over 80 years.
So they will mismeasure just the horrific extent of the monetary policy in pursuit of the foreign policy and the domestic policy, which they overestimate their budget and their means to accomplish their ends, and they underestimate the cost. And they’re oblivious to the horrific damage that they do to the civilization because the mental models that they use that are conventionally taught are wrong. The mental model that it’s okay, we can print all this money because the velocity of the money is low because money velocity is a scalar and inflation is the scalar, and we don’t see 2% inflation yet, and the money velocity is low, and so it’s okay if we print trillions of dollars. Well, the money velocity was immediate. The velocity of money through the crypto economy is 10,000 times faster than the velocity of money through the consumer economy. I think Nic pointed out when you spoke to him, he said it takes two months for a credit card transaction to settle, right? So you spend a million dollars in the consumer economy, you can move it six times a year.
You put the million dollars into gold, gold will sit in a vault for a decade. Okay? So the velocity of money through gold is 0.1. You put the money in the stock market and you can trade it once a week. The settlement is T+2. Maybe you get to 2:1 leverage, you might get to a money velocity of 100 a year. In the stock market, you put your money into the crypto economy and these people are settling every four hours. And if you’re offshore, they’re trading with 20x leverage. So if you settle every day and you trade the 20x leverage, you just went to 7,000. So the velocity of the money varies. I think the politicians, they don’t really understand inflation and they don’t understand economics, but you can’t blame them because the economists don’t understand economics. Because if they did, they would be creating multivariate computer simulations where they actually put in the price of every piece of housing and every city in the world the full array of foods and the full array of products and the full array of assets.
And then on a monthly basis they would publish all those results. And that’s a high bandwidth requirement, and I think that people don’t really want to embrace it. There’s that phrase, you can’t tell people what to think, but you can tell them what to think about. The most pernicious thing is I get you to misunderstand the phenomena so that even when it’s happening to you, you don’t appreciate that it’s a bad thing and you think it’s a good thing. So if housing prices are going up 20% year over year, and I say this is great for the American public ’cause most of them are homeowners, then I have misrepresented a phenomena. Inflation is 20%, not 7%, and then I have misrepresented it as being a positive rather than a negative, and people will stare at it. And you could even show them their house on fire and they would perceive it as being great because it’s warming them up and they’re going to save on their heat cost.
Lex Fridman
It does seem that the cruder of the model, whether it’s economics, whether it’s psychology, the easier it is to weave whatever the heck narrative you want. And not in a malicious way, but just like it’s some kind of emergent phenomena, this narrative thing that we tell ourselves. So you can tell any kind of story about inflation. Inflation is good. Inflation is bad. Like the cruder the model, the easier it is to tell a narrative about it. So if you take an engineering approach, I feel like it becomes more and more difficult to run away from a true deep understanding of the dynamics of the system.
It does seem that the cruder of the model, whether it’s economics, whether it’s psychology, the easier it is to weave whatever the heck narrative you want. And not in a malicious way, but just like it’s some kind of emergent phenomena, this narrative thing that we tell ourselves. So you can tell any kind of story about inflation. Inflation is good. Inflation is bad. Like the cruder the model, the easier it is to tell a narrative about it. So if you take an engineering approach, I feel like it becomes more and more difficult to run away from a true deep understanding of the dynamics of the system.
Michael Saylor
Honestly, if you went to 100 people on the street and you ask them to define inflation, how many would say it’s a vector tracking the change in price of every product service asset in the world over time?
Honestly, if you went to 100 people on the street and you ask them to define inflation, how many would say it’s a vector tracking the change in price of every product service asset in the world over time?
Lex Fridman
No.
No.
Michael Saylor
Not many.
Not many.
Lex Fridman
Not many.
Not many.
Michael Saylor
If you went to them and you said, “Do you think 2% inflation a year is good or bad?” The majority would probably say, “Well, I heat it’s good.” The majority of economists would say 2% inflation a year is good, and of course, look at the ship next to us. What if I told you that the ship leaked 2% of its volume every something? The ship is rotting 2% a year. That means the useful life of the ship is 50 years. Now, ironically, that’s true. Like a wooden ship had a 50-year to 100- year life. 100 would be long, 50 years, not unlikely. So when we built ships out of wood, they had a useful life of about 50 years, and then they sunk and they rotted. There’s nothing good about it. You build a ship out of steel and it’s 0 as opposed to 2% degradation, and how much better is 0% versus 2%?
If you went to them and you said, “Do you think 2% inflation a year is good or bad?” The majority would probably say, “Well, I heat it’s good.” The majority of economists would say 2% inflation a year is good, and of course, look at the ship next to us. What if I told you that the ship leaked 2% of its volume every something? The ship is rotting 2% a year. That means the useful life of the ship is 50 years. Now, ironically, that’s true. Like a wooden ship had a 50-year to 100- year life. 100 would be long, 50 years, not unlikely. So when we built ships out of wood, they had a useful life of about 50 years, and then they sunk and they rotted. There’s nothing good about it. You build a ship out of steel and it’s 0 as opposed to 2% degradation, and how much better is 0% versus 2%?
Well, 2% means you have a useful life of it’s half life of 35 years. 2% is a half life of 35 years. That’s basically the half life of money in gold. If I store your life force in gold, under perfect circumstances, you have a useful life of 35 years. 0% is a useful life of forever. So 0% is immortal, 2% is 35 years average life expectancy. So the idea that you would think the life expectancy of the currency and the civilization should be 35 years instead of forever is a silly notion. But the tragic notion is it was 7 into 70 or 10 years.
The money has had a half life of 10 years except for the fact that in weak societies and Argentina or the like, the half-life of the money is three to four years; in Venezuela, one year. So the United States dollar and the United States economic system was the most successful economic system in the last 100 years in the world. We won every war. We were the world’s superpower. Our currency lost 99.7% of its value, and that means horrifically every other currency lost, right? In essence, the other ones were 99.9, except for most that were 100% because they all completely failed. And you’ve got a mainstream economic community that thinks that inflation is a number and 2% is desirable. It’s like, remember George Washington? You know how he died?
Lex Fridman
No.
No.
Michael Saylor
Well-meaning physicians bled him to death. Okay? The last thing in the world you would want to do to a sick person is bleed them in the modern world. I think we understand that oxygen is carried by the blood cells, and if… There’s that phrase, triage phrase, what’s the first thing you do in an injury? Stop the bleeding. Single first thing, right? You show up after any accident, I look at you, stop the bleeding because you’re going to be dead in a matter of minutes if you bleed out. So it strikes me as being ironic that orthodox conventional wisdom was bleed the patient to death. And this was the most important patient in the country, maybe in the history of the country, and we bled him to death trying to help him.
Well-meaning physicians bled him to death. Okay? The last thing in the world you would want to do to a sick person is bleed them in the modern world. I think we understand that oxygen is carried by the blood cells, and if… There’s that phrase, triage phrase, what’s the first thing you do in an injury? Stop the bleeding. Single first thing, right? You show up after any accident, I look at you, stop the bleeding because you’re going to be dead in a matter of minutes if you bleed out. So it strikes me as being ironic that orthodox conventional wisdom was bleed the patient to death. And this was the most important patient in the country, maybe in the history of the country, and we bled him to death trying to help him.
So when you’re actually inflating the money supply at 7% but you’re calling it 2% because you want to help the economy, you’re literally bleeding the free market to death. But the sad fact is George Washington went along with it ’cause he thought that they were going to do him good. And the majority of the society, most companies, most conventional thinkers, the working class, they go along with this because they think that someone has their best interest in mind. And the people that are bleeding them to death, they believe that prescription because their mental models are just so defective and they’re understanding of energy and engineering and the economics that are at play is crippled by these mental models.
Lex Fridman
But that’s both the bug in the future of human civilization that ideas take hold, that unite us. We believe in them, and we make a lot of cool stuff happen by, as an average, just the fact of the matter, a lot of people believe the same thing. They get together and they get some shit done because they believe that thing. And then some ideas can be really bad and really destructive. But on average, the ideas seem to be progressing in a direction of good. Let me just step back. What the hell are we doing here, us humans on this earth? How do you think of humans? How special are humans? How did human civilization originate on this earth, and what is this human project they’re all taking on? You mentioned fire and water, and apparently bleeding you to death is not a good idea. I always thought you can get the demons out in that way, but that was a recent invention. So what’s this thing we’re doing here?
But that’s both the bug in the future of human civilization that ideas take hold, that unite us. We believe in them, and we make a lot of cool stuff happen by, as an average, just the fact of the matter, a lot of people believe the same thing. They get together and they get some shit done because they believe that thing. And then some ideas can be really bad and really destructive. But on average, the ideas seem to be progressing in a direction of good. Let me just step back. What the hell are we doing here, us humans on this earth? How do you think of humans? How special are humans? How did human civilization originate on this earth, and what is this human project they’re all taking on? You mentioned fire and water, and apparently bleeding you to death is not a good idea. I always thought you can get the demons out in that way, but that was a recent invention. So what’s this thing we’re doing here?
War and power
Michael Saylor
I think what distinguishes human beings from all the other creatures on the earth is our ability to engineer. We’re engineers, right?
I think what distinguishes human beings from all the other creatures on the earth is our ability to engineer. We’re engineers, right?
Lex Fridman
To solve problems or just build incredible cool things?
To solve problems or just build incredible cool things?
Michael Saylor
Engineering, harnessing energy and technique to make the world a better place than you found it. From the point that we actually started to play with fire, that was a big leap forward. Harnessing the power of kinetic energy and missiles, another step forward, every city built on water. Why water? Well, water’s bringing energy, right? If you actually put a turbine on a river or you capture a change in elevation of water, you’ve literally harnessed gravitational energy, but water’s also bringing you food. It’s also giving you a cheap form of getting rid of your waste. It’s also giving you free transportation. You want to move one ton blocks around, you want to move them in water. So I think the human story is really the story of engineering a better world. And the rise in the human condition is determined by those groups of people, those civilizations that were best at harnessing energy, right?
Engineering, harnessing energy and technique to make the world a better place than you found it. From the point that we actually started to play with fire, that was a big leap forward. Harnessing the power of kinetic energy and missiles, another step forward, every city built on water. Why water? Well, water’s bringing energy, right? If you actually put a turbine on a river or you capture a change in elevation of water, you’ve literally harnessed gravitational energy, but water’s also bringing you food. It’s also giving you a cheap form of getting rid of your waste. It’s also giving you free transportation. You want to move one ton blocks around, you want to move them in water. So I think the human story is really the story of engineering a better world. And the rise in the human condition is determined by those groups of people, those civilizations that were best at harnessing energy, right?
If you look the Greek civilization, they built it around ports and seaports and water and created a trading network. The Romans were really good at harnessing all sorts of engineering. The aqueducts are a great example. If you go to any big city, you travel through cities in the Med, you find that the carrying capacity of the city or the island is 5,000 people without running water. And then if you can find a way to bring water to it it increases by a factor of 10. And so human flourishing is really only possible through that channeling of energy that eventually takes the form of air power. That ship, look at the intricacy of those sails. Just the model is intricate. Now, think about all of the experimentation that took place to figure out how many sails to put on that ship and how to rig them and how to repair them and how to operate them.
Lex Fridman
It’s thousands of lives spent thinking through all the tiny little details all to increase the effectiveness, the efficiency of this ship as it sails thru water. And we should also note there’s a bunch of cannons on the side. So obviously-
It’s thousands of lives spent thinking through all the tiny little details all to increase the effectiveness, the efficiency of this ship as it sails thru water. And we should also note there’s a bunch of cannons on the side. So obviously-
Michael Saylor
Another form of engineering, energy harnessing with explosives.
Another form of engineering, energy harnessing with explosives.
Lex Fridman
To achieve what end? That’s another discussion. Exactly.
To achieve what end? That’s another discussion. Exactly.
Michael Saylor
Suppose we’re trying to get off the planet, right?
Suppose we’re trying to get off the planet, right?
Lex Fridman
Well, there’s a selection mechanism going on, so natural selection it’s’… However evolution works, it seems that one of the interesting inventions on earth was the predator/prey dynamic, that you want to be the bigger fish, that violence seems to serve a useful purpose if you look at earth as a whole. We as humans now like to think of violence as really a bad thing. It seems to be one of the amazing things about humans is we’re ultimately tend towards cooperation. We like peace. If you just look at history, we want things to be nice and calm. But just wars break out every once in a while and lead to immense suffering and destruction and so on, and they have a resetting the palette effect. It’s one that’s full of just immeasurable human suffering, but it’s like a way to start over.
Well, there’s a selection mechanism going on, so natural selection it’s’… However evolution works, it seems that one of the interesting inventions on earth was the predator/prey dynamic, that you want to be the bigger fish, that violence seems to serve a useful purpose if you look at earth as a whole. We as humans now like to think of violence as really a bad thing. It seems to be one of the amazing things about humans is we’re ultimately tend towards cooperation. We like peace. If you just look at history, we want things to be nice and calm. But just wars break out every once in a while and lead to immense suffering and destruction and so on, and they have a resetting the palette effect. It’s one that’s full of just immeasurable human suffering, but it’s like a way to start over.
Michael Saylor
We’re clearly apex predator on the planet. And I Googled something the other day, “What’s the most common form of mammal life on the earth?”
We’re clearly apex predator on the planet. And I Googled something the other day, “What’s the most common form of mammal life on the earth?”
Lex Fridman
By number of organisms?
By number of organisms?
Michael Saylor
Count.
Count.
Lex Fridman
By count?
By count?
Michael Saylor
And the answer that came back was human beings.
And the answer that came back was human beings.
Lex Fridman
Really?
Really?
Michael Saylor
I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it, right? It says apparently if we’re just looking at mammals, the answer was human beings are the most common, which was very interesting to me. I almost didn’t believe it, but I was trying to figure out, 8 billion or so human beings-
I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it, right? It says apparently if we’re just looking at mammals, the answer was human beings are the most common, which was very interesting to me. I almost didn’t believe it, but I was trying to figure out, 8 billion or so human beings-
Lex Fridman
Yeah, It’s a lot.
Yeah, It’s a lot.
Michael Saylor
… there’s no other mammal that’s got more than 8 billion. If you walk through downtown Edinburgh and Scotland and you look up on this hill and this castle up on the hill and you talk to people and the story is, “Oh, yeah, well, that was a British castle. Before, it was a Scottish castle. Before, it was a pick castle. Before, it was a Roman castle. Before, it was some other Celtic castle. Before, it was…” Then they found 13 prehistoric castles buried one under the other, under the other. And you get the conclusion that 100,000 years ago, somebody showed up and grabbed the high point, the apex of the city, and they built a stronghold there and they flourished and their family flourished and their tribe flourished until someone came along and knocked them off the hill. And it’s been a nonstop never-ending fight by the aggressive, most powerful entity, family, organization, municipality, tribe, whatever-
… there’s no other mammal that’s got more than 8 billion. If you walk through downtown Edinburgh and Scotland and you look up on this hill and this castle up on the hill and you talk to people and the story is, “Oh, yeah, well, that was a British castle. Before, it was a Scottish castle. Before, it was a pick castle. Before, it was a Roman castle. Before, it was some other Celtic castle. Before, it was…” Then they found 13 prehistoric castles buried one under the other, under the other. And you get the conclusion that 100,000 years ago, somebody showed up and grabbed the high point, the apex of the city, and they built a stronghold there and they flourished and their family flourished and their tribe flourished until someone came along and knocked them off the hill. And it’s been a nonstop never-ending fight by the aggressive, most powerful entity, family, organization, municipality, tribe, whatever-
Lex Fridman
All for the hill.
All for the hill.
Michael Saylor
For that one hill, going back since time immemorial. And you scratch your head and you think, it seems like it’s just this never-ending-
For that one hill, going back since time immemorial. And you scratch your head and you think, it seems like it’s just this never-ending-
Lex Fridman
But doesn’t that lead-
But doesn’t that lead-
Michael Saylor
… wheel.
… wheel.
Lex Fridman
… if you just… all kinds of metrics that seems to improve the quality of our cannons and ships as a result. It seems that war, just like your laser eyes, focuses the mind on the engineering tasks.
… if you just… all kinds of metrics that seems to improve the quality of our cannons and ships as a result. It seems that war, just like your laser eyes, focuses the mind on the engineering tasks.
Michael Saylor
It is that, and it does remind you that the winner is always the most powerful. And we throw that phrase out, but no one thinks about what that phrase means. Like who’s the most powerful or the most powerful side one, but they don’t think about it. And they think about power, energy delivered in a period of time. And then you think a guy with a spear is more powerful than someone with their fist and someone with a bow and arrow is more powerful than the person with the spear. And then you realize that somebody with bronze is more powerful than without, and steel is more powerful than bronze.
It is that, and it does remind you that the winner is always the most powerful. And we throw that phrase out, but no one thinks about what that phrase means. Like who’s the most powerful or the most powerful side one, but they don’t think about it. And they think about power, energy delivered in a period of time. And then you think a guy with a spear is more powerful than someone with their fist and someone with a bow and arrow is more powerful than the person with the spear. And then you realize that somebody with bronze is more powerful than without, and steel is more powerful than bronze.
And if you look at the Romans, they persevered with artillery and they could stand off from 800 meters and blast you smithereens. You study the history of the Balearic slingers and you think we invented bullets, but they invented bullets to put in slings thousands of years ago that could have stood off 500 meters and put a hole in your head. And so there was never a time when humanity wasn’t vying to come up with an asymmetric form of projecting their own power via technology.
Lex Fridman
And absolute power is when a leader is able to control large amount of humans, they’re facing the same direction, working in the same direction to leverage energy.
And absolute power is when a leader is able to control large amount of humans, they’re facing the same direction, working in the same direction to leverage energy.
Michael Saylor
The most organized society wins. When the Romans were dominating everybody, they were the most organized civilization in Europe. As long as they stayed organized, they dominated. And at some point, they over-expanded and got disorganized and they collapsed. And I guess you could say the struggle of human condition. It catalyzes the development of new technologies one after the other. Anybody that rejects ocean power gets penalized. You reject artillery, you get penalized. You reject atomic power, you get penalized. If you reject digital power, cyber power, you get penalized. And the underlying control of the property keeps shifting hands from one institution or one government to another based upon how rationally they’re able to channel that energy and how well organized or coordinated they are.
The most organized society wins. When the Romans were dominating everybody, they were the most organized civilization in Europe. As long as they stayed organized, they dominated. And at some point, they over-expanded and got disorganized and they collapsed. And I guess you could say the struggle of human condition. It catalyzes the development of new technologies one after the other. Anybody that rejects ocean power gets penalized. You reject artillery, you get penalized. You reject atomic power, you get penalized. If you reject digital power, cyber power, you get penalized. And the underlying control of the property keeps shifting hands from one institution or one government to another based upon how rationally they’re able to channel that energy and how well organized or coordinated they are.
Lex Fridman
Well, that’s a really interesting thing about both the human mind and governments and companies, once they get a few good ideas, they seem to stick with them. They reject new ideas. It’s almost whether that’s emergent or however that evolved, it seems to have a really interesting effect, ’cause when you’re young, you fight for the new ideas. You push them through, then a few of us humans find success, then we get complacent. We take over the world using that new idea, and then the new young person with a better new idea challenges you. As opposed to pivoting, you stick with the old and lose because of it, and that’s how empires collapse. And it’s just both at the individual level that happens with two academics fighting about ideas or something like that. And at the human civilization level, governments. They hold on to the ideas of old. It’s fascinating.
Well, that’s a really interesting thing about both the human mind and governments and companies, once they get a few good ideas, they seem to stick with them. They reject new ideas. It’s almost whether that’s emergent or however that evolved, it seems to have a really interesting effect, ’cause when you’re young, you fight for the new ideas. You push them through, then a few of us humans find success, then we get complacent. We take over the world using that new idea, and then the new young person with a better new idea challenges you. As opposed to pivoting, you stick with the old and lose because of it, and that’s how empires collapse. And it’s just both at the individual level that happens with two academics fighting about ideas or something like that. And at the human civilization level, governments. They hold on to the ideas of old. It’s fascinating.
Michael Saylor
An ever-persistent theme in the history of science is the paradigm shifts, and the paradigms shift when the old guard dies and a new generation arrives. Or the paradigm shifts when there’s a war, and everyone that disagrees with the idea of aviation finds bombs dropping on their head or everyone that disagrees with whatever your technology is has a rude awakening. And if they totally disagree, their society collapses and they’re replaced by that new thing.
An ever-persistent theme in the history of science is the paradigm shifts, and the paradigms shift when the old guard dies and a new generation arrives. Or the paradigm shifts when there’s a war, and everyone that disagrees with the idea of aviation finds bombs dropping on their head or everyone that disagrees with whatever your technology is has a rude awakening. And if they totally disagree, their society collapses and they’re replaced by that new thing.
Dematerializing information
Lex Fridman
A lot of the engineering you talked about had to do with ships and cannons and leveraging water. What about this whole digital thing that’s happening, been happening over the past century? Is that still engineering in your mind? You’re starting to operate in these bits of information?
A lot of the engineering you talked about had to do with ships and cannons and leveraging water. What about this whole digital thing that’s happening, been happening over the past century? Is that still engineering in your mind? You’re starting to operate in these bits of information?
Michael Saylor
I think there’s two big ideas. The first wave of ideas were digital information, and that was the internet wave been running since 1990 or so for 30 years. And the second wave is digital energy. So if I look at digital information, this idea that we want to digitally transform a book, I’m going to dematerialize every book in this room into bits and then I’m going to deliver a copy of the entire library to a billion people, and I’m going to do it for pretty much de minimis electricity, if I can dematerialize music, books, education, entertainment, maps, that is an incredibly exothermic transaction.
I think there’s two big ideas. The first wave of ideas were digital information, and that was the internet wave been running since 1990 or so for 30 years. And the second wave is digital energy. So if I look at digital information, this idea that we want to digitally transform a book, I’m going to dematerialize every book in this room into bits and then I’m going to deliver a copy of the entire library to a billion people, and I’m going to do it for pretty much de minimis electricity, if I can dematerialize music, books, education, entertainment, maps, that is an incredibly exothermic transaction.
It’s a crystallization when we collapse into a lower energy state as a civilization and we give off massive amounts of energy. If you look at what Carnegie did, the richest man in the world created libraries everywhere at the time, and he gave away his entire fortune. And now we can give a better library to every six-year-old for nothing, and so what’s the value of giving a million books to 8 billion people? That’s the explosion in prosperity that comes from digital transformation. And when we do it with maps, I transform the map. I put it into a car. You get in the car and the car drives you where you want to go with the map. And how much better is that than a Rand McNally Atlas right here? It’s like a million times better.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Saylor
Atlas right here, it’s like a million times better.
Atlas right here, it’s like a million times better.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Saylor
So the first wave of digital transformation was the dematerialization of all of these informational things, which were non-conservative. That is, I could take Beethoven’s 5th Symphony played for by the best orchestra in Germany and I could give it to a billion people and they could play it 1000 times each at less than the cost of the one performance, right? So I deliver culture and education and erudition and intelligence and insight to the entire civilization over digital rails. And the consequences of the human race are first order generally good, right? The world is a better place. It drives growth and you create these trillion dollar entities like Apple, and Amazon, and Facebook, and Google, and Microsoft, right? That is the first wave. The second wave,-
So the first wave of digital transformation was the dematerialization of all of these informational things, which were non-conservative. That is, I could take Beethoven’s 5th Symphony played for by the best orchestra in Germany and I could give it to a billion people and they could play it 1000 times each at less than the cost of the one performance, right? So I deliver culture and education and erudition and intelligence and insight to the entire civilization over digital rails. And the consequences of the human race are first order generally good, right? The world is a better place. It drives growth and you create these trillion dollar entities like Apple, and Amazon, and Facebook, and Google, and Microsoft, right? That is the first wave. The second wave,-
Lex Fridman
Do you mind? Sorry to interrupt, but that first wave, it feels like the impact that’s positive. You said the first order impact is generally positive. It feels like it’s positive in a way that nothing else in history has been positive, and then we may not actually truly be able to understand the orders and magnitude of increase in productivity and just progress and human civilization until we look back centuries from now. Or maybe, like just looking at the impact of Wikipedia.
Do you mind? Sorry to interrupt, but that first wave, it feels like the impact that’s positive. You said the first order impact is generally positive. It feels like it’s positive in a way that nothing else in history has been positive, and then we may not actually truly be able to understand the orders and magnitude of increase in productivity and just progress and human civilization until we look back centuries from now. Or maybe, like just looking at the impact of Wikipedia.
Michael Saylor
Right.
Right.
Lex Fridman
Giving access to basic wisdom or basic knowledge and then perhaps wisdom to billions of people. If you can just linger on that for a second, what’s your sense of the impact of that?
Giving access to basic wisdom or basic knowledge and then perhaps wisdom to billions of people. If you can just linger on that for a second, what’s your sense of the impact of that?
Michael Saylor
I would say if you’re a technologist philosopher, the impact of a technology is so much greater on the civilization and the human condition than a non-technology, that it’s almost not worth your trouble to bother trying to fix things a conventional way. So let’s take example. I have a foundation, the Saylor Academy and the Saylor Academy gives away free education, free college education to anybody on earth that wants it. And we’ve had more than a million students. And if you go and you take the physics class, the lectures were by the same physics lecturer that taught me physics at MIT, except when I was at MIT, the cost of the first four weeks of MIT would’ve drained my family’s life, collective life savings for the first last 100 years.
I would say if you’re a technologist philosopher, the impact of a technology is so much greater on the civilization and the human condition than a non-technology, that it’s almost not worth your trouble to bother trying to fix things a conventional way. So let’s take example. I have a foundation, the Saylor Academy and the Saylor Academy gives away free education, free college education to anybody on earth that wants it. And we’ve had more than a million students. And if you go and you take the physics class, the lectures were by the same physics lecturer that taught me physics at MIT, except when I was at MIT, the cost of the first four weeks of MIT would’ve drained my family’s life, collective life savings for the first last 100 years.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Saylor
100 years worth of my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, they saved every penny they had after 100 years, they could have paid for one week or two weeks of MIT. That’s how fiendishly expensive and inefficient it was. So I went on scholarship. I was lucky to have a scholarship, but on the other hand, I sat in the back of the 801 lecture hall and I was right up in the rafters. It’s an awful experience on these uncomfortable wooden benches and you can barely see the blackboard and you got to be there synchronously. And the stuff we upload, you can start it and stop it and watch it on your iPad or watch it on your computer and rewind it multiple times and sit in a comfortable chair and you can do it from anywhere on earth and it’s absolutely free.
100 years worth of my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, they saved every penny they had after 100 years, they could have paid for one week or two weeks of MIT. That’s how fiendishly expensive and inefficient it was. So I went on scholarship. I was lucky to have a scholarship, but on the other hand, I sat in the back of the 801 lecture hall and I was right up in the rafters. It’s an awful experience on these uncomfortable wooden benches and you can barely see the blackboard and you got to be there synchronously. And the stuff we upload, you can start it and stop it and watch it on your iPad or watch it on your computer and rewind it multiple times and sit in a comfortable chair and you can do it from anywhere on earth and it’s absolutely free.
So I think about this and I think you want to improve the human condition? You need people with postgraduate level education. You need PhDs, and I know this sounds kind of elitist, but you want to cure cancer and you want to go to the Stars fusion drive. We need new propulsion, right? We need extraordinary breakthroughs in every area of basic science, be it biology, or propulsion, or material science, or computer science. You’re not doing that with an undergraduate degree. You’re certainly not doing it with a high school education, but the cost of a PhD is like a million bucks. There’s like 10 million PhDs in the world. If you check it out. There’s 8 billion people in the world. How many people could get a PhD or would want to? Maybe not 8 billion, but a billion, 500 million. Let’s just say 500 million to a billion. How do you go from 10 million to a billion highly educated people, all of them specializing in, and I don’t have to tell you how many different fields of human endeavor there are. I mean, your life is interviewing these experts and there’s so many, right? It’s amazing. So how do I give a multimillion dollar education to a billion people? And there’s two choices. You can either endow a scholarship, in which case you pay $75,000 a year. Okay. 75, let’s pay a million dollars and a million dollars a person. I can do it that way. And you’re never, even if you had a trillion dollars, if you had $10 trillion to throw at the problem and we’ve just thrown $10 trillion at certain problems, you don’t solve the problem, right? If I put $10 trillion on the table and I said, educate everybody, give them all a PhD, you still wouldn’t solve the problem. Harvard University can’t educate 18,000 people simultaneously or 87,000 or 800,000 or 8 million. So you have to dematerialize the professor and dematerialize the experience. So you put it all as streaming on demand, computer generated education, and you create simulations where you need to create simulations and you upload it.
It’s like the human condition is being held back by 500,000 well-meaning average algebra teachers. I love them. I mean, please don’t take of offense if you’re an algebra teacher, but instead of 500,000 algebra teachers going through the same motion over and over again, what you need is one or five or 10 really good algebra teachers and they need to do it a billion times a day or a billion times a year for free. And if we do that, there’s no reason why you can’t give infinite education, certainly in science, technology, engineering, and math, right, infinite education to everybody with no constraint. And I think the same is true, right, with just about every other thing. If you want to bring joy to the world, you need digital music. If you want to bring enlightenment to the world, you need digital education. If you want to bring anything of consequence in the world, you got to digitally transform it and then you got to manufacture it, something like 100 times more efficiently as a start, but a million times more efficiently is probably optimal. That’s hopeful. Maybe you have a chance.
If you look at all of these space endeavors and everything, we’re thinking about getting to Mars, getting off the planet, getting to other worlds. Number one thing you got to do is you got to make a fundamental breakthrough in an engine. People dreamed about flying for thousands of years, but until the internal combustion engine, you didn’t have enough energy, enough power in a light enough package in order to solve the problem. And the human race has all sorts of those fundamental engines and materials and techniques that we need to master. And each one of them is a lifetime of experimentation, of someone capable of making a seminal contribution to the body of human knowledge.
Lex Fridman
There are certain problems like education that could be solved through this process of dematerialization. And by the way, to give props to the 500K algebra teachers, when I look at YouTube for example, one possible approach is each one of those 500,000 teachers probably had days and moments of brilliance. And if they had ability to contribute to in the natural selection process, like the market of education where the best ones rise up, that’s a really interesting way, which is the best day of your life, the best lesson you’ve ever taught could be found and sort of broadcast to billions of people. So all of those kinds of ideas can be made real in the digital world. Now, traveling across planets, you still can’t solve that problem with dematerialization. What you could solve potentially is dematerializing the human brain where you can transfer, like you don’t need to have astronauts on the ship. You can have a floppy disk carrying a human brain
There are certain problems like education that could be solved through this process of dematerialization. And by the way, to give props to the 500K algebra teachers, when I look at YouTube for example, one possible approach is each one of those 500,000 teachers probably had days and moments of brilliance. And if they had ability to contribute to in the natural selection process, like the market of education where the best ones rise up, that’s a really interesting way, which is the best day of your life, the best lesson you’ve ever taught could be found and sort of broadcast to billions of people. So all of those kinds of ideas can be made real in the digital world. Now, traveling across planets, you still can’t solve that problem with dematerialization. What you could solve potentially is dematerializing the human brain where you can transfer, like you don’t need to have astronauts on the ship. You can have a floppy disk carrying a human brain
Michael Saylor
Touching on those points. You’d love for the 500,000 algebra teachers to become 500,000 math specialists, and maybe they clump into 50,000 specialties as teams and they all pursue 50,000 new problems and they put their algebra teaching on autopilot.
Touching on those points. You’d love for the 500,000 algebra teachers to become 500,000 math specialists, and maybe they clump into 50,000 specialties as teams and they all pursue 50,000 new problems and they put their algebra teaching on autopilot.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Yes.
Yeah. Yes.
Michael Saylor
That’s the same as when I give you 11 cents worth of electricity. And you don’t have to row a boat eight hours a day before you can eat. Right.
That’s the same as when I give you 11 cents worth of electricity. And you don’t have to row a boat eight hours a day before you can eat. Right.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Michael Saylor
It would be a lot better. That you would pay for your food in the first eight seconds of your day and then you could start thinking about other things. Right. With regard to technology, one thing that I learned studying technology, when you look at S-curves, is until you start the S-curve, you don’t know whether you’re 100 from viability, 1000 years from viability or a few months from viability. So,-
It would be a lot better. That you would pay for your food in the first eight seconds of your day and then you could start thinking about other things. Right. With regard to technology, one thing that I learned studying technology, when you look at S-curves, is until you start the S-curve, you don’t know whether you’re 100 from viability, 1000 years from viability or a few months from viability. So,-
Lex Fridman
Isn’t that fun? That’s so fun. The early part of the S-curve is so fun because you don’t know.
Isn’t that fun? That’s so fun. The early part of the S-curve is so fun because you don’t know.
Michael Saylor
In 1900 you could have got any number of learned academics to give you 10,000 reasons why humans will never fly.
In 1900 you could have got any number of learned academics to give you 10,000 reasons why humans will never fly.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Saylor
Right. And in 1903, the Wright brothers flew, and by 1969 we’re walking on the moon. So the advance that we made in that field was extraordinary. But for the 100 years and 200 years before, they were just back and forth and nobody was close. And that’s the happy part. The happy part is we went from flying 20 miles an hour or whatever to flying 25,000 miles an hour in 66 years. The unhappy part is I studied aeronautical engineering at MIT in the 80s. And in the 80s we had Gulfstream aircraft, we had Boeing 737s, we had the space shuttle. And you fast-forward 40 years and we pretty much had the same exact aircraft. The efficiency of the engines was 20, 30% more.
Right. And in 1903, the Wright brothers flew, and by 1969 we’re walking on the moon. So the advance that we made in that field was extraordinary. But for the 100 years and 200 years before, they were just back and forth and nobody was close. And that’s the happy part. The happy part is we went from flying 20 miles an hour or whatever to flying 25,000 miles an hour in 66 years. The unhappy part is I studied aeronautical engineering at MIT in the 80s. And in the 80s we had Gulfstream aircraft, we had Boeing 737s, we had the space shuttle. And you fast-forward 40 years and we pretty much had the same exact aircraft. The efficiency of the engines was 20, 30% more.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Saylor
Right. We slammed into a brick wall around 69 to 75. In fact, the Global Express, the Gulfstream, these were all engineered in the 70s, some in the 60s. The fuselage silhouette of a Gulfstream of a G5 was the same shape as a G4 is the same shape as a G3, is the same shape as a G2. And that’s because they were afraid to change the shape for 40 years because they worked it out in a wind tunnel. They knew it worked. And when they finally decided to change the shape, it was like a $10 billion exercise with modern supercomputers and computational fluid dynamics.
Right. We slammed into a brick wall around 69 to 75. In fact, the Global Express, the Gulfstream, these were all engineered in the 70s, some in the 60s. The fuselage silhouette of a Gulfstream of a G5 was the same shape as a G4 is the same shape as a G3, is the same shape as a G2. And that’s because they were afraid to change the shape for 40 years because they worked it out in a wind tunnel. They knew it worked. And when they finally decided to change the shape, it was like a $10 billion exercise with modern supercomputers and computational fluid dynamics.
Lex Fridman
Why was it so hard? What is that wall made of that you slammed into?
Why was it so hard? What is that wall made of that you slammed into?
Michael Saylor
The right question is, so why does the guy that went to MIT that got an aeronautical engineering degree, spent his career in software? Why is it that I never a day in my life with the exception of some Air Force Reserve work, I never got paid to be an aeronautical engineer, and I worked in software engineering my entire career.
The right question is, so why does the guy that went to MIT that got an aeronautical engineering degree, spent his career in software? Why is it that I never a day in my life with the exception of some Air Force Reserve work, I never got paid to be an aeronautical engineer, and I worked in software engineering my entire career.
Lex Fridman
Well, maybe software engineering is the new aeronautical engineering in some way. Maybe you hit fundamental walls until you have to return to it centuries later, or no.
Well, maybe software engineering is the new aeronautical engineering in some way. Maybe you hit fundamental walls until you have to return to it centuries later, or no.
Michael Saylor
The National Gallery of Art was endowed by a very rich man, Andrew Mellon, and you know how he made his money? Aluminum. Okay. And you know what kind of airplanes you can create without aluminum? Nothing. Nothing, right?
The National Gallery of Art was endowed by a very rich man, Andrew Mellon, and you know how he made his money? Aluminum. Okay. And you know what kind of airplanes you can create without aluminum? Nothing. Nothing, right?
Lex Fridman
So it’s a materialist problem.
So it’s a materialist problem.
Michael Saylor
Okay. So 1900, we made massive advances in metallurgy, right? I mean, that was US Steel, that was iron to steel, aluminum, massive fortunes were created because this was a massive technical advance. And then we also had the internal combustion engine and the story of Ford and General Motors and DaimlerChrysler and the like is informed by that. So you have no jet engines, no rocket motors, no internal combustion engines, you have no aviation. But even if you had those engines, if you were trying to build those things with steel, no chance. You had to have aluminum. So there’s two pretty basic technologies, and once you have those two technologies, stuff happens very fast. So tell me the last big advance in jet engines. There hasn’t been one there. The last big advance in rocket engines. Hasn’t been one. The big advances in spaceship design, from what I can see are in the control systems, the gyros and the ability to land, right, in a stable fashion. That’s pretty amazing, landing a rocket.
Okay. So 1900, we made massive advances in metallurgy, right? I mean, that was US Steel, that was iron to steel, aluminum, massive fortunes were created because this was a massive technical advance. And then we also had the internal combustion engine and the story of Ford and General Motors and DaimlerChrysler and the like is informed by that. So you have no jet engines, no rocket motors, no internal combustion engines, you have no aviation. But even if you had those engines, if you were trying to build those things with steel, no chance. You had to have aluminum. So there’s two pretty basic technologies, and once you have those two technologies, stuff happens very fast. So tell me the last big advance in jet engines. There hasn’t been one there. The last big advance in rocket engines. Hasn’t been one. The big advances in spaceship design, from what I can see are in the control systems, the gyros and the ability to land, right, in a stable fashion. That’s pretty amazing, landing a rocket.
Lex Fridman
Also in the, at least according to the Elon and so on, the manufacture of more efficient and less expensive manufacturer of rockets. So it’s a production, whatever that you call that discipline of at scale manufacture, at scale production. So factory work, but it’s not 10X. I mean maybe it’s 10X over a period of a few decades.
Also in the, at least according to the Elon and so on, the manufacture of more efficient and less expensive manufacturer of rockets. So it’s a production, whatever that you call that discipline of at scale manufacture, at scale production. So factory work, but it’s not 10X. I mean maybe it’s 10X over a period of a few decades.
Michael Saylor
When we figure out how to operate a spaceship on the water in your water bottle for a year.
When we figure out how to operate a spaceship on the water in your water bottle for a year.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Saylor
Right. Now, then you’ve got a breakthrough. So the bottom line is propulsion technology, propellants, and the materials technology, they were critical to getting on that aviation S-curve. And then we slammed into a wall in the 70s and the Boeing 747, the Global Express, the Gulfstream, these things were, the space shuttle, they were all pretty much reflective of that. And then we stopped. And at that point, you have to switch to a new S-curve. So the next equivalent to the internal combustion engine was the CPU, and the next aluminum equivalent was silicon.
Right. Now, then you’ve got a breakthrough. So the bottom line is propulsion technology, propellants, and the materials technology, they were critical to getting on that aviation S-curve. And then we slammed into a wall in the 70s and the Boeing 747, the Global Express, the Gulfstream, these things were, the space shuttle, they were all pretty much reflective of that. And then we stopped. And at that point, you have to switch to a new S-curve. So the next equivalent to the internal combustion engine was the CPU, and the next aluminum equivalent was silicon.
So when we actually started developing CPUs, transistor gave way to CPUs. And if you look at the power, right, the bandwidth that we had on computers and Moore’s law, right? What if the efficiency of jet engines had doubled every three years, right, in the last 40 years where we be right now? Right. So I think that if you’re a business person, if you’re looking for a commercially viable application of your mind, then you have to find that S-curve. And ideally you have to find it in the first five, six, 10 years. But people always miss this. Let’s take Google Glass, right? Google Glass was an idea 2013. The year is 2022. And people were quite sure this was going to be a big thing but,-
Lex Fridman
And it could have been at the beginning of the S-curve.
And it could have been at the beginning of the S-curve.
Michael Saylor
But fundamentally, we didn’t really have an effective mechanism. I mean, people getting vertigo and their,-
But fundamentally, we didn’t really have an effective mechanism. I mean, people getting vertigo and their,-
Lex Fridman
But you didn’t know that at the beginning of the S-curve, right? I mean, maybe some people had a deep intuition about the fundamentals of augmented reality, but you don’t know that. You don’t have those, you’re looking through the fog. You don’t know.
But you didn’t know that at the beginning of the S-curve, right? I mean, maybe some people had a deep intuition about the fundamentals of augmented reality, but you don’t know that. You don’t have those, you’re looking through the fog. You don’t know.
Michael Saylor
So the point is, we’re year zero in 2013, and we’re still year zero in 2022 on that augmented reality. And when somebody puts out a set of glasses that you can wear comfortably without getting vertigo, right, without any disorientation that managed to have the stability and the bandwidth necessary to sync with the real world, you’ll be in year one. And from that point, you’ll have a 70 year or some interesting future until you slam into a limit to growth.
So the point is, we’re year zero in 2013, and we’re still year zero in 2022 on that augmented reality. And when somebody puts out a set of glasses that you can wear comfortably without getting vertigo, right, without any disorientation that managed to have the stability and the bandwidth necessary to sync with the real world, you’ll be in year one. And from that point, you’ll have a 70 year or some interesting future until you slam into a limit to growth.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Saylor
And then it’ll slow down. And this is the story of a lot of things, right? I mean, John D. Rockefeller got in the oil business in the 1860s, and the oil business as we understood it became fairly mature by the 1920s to 30s. And then it actually stayed that way until we got to fracking, which was like seven years later, and then it burst forward, so.
And then it’ll slow down. And this is the story of a lot of things, right? I mean, John D. Rockefeller got in the oil business in the 1860s, and the oil business as we understood it became fairly mature by the 1920s to 30s. And then it actually stayed that way until we got to fracking, which was like seven years later, and then it burst forward, so.
Lex Fridman
The interesting story about Moore’s law though is that you get this constant burst of S-curves, on top of S-curves, on top of S-curves. It’s like the moment you start slowing down or almost ahead of you slowing down, you come up with another innovation, another innovation. So Moore’s law doesn’t seem to happen in every technological advancement. It seems like you only get a couple of S-curves and then you’re done for a bit. So I wonder what the pressures there are that resulted in such success over several decades and still going.
The interesting story about Moore’s law though is that you get this constant burst of S-curves, on top of S-curves, on top of S-curves. It’s like the moment you start slowing down or almost ahead of you slowing down, you come up with another innovation, another innovation. So Moore’s law doesn’t seem to happen in every technological advancement. It seems like you only get a couple of S-curves and then you’re done for a bit. So I wonder what the pressures there are that resulted in such success over several decades and still going.
Michael Saylor
Humility dictates that nobody knows when the S-curve kicks off, and you could be 20 years early or 100 years early. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, they were designing flying machines hundreds and hundreds of years ago. So humility says you’re not quite sure when you really hit that commercial viability. And it also dictates you don’t know when it ends. When will the party stop? When will Moore’s law stop and we’ll get to the point where they’re exponentially diminishing returns on silicon performance and just like we got exponentially diminishing returns on jet engines, and it just takes an exponential increase in effort to make it 10% better, but while you’re in the middle of it, then you know can do things.
Humility dictates that nobody knows when the S-curve kicks off, and you could be 20 years early or 100 years early. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, they were designing flying machines hundreds and hundreds of years ago. So humility says you’re not quite sure when you really hit that commercial viability. And it also dictates you don’t know when it ends. When will the party stop? When will Moore’s law stop and we’ll get to the point where they’re exponentially diminishing returns on silicon performance and just like we got exponentially diminishing returns on jet engines, and it just takes an exponential increase in effort to make it 10% better, but while you’re in the middle of it, then you know can do things.
So the reason that the digital revolution is so important is because the underlying platforms, the bandwidth and the performance of the components, and I say the components are the radio protocols, mobile protocols, the batteries, the CPUs, and the displays. Right. Those four components are pretty critical. They’re all critical in the creation of an iPhone. I wrote about it in the book, The Mobile Wave, and they catalyzed this entire mobile revolution. Because they have advanced and continue to advance, they created the very fertile environment for all these transformations. And the digital transformations themselves, right, they call for creativity in their own. Right.
I think the interesting thing about let’s take digital maps. Right. When you conceptualize something as a dematerialized map, right, it becomes a map because I can put it on a display like an iPad or I can put it in a car like a Tesla. But if you really want to figure it out, you can’t think like an engineer. You need to think like a fantasy writer. This is where it’s useful if you played Dungeons and Dragons and you read Lord of the Rings and you studied all the fantasy literature, because when I dematerialize the map, first I put 10 million pages of satellite imagery into the map. Right.
That’s a simple physical transform. But then I start to put telemetry into the map, and I keep track of the traffic rates on the roads, and I tell you whether you’ll be in a traffic jam if you drive that way, and I tell you which way to drive. And then I start to get feedback on where you’re going. And I tell you, the restaurant’s closed and people don’t like it anyway. And then I put an AI on top of it and I have it drive your car for you. And eventually the implication of digital transformation of maps is I get into a self-driving car and I say, take me someplace cool where I can eat.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Saylor
Right. And how did you get to that last step? Right. It wasn’t simple engineering. There’s a bit of fantasy in there, a bit of magic.
Right. And how did you get to that last step? Right. It wasn’t simple engineering. There’s a bit of fantasy in there, a bit of magic.
Lex Fridman
Design, art, whatever the heck you call it, it’s whatever. Yeah. Fantasy injects magic into the engineering process. Imagination precedes great revolutions in engineering. It’s like imagining a world, like of what you can do with the display. How will the interaction be? That’s where Google Glass actually came in, augmented reality, virtual reality, people are playing in the space of sci-fi, imagination.
Design, art, whatever the heck you call it, it’s whatever. Yeah. Fantasy injects magic into the engineering process. Imagination precedes great revolutions in engineering. It’s like imagining a world, like of what you can do with the display. How will the interaction be? That’s where Google Glass actually came in, augmented reality, virtual reality, people are playing in the space of sci-fi, imagination.
Michael Saylor
They called it a moonshot. They tried, it didn’t work, but to their credit, they stopped trying.
They called it a moonshot. They tried, it didn’t work, but to their credit, they stopped trying.
Lex Fridman
And then there’s new people. They keep dreaming. Dreamers all around us. I love those dreamers. And most of them fail and suffer because of it, but some of them win Nobel Prizes or become billionaires.
And then there’s new people. They keep dreaming. Dreamers all around us. I love those dreamers. And most of them fail and suffer because of it, but some of them win Nobel Prizes or become billionaires.
Michael Saylor
Well, what I would say is if half the civilization dropped what they were doing tomorrow and eagerly started working on launching a rocket to Alpha Centauri, it might not be the best use of our resources because it’s kind of like if half of Athens in the year 500 BC eagerly started working on flying machines. If you went back and you said, what advice would you give them, you would say, it’s not going to work until you get to aluminum. And you’re not going to get to aluminum until you work out the steel and certain other things. And you’re not going to get to that until you work out the calculus of variations and some metallurgy. And there’s a dude Newton that won’t come along for quite a while and he’s going to give you the calculus to do it. And until then, it’s hopeless.
Well, what I would say is if half the civilization dropped what they were doing tomorrow and eagerly started working on launching a rocket to Alpha Centauri, it might not be the best use of our resources because it’s kind of like if half of Athens in the year 500 BC eagerly started working on flying machines. If you went back and you said, what advice would you give them, you would say, it’s not going to work until you get to aluminum. And you’re not going to get to aluminum until you work out the steel and certain other things. And you’re not going to get to that until you work out the calculus of variations and some metallurgy. And there’s a dude Newton that won’t come along for quite a while and he’s going to give you the calculus to do it. And until then, it’s hopeless.
So you might be better off to work on the aqueduct or to focus upon sales or something. So if I look at this today, I say there’s massive profound civilization advances to be made through digital transformation of information. And you can see them. This is not the story of today, right? It’s 10 years old, what we’ve been seeing.
Lex Fridman
We’re living through different manifestations of that story today too though, like social media, the effects of that is very interesting because ideas spread even, you talk about velocity of money, the velocity of ideas keeps increasing.
We’re living through different manifestations of that story today too though, like social media, the effects of that is very interesting because ideas spread even, you talk about velocity of money, the velocity of ideas keeps increasing.
Michael Saylor
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So Wikipedia is a passive store. It’s a store of knowledge. Twitter is like a water hose or something. It’s like spraying you with knowledge whether you want it or not. It’s like social media is just like this explosion of ideas. And then we pick them up and then we try to understand ourselves because the drama of it also plays with our human psyche. So sometimes there’s more ability for misinformation, for propaganda to take hold. So we get to learn about ourselves, we get to learn about the technology that can decelerate the propaganda, for example, all that kind of stuff. But the reality is we’re living, I feel like we’re living through a singularity in the digital information space, and we don’t have a great understanding of exactly how it’s transforming our lives.
So Wikipedia is a passive store. It’s a store of knowledge. Twitter is like a water hose or something. It’s like spraying you with knowledge whether you want it or not. It’s like social media is just like this explosion of ideas. And then we pick them up and then we try to understand ourselves because the drama of it also plays with our human psyche. So sometimes there’s more ability for misinformation, for propaganda to take hold. So we get to learn about ourselves, we get to learn about the technology that can decelerate the propaganda, for example, all that kind of stuff. But the reality is we’re living, I feel like we’re living through a singularity in the digital information space, and we don’t have a great understanding of exactly how it’s transforming our lives.
Michael Saylor
And this is where money is useful as a metaphor for significance. Because if money is the economic energy of the civilization, then something that’s extraordinarily lucrative that’s going to generate a monetary or a wealth increase is a way to increase the net energy and the civilization. And ultimately, if we had 10 times as much of everything, we’d have a lot more free resources to pursue all of our advanced scientific and mathematical and theoretical endeavors. So let’s take Twitter. Right. Twitter’s something that could be 10 times more valuable than it is. Right. Twitter could be made 10 times better.
And this is where money is useful as a metaphor for significance. Because if money is the economic energy of the civilization, then something that’s extraordinarily lucrative that’s going to generate a monetary or a wealth increase is a way to increase the net energy and the civilization. And ultimately, if we had 10 times as much of everything, we’d have a lot more free resources to pursue all of our advanced scientific and mathematical and theoretical endeavors. So let’s take Twitter. Right. Twitter’s something that could be 10 times more valuable than it is. Right. Twitter could be made 10 times better.
Lex Fridman
Oh, by the way, I should say that people should follow you on Twitter. Your Twitter account is awesome.
Oh, by the way, I should say that people should follow you on Twitter. Your Twitter account is awesome.
Michael Saylor
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Lex Fridman
It could be made 10 times better. Yeah.
It could be made 10 times better. Yeah.
Michael Saylor
Yeah, Twitter can be made 10 times better. If we take YouTube or take education, we could generate a billion PhDs. And the question is, do you need any profound breakthrough in materials or technology to do that? The answer is not really. Right. So if you want to, you could make Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Twitter, all these things better. The United States government, if they took 1% of the money they spend on the Department of Education and they simply poured it into digital education and they gave degrees to people that actually met those requirements, they could provide 100X as much education for one 100th of the cost, and they could do it with no new technology. That’s a marketing and political challenge.
Yeah, Twitter can be made 10 times better. If we take YouTube or take education, we could generate a billion PhDs. And the question is, do you need any profound breakthrough in materials or technology to do that? The answer is not really. Right. So if you want to, you could make Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Twitter, all these things better. The United States government, if they took 1% of the money they spend on the Department of Education and they simply poured it into digital education and they gave degrees to people that actually met those requirements, they could provide 100X as much education for one 100th of the cost, and they could do it with no new technology. That’s a marketing and political challenge.
So I don’t think every objective is equally practical. And I think the benefit of being an engineer or thinking about practical achievements is when the government pursues an impractical objective or when anybody, an entrepreneur, not so bad with an entrepreneur because they don’t have that much money to waste. When a government pursues an impractical objective, they squander trillions and trillions of dollars and achieve nothing. Whereas if they pursue a practical objective or if they simply get out of the way and do nothing and they allow the free market to pursue the practical objectives, then I think you can have profound impact on the human civilization.
And if I look at the world we’re in today, I think that there are multi- trillion 10, 20, $50 trillion worth of opportunities in the digital information realm yet to be obtained. But there’s hundreds of trillions of dollars of opportunities in the digital energy realm that not only are they not obtained, the majority of people don’t even know what digital energy is. Most of them would reject the concept. They’re not looking for it. They’re not expecting to find it. It’s inconceivable because it is a paradigm shift, but in fact, it’s completely practical. Right under our nose. It’s staring at us, and it could make the entire civilization work dramatically better in every respect.
Digital energy and assets
Lex Fridman
So you mentioned in the digital world, digital information is one, digital energy is two, and the possible impact on the world and the set of opportunities available in the digital energy space is much greater. So how do you think about digital energy? What is it?
So you mentioned in the digital world, digital information is one, digital energy is two, and the possible impact on the world and the set of opportunities available in the digital energy space is much greater. So how do you think about digital energy? What is it?
Michael Saylor
So I’ll start with Tesla. He had a very famous quote. He said, “If you want to understand the universe, think in terms of energy, vibration< and frequency." And it gets you thinking about what is the universe? And of course, the universe is just all energy. And then what is matter? Matter is low frequency energy. And what are we? We're vibrating, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I can turn a tree into light. I can turn light back into a tree. If I consider the entire universe, and it's very important because we don't really think this way. Let's take the New York disco model. If I walk into a nightclub and there's loud music blaring in New York City, what's really going on there? Right. If you blast out 14 billion years ago, the universe is formed. Okay, that's a low frequency thing. The universe. Four and a half billion years ago, the sun, maybe the earth are formed. The continents are 400 million years old. The shift that New York City is on is some hundreds of millions of years, but the Hudson River is only 20,000 years.
So I’ll start with Tesla. He had a very famous quote. He said, “If you want to understand the universe, think in terms of energy, vibration< and frequency." And it gets you thinking about what is the universe? And of course, the universe is just all energy. And then what is matter? Matter is low frequency energy. And what are we? We're vibrating, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I can turn a tree into light. I can turn light back into a tree. If I consider the entire universe, and it's very important because we don't really think this way. Let's take the New York disco model. If I walk into a nightclub and there's loud music blaring in New York City, what's really going on there? Right. If you blast out 14 billion years ago, the universe is formed. Okay, that's a low frequency thing. The universe. Four and a half billion years ago, the sun, maybe the earth are formed. The continents are 400 million years old. The shift that New York City is on is some hundreds of millions of years, but the Hudson River is only 20,000 years.
There’s a building that’s probably 50 years old. There’s a company operating that disco or that club, which is five to 10 years old. There’s a person, a customer walking in there for an experience for a few hours. There’s music that’s oscillating at some kilohertz, and then there’s light.
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Michael Saylor
And you have all forms of energy, all frequencies, right, all layered, all moving through different medium. And how you perceive the world is the question of at what frequency do you want to perceive the world? And I think that once you start to think that way, you’re catalyzed to think about what would digital energy look like and why would I want it? And what is it? So why don’t we just start right there. What is it? The most famous manifestation of digital energy is Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s a crypto asset. It’s a crypto asset that has monetary value.
And you have all forms of energy, all frequencies, right, all layered, all moving through different medium. And how you perceive the world is the question of at what frequency do you want to perceive the world? And I think that once you start to think that way, you’re catalyzed to think about what would digital energy look like and why would I want it? And what is it? So why don’t we just start right there. What is it? The most famous manifestation of digital energy is Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s a crypto asset. It’s a crypto asset that has monetary value.
Lex Fridman
Can we just linger on that? Bitcoin is digital asset that has monetary value. What is a digital asset? What is monetary? Why use those terms versus the words of money and currency? Is there something interesting in that disambiguation of different terms?
Can we just linger on that? Bitcoin is digital asset that has monetary value. What is a digital asset? What is monetary? Why use those terms versus the words of money and currency? Is there something interesting in that disambiguation of different terms?
Michael Saylor
I’d call it a crypto asset network. The goal is to create a billion dollar block of pure energy in cyberspace, one that I could then move with no friction at the speed of light. Right. It’s the equivalent to putting a million pounds in orbit. How do I actually launch something into orbit? Right. How do I launch something into cyberspace such that it moves friction free? And the solution is a decentralized proof-of-work network. Right. Satoshi’s solution was, I’m going to establish protocol running on a distributed set of computers that will maintain a constant supply of never more than 21 million Bitcoins subdividable by 100 million Satoshis each transferable via transferring private keys. Now, the innovation is to create that in a ethical, durable fashion. Right. The ethical innovation is I want it to be property and not a security. A bushel of corn, an acre of land, a stack of lumber, and a bar of gold and a Bitcoin are all property. And that means they’re all commonly occurring elements in the world.
I’d call it a crypto asset network. The goal is to create a billion dollar block of pure energy in cyberspace, one that I could then move with no friction at the speed of light. Right. It’s the equivalent to putting a million pounds in orbit. How do I actually launch something into orbit? Right. How do I launch something into cyberspace such that it moves friction free? And the solution is a decentralized proof-of-work network. Right. Satoshi’s solution was, I’m going to establish protocol running on a distributed set of computers that will maintain a constant supply of never more than 21 million Bitcoins subdividable by 100 million Satoshis each transferable via transferring private keys. Now, the innovation is to create that in a ethical, durable fashion. Right. The ethical innovation is I want it to be property and not a security. A bushel of corn, an acre of land, a stack of lumber, and a bar of gold and a Bitcoin are all property. And that means they’re all commonly occurring elements in the world.
Michael Saylor
… they’re all commonly occurring elements in the world. You could call them commodities, but commodity is a little bit misleading, and I’ll tell you why in a second. But they’re all distinguished by the fact that no one entity or person or government controls them. If you have a barrel of oil and you’re in Ukraine versus Russia versus Saudi, Arabia versus the US, you have a barrel of oil, right? And it doesn’t matter what the premier in Japan or the mayor of Miami Beach thinks about your barrel of oil, they cannot wave their hand and make it not a barrel of oil or a cord of wood. And so property is just a naturally occurring element in the universe.
… they’re all commonly occurring elements in the world. You could call them commodities, but commodity is a little bit misleading, and I’ll tell you why in a second. But they’re all distinguished by the fact that no one entity or person or government controls them. If you have a barrel of oil and you’re in Ukraine versus Russia versus Saudi, Arabia versus the US, you have a barrel of oil, right? And it doesn’t matter what the premier in Japan or the mayor of Miami Beach thinks about your barrel of oil, they cannot wave their hand and make it not a barrel of oil or a cord of wood. And so property is just a naturally occurring element in the universe.
Lex Fridman
Why use the word ethical? And sorry, I may interrupt occasionally. Why ethical assigned to property?
Why use the word ethical? And sorry, I may interrupt occasionally. Why ethical assigned to property?
Michael Saylor
Because if it’s a security, a security would be an example of a share of a stock or a crypto token controlled by a small team. And in the event that something is a security because some small group or some identifiable group can control its nature, character, supply, then it really only becomes ethical to promote it or sell it pursuant to fair disclosures. So, I’ll give you maybe practical example. I’m the mayor of Chicago. I give a speech. In my speech, I’ll say, “I think everybody in Chicago should own their own farm and have a chicken in the backyard and their own horse and an automobile.” That’s ethical. I give the same speech and I say, “I think everybody in Chicago should buy Twitter stock. Sell their house or sell their cash and buy Twitter stock.” Is that ethical? Not really. But at that point you’ve entered into a conflict of interest because what you’re doing is you’re promoting an asset which is substantially controlled by a small group of people, the board of directors or the CEO of the company.
Because if it’s a security, a security would be an example of a share of a stock or a crypto token controlled by a small team. And in the event that something is a security because some small group or some identifiable group can control its nature, character, supply, then it really only becomes ethical to promote it or sell it pursuant to fair disclosures. So, I’ll give you maybe practical example. I’m the mayor of Chicago. I give a speech. In my speech, I’ll say, “I think everybody in Chicago should own their own farm and have a chicken in the backyard and their own horse and an automobile.” That’s ethical. I give the same speech and I say, “I think everybody in Chicago should buy Twitter stock. Sell their house or sell their cash and buy Twitter stock.” Is that ethical? Not really. But at that point you’ve entered into a conflict of interest because what you’re doing is you’re promoting an asset which is substantially controlled by a small group of people, the board of directors or the CEO of the company.
So, how would you feel if the president of the United States said, “I really think Americans should all buy Apple stock,” especially if you worked at Google. But if you worked anywhere, you’d be like, “Why isn’t he saying buy mine?” Right? A security is a proprietary asset in some way, shape or form. And the whole nature of securities law, it starts from this ancient idea, thou shalt not lie, cheat or steal. Okay? If I’m going to sell you securities or I’m going to promote securities as a public figure or as an influencer or anybody else. If I create my own Yo-Yo coin or Mikey coin, and then there’s a million of them, and I tell you that I think that it’s a really good thing, and Mikey coin will go up forever and everybody buys Mikey coin and then I give 10 million to you and don’t tell the public, I’ve cheated them.
Maybe if I have Mikey coin and I think there’s only 2 million Mikey coin, and I swear to you there’s only 2 million, and then I get married and I have three kids and my third kid is in the hospital and my kid’s going to die and I have this ethical reason to print 500,000 more Mikey coin or else people are going to die, and everybody tells me it’s fine, I’ve still abused the investor, right? It’s an ethical challenge. If you look at ethics laws everywhere in the world, they all boil down to having a clause which says that if you’re a public figure, you can’t endorse a security. You can’t endorse something that would cause you to have a conflict of interest.
So, if you’re a mayor, a governor, a country, a public figure, an influencer, and you want to promote or promulgate or support something using any public influence or funds or resources you may have, it needs to be property. It can’t be security. So, it goes beyond that, right? I mean, would the Chinese want to support an American company? As soon as you look at what’s in the best interest of the human race, the civilization, you realize that if you want an ethical path forward, it needs to be based on common property, which is fair. And the way you get to a common property is through an open permissionless protocol. If it’s not open, if it’s proprietary and I know what the code says and you don’t know what the code says, that makes it a security.
If it’s permissioned, you’re not allowed on my network. Or if you can be censored or booted off my network, that also makes it a security. When I talk about property, I mean the challenge here is how do I create something that’s equivalent to a barrel of oil in cyberspace? And that means it has to be a non-sovereign bearer instrument, open, permissionless, not censorable, right? If I could do that, then I could deliver you 10,000 dematerialized barrels of oil and you would take settlement of them and you would know that you have possession of that property, irregardless of the opinion of any politician or any company or anybody else in the world.
That’s a really critical characteristic. And it actually is, it’s probably one of the fundamental things that makes Bitcoin special. Bitcoin isn’t just a crypto-asset network. It’s easy to create a crypto-asset network. It’s very hard to create an ethical crypto-asset network because you have to create one without any government or corporation or investor exercising into influence to make it successful.
Oil barrel vs Bitcoin
Lex Fridman
So open, permissionless, noncensorable. So basically no way for you without explicitly saying so, outsourcing control to somebody else. So it’s a kind of, you have full control. Even with a barrel of oil, what’s the difference between a barrel of oil and a Bitcoin to you? Because you kind of mentioned that both are property. You mentioned Russia and China and so on. Is it the ability of the government to confiscate? In the end, governments can probably confiscate no matter what the asset is, but you want to lessen the effort involved.
So open, permissionless, noncensorable. So basically no way for you without explicitly saying so, outsourcing control to somebody else. So it’s a kind of, you have full control. Even with a barrel of oil, what’s the difference between a barrel of oil and a Bitcoin to you? Because you kind of mentioned that both are property. You mentioned Russia and China and so on. Is it the ability of the government to confiscate? In the end, governments can probably confiscate no matter what the asset is, but you want to lessen the effort involved.
Michael Saylor
And barrel oil is a bucket of physical property. Liquid property.
And barrel oil is a bucket of physical property. Liquid property.
Lex Fridman
That’s very [inaudible 01:49:27].
That’s very [inaudible 01:49:27].
Michael Saylor
And Bitcoin is a digital property.
And Bitcoin is a digital property.
Lex Fridman
But it’s easier to confiscate a barrel of oil.
But it’s easier to confiscate a barrel of oil.
Michael Saylor
It’s easier to confiscate things in the real world than things in cyberspace, much easier.
It’s easier to confiscate things in the real world than things in cyberspace, much easier.
Lex Fridman
So, that’s not universally true. Some things in the digital space are actually easier to confiscate because just the nature of how things move easily with information, right?
So, that’s not universally true. Some things in the digital space are actually easier to confiscate because just the nature of how things move easily with information, right?
Michael Saylor
I think in the Bitcoin world, what we would say is that Bitcoin is the most difficult property that the human race possesses or has yet invented to confiscate. And that’s by virtue of the fact that you could take possession of it via your private keys. So, if you’ve got your 12 seed phrases in your head, then that would be the highest form of property, right? Because I literally have to crack your head open and read your mind to take it. It doesn’t mean I couldn’t extract it from you under duress, but it means that it’s harder than every other thing you might own. In fact, it’s exponentially harder.
I think in the Bitcoin world, what we would say is that Bitcoin is the most difficult property that the human race possesses or has yet invented to confiscate. And that’s by virtue of the fact that you could take possession of it via your private keys. So, if you’ve got your 12 seed phrases in your head, then that would be the highest form of property, right? Because I literally have to crack your head open and read your mind to take it. It doesn’t mean I couldn’t extract it from you under duress, but it means that it’s harder than every other thing you might own. In fact, it’s exponentially harder.
If you consider every other thing you might own. A car, a house, a share of stock, gold, diamonds, property rights, intellectual property rights, movie rights, music rights. Anything imaginable, they would all be easier by orders and orders of magnitude to seize. So, digital property in the form of a set of private keys is by far the apex property of the human race. In terms of ethics, I want to make one more point. It’s like I might say to you, “Lex, I think Bitcoin is the best, most secure, most durable crypto asset network in the world, it’s going to go up forever and there’s nothing better in the world.
I might be right, I might be wrong, but the point is because it’s property, it’s ethical for me to say that. If I were to turn around and say, “Lex, I think the same about MicroStrategy stock, MSTR, that’s a security. Okay? If I’m wrong about that, I have civil liability or other liability because I could go to a board meeting tomorrow and I could actually propose we issue a million more shares of MicroStrategy stock. Whereas the thing that makes Bitcoin ethical for me to even promote is the knowledge that I can’t change it. If I knew that I could make it 42 million instead of 21 million and I had the button back here, then I have a different degree of ethical responsibility.
Now, I could tell you your life will be better if you buy Bitcoin, and it might not. You might go buy Bitcoin, you might lose the keys and be bankrupt and your life ends and your life is not better because you bought Bitcoin. But it wouldn’t be my ethical liability any more than if I were to say, “Lex, I think you ought to get a farm. I think you should be a farmer. I think a chicken in every pot, you should get a horse. I think you’d be better.” I mean, they’re all opinions expressed about property, which may or may not be right that you may or may not agree with. But in a legal sense, if we read the law, if we understand securities law… And I would say most people in the crypto industry, they didn’t take companies public and so they’re not really focused on the securities law. They don’t even know the securities law.
If you focus on the securities law, that would say you just can’t legally sell this stuff to the general public or promote it without a full set of continuing disclosures signed off on by a regulator. So, there’s a fairly bright line there with regard to securities, but when you get to the secondary issue, it’s how do you actually build a world based on digital property if public figures can’t embrace it or endorse it? You see? So, you’re not going to build a better world based upon Twitter stock, if that’s your idea of property, because Twitter stock is a security, and Twitter stock is never going to be a non-sovereign bearer instrument in Russia, right? Or in China, it’s not even legal in China.
It’s not a global permissionless, open thing. It will never be trusted by the rest of the world, and legally it’s impractical. But would you really want to put a hundred trillion dollars worth of economic value on Twitter stock if there’s a board of directors and a CEO that could just get up and take half of it tomorrow? The answer is no. So, if you want to build a better world based on digital energy, you need to start with constructing a digital property, and I’m using property here-
Lex Fridman
Open, permissionless, [inaudible 01:54:30]-
Open, permissionless, [inaudible 01:54:30]-
Michael Saylor
In the legal sense, but I would also go to the next step and say property is low frequency money. So, if I give you a million dollars and you want to hold it for a decade, you might go buy a house with it and the house is low frequency money. You converted the million dollars of economic energy into a structure called a house. Maybe after a decade you might convert it back into energy. You might sell the house for currency and it’ll be worth more or less depending upon the monetary climate you sell in.
In the legal sense, but I would also go to the next step and say property is low frequency money. So, if I give you a million dollars and you want to hold it for a decade, you might go buy a house with it and the house is low frequency money. You converted the million dollars of economic energy into a structure called a house. Maybe after a decade you might convert it back into energy. You might sell the house for currency and it’ll be worth more or less depending upon the monetary climate you sell in.
Lex Fridman
The frequency means what here? How quickly it changes state>
The frequency means what here? How quickly it changes state>
Michael Saylor
How quickly does something vibrate? If I transfer $10 from me to you for a drink, and then you turn around and you buy another, right? We’re vibrating on a frequency of every few hours. The energy is changing hands, but it’s not likely that you sell and buy houses every few hours. The frequency of a transaction in real estate is every 10 years, every five years. It’s much lower frequency transaction. And so when you think about what’s going on here, you have extremely low frequency things, which we’ll call property. Then you have mid-frequency things. I’m going to call them money or currency. And then you have high frequency, and that’s energy.
How quickly does something vibrate? If I transfer $10 from me to you for a drink, and then you turn around and you buy another, right? We’re vibrating on a frequency of every few hours. The energy is changing hands, but it’s not likely that you sell and buy houses every few hours. The frequency of a transaction in real estate is every 10 years, every five years. It’s much lower frequency transaction. And so when you think about what’s going on here, you have extremely low frequency things, which we’ll call property. Then you have mid-frequency things. I’m going to call them money or currency. And then you have high frequency, and that’s energy.
And that’s why I use the illustration of you got the building, you got the light and you got the sound, and they’re all just energy moving at different frequencies. Now, Bitcoin is magical and it is truly the innovation. It’s like a singularity because it represents the first time in the history of the human race that we managed to create a digital property, properly understood. It’s easy to create something digital, right? Every coupon and every scan on Fortnite and Roblox and Apple TV credits and all these things, they’re all digital something, but they’re securities, right?
Shares of stock are securities. Whenever anybody transfers, when you transfer money on PayPal or Apple Pay, you’re transferring in essence, a security or an IOU. So, transferring a bearer instrument with final settlement in the internet domain or in cyberspace, that’s a critical thing. And anybody in the crypto world can do that. All the cryptos can do that. But what they can’t do, what 99% of them fail to do is be property. They’re securities.
Lex Fridman
Well, there’s a line there I’d like to explore a little further. For example, what about when you… Like Coinbase or something like that, when there’s an exchange that you buy Bitcoin in, you start to move away from this kind of, some of the aspects that you said makes up a property, which is this noncensorable and permissionless and open. So, in order to achieve the convenience, the effectiveness of the transfer of energy, you have to leverage some of these [inaudible 01:58:10] that remove the aspects of property. So, maybe you can comment on that.
Well, there’s a line there I’d like to explore a little further. For example, what about when you… Like Coinbase or something like that, when there’s an exchange that you buy Bitcoin in, you start to move away from this kind of, some of the aspects that you said makes up a property, which is this noncensorable and permissionless and open. So, in order to achieve the convenience, the effectiveness of the transfer of energy, you have to leverage some of these [inaudible 01:58:10] that remove the aspects of property. So, maybe you can comment on that.
Layers of Bitcoin
Michael Saylor
Let me give you a good model for that. If you think about the layer one of Bitcoin, the layer one is the property settlement layer, and we’re going to do 350,000 transactions or less a day, a hundred million transactions a year is the bandwidth on the layer one. And it would be an ideal layer of one to move a billion dollars from point A to point B with a massive security. The role of the layer one is two things. One thing is I want to move a large sum of money through space with security. I can move any amount of Bitcoin in a matter of minutes for dollars on layer one.
Let me give you a good model for that. If you think about the layer one of Bitcoin, the layer one is the property settlement layer, and we’re going to do 350,000 transactions or less a day, a hundred million transactions a year is the bandwidth on the layer one. And it would be an ideal layer of one to move a billion dollars from point A to point B with a massive security. The role of the layer one is two things. One thing is I want to move a large sum of money through space with security. I can move any amount of Bitcoin in a matter of minutes for dollars on layer one.
The second important feature of the layer one is I need the money to last forever. I need the money indestructible, immortal. So, the bigger trick is not to move a billion dollars from here to Tokyo. The big trick is to move a billion dollars from here to the year 2140. And that’s what we want to solve with layer one. And the best real metaphor in New York City would be the granite or the schist. What you want is a city block of a bedrock. And how long has it been there? Millions of years it’s been there. And how fast do you want it to move? You don’t. In fact, the single thing that’s most important is that it not deflect. If it deflects a foot in a hundred years, it’s too much. If it deflects an inch in a hundred years, you might not want that.
So, the layer one of Bitcoin is a foundation upon which you put weight. How much weight can you put on it? You put a trillion, 10 trillion, a hundred trillion, a quadrillion. How much weight’s on the bedrock in Manhattan, right? Think about hundred story buildings. So, the real key there is the foundational asset needs to be there at all. The fact that you can create a hundred trillion dollars layer one that would stand for a hundred years, that is the revolutionary breakthrough first time.
And the fact that it’s ethical, right? It’s ethical and it’s common property, global, permissionless. Extremely unlikely that would happen. People tried 50 times before and they all failed. They tried 15,000 times after, and they’ve all been… They’ve all generally failed. 98% have failed and a couple have been less successful. But for the most part, that’s an extraordinary thing. Now-
Lex Fridman
Just really quickly pause, just to define some terms. If maybe people don’t know, layer one that Michael’s referring to is in general what people know of as the Bitcoin technology originally defined. Which is there’s blockchain, there’s a consensus mechanism of proof of work, low number of transactions, but you can move a very large amount of money.
Just really quickly pause, just to define some terms. If maybe people don’t know, layer one that Michael’s referring to is in general what people know of as the Bitcoin technology originally defined. Which is there’s blockchain, there’s a consensus mechanism of proof of work, low number of transactions, but you can move a very large amount of money.
The reason he’s using the term layer one is now that there’s a lot of ideas of layer two technologies that built on top of this bedrock that allow you to move a much larger number of transactions, sort of higher frequency, I don’t know how would terminology want to use, but basically be able to use now something that is based on Bitcoin to then buy stuff, be a consumer, to transfer money, to use it as currency. Just to define some terms.
Michael Saylor
Yeah. So, the layer one is the foundation for the entire cyber economy, and we don’t want it to move fast. What we want is immortality. Immortal, incorruptible, indestructible. That’s what you want, integrity from the layer one. Now there’s layer two and layer three and layer two I would define as an open, permissionless, non-custodial protocol that uses the underlying layer one token as its gas fee.
Yeah. So, the layer one is the foundation for the entire cyber economy, and we don’t want it to move fast. What we want is immortality. Immortal, incorruptible, indestructible. That’s what you want, integrity from the layer one. Now there’s layer two and layer three and layer two I would define as an open, permissionless, non-custodial protocol that uses the underlying layer one token as its gas fee.
Lex Fridman
So, what’s custodial mean and how does the different markets… Like is Lightning network-
So, what’s custodial mean and how does the different markets… Like is Lightning network-
Michael Saylor
So, Lightning Network would be an example of a layer two, non-custodial. The Lightning Network will sit on top of layer one. It’ll sit on top of Bitcoin and it solves… What you want to do is solve the problem of, “It’s well and fine. I don’t want to move a billion dollars every day. What I want to move is $5 a billion times a day.” So, if I want to move $5 a billion times a day, I don’t really need to put the entire trillion dollars of assets at risk every time I move $5. All I really need to do is put a hundred thousand dollars in a channel or a million dollars in a channel, and then I do 10 million transactions where I have a million dollars at risk.
So, Lightning Network would be an example of a layer two, non-custodial. The Lightning Network will sit on top of layer one. It’ll sit on top of Bitcoin and it solves… What you want to do is solve the problem of, “It’s well and fine. I don’t want to move a billion dollars every day. What I want to move is $5 a billion times a day.” So, if I want to move $5 a billion times a day, I don’t really need to put the entire trillion dollars of assets at risk every time I move $5. All I really need to do is put a hundred thousand dollars in a channel or a million dollars in a channel, and then I do 10 million transactions where I have a million dollars at risk.
And of course, it’s kind of simple. If I lower my security requirement by a factor of a million, I can probably move the stuff a million times faster. And that’s how Lightning works. It’s non-custodial because there’s no corporation or custodian or counterparty you’re trusting, right? There’s the risk of moving through the channel. But Lightning is an example of how I go from 350,000 transactions a day to 350 million transactions a day. So, on that layer two, you could move the Bitcoin in seconds for fractions of pennies.
Now, that’s not the end all, be all because the truth is there are a lot of open protocols. Lightning probably won’t be the only one. There’s an open market competition of other permissionless, open source protocols to do this work. And in theory, any other crypto network that was deemed to be property, deemed to be non-security, you could also think of as potentially a layer two to Bitcoin. There’s a debate about are there any and what are they? And we could leave that for a later time.
Lex Fridman
But why do you think of them as layer two as opposed to contending for layer one?
But why do you think of them as layer two as opposed to contending for layer one?
Michael Saylor
Yeah, actually, if they’re using their own token, then they are a layer one. If you create an open protocol that uses the Bitcoin token as the fee, then it becomes a layer two. Bitcoin itself incentivizes its own transactions with its own token, and that’s what makes it layer one.
Yeah, actually, if they’re using their own token, then they are a layer one. If you create an open protocol that uses the Bitcoin token as the fee, then it becomes a layer two. Bitcoin itself incentivizes its own transactions with its own token, and that’s what makes it layer one.
Lex Fridman
Okay, what’s layer three then?
Okay, what’s layer three then?
Michael Saylor
Layer three is a custodial layer. So, if you want to move Bitcoin in milliseconds for free, you move it through Binance or Coinbase or Cash App. This is a very straightforward thing. I mean, it seems pretty obvious when you think about it that there are going to be hundreds of thousands of layer threes. There may be dozens of layer twos. I mean, Lightning is a one, but it’s not the only one, anybody can invent something. And we can have this debate about custodial, non-custodial.
Layer three is a custodial layer. So, if you want to move Bitcoin in milliseconds for free, you move it through Binance or Coinbase or Cash App. This is a very straightforward thing. I mean, it seems pretty obvious when you think about it that there are going to be hundreds of thousands of layer threes. There may be dozens of layer twos. I mean, Lightning is a one, but it’s not the only one, anybody can invent something. And we can have this debate about custodial, non-custodial.
Lex Fridman
Don’t you think there’s a monopolization possibilities at layer three. You mentioned Binance, Coinbase. What if they start to dominate and basically everybody’s using them practically speaking, and then it becomes too costly to memorize the private key in your brain or like a cold storage of layer one technology.
Don’t you think there’s a monopolization possibilities at layer three. You mentioned Binance, Coinbase. What if they start to dominate and basically everybody’s using them practically speaking, and then it becomes too costly to memorize the private key in your brain or like a cold storage of layer one technology.
Michael Saylor
The idealists fear the layer threes because they think… And especially they detest, they would detest a bit… There’s almost like a layer four, by the way, if you want to. A layer four would be, I’ve got Bitcoin on an application, but I can’t withdraw it. So, I’ve got an application that’s backed by Bitcoin, but the Bitcoin is sealed. It’s a proprietary example, and I’ll give you an example of that. That would be like Grayscale. If I own a share of GBTC, so I own a security. Actually, you could own MSTR. If you own a security or you own a product that has Bitcoin embedded in it, you get the benefits of Bitcoin, but you don’t have the ability to withdraw the asset.
The idealists fear the layer threes because they think… And especially they detest, they would detest a bit… There’s almost like a layer four, by the way, if you want to. A layer four would be, I’ve got Bitcoin on an application, but I can’t withdraw it. So, I’ve got an application that’s backed by Bitcoin, but the Bitcoin is sealed. It’s a proprietary example, and I’ll give you an example of that. That would be like Grayscale. If I own a share of GBTC, so I own a security. Actually, you could own MSTR. If you own a security or you own a product that has Bitcoin embedded in it, you get the benefits of Bitcoin, but you don’t have the ability to withdraw the asset.
Lex Fridman
To get on the security market at layer four? Am I understanding this correctly?
To get on the security market at layer four? Am I understanding this correctly?
Michael Saylor
I don’t know if I would say… Not all securities are layer four, but anything that’s a proprietary product with Bitcoin embedded in it where you can’t withdraw the Bitcoin is another application of Bitcoin. If you think about different ways you can use this, you can either stay completely on the layer one and use the base chain for your transactions, or you can limit yourself to layer one and layer two, Lightening. And the purist would say, “We stay there, get your Bitcoin off the exchange.” But you could also go to the layer three.
I don’t know if I would say… Not all securities are layer four, but anything that’s a proprietary product with Bitcoin embedded in it where you can’t withdraw the Bitcoin is another application of Bitcoin. If you think about different ways you can use this, you can either stay completely on the layer one and use the base chain for your transactions, or you can limit yourself to layer one and layer two, Lightening. And the purist would say, “We stay there, get your Bitcoin off the exchange.” But you could also go to the layer three.
When Cash App supported Bitcoin, they made it very easy to buy it, and then they gave you the ability to withdraw. When PayPal or I think Robinhood let you buy it, they wouldn’t let you withdraw it and it was a big community uproar and people, they want these layer threes to make it possible to withdraw the Bitcoins. You can take it to your own private wallet and get it off the exchange. I think the answer to the question of, “Well, is corruption possible?” Is corruption is possible in all human institutions and all governments everywhere. The difference between digital property and physical property is when you own a building in Los Angeles and the city politics turn against you, you can’t move the building.
And when you own a share of a security that’s like a US traded security and you wish to move to some other country, you can’t take the security with you either. And when you own a bunch of gold and you try to get through the airport, they might not let you take it. So, Bitcoin is advantageous versus all those because you actually do have the option to withdraw your asset from the exchange. If you had Bitcoin with Fidelity and you had shares of stock with Fidelity, and if you had bonds and sovereign debt with Fidelity, and if you own some mutual funds and some other random limited partnerships with Fidelity, none of those things can be removed from the custodian. But the Bitcoin, you can take off the exchange, you can remove from the custodian.
Lex Fridman
It’s still possible though-
It’s still possible though-
Michael Saylor
There’s a deterrent.
There’s a deterrent.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Michael Saylor
There’s a deterrent. That’s an anti-corrupting element. And the phrase is, “An armed society is a polite society,” right? Because you have the optionality to withdraw all your assets from the crypto exchange, you can enforce fairness. And at the point where you disagree with their policies, you can within an hour move your assets to another counterparty or take personal custody of those assets and you don’t have that option with most other forms of property. You don’t have as much optionality with any other form of property on earth. And so what makes digital property distinct is the fact that it has the most optionality for custody.
There’s a deterrent. That’s an anti-corrupting element. And the phrase is, “An armed society is a polite society,” right? Because you have the optionality to withdraw all your assets from the crypto exchange, you can enforce fairness. And at the point where you disagree with their policies, you can within an hour move your assets to another counterparty or take personal custody of those assets and you don’t have that option with most other forms of property. You don’t have as much optionality with any other form of property on earth. And so what makes digital property distinct is the fact that it has the most optionality for custody.
Now, coming back to this digital energy issue, the real key point is the energy moves in milliseconds for free on layer threes. It moves in seconds or less than seconds on layer twos, it moves in minutes on the layer one. And I don’t think it makes any sense to even think about trying to solve all three problems on the layer one because it’s impossible to achieve the security and the incorruptibility and immortality if you try to build that much speed and that functionality and performance.
In fact, if you come back to the New York model, you really wanted a block of granite, a building and a company. That’s what makes the economy right? If I said to you, “You’re going to build a building, but you can only have one company in it for the life of the building,” it would be very fragile, very brittle. What company a hundred years ago is still relevant today? You want all three layers because they all oscillate at different frequencies. And there’s a tendency to think, “Well, it’s got to be this L1 or that L1.” Not really. And sometimes people think, “Well, I don’t really want any L3.”
But companies, it’s not an even/or. Companies are better than crypto asset networks at certain things. If you want complexity, you want to implement complexity or you want to implement compliance or customer service. Companies do these things well. We know you couldn’t decentralize Apple or Netflix or even YouTube. The performance wouldn’t be there and the subtlety wouldn’t be there. And you can’t really legally decentralize certain forms of banking and insurance because they would become illegal in the political jurisdiction they’re in.
So, unless you’re a crypto anarchist and you believe in no companies and no nation states, which is just not very practical, not anytime soon. Once you allow that nation states will continue and companies have a role, then the layered architecture follows, and the free market determines who wins. For example, there are layer threes that let you acquire Bitcoin and withdraw Bitcoin. There are other applications that let you acquire but not withdraw it, and they don’t get the same market share, but they might give you some other advantage. There are certain layer threes, like Jack Dorsey’s Cash App where they just incorporated Lightning, an implementation of it.
Lex Fridman
Into Cash App?
Into Cash App?
Michael Saylor
So, that makes it advantageous versus an application that doesn’t incorporate Lightning. If you think about the big picture, the big picture is 8 billion people with mobile phones served by a hundred million companies doing billions of transactions an hour. And the companies are settling with each other on the base layer in blocks of 80 million at a time. And then the companies are trading with the consumers in proprietary layers, like layer three. And then on occasion, people are shuffling assets across custodians with Lightning layer two, because you don’t want to pay $5 to move $50. You want to pay a 20th of a penny to move $50.
So, that makes it advantageous versus an application that doesn’t incorporate Lightning. If you think about the big picture, the big picture is 8 billion people with mobile phones served by a hundred million companies doing billions of transactions an hour. And the companies are settling with each other on the base layer in blocks of 80 million at a time. And then the companies are trading with the consumers in proprietary layers, like layer three. And then on occasion, people are shuffling assets across custodians with Lightning layer two, because you don’t want to pay $5 to move $50. You want to pay a 20th of a penny to move $50.
And so all of these things create efficiency in the economy. And Lex, if you want to consider how much efficiency. If you gave me a billion dollars in 20 years, I couldn’t find a way to trade with another company or a counterparty in Nigeria. No amount of money. Give me %10 billion, I couldn’t do it because you get shut down at the banking level. You can’t link up a bank in Nigeria with a bank in the US. You get shut down at this credit card level because they don’t have the credit card, so they won’t clear. You get shut down at the compliance FCPA level because you wouldn’t be able to implement a system that interfaced with somebody else’s system if it’s not in the right political jurisdiction.
On the other hand, three entrepreneurs in Nigeria on the weekend could create a website that would trade in this Lightning economy using open protocols without asking anybody’s permission. So, you’re talking about something that’s like a million times cheaper, less friction, and faster to do it if you want to get money to move.
Bitcoin’s role during wartime
Lex Fridman
What do you think that looks like? So, now there’s a war going on in Ukraine. There’s other wars, Yemen, going on throughout the world. In this most difficult of states that a nation can be in, which is at war, civil war, or war with other nations, what’s the role of Bitcoin in this context?
What do you think that looks like? So, now there’s a war going on in Ukraine. There’s other wars, Yemen, going on throughout the world. In this most difficult of states that a nation can be in, which is at war, civil war, or war with other nations, what’s the role of Bitcoin in this context?
Michael Saylor
I mean, Bitcoin is a universal trust protocol. A universal energy protocol, if you will. English is one. What I see is a bunch of fragmentation of applications-
I mean, Bitcoin is a universal trust protocol. A universal energy protocol, if you will. English is one. What I see is a bunch of fragmentation of applications-
Michael Saylor
Okay. What I see is a bunch of fragmentation of applications. For example, the Russian payment app is not going to work in Ukraine.
Okay. What I see is a bunch of fragmentation of applications. For example, the Russian payment app is not going to work in Ukraine.
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Michael Saylor
The Ukraine payment app is not going to work in Russia. The US payment apps won’t work either of those places as far as I know. So in Argentina, their payment app may not work in certain parts of Africa. So what you have is different local economies where people spin up their own applications compliant with their own local laws or in war zones, not compliant, but just spinning up.
The Ukraine payment app is not going to work in Russia. The US payment apps won’t work either of those places as far as I know. So in Argentina, their payment app may not work in certain parts of Africa. So what you have is different local economies where people spin up their own applications compliant with their own local laws or in war zones, not compliant, but just spinning up.
Lex Fridman
So how do you build something that’s not compliant? What is the revolutionary act here when you don’t agree with the government or what you want to free yourself from the… So here’s the thing. When a nation is really at war, especially if it’s an authoritarian regime, it’s going to try to control the pipe, lock everything down, the spread of information. How do you break through that? Do you do the thing that you mentioned, which is you have to build another app essentially that allows you to flow of money outside the legal constraints placed on you by the government? So basically break the law, is that possible?
So how do you build something that’s not compliant? What is the revolutionary act here when you don’t agree with the government or what you want to free yourself from the… So here’s the thing. When a nation is really at war, especially if it’s an authoritarian regime, it’s going to try to control the pipe, lock everything down, the spread of information. How do you break through that? Do you do the thing that you mentioned, which is you have to build another app essentially that allows you to flow of money outside the legal constraints placed on you by the government? So basically break the law, is that possible?
Michael Saylor
Metaphorically speaking, if you want to break out of the constraints of your culture, you learn to speak English. For example, it’s not illegal to speak English. Even if it is, does it matter? But English works everywhere in the world if you can speak it, and then you can tap into a global commerce and intelligence network. So Bitcoin is a language. So you learn to speak Bitcoin or you learn to speak Lightning, and then you tap into that network in whatever manner you can.
Metaphorically speaking, if you want to break out of the constraints of your culture, you learn to speak English. For example, it’s not illegal to speak English. Even if it is, does it matter? But English works everywhere in the world if you can speak it, and then you can tap into a global commerce and intelligence network. So Bitcoin is a language. So you learn to speak Bitcoin or you learn to speak Lightning, and then you tap into that network in whatever manner you can.
Lex Fridman
But the problem is it’s still very difficult to move Bitcoin around in Russia and Ukraine now during war. And there was a sense to me that the cryptocurrency in general could be the savior for helping people. There’s millions of refugees that are moving all around. It’s very difficult to move money around in that space to help people.
But the problem is it’s still very difficult to move Bitcoin around in Russia and Ukraine now during war. And there was a sense to me that the cryptocurrency in general could be the savior for helping people. There’s millions of refugees that are moving all around. It’s very difficult to move money around in that space to help people.
Michael Saylor
I think we’re very early. We’re very embryonic here. If you look at the-
I think we’re very early. We’re very embryonic here. If you look at the-
Lex Fridman
Who’s we? Sorry, we as a human civilization or we operating in the cryptocurrency space?
Who’s we? Sorry, we as a human civilization or we operating in the cryptocurrency space?
Michael Saylor
I think the entire crypto economy is very embryonic and the human race’s adoption of it is embryonic. We’re like 1%, 2% down that adoption curve. If you take Lightning for example, the first real commercial applications of Lightning are just in the last 12 months. So we’re like year one. We might be approaching year two of commercial Lightning adoption. And if you look at Lightning adoption, Lightning’s not built into Coinbase, is not built into Binance, is not built into FTX. Cash App just implemented the first implementation, but not all the features are built into it. There’s a few dozen, a dozen Lightning wallets circulating out there.
I think the entire crypto economy is very embryonic and the human race’s adoption of it is embryonic. We’re like 1%, 2% down that adoption curve. If you take Lightning for example, the first real commercial applications of Lightning are just in the last 12 months. So we’re like year one. We might be approaching year two of commercial Lightning adoption. And if you look at Lightning adoption, Lightning’s not built into Coinbase, is not built into Binance, is not built into FTX. Cash App just implemented the first implementation, but not all the features are built into it. There’s a few dozen, a dozen Lightning wallets circulating out there.
So I think that we’re probably going to be 36 months of software development. At the point that every Android phone and every iPhone has a Bitcoin wallet or a crypto wallet in it of sorts, that’s a big deal. If Apple embraced Lightning, that’s a big deal.
Lex Fridman
So the adoption is the thing… In a war zone adoption, the people who struggle the most in war are people who weren’t doing that great before the war started. They don’t have the technological sophistication.
So the adoption is the thing… In a war zone adoption, the people who struggle the most in war are people who weren’t doing that great before the war started. They don’t have the technological sophistication.
Jack Dorsey
Michael Saylor
Sure.
Sure.
Lex Fridman
The hackers and all those kinds of people will find a way. It’s just regular people who are just struggling to make day by day living. And so if the adoption permeates the entire culture, then you can start to move money around in the digital space. If you can psychoanalyze Jack Dorsey for a second. So he’s one of the early adopters or he’s one of the people pushing the early adoption, this layer three, so inside Cash App. What do you make of the man of this decision as a business owner, as somebody playing in the space? Why did he do it and what does that mean for others at the scale that might be doing the same? So incorporating Lightning networking, incorporating Bitcoin into their products.
The hackers and all those kinds of people will find a way. It’s just regular people who are just struggling to make day by day living. And so if the adoption permeates the entire culture, then you can start to move money around in the digital space. If you can psychoanalyze Jack Dorsey for a second. So he’s one of the early adopters or he’s one of the people pushing the early adoption, this layer three, so inside Cash App. What do you make of the man of this decision as a business owner, as somebody playing in the space? Why did he do it and what does that mean for others at the scale that might be doing the same? So incorporating Lightning networking, incorporating Bitcoin into their products.
Michael Saylor
I think he’s been pretty clear about this. He feels that Bitcoin is an instrument of economic empowerment for billions of people that are unbanked and have no property rights in the world. If you want to give an incorruptible bank to 8,000,000,000 people on the planet, that’s the same as asking the question, “How do you give a full education through PhD to 8,000,000,000 people on the planet?” And the answer is a digital version of the 20th century thing running on a mobile phone, and Bitcoin is a bank in cyberspace, is run by incorruptible software and it’s for everybody on earth.
I think he’s been pretty clear about this. He feels that Bitcoin is an instrument of economic empowerment for billions of people that are unbanked and have no property rights in the world. If you want to give an incorruptible bank to 8,000,000,000 people on the planet, that’s the same as asking the question, “How do you give a full education through PhD to 8,000,000,000 people on the planet?” And the answer is a digital version of the 20th century thing running on a mobile phone, and Bitcoin is a bank in cyberspace, is run by incorruptible software and it’s for everybody on earth.
So I think when Jack looks at it, he’s very sensitive to the plight of everybody in Africa. If you look at Africans, you’re going to give them banks. You’re not going to put a bank branch on every corner. That’s an obscene waste of energy. You’re not going to run copper wires across the continent. That’s an obscene waste of energy. You’re not going to give them gold. So how are you going to provide people with a decent life?
The metaphor I think is relevant here, the biological metaphor, Lex, is type one diabetic. If you’re a type one diabetic, you can’t form fat. And if you can’t form fat, then you can’t store excess energy. Fat is the ultimate organic battery, and if you’ve got 30 pounds of it, you can go 60 days without eating. But if you can’t generate insulin, you can’t form fat cells. And if you can’t form fat cells and store energy, then you can eat yourself to death. You will eat and you will die. You’ll starve to death. So the lack of property rights is like being a type one diabetic. And so if you look at most people everywhere in the world, they don’t have property rights, they don’t have effective bank and their currency is broken.
What are the two things that in theory would serve as the equivalent of an organic battery or an economic battery to civilization? It would be I have a currency which holds its value and I can store it in a bank. So a risk-free currency derivative. I pay you your money, you take your life savings, you put it in a bank, you save up for your retirement, you live happily ever after. That’s the American dream, right? That’s the idyllic situation. The real situation is there are no banks. You can’t get a bank account. So I give you your pay in currency and then I double the supply and I give it to my cousin, or I give it to whatever cause I want or I use it to buy weapons. And then you find a loaf of bread costs triple next month as what it costs and your life savings is worthless.
And so in that environment, everybody’s ripped back to Stone Age barter. And the problem with that, even Stone Age barter, is you’re going to carry your life savings on your back. And what happens when the guy with a machine gun points it at your head and just takes your life savings? So I think from Jack’s point of view, he thinks that, this is maybe too strong, but these are my words, life is hopeless for a lot of people and Bitcoin is hope because it gives everyone an engineered monetary asset that’s a bearer instrument and it gives them a bank on their mobile phone and they don’t have to trust their government or another counterparty with their life force.
So there’s a secondary thing I think he’s interested in, which is… The first thing is the human rights issue. And the second thing would be the friction to trade cross borders is so great. You like AI. So I’ll give you a beautiful notion. Maybe one day there’ll be an artificially intelligent creature in cyberspace that is self-sufficient and rich.
Lex Fridman
It would have sovereignty. You mean-
It would have sovereignty. You mean-
Michael Saylor
Can a robot own money or property? How about can a Tesla car? Can I actually put enough money in a car for it to drive itself and maintain itself forever? Or can I create an artificially intelligent creature in cyberspace that is endowed such that it would live 1,000 years and continue to do its job? We have a word for that in the real world. It’s institution, Harvard, Cambridge, Stanford. Right? There are institutions with endowments that go on in perpetuity, but what if I wanted to perpetuate a software program?
Can a robot own money or property? How about can a Tesla car? Can I actually put enough money in a car for it to drive itself and maintain itself forever? Or can I create an artificially intelligent creature in cyberspace that is endowed such that it would live 1,000 years and continue to do its job? We have a word for that in the real world. It’s institution, Harvard, Cambridge, Stanford. Right? There are institutions with endowments that go on in perpetuity, but what if I wanted to perpetuate a software program?
And with something like digital property with Bitcoin and Lightning, you could do it. And on the other hand, with banks and credit cards, you couldn’t ever. So you can create things that are beautiful and lasting and what’s the difference in speed? Well, so I can either trade with everybody in the world at the speed of light, friction-free in 24 hours writing a Python script, or I can spend $100 billion to trade with a few million people in the world after it takes them six months of application. The impedance is like a 10,000,000 to one difference, and the metaphors are literally like launching something in orbit versus almost orbit or vacuum sealing something. Does it last forever and does it orbit forever or does it go up and come down and burn up? Right? And I think Jack is interested in putting freedom in orbit, right?
Lex Fridman
Putting freedom-
Putting freedom-
Michael Saylor
Putting freedom in orbit. And he said it many times, he said, “The internet needs a native currency.” Right? And no political construct or security can be a native currency. You need a property and you need a property that can be moved 1,000,000 times a second. Can you oscillate it at 10 kilohertz or 100 kilohertz? And the answer is only if it’s a pure digital construct, permissionless and open. And so I think that he’s enthusiastic as the technologist and he’s enthusiastic as the humanitarian. And what he’s doing is to support both those areas. He’s supporting the Bitcoin and the Lightning protocol by building them into his products, but he’s also building the applications which you need at the Cash App level in order to commercialize and deliver the functionality and the compliance necessary, and they’re related.
Putting freedom in orbit. And he said it many times, he said, “The internet needs a native currency.” Right? And no political construct or security can be a native currency. You need a property and you need a property that can be moved 1,000,000 times a second. Can you oscillate it at 10 kilohertz or 100 kilohertz? And the answer is only if it’s a pure digital construct, permissionless and open. And so I think that he’s enthusiastic as the technologist and he’s enthusiastic as the humanitarian. And what he’s doing is to support both those areas. He’s supporting the Bitcoin and the Lightning protocol by building them into his products, but he’s also building the applications which you need at the Cash App level in order to commercialize and deliver the functionality and the compliance necessary, and they’re related.
Lex Fridman
And I should also say he’s just a fascinating person for a random reason that I couldn’t even explain if I tried. I met him a few days ago and gave him a great big hug in the middle of nowhere. There was no explanation. He just appeared. That’s a fascinating human. His relationship with art, with the world, with human suffering, with technology is fascinating. I don’t know what his path looks like, but it’s interesting that people like that exist. And in part, I’m saddened that he no longer is involved with Twitter directly as a CEO because I was hoping something inside Twitter would also integrate some of these ideas of what you’re calling digital energy to see how social networks, something I’m really interested in and passionate about, could be transformed.
And I should also say he’s just a fascinating person for a random reason that I couldn’t even explain if I tried. I met him a few days ago and gave him a great big hug in the middle of nowhere. There was no explanation. He just appeared. That’s a fascinating human. His relationship with art, with the world, with human suffering, with technology is fascinating. I don’t know what his path looks like, but it’s interesting that people like that exist. And in part, I’m saddened that he no longer is involved with Twitter directly as a CEO because I was hoping something inside Twitter would also integrate some of these ideas of what you’re calling digital energy to see how social networks, something I’m really interested in and passionate about, could be transformed.
Let me ask you, just for educational purposes. Can you please explain to me what Web3 and the beef between Jack and Mark Andreessen is exactly? Did you see what happened? Sorry to have you analyze Twitter like it’s Shakespeare, but can you please explain to me why there was any drama over this topic?
Michael Saylor
First of all, Web3 is a term that’s used to refer to the part of the economy that’s token finance. So if I’m launching an application and my idea is to create a token along with the application and issue the token to the community so as to finance the application and build support for it, I think that that’s the most common interpretation of Web3. There are other interpretations too, so I’m just going to refer to that one. And I think the beef in a nutshell, not articulated, but I’ll articulate it, is whether or not you should focus all your energy creating applications on top of an ethical digital property like Bitcoin or whether you should attempt to create a competitor to it, which generally would be deemed as a security by the Bitcoin community?
First of all, Web3 is a term that’s used to refer to the part of the economy that’s token finance. So if I’m launching an application and my idea is to create a token along with the application and issue the token to the community so as to finance the application and build support for it, I think that that’s the most common interpretation of Web3. There are other interpretations too, so I’m just going to refer to that one. And I think the beef in a nutshell, not articulated, but I’ll articulate it, is whether or not you should focus all your energy creating applications on top of an ethical digital property like Bitcoin or whether you should attempt to create a competitor to it, which generally would be deemed as a security by the Bitcoin community?
So I’m going to put on my Bitcoin hat here. Right? If it’s driven by a venture capitalist, well, it’s a security. If there’s a CEO and a CTO, it’s a security. All these projects, they’re companies. Foundations are companies. Right? If you call them a project or a foundation, it doesn’t make it not a security. They’re all in essence, collections of individuals that are issuing equity in the form of a token. And if there’s a pre-mine, an IPO, an ICO, a foundation or any kind of protocol where there’s a group of engineers that have influence over it, then to a securities lawyer or to most Bitcoiners, and definitely to anybody that’s steeped in securities law, you look at it and say, “Well, that passes the Howey test.” It looks like a security. It should be sold to the public pursuant to disclosures and regulations, and you’re just ducking the IPO process. Right?
And so now we get back to the ethical issue. Well, the ethical issue is if you’re trading it as a commodity and representing it as a commodity, while truthfully it’s a security, then it’s a violation of ethics rules and it’s probably illegal.
Lex Fridman
Well, you keep leaning on this. Let me push back on that part. Maybe you can educate me, but you keep leaning on this line of securities law, with all due respect to lawyers, as if that line somehow defines what is and isn’t ethical. I think there’s a lot of correlation as you’ve discussed, but I’d like to leave the line aside. If the law calls something a security, it doesn’t mean in my eyes that it is unethical. There could be some technicalities and lawyers and people play games with this kind of stuff all the time. But I take your bigger point that if there’s a CEO, if there’s a project lead that’s fundamentally… Well, that to you is fundamentally different than the structure of Bitcoin.
Well, you keep leaning on this. Let me push back on that part. Maybe you can educate me, but you keep leaning on this line of securities law, with all due respect to lawyers, as if that line somehow defines what is and isn’t ethical. I think there’s a lot of correlation as you’ve discussed, but I’d like to leave the line aside. If the law calls something a security, it doesn’t mean in my eyes that it is unethical. There could be some technicalities and lawyers and people play games with this kind of stuff all the time. But I take your bigger point that if there’s a CEO, if there’s a project lead that’s fundamentally… Well, that to you is fundamentally different than the structure of Bitcoin.
Michael Saylor
It’s not that creating securities is unethical. I created security. I took a company public. Right? That’s not the unethical part. It’s completely ethical to create securities. Block is a security, all companies are securities. The unethical part is to represent it as property when it’s a security and to promote it or trade it as such.
It’s not that creating securities is unethical. I created security. I took a company public. Right? That’s not the unethical part. It’s completely ethical to create securities. Block is a security, all companies are securities. The unethical part is to represent it as property when it’s a security and to promote it or trade it as such.
Lex Fridman
This whole promotion, that’s also a technical thing because what counts as not as promotion is a legal thing and you get in trouble for all these things, but that’s the game that lawyers play. There’s an ethical thing here, which is like what’s right to promote a not? To me, propaganda is unethical, but it’s usually not illegal.
This whole promotion, that’s also a technical thing because what counts as not as promotion is a legal thing and you get in trouble for all these things, but that’s the game that lawyers play. There’s an ethical thing here, which is like what’s right to promote a not? To me, propaganda is unethical, but it’s usually not illegal.
Michael Saylor
You roll clock back 20 years, right? All the boiler room pump and dump schemes were all about someone pitching a penny stock-
You roll clock back 20 years, right? All the boiler room pump and dump schemes were all about someone pitching a penny stock-
Lex Fridman
Sure.
Sure.
Michael Saylor
Selling swampland in Florida. And if you roll the clock forward 20 years, and I create my own company and I represent it as the same thing, and I don’t make the disclosures, you’re just one step removed from the boiler room scheme, and that’s what’s distasteful about it. There are ways to sell securities to the public, but there are expectations. Maybe we could forget about whether the security laws are ethical or not, right? I will leave that alone. We’ll just start with the biblical definition of ethics.
Selling swampland in Florida. And if you roll the clock forward 20 years, and I create my own company and I represent it as the same thing, and I don’t make the disclosures, you’re just one step removed from the boiler room scheme, and that’s what’s distasteful about it. There are ways to sell securities to the public, but there are expectations. Maybe we could forget about whether the security laws are ethical or not, right? I will leave that alone. We’ll just start with the biblical definition of ethics.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Michael Saylor
Don’t lie, cheat or steal. So if I’m going to sell something to you, I need to fully disclose what I’m selling to you, and that’s a matter of great debate right now. So I think that that’s part of the debate, but the other part of the debate is whether or not we need more than one token, we need at least one. Right?
Don’t lie, cheat or steal. So if I’m going to sell something to you, I need to fully disclose what I’m selling to you, and that’s a matter of great debate right now. So I think that that’s part of the debate, but the other part of the debate is whether or not we need more than one token, we need at least one. Right?
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Michael Saylor
We need at least one digital property.
We need at least one digital property.
Lex Fridman
One is better than zero.
One is better than zero.
Michael Saylor
Because zero means there is no digital economy.
Because zero means there is no digital economy.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Michael Saylor
And by the way, the conventional view of maximalists is they think there’s only one and everything else isn’t. That’s not the point I’m going to make. I would say we know there is at least one digital property and that is Bitcoin. If you can create a truly decentralized, non-custodial bearer instrument that is not under the control of any organization that is fairly distributed, then you might create another or multiple and there may be others out there. But I think that the frustration of a lot of people in the Bitcoin community, and I share this with Jack, is we could create $100 trillion of value in the real world simply by building applications on top of Bitcoin as a foundation. And so continually trying to reinvent the wheel and create competitive things is a massive waste of time and it’s diversion of human creativity. It’s like we have an ethical good thing, and now we’re going to try to create a third or a fourth one. Why?
And by the way, the conventional view of maximalists is they think there’s only one and everything else isn’t. That’s not the point I’m going to make. I would say we know there is at least one digital property and that is Bitcoin. If you can create a truly decentralized, non-custodial bearer instrument that is not under the control of any organization that is fairly distributed, then you might create another or multiple and there may be others out there. But I think that the frustration of a lot of people in the Bitcoin community, and I share this with Jack, is we could create $100 trillion of value in the real world simply by building applications on top of Bitcoin as a foundation. And so continually trying to reinvent the wheel and create competitive things is a massive waste of time and it’s diversion of human creativity. It’s like we have an ethical good thing, and now we’re going to try to create a third or a fourth one. Why?
Bitcoin conflict of interest
Lex Fridman
Well, let’s talk about it. So first of all, I’m with you, but let me ask you this interesting question because we talked about properties and securities. Let’s talk about conflict of interest. You said you could advertise… You have a popular Twitter account. It’s hilarious and insightful. You do promote Bitcoin in a sense. I don’t know if you would say that, but do you think there’s a conflict of interest in anyone who owns Bitcoin, promoting Bitcoin? Is it the same as you promoting farming?
Well, let’s talk about it. So first of all, I’m with you, but let me ask you this interesting question because we talked about properties and securities. Let’s talk about conflict of interest. You said you could advertise… You have a popular Twitter account. It’s hilarious and insightful. You do promote Bitcoin in a sense. I don’t know if you would say that, but do you think there’s a conflict of interest in anyone who owns Bitcoin, promoting Bitcoin? Is it the same as you promoting farming?
Michael Saylor
I would say no. There’s an interest. I think that you can promote a property or an idea to the extent that you don’t control it. I think that the point at which you start to have a conflict of interest is when you’re promoting a proprietary product or proprietary security. A security in general is proprietary asset. So for example, if you look at my Twitter, you’ll find that I make lots of statements about Bitcoin. You won’t ever see me making a statement that say micro strategy stock will go it forever. I’m not promoting a security MSTR because at the end of the day, MSTR is a security. It is proprietary. I have proprietary interest in it. I have a disproportionate amount of control and influence on the direction. Whereas-
I would say no. There’s an interest. I think that you can promote a property or an idea to the extent that you don’t control it. I think that the point at which you start to have a conflict of interest is when you’re promoting a proprietary product or proprietary security. A security in general is proprietary asset. So for example, if you look at my Twitter, you’ll find that I make lots of statements about Bitcoin. You won’t ever see me making a statement that say micro strategy stock will go it forever. I’m not promoting a security MSTR because at the end of the day, MSTR is a security. It is proprietary. I have proprietary interest in it. I have a disproportionate amount of control and influence on the direction. Whereas-
Lex Fridman
The control is the problem. The control is the problem because you have interest in both. If Bitcoin is as successful as we’re talking about, you very possibly can become the richest human on earth given how much you own in Bitcoin. The wealthiest, not the richest. I don’t know what those words mean.
The control is the problem. The control is the problem because you have interest in both. If Bitcoin is as successful as we’re talking about, you very possibly can become the richest human on earth given how much you own in Bitcoin. The wealthiest, not the richest. I don’t know what those words mean.
Michael Saylor
I would benefit economically.
I would benefit economically.
Lex Fridman
You would benefit economically.
You would benefit economically.
Michael Saylor
That’s true.
That’s true.
Lex Fridman
So the reason that’s not conflict of interest is because the word property that Bitcoin is an idea and Bitcoin is open-
So the reason that’s not conflict of interest is because the word property that Bitcoin is an idea and Bitcoin is open-
Michael Saylor
It’s because I don’t own it. I don’t control it. In essence, the ethical line here is could I print myself 10,000,000 more Bitcoin or not? Right?
It’s because I don’t own it. I don’t control it. In essence, the ethical line here is could I print myself 10,000,000 more Bitcoin or not? Right?
Lex Fridman
Or can anyone? Right? It’s not just you. It’s can anyone? Because can you promote somebody else’s? Yes, I guess you can. Can you promote Apple when you have no stake?
Or can anyone? Right? It’s not just you. It’s can anyone? Because can you promote somebody else’s? Yes, I guess you can. Can you promote Apple when you have no stake?
Michael Saylor
You could have a Twitter account where you promote oil or you promote camping or you promote family values or promote a carnivore diet or promote the Iron Man, right?
You could have a Twitter account where you promote oil or you promote camping or you promote family values or promote a carnivore diet or promote the Iron Man, right?
Lex Fridman
But you’re not going to get wealthier if you promote camping because you can’t own a stake in… You own a lot of Bitcoin. What is that? Don’t you own the stake in the idea of Bitcoin?
But you’re not going to get wealthier if you promote camping because you can’t own a stake in… You own a lot of Bitcoin. What is that? Don’t you own the stake in the idea of Bitcoin?
Michael Saylor
Yeah, I would grant you that.
Yeah, I would grant you that.
Lex Fridman
But the lack of control is the fundamental ethical line that you don’t have… All you are is you’re a fan of the idea. You believe in the idea and the power of idea.
But the lack of control is the fundamental ethical line that you don’t have… All you are is you’re a fan of the idea. You believe in the idea and the power of idea.
Michael Saylor
Yeah, I think-
Yeah, I think-
Lex Fridman
You can’t take that idea away from others.
You can’t take that idea away from others.
Michael Saylor
Let me give you some maybe easier examples. If you were the Head of the Marine Corps and someone came to you and said, “I created Marinecoin, and the twist on Marinecoin is I want you to tell every Marine that they’ll get an extra Marinecoin when they get their next stripe. And then I’m going to let you buy Marinecoin now, and then after you buy Marinecoin, I want you to promote it to them.” At some point, if you start to have a disproportional influence on it, or if you’re in a conversation with people with disproportionate influence becomes conflict of interest and it would make you profoundly uncomfortable, I think, if the Head of the Marine Corps started promoting anything that looked like a security.
Let me give you some maybe easier examples. If you were the Head of the Marine Corps and someone came to you and said, “I created Marinecoin, and the twist on Marinecoin is I want you to tell every Marine that they’ll get an extra Marinecoin when they get their next stripe. And then I’m going to let you buy Marinecoin now, and then after you buy Marinecoin, I want you to promote it to them.” At some point, if you start to have a disproportional influence on it, or if you’re in a conversation with people with disproportionate influence becomes conflict of interest and it would make you profoundly uncomfortable, I think, if the Head of the Marine Corps started promoting anything that looked like a security.
Now, if the Head of the Marine Corps started promoting canoeing, you might think he’s wacky. Maybe that’s a waste of time and a distraction. But to the extent that canoeing is not a security, not a problem, unless you… Ultimately, the issue of decentralization is really a critical one.
Lex Fridman
So not having a head. Can Bitcoin be replicated? So all the things that you’re saying that make it a property, can that be replicated? Have any other-
So not having a head. Can Bitcoin be replicated? So all the things that you’re saying that make it a property, can that be replicated? Have any other-
Michael Saylor
I think it’s possible to create other crypto properties.
I think it’s possible to create other crypto properties.
Lex Fridman
Does the having a head of a project, a thing that limits its ability to be a property if you try to replicate a project? Is that the fundamental flaw?
Does the having a head of a project, a thing that limits its ability to be a property if you try to replicate a project? Is that the fundamental flaw?
Michael Saylor
No. Look, I think the real fundamental issue is you just never want it to change. If you really want something decentralized, you want a genetic template that substantially is not going to change for 1,000 years. So I think Satoshi said it at one point. He said, “The nature of the software is such that by version 0.1, its genetic code was set.” If there was any development team that’s continually changing it on a routine basis, it becomes harder and harder to maintain its decentralization because now there’s the issue of who is influencing the changes?
No. Look, I think the real fundamental issue is you just never want it to change. If you really want something decentralized, you want a genetic template that substantially is not going to change for 1,000 years. So I think Satoshi said it at one point. He said, “The nature of the software is such that by version 0.1, its genetic code was set.” If there was any development team that’s continually changing it on a routine basis, it becomes harder and harder to maintain its decentralization because now there’s the issue of who is influencing the changes?
So what you really want is a very, very simple idea. The simplest idea, I’m just going to keep track of who owns 21,000,000 parts of energy? And when someone proposes big functional upgrades, you don’t really want that development to go on to base layer. You want that development to go on to layer threes because now Cash App has a proprietary set of functionality and it’s a security. And if you’re going to promote the use of this thing, you’re not going to promote the layer three security because that’s an edge to a given entity and you’re trusting the counterparty. You’re going to promote the layer one or at most the layer two.
Satoshi Nakamoto
Lex Fridman
Okay, so one of the fascinating things about Bitcoin, and sorry to romanticize certain notions, but Satoshi Nakamoto that the founder is anonymous. Maybe you can speak to whether that’s useful, but also I just like the psychology of that to imagine that there’s a human being that was able to create something special and walk away. Though first, are you Satoshi Nakamoto?
Okay, so one of the fascinating things about Bitcoin, and sorry to romanticize certain notions, but Satoshi Nakamoto that the founder is anonymous. Maybe you can speak to whether that’s useful, but also I just like the psychology of that to imagine that there’s a human being that was able to create something special and walk away. Though first, are you Satoshi Nakamoto?
Michael Saylor
I’m certain I’m not. No, actually I think the providence is really important, and if I were to look at the highlighted points, I think having a founder that was anonymous or stood anonymous is important. I think the founder disappearing is also important. I think that the fact that the Satoshi coins never moved is also important. I think the lack of an initial coin offering is also important. I think the lack of a corporate sponsor is important. I think the fact that it traded for 15 months with no commercial value was also important. I think that the simplicity of the protocol is very important. I think that the outcome of the block size wars is very important and all of those things add up to common property. They’re all indicia, indicators of a digital property as opposed to security.
I’m certain I’m not. No, actually I think the providence is really important, and if I were to look at the highlighted points, I think having a founder that was anonymous or stood anonymous is important. I think the founder disappearing is also important. I think that the fact that the Satoshi coins never moved is also important. I think the lack of an initial coin offering is also important. I think the lack of a corporate sponsor is important. I think the fact that it traded for 15 months with no commercial value was also important. I think that the simplicity of the protocol is very important. I think that the outcome of the block size wars is very important and all of those things add up to common property. They’re all indicia, indicators of a digital property as opposed to security.
If there was a Satoshi sitting around, sitting on top of $50 billion worth of Bitcoin, I don’t think it would cripple Bitcoin as property, but I think it would undermine its digital property. And if I wanted to undermine a crypto asset network, I would do the opposite of all those things. I would launch one myself. I would sell 25% or 50% to the general public. I would pre-mine some stuff or early mine it and I would keep an influence on it. Those are all the opposite of what you would do in order to create common property. And so I see the entire story as Satoshi giving a gift of digital property to the human race and disappearing.
Lex Fridman
Do you think it was one person? Do you have ideas of who it could be?
Do you think it was one person? Do you have ideas of who it could be?
Michael Saylor
I don’t care to speculate.
I don’t care to speculate.
Lex Fridman
But do you think it was one person?
But do you think it was one person?
Michael Saylor
I think it was one person, maybe in conjunction with a bunch of others. It might’ve been a group of people that were working together, but certainly there’s a Satoshi.
I think it was one person, maybe in conjunction with a bunch of others. It might’ve been a group of people that were working together, but certainly there’s a Satoshi.
Lex Fridman
It’s just so fascinating to me that one person could be so brave and thoughtful. Or do you think a lot of his accent, like the block size wars, the decision to make a block a certain size, all the things you mentioned led up to the characteristics that make Bitcoin property? Do you think that’s an accident or was it deeply thought through? This is almost like a history of science question.
It’s just so fascinating to me that one person could be so brave and thoughtful. Or do you think a lot of his accent, like the block size wars, the decision to make a block a certain size, all the things you mentioned led up to the characteristics that make Bitcoin property? Do you think that’s an accident or was it deeply thought through? This is almost like a history of science question.
Michael Saylor
They tried 40 of them, right? I think there’s a history of attempting to create something like this, and it was tried many, many times and they failed for different reasons. And I think that it’s like Prometheus tried to start a fire 47 times and maybe the 48 time it sparked, and that’s how I see this. This is the first one that sparked, and it sets a roadmap for us. And I think if you’re looking for any one word that characterize, it’s fair. The whole point of the network is it’s a fair launch, a fair distribution. I have Bitcoin, but I bought it. In fact, at this point, we’ve paid $4 billion of real cash to buy it. If I was sitting on the same position and I had it for free or I bought it for a nickel, a coin, or a penny of coin, the question is, was it fair? And that’s a very hard question to answer, right? Did you acquire the Bitcoin that you own fairly? And if you roll the clock back, you could have bought it for a nickel or a dime, but that was when it was 1,000,000 times more likely to fail, right? When the risk was greater, the cost was lower, and then over time, the risk became lower and the cost became greater.
They tried 40 of them, right? I think there’s a history of attempting to create something like this, and it was tried many, many times and they failed for different reasons. And I think that it’s like Prometheus tried to start a fire 47 times and maybe the 48 time it sparked, and that’s how I see this. This is the first one that sparked, and it sets a roadmap for us. And I think if you’re looking for any one word that characterize, it’s fair. The whole point of the network is it’s a fair launch, a fair distribution. I have Bitcoin, but I bought it. In fact, at this point, we’ve paid $4 billion of real cash to buy it. If I was sitting on the same position and I had it for free or I bought it for a nickel, a coin, or a penny of coin, the question is, was it fair? And that’s a very hard question to answer, right? Did you acquire the Bitcoin that you own fairly? And if you roll the clock back, you could have bought it for a nickel or a dime, but that was when it was 1,000,000 times more likely to fail, right? When the risk was greater, the cost was lower, and then over time, the risk became lower and the cost became greater.
And the real critical thing was to allow the marketplace absent any powerful, interested actor, right? If Satoshi had held 1,000,000 coins and then stayed engaged for 10 more years, tweaking things in the background, there’d still be that question. But what we’ve got is really a beautiful thing. We’ve got a chain reaction in cyberspace or an ideology spreading virally in the world that has seasoned in a fair, ethical fashion. Sometimes it’s a very violent, brutal fashion with all the volatility, and there’s been a lot of sound and fury along the way.
Volatility
Lex Fridman
How do you psychoanalyze? How do you deal from a financial, from a human perspective with the volatility? You mentioned you could have gotten it for a nickel and the risk was great. Where’s the risk today? What’s your sense?
How do you psychoanalyze? How do you deal from a financial, from a human perspective with the volatility? You mentioned you could have gotten it for a nickel and the risk was great. Where’s the risk today? What’s your sense?
Michael Saylor
We’re 13 years into this entire activity. I think the risk has never been lower. If you look at all the risks, the risks in the early years are is the engineering protocol proper? One megabyte, block size, 10 minute clock frequency, cryptography is first, will it be hacked or will it crash? 730,000 blocks and it hasn’t crashed. Will it be hacked? Hasn’t been hacked. It’s a Lindy thing, right? You wait 13 years to see if it’ll be hacked. But on the other hand, with $1 billion, it’s not as interesting a target as it is with $ 100 billion. And when it gets to be worth $1 trillion, then it’s a bigger target.
We’re 13 years into this entire activity. I think the risk has never been lower. If you look at all the risks, the risks in the early years are is the engineering protocol proper? One megabyte, block size, 10 minute clock frequency, cryptography is first, will it be hacked or will it crash? 730,000 blocks and it hasn’t crashed. Will it be hacked? Hasn’t been hacked. It’s a Lindy thing, right? You wait 13 years to see if it’ll be hacked. But on the other hand, with $1 billion, it’s not as interesting a target as it is with $ 100 billion. And when it gets to be worth $1 trillion, then it’s a bigger target.
So the risk has been bleeding off over time as the network monetized. I think the second question is, will it be banned? You couldn’t know. It literally could have been banned many times early on. In fact, 2013, I tweeted on the subject. I thought it would be banned. I made a very infamous tweet.
Lex Fridman
Infamous tweet, yeah.
Infamous tweet, yeah.
Michael Saylor
I thought it was going to be banned. In 2014, the IRS designated it as…
I thought it was going to be banned. In 2014, the IRS designated it as…
Michael Saylor
In 2014, the IRS designated it as property and gave it property tax treatment. They could have given it a tax treatment where you had to pay tax on the unrealized capital gains every year, and it probably would’ve crushed it to death. Right? So it could have been in any number of places banned by a government, but in fact, it was legitimized as property. And then the question is, would it be copied? Will it be something better than that? And it was copied 15,000 times. And you know the story of all those, and they either diverged to be something totally different and not comparable, or someone trying to copy a non-sovereign bearer instrument store of value found that their networks crashed to be 1% of what Bitcoin is. So now we’re sitting at a point where all those risks are out of the way.
In 2014, the IRS designated it as property and gave it property tax treatment. They could have given it a tax treatment where you had to pay tax on the unrealized capital gains every year, and it probably would’ve crushed it to death. Right? So it could have been in any number of places banned by a government, but in fact, it was legitimized as property. And then the question is, would it be copied? Will it be something better than that? And it was copied 15,000 times. And you know the story of all those, and they either diverged to be something totally different and not comparable, or someone trying to copy a non-sovereign bearer instrument store of value found that their networks crashed to be 1% of what Bitcoin is. So now we’re sitting at a point where all those risks are out of the way.
I would say that year one of institutional adoption is it started August 2020. That’s when MicroStrategy bought $250 million worth of Bitcoin and we put that out on the wire. We were the first publicly traded company to actually buy Bitcoin. I don’t think you could have found a $5 million purchase from a public company before we did that. So that was like a gun going off. And then in the next 12 months, Tesla bought Bitcoin, Square bought Bitcoin. I’d say now we’re in year two of institutional adoption. Should be 24 publicly traded Bitcoin miners by the end of this quarter. So you’re looking at 36 publicly traded companies, and you’ve got at least in the range of $50 billion of Bitcoin on the balance sheet of publicly traded companies and hundreds of billions of dollars of market cap of Bitcoin-exposed companies. So I would say the asset, decade one was entrepreneurial experimental. Decade two is a rotation from entrepreneurs to institutions and it’s becoming institutionalized. So maybe decade one, you go from zero to a trillion and in decade two you go from 1 trillion to 100 trillion.
Lex Fridman
What about government adoption? You said institutional adoption, are governments important in this, maybe making it some governments incorporating it as a currency into their banks, all that kind of stuff? Is that important? And if it is, when will it happen?
What about government adoption? You said institutional adoption, are governments important in this, maybe making it some governments incorporating it as a currency into their banks, all that kind of stuff? Is that important? And if it is, when will it happen?
Michael Saylor
It’s not essential for the success of the asset class, but I think it’s inevitable in various degrees over time. But the most likely thing to happen next is large acquisitions by institutional investors of Bitcoin as a digital gold, where they’re just swapping out gold for digital gold and thinking of it like that. The government entities most likely to be involved with that would be sovereign wealth funds. If you look at all the sovereign wealth funds that are holding big tech stock equities, the Swiss, the Norwegians, the Middle Easterners, if you can hold big tech then holding digital gold would be not far removed from that. That’s a non-controversial adoption.
It’s not essential for the success of the asset class, but I think it’s inevitable in various degrees over time. But the most likely thing to happen next is large acquisitions by institutional investors of Bitcoin as a digital gold, where they’re just swapping out gold for digital gold and thinking of it like that. The government entities most likely to be involved with that would be sovereign wealth funds. If you look at all the sovereign wealth funds that are holding big tech stock equities, the Swiss, the Norwegians, the Middle Easterners, if you can hold big tech then holding digital gold would be not far removed from that. That’s a non-controversial adoption.
I think there are opportunities for governments that are much more profound. If a government started to adopt Bitcoin as a Treasury Reserve asset, that’s much bigger than just an asset investment that’s 100X bigger. And you could imagine, that’s like a trillion dollar opportunity. Like any government that wanted to adopt it as a Treasury Reserve asset would probably generate a trillion or more of value. And then the thing that people think about is, “Well, will oil ever be priced in Bitcoin or any other export commodity?” I think there’s $1.8 trillion or more of export commodities in the world, and right now they’re all priced in dollars. I think that this is a colorful thing, but not really that relevant. You could sell all that stuff in dollars. The relevant decision that any institution makes, whether they’re a nonprofit, a university, a corporation, or a government, is what’s your Treasury Reserve asset? And if your Treasury Reserve asset is the peso, and if the peso is losing 20% or 30% of its value a year, then your balance sheet is collapsing within five years.
And if the Treasury Reserve asset is dollars in currency derivatives and US Treasuries, then you’re getting your seven… Right now it’s probably 15% or more monetary inflation. We’re running double the historic average. You could argue triple. Somewhere between double and triple depending upon what your metric is. So, do I think it’ll happen? I think that they’re conservative, but they have to be shocked, and I think there is a shock. The late Russian sanctions are a big shock that when the West sees $300 billion worth of Russian gold in currency derivatives, I think you got the famous quote by Putin that we have to rethink our Treasury strategies. And that pushes everybody toward a commodity strategy, “What commodities do I want to hold?” I think that’s got a lot of people thinking. I think it’s got the Chinese thinking. Everybody wants to be the reserve currency, so if I buy $50 billion worth of dollars every year, then I buy 500 billion over a decade and I probably pay $250 billion of inflation costs on the backs of my citizens in a decade.
Lex Fridman
So inflation could be one of the sources of shock. You wonder if there is a switch to Bitcoin whether it would be a bang or a whimper. What is the nature of the shock of the transition?
So inflation could be one of the sources of shock. You wonder if there is a switch to Bitcoin whether it would be a bang or a whimper. What is the nature of the shock of the transition?
Michael Saylor
I think that the year 2022 is pretty catalytic for digital assets in general and for Bitcoin in particular. The Canadian trucker crisis I think educated hundreds of millions of people and made them start questioning their property rights and their banks. I think the Ukraine war was a second shock, but I think that the Russian sanctions was a third shock. And I think hyperinflation in the rest of the world is a fourth shock. And then persistent inflation in the US is a fifth shock.
I think that the year 2022 is pretty catalytic for digital assets in general and for Bitcoin in particular. The Canadian trucker crisis I think educated hundreds of millions of people and made them start questioning their property rights and their banks. I think the Ukraine war was a second shock, but I think that the Russian sanctions was a third shock. And I think hyperinflation in the rest of the world is a fourth shock. And then persistent inflation in the US is a fifth shock.
So I think it’s a perfect storm. And if you put all these events together, what do they signify? They signify the rational conclusion for any person thinking about this is, “I’m not sure if I can trust my property. I don’t know if I have property rights. I don’t know if I can trust the bank. And if I’m politically at odds with the leader of my own country, I’m going to lose my property. And if I’m politically at odds with the owner of another country, I’m still going to lose my property. And when push comes to shove, the banks will freeze my assets and seize them.”
And I think that that is playing out in front of everybody in the world such that your logical response would be, “I’m going to convert my weak currency to a strong currency. Like, I’ll convert my peso and lira to the dollar. I’m going to convert my weak property to strong property. I’m going to sell my building Downtown Moscow, and I’d rather own a building in New York City. I’d rather own in a powerful nation than be stuck with a building in Nigeria or a building in Argentina or whatever. So I’m going to sell my weak properties to buy strong properties. I’m going to convert my physical assets to digital assets. I’d rather own a digital building than own a physical building, because if I had a billion dollar building in Moscow, who can I rent that to? But if I have a billion dollar digital building, I can rent it to anybody in any city in the world, anybody with money, and the maintenance cost is almost nothing, and I can hold it for 100 years.” So it’s an indestructible building.
And then finally, I want to move from having my assets in a bank with a counterparty to self-custody assets. It is not just Ukraine, but this is like the story in Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, South America. You don’t really want to be sitting with $10 million in a bank in Istanbul. The bank’s going to freeze your money, convert it to lira, devalue the lira, and then feed it back to you over 17 years, right?
Lex Fridman
So self-custody assets would be layer one Bitcoin?
So self-custody assets would be layer one Bitcoin?
Michael Saylor
Self-custody assets is like if I got my own hardware wallet and I’ve either got… Your highest form of self-custody would be Bitcoin on your own hardware wallet or Bitcoin on your own self-custody. And the other thing people think about is, “How do I get crypto dollars tether some stable coin?” If you had a choice, would you rather have your money in a bank in a war zone in dollars or have your money in a stable coin on your mobile phone in dollars? I mean, you would take the latter risk rather than the former risk.
Self-custody assets is like if I got my own hardware wallet and I’ve either got… Your highest form of self-custody would be Bitcoin on your own hardware wallet or Bitcoin on your own self-custody. And the other thing people think about is, “How do I get crypto dollars tether some stable coin?” If you had a choice, would you rather have your money in a bank in a war zone in dollars or have your money in a stable coin on your mobile phone in dollars? I mean, you would take the latter risk rather than the former risk.
Lex Fridman
In a war zone, definitely, yeah.
In a war zone, definitely, yeah.
Michael Saylor
And you can see that happening. We’ve gone from 5 billion in stable coins to 200 billion in the last 24 months. So I do think there’s massive demand for crypto dollars in the form of a US dollar asset. Everybody in the world would say, “Yeah, I want that.” Well, unless you’re just an extreme patriot. But most people in the world would say, “I want that.” And then a lesser group of people would say, “I think I want to be able to carry my property in the palm of my hand so I have self-custody of it.”
And you can see that happening. We’ve gone from 5 billion in stable coins to 200 billion in the last 24 months. So I do think there’s massive demand for crypto dollars in the form of a US dollar asset. Everybody in the world would say, “Yeah, I want that.” Well, unless you’re just an extreme patriot. But most people in the world would say, “I want that.” And then a lesser group of people would say, “I think I want to be able to carry my property in the palm of my hand so I have self-custody of it.”
Bitcoin price
Lex Fridman
So Bitcoin price has gone through quite a roller coaster. What do you think is the high point it’s going to hit?
So Bitcoin price has gone through quite a roller coaster. What do you think is the high point it’s going to hit?
Michael Saylor
I think it’ll go forever. I mean, I think the Bitcoin, it’s going to climb in a serpentine fashion. It’s going to advance and come back and it’s going to keep climbing. I think that the volatility attracts all the capital into the marketplace. And so the volatility makes it the most interesting thing in the financial universe. It also generates massive yield and massive returns for traders, and that attracts capital. We’re talking about the difference between 5% return and 500% return.
I think it’ll go forever. I mean, I think the Bitcoin, it’s going to climb in a serpentine fashion. It’s going to advance and come back and it’s going to keep climbing. I think that the volatility attracts all the capital into the marketplace. And so the volatility makes it the most interesting thing in the financial universe. It also generates massive yield and massive returns for traders, and that attracts capital. We’re talking about the difference between 5% return and 500% return.
So the fast money is attracted by the volatility. The volatility has been decreasing year by year by year. I think that it’s stabilizing. I don’t think we’ll see as much volatility in the future as we have in the past. I think that if we look at Bitcoin and model it as digital gold, the market cap goes to between 10 and 20 trillion. But remember, gold is defective property. Gold is dead money. You have a billion dollars of gold that sits in a vault for a decade, it’s very hard to mortgage the gold. It’s also very hard to rent the gold. You can’t loan the gold. No one’s going to create a business with your gold.
So gold doesn’t generate much of a yield. So for that reason, most people wouldn’t store a billion dollars for a decade in gold. They would buy a billion dollars of commercial real estate property. The reason why is because I can rent it and generate a yield on it that’s in excess of the maintenance cost. So if you consider digital property, that’s 100 to $200 trillion addressable market. So I would think it goes from 10 trillion to 100 trillion as people start to think of it as digital property.
Lex Fridman
What does that mean in terms of price per coin?
What does that mean in terms of price per coin?
Michael Saylor
At 500,000, that’s a $10 trillion asset. At 5 million, that’s 100 trillion dollars asset.
At 500,000, that’s a $10 trillion asset. At 5 million, that’s 100 trillion dollars asset.
Lex Fridman
So you think it crosses a million it can go even higher?
So you think it crosses a million it can go even higher?
Michael Saylor
Yeah, I think it keeps going up forever. I mean, there’s no reason we couldn’t go to 10 million a coin. Because digital property isn’t the highest form, right? Gold was that low frequency money. Property is a mid-frequency money, but when I start to program it faster, it starts to look like digital energy. Then it doesn’t just replace property, then you’re starting to replace bonds. It’s 100 trillion in bonds, there’s 50 to 100 trillion in other currency derivatives. And these are all conventional use cases. I think that there’s 350 trillion to $500 trillion worth of currency, currency derivatives in the world. When I say that, I mean things that are valued based upon fiat cash flows. Any commercial real estate, any bond, any sovereign debt, any currency itself, any derivatives to those things, they’re all derivatives and they’re all defective. And they’re all defective because of this persistent seven to 14% lapse which we call inflation or monetary expansion.
Yeah, I think it keeps going up forever. I mean, there’s no reason we couldn’t go to 10 million a coin. Because digital property isn’t the highest form, right? Gold was that low frequency money. Property is a mid-frequency money, but when I start to program it faster, it starts to look like digital energy. Then it doesn’t just replace property, then you’re starting to replace bonds. It’s 100 trillion in bonds, there’s 50 to 100 trillion in other currency derivatives. And these are all conventional use cases. I think that there’s 350 trillion to $500 trillion worth of currency, currency derivatives in the world. When I say that, I mean things that are valued based upon fiat cash flows. Any commercial real estate, any bond, any sovereign debt, any currency itself, any derivatives to those things, they’re all derivatives and they’re all defective. And they’re all defective because of this persistent seven to 14% lapse which we call inflation or monetary expansion.
Can we switch subjects to talk about the energy side of it-
Lex Fridman
Sure.
Sure.
Michael Saylor
… like the innovative piece?
… like the innovative piece?
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Saylor
Let’s just start with this idea that I’ve got a hotel worth a billion dollars with 1,000 rooms. When it becomes a dematerialized hotel-
Let’s just start with this idea that I’ve got a hotel worth a billion dollars with 1,000 rooms. When it becomes a dematerialized hotel-
Lex Fridman
I love that word so much, by the way, dematerialized hotel.
I love that word so much, by the way, dematerialized hotel.
Michael Saylor
We’re a cross from the Fontainebleau here. Imagine the Fontainebleau is dematerialized. The problem with the physical hotel is I got to hire real people moving subject to the speed of sound and physics laws and Newton’s laws, and I can rent it to people in Miami Beach. But if it was a digital hotel, I could rent the room to people in Paris, London and New York every night, and I can run it with robots. And as soon as I do that, I can rent it by the room hour, and I can rent it by the room minute. And so I start to chop my hotel up into 100,000 room hours that I sell to the highest bidder anywhere in the world. And you can see all of a sudden the yield, the rent, and the income of the property is dramatically increased.
We’re a cross from the Fontainebleau here. Imagine the Fontainebleau is dematerialized. The problem with the physical hotel is I got to hire real people moving subject to the speed of sound and physics laws and Newton’s laws, and I can rent it to people in Miami Beach. But if it was a digital hotel, I could rent the room to people in Paris, London and New York every night, and I can run it with robots. And as soon as I do that, I can rent it by the room hour, and I can rent it by the room minute. And so I start to chop my hotel up into 100,000 room hours that I sell to the highest bidder anywhere in the world. And you can see all of a sudden the yield, the rent, and the income of the property is dramatically increased.
I can also see the maintenance cost of the property falls. I get on Moore’s Law and I’m operating in cyberspace. So I got rid of Newton’s laws, I got rid of all the friction and all those problems, I tapped into the benefits of cyberspace. I created a global property. I started monetizing at different frequencies. And of course, now I can mortgage it to anybody in the world. You’re not going to be able to get a mortgage on a Turkish building from someone in South Africa. You have to find someone that’s local to the culture you’re in. So when you start to move from analog property to digital property, it’s not just a little bit better, it’s a lot better. And what I just described, Lex, is like the DeFi vision. It’s the beauty of DeFi flash loans, money moving at high velocity. At some point, if the hotel is dematerialized, then what’s the difference between renting a hotel room and loaning a block of stock? I’m just finding the highest best use of the thing.
Lex Fridman
It feels like the magic really emerges though when you build a market of layer two and layer three technologies on top of that. So maybe you can correct me if I’m wrong, but for all these hotels and all these kinds of ideas, it’s always touching humans at some point and the consumers or humans, business owners and so on. So you have to create interface. You have to create services that make all of that super efficient, super fun to use, pleasant, effective, all those kinds of things. And so you have to build a whole economy on top of that.
It feels like the magic really emerges though when you build a market of layer two and layer three technologies on top of that. So maybe you can correct me if I’m wrong, but for all these hotels and all these kinds of ideas, it’s always touching humans at some point and the consumers or humans, business owners and so on. So you have to create interface. You have to create services that make all of that super efficient, super fun to use, pleasant, effective, all those kinds of things. And so you have to build a whole economy on top of that.
Michael Saylor
Yeah. I happen to think that won’t be done by the crypto industry at all. I think that’ll be done by centralized applications. I think it’ll be the citadels of the world, the high speed traders of the world, the New Yorkers. I think it’ll be Binance, FTX, and Coinbase as a layer three exchange that will give you the yield and will give you the loan and the best terms. Because ultimately, you have to jump these compliance hoops. BlockFi can give you yield, but they have to do it in a compliant way with the United States jurisdiction. So ultimately, those applications to use that digital property and either give you a loan on it or give you yield on it, are going to come from companies.
Yeah. I happen to think that won’t be done by the crypto industry at all. I think that’ll be done by centralized applications. I think it’ll be the citadels of the world, the high speed traders of the world, the New Yorkers. I think it’ll be Binance, FTX, and Coinbase as a layer three exchange that will give you the yield and will give you the loan and the best terms. Because ultimately, you have to jump these compliance hoops. BlockFi can give you yield, but they have to do it in a compliant way with the United States jurisdiction. So ultimately, those applications to use that digital property and either give you a loan on it or give you yield on it, are going to come from companies.
But the difference, the fundamental difference is it could be companies anywhere in the world. So if a company in Singapore comes up with a better offering, then the capital is going to start to flow to Singapore. I can’t send 10 city blocks of LA to Singapore to rent during a festival, but I can send 10 blocks of Bitcoin to Singapore. So you’ve got a truly global market that’s functioning in this asset, and it’s their second order asset. For example, maybe you’re an American citizen and you own 10 Bitcoin and someone in Singapore will generate 27% yield in the Bitcoin but legally you can’t send the money to them or the Bitcoin to them, it doesn’t matter. Because the fact that that exists means that someone in Hong Kong will borrow the 10 Bitcoin from somebody in New York, and then they will put on the trade in Singapore, and that will create a demand for Bitcoin, which will drive up the price of Bitcoin, which will result in an effective tax-free yield for the person in the US that’s not even in the jurisdiction.
So there’s nothing that’s going on in Singapore to drive up the price of your land in LA. But there is something going on everywhere in the world to drive up the price of property in cyberspace if there’s only one digital Manhattan. And so there’s a dynamic there which is profound because it’s global. But now let’s go to the next extreme. I’m still giving you a fairly conventional idea, which is, let’s just loan the money fast on a global network and let’s just rent the hotel room fast in cyberspace. But let’s move to maybe a more innovative idea. The first generation of internet brought a lot of productivity, but there’s also just a lot of flaws in it. For example, Twitter is full of garbage. Instagram DMs are full of garbage. Your Twitter DMs are full of garbage. YouTube is full of scams. Every 15 minutes there’s a Michael Saylor Bitcoin giveaway spun up on YouTube. My Office 365 inbox is full of garbage, millions of spam messages. I’m running four different email filters. My company spends million dollars a year to fight denial of service attacks and all sorts of other security things.
There are denial of service attacks everywhere against everybody in cyberspace all the time. It’s extreme. And we’ll all beset with hostility, right? You’ve been a victim of it in Twitter. You go on Twitter and people post stuff they would never say to your face. And then if you look, you find out that the account was created three days ago and it’s not even a real person. So we’re beset with phishing attacks and scams and spam bots and garbage. Why? The answer is because the first generation of internet was digital information, and there’s no energy. There’s no conservation of energy in cyberspace. The thing that makes the universe work is conservation of energy.
If I went to a hotel room, I’d have to post a credit card. And then if I smash the place up, there’d be economic consequences, maybe there’d be criminal consequences, there might be reputational consequences. A lamp might fall on me. But in the worst case, I can only smash up one hotel room. Now imagine I could actually write a Python script to send myself to every hotel room in the world every minute, not post a credit card, and smash them all up anonymously.
The thing that makes the universe work is friction, speed of sound, speed of light, and the fact that ultimately it’s conservative. You’re either energy or you’re matter, but once you’ve used the energy, it’s gone, and you can’t do infinite everything. That’s missing in cyberspace right now. And if you look at all of the moral hazards and all of the product defects that we have in all of these products, most of them, 99% of them, could be cured if we introduced conservation of energy into cyberspace. That’s what you can do with high-speed, digital property, high-speed Bitcoin. And by high-speed, I mean not 20 transactions a day, I mean 20,000 transactions a day. So how do you do that? Well, I let everybody on Twitter post 1,000 or 10,000 satoshis via a Lightning badge, “Give me an orange check.” If you put up 20 bucks once in your life, you could give 300 million people an orange check. Right now you don’t have a blue check, Lex. You’re a famous person, I don’t know why you don’t have a blue check. Have you ever applied for a blue check?
Twitter verification
Lex Fridman
No.
No.
Michael Saylor
There are 360,000 people on Twitter with a blue check. There are 300 million people on Twitter. So the conventional way to verify accounts is elitist, archaic.
There are 360,000 people on Twitter with a blue check. There are 300 million people on Twitter. So the conventional way to verify accounts is elitist, archaic.
Lex Fridman
How does it work? How do you get a blue check? I mean, I’ve worked-
How does it work? How do you get a blue check? I mean, I’ve worked-
Michael Saylor
You got to apply and wait six months, and you have to post three articles in the public mainstream media that illustrates you’re a person of interest.
You got to apply and wait six months, and you have to post three articles in the public mainstream media that illustrates you’re a person of interest.
Lex Fridman
Interesting.
Interesting.
Michael Saylor
Generally, they would grant them to CEOs of public companies. The whole idea is to verify that you are-
Generally, they would grant them to CEOs of public companies. The whole idea is to verify that you are-
Lex Fridman
Who you are.
Who you are.
Michael Saylor
… who you say you are. But the question is, why isn’t everybody verified? There’s a couple of Threads on that. One is some people don’t want to be doxed, they want to be anonymous. But they’re even anonymous people that should be verified, because otherwise you’re subjecting their entire following to phishing attacks and scams and hostility. But the other-
… who you say you are. But the question is, why isn’t everybody verified? There’s a couple of Threads on that. One is some people don’t want to be doxed, they want to be anonymous. But they’re even anonymous people that should be verified, because otherwise you’re subjecting their entire following to phishing attacks and scams and hostility. But the other-
Lex Fridman
What’s the orange verification, so this idea? Can you actually elaborate a little bit more? If you put up 20 bucks…
What’s the orange verification, so this idea? Can you actually elaborate a little bit more? If you put up 20 bucks…
Michael Saylor
Yeah, I think everybody on Twitter ought to be able to get an orange check if they could come up with like $10.
Yeah, I think everybody on Twitter ought to be able to get an orange check if they could come up with like $10.
Lex Fridman
What is the power of that orange check? What does that verify exactly?
What is the power of that orange check? What does that verify exactly?
Michael Saylor
You basically post a security deposit for your safe passage through cyberspace. The way it would work is, if you’ve got $10 once in your life, you can basically show that you’re creditworthy. And that’s your pledge to me that you’re going to act responsibly. So you put the 10 or the $20 into the Lightning wallet, you get an orange check. Then Twitter just gives you a setting where I can say, “The only people that could DM me are orange checks. The only people that can post on my tweets are orange checks.” So instead of locking out the public and just letting your followers comment, you lock out all the unverified. And that means people that don’t want to post $10 security deposit can’t comment.
You basically post a security deposit for your safe passage through cyberspace. The way it would work is, if you’ve got $10 once in your life, you can basically show that you’re creditworthy. And that’s your pledge to me that you’re going to act responsibly. So you put the 10 or the $20 into the Lightning wallet, you get an orange check. Then Twitter just gives you a setting where I can say, “The only people that could DM me are orange checks. The only people that can post on my tweets are orange checks.” So instead of locking out the public and just letting your followers comment, you lock out all the unverified. And that means people that don’t want to post $10 security deposit can’t comment.
Once you’ve done those two things, then you’re in a position to monetize malice. Monetize motion or malice for that matter, but let’s just say for the sake of argument you post something and 9,700 bots spin up and pitch their whatever scam. Right now you sit and you go report, report, report, report, report, report. And if you spend an hour, you get through half of them, you waste an hour of your life, and they just spin up another 97 gazillion because they’ve got a Python script spinning it up. So it’s hopeless. But on the other hand, if you report them, and they really are a bot, Twitter’s got a method to actually delete the account. They know that they’re bots. The problem is not they don’t know how to delete the account, the problem is there are no consequences when they delete the account. So if there are consequences, Twitter, they could just seize the $10 or seize the $20 because it’s a bot, it’s a malicious criminal act or whatever as a violation of the platform rules. You end up seizing $10,000, give half the money to the reporter, and half the money to the Twitter platform.
Lex Fridman
That’s a really powerful idea, but that’s adding friction akin to the kind of friction you have in the physical world. You have consequences. You have real consequences.
That’s a really powerful idea, but that’s adding friction akin to the kind of friction you have in the physical world. You have consequences. You have real consequences.
Michael Saylor
It’s putting conservation of energy.
It’s putting conservation of energy.
Lex Fridman
Conservation of energy, but-
Conservation of energy, but-
Michael Saylor
There’s no friction. There’s no nothing on this earth. I mean, you can’t walk across the room without friction. Friction is not bad. Unnecessary friction is bad. So in this particular case, you’re introducing conservation of energy, and in essence, you’re introducing the concept of consequence or truth into cyberspace. And that means if you do want to spin up 10 million fake-less Fridmans…
There’s no friction. There’s no nothing on this earth. I mean, you can’t walk across the room without friction. Friction is not bad. Unnecessary friction is bad. So in this particular case, you’re introducing conservation of energy, and in essence, you’re introducing the concept of consequence or truth into cyberspace. And that means if you do want to spin up 10 million fake-less Fridmans…
Lex Fridman
It’s going to cost-
It’s going to cost-
Michael Saylor
It’s going to cost you $100 million to spin up 10 million fake Lexes.
It’s going to cost you $100 million to spin up 10 million fake Lexes.
Lex Fridman
But the thing is, you could do that with the dollar, but your case, you’re saying that it’s more tied to physical reality when you do that with Bitcoin?
But the thing is, you could do that with the dollar, but your case, you’re saying that it’s more tied to physical reality when you do that with Bitcoin?
Michael Saylor
Yeah. Well, let’s follow up on that idea a bit more. If you did do it with the dollar, then the question is, how does six billion people deposit the dollars? Could you do it with a credit card? How do you send dollars? Well, you have to dox yourself. It’s not easy.
Yeah. Well, let’s follow up on that idea a bit more. If you did do it with the dollar, then the question is, how does six billion people deposit the dollars? Could you do it with a credit card? How do you send dollars? Well, you have to dox yourself. It’s not easy.
Lex Fridman
Sure.
Sure.
Michael Saylor
So you’re talking about inputting a credit card transaction, doxing yourself, and now you’ve just eliminated the two billion people that don’t have credit cards or don’t have banks. You’ve also got a problem with everybody that wants to remain anonymous. But you’ve also got this other problem, which is credit cards are expensive transactions, low frequency, slow settlement. So do you really want to pay 2.5% every time you actually show a $20 deposit? Maybe you could do a kludgy version of this for a subset of people.
So you’re talking about inputting a credit card transaction, doxing yourself, and now you’ve just eliminated the two billion people that don’t have credit cards or don’t have banks. You’ve also got a problem with everybody that wants to remain anonymous. But you’ve also got this other problem, which is credit cards are expensive transactions, low frequency, slow settlement. So do you really want to pay 2.5% every time you actually show a $20 deposit? Maybe you could do a kludgy version of this for a subset of people.
It’s 10% is good if you did it with conventional payment rails. But what you can’t do is the next idea, which is I want the orange badge to be used to give me safe passage through cyberspace tripping across every platform. So how do I solve the denial of service attacks against a website? I publish a website, you hit it with a million requests. Okay, now how do I deal with that? Well, I can lock you out and I can make it a zero trust website, and then you have to be coming at me through a trusted firewall or with a trusted credential. But that’s a pretty draconian thing. Or I could put it behind a Lightning wall. A Lightning wall would be I just challenge you, “Lex, you want to browse my website, you have to show me your 100,000 satoshis. Do you have 100,000 satoshis?”
Click. Okay. Now you click away 100 times or 1,000 times. And after 1,000 times, I’m like, “Well, now Lex, you’re getting offensive, I’m going to take a satoshi from you or 10 satoshis, a microtransaction. You want to hit me a million times? I’m taking all your satoshis and locking you out.” What you want to do is you want to go through 200 websites a day, and what you want every time you cross a domain, you need to be able to in a split second prove that you’ve got some asset. And now when you cross back, when you exit domain, you want to fetch your asset back.
So, how do I in a friction-free fashion browse through dozens or hundreds of websites, post a security deposit for safe passage, and then get it back? You couldn’t afford to pay a credit card fee each time. When you think about 2.5% as a transaction fee, it means you trade the money 40 times and it’s gone. It’s gone.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So you can’t do this hopping around through the internet with this kind of verification that grounds you to a physical reality. It is a really, really interesting idea. Why hasn’t that been done?
Yeah. So you can’t do this hopping around through the internet with this kind of verification that grounds you to a physical reality. It is a really, really interesting idea. Why hasn’t that been done?
Michael Saylor
I think you need two things. You need an idea like a digital asset like Bitcoin, that’s a bearer instrument for final settlement. And then you need a high-speed transaction network like Lightning, where the transaction cost might be a 20th of a penny or less. And if you roll the clock back 24 months, I don’t think you had the Lightning Network in a stable point. It’s really just the past 12 months. It’s an idea you could think about this year, and I think you need to be aware of Bitcoin as something other than a scary speculative asset. So I really think we’re just at the beginning.
I think you need two things. You need an idea like a digital asset like Bitcoin, that’s a bearer instrument for final settlement. And then you need a high-speed transaction network like Lightning, where the transaction cost might be a 20th of a penny or less. And if you roll the clock back 24 months, I don’t think you had the Lightning Network in a stable point. It’s really just the past 12 months. It’s an idea you could think about this year, and I think you need to be aware of Bitcoin as something other than a scary speculative asset. So I really think we’re just at the beginning.
Second best crypto
Lex Fridman
The embryonic stage. I have to ask, Michael Saylor, you said before there’s no second best to Bitcoin. What would be the second best? Traditionally there’s Ethereum with smart contracts, Cardano with proof of stake, Polkadot with interoperability between blockchains, Dogecoin has the incredible power of the meme, privacy with Monero. I just can keep going. There’s, of course, after the block size wars the different offshoots of Bitcoin.
The embryonic stage. I have to ask, Michael Saylor, you said before there’s no second best to Bitcoin. What would be the second best? Traditionally there’s Ethereum with smart contracts, Cardano with proof of stake, Polkadot with interoperability between blockchains, Dogecoin has the incredible power of the meme, privacy with Monero. I just can keep going. There’s, of course, after the block size wars the different offshoots of Bitcoin.
Michael Saylor
I think if you decompose or segment the crypto market, you’ve got crypto property, Bitcoin is the king of that, and other Bitcoin forks that wanted to be a bearer instrument, store of value would be a property, a Bitcoin Cash or Litecoin, something like that. Then you’ve got cryptocurrencies. I don’t think Bitcoin is a currency because a currency I define in nation-state sense. A currency is a digital asset that you can transfer in a transaction without incurring a taxable obligation. So that means it has to be a stable dollar or a stable euro or a stable yen, a stable coin.
I think if you decompose or segment the crypto market, you’ve got crypto property, Bitcoin is the king of that, and other Bitcoin forks that wanted to be a bearer instrument, store of value would be a property, a Bitcoin Cash or Litecoin, something like that. Then you’ve got cryptocurrencies. I don’t think Bitcoin is a currency because a currency I define in nation-state sense. A currency is a digital asset that you can transfer in a transaction without incurring a taxable obligation. So that means it has to be a stable dollar or a stable euro or a stable yen, a stable coin.
So I think you’ve got cryptocurrencies, Tether, Circle, most famous. I think you’ve got crypto platforms, and Ethereum is the most famous of the crypto platforms, the platform with smart contract functionality, et cetera. And then I think you’ve got just crypto securities. It’s just like my favorite whatever meme coin, and I love it because I love it, and it’s attached to my game or my company or my persona or my whatever. I think if you pushed me and said, “Well, what’s the second best?” I would say the world wants two things…
Michael Saylor
And said, “Well, what’s the second best?” I would say the world wants two things. It wants crypto property as a savings account, and it wants cryptocurrency as a checking account. And that means that the most popular thing really is going to be a stablecoin dollar. And there’s maybe a fight right now, might be Tether, right? But a stable dollar, because I feel like the market opportunity… It’s not clear that there’ll be one that will win. The class of stable dollars is probably a one to $10 trillion market easily. I think that in the crypto platform space, Ethereum will compete with Solana and Binance Smart chain and the like-
And said, “Well, what’s the second best?” I would say the world wants two things. It wants crypto property as a savings account, and it wants cryptocurrency as a checking account. And that means that the most popular thing really is going to be a stablecoin dollar. And there’s maybe a fight right now, might be Tether, right? But a stable dollar, because I feel like the market opportunity… It’s not clear that there’ll be one that will win. The class of stable dollars is probably a one to $10 trillion market easily. I think that in the crypto platform space, Ethereum will compete with Solana and Binance Smart chain and the like-
Lex Fridman
Are there certain characteristics of any of them that stand out to you? Don’t you think the competition is based on a set of features? Also… So the set of features that a cryptocurrency provides, but also the community that it provides, don’t you think the community matters and the adoption, the dynamic of the adoption both across the developers and the investors?
Are there certain characteristics of any of them that stand out to you? Don’t you think the competition is based on a set of features? Also… So the set of features that a cryptocurrency provides, but also the community that it provides, don’t you think the community matters and the adoption, the dynamic of the adoption both across the developers and the investors?
Michael Saylor
If I’m looking at them, the first question is what’s the regulatory risk? How likely is it to be deemed a property versus security? And the second is what’s the competitive risk? And the third is what’s the speed and the performance? All those things lead to the question of what’s the security risk? How likely is it to crash and burn? And how stable or unstable is it? And then there’s the marketing risk. There are different teams behind each of these things and communities behind them. I think that the big cloud looming over the crypto industry is regulatory treatment of cryptocurrencies and regulatory treatment of crypto securities and crypto platforms. And I think that won’t be determined until the end of the first Biden administration. For example, there are people that would only US FDIC insured banks to issue cryptocurrencies. They want JP Morgan to issue a crypto dollar backed one-to-one.
If I’m looking at them, the first question is what’s the regulatory risk? How likely is it to be deemed a property versus security? And the second is what’s the competitive risk? And the third is what’s the speed and the performance? All those things lead to the question of what’s the security risk? How likely is it to crash and burn? And how stable or unstable is it? And then there’s the marketing risk. There are different teams behind each of these things and communities behind them. I think that the big cloud looming over the crypto industry is regulatory treatment of cryptocurrencies and regulatory treatment of crypto securities and crypto platforms. And I think that won’t be determined until the end of the first Biden administration. For example, there are people that would only US FDIC insured banks to issue cryptocurrencies. They want JP Morgan to issue a crypto dollar backed one-to-one.
But then in the US right now, we have Circle and we have other companies that are licensed entities that are backed by cash and cash equivalents, but they’re not FDIC insured banks. There’s also a debate in Congress about whether state-chartered banks should be able to issue these things. And then we have Tether and others that are outside of the US jurisdiction. They’re probably not backed by cash and cash equivalents. They’re backed by stuff, and we don’t know what stuff. And then finally you have UST and DAI, which are algorithmic stablecoins, that are even more innovative, further outside the compliance framework. So if you ask who’s going to win, the question is really, I don’t know. Will the market decide or will the regulators decide? If the regulators get out of the way and the market [inaudible 03:27:03] Well then it’s an interesting discussion.
And then I think that all bets are off if the regulators get more heavy-handed with this. And I think you could have the same discussion with crypto properties, like the DeFi exchanges and the crypto exchanges, the SEC would like to regulate the crypto exchanges, they’d like to regulate the DeFi exchanges. That means they may regulate the crypto platforms, and at what rate and in what fashion? And so I think that I could give you an opinion if it was limited to competition under the current regulatory regime. But I think that the regulations are so fast moving and it’s so uncertain that you can’t make a decision without considering the potential actions of the regulators.
Dogecoin
Lex Fridman
I hope the regulators get out of the way. Can you steel man the case that Dogecoin is, I guess the second best cryptocurrency, or if you don’t consider Bitcoin a cryptocurrency, but instead a crypto property-
I hope the regulators get out of the way. Can you steel man the case that Dogecoin is, I guess the second best cryptocurrency, or if you don’t consider Bitcoin a cryptocurrency, but instead a crypto property-
Michael Saylor
I would classify it as crypto property, because the US dollar is a currency. So unless your crypto asset is pegged algorithmically or stably to the value of the dollar, it’s not a currency, it’s a property or it’s an asset.
I would classify it as crypto property, because the US dollar is a currency. So unless your crypto asset is pegged algorithmically or stably to the value of the dollar, it’s not a currency, it’s a property or it’s an asset.
Lex Fridman
So then can you steel man the case that Dogecoin is the best cryptocurrency then? Because Bitcoin is not even in that list.
So then can you steel man the case that Dogecoin is the best cryptocurrency then? Because Bitcoin is not even in that list.
Michael Saylor
The debate is going to be whether it’s property or security, and there’s a debate whether it’s decentralized enough. So let’s assume it was decentralized. Well, it’s increasing at not quite what, 5% a year inflation rate, but it’s not 5% exponentially. It’s like plus 5 million, 5% something capped than is less… I forget the exact number. It’s an inflationary property. It’s got a lower inflation rate than the US dollar, and it’s got a much lower inflation rate than many other fiat currencies. So I think you could say that.
The debate is going to be whether it’s property or security, and there’s a debate whether it’s decentralized enough. So let’s assume it was decentralized. Well, it’s increasing at not quite what, 5% a year inflation rate, but it’s not 5% exponentially. It’s like plus 5 million, 5% something capped than is less… I forget the exact number. It’s an inflationary property. It’s got a lower inflation rate than the US dollar, and it’s got a much lower inflation rate than many other fiat currencies. So I think you could say that.
Lex Fridman
But don’t you see the power of meme, the power of ideas, the power of fun or whatever mechanism is used to captivate a community?
But don’t you see the power of meme, the power of ideas, the power of fun or whatever mechanism is used to captivate a community?
Michael Saylor
I do. But there are meme stocks. It doesn’t absolve you of your ethical and securities liabilities if you’re promoting it. I don’t have a problem with people buying a stock. It’s just… The way I divide the world is there’s investment, there’s saving, and there’s speculation, and there’s trading. So Bitcoin is an asset for saving. If you want to save money for a hundred years, you don’t really want to take on execution risk or the like. So you’re just buying something to hold forever. For you to actually endorse something as a property, if you said to me, “Mike, what should I buy for the next a hundred years?” I’d say, “Well, some amount of real estate, some amount of scarce collectibles, some amount of Bitcoin. You can run your company.” But running your company is an investment.
I do. But there are meme stocks. It doesn’t absolve you of your ethical and securities liabilities if you’re promoting it. I don’t have a problem with people buying a stock. It’s just… The way I divide the world is there’s investment, there’s saving, and there’s speculation, and there’s trading. So Bitcoin is an asset for saving. If you want to save money for a hundred years, you don’t really want to take on execution risk or the like. So you’re just buying something to hold forever. For you to actually endorse something as a property, if you said to me, “Mike, what should I buy for the next a hundred years?” I’d say, “Well, some amount of real estate, some amount of scarce collectibles, some amount of Bitcoin. You can run your company.” But running your company is an investment.
So the savings are properties. If you said, “What should I invest in?” I’d say, “Well, here’s a list of good companies, private companies. You could start your own company. That’s an investment.” If you said, “What should I trade?” Well, I’m trading as a proprietary thing. I don’t have any special insight into that. If you’re a good trader, you know you are. If you said to me, “What should you speculate in?” We talk about meme stocks and meme coins, and it sits up there, it sits right in the same space with what horse should you bet on and what sports team should you gamble on, and should you bet on black six times in a row and double down each time? It’s fun, but at the end of the day, it’s a speculation, right? You can’t build a civilization-
Lex Fridman
On speculation.
On speculation.
Michael Saylor
… on it. It’s not an institutional asset. And in fact, where I’d leave it right is Bitcoin is clearly digital property, which makes it an institutional grade investable asset for a public company, a public figure, a public investor, or anybody that’s risk-adverse. I think that the top 100 other cryptos are like venture capital investments. And if you’re a VC, and if you’re a qualified technical investor and you have a pool of capital and you can take that kind of risk, then you can parse through that and form opinions.
… on it. It’s not an institutional asset. And in fact, where I’d leave it right is Bitcoin is clearly digital property, which makes it an institutional grade investable asset for a public company, a public figure, a public investor, or anybody that’s risk-adverse. I think that the top 100 other cryptos are like venture capital investments. And if you’re a VC, and if you’re a qualified technical investor and you have a pool of capital and you can take that kind of risk, then you can parse through that and form opinions.
It’s just orders of magnitude more risky because of competition, because of ambition and because of regulation. And if you take the meme coins, it’s like when some rapper comes out with a meme coin, it’s like maybe it’ll peak when I hear about it. SHIB was created as the coin such that it had so many zeros after the decimal point that when you looked at it on the exchanges, it always showed zero, zero, zero, zero. And it wasn’t until six months after it got popular that they started expanding the display so you could see whether the price had changed.
Elon Musk
Lex Fridman
That’s speculation. Maybe you can correct me, but you’ve been critical of Elon Musk in the past in the crypto space. Where do you stand on Elon’s effect on Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general these days?
That’s speculation. Maybe you can correct me, but you’ve been critical of Elon Musk in the past in the crypto space. Where do you stand on Elon’s effect on Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general these days?
Michael Saylor
I believe that Bitcoin is a massive breakthrough for the human race that will cure half the problems in the world and generate hundreds of trillions of dollars of economic value to the civilization. And I believe that it’s in an early stage, where many people don’t understand it and they’re afraid of it, and there’s FUD, and there’s uncertainty, there’s doubt and there’s fear, and there’s a very noisy crypto world, and there’s 15,000 other cryptos that are seeking relevance. And I think most of the FUD is actually fueled by the other crypto entrepreneurs. So the environmental FUD and the other types of uncertainty that’s around Bitcoin, generally, they’re not coming from legitimate environmentalists, they don’t come from legitimate critics. They actually are guerrilla marketing campaigns that are being financed and fueled by other crypto entrepreneurs because they have an interest in doing so.
I believe that Bitcoin is a massive breakthrough for the human race that will cure half the problems in the world and generate hundreds of trillions of dollars of economic value to the civilization. And I believe that it’s in an early stage, where many people don’t understand it and they’re afraid of it, and there’s FUD, and there’s uncertainty, there’s doubt and there’s fear, and there’s a very noisy crypto world, and there’s 15,000 other cryptos that are seeking relevance. And I think most of the FUD is actually fueled by the other crypto entrepreneurs. So the environmental FUD and the other types of uncertainty that’s around Bitcoin, generally, they’re not coming from legitimate environmentalists, they don’t come from legitimate critics. They actually are guerrilla marketing campaigns that are being financed and fueled by other crypto entrepreneurs because they have an interest in doing so.
So if I look at the constructive path forward, first, I think it’d be very constructive for corporations to embrace Bitcoin and build applications on top of it. You don’t need to fix it. There’s nothing wrong with it. When you put it on a layer two and a layer three, it moves a billion times a second at the speed of light. So every beautiful, cool DeFi application, every crypto application, everything you could imagine you might want to do, you can do with a legitimate company and a legitimate website or mobile application sitting on top of Bitcoin or lightning if you want to. So I think that to the extent that people do that, that’s going to be better for the world. If you consider what holds people back, I think it’s just misperceptions about what Bitcoin is. So I’m a big fan of just educating people. If you’re not going to commercialize it, then just educate people on what it is.
So for example, Bitcoin is the most efficient use of energy in the world by far. Right? Most people, they don’t necessarily perceive that or realize that, but if you were to take any metric energy intensity, you put $2 billion worth of electricity in the network every year and it’s worth $850 billion. There is no industry in the real world that is that energy efficient. Not only that energy efficient, it’s also the most sustainable industry. We do surveys, 58% of Bitcoin mining energy is sustainable. So there’s a very good story, in fact, every other industry, planes, trains, automobiles, construction, food, medicine, everything else, it’s less clean, less efficient. So-
Lex Fridman
So the basic debate was-
So the basic debate was-
Michael Saylor
I wouldn’t say there is a debate. I would just say that to the extent that the Bitcoin community had any issue with Elon, it was just this environmental uncertainty that he fueled in a couple of his tweets, which I think just is very distracting.
I wouldn’t say there is a debate. I would just say that to the extent that the Bitcoin community had any issue with Elon, it was just this environmental uncertainty that he fueled in a couple of his tweets, which I think just is very distracting.
Lex Fridman
Well, that was one of them, but I think it’s the Bitcoin maximalists, but generally the crypto community, what you call the crypto entrepreneurs are… It’s also they’re using it for investment, for speculation, and therefore get very passionate about people’s, celebrities, including you, famous people, saying positive stuff about any one particular crypto, a thing you can buy in Coinbase. And so they might be unhappy with Elon Musk that he’s promoting Bitcoin and then not, and then promoting Dogecoin, then not. There’s so much emotion tied up in the communication on this topic, and I think that’s where a lot of the-
Well, that was one of them, but I think it’s the Bitcoin maximalists, but generally the crypto community, what you call the crypto entrepreneurs are… It’s also they’re using it for investment, for speculation, and therefore get very passionate about people’s, celebrities, including you, famous people, saying positive stuff about any one particular crypto, a thing you can buy in Coinbase. And so they might be unhappy with Elon Musk that he’s promoting Bitcoin and then not, and then promoting Dogecoin, then not. There’s so much emotion tied up in the communication on this topic, and I think that’s where a lot of the-
Michael Saylor
Look, I don’t have a criticism of Elon Musk. He’s free to do whatever he wishes to do. It’s his life. In fact, Elon Musk is the second-largest supporter of Bitcoin in the world. So I think that the Bitcoin community tends to eat its own quite a bit. It tends to be very self-critical, and instead of saying, “Well, Elon is more supportive of Bitcoin than the other 10,000 people in the world with serious amounts of money,” they focus upon…
Look, I don’t have a criticism of Elon Musk. He’s free to do whatever he wishes to do. It’s his life. In fact, Elon Musk is the second-largest supporter of Bitcoin in the world. So I think that the Bitcoin community tends to eat its own quite a bit. It tends to be very self-critical, and instead of saying, “Well, Elon is more supportive of Bitcoin than the other 10,000 people in the world with serious amounts of money,” they focus upon…
Lex Fridman
Yeah, this is strange. Eating your own is just…
Yeah, this is strange. Eating your own is just…
Michael Saylor
I think he’s free to do what he wants to do. I think he’s done a lot of good for Bitcoin in putting it on the balance sheet of Tesla and holding it, and I think that sent a very powerful message.
I think he’s free to do what he wants to do. I think he’s done a lot of good for Bitcoin in putting it on the balance sheet of Tesla and holding it, and I think that sent a very powerful message.
Advice for young people
Lex Fridman
Do you have advice for young people? So you’ve had a heck of a life, you’ve done quite a lot of things, start before MIT, but starting with MIT, is there advice you have for young people, in high school and college, how to have a career that can be proud of, how to have a life they can be proud of?
Do you have advice for young people? So you’ve had a heck of a life, you’ve done quite a lot of things, start before MIT, but starting with MIT, is there advice you have for young people, in high school and college, how to have a career that can be proud of, how to have a life they can be proud of?
Michael Saylor
I was asked by somebody for quick advice for his young children. He had twins, when they enter adulthood. He said, “Give me your advice for them,” in a letter. “I’m going to give it to them when they turn 21,” or something. I was at a party and then he handed me this sheet of paper, and I thought, “Oh, he wants me to write it down right now.” So I sat down, I started writing and I figured, “Well, what would you want to tell someone at age 21?”
I was asked by somebody for quick advice for his young children. He had twins, when they enter adulthood. He said, “Give me your advice for them,” in a letter. “I’m going to give it to them when they turn 21,” or something. I was at a party and then he handed me this sheet of paper, and I thought, “Oh, he wants me to write it down right now.” So I sat down, I started writing and I figured, “Well, what would you want to tell someone at age 21?”
Lex Fridman
You wrote it down.
You wrote it down.
Michael Saylor
So I wrote it down. Then I tweeted it and it’s sitting on Twitter. But I tell you what I said. I said, “My advice, if you’re entering adulthood, focus your energy, guard your time, train your mind, train your body, think for yourself, curate your friends, curate your environment, keep your promises, stay cheerful and constructive, and upgrade the world.” That was the 10.
So I wrote it down. Then I tweeted it and it’s sitting on Twitter. But I tell you what I said. I said, “My advice, if you’re entering adulthood, focus your energy, guard your time, train your mind, train your body, think for yourself, curate your friends, curate your environment, keep your promises, stay cheerful and constructive, and upgrade the world.” That was the 10.
Lex Fridman
Upgrade the world. That’s an interesting choice of words. Upgrade the world. Upgrade the world.
Upgrade the world. That’s an interesting choice of words. Upgrade the world. Upgrade the world.
Michael Saylor
It’s like an engineer’s [inaudible 03:39:42]
It’s like an engineer’s [inaudible 03:39:42]
Lex Fridman
It’s a very, yeah, it is a very engineering themed… Keep you promises too, that’s an interesting one.
It’s a very, yeah, it is a very engineering themed… Keep you promises too, that’s an interesting one.
Michael Saylor
I think most people suffer because they don’t focus. You got to figure out… I think the big risk in this world is there’s too much of everything.
I think most people suffer because they don’t focus. You got to figure out… I think the big risk in this world is there’s too much of everything.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Saylor
You can sit and watch chess videos a hundred hours a week and you’ll never get through all the chess videos. There’s too much of every possible thing, too much of every good thing. So figuring out what you want to do, and then… Everything will suck up your time. There’s a hundred streaming channels to binge-watch on. You got to guard your time and then train your body, train your mind, and control who’s around you, control what surrounds you. So ultimately, in a world where there’s too much of everything, then your success-
You can sit and watch chess videos a hundred hours a week and you’ll never get through all the chess videos. There’s too much of every possible thing, too much of every good thing. So figuring out what you want to do, and then… Everything will suck up your time. There’s a hundred streaming channels to binge-watch on. You got to guard your time and then train your body, train your mind, and control who’s around you, control what surrounds you. So ultimately, in a world where there’s too much of everything, then your success-
Lex Fridman
It’s like those laser eyes, you have to focus on just a few of those things.
It’s like those laser eyes, you have to focus on just a few of those things.
Michael Saylor
Yeah. I got a thousand opinions we could talk about, and I could pursue a thousand things, but I don’t expect to be successful. I’m not sure that my opinion in any of the 999 is any more valid than the leader of thought in that area. So how about if I just focus upon one thing and then deliver the best I can in the one thing. That’s the laser eye message. The rest get you distracted.
Yeah. I got a thousand opinions we could talk about, and I could pursue a thousand things, but I don’t expect to be successful. I’m not sure that my opinion in any of the 999 is any more valid than the leader of thought in that area. So how about if I just focus upon one thing and then deliver the best I can in the one thing. That’s the laser eye message. The rest get you distracted.
Lex Fridman
How do you achieve that? Do you find yourself, given where you are in life, having to say no a lot, or just focus comes natural when you just ignore everything around you? So how do you achieve that focus?
How do you achieve that? Do you find yourself, given where you are in life, having to say no a lot, or just focus comes natural when you just ignore everything around you? So how do you achieve that focus?
Michael Saylor
I think it helps if people know what you’re focused on.
I think it helps if people know what you’re focused on.
Lex Fridman
So everything about you just radiates that, people know. People know this is-
So everything about you just radiates that, people know. People know this is-
Michael Saylor
If they know what you’re focused on, then you won’t get so many other things coming your way. If you dally or if you flirt with 27 different things, then you’re going to get approached by people in each of the 27 communities. Right?
If they know what you’re focused on, then you won’t get so many other things coming your way. If you dally or if you flirt with 27 different things, then you’re going to get approached by people in each of the 27 communities. Right?
Lex Fridman
You mentioned beginning a PhD, and given your roots at MIT, do you think there’s… There’s all kinds of journeys you can take to educate yourself. Do you think a PhD or school is still worth it, or is there other paths through life?
You mentioned beginning a PhD, and given your roots at MIT, do you think there’s… There’s all kinds of journeys you can take to educate yourself. Do you think a PhD or school is still worth it, or is there other paths through life?
Michael Saylor
Is it worth it if you had to pay for it? Is it worth it if you spend the time on it?
Is it worth it if you had to pay for it? Is it worth it if you spend the time on it?
Lex Fridman
The time and the money is a big cost?
The time and the money is a big cost?
Michael Saylor
I think…
I think…
Lex Fridman
Time, probably the bigger one. Right?
Time, probably the bigger one. Right?
Michael Saylor
It seems clear to me that the world wants more specialists. It wants you to be an expert and to focus on in one area. It’s punishing generalists, jack-of-all-trades, especially people that are generalists in the physical realm. Because if you’re a specialist in the digital realm, you might very well… You’re the person with 700,000 followers on Twitter and you show them how to tie knots, or you’re the banjo player with 1.8 million followers, and when everybody types banjo, it’s you, right?
It seems clear to me that the world wants more specialists. It wants you to be an expert and to focus on in one area. It’s punishing generalists, jack-of-all-trades, especially people that are generalists in the physical realm. Because if you’re a specialist in the digital realm, you might very well… You’re the person with 700,000 followers on Twitter and you show them how to tie knots, or you’re the banjo player with 1.8 million followers, and when everybody types banjo, it’s you, right?
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Saylor
And so the world wants people that do something well, and then it wants to stamp out 18 million copies of them. And so that argues in favor of focus. Now, the definition of a PhD is someone with enough of an education that they’re capable of or have made… I guess to get a PhD, technically you have to have done a dissertation where you made a seminal contribution to the body of human knowledge. And if you haven’t done that, technically you have a master’s degree, but you’re not a doctor. So if you’re interested in any of the academic disciplines that a PhD would be granted for, then I can see that being a reasonable pursuit. But there are many people that are specialists… you know the Agadmator?
And so the world wants people that do something well, and then it wants to stamp out 18 million copies of them. And so that argues in favor of focus. Now, the definition of a PhD is someone with enough of an education that they’re capable of or have made… I guess to get a PhD, technically you have to have done a dissertation where you made a seminal contribution to the body of human knowledge. And if you haven’t done that, technically you have a master’s degree, but you’re not a doctor. So if you’re interested in any of the academic disciplines that a PhD would be granted for, then I can see that being a reasonable pursuit. But there are many people that are specialists… you know the Agadmator?
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Michael Saylor
The Agadmator on YouTube. He’s the world’s greatest chess commentator.
The Agadmator on YouTube. He’s the world’s greatest chess commentator.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Saylor
I’ve watched his career, and he’s got progressively better, and he’s really good.
I’ve watched his career, and he’s got progressively better, and he’s really good.
Lex Fridman
He’s going to love hearing this.
He’s going to love hearing this.
Michael Saylor
If the Agadmator ever hears this, I’m a big fan of the Agadmator. I have to cut myself off, right? Because otherwise you’ll watch the entire Paul Morphy saga for your weekend. But the point really is, YouTube is full of experts who are specialists in something, and they rise to the top of their profession. Twitter is too. The internet is. So I would advocate that you figure out what you’re passionate about and what you’re good at, and you do focus on it, especially if… If the thing that you’re doing can be automated… The problem is, back to that 500,000 algebra teacher type comment, the problem is if it is possible to be automated, then over time, someone’s probably going to automate it, that squeezes the state space of everybody else. Like after the lockdowns, it used to be there are all these local bands that played in bars and everybody went to the bar to see the local band, and then during the lockdown, you would have these six super groups, and they would all get 500,000 or a million followers, and all these smaller local bands just got no attention at all.
If the Agadmator ever hears this, I’m a big fan of the Agadmator. I have to cut myself off, right? Because otherwise you’ll watch the entire Paul Morphy saga for your weekend. But the point really is, YouTube is full of experts who are specialists in something, and they rise to the top of their profession. Twitter is too. The internet is. So I would advocate that you figure out what you’re passionate about and what you’re good at, and you do focus on it, especially if… If the thing that you’re doing can be automated… The problem is, back to that 500,000 algebra teacher type comment, the problem is if it is possible to be automated, then over time, someone’s probably going to automate it, that squeezes the state space of everybody else. Like after the lockdowns, it used to be there are all these local bands that played in bars and everybody went to the bar to see the local band, and then during the lockdown, you would have these six super groups, and they would all get 500,000 or a million followers, and all these smaller local bands just got no attention at all.
Lex Fridman
Well, the interesting thing is one of those 500,000 algebra teachers is likely to be part of the automation. So it’s an opportunity for you to think, “Where’s my field, my discipline, evolving into?” I talked to a bunch of librarians, just happen to be friends with librarians. Libraries will probably be evolving, and it’s up to you as a librarian to be one of the few that remain in the rubble.
Well, the interesting thing is one of those 500,000 algebra teachers is likely to be part of the automation. So it’s an opportunity for you to think, “Where’s my field, my discipline, evolving into?” I talked to a bunch of librarians, just happen to be friends with librarians. Libraries will probably be evolving, and it’s up to you as a librarian to be one of the few that remain in the rubble.
Michael Saylor
If you’re going to give commentary on Shakespeare plays, I want you to basically do it for every Shakespeare play. I want you to be the Shakespeare dude. Because just like, Lex, you’re like..
If you’re going to give commentary on Shakespeare plays, I want you to basically do it for every Shakespeare play. I want you to be the Shakespeare dude. Because just like, Lex, you’re like..
Lex Fridman
I don’t know what kind of…
I don’t know what kind of…
Michael Saylor
You’re the deep thinking podcaster, or you’re the podcaster that goes after the deep intellectual conversations. And once I get comfortable with you, and I like you, then I start binge-watching Lex. But if you changed your format through 16 different formats so that you could compete with 16 different other personalities on YouTube, you probably wouldn’t beat any of them, right? You would probably just kind of sink into the, you’re the number two or number three guy. You’re not the number one guy in the format. And I think the algorithm, right? The Twitter algorithm and the YouTube algorithm, they really reward the person that’s focused on message, consistent. The world wants somebody they can trust that’s consistent and reliable, and they kind of want to know what they’re getting into, because, and this is taken for granted maybe, but there’s 10 million people vying for every hour of your time. And so the fact that anybody gives you any time at all is a huge-
You’re the deep thinking podcaster, or you’re the podcaster that goes after the deep intellectual conversations. And once I get comfortable with you, and I like you, then I start binge-watching Lex. But if you changed your format through 16 different formats so that you could compete with 16 different other personalities on YouTube, you probably wouldn’t beat any of them, right? You would probably just kind of sink into the, you’re the number two or number three guy. You’re not the number one guy in the format. And I think the algorithm, right? The Twitter algorithm and the YouTube algorithm, they really reward the person that’s focused on message, consistent. The world wants somebody they can trust that’s consistent and reliable, and they kind of want to know what they’re getting into, because, and this is taken for granted maybe, but there’s 10 million people vying for every hour of your time. And so the fact that anybody gives you any time at all is a huge-
Lex Fridman
Is amazing.
Is amazing.
Michael Saylor
… privilege, right? And you should be thanking them and you should respect their time.
… privilege, right? And you should be thanking them and you should respect their time.
Lex Fridman
It’s interesting. Everything you said is very interesting. But of course, from my perspective and probably from your perspective, my actual life has nothing to do with, it’s just being focused on stuff. In my case, it’s like focus on doing the thing I really enjoy doing and being myself, and not caring about anything else. I don’t care about views or likes or attention. And that just maintaining that focus is the way, from an individual perspective, you live that life. But yeah, it does seem that the world and technology is rewarding the specialization and creating bigger and bigger platforms for the different specializations. And then that lifts all boats actually, because the specializations get better and better and better at teaching people to do specific things, and they educate themselves. Just everybody gets more and more knowledgeable and more and more empowered.
It’s interesting. Everything you said is very interesting. But of course, from my perspective and probably from your perspective, my actual life has nothing to do with, it’s just being focused on stuff. In my case, it’s like focus on doing the thing I really enjoy doing and being myself, and not caring about anything else. I don’t care about views or likes or attention. And that just maintaining that focus is the way, from an individual perspective, you live that life. But yeah, it does seem that the world and technology is rewarding the specialization and creating bigger and bigger platforms for the different specializations. And then that lifts all boats actually, because the specializations get better and better and better at teaching people to do specific things, and they educate themselves. Just everybody gets more and more knowledgeable and more and more empowered.
Michael Saylor
The reward for authenticity more than offsets the specificity with which you pursue your mission. Another way to say it is “Nobody wants to read advertising.” If you were to spend a hundred million dollars advertising your thing, I probably wouldn’t want to watch it, but-
The reward for authenticity more than offsets the specificity with which you pursue your mission. Another way to say it is “Nobody wants to read advertising.” If you were to spend a hundred million dollars advertising your thing, I probably wouldn’t want to watch it, but-
Lex Fridman
That’s so Fascinating.
That’s so Fascinating.
Michael Saylor
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
That’s so fascinating.
That’s so fascinating.
Michael Saylor
We see the death of that. And so the commercial shows are losing their audiences, and the authentic specialist or the authentic artist are gaining their audience.
We see the death of that. And so the commercial shows are losing their audiences, and the authentic specialist or the authentic artist are gaining their audience.
Mortality
Lex Fridman
And that’s a beautiful thing. Speaking of deep thinking, you’re just a human. Your life ends. You’ve accumulated so much wisdom, so much money, but the ride ends. Do you think about that? Do you ponder your death, your mortality? Are you afraid of it?
And that’s a beautiful thing. Speaking of deep thinking, you’re just a human. Your life ends. You’ve accumulated so much wisdom, so much money, but the ride ends. Do you think about that? Do you ponder your death, your mortality? Are you afraid of it?
Michael Saylor
When I go, all my assets will flow into a foundation, and the foundation’s mission is to make education free for everybody forever. And if I’m able to contribute to the creation of a more perfect monetary system, then maybe that foundation will go on forever.
When I go, all my assets will flow into a foundation, and the foundation’s mission is to make education free for everybody forever. And if I’m able to contribute to the creation of a more perfect monetary system, then maybe that foundation will go on forever.
Lex Fridman
The idea, the foundation of the idea, so not just… Each of the foundations.
The idea, the foundation of the idea, so not just… Each of the foundations.
Michael Saylor
It’s not clear we’re on the s-curve of immortal life yet. That’s a biological question. And you asked that on some of your other interviews a lot. I think that we are on the threshold of immortal life for ideas or immortal life for certain institutions or computer programs. So if we can fix the money, then you can create a technically perfected endowment. And then the question really is what are your ideas? What do you want to leave behind? And so if it’s a park, then you endow the park, right? If it’s free education, you endow that. If it’s some other ethical idea, right?
It’s not clear we’re on the s-curve of immortal life yet. That’s a biological question. And you asked that on some of your other interviews a lot. I think that we are on the threshold of immortal life for ideas or immortal life for certain institutions or computer programs. So if we can fix the money, then you can create a technically perfected endowment. And then the question really is what are your ideas? What do you want to leave behind? And so if it’s a park, then you endow the park, right? If it’s free education, you endow that. If it’s some other ethical idea, right?
Lex Fridman
Does it make you sad that there’s something that you’ve endowed, some very powerful idea of digital energy that you put out into, you help put it into the world, and that your mind, your conscious mind, will no longer be there to experience it. It’s just gone forever.
Does it make you sad that there’s something that you’ve endowed, some very powerful idea of digital energy that you put out into, you help put it into the world, and that your mind, your conscious mind, will no longer be there to experience it. It’s just gone forever.
Michael Saylor
I’d rather think that the thing that Satoshi taught us is you should do your part during some phase of the journey, and then you should get out of the way. I think Steve Jobs said something similar to that effect in a very famous speech one day, which is “Death is a natural part of life and it makes way for the next generation.” And I think the goal is you upgrade the world, right? You leave it a better place, but you get out of the way. And I think when that breaks down, bad things happen. I think nature cleanses itself. There’s a cycle of life.
I’d rather think that the thing that Satoshi taught us is you should do your part during some phase of the journey, and then you should get out of the way. I think Steve Jobs said something similar to that effect in a very famous speech one day, which is “Death is a natural part of life and it makes way for the next generation.” And I think the goal is you upgrade the world, right? You leave it a better place, but you get out of the way. And I think when that breaks down, bad things happen. I think nature cleanses itself. There’s a cycle of life.
Meaning of life
Lex Fridman
And speaking of one of great people who did also get out of the way is George Washington. So hopefully when you get out of the way, nobody’s bleeding you to death in hope of helping you. What do you think, to do a bit of a callback, what do you think is the meaning of this whole thing? What’s the meaning of life? Why are we here? We talked about the rise of human civilization. It seems like we’re engineers at heart. We build cool stuff, better and better use of energy, channeling energy to be productive. Why? What’s it all for?
And speaking of one of great people who did also get out of the way is George Washington. So hopefully when you get out of the way, nobody’s bleeding you to death in hope of helping you. What do you think, to do a bit of a callback, what do you think is the meaning of this whole thing? What’s the meaning of life? Why are we here? We talked about the rise of human civilization. It seems like we’re engineers at heart. We build cool stuff, better and better use of energy, channeling energy to be productive. Why? What’s it all for?
Michael Saylor
You’re getting metaphysical on me.
You’re getting metaphysical on me.
Lex Fridman
Very. There’s a beautiful boat to the left of us. Why do we do that? This boat that sailed the ocean? Then we build models of it to celebrate great engineering of the past.
Very. There’s a beautiful boat to the left of us. Why do we do that? This boat that sailed the ocean? Then we build models of it to celebrate great engineering of the past.
Michael Saylor
To engineer is divine. You can make lots of arguments as why we’re here. We’re either here to entertain ourselves or we’re here to create something that’s beautiful or something that’s functional. I think if you’re an engineer, you entertain yourself by creating something that’s both beautiful and functional. So I think all three of those things, it’s entertaining, but it’s ethical. You got to admire the first person that built a bridge, crossing a chasm, or the first person to work out the problem of how to get running water to a village, or the first person to figure out how to dam up a river, or mastered agriculture, or the guy that figured out how to grow fruit on trees or created orchards, and maybe one day had 10 fruit trees. He is pretty proud of himself.
To engineer is divine. You can make lots of arguments as why we’re here. We’re either here to entertain ourselves or we’re here to create something that’s beautiful or something that’s functional. I think if you’re an engineer, you entertain yourself by creating something that’s both beautiful and functional. So I think all three of those things, it’s entertaining, but it’s ethical. You got to admire the first person that built a bridge, crossing a chasm, or the first person to work out the problem of how to get running water to a village, or the first person to figure out how to dam up a river, or mastered agriculture, or the guy that figured out how to grow fruit on trees or created orchards, and maybe one day had 10 fruit trees. He is pretty proud of himself.
Lex Fridman
So that’s functional. There is also something to that, just like you said, that’s just beautiful. It does get you closer to, like you said, the divine. Something… When you step back and look at the entirety of it. A collective of humans, using a beautiful invention or creation, or just something about this instrument is creating a beautiful piece of music, that seems just right. That’s what we’re here for. Whatever the divine is, it seems like we’re here for that. And I, of course, love talking to you because from the engineering perspective, the functional is ultimately the mechanism towards the beauty.
So that’s functional. There is also something to that, just like you said, that’s just beautiful. It does get you closer to, like you said, the divine. Something… When you step back and look at the entirety of it. A collective of humans, using a beautiful invention or creation, or just something about this instrument is creating a beautiful piece of music, that seems just right. That’s what we’re here for. Whatever the divine is, it seems like we’re here for that. And I, of course, love talking to you because from the engineering perspective, the functional is ultimately the mechanism towards the beauty.
Michael Saylor
Isn’t there something beautiful about making the world a better place for people that you love, your friends, your family, or yourself? When you think about the entire arc of human existence, and you roll the clock back 500,000 years, and you think about every struggle of everyone that came before us, and everything they had to overcome in order to put you here right now, you got to admire that, right? You got to respect that.
Isn’t there something beautiful about making the world a better place for people that you love, your friends, your family, or yourself? When you think about the entire arc of human existence, and you roll the clock back 500,000 years, and you think about every struggle of everyone that came before us, and everything they had to overcome in order to put you here right now, you got to admire that, right? You got to respect that.
Lex Fridman
That’s a heck of a gift they gave us. It’s also a heck of a responsibility. Don’t screw it up.
That’s a heck of a gift they gave us. It’s also a heck of a responsibility. Don’t screw it up.
Michael Saylor
If I dropped you 500,000 years ago and I said, figure out steel refining, or figure out silicon chips, fab reproduction, or whatever it is.
If I dropped you 500,000 years ago and I said, figure out steel refining, or figure out silicon chips, fab reproduction, or whatever it is.
Lex Fridman
To fly, or fire.
To fly, or fire.
Michael Saylor
You’d be like, “Ugh.” And so now we’re here, and I guess the way you repay them is you fix everything in front of your face you can. And that means, to someone like Elon, it means get us off the planet. To someone like me, it’s like, I think fix the energy and the system,
You’d be like, “Ugh.” And so now we’re here, and I guess the way you repay them is you fix everything in front of your face you can. And that means, to someone like Elon, it means get us off the planet. To someone like me, it’s like, I think fix the energy and the system,
Lex Fridman
And that gives me hope. Michael, this was an incredible conversation. You’re an incredible human. It’s a huge honor you would sit down with me. Thank you so much for talking today.
And that gives me hope. Michael, this was an incredible conversation. You’re an incredible human. It’s a huge honor you would sit down with me. Thank you so much for talking today.
Michael Saylor
Yeah, thanks for having me, Lex.
Yeah, thanks for having me, Lex.
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Michael Saylor. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with a few words from Francis Bacon “Money is a great servant, but a bad master.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Michael Saylor. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with a few words from Francis Bacon “Money is a great servant, but a bad master.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Transcript for Nick Lane: Origin of Life, Evolution, Aliens, Biology, and Consciousness | Lex Fridman Podcast #318
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #318 with Nick Lane.
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Well, there is one. There’s a very obvious one. It’s basically created by whenever you have a wet rocky planet, you get these hydrothermal vents, which generate hydrogen gas in bucket loads and electrical charges on kind of cell-like pores that can drive the kind of chemistry that life does. So, it seems so beautiful and so obvious, that I’ve spent the last 10 years or more trying to do experiments. It turns out to be difficult, of course. Everything’s more difficult than you ever thought it was going to be, but it looks, I would say, more true rather than less true over that ten-year period. I think I have to take a step back every now and then and think, “Hang on a minute. Where is this going?” I’m happy it’s going in a sensible direction.
And I think then you have these other interesting dilemmas. I’m often accused of being too focused on life on earth, too kind of narrow-minded and inward looking, you might say. I’m talking about carbon, I’m talking about cells. And maybe you or plenty of people can say to me, “Oh, yeah, but life can be anything. I have no imagination.” And maybe they’re right, but unless we can say why life here is this way, and if those reasons are fundamental reasons or if they’re just trivial reasons, then we can’t answer that question. So, I think they’re fundamental reasons, and I think we need to worry about them.
But there’s a very interesting deep split in life between bacteria and what are called archaea, which look just the same as bacteria. And they’re not quite as diverse, but nearly, and they are very different in their biochemistry. And so any explanation for the origin of life has to account, as well, for why they’re so different and yet so similar. And that makes me think that life probably did arise only once.
And when you leave the vent, you’ve got to do that yourself. You’ve got to power up your own membrane. And so the question is: well, how do you power up your own membrane? And the answer is, well, you need to pump. You need to pump ions to give an electrical charge on the membrane. So, what do the pumps look like? Well, the pumps look different in these two groups. It’s as if they both emerge from a common ancestor, and as soon as you’ve got that ancestor, things move very quickly and divergently. Why does the DNA replication look different? Well, it’s joined to the membrane. The membranes are different. The DNA replication is different because it’s joined to a different kind of membrane. So, there’s interesting… This is detail you may say, but it’s also fundamental because it’s about the two big divergent groups of life on earth that seemed to have diverged really early on.
And the answer is, “Oh, well, they have to go ‘bloop’ and become alive.” So, how did they do that? You may as well say that a miracle happened. I don’t believe in soup. I think what we have in a vent is a continuous conversion, a continuous growth, a continuous reaction, a continuous converting a flow of molecules into more of yourself, you might say, even if it’s a small bit. So, you’ve got a kind of continuous self-organization and growth from the very beginning. You never have that in a soup.
To come back to your first question about panspermia properly, that just pushes the question somewhere else, even if it’s true. Maybe life did start on Earth by panspermia, but so what are the principles that govern the emergence of life on any planet? It’s an assumption that life started here, and it’s an assumption that it started in a hydrothermal vent or it started in a terrestrial geothermal system. The question is: can we work out a testable sequence of events that would lead from one to the other one? And then test it, and see if there’s any truth in it or not. With panspermia, you can’t do any of that.
And in that framework, every time you have a choice, it could be this way or it could be that way, or there’s lots of possible forks down that road, did it have to be that way? Could it have been the other way, and would that have given you life with very different properties? And so if you come up with… It’s a long hypothesis, because as I say, we’re going from really simple prebiotic chemistry all the way through to genes and molecular machines. That’s a long, long pathway. And nobody in the field would agree on the order in which these things happened, which is not a bad thing because it means that you have to go out and do some experiments and try and demonstrate that it’s possible or not possible.
The real question is: what is… We can argue all day, or people do argue all day about: is a virus alive or not? And it depends on the content. In fact, most biologists could not agree about that. So, then what about a jumping gene, a retro element or something like that? It’s even simpler than a virus, but it’s capable of converting its environment into a copy of itself. And that’s about as close… This is not a definition, but this is a kind of description of life, is that it’s able to parasitize the environment, and that goes for plants as well as animals and bacteria and viruses, to make a relatively exact copy of themselves, informationally exact copy of themselves.
This is a kind of leap into a different direction. The only question for natural selection is: does it work? Is the change itself feasible as a single change? And the answer is yes. It’s just a small change to a single gene. And the second thing is it gives rise to a completely different morphology. Does it work? And if it works, that can easily be a shift. But for it to be a speciation, for it to continue, for it to give rise to a different morphology over time, then it has to be perpetuated. So that shift, that change in that one gene has to work well enough that it is selected and it goes on.
But we still need to constrain those steps, but we’ve got a planet doing similar chemistry. You asked about a trajectory. The trajectory is the planetary trajectory. The planet has properties. It’s basically… It’s got a lot of iron at the center of it, it’s got a lot of electrons at the center of it. It’s more oxidized on the outside, partly because of the sun, and partly because the heat of volcanoes puts out oxidized gases. So, the planet is a battery. It’s a giant battery. And we have a flow of electrons going from inside to outside in these hydrothermal vents, and that’s the same topology that a cell has. A cell is basically just a micro-version of the planet.
And there is a trajectory in all of that, and there’s an inevitability that certain types of chemical reaction are going to be favored over others. And there’s an inevitability in what happens in water, the chemistry that happens in water. Some will be immiscible with water and will form membranes and will form insoluble structures. Water’s a… Nobody really understands water very well. And it’s another big question for experiments on the origin of life: what do you put it in? What kind of structure do we want to induce in this water? Because the last thing it’s likely to be is just kind of bulk water.
So, it wouldn’t surprise me any longer if we found life on Mars and it had a genetic code that was not very different to the genetic code that we have here without it just being transferred across, there’s some inevitability about the whole of the beginnings of life, in my view.
And that wiring, it can’t be easy to get it right because the plants that we see around us, they have chloroplasts. Those chloroplasts were cyanobacteria ones. Those cyanobacteria are the only group of bacteria that can do that type of photosynthesis, so there’s plenty of opportunity but-
You can do it from iron, you can take electrons… So the early oceans, were probably full of iron, you can take an electron from ferrous iron, so Iron 2+ and make it Iron 3+, which now precipitates as rust, and you take a proton from the acidic early ocean, stick it there now you’ve got a hydrogen atom, stick it onto CO2, you’ve just done the trick. The trouble is you bury yourself in rusty iron and with sulphur can bury yourself in sulphur. One of the reasons oxygenic photosynthesis is so much better is that the waste product is oxygen, which just bubbles away.
The earliest life that we can physically see on the planet are stromatolites, which are made by things like cyanobacteria and they’re large superstructures, effectively biofilms plated on top of each other, and you end up with quite large structures that you can see in the fossil record. But they never came up with animals, they never came up with plants, they came up with multicellular things filamentous cyanobacteria for example, they’re just long strings of cells. But the origin of the eukaryotic cell seems to have been what’s called an endosymbiosis so one cell gets inside another cell, and I think that that transformed the energetic possibilities of life. So what we end up with is a kind of supercharged cell, which can have a much larger nucleus with many more genes all supported.
You could think about it as multi-bacterial power without the overhead. So you’ve got a cell and it’s got bacteria living in it, and those bacteria are providing it with the energy currency it needs. But each bacterium has a genome of its own, which costs a fair amount of energy to express, to turn over and convert into proteins and so on. What the mitochondria did, which are these power packs in our own cells, they were bacteria once and they threw away virtually all their genes, they’ve only got a few left.
And it is interesting then that the only two occasions that complex life has arisen on earth, plants and animals, fungi you could say are complex as well, but they don’t form such complex morphology as plants and animals, start with a single cell they start with an oocyte and a sperm fused together to make a zygote. So we start development with a single cell and all the cells in the organism have identical DNA, and in the brain, you switch off these genes and you switch on those genes and the liver, you switch off those and you switch on a different set. And the standard evolutionary explanation for that is that you’re restricting conflict, you don’t have a load of genetically different cells that are all fighting each other and so it works.
The trouble with bacteria is they form these biofilms and they’re all genetically different, and effectively they’re incapable of that level of cooperation they would get in a fight.
So they have explored genetic sequence space far more thoroughly than eukaryotes ever did because they’ve had twice as long at least, and they’ve got much larger populations, and they never got around this problem. So why can’t they? It seems as if you can’t solve it with information alone. So what’s the problem? The problem is structure.
If the very first cells needed an electrical charge on their membrane to grow, and in bacteria it’s the outer membrane that surrounds the cell, which is electrically charged, you try and scale that up and you’ve got a fundamental design problem, you’ve got an engineering problem, and there are examples of it. And what we see in all these cases is what’s known as extreme polyploidy, which is to say they have tens of thousands of copies of their complete genome, which is energetically hugely expensive, and you end up with a large bacteria with no further development. What you is to incorporate these electrically charged power pack units inside with their control units intact, and for them not to conflict so much with the host cell that it all goes wrong, perhaps it goes wrong more often than not, and then you change the topology of the cell.
Now, you don’t necessarily have any more DNA than a giant bacterium with extreme polyploidy, but what you’ve got is an asymmetry. You now have a giant nuclear genome surrounded by lots of subsidiary energetic genomes they’re the control units that are doing all the control of energy generation.
So again, why switch? What are the drivers here? So there’s a lot of time, there’s a lot of evolution, but as soon as you’ve got cells living inside another cell, what you’ve got is a new design, you’ve got new potential that you didn’t have before.
So now we have four copies of the complete genome, and then we crisscross between all of these things. So we take a bit from here and stick it on there and a bit from here, and we stick it on here, that’s recombination. Then we go through two rounds of cell division. So we divide in half, so now the two daughter cells have two copies and we divide in half again, now we have some gametes, each of which has got a single copy of the genome. And that’s the basic ground plan for what’s called meiosis and syn-gametes, that’s basically sex.
And it happens at the level of single-celled organisms and it happens pretty much the same way in plants and pretty much the same way in animals and so on. And it’s not found in any bacteria, they switch things around using the same machinery and they take up a bit of DNA from the environment. They take out this bit and stick in that bit, and it’s the same molecular machinery they’re using to do it.
So I know I’ve got a mutation in a gene, I don’t know which gene it is because I’m not sentient, but I know I can’t grow, I know all my regulation systems are saying, “Something wrong here, something wrong, pick up some DNA, pick up a bit of DNA from the environment.” If you’ve got a small genome, the chances of you picking up the right bit of DNA from the environment is much higher than if you’ve got a genome of 20,000 genes. To do that, you’ve effectively got to be picking up DNA all the time, all day long and nothing else, and you’re still going to get the wrong DNA. You’ve got to pick up large chunks, and in the end, you’ve got to line them up, you’re forced into sex, to coin a phrase.
They have the same machinery in these algal blooms. How do they know who dies? The answer is they will often put out a toxin and that toxin is a kind of challenge to you. Either you can cope with the toxin or you can’t. If you can cope with it, you form a spore and you will go on to become the next generation. You form kind of a resistant spore, you sink down a little bit, you get out of the way, you can’t be attacked by a virus if you’re a spore or at least not so easily. Whereas if you can’t deal with that toxin, you pull the plug and you trigger your death apparatus and you kill yourself.
So getting to RNA, I suspect is probably not that hard. But getting from RNA, there’s multiple different types of RNA now, how do you distinguish? This is something we’re actively thinking about, how do you distinguish between a random population of RNA? Some of them go on to become messenger RNA, this is the transcript of the code of the gene that you want to make. Some of them become transfer RNA, which is kind of the unit that holds the amino acid that’s going to be polymerized. Some of them become ribosomal RNA, which is the machine, which is joining them all up together.
How do they discriminate themselves? There’s some kind of phase transition going on there, I don’t know, it’s a difficult question and we’re now in the region of biology where information is coming in. But the thing about RNA is very, very good at what it does but the largest genomes supported by RNA are RNA viruses like HIV, for example. They’re pretty small. And so there’s a limit to how complex life could be unless you come up with DNA, which chemically is a really small change but how easy it is to make that change? I don’t really know. As soon as you’ve got DNA, then you’ve got an amazingly stable molecule for information storage, and you can do absolutely anything. But how likely that transition from RNA to DNA was? I don’t know either.
The question to me is, why is it this way? Is it because there was some form of selection that this is better than the other forms and there were lots of competing forms of information storage early on, and this one was the one that worked out? Or was it kind of channeled that way, that these are the molecules that you’re dealing with and they work? And I’m increasingly thinking it’s that way that we’re channeled towards ribose phosphate and the bases that are used, but there are 200 different letters kicking around out there that could have been used.
And then the question is, did human civilization always strive towards JavaScript or was JavaScript just the first programming language that ran on the browser and still sticky? The first is the sticky one, and so it wins over anything else because it was first. And I don’t think that’s answerable, right? But it’s good to ask that. I suppose in the lab you can’t run it with programming languages, but in biology you can probably do some kind of small scale evolutionary test to try to infer which is which?
And something changes. Oxygen definitely changes during this period. Other things may have changed as well. But the next thing you really see in the fossil record is the Cambrian explosion. And what do we see there? We’re now seeing animals that we would recognize, they’ve got eyes, they’ve got claws, they’ve got shells. They’re plainly killing things or running away and hiding. So we’ve gone from a rather gentle, but limited world, to a rather vicious, unpleasant world that we recognize, which leads to kind of arms races, evolutionary arms races, which again is something that when we think about a nuclear arms race, we think, “Jesus, we don’t want to go there. It’s not done anybody any good.” In some ways, maybe it does do good. I don’t want to make an argument for nuclear arms, but predation as a mechanism forces organisms to adapt, to change, to be better, to escape, or to kill. If you need to eat, then you’ve got to eat. A cheetah is not going to run at that speed unless it has to because the zebra is capable of escaping. So it leads to much greater feats of evolution would ever have been possible without it, and in the end, to a much more beautiful world. So it’s not all bad, by any means.
But the thing is, you can’t have this if you don’t have an oxygenated planet because it’s all, in the end, it’s about how much energy can you extract from the food you eat? And if you don’t have an oxygenated planet, you can get about 10% out, not much more than that. And if you’ve got an oxygenated planet, you can get about 40% out. And that means you can have, instead of having one or two trophic levels, you can have five or six trophic levels, and that means things can eat things that eat other things and so on, and you’ve gone to a level of ecological complexity, which is completely impossible in the absence of oxygen.
In terms of violence and interactions between groups, yes, all this dynamic of if you’re interacting between groups, you can be certain that they’re going to be burning each other and all kinds of physical, violent interactions as well, which will drive the kind of cleverness of, how do you resist this? Let’s build a tower. What are we going to do to prevent being overrun by those marauding gangs from over there? And you look outside humans, and you look at chimps and bonobos and so on, and they’re very, very different structures to society. Chimps tend to have an aggressive alpha male-type structure, and bonobos, there’s basically a female society, where the males are predominantly excluded and only brought in at the behest of the female. We have a lot in common with both of those groups.
Asking for a friend again, what do you think happened to Neanderthals? What did we cheeky humans do to the Neanderthals, homo sapiens? Do you think we murdered them? How do we murder them? How do we out-compete them, or do we out-mate them?
But the problem is, because they go down only the maternal line, from mother to daughter, your mitochondrial DNA and mine, it’s going nowhere. It doesn’t matter. Any kids we have, they get their mother’s mitochondrial DNA, except in very, very rare and strange circumstances. So it tells a different story, and it’s not a story which is easy to reconcile always. And what it seems to suggest, to my mind at least, is that there was one-way traffic of genes probably going from humans into Neanderthals rather than the other way around.
Why did the Neanderthals disappear? I don’t know. I suspect they were probably less violent, less clever, less populous, less willing to fight. I don’t know. I think we probably drove them to extinction at the margins of Europe.
So it’s not that big a deal to evolve an eye. But once you have one, then there’s nowhere to hide. Again, we’re back to predator-prey relationships. We’re back to all the benefits that being able to see brings you. And if you think philosophically what bats are doing with ecolocation and so on, I have no idea, but I suspect that they form an image of the world in pretty much the same way that we do. It’s just a matter of mental reconstruction.
So I suppose the other thing about sight, there are single-celled organisms that have got a lens and a retina and a cornea and so on. Basically they’ve got a camera-type eye in a single cell. They don’t have a brain; what they understand about their world is impossible to say, but they’re capable of coming up with the same structures to do so. So I suppose then, is that once you’ve got things like eyes, then you have a big driving pressure on the central nervous system to figure out what it all means.
And then we come around to your other point about manipulation, sensory input, and so on about now you have a huge requirement to understand what your environment is and what it means and how it reacts and how you should run away and where you should stay put.
When you watch a child develop, it walks into a table. It bangs its head on the table and it hurts. Now you’ve got two inputs. You’ve got one pain from this sharp edge, and number two, probably you’ve touched it and realized it’s there, it’s a sharp edge, and you’ve got the visual input. And you put the three things together and think, “I don’t want to walk into a table again.” So you’re learning, and it’s a limited reality, but it’s a true reality. And if you don’t learn that properly, then you will get eaten, you will get hit by a bus, you will not survive. And same if you’re in some kind of, let’s say, computer construction of reality. I’m not in my ground here, but if you construct the laws that this is what reality is inside this, then you play by those laws.
Now, if you’ve got just babies in the matrix who are slotted into this, I don’t think they have that kind of sensory input. I don’t think they would have any way to make sense of New York as a world that they’re part of. The brain is just not developed in that way.
Because 10 years ago I wrote a chapter in a book called Life Ascending about consciousness. And the subtitle of Life Ascending was The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, and I couldn’t possibly write a book with a subtitle like that that did not include consciousness, and specifically consciousness as one of the great inventions. And it was in part because I was just curious to know more and I read more for that chapter. I never worked on it, but I’ve always… How can anyone not be interested in the question?
And I was left with the feeling that, A, nobody knows, and B, there are two main schools of thought out there with a big kind of skew in distribution. One of them says, oh, it’s a property of matter. It’s an unknown law of physics. Panpsychism, everything is conscious. The sun is conscious. It’s just a matter… A rock is conscious. It’s just a matter of how much. And I find that very unpersuasive. I can’t say that it’s wrong. It’s just that I think we somehow can tell the difference between something that’s living and something that’s not. And then the other end is it’s an emergent property of a very complex, central nervous system. I never quite understand what people mean by words like emergence. There are genuine examples, but I think we very often tend to-
Speaking to the question of emergence, there’s just technical… There’s an excellent paper on this recently about this phase transition emergence of performance in neural networks on problem of NLP, natural language processing. So language models, there seems to be this question of size. At some point, there is a phase transition as you grow the size of the neural network. So the question is, this is somewhat of a technical question that you can philosophize over.
The technical question is, is there a size of a neural network that starts to be able to form the kind of representations that can capture a language and therefore be able to not just language, but linguistically capture knowledge that’s sufficient to solve a lot of problems in language? Like be able to have a conversation and there seems to be not a gradual increase, but a phase transition and they’re trying to construct the science of where that is, what is a good size of a neural network and why does such a face transition happen. Anyway, that points to emergence that there could be stages where a thing goes from being you’re very intelligent toaster to a toaster that’s feeling sad today and turns away and looks out the window sighing having an existential crisis.
And this is something physical which can be selected over generations that if you get this wrong, it’s linked with this set of circumstances that I’ve just… As an individual, I have a moment of blind panic and run. As a bacterium or something you have some electrical discharge that says blind panic and it runs whatever it may be. And you associate over generations, multiple generations that this electrical phase that I’m in now is associated with a response like that. And it’s easy to see how feelings come in through the back door almost with that kind of giving real-time feedback on your position in the world in relation to how am I doing?
And then you complexify the system and yes, I have no problem with phase transition. And can all of this be done purely by the language, by the issues with how the system understands itself? Maybe it can, I honestly don’t know, but the philosophers for a long time have talked about the possibility that you can have zombie intelligence and that there are no feelings there, but everything else is the same. I mean I have to throw this back to you really. How do you deal with the zombie intelligence?
And somehow you’ve been searching for this feeling, this moment, this person your whole life, that feeling. The philosophers can have a lot of fun with that one. And also say that that’s just… You could have a biological explanation, you could have all kinds of… It’s all fake. It’s actually Ayn Rand will say it’s all selfish. There’s a lot of different interpretations. I’ll leave it to the philosophers. The point is the feeling sure as hell feels very real. And if my toaster makes me feel like it’s the only toaster in the world, and when I leave and I miss the toaster and when I come back, I’m excited to see the toaster and my life is meaningful and joyful and the friends I have around me get a better version of me because that toaster exists. That sure as hell feels-
I’m going to do that. And that can be based on in effect a different currency, which is the currency of feelings and something where we don’t have very much personal control over. And then it comes back around to you and what are you trying to get at with AI? Do we need to have some system which is capable of overriding a rational decision which cannot be made because there’s too much conflicting information by effectively an emotional judgmental decision that just says do this and see what happens? That’s what consciousness is really doing in my view.
So the question to me is if biochemistry is an algorithm, how difficult is it to create a software system that runs the human body, which I think is incorrect? I think that is going to take so long, I mean, that’s going to be centuries from now to be able to reconstruct a human. Now what I would venture to say, to get some of the magic of a human being, what we’re saying with the emotions and the interactions and like a dog makes a smile and joyful and all those kinds of things, that will come much sooner. But that doesn’t require us to reverse engineer the algorithm of biochemistry.
What defines the head, what defines the immune system, what defines the brain, and so on? That really is written in a language that we’re only just beginning to understand. And frankly biologists, most biologists are still very reluctant to even get themselves tangled up in questions like electrical fields influencing development. It seems like mumbo jumbo to a lot of biologists and it should not be because this is the 21st century biology. This is where it’s going, but we’re not going to reverse engineer a human being or the mind or any of these subsystems until we understand how this developmental processes work, how electricity and biology really works, and if it is linked with feelings or with consciousness and so on. In the meantime, we have to try, but I think that’s where the answer lies.
And there’s a much greater membrane potential and it’s formed in, very often parallel Christi, which are capable of reinforcing a field and generating fields over longer distances. And nobody knows if that plays a role in consciousness or not. There’s reasons to argue that it could, but frankly, we simply do not know and it’s not taken into consideration. You look at the structure of the mitochondrial membranes in the brains of simple things like Drosophila, the fruit fly, and they have amazing structures. You can see lots of little rectangular things all lined up in amazing patterns. What are they doing? Why are they like that? We haven’t the first clue.
So by the time it’s fully emerged, it’s already got its shape. And that shape depended on the immediate environment that it was emerging into one letter, one amino acid at a time. And I don’t think that the field was looking at it that way. And if that’s correct, then that’s very characteristic of science, which is to say it asks very often the wrong question and then does really amazingly sophisticated analyses on something having never thought to actually think, well, what is biology doing? And biology is giving you a charged electrical environment that forces you to be this way. Now did DeepMind come up through patterns with some answer that was like that? I’ve got absolutely no idea. It ought to be possible to deduce that from the shapes of proteins. It would require much greater skill than the human mind has. But the human mind is capable of saying, “Well, hang on, let’s look at this exit tunnel and try and work out what shape is this protein going to take.” And we can figure that out.
So you effectively scan the entire genome for any single nucleotide polymorphisms, which is to say a single letter change in one place that has a higher association of being linked with a particular disease or not. And you can come out with thousands of these things across the genome. And if you add them all up and try and say, “Well, so do they add up to explain the known genetic risk of this disease?” And the known genetic risk often comes from twin studies, and you can say that if this twin gets epilepsy, there’s a 40 or 50% risk that the other twin, identical twin, will also get epilepsy. Therefore, the genetic factor is about 50%, and so the gene similarities that you see should account for 50% of that known risk.
Very often, it accounts for less than a 10th of the known risk. And there’s two possible explanations, and there’s one which people tend to do, which is to say, “Ah, well, we don’t have enough statistical power. Maybe there’s a million. We’ve only found a 1,000 of them, but if we find the other million, they’re weakly related, but there’s a huge number of them, and so we’ll account for that whole risk.” Maybe there’s a billion of them, [inaudible 02:12:10]. So that’s one way. The other way is to say, “Well, hang on a minute. You’re missing a system here. That system is the mitochondrial DNA,” which people tend to dismiss, because it’s small and it doesn’t change very much.
But a few single letter changes in that mitochondrial DNA, it controls some really basic processes. It controls not only all the energy that we need to live, and to move around, and do everything we do, but also biosynthesis, to make the new building blocks, to make new cells. And cancer cells very often take over the mitochondria and rewire them, so that instead of using them for making energy, they’re effectively using them as precursors for the building blocks, for biosynthesis. You need to make new amino acids, new nucleotides for DNA. You want to make new lipids to make your membranes and so on. So they kind of rewire metabolism.
Now, the problem is that we’ve got all these interactions between mitochondrial DNA and the genes in the nucleus that are overlooked completely, because people literally throw away the mitochondrial genes, and we can see in fruit flies that they interact and produce big differences in risk. So you can set AI onto this question of exactly how many of these base changes there are, and that’s just one possible solution, that maybe there are a million of them and it does account for the greater part of the risk, or the other one is they aren’t. It’s just not there, that actually the risk lies in something you weren’t even looking at. And this is where human intuition is very important, and there’s this feeling that, “Well, I’m working on this, and I think it’s important, and I’m bloody minded about it.” And in the end, some people are right. It turns out that it was important. Can you get AI to do that, to be bloody minded?
But some of the most enjoyable human aspects is finding a new story that goes to an unexpected place. And again, these are all aspects of what being human means to me. And maybe these are all things that AI figures out for itself, or maybe they’re just aspects… But I just have the feeling sometimes that the people who are trying to understand what we are like, if we wish to craft an AI system which is somehow human-like, that we don’t have a firm enough grasp of what humans really are like, in terms of how we are built,
So he refused, as a typical human, refused to give the system sort of its due, because he came up with a lot of things that a lot of people are extremely impressed by, not just the sheer calculation, but the brilliance of play. So one of the things that it does in really interesting ways is it sacrifices pieces. So in chess, that means you basically take a few steps back in order to take a step forward. You give away pieces for some future reward. And that, for us humans, is where art is in chess. You take big risks that, for us humans, those risks are especially painful, because you have a fog of uncertainty before you. So to take a risk now based on intuition of, “I think this is the right risk to take, but there’s so many possibilities,” that that’s where it takes guts. That’s where art is, that’s that danger.
And then, AlphaZero takes those same kind of risks, and does them even greater degree, but of course, it does it from where you could easily reduce down to a cold calculation over patterns. But boy, when you see the final result, it sure looks like the same kind of magic that we see, and creativity, when we see creative play on the chess board. But the chess board is very limited, and the question is, as we get better and better, can we do that same kind of creativity in mathematics, in programming, and then eventually in biology, psychology, and expand into more and more complex systems?
And it’s amazing. You can run at astonishing speed down a hillside, with no idea how you did it at all. And then, you panic and you think, “I’m going to break my leg if I keep doing this. I’ve got to think about where I’m going to put my foot.” So you slow down a bit and try to bring this conscious mind in, and then you do, you crash. You cannot think consciously while running downhill. And so it’s amazing how many calculations the mind is able to make.
Now, the problem with playing chess or something, if you were able to make all of those subconscious, forward calculations about what is the likely outcome of this move now in the way that we can by running down a hillside or something, it’s partly about what we have adapted to do. It’s partly about the reality of the world that we’re in. Running fast downhill is something that we better be bloody good at, otherwise we’re going to be eaten. Whereas, trying to calculate multiple, multiple moves into the future is not something we’ve ever been called on to do. Two or three, four moves into the future is quite enough for most of us, most of the time.
So from the first appearance of oxygen in the Great Oxidation Event to enough for animals to respire was close to 2 billion years. Why so long? It seems to be planetary factors. It seems to be geology, as much as anything else, and we don’t really know what was going on. So the idea that there’s a kind of an inevitable march towards complexity and sentient life I don’t think is right. Not to say it’s not going to happen, but I think it’s not going to happen often.
To me, there’s a beautiful paradox here. Plants, and animals, and fungi all have exactly the same type of cell, but they all have really different ways of living. So a plant cell is photosynthetic, they started out as algae in the oceans and so on. So think of algal bloom, single-cell things. The basic cell structure that it’s built from is exactly the same, with a couple of small differences. It’s got chloroplasts as well, it’s got a vacuole, it’s got a cell wall, but that’s about it. Pretty much everything else is exactly the same in a plant cell and an animal cell. And yet, the ways of life are completely different. So this cell structure did not evolve in response to different ways of life, different environments. I’m in the ocean doing photosynthesis, I’m on land running around as part of an animal, I’m a fungus in a soil, spinning out long kind of shoots into whatever it may be, mycelium.
So they all have the same underlying cell structure. Why? Almost certainly, it was driven by adaptation to the internal environment, of having these pesky endosymbionts that forced all kinds of change on the host cell. Now, in one way, you could see that as a really good thing, because it may be that there’s some inevitability to this process. It’s as soon as you’ve got endosymbionts, you’re more or less bound to go in that direction. Or, it could be that there’s a huge fluke about it, and it’s almost certain to go wrong in just about every case possible, that the conflict will lead to, effectively, war, leading to death and extinction, and it simply doesn’t work out. So maybe it happened millions of times and it went wrong every time, or maybe it only happened once, and it worked out because it was inevitable. And actually, we simply do not know enough now to say which of those two possibilities is true, but both of them are a bit grim.
The other way to see that question, though, would be to say, “Well, actually the whole beginnings of life lie in deterministic chemistry and thermodynamics, starting with the most likely abundant materials, CO₂, and water, and wet, rocky planet,” and Mars was wet and rocky at the beginning and will, I won’t say inevitably, but potentially almost inevitably come up with a genetic code which is not very far away from the genetic code that we already have. So we see subtle differences in the genetic code, what does it mean? It could be very difficult to interpret.
So that kind of says that the reason that it only happened once is probably because it’s difficult, because the wiring is difficult. But then, it happened at least 2.2 billion years ago, right before the GOE, maybe as long as 3 billion years ago, when some people say there are whiffs of oxygen, there’s just kind of traces in the fossil, in the geochemical record that say maybe there was a bit of oxygen then. That’s really disputed. Some people say it goes all the way back 4 billion years ago, and that it was the common ancestor of life on Earth was photosynthetic. So immediately, you’ve got groups of people who disagree over a 2 billion-year period of time about when it started.
But let’s take the latest date when it’s unequivocal. That’s 2.2 billion years ago, through to around about the time of the Cambrian explosion, when oxygen levels definitely got close to modern levels, which was around about 550 million years ago. So we’ve gone more than one and a half billion years, where the Earth was in stasis. Nothing much changed. It’s known as the Boring Billion, in fact. Probably, stuff was… That was when Eukaryotes arose somewhere in there, but it’s… So this idea that the world is constantly changing, that we’re constantly evolving, that we’re moving up some ramp, it’s a very human idea, but in reality, there are kind of tipping points to a new stable equilibrium, where the cells that are producing oxygen are precisely counterbalanced by the cells that are consuming that oxygen, which is why it’s 21% now and has been that way for hundreds of millions of years. We have a very precise balance.
You go through a tipping point, and you don’t know where the next stable state’s going to be, but it can be a long way from here. And so if we change the world with global warming, there will be a tipping point. Question is where, and when, and what’s the next stable state? It may be uninhabitable to us. It’ll be habitable to life, for sure, but there may be something like the Permian extinction, where 95% of species go extinct, and there’s a 5-to-10 million year gap, and then life recovers, but without humans.
But the issue is, I mean, what the data is showing, we can track roughly how oxygen was going into the atmosphere from carbon isotopes. So there’s two main isotopes of carbon that we need to think about here. One is carbon-12, 99% of carbon is carbon-12, and then 1% of carbon is carbon-13, which is a stable isotope. And then, there’s carbon-14, which is a trivial radioactive, it’s trivial amount. So carbon-13 is 1%, and life and enzymes, generally, you can think of carbon atoms as little balls bouncing around, ping-pong balls bouncing around. Carbon-12 moves a little bit faster than carbon-13.
You can work out historically how much oxygen there must’ve been in the atmosphere by how much carbon was being buried. You think, well, how can we possibly know how much carbon was being buried? The answer is, well, if you’re burying carbon-12, what you’re leaving behind is more Carbon-13 in the oceans, and that precipitates out into limestone. You can look at limestones over these ages and work out what’s the Carbon-13 signal. That gives you a feedback on what the oxygen content.
Right before the Cambrian explosion, there was what’s called a negative isotope anomaly excursion, which is basically the carbon-13 goes down by a massive amount and then back up again 10 million years later. What that seems to be saying is the amount of carbon-12 in the oceans was disappearing, which is to say it was being oxidized. If it’s being oxidized, it’s consuming oxygen and that should … A big carbon-13 signal says the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13 is really going down, which means there’s much more carbon-12 being taken out and being oxidized.
Sorry, this is getting too complex, but-
The assumption and this is completely wrong, this assumption is then that evolution works really slowly and that you need billions of years to affect some small change and then another billion years to do something. It’s completely wrong. Evolution gets stuck in a stasis and it stays that way for tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years. Stephen J. Gould used to argue this, he called it punctuated equilibrium, but he was doing it to do with animals and to do with the last 500 million years or so where it’s much less obvious than if you think about the entire planetary history. Then you realize that the first 2 billion years was bacteria only. You have the origin of life, 2 billion years of just bacteria, oxygenic, photosynthesis arising here. Then you have a global catastrophe, snowball Earths, and great oxidation event, and then another billion years of nothing happening, and then some period of upheavals and then another snowball Earth. Then suddenly you see the Cambrian explosion.
This is long periods of stasis where the world is in a stable state and is not geared towards increasing complexity. It’s just everything is in balance. Only when you have a catastrophic level of global level problem, like of snowball Earth, it forces everything out of balance and there’s a tipping point and you end up somewhere else. Now, the idea that evolution is slow is wrong. It can be incredibly fast. I mentioned earlier on that in theory it would take half a million years to invent an eye, for example, from a light sensitive spot. It doesn’t take long to convert one kind of tube into a tube with nobbles on it into a tube with arms on it, and then multiple arms, and then one end is a head with it starts out as a swelling. It’s not difficult intellectually to understand how these things can happen.
It boggles the mind that it can happen so quickly, but we’re used to human time scales. What we need to talk about is generations of things that live for a year in the ocean, and then a million years is a million generations. The amount of change that you can do can affect in that period of time is enormous. We’re dealing with large populations of things where selection is sensitive to pretty small changes. Again, as soon as you throw in the competition of predators and prey and you’re ramping up the scale of evolution, it’s not very surprising that it happens very quickly when the environment allows it to happen.
I don’t think there’s a big mystery. There’s lots of details that need to be filled in. The big mystery in biology is consciousness.
But I think most people will accept if faced with that, that that’s what it is. All of this probability though of complex life. In one way, I think why it matters is that my expectation I suppose is that we will be over the next 100 years or so, if we survive it all, that AI will increasingly dominate. Pretty much anything that we put out into space looking for the universe, for what’s out there will be AI. It won’t be us, we won’t be doing that, or when we do, it will be on a much more limited scale. I suppose the same would apply to any alien civilization.
Perhaps rather than looking for signs of life out there, we should be looking for AI out there, but then we face the problem that I don’t see how a planet is going to give rise directly to AI. I can see how a planet can give rise directly to organic life, and if the principles that govern the evolution of life on Earth apply to other planets as well. I think a lot of them would, then the likelihood of ending up with a human-like civilization capable of giving rise to AI in the first place is massively limited. Once you’ve done it once, perhaps it takes over the universe and maybe there’s no issue, but it seems to me that the two are necessarily linked, that you’re not going to just turn a sterile planet into an AI life form without the intermediary of the organics first.
I think the chances are pretty limited and the chances of us surviving are pretty limited too. The way we’re going on at the moment, the likelihood of us not making ourselves extinct within the next few 100 years, possibly within the next 50 or 100 years seems quite small. I hope we can do better than that. Maybe the only thing that will survive from humanity will be AI and maybe AI once it exists, and once it’s capable of effectively copying itself and cutting humans out of the loop, then maybe that will take over the universe.
Do you think aliens have consciousness?
It’s a novel, but I felt enormously challenged by that novel because it hadn’t occurred to me how limited my thinking was, how narrow-minded I was being. Here was a great physicist with a completely different conception of what life be. Since then, I’ve seen him attacked in various ways. I’m reluctant to say the attacks make more sense to me than the original story, which is to say even in terms of information processing, if you’re on that scale and there’s a limit of the speed of how quickly can something think, if you’re needing to broadcast across the solar system, it is going to be slow.
It’s not going to hold a conversation with you on the timelines that Fred Hoyle was imagining, or at least not by any easy way of doing it, assuming that the speed of light is a limit. Then again, you really can’t. This is something Richard Dawkins argued long ago and I do think he’s right. There is no other way to generate this level of complexity than natural selection. Nothing else can do it. You need populations and you need selection in populations and an isolated interstellar cloud. Again, there’s unlimited time and maybe there’s no problems with distance, but you need to have a certain frequency of generational time to generate a serious level of complexity. I just have a feeling it’s never going to work.
That can work and we know it happens in biology. If this nucleotide, for example, catalyzes CO₂ fixation, then you’re going to increase the rate of flux through the whole system, and you’re going to effectively steepen the driving force to make more nucleotides. This can be inherited because there are forms of membrane heredity that you can have and there are effectively, if a cell divides in two and it’s got a lot of stuff inside it and that stuff is basically bound as a network which is capable of regenerating itself, then it will inevitably regenerate itself.
You can develop greater complexity, but everything that I’ve said depends on the underlying rules of thermodynamics. There is no evolvability about that. It’s simply an inevitable outcome of your starting point, assuming that you’re able to increase the driving force through the system. You will generate more of the same, you’ll expand on what you can do, but you’ll never get anything different than that. It’s only when you introduce information into that as a gene, as a small stretch of RNA, which can be random stretch, then you get real evolvability. Then you get biology as we know it, but you’ll also have selection as we know it.
You open Transformers with “From space, it looks gray and crystalline, obliterating the blue-green colors of the living Earth. It is crisscrossed by regular patterns and convergence striations. There’s a central amorphous density where these scratches seem lighter. This ‘growth’ does not look alive, although it has extended out along some lines and there is something grasping and parasitic about it. Across the globe, there are thousands of them varying in shape and detail, but all of them, gray, angular, inorganic, spreading. Yet at night they light up, glowing up the dark sky, suddenly beautiful. Perhaps these cankers on the landscape are in some sense living. There’s a controlled flow of energy. There must be information and some form of metabolism, some turnover of materials. Are they alive? No, of course not. They are cities.”
Is there some sense that cities are living beings? You think aliens would think of them as living beings?
In that sense, they’re quite biological. There was a plan after the Great Fire of London, Christopher Wren was making plans not only for St. Paul’s Cathedral, but also to rebuild in large Parisian-type boulevards, a large part of the area of central London that was burnt. It never happened because they didn’t have enough money I think, but it’s interesting what was in the plan. There were all these boulevards, but there were no pubs and no coffee houses or anything like that. The reality was London just grew up in a set of jumbled streets.
It was the coffee houses and the pubs where all the business of the City of London was being done. That was where the real life of the city was. No one had planned it. The whole thing was unplanned and works much better that way. In that sense, the cell is completely unplanned. It’s not controlled by the genes in the nucleus in the way that we might like to think that it is, but it’s an evolved entity that has the same flux, the same animation, the same life. I think it’s a beautiful analogy, but I wouldn’t get too stuck with it as a metaphor.
You write in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Ford Prefect spends 15 years researching his revision to the Guide’s entry on the Earth, which originally read, “Harmless,” by the way, I would also as a side question, I would like to ask you what would be your summary of what Earth is.
But you write, “His long essay on the subject is edited down by the guide to read “Mostly Harmless.” I suspect that too many new editions suffer similar fate, if not through absurd editing decisions, at least through a lack of meaningful change in content. As it happens, nearly 15 years have passed since the first edition of Power, Sex, Suicide was published, and I am resisting the temptation to make any lame revisions. Some say that even Darwin lessened the power of his arguments in the Origin of species through his multiple revisions in which he dealt with criticisms and sometimes shifted his views in the wrong direction. I prefer my original to speak for itself even if it turns out to be wrong.”
Let me ask the question about writing, both your students in the academic setting, but also writing some of the most brilliant writings on science and humanity I’ve ever read. What’s the process of writing? How do you advise other humans? If you were to talk to young Darwin or the young you and just young anybody and give advice about how to write and how to write well about these big topics, what would you say?
So trying to ask the questions that I would’ve been asking myself at the age of 15, 16 when I was really hungry to know about the world and didn’t know very much about it and wanted to go to the edge of what we know but be helped to get there. I don’t want too much terminology. And so I want someone to keep a clean eye on what the question is. Beyond that, I’ve wondered a lot about who am I writing for? And that was in the end, the only answer I had was myself at the age of 15 or 16. Because even if you just don’t know who’s reading it, but also where are they reading it? Are they reading it in the bath or in bed or on the metro or are they listening to an audiobook? Do you want to have a recapitulation every few pages because you read three pages at a time?
Or are you really irritated by that? You’re going to get criticism from people who are irritated by what you’re doing and you don’t know who they are or what you’re going to do that’s going to irritate people. And in the end, all you can do is just try and please yourself. And that means what are these big, fun, fascinating, big questions, and what do we know about it? And can I convey that? And I kind of learned in trying to write, first of all, say what we know. And I was shocked in the first couple of books how often I came up quickly against all the stuff we don’t know.
And if you’re trying to… I realized later on in supervising various physicists and mathematicians who are PhD students and I know their math is way beyond what I can do. But the process of trying to work out what are we actually going to model here, what’s going into this equation? It’s a very similar one to writing, what am I going to put on a page? What’s the simplest possible way I can encapsulate this idea so that I now have it as a unit that I can kind of see how it interacts with the other units? And you realize that, well, if this is like that and this is like this, then that can’t be true.
So you end up navigating your own path through this landscape and that can be thrilling because you don’t know where it’s going. And I’d like to think that that’s one of the reasons my books have worked for people because this sense of thrilling adventure ride, I don’t know where it’s going either.
And I think the bigger your ego grows, the more you start to take yourself seriously, the less you’re able to enjoy that.
Then looking at the role of China and this whole thing with Russia and growing influence of Africa and the weird dynamics of Europe and then America falling apart through the political division, fueled by recommender systems through Twitter and Facebook. The whole beautiful mess is just fun. And I think there’s a lot of incredible engineers, incredible scientists, incredible human beings, that while everyone is bickering and so on online for the fun of it, on the weekends, they’re actually trying to build solutions. And those are the people that will create something beautiful. At least that’s the process of evolution. It all started with a Chuck Norris single cell organism that went out from the vents and was the parent to all of us. And for that guy or lady or both, I guess, is a big thank you. And I can’t wait to what happens next. And I’m glad there’s incredible humans writing and studying it like you are. Nick, it’s a huge honor that you would talk to me.
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 1:09 – Origin of life
- 14:56 – Panspermia
- 20:30 – What is life?
- 33:44 – Photosynthesis
- 37:19 – Prokaryotic vs eukaryotic cells
- 47:20 – Sex
- 55:03 – DNA
- 1:02:15 – Violence
- 1:12:50 – Human evolution
- 1:18:45 – Neanderthals
- 1:22:18 – Sensory inputs
- 1:33:08 – Consciousness
- 2:04:41 – AI and biology
- 2:34:00 – Evolution
- 2:54:32 – Fermi paradox
- 3:07:52 – Cities
- 3:15:39 – Depression
- 3:18:14 – Writing
- 3:26:13 – Advice for young people
- 3:33:22 – Earth
Introduction
Nick Lane
Well, the source of energy at the origin of life is the reaction between carbon dioxide and hydrogen. And amazingly, most of these reactions are exergonic, which is to say they release energy. If you have hydrogen and CO2, and you put them together in a Falcon tube and you warm it up to, say, 50 degrees centigrade, and you put in a couple of catalysts and you shake it, nothing’s going to happen. But thermodynamically that is less stable. Two gases, hydrogen and CO2, is less stable than cells. What should happen is you get cells coming out. Why doesn’t that happen is because of the kinetic barriers. That’s where you need the spark.
Well, the source of energy at the origin of life is the reaction between carbon dioxide and hydrogen. And amazingly, most of these reactions are exergonic, which is to say they release energy. If you have hydrogen and CO2, and you put them together in a Falcon tube and you warm it up to, say, 50 degrees centigrade, and you put in a couple of catalysts and you shake it, nothing’s going to happen. But thermodynamically that is less stable. Two gases, hydrogen and CO2, is less stable than cells. What should happen is you get cells coming out. Why doesn’t that happen is because of the kinetic barriers. That’s where you need the spark.
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Nick Lane, a biochemist at University College London, and author of some of my favorite books on biology, science, and life ever written, including his two most recent titles, Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death, and The Vital Question: Why Is Life the Way It Is? This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Nick Lane.
The following is a conversation with Nick Lane, a biochemist at University College London, and author of some of my favorite books on biology, science, and life ever written, including his two most recent titles, Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death, and The Vital Question: Why Is Life the Way It Is? This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Nick Lane.
Origin of life
Lex Fridman
Let’s start with perhaps the most mysterious, the most interesting question that we little humans can ask of ourselves. How did life originate on earth?
Let’s start with perhaps the most mysterious, the most interesting question that we little humans can ask of ourselves. How did life originate on earth?
Nick Lane
You could ask anybody working on the subject, and you’ll get a different answer from all of them. They will be pretty passionately held opinions, and they’re opinions grounded in science, but they’re still really at this point, they’re opinions. Because there’s so much stuff to know, that all we can ever do is get a small slice of it, and it’s the context which matters. So, I can give you my answer. My answer is, from a biologist’s point of view, that has been missing from the equation over decades, which is: well, what does life do on earth? Why is it this way? Why is it made of cells? Why is it made of carbon? Why is it powered by electrical charges on membranes? There’s all these interesting questions about cells, that if you then look to see: well, is there an environment on earth, on the early earth 4 billion years ago that kind of matches the requirements of cells?
You could ask anybody working on the subject, and you’ll get a different answer from all of them. They will be pretty passionately held opinions, and they’re opinions grounded in science, but they’re still really at this point, they’re opinions. Because there’s so much stuff to know, that all we can ever do is get a small slice of it, and it’s the context which matters. So, I can give you my answer. My answer is, from a biologist’s point of view, that has been missing from the equation over decades, which is: well, what does life do on earth? Why is it this way? Why is it made of cells? Why is it made of carbon? Why is it powered by electrical charges on membranes? There’s all these interesting questions about cells, that if you then look to see: well, is there an environment on earth, on the early earth 4 billion years ago that kind of matches the requirements of cells?
Well, there is one. There’s a very obvious one. It’s basically created by whenever you have a wet rocky planet, you get these hydrothermal vents, which generate hydrogen gas in bucket loads and electrical charges on kind of cell-like pores that can drive the kind of chemistry that life does. So, it seems so beautiful and so obvious, that I’ve spent the last 10 years or more trying to do experiments. It turns out to be difficult, of course. Everything’s more difficult than you ever thought it was going to be, but it looks, I would say, more true rather than less true over that ten-year period. I think I have to take a step back every now and then and think, “Hang on a minute. Where is this going?” I’m happy it’s going in a sensible direction.
And I think then you have these other interesting dilemmas. I’m often accused of being too focused on life on earth, too kind of narrow-minded and inward looking, you might say. I’m talking about carbon, I’m talking about cells. And maybe you or plenty of people can say to me, “Oh, yeah, but life can be anything. I have no imagination.” And maybe they’re right, but unless we can say why life here is this way, and if those reasons are fundamental reasons or if they’re just trivial reasons, then we can’t answer that question. So, I think they’re fundamental reasons, and I think we need to worry about them.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, there might be some deep truth to the puzzle here on earth that will resonate with other puzzles elsewhere that will… solving this particular puzzle will give us that deeper truth. So, what do this puzzle… You said vents, hydrogen, wet. So, chemically, what is the potion here? How important is oxygen? You wrote a book about this.
Yeah, there might be some deep truth to the puzzle here on earth that will resonate with other puzzles elsewhere that will… solving this particular puzzle will give us that deeper truth. So, what do this puzzle… You said vents, hydrogen, wet. So, chemically, what is the potion here? How important is oxygen? You wrote a book about this.
Nick Lane
Yeah. And I actually just came straight here from a conference where I was chairing a session on whether oxygen matters or not in the history of life. Of course, it matters, but it matters most to the origin of life to be not there. As I see it, we have this… Life is made of carbon basically, primarily, organic molecules with carbon-carbon bonds. And the building block, the Lego brick that we take out of the air or take out of the oceans is carbon dioxide. And to turn carbon dioxide into organic molecules, we need to strap on hydrogen. And so we need… And this is basically what life is doing, it’s hydrogenating carbon dioxide. It’s taking the hydrogen that bubbles out of the earth in these hydrothermal vents, and it sticks it on CO2. And it’s kind of really as simple as that. And actually thermodynamically, the thing that I find most troubling is that if you do these experiments in the lab, the molecules you get are exactly the molecules that we see at the heart of biochemistry and the heart of life.
Yeah. And I actually just came straight here from a conference where I was chairing a session on whether oxygen matters or not in the history of life. Of course, it matters, but it matters most to the origin of life to be not there. As I see it, we have this… Life is made of carbon basically, primarily, organic molecules with carbon-carbon bonds. And the building block, the Lego brick that we take out of the air or take out of the oceans is carbon dioxide. And to turn carbon dioxide into organic molecules, we need to strap on hydrogen. And so we need… And this is basically what life is doing, it’s hydrogenating carbon dioxide. It’s taking the hydrogen that bubbles out of the earth in these hydrothermal vents, and it sticks it on CO2. And it’s kind of really as simple as that. And actually thermodynamically, the thing that I find most troubling is that if you do these experiments in the lab, the molecules you get are exactly the molecules that we see at the heart of biochemistry and the heart of life.
Lex Fridman
Is there something to be said about the earliest origins of that little potion, that chemical process? What really is the spark there?
Is there something to be said about the earliest origins of that little potion, that chemical process? What really is the spark there?
Nick Lane
There isn’t a spark. There is a continuous chemical reaction. And there is kind of a spark, but it’s a continuous electrical charge, which helps drive that reaction.
There isn’t a spark. There is a continuous chemical reaction. And there is kind of a spark, but it’s a continuous electrical charge, which helps drive that reaction.
Lex Fridman
So, literally spark.
So, literally spark.
Nick Lane
Well, the charge at least. But yes, a spark in that sense is… We tend to think in terms of Frankenstein. We tend to think in terms of electricity, and one moment you zap something and it comes alive. And what does that really mean? It’s come alive. And now what’s sustaining it? Well, we are sustained by oxygen, by this continuous chemical reaction. And if you put a plastic bag on your head, then you’ve got a minute or something before it’s all over.
Well, the charge at least. But yes, a spark in that sense is… We tend to think in terms of Frankenstein. We tend to think in terms of electricity, and one moment you zap something and it comes alive. And what does that really mean? It’s come alive. And now what’s sustaining it? Well, we are sustained by oxygen, by this continuous chemical reaction. And if you put a plastic bag on your head, then you’ve got a minute or something before it’s all over.
Lex Fridman
So, it’s some way of being able to leverage a source of energy?
So, it’s some way of being able to leverage a source of energy?
Nick Lane
Well, the source of energy at the origin of life is the reaction between carbon dioxide and hydrogen. And amazingly, most of these reactions are exergonic, which is to say they release energy. If you have hydrogen and CO2 and you put them together in a Falcon tube and you warm it up to say 50 degrees centigrade, and you put in a couple of catalysts and you shake it, nothing’s going to happen. But thermodynamically that is less stable, two gases, hydrogen and CO2, is less stable than cells. What should happen is you get cells coming out. So, why doesn’t that happen? It’s because of the kinetic barriers. That’s where you need the spark.
Well, the source of energy at the origin of life is the reaction between carbon dioxide and hydrogen. And amazingly, most of these reactions are exergonic, which is to say they release energy. If you have hydrogen and CO2 and you put them together in a Falcon tube and you warm it up to say 50 degrees centigrade, and you put in a couple of catalysts and you shake it, nothing’s going to happen. But thermodynamically that is less stable, two gases, hydrogen and CO2, is less stable than cells. What should happen is you get cells coming out. So, why doesn’t that happen? It’s because of the kinetic barriers. That’s where you need the spark.
Lex Fridman
Is it possible that life originated multiple times on earth? The way you describe it, you make it sound so easy.
Is it possible that life originated multiple times on earth? The way you describe it, you make it sound so easy.
Nick Lane
There’s a long distance to go from those first bits of prebiotic chemistry to, say, molecular machines, like ribosomes.
There’s a long distance to go from those first bits of prebiotic chemistry to, say, molecular machines, like ribosomes.
Lex Fridman
Is that the first thing that you would say is life? If I introduce the two of you at a party, you would say that’s a living thing?
Is that the first thing that you would say is life? If I introduce the two of you at a party, you would say that’s a living thing?
Nick Lane
I would say as soon as we introduce genes information into systems that are growing anyway, so I would talk about growing protocells, as soon as we introduce even random bits of information into there. I’m thinking about RNA molecules, for example. It doesn’t have to have any information in it. It can be completely random sequence, but if it’s introduced into a system which is in any case growing and doubling itself and reproducing itself, then any changes in that sequence that allow it to do so better or worse are now selected by perfectly normal natural selection.
I would say as soon as we introduce genes information into systems that are growing anyway, so I would talk about growing protocells, as soon as we introduce even random bits of information into there. I’m thinking about RNA molecules, for example. It doesn’t have to have any information in it. It can be completely random sequence, but if it’s introduced into a system which is in any case growing and doubling itself and reproducing itself, then any changes in that sequence that allow it to do so better or worse are now selected by perfectly normal natural selection.
Lex Fridman
But it’s a system-
But it’s a system-
Nick Lane
So, that’s when it becomes alive to my mind.
So, that’s when it becomes alive to my mind.
Lex Fridman
… that’s encompassed into an object, that keeps information, and evolves that information over time or changes that information over time.
… that’s encompassed into an object, that keeps information, and evolves that information over time or changes that information over time.
Nick Lane
Yes, exactly.
Yes, exactly.
Lex Fridman
In response to the enzymes.
In response to the enzymes.
Nick Lane
So, it’s always part of a cell system from the very beginning.
So, it’s always part of a cell system from the very beginning.
Lex Fridman
So, is your sense that it started only once because it’s difficult or is it possible it started in multiple occasions on earth?
So, is your sense that it started only once because it’s difficult or is it possible it started in multiple occasions on earth?
Nick Lane
It’s possible it started multiple occasions. There’s two provisos to that. One of them is oxygen makes it impossible really for life to start. So, as soon as we’ve got oxygen in the atmosphere, then life isn’t going to keep starting over. So, I often get asked by people, “Why can’t we have life starting? If it’s so easy, why can’t life start in these vents now?” And the answer is, if you want hydrogen to react with CO2 and there’s oxygen there, hydrogen reacts with oxygen instead. You get an explosive reaction that way. It’s rocket fuel. So, it’s never going to happen. But for the origin of life earlier than that, all we know is that there’s a single common ancestor for all of life. There could have been multiple origins, and they all just disappeared.
It’s possible it started multiple occasions. There’s two provisos to that. One of them is oxygen makes it impossible really for life to start. So, as soon as we’ve got oxygen in the atmosphere, then life isn’t going to keep starting over. So, I often get asked by people, “Why can’t we have life starting? If it’s so easy, why can’t life start in these vents now?” And the answer is, if you want hydrogen to react with CO2 and there’s oxygen there, hydrogen reacts with oxygen instead. You get an explosive reaction that way. It’s rocket fuel. So, it’s never going to happen. But for the origin of life earlier than that, all we know is that there’s a single common ancestor for all of life. There could have been multiple origins, and they all just disappeared.
But there’s a very interesting deep split in life between bacteria and what are called archaea, which look just the same as bacteria. And they’re not quite as diverse, but nearly, and they are very different in their biochemistry. And so any explanation for the origin of life has to account, as well, for why they’re so different and yet so similar. And that makes me think that life probably did arise only once.
Lex Fridman
Can you describe the difference that’s interesting there, how they’re similar, how they’re different?
Can you describe the difference that’s interesting there, how they’re similar, how they’re different?
Nick Lane
Well, they’re different in their membranes primarily. They’re different in things like DNA replication. They use completely different enzymes, and the genes behind it for replicating DNA.
Well, they’re different in their membranes primarily. They’re different in things like DNA replication. They use completely different enzymes, and the genes behind it for replicating DNA.
Lex Fridman
So, they both have membranes, both have DNA replication.
So, they both have membranes, both have DNA replication.
Nick Lane
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
The process of that is different.
The process of that is different.
Nick Lane
They both have DNA. The genetic code is identical in them both. The way in which it’s transcribed into RNA, into the copy of a gene, and the way that that’s then translated into a protein, that’s all basically the same in both these groups, so they clearly share a common ancestor. It’s just that they’re different in fundamental ways as well. And if you think about, “Well, what kind of processes could drive that divergence very early on?” I can think about it in terms of membranes, in terms of the electrical charges on membranes, and it’s that makes me think that there were probably many unsuccessful attempts and only one really successful attempt.
They both have DNA. The genetic code is identical in them both. The way in which it’s transcribed into RNA, into the copy of a gene, and the way that that’s then translated into a protein, that’s all basically the same in both these groups, so they clearly share a common ancestor. It’s just that they’re different in fundamental ways as well. And if you think about, “Well, what kind of processes could drive that divergence very early on?” I can think about it in terms of membranes, in terms of the electrical charges on membranes, and it’s that makes me think that there were probably many unsuccessful attempts and only one really successful attempt.
Lex Fridman
Can you explain why that divergence makes you think there’s one common ancestor? Can you describe that intuition? I’m a little bit unclear about why the leap from the divergence means there’s one. Do you mean the divergence indicates that there was a big invention at that time from one source?
Can you explain why that divergence makes you think there’s one common ancestor? Can you describe that intuition? I’m a little bit unclear about why the leap from the divergence means there’s one. Do you mean the divergence indicates that there was a big invention at that time from one source?
Nick Lane
Yes. As I imagine it, you have a common ancestor living in a hydrothermal vent. Let’s say there are millions of vents and millions of potential common ancestors living in all of those vents, but only one of them makes it out first. Then you could imagine that that cell is then going to take over the world and wipe out everything else. And so what you would see would be a single common ancestor for all of life, but with lots of different vent systems, all vying to create the first life forms, you might say.
Yes. As I imagine it, you have a common ancestor living in a hydrothermal vent. Let’s say there are millions of vents and millions of potential common ancestors living in all of those vents, but only one of them makes it out first. Then you could imagine that that cell is then going to take over the world and wipe out everything else. And so what you would see would be a single common ancestor for all of life, but with lots of different vent systems, all vying to create the first life forms, you might say.
Lex Fridman
So, this thing is a cell, a single-cell organism?
So, this thing is a cell, a single-cell organism?
Nick Lane
Well, we’re always talking about populations of cells, but yes, these are single-celled organisms.
Well, we’re always talking about populations of cells, but yes, these are single-celled organisms.
Lex Fridman
But the fundamental life form is a single cell. So, they’re always together, but they’re alone together. There’s a machinery in each one individual component, that if left by itself would still work, right?
But the fundamental life form is a single cell. So, they’re always together, but they’re alone together. There’s a machinery in each one individual component, that if left by itself would still work, right?
Nick Lane
Yes, yes, yes. It’s the unit of selection is a single cell. But selection operates over generations and changes over generations in populations of cells, so it would be impossible to say that a cell is the unit of selection in the sense that unless you have a population, you can’t evolve, you can’t change.
Yes, yes, yes. It’s the unit of selection is a single cell. But selection operates over generations and changes over generations in populations of cells, so it would be impossible to say that a cell is the unit of selection in the sense that unless you have a population, you can’t evolve, you can’t change.
Lex Fridman
Right, but there was one Chuck Norris, that’s an American reference, cell that made it out of the vents or the first one?
Right, but there was one Chuck Norris, that’s an American reference, cell that made it out of the vents or the first one?
Nick Lane
So, imagine then that there’s one cell gets out and it takes over the world.
So, imagine then that there’s one cell gets out and it takes over the world.
Lex Fridman
It gets out in the water. It’s floating around.
It gets out in the water. It’s floating around.
Nick Lane
Well, deep in the ocean somewhere. But actually two cells got out. And they appear to have got out from the same vent because they both share the same code and everything else. So unless all… We’ve got a million different common ancestors in all these different vents, so either they all have the same code, and two cells spontaneously emerged from different places, or two different cells, fundamentally different cells, came from the same place. So, either way, what are the constraints that say, “Not just one came out or not half a million came out, but two came out.”? That’s kind of a bit strange. So, how did they come out? Well, they come out because what you’re doing inside a vent is you’re relying on the electrical charges down there to power this reaction between hydrogen and CO2 to make yourself grow.
Well, deep in the ocean somewhere. But actually two cells got out. And they appear to have got out from the same vent because they both share the same code and everything else. So unless all… We’ve got a million different common ancestors in all these different vents, so either they all have the same code, and two cells spontaneously emerged from different places, or two different cells, fundamentally different cells, came from the same place. So, either way, what are the constraints that say, “Not just one came out or not half a million came out, but two came out.”? That’s kind of a bit strange. So, how did they come out? Well, they come out because what you’re doing inside a vent is you’re relying on the electrical charges down there to power this reaction between hydrogen and CO2 to make yourself grow.
And when you leave the vent, you’ve got to do that yourself. You’ve got to power up your own membrane. And so the question is: well, how do you power up your own membrane? And the answer is, well, you need to pump. You need to pump ions to give an electrical charge on the membrane. So, what do the pumps look like? Well, the pumps look different in these two groups. It’s as if they both emerge from a common ancestor, and as soon as you’ve got that ancestor, things move very quickly and divergently. Why does the DNA replication look different? Well, it’s joined to the membrane. The membranes are different. The DNA replication is different because it’s joined to a different kind of membrane. So, there’s interesting… This is detail you may say, but it’s also fundamental because it’s about the two big divergent groups of life on earth that seemed to have diverged really early on.
Lex Fridman
It all started from one organism, and then that organism just start replicating the heck out of itself with some mutation of the DNA. So, there’s a competition through the process of evolution. They’re not trying to beat each other up. They’re just trying to live life.
It all started from one organism, and then that organism just start replicating the heck out of itself with some mutation of the DNA. So, there’s a competition through the process of evolution. They’re not trying to beat each other up. They’re just trying to live life.
Nick Lane
They are just replicators.
They are just replicators.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Well, let’s not minimize their… They’re just trying to chill. They’re trying to relax up in the… But there’s no sense of trying to survive. They’re replicating-
Yeah. Well, let’s not minimize their… They’re just trying to chill. They’re trying to relax up in the… But there’s no sense of trying to survive. They’re replicating-
Nick Lane
There’s no sense in which they’re trying to do anything. They’re just kind of an outgrowth of the earth, you might say.
There’s no sense in which they’re trying to do anything. They’re just kind of an outgrowth of the earth, you might say.
Lex Fridman
Of course, the aliens would describe us humans in that same way.
Of course, the aliens would describe us humans in that same way.
Nick Lane
They might be right.
They might be right.
Lex Fridman
It’s primitive life. It’s just ants that are hairless or mostly hairless.
It’s primitive life. It’s just ants that are hairless or mostly hairless.
Nick Lane
Overgrown ants.
Overgrown ants.
Panspermia
Lex Fridman
Overgrown ants. Okay. What do you think about the idea of panspermia, the theory that life did not originate on earth and was planted here from outer space or pseudo-panspermia, which is like the basic ingredients, the magic that you mentioned was planted here from elsewhere in space?
Overgrown ants. Okay. What do you think about the idea of panspermia, the theory that life did not originate on earth and was planted here from outer space or pseudo-panspermia, which is like the basic ingredients, the magic that you mentioned was planted here from elsewhere in space?
Nick Lane
I don’t find them helpful. That’s not to say they’re wrong. So pseudo-transpermia, the idea that the chemicals, the amino acids, the nucleotides are being delivered from space. Well, we know that happens. It’s unequivocal. They’re delivered on meteorites, comets and so on. So, what do they do next? That’s, to me, the question. Well, what they do is they stock a soup, presumably they land in a pond or in an ocean or wherever they land. And then a best possible case scenario is you end up with a soup of nucleotides and amino acids. And then you have to say, “So now what happens?”
I don’t find them helpful. That’s not to say they’re wrong. So pseudo-transpermia, the idea that the chemicals, the amino acids, the nucleotides are being delivered from space. Well, we know that happens. It’s unequivocal. They’re delivered on meteorites, comets and so on. So, what do they do next? That’s, to me, the question. Well, what they do is they stock a soup, presumably they land in a pond or in an ocean or wherever they land. And then a best possible case scenario is you end up with a soup of nucleotides and amino acids. And then you have to say, “So now what happens?”
And the answer is, “Oh, well, they have to go ‘bloop’ and become alive.” So, how did they do that? You may as well say that a miracle happened. I don’t believe in soup. I think what we have in a vent is a continuous conversion, a continuous growth, a continuous reaction, a continuous converting a flow of molecules into more of yourself, you might say, even if it’s a small bit. So, you’ve got a kind of continuous self-organization and growth from the very beginning. You never have that in a soup.
Lex Fridman
Isn’t the entire universe and living organisms in the universe, isn’t it just soup all the way down? Isn’t it all soup?
Isn’t the entire universe and living organisms in the universe, isn’t it just soup all the way down? Isn’t it all soup?
Nick Lane
No, no, soup almost by definition doesn’t have a structure.
No, no, soup almost by definition doesn’t have a structure.
Lex Fridman
But soup is a collection of ingredients that are randomly [inaudible 00:16:34].
But soup is a collection of ingredients that are randomly [inaudible 00:16:34].
Nick Lane
But they’re not random. We have chemistry going on here. We have membranes forming which are effectively oil-water interactions.
But they’re not random. We have chemistry going on here. We have membranes forming which are effectively oil-water interactions.
Lex Fridman
There’s a process going on. Okay, so it feels like there’s a direction to a… directed process.
There’s a process going on. Okay, so it feels like there’s a direction to a… directed process.
Nick Lane
There are directions to processes, yeah. And if you’re starting with CO2, and you’ve got two reactive fluids being brought together and they react, what are they going to make? Well, they make carboxylic acids, which include the fatty acids that make up the cell membranes. And they form directly into bilayer membranes. They form like soap bubbles. It’s spontaneous organization caused by the nature of the molecules. And those things are capable of growing and are capable, in effect, of being selected. Even before there are genes, we have this. So, we have a lot of order, and that order is coming from thermodynamics. And the thermodynamics is always about increasing the entropy of the universe, but if you have oil and water and they’re separating, you are increasing the entropy of the universe, even though you’ve got some order, which is the soap and the water are not miscible.
There are directions to processes, yeah. And if you’re starting with CO2, and you’ve got two reactive fluids being brought together and they react, what are they going to make? Well, they make carboxylic acids, which include the fatty acids that make up the cell membranes. And they form directly into bilayer membranes. They form like soap bubbles. It’s spontaneous organization caused by the nature of the molecules. And those things are capable of growing and are capable, in effect, of being selected. Even before there are genes, we have this. So, we have a lot of order, and that order is coming from thermodynamics. And the thermodynamics is always about increasing the entropy of the universe, but if you have oil and water and they’re separating, you are increasing the entropy of the universe, even though you’ve got some order, which is the soap and the water are not miscible.
To come back to your first question about panspermia properly, that just pushes the question somewhere else, even if it’s true. Maybe life did start on Earth by panspermia, but so what are the principles that govern the emergence of life on any planet? It’s an assumption that life started here, and it’s an assumption that it started in a hydrothermal vent or it started in a terrestrial geothermal system. The question is: can we work out a testable sequence of events that would lead from one to the other one? And then test it, and see if there’s any truth in it or not. With panspermia, you can’t do any of that.
Lex Fridman
But the fundamental question of panspermia is: do we have the machine here on earth to build life?
But the fundamental question of panspermia is: do we have the machine here on earth to build life?
Nick Lane
Not yet.
Not yet.
Lex Fridman
Is the vents enough? Is oxygen and hydrogen, and whatever the heck else we want, and some source of energy and heat, is that enough to build life?
Is the vents enough? Is oxygen and hydrogen, and whatever the heck else we want, and some source of energy and heat, is that enough to build life?
Nick Lane
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
Well, of course you would say that as a human, but there could be aliens right now chuckling at that idea. Maybe you need some special sauce, special elsewhere sauce. So, your sense is we have everything here.
Well, of course you would say that as a human, but there could be aliens right now chuckling at that idea. Maybe you need some special sauce, special elsewhere sauce. So, your sense is we have everything here.
Nick Lane
This is precisely the question. When I’m talking in schools, I like to start out with the idea of: we can make a time machine. We go back 4 billion years, and we go to these environments that people talk about. We go to a deep sea hydrothermal vent, we go to a kind of Yellowstone Park type place/environment, and we find some slime that looks like we can test it. It’s made of organic molecules. It’s got a structure which is not obviously cells, but is this a stepping stone on the way to life or not? How do we know? Unless we’ve got an intellectual framework that says, “This is a stepping stone, and that’s not a step…” We’d never know. We wouldn’t know which environment to go to, what to look for, how to say this. So, all we can ever hope for, because we’re never going to build that time machine, is to have an intellectual framework that can explain step by step, experiment by experiment, how we go from a sterile inorganic planet to living cells as we know them.
This is precisely the question. When I’m talking in schools, I like to start out with the idea of: we can make a time machine. We go back 4 billion years, and we go to these environments that people talk about. We go to a deep sea hydrothermal vent, we go to a kind of Yellowstone Park type place/environment, and we find some slime that looks like we can test it. It’s made of organic molecules. It’s got a structure which is not obviously cells, but is this a stepping stone on the way to life or not? How do we know? Unless we’ve got an intellectual framework that says, “This is a stepping stone, and that’s not a step…” We’d never know. We wouldn’t know which environment to go to, what to look for, how to say this. So, all we can ever hope for, because we’re never going to build that time machine, is to have an intellectual framework that can explain step by step, experiment by experiment, how we go from a sterile inorganic planet to living cells as we know them.
And in that framework, every time you have a choice, it could be this way or it could be that way, or there’s lots of possible forks down that road, did it have to be that way? Could it have been the other way, and would that have given you life with very different properties? And so if you come up with… It’s a long hypothesis, because as I say, we’re going from really simple prebiotic chemistry all the way through to genes and molecular machines. That’s a long, long pathway. And nobody in the field would agree on the order in which these things happened, which is not a bad thing because it means that you have to go out and do some experiments and try and demonstrate that it’s possible or not possible.
What is life?
Lex Fridman
It’s so freaking amazing that it happened though. It feels like there’s a direction to the thing. Can you try to answer from a framework of: what is life? So, you said there’s some order and yet there’s complexity, so it’s not perfectly ordered, it’s not boring. There’s still some fun in it. And it also feels like the processes have a direction through the selection mechanism. They seem to be building something, always better, always improving. Maybe it’s-
It’s so freaking amazing that it happened though. It feels like there’s a direction to the thing. Can you try to answer from a framework of: what is life? So, you said there’s some order and yet there’s complexity, so it’s not perfectly ordered, it’s not boring. There’s still some fun in it. And it also feels like the processes have a direction through the selection mechanism. They seem to be building something, always better, always improving. Maybe it’s-
Nick Lane
That’s a perception.
That’s a perception.
Lex Fridman
That’s our romanticization of things are always better. Things are getting better. We’d like to believe that.
That’s our romanticization of things are always better. Things are getting better. We’d like to believe that.
Nick Lane
You think about the world from the point of view of bacteria, and bacteria are the first things to emerge from whatever environment they came from, and they dominated the planet very, very quickly, and they haven’t really changed. 4 billion years later they look exactly the same.
You think about the world from the point of view of bacteria, and bacteria are the first things to emerge from whatever environment they came from, and they dominated the planet very, very quickly, and they haven’t really changed. 4 billion years later they look exactly the same.
Lex Fridman
So, about 4 billion years ago, bacteria started to really run the show, and then nothing happened for a while?
So, about 4 billion years ago, bacteria started to really run the show, and then nothing happened for a while?
Nick Lane
Nothing happened for 2 billion years. Then after 2 billion years, we see another single event, origin, if you like, of our own type of cell, the eukaryotic cells, so cells with a nucleus and lots of stuff going on inside. Another singular origin. It only happened once in the history of life on earth. Maybe it happened multiple times, and there’s no evidence everything just disappeared. But we have to at least take it seriously that there’s something that stops bacteria from becoming more complex, because they didn’t. That’s a fact, that they emerged 4 billion years ago, and something happened 2 billion years ago, but the bacteria themselves didn’t change. They remain bacterial. So, there is no necessary trajectory towards great complexity in human beings at the end of it. It’s very easy to imagine that without photosynthesis arising or without eukaryotes arising, that the planet could be full of bacteria and nothing else.
Nothing happened for 2 billion years. Then after 2 billion years, we see another single event, origin, if you like, of our own type of cell, the eukaryotic cells, so cells with a nucleus and lots of stuff going on inside. Another singular origin. It only happened once in the history of life on earth. Maybe it happened multiple times, and there’s no evidence everything just disappeared. But we have to at least take it seriously that there’s something that stops bacteria from becoming more complex, because they didn’t. That’s a fact, that they emerged 4 billion years ago, and something happened 2 billion years ago, but the bacteria themselves didn’t change. They remain bacterial. So, there is no necessary trajectory towards great complexity in human beings at the end of it. It’s very easy to imagine that without photosynthesis arising or without eukaryotes arising, that the planet could be full of bacteria and nothing else.
Lex Fridman
But we’ll get to that, because that’s a brilliant invention, and there’s a few brilliant inventions along the way. But what is life? If you were to show up on earth, but take that time machine, and you said, asking yourself the question, “Is this a stepping stone towards life?” As you step along when you see the early bacteria, how would you know it’s life? And then this is a really important question when you go to other planets and look for life: what is the framework of telling a difference between a rock and a bacteria?
But we’ll get to that, because that’s a brilliant invention, and there’s a few brilliant inventions along the way. But what is life? If you were to show up on earth, but take that time machine, and you said, asking yourself the question, “Is this a stepping stone towards life?” As you step along when you see the early bacteria, how would you know it’s life? And then this is a really important question when you go to other planets and look for life: what is the framework of telling a difference between a rock and a bacteria?
Nick Lane
The question’s kind of both impossible to answer and trivial at the same time. And I don’t like to answer it because I don’t think there is an answer. I think we’re trying to describe-
The question’s kind of both impossible to answer and trivial at the same time. And I don’t like to answer it because I don’t think there is an answer. I think we’re trying to describe-
Lex Fridman
Those are the most fun questions. What do you mean, there’s no answer?
Those are the most fun questions. What do you mean, there’s no answer?
Nick Lane
There is no answer. There’s lot… There are at least 40 or 50 different definitions of life out there, and most of them are, well-
There is no answer. There’s lot… There are at least 40 or 50 different definitions of life out there, and most of them are, well-
Lex Fridman
Not convincing.
Not convincing.
Nick Lane
… obviously bad in one way or another. I can never remember the exact words that people use, but there’s NASA working definition of life, which more or less says, “A self-sustaining system capable of evolution,” or something along those lines. And I immediately have a problem with the words self-sustaining, because it’s sustained by the environment. And I know what they’re getting at. I know what they’re trying to say, but I pick a hole in that. And there’s always wags who say, “But by that definition, a rabbit is not alive. Only a pair of rabbits would be alive because a single rabbit is incapable of copying itself.” There are all kinds of pedantic, silly, but also important objections to any hypothesis.
… obviously bad in one way or another. I can never remember the exact words that people use, but there’s NASA working definition of life, which more or less says, “A self-sustaining system capable of evolution,” or something along those lines. And I immediately have a problem with the words self-sustaining, because it’s sustained by the environment. And I know what they’re getting at. I know what they’re trying to say, but I pick a hole in that. And there’s always wags who say, “But by that definition, a rabbit is not alive. Only a pair of rabbits would be alive because a single rabbit is incapable of copying itself.” There are all kinds of pedantic, silly, but also important objections to any hypothesis.
The real question is: what is… We can argue all day, or people do argue all day about: is a virus alive or not? And it depends on the content. In fact, most biologists could not agree about that. So, then what about a jumping gene, a retro element or something like that? It’s even simpler than a virus, but it’s capable of converting its environment into a copy of itself. And that’s about as close… This is not a definition, but this is a kind of description of life, is that it’s able to parasitize the environment, and that goes for plants as well as animals and bacteria and viruses, to make a relatively exact copy of themselves, informationally exact copy of themselves.
Lex Fridman
By the way, it doesn’t really have to be a copy of itself, it just has to be… you have to create something that’s interesting. The way evolution is, so it is extremely powerful process of evolution, which is basically make a copy of yourself and sometimes mess up a little bit.
By the way, it doesn’t really have to be a copy of itself, it just has to be… you have to create something that’s interesting. The way evolution is, so it is extremely powerful process of evolution, which is basically make a copy of yourself and sometimes mess up a little bit.
Nick Lane
Yes. Absolutely.
Yes. Absolutely.
Lex Fridman
Okay. That seems to work really well. I wonder if it’s possible to-
Okay. That seems to work really well. I wonder if it’s possible to-
Nick Lane
Mess up big time?
Mess up big time?
Lex Fridman
Mess up big time as a standard, as the default.
Mess up big time as a standard, as the default.
Nick Lane
It’s called the hopeful monster, and-
It’s called the hopeful monster, and-
Lex Fridman
It doesn’t work?
It doesn’t work?
Nick Lane
In principle, it can. Actually, it turns out, I would say that this is due a reemergence. There’s some amazing work from Michael Levin. I don’t know if you came across him, but if you haven’t interviewed him, you should interview him.
In principle, it can. Actually, it turns out, I would say that this is due a reemergence. There’s some amazing work from Michael Levin. I don’t know if you came across him, but if you haven’t interviewed him, you should interview him.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, in Boston. I’m talking to him in a few days.
Yeah, in Boston. I’m talking to him in a few days.
Nick Lane
Oh, fantastic.
Oh, fantastic.
Lex Fridman
So I mentioned off… There’s two people that, if I may mention. Andrej Karpathy is a friend who’s really admired in the AI community, said, “You absolutely must talk to Michael and to Nick.” So, of course I’m a huge fan of yours, so I’m really fortunate that we can actually make this happen. Anyway, you were saying.
So I mentioned off… There’s two people that, if I may mention. Andrej Karpathy is a friend who’s really admired in the AI community, said, “You absolutely must talk to Michael and to Nick.” So, of course I’m a huge fan of yours, so I’m really fortunate that we can actually make this happen. Anyway, you were saying.
Nick Lane
Well, Michael Levin is doing amazing work basically about the way in which electrical fields control development. And he’s done some work with Planarian worms or flatworms, where he’ll tell you all about this, so I won’t say any more than the minimum, but basically you can cut their head off and they’ll redevelop a new head. But the head that they develop depends. If you knock out just one iron pump in a membrane, so you change the electrical circuitry just a little bit, you can come up with a completely different head. It can be a head which is similar to those that diverged 150 million years ago or it can be a head which no one’s ever seen before, a different kind of head. Now that is really, you might say, a hopeful monster.
Well, Michael Levin is doing amazing work basically about the way in which electrical fields control development. And he’s done some work with Planarian worms or flatworms, where he’ll tell you all about this, so I won’t say any more than the minimum, but basically you can cut their head off and they’ll redevelop a new head. But the head that they develop depends. If you knock out just one iron pump in a membrane, so you change the electrical circuitry just a little bit, you can come up with a completely different head. It can be a head which is similar to those that diverged 150 million years ago or it can be a head which no one’s ever seen before, a different kind of head. Now that is really, you might say, a hopeful monster.
This is a kind of leap into a different direction. The only question for natural selection is: does it work? Is the change itself feasible as a single change? And the answer is yes. It’s just a small change to a single gene. And the second thing is it gives rise to a completely different morphology. Does it work? And if it works, that can easily be a shift. But for it to be a speciation, for it to continue, for it to give rise to a different morphology over time, then it has to be perpetuated. So that shift, that change in that one gene has to work well enough that it is selected and it goes on.
Lex Fridman
And copied enough times to where you can really test it.
And copied enough times to where you can really test it.
Nick Lane
So, the likelihood it would be lost, but there’ll be some occasions where it survives. And yes, the idea that we can have sudden fairly abrupt changes in evolution, I think it’s time for rebirth.
So, the likelihood it would be lost, but there’ll be some occasions where it survives. And yes, the idea that we can have sudden fairly abrupt changes in evolution, I think it’s time for rebirth.
Lex Fridman
What about this idea that… kind of trying to mathematize a definition of life and saying how many steps… the shortest amount of steps it takes to build the thing, almost like an engineering view of it? Do you find that at all compelling?
What about this idea that… kind of trying to mathematize a definition of life and saying how many steps… the shortest amount of steps it takes to build the thing, almost like an engineering view of it? Do you find that at all compelling?
Nick Lane
I like that view, because I think that, in a sense, that’s not very far away from what a hypothesis needs to do to be a testable hypothesis for the origin of life. You need to spell out, here’s each step and here’s the experiment to do for each step. The idea that we can do it in the lab, some people say, “Oh, we’ll have created life within five years.” But ask them what they mean by life. We have a planet 4 billion years ago with these vent systems across the entire surface of the planet, and we have millions of years if we want it. I have a feeling that we’re not talking about millions of years. I have a feeling we’re talking about maybe millions of nanoseconds or picoseconds. We’re talking about chemistry, which is happening quickly.
I like that view, because I think that, in a sense, that’s not very far away from what a hypothesis needs to do to be a testable hypothesis for the origin of life. You need to spell out, here’s each step and here’s the experiment to do for each step. The idea that we can do it in the lab, some people say, “Oh, we’ll have created life within five years.” But ask them what they mean by life. We have a planet 4 billion years ago with these vent systems across the entire surface of the planet, and we have millions of years if we want it. I have a feeling that we’re not talking about millions of years. I have a feeling we’re talking about maybe millions of nanoseconds or picoseconds. We’re talking about chemistry, which is happening quickly.
But we still need to constrain those steps, but we’ve got a planet doing similar chemistry. You asked about a trajectory. The trajectory is the planetary trajectory. The planet has properties. It’s basically… It’s got a lot of iron at the center of it, it’s got a lot of electrons at the center of it. It’s more oxidized on the outside, partly because of the sun, and partly because the heat of volcanoes puts out oxidized gases. So, the planet is a battery. It’s a giant battery. And we have a flow of electrons going from inside to outside in these hydrothermal vents, and that’s the same topology that a cell has. A cell is basically just a micro-version of the planet.
And there is a trajectory in all of that, and there’s an inevitability that certain types of chemical reaction are going to be favored over others. And there’s an inevitability in what happens in water, the chemistry that happens in water. Some will be immiscible with water and will form membranes and will form insoluble structures. Water’s a… Nobody really understands water very well. And it’s another big question for experiments on the origin of life: what do you put it in? What kind of structure do we want to induce in this water? Because the last thing it’s likely to be is just kind of bulk water.
Lex Fridman
How fundamental is water to life, would you say?
How fundamental is water to life, would you say?
Nick Lane
I would say pretty fundamental. I wouldn’t like to say it’s impossible for life to start any other way, but water is everywhere. Water’s extremely good at what it does, and carbon works in water especially well. And carbon is everywhere. So, those things together make me think probabilistically, if we found 1,000 life forms, 995 of them would be carbon-based and living in water.
I would say pretty fundamental. I wouldn’t like to say it’s impossible for life to start any other way, but water is everywhere. Water’s extremely good at what it does, and carbon works in water especially well. And carbon is everywhere. So, those things together make me think probabilistically, if we found 1,000 life forms, 995 of them would be carbon-based and living in water.
Lex Fridman
Now the reverse question. If you found a puddle of water elsewhere and some carbon… No, just a puddle of water. Is a puddle of water a pretty good indication that life either exists here or has once existed here?
Now the reverse question. If you found a puddle of water elsewhere and some carbon… No, just a puddle of water. Is a puddle of water a pretty good indication that life either exists here or has once existed here?
Nick Lane
No.
No.
Lex Fridman
So, it doesn’t work the other way.
So, it doesn’t work the other way.
Nick Lane
I think you need a living planet. You need a planet which is capable of turning over its surface. It needs to be a planet with water. It needs to be capable of bringing those electrons from inside to the outside. It needs to turn over its surface. It needs to make that water work and turn it into hydrogen. So, I think you need a living planet, but once you’ve got the living planet, I think the rest of it is kind of thermodynamics all the way.
I think you need a living planet. You need a planet which is capable of turning over its surface. It needs to be a planet with water. It needs to be capable of bringing those electrons from inside to the outside. It needs to turn over its surface. It needs to make that water work and turn it into hydrogen. So, I think you need a living planet, but once you’ve got the living planet, I think the rest of it is kind of thermodynamics all the way.
Lex Fridman
So, if you were to run Earth over a million times up to this point, maybe beyond, to the end, let’s run it to the end, how much variety is there? You kind of spoke to this trajectory, that the environment dictates chemically, I don’t know in which other way, spiritually, dictates the direction of this giant machine, that seems chaotic, but it does seem to have order in-
So, if you were to run Earth over a million times up to this point, maybe beyond, to the end, let’s run it to the end, how much variety is there? You kind of spoke to this trajectory, that the environment dictates chemically, I don’t know in which other way, spiritually, dictates the direction of this giant machine, that seems chaotic, but it does seem to have order in-
Lex Fridman
… seems chaotic, but it does seem to have order in the steps it’s taking. How often will bacteria emerge? How often will something like humans emerge? How much variety do you think there would be?
… seems chaotic, but it does seem to have order in the steps it’s taking. How often will bacteria emerge? How often will something like humans emerge? How much variety do you think there would be?
Nick Lane
I think at the level of bacteria, not much variety. I think we would get how many times you say you want to run it a million times? I would say at least a few hundred thousand will get bacteria again.
I think at the level of bacteria, not much variety. I think we would get how many times you say you want to run it a million times? I would say at least a few hundred thousand will get bacteria again.
Lex Fridman
Oh, wow. Nice.
Oh, wow. Nice.
Nick Lane
Because I think there’s some level of inevitability that a wet, rocky planet will give rise through the same processes to something very… I think this is not something I would have thought a few years ago, but working with a PhD student of mine, Stuart Harrison, he’s been thinking about the genetic code and we’ve just been publishing on that. There are patterns that he has discerned in the code that if you think about them in terms of we start with CO2 and hydrogen and these are the first steps of biochemistry, you come up with a code which is very similar to the code that we see.
Because I think there’s some level of inevitability that a wet, rocky planet will give rise through the same processes to something very… I think this is not something I would have thought a few years ago, but working with a PhD student of mine, Stuart Harrison, he’s been thinking about the genetic code and we’ve just been publishing on that. There are patterns that he has discerned in the code that if you think about them in terms of we start with CO2 and hydrogen and these are the first steps of biochemistry, you come up with a code which is very similar to the code that we see.
So, it wouldn’t surprise me any longer if we found life on Mars and it had a genetic code that was not very different to the genetic code that we have here without it just being transferred across, there’s some inevitability about the whole of the beginnings of life, in my view.
Lex Fridman
That’s really promising because if the basic chemistry is tightly linked to the genetic code, that means we can interact with other life if it exists out there.
That’s really promising because if the basic chemistry is tightly linked to the genetic code, that means we can interact with other life if it exists out there.
Nick Lane
Well, that’s potentially the guess, yes.
Well, that’s potentially the guess, yes.
Lex Fridman
That’s really exciting if that’s the case. Okay. But then bacteria-
That’s really exciting if that’s the case. Okay. But then bacteria-
Nick Lane
Then we’ve got bacteria.
Then we’ve got bacteria.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nick Lane
How easy is photosynthesis? Much harder, I would say.
How easy is photosynthesis? Much harder, I would say.
Photosynthesis
Lex Fridman
Let’s actually go there. Let’s go through the inventions.
Let’s actually go there. Let’s go through the inventions.
Nick Lane
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
What is photosynthesis and why is it hard?
What is photosynthesis and why is it hard?
Nick Lane
Well, there are different forms. I mean, basically you’re taking hydrogen and you’re sticking it onto CO2 and it’s powered by the sun. The question is where are you taking the hydrogen from? And in photosynthesis that we know in plants, it’s coming from water. So you’re using the power of the sun to split water, take out the hydrogen, stick it onto CO2, and the oxygen is a waste product and you just throw it out, throw it away. So it’s the single greatest planetary pollution event in the whole history of the earth.
Well, there are different forms. I mean, basically you’re taking hydrogen and you’re sticking it onto CO2 and it’s powered by the sun. The question is where are you taking the hydrogen from? And in photosynthesis that we know in plants, it’s coming from water. So you’re using the power of the sun to split water, take out the hydrogen, stick it onto CO2, and the oxygen is a waste product and you just throw it out, throw it away. So it’s the single greatest planetary pollution event in the whole history of the earth.
Lex Fridman
The pollutant being oxygen?
The pollutant being oxygen?
Nick Lane
Yes. Yeah. It also made possible animals, you can’t have large active animals without an oxygenated atmosphere, at least not in the sense that we know on earth.
Yes. Yeah. It also made possible animals, you can’t have large active animals without an oxygenated atmosphere, at least not in the sense that we know on earth.
Lex Fridman
So that’s a really big invention in the history of earth.
So that’s a really big invention in the history of earth.
Nick Lane
Huge invention, yes. And it happened once, there’s a few things that happened once on earth and you’re always stuck with this problem once it happened, did it become so good so quickly that it precluded the same thing happening ever again? Or are there other reasons? And we really have to look at each one in turn and think, “Why did it only happen once?” In this case, it’s really difficult to split water, it requires a lot of power and that power you’re effectively separating charge across a membrane. And the way in which you do it, if it doesn’t all rush back and kind of cause an explosion right at the site requires really careful wiring.
Huge invention, yes. And it happened once, there’s a few things that happened once on earth and you’re always stuck with this problem once it happened, did it become so good so quickly that it precluded the same thing happening ever again? Or are there other reasons? And we really have to look at each one in turn and think, “Why did it only happen once?” In this case, it’s really difficult to split water, it requires a lot of power and that power you’re effectively separating charge across a membrane. And the way in which you do it, if it doesn’t all rush back and kind of cause an explosion right at the site requires really careful wiring.
And that wiring, it can’t be easy to get it right because the plants that we see around us, they have chloroplasts. Those chloroplasts were cyanobacteria ones. Those cyanobacteria are the only group of bacteria that can do that type of photosynthesis, so there’s plenty of opportunity but-
Lex Fridman
There’s not many bacteria. So who invented photosynthesis?
There’s not many bacteria. So who invented photosynthesis?
Nick Lane
The cyanobacteria or their ancestors.
The cyanobacteria or their ancestors.
Lex Fridman
And there’s not many-
And there’s not many-
Nick Lane
No other bacteria can do what’s called oxygenic photosynthesis. Lots of other bacteria can split. I mean, you can take your hydrogen from somewhere else, you can take it from hydrogen sulphide bubbling out of a hydrothermal vent, grab your two hydrogens, the sulphur is the waste now.
No other bacteria can do what’s called oxygenic photosynthesis. Lots of other bacteria can split. I mean, you can take your hydrogen from somewhere else, you can take it from hydrogen sulphide bubbling out of a hydrothermal vent, grab your two hydrogens, the sulphur is the waste now.
You can do it from iron, you can take electrons… So the early oceans, were probably full of iron, you can take an electron from ferrous iron, so Iron 2+ and make it Iron 3+, which now precipitates as rust, and you take a proton from the acidic early ocean, stick it there now you’ve got a hydrogen atom, stick it onto CO2, you’ve just done the trick. The trouble is you bury yourself in rusty iron and with sulphur can bury yourself in sulphur. One of the reasons oxygenic photosynthesis is so much better is that the waste product is oxygen, which just bubbles away.
Lex Fridman
That seems extremely unlikely and it’s extremely essential for the evolution of complex organisms because of all the oxygen.
That seems extremely unlikely and it’s extremely essential for the evolution of complex organisms because of all the oxygen.
Nick Lane
Yeah, and that didn’t accumulate quickly either.
Yeah, and that didn’t accumulate quickly either.
Lex Fridman
So it’s converting, what is it? It’s converting energy from the sun and the resource of water into the resource needed for animals?
So it’s converting, what is it? It’s converting energy from the sun and the resource of water into the resource needed for animals?
Nick Lane
Both resources needed for animals. We need to eat and we need to burn the food, and we’re eating plants which are getting their energy from the sun and we’re burning it with their waste product, which is the oxygen. So there’s a lot of circularity in that, but without an oxygenated planet, you couldn’t really have predation. You can have animals, but you can’t really have animals that go around and eat each other. You can’t have ecosystems as we know them.
Both resources needed for animals. We need to eat and we need to burn the food, and we’re eating plants which are getting their energy from the sun and we’re burning it with their waste product, which is the oxygen. So there’s a lot of circularity in that, but without an oxygenated planet, you couldn’t really have predation. You can have animals, but you can’t really have animals that go around and eat each other. You can’t have ecosystems as we know them.
Prokaryotic vs eukaryotic cells
Lex Fridman
Well, let’s actually step back. What about eukaryotic versus prokaryotic cells, prokaryotes, what are each of those and how big of an invention is that?
Well, let’s actually step back. What about eukaryotic versus prokaryotic cells, prokaryotes, what are each of those and how big of an invention is that?
Nick Lane
I personally think that’s the single biggest invention in the whole history of life.
I personally think that’s the single biggest invention in the whole history of life.
Lex Fridman
Exciting. So what are they? Can you explain?
Exciting. So what are they? Can you explain?
Nick Lane
Yeah. So I mentioned bacteria and archaea, these are both prokaryotes. They’re basically small cells that don’t have a nucleus. If you look at them under a microscope, you don’t see much going on. If you look at them under a super resolution microscope, then they’re fantastically complex. In terms of their molecular machinery, they’re amazing. In terms of their morphological appearance under a microscope, they’re really small and really simple.
Yeah. So I mentioned bacteria and archaea, these are both prokaryotes. They’re basically small cells that don’t have a nucleus. If you look at them under a microscope, you don’t see much going on. If you look at them under a super resolution microscope, then they’re fantastically complex. In terms of their molecular machinery, they’re amazing. In terms of their morphological appearance under a microscope, they’re really small and really simple.
The earliest life that we can physically see on the planet are stromatolites, which are made by things like cyanobacteria and they’re large superstructures, effectively biofilms plated on top of each other, and you end up with quite large structures that you can see in the fossil record. But they never came up with animals, they never came up with plants, they came up with multicellular things filamentous cyanobacteria for example, they’re just long strings of cells. But the origin of the eukaryotic cell seems to have been what’s called an endosymbiosis so one cell gets inside another cell, and I think that that transformed the energetic possibilities of life. So what we end up with is a kind of supercharged cell, which can have a much larger nucleus with many more genes all supported.
You could think about it as multi-bacterial power without the overhead. So you’ve got a cell and it’s got bacteria living in it, and those bacteria are providing it with the energy currency it needs. But each bacterium has a genome of its own, which costs a fair amount of energy to express, to turn over and convert into proteins and so on. What the mitochondria did, which are these power packs in our own cells, they were bacteria once and they threw away virtually all their genes, they’ve only got a few left.
Lex Fridman
So mitochondria is, like you said, is the bacteria that got inside a cell and then throw away all this stuff it doesn’t need to survive inside the cell and then kept what?
So mitochondria is, like you said, is the bacteria that got inside a cell and then throw away all this stuff it doesn’t need to survive inside the cell and then kept what?
Nick Lane
So what we end up with, so it kept always a handful of genes in our own case, 37 genes, but there’s a few protists which are single-celled things that have got as many as 70 or 80 genes so it is not always the same, but it’s always a small number. And you can think of it as a pared-down power pack where the control unit has really been kind pared down to almost nothing. So it’s putting out the same power, but the investment in the overheads is really pared down, that means that you can support a much larger nuclear genome. So we’ve gone up in the number of genes, but also the amount of power you have to convert those genes into proteins. We’ve gone up about fourfold in the number of genes, but in terms of the size of genomes and your ability to make the building blocks, make the proteins, we’ve gone up a hundred thousand fold or more, so it’s huge step change in the possibilities of evolution.
So what we end up with, so it kept always a handful of genes in our own case, 37 genes, but there’s a few protists which are single-celled things that have got as many as 70 or 80 genes so it is not always the same, but it’s always a small number. And you can think of it as a pared-down power pack where the control unit has really been kind pared down to almost nothing. So it’s putting out the same power, but the investment in the overheads is really pared down, that means that you can support a much larger nuclear genome. So we’ve gone up in the number of genes, but also the amount of power you have to convert those genes into proteins. We’ve gone up about fourfold in the number of genes, but in terms of the size of genomes and your ability to make the building blocks, make the proteins, we’ve gone up a hundred thousand fold or more, so it’s huge step change in the possibilities of evolution.
And it is interesting then that the only two occasions that complex life has arisen on earth, plants and animals, fungi you could say are complex as well, but they don’t form such complex morphology as plants and animals, start with a single cell they start with an oocyte and a sperm fused together to make a zygote. So we start development with a single cell and all the cells in the organism have identical DNA, and in the brain, you switch off these genes and you switch on those genes and the liver, you switch off those and you switch on a different set. And the standard evolutionary explanation for that is that you’re restricting conflict, you don’t have a load of genetically different cells that are all fighting each other and so it works.
The trouble with bacteria is they form these biofilms and they’re all genetically different, and effectively they’re incapable of that level of cooperation they would get in a fight.
Lex Fridman
Okay, so why is this such a difficult invention of getting this bacteria inside and becoming an engine, which the mitochondria is? Why do you assign it such great importance? Is it great importance in terms of the difficulty of how it was to achieve or great importance in terms of the impact it had on life?
Okay, so why is this such a difficult invention of getting this bacteria inside and becoming an engine, which the mitochondria is? Why do you assign it such great importance? Is it great importance in terms of the difficulty of how it was to achieve or great importance in terms of the impact it had on life?
Nick Lane
Both. It had a huge impact on life because if that had not happened, you can be certain that life on earth would be bacterial only.
Both. It had a huge impact on life because if that had not happened, you can be certain that life on earth would be bacterial only.
Lex Fridman
And that took a really long time to-
And that took a really long time to-
Nick Lane
It took 2 billion years and it hasn’t happened since to the best of our knowledge, so it looks as if it’s genuinely difficult. And if you think about it then from just an informational perspective, you think bacteria, they structure their information differently. So a bacterial cell has a small genome, you might have 4,000 genes in it. But a single E. coli cell has access to about 30,000 genes, potentially. It’s got a metagenome where other E. coli out there have got different gene sets and they can switch them around between themselves. And so you can generate a huge amount of variation, and they’ve got more. An E. coli. metagenome is larger than the human genome, we own 20,000 genes or something, and they’ve had 4 billion years of evolution to work out what can I do and what can’t I do with this metagenome. And the answer is, you’re stuck, you’re still bacteria.
It took 2 billion years and it hasn’t happened since to the best of our knowledge, so it looks as if it’s genuinely difficult. And if you think about it then from just an informational perspective, you think bacteria, they structure their information differently. So a bacterial cell has a small genome, you might have 4,000 genes in it. But a single E. coli cell has access to about 30,000 genes, potentially. It’s got a metagenome where other E. coli out there have got different gene sets and they can switch them around between themselves. And so you can generate a huge amount of variation, and they’ve got more. An E. coli. metagenome is larger than the human genome, we own 20,000 genes or something, and they’ve had 4 billion years of evolution to work out what can I do and what can’t I do with this metagenome. And the answer is, you’re stuck, you’re still bacteria.
So they have explored genetic sequence space far more thoroughly than eukaryotes ever did because they’ve had twice as long at least, and they’ve got much larger populations, and they never got around this problem. So why can’t they? It seems as if you can’t solve it with information alone. So what’s the problem? The problem is structure.
If the very first cells needed an electrical charge on their membrane to grow, and in bacteria it’s the outer membrane that surrounds the cell, which is electrically charged, you try and scale that up and you’ve got a fundamental design problem, you’ve got an engineering problem, and there are examples of it. And what we see in all these cases is what’s known as extreme polyploidy, which is to say they have tens of thousands of copies of their complete genome, which is energetically hugely expensive, and you end up with a large bacteria with no further development. What you is to incorporate these electrically charged power pack units inside with their control units intact, and for them not to conflict so much with the host cell that it all goes wrong, perhaps it goes wrong more often than not, and then you change the topology of the cell.
Now, you don’t necessarily have any more DNA than a giant bacterium with extreme polyploidy, but what you’ve got is an asymmetry. You now have a giant nuclear genome surrounded by lots of subsidiary energetic genomes they’re the control units that are doing all the control of energy generation.
Lex Fridman
Could this have been done gradually or does it have to be done, the power pack has to be all intact and ready to go and working?
Could this have been done gradually or does it have to be done, the power pack has to be all intact and ready to go and working?
Nick Lane
I mean, it’s a kind of step changing in the possibilities of evolution, but it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s going to still require multiple, multiple, generations. So it could take millions of years, it could take shorter time there’s another thing I would like to put the number of steps and try and work out what’s required at each step and we are trying to do that with sex, for example. You can’t have a very large genome unless you have sex at that point so what are the changes to go from bacterial recombination to eukaryotic recombination? What do you need to do? Why do we go from passing around bits of DNA as if it’s loose change to fusing cells together, lining up the chromosomes, recombining across the chromosomes, and then going through two rounds of cell division to produce your gametes? All eukaryotes do it that way.
I mean, it’s a kind of step changing in the possibilities of evolution, but it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s going to still require multiple, multiple, generations. So it could take millions of years, it could take shorter time there’s another thing I would like to put the number of steps and try and work out what’s required at each step and we are trying to do that with sex, for example. You can’t have a very large genome unless you have sex at that point so what are the changes to go from bacterial recombination to eukaryotic recombination? What do you need to do? Why do we go from passing around bits of DNA as if it’s loose change to fusing cells together, lining up the chromosomes, recombining across the chromosomes, and then going through two rounds of cell division to produce your gametes? All eukaryotes do it that way.
So again, why switch? What are the drivers here? So there’s a lot of time, there’s a lot of evolution, but as soon as you’ve got cells living inside another cell, what you’ve got is a new design, you’ve got new potential that you didn’t have before.
Lex Fridman
So the cell living inside another cell, that design allows for better storage of information, better use of energy, more delegation, like a hierarchical control of the whole thing. And then somehow that leads to ability to have multi-cell organisms?
So the cell living inside another cell, that design allows for better storage of information, better use of energy, more delegation, like a hierarchical control of the whole thing. And then somehow that leads to ability to have multi-cell organisms?
Nick Lane
I’m not sure that you have hierarchical control necessarily, but you’ve got a system where you can have a much larger information storage depot in the nucleus, you can have a much larger genome. And that allows multi-cellularity, yes, because it allows you… It’s a funny thing, to have an animal where I have 70% of my genes switched on in my brain and a different 50% switched on in my liver or something, you’ve got to have all those genes in the egg cell at the very beginning, and you’ve got to have a program of development which says, “Okay, you guys switch off those genes and switch on those genes, and you guys you do that.” But all the genes are there at the beginning. That means you’ve got to have a lot of genes in one cell and you’ve got to be able to maintain them and the problem with bacteria is they don’t get close to having enough genes in one cell. So if you were to try make a multicellular organism from bacteria, you’d bring different types of bacteria together and hope they’ll cooperate and the reality is they don’t.
I’m not sure that you have hierarchical control necessarily, but you’ve got a system where you can have a much larger information storage depot in the nucleus, you can have a much larger genome. And that allows multi-cellularity, yes, because it allows you… It’s a funny thing, to have an animal where I have 70% of my genes switched on in my brain and a different 50% switched on in my liver or something, you’ve got to have all those genes in the egg cell at the very beginning, and you’ve got to have a program of development which says, “Okay, you guys switch off those genes and switch on those genes, and you guys you do that.” But all the genes are there at the beginning. That means you’ve got to have a lot of genes in one cell and you’ve got to be able to maintain them and the problem with bacteria is they don’t get close to having enough genes in one cell. So if you were to try make a multicellular organism from bacteria, you’d bring different types of bacteria together and hope they’ll cooperate and the reality is they don’t.
Lex Fridman
That’s really, really tough to do, combinatorially.
That’s really, really tough to do, combinatorially.
Nick Lane
We know they don’t because it doesn’t exist.
We know they don’t because it doesn’t exist.
Lex Fridman
We have the data as far as we know. I’m sure there’s a few special ones and they die off quickly. I’d love to know some of the most fun things bacteria have done since?
We have the data as far as we know. I’m sure there’s a few special ones and they die off quickly. I’d love to know some of the most fun things bacteria have done since?
Nick Lane
Oh, I mean, they can do some pretty funky things. This is broad brushstroke that I’m talking about, but it’s, yeah.
Oh, I mean, they can do some pretty funky things. This is broad brushstroke that I’m talking about, but it’s, yeah.
Sex
Lex Fridman
Generally speaking. So another fun invention, us humans seem to utilize it well, but you say it’s also very important early on is sex. So what is sex? Just asking for a friend. And when was it invented and how hard was it to invent, just as you were saying, and why was it invented? How hard was it? And when?
Generally speaking. So another fun invention, us humans seem to utilize it well, but you say it’s also very important early on is sex. So what is sex? Just asking for a friend. And when was it invented and how hard was it to invent, just as you were saying, and why was it invented? How hard was it? And when?
Nick Lane
I have a PhD student who’s been working on this-
I have a PhD student who’s been working on this-
Lex Fridman
On sex?
On sex?
Nick Lane
… and we’ve just published a couple of papers. On sex, yes, yes, yes.
… and we’ve just published a couple of papers. On sex, yes, yes, yes.
Lex Fridman
Nice. Where do you publish these? Is it biology, genetics, journals?
Nice. Where do you publish these? Is it biology, genetics, journals?
Nick Lane
This is actually PNAS, which is Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
This is actually PNAS, which is Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Lex Fridman
So like, broad, big, big picture stuff?
So like, broad, big, big picture stuff?
Nick Lane
Everyone’s interested in sex.
Everyone’s interested in sex.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nick Lane
The job of biologist is to make sex dull.
The job of biologist is to make sex dull.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that’s a beautiful way to put it. Okay, so when was it invented?
Yeah, that’s a beautiful way to put it. Okay, so when was it invented?
Nick Lane
It was invented with eukaryotes about 2 billion years ago. All eukaryotes share the same basic mechanism that you produce gametes, the gametes fuse together. So a gamete is the egg cell and the sperm, they’re not necessarily even different in size or shape. So the simplest eukaryotes produce what are called motile gametes, they’re all like sperm and they all swim around, they find each other, they fuse together, they don’t have much going on there beyond that. And then these are haploids, which is to say we all have two copies of our genome, and the gametes have only a single copy of the genome. So when they fuse together, you now become diploid again, which is to say you now have two copies of your genome, and what you do is you line them all up and then you double everything.
It was invented with eukaryotes about 2 billion years ago. All eukaryotes share the same basic mechanism that you produce gametes, the gametes fuse together. So a gamete is the egg cell and the sperm, they’re not necessarily even different in size or shape. So the simplest eukaryotes produce what are called motile gametes, they’re all like sperm and they all swim around, they find each other, they fuse together, they don’t have much going on there beyond that. And then these are haploids, which is to say we all have two copies of our genome, and the gametes have only a single copy of the genome. So when they fuse together, you now become diploid again, which is to say you now have two copies of your genome, and what you do is you line them all up and then you double everything.
So now we have four copies of the complete genome, and then we crisscross between all of these things. So we take a bit from here and stick it on there and a bit from here, and we stick it on here, that’s recombination. Then we go through two rounds of cell division. So we divide in half, so now the two daughter cells have two copies and we divide in half again, now we have some gametes, each of which has got a single copy of the genome. And that’s the basic ground plan for what’s called meiosis and syn-gametes, that’s basically sex.
And it happens at the level of single-celled organisms and it happens pretty much the same way in plants and pretty much the same way in animals and so on. And it’s not found in any bacteria, they switch things around using the same machinery and they take up a bit of DNA from the environment. They take out this bit and stick in that bit, and it’s the same molecular machinery they’re using to do it.
Lex Fridman
So what about the, you said find each other this kind of imperative to find each other. What is that?
So what about the, you said find each other this kind of imperative to find each other. What is that?
Nick Lane
Well, you’ve got a fuse cells together. So the bottom line on all of this is bacteria, I mean, it’s kind of simple when you’ve figured it out and figuring it out this is not me, this is my PhD student, Marco Colnaghi. And in effect, if you’re doing lateral, you’re E. coli cell, you’ve got 4,000 genes, you want to scale up to a eukaryotic size. I want to have 20,000 genes and I need to maintain my genome so it doesn’t get shot to pieces by mutations, and I’m going to do it by lateral gene transfer.
Well, you’ve got a fuse cells together. So the bottom line on all of this is bacteria, I mean, it’s kind of simple when you’ve figured it out and figuring it out this is not me, this is my PhD student, Marco Colnaghi. And in effect, if you’re doing lateral, you’re E. coli cell, you’ve got 4,000 genes, you want to scale up to a eukaryotic size. I want to have 20,000 genes and I need to maintain my genome so it doesn’t get shot to pieces by mutations, and I’m going to do it by lateral gene transfer.
So I know I’ve got a mutation in a gene, I don’t know which gene it is because I’m not sentient, but I know I can’t grow, I know all my regulation systems are saying, “Something wrong here, something wrong, pick up some DNA, pick up a bit of DNA from the environment.” If you’ve got a small genome, the chances of you picking up the right bit of DNA from the environment is much higher than if you’ve got a genome of 20,000 genes. To do that, you’ve effectively got to be picking up DNA all the time, all day long and nothing else, and you’re still going to get the wrong DNA. You’ve got to pick up large chunks, and in the end, you’ve got to line them up, you’re forced into sex, to coin a phrase.
Lex Fridman
So there is a kind of incentive-
So there is a kind of incentive-
Nick Lane
If you want to have a large genome, you’ve got to prevent it mutating to nothing and that will happen with bacteria, so there’s another reason why bacteria can’t have a large genome. But as soon as you give eukaryotic cells the power pack that allows them to increase the size of their genome, then you face the pressure that you’ve got to maintain its quality. You’ve got to stop it just mutating away.
If you want to have a large genome, you’ve got to prevent it mutating to nothing and that will happen with bacteria, so there’s another reason why bacteria can’t have a large genome. But as soon as you give eukaryotic cells the power pack that allows them to increase the size of their genome, then you face the pressure that you’ve got to maintain its quality. You’ve got to stop it just mutating away.
Lex Fridman
What about sexual selection? So the finding like, “I don’t like this one. I don’t like this one. This one seems all right.” At which point does it become less random?
What about sexual selection? So the finding like, “I don’t like this one. I don’t like this one. This one seems all right.” At which point does it become less random?
Nick Lane
It’s hard to know.
It’s hard to know.
Lex Fridman
Because eukaryotes just kind of float around just kind of have… It’s kind of like Tinder these days.
Because eukaryotes just kind of float around just kind of have… It’s kind of like Tinder these days.
Nick Lane
Yeah I mean, it’s their sexual section election in single-celled eukaryotes. There probably is, it’s just that I don’t know very much about it. By the time we-
Yeah I mean, it’s their sexual section election in single-celled eukaryotes. There probably is, it’s just that I don’t know very much about it. By the time we-
Lex Fridman
You don’t hang out with eukaryotes?
You don’t hang out with eukaryotes?
Nick Lane
Well, I do all the time, but you know?
Well, I do all the time, but you know?
Lex Fridman
You can’t communicate with them, yeah.
You can’t communicate with them, yeah.
Nick Lane
Yeah. Peacock or something.
Yeah. Peacock or something.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Nick Lane
The kind of standard, this is not quite what I work on, but the standard answer is that it’s female mate choice, she’s looking for good genes and if you can have a tail that’s like this and still survive, still be alive, not actually have been taken down by the nearest predator, then you must’ve got pretty good genes despite this handicap you are able to survive.
The kind of standard, this is not quite what I work on, but the standard answer is that it’s female mate choice, she’s looking for good genes and if you can have a tail that’s like this and still survive, still be alive, not actually have been taken down by the nearest predator, then you must’ve got pretty good genes despite this handicap you are able to survive.
Lex Fridman
So those are human interpretable things like with a peacock. But I wonder, I’m sure echoes of the same thing are there with more primitive organisms, basically your PR, like how you advertise yourself that you’re worthy of? Yeah,
So those are human interpretable things like with a peacock. But I wonder, I’m sure echoes of the same thing are there with more primitive organisms, basically your PR, like how you advertise yourself that you’re worthy of? Yeah,
Nick Lane
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman
So one big advertisement is the fact that you survived it all.
So one big advertisement is the fact that you survived it all.
Nick Lane
Yeah, let me give you one beautiful example of an algal bloom, and this can be a sign of bacteria, this can be in bacteria. So if suddenly you pump nitrate or phosphate or something into the ocean and everything goes green, you end up with all this algae growing there, a viral infection or something like that can kill the entire bloom overnight. And it’s not that the virus takes out everything overnight, it’s that most of the cells in that bloom kill themselves before the virus can get onto them. And it’s through a form of cell death called programmed cell death. And we do the same thing, this is how we have the gaps between our fingers and so on, it’s how we craft synapses in the brain. It is fundamental again, to multicellular life.
Yeah, let me give you one beautiful example of an algal bloom, and this can be a sign of bacteria, this can be in bacteria. So if suddenly you pump nitrate or phosphate or something into the ocean and everything goes green, you end up with all this algae growing there, a viral infection or something like that can kill the entire bloom overnight. And it’s not that the virus takes out everything overnight, it’s that most of the cells in that bloom kill themselves before the virus can get onto them. And it’s through a form of cell death called programmed cell death. And we do the same thing, this is how we have the gaps between our fingers and so on, it’s how we craft synapses in the brain. It is fundamental again, to multicellular life.
They have the same machinery in these algal blooms. How do they know who dies? The answer is they will often put out a toxin and that toxin is a kind of challenge to you. Either you can cope with the toxin or you can’t. If you can cope with it, you form a spore and you will go on to become the next generation. You form kind of a resistant spore, you sink down a little bit, you get out of the way, you can’t be attacked by a virus if you’re a spore or at least not so easily. Whereas if you can’t deal with that toxin, you pull the plug and you trigger your death apparatus and you kill yourself.
Lex Fridman
It’s truly life and death selection.
It’s truly life and death selection.
Nick Lane
Yeah, so it’s a challenge, and this is a bit like sexual selection. They’re all pretty much genetically identical, but they’ve had different life histories. So have you had a tough day? Did you happen to get infected by this virus? Or did you run out of iron? Or did you get a bit too much sun? Whatever it may be. If this extra stress of the toxin just pushes you over the edge, then you have this binary choice, either you’re the next generation or you kill yourself now using this same machinery.
Yeah, so it’s a challenge, and this is a bit like sexual selection. They’re all pretty much genetically identical, but they’ve had different life histories. So have you had a tough day? Did you happen to get infected by this virus? Or did you run out of iron? Or did you get a bit too much sun? Whatever it may be. If this extra stress of the toxin just pushes you over the edge, then you have this binary choice, either you’re the next generation or you kill yourself now using this same machinery.
DNA
Lex Fridman
It’s also actually exactly the way I approach dating, but that’s probably why I am single. Okay. What about, if we can step back, DNA just mechanism of storing information, RNA, DNA, how big of an invention was that? That seems to be fundamental to something deep within what life is, is the ability, as you said, to kind of store and propagate information. But then you also kind of inferred that with you and your students’ work, that there’s a deep connection between the chemistry and the ability to have this kind of genetic information. So how big of an invention is it to have a nice representation, a nice hard drive for info to pass on?
It’s also actually exactly the way I approach dating, but that’s probably why I am single. Okay. What about, if we can step back, DNA just mechanism of storing information, RNA, DNA, how big of an invention was that? That seems to be fundamental to something deep within what life is, is the ability, as you said, to kind of store and propagate information. But then you also kind of inferred that with you and your students’ work, that there’s a deep connection between the chemistry and the ability to have this kind of genetic information. So how big of an invention is it to have a nice representation, a nice hard drive for info to pass on?
Nick Lane
Huge, I suspect. I mean, but when I was talking about the code, you see the code in RNA as well, and RNA almost certainly came first. And there’s been an idea going back decades called the RNA world because RNA in theory can copy itself and can catalyze reactions. So it kind of cuts out this chicken and egg loop.
Huge, I suspect. I mean, but when I was talking about the code, you see the code in RNA as well, and RNA almost certainly came first. And there’s been an idea going back decades called the RNA world because RNA in theory can copy itself and can catalyze reactions. So it kind of cuts out this chicken and egg loop.
Lex Fridman
The DNA, it’s possible is not that special?
The DNA, it’s possible is not that special?
Nick Lane
So RNA is the thing that does the work really, and the code lies in RNA. The code lies in the interactions between RNA and amino acids and it still is there today in the ribosome, for example, which is just kind of a giant ribozyme, which is to say it’s an enzyme that’s made of RNA.
So RNA is the thing that does the work really, and the code lies in RNA. The code lies in the interactions between RNA and amino acids and it still is there today in the ribosome, for example, which is just kind of a giant ribozyme, which is to say it’s an enzyme that’s made of RNA.
So getting to RNA, I suspect is probably not that hard. But getting from RNA, there’s multiple different types of RNA now, how do you distinguish? This is something we’re actively thinking about, how do you distinguish between a random population of RNA? Some of them go on to become messenger RNA, this is the transcript of the code of the gene that you want to make. Some of them become transfer RNA, which is kind of the unit that holds the amino acid that’s going to be polymerized. Some of them become ribosomal RNA, which is the machine, which is joining them all up together.
How do they discriminate themselves? There’s some kind of phase transition going on there, I don’t know, it’s a difficult question and we’re now in the region of biology where information is coming in. But the thing about RNA is very, very good at what it does but the largest genomes supported by RNA are RNA viruses like HIV, for example. They’re pretty small. And so there’s a limit to how complex life could be unless you come up with DNA, which chemically is a really small change but how easy it is to make that change? I don’t really know. As soon as you’ve got DNA, then you’ve got an amazingly stable molecule for information storage, and you can do absolutely anything. But how likely that transition from RNA to DNA was? I don’t know either.
Lex Fridman
How much possibility is there for variety in ways to store information? It seems to be very, there’s specific characteristics about the programming language of DNA.
How much possibility is there for variety in ways to store information? It seems to be very, there’s specific characteristics about the programming language of DNA.
Nick Lane
Yeah, there’s a lot of work going on on what’s called the Xeno DNA or RNA. Can we replace the bases themselves, the letters if you like, in RNA or DNA? Can we replace the backbone? Can we replace, for example, phosphate with arsenate? Can we replace the sugar ribose or deoxyribose with a different sugar? And the answer is yes, you can within limits there’s not an infinite space there. Arsenate doesn’t really work if the bonds are not as strong as phosphate, it’s probably quite hard to replace phosphate. It’s possible to do it.
Yeah, there’s a lot of work going on on what’s called the Xeno DNA or RNA. Can we replace the bases themselves, the letters if you like, in RNA or DNA? Can we replace the backbone? Can we replace, for example, phosphate with arsenate? Can we replace the sugar ribose or deoxyribose with a different sugar? And the answer is yes, you can within limits there’s not an infinite space there. Arsenate doesn’t really work if the bonds are not as strong as phosphate, it’s probably quite hard to replace phosphate. It’s possible to do it.
The question to me is, why is it this way? Is it because there was some form of selection that this is better than the other forms and there were lots of competing forms of information storage early on, and this one was the one that worked out? Or was it kind of channeled that way, that these are the molecules that you’re dealing with and they work? And I’m increasingly thinking it’s that way that we’re channeled towards ribose phosphate and the bases that are used, but there are 200 different letters kicking around out there that could have been used.
Lex Fridman
It’s such an interesting question. If you look at, in the programming world in computer science, there’s a programming language called JavaScript, which was written super quickly, it’s a giant mess, but it took over the world.
It’s such an interesting question. If you look at, in the programming world in computer science, there’s a programming language called JavaScript, which was written super quickly, it’s a giant mess, but it took over the world.
Nick Lane
Sounds very biological.
Sounds very biological.
Lex Fridman
It was kind of a running joke that surely this can’t be… This is a terrible programming language, it’s a giant mess. It’s full of bugs, it’s so easy to write really crappy code but it took over all of front end development in the web browser. If you have any kind of dynamic interactive website, it’s usually running JavaScript and it’s now taking over much of the backend, which is the serious heavy duty computational stuff. And it’s become super fast with the different compilation engines that are running it, so it really took over the world. It’s very possible that this initially crappy derided language actually takes everything over.
It was kind of a running joke that surely this can’t be… This is a terrible programming language, it’s a giant mess. It’s full of bugs, it’s so easy to write really crappy code but it took over all of front end development in the web browser. If you have any kind of dynamic interactive website, it’s usually running JavaScript and it’s now taking over much of the backend, which is the serious heavy duty computational stuff. And it’s become super fast with the different compilation engines that are running it, so it really took over the world. It’s very possible that this initially crappy derided language actually takes everything over.
And then the question is, did human civilization always strive towards JavaScript or was JavaScript just the first programming language that ran on the browser and still sticky? The first is the sticky one, and so it wins over anything else because it was first. And I don’t think that’s answerable, right? But it’s good to ask that. I suppose in the lab you can’t run it with programming languages, but in biology you can probably do some kind of small scale evolutionary test to try to infer which is which?
Nick Lane
Yeah, I mean, in a way, we’ve got the hardware and the software here, and the hardware is maybe the DNA and the RNA itself, and then the software perhaps is more about the code. Did the code have to be this way? Could it have been a different way? And people talk about the optimization of the code, and there’s some suggestion for that. I think it’s weak, actually. But you could imagine you can come out with a million different codes and this would be one of the best ones.
Yeah, I mean, in a way, we’ve got the hardware and the software here, and the hardware is maybe the DNA and the RNA itself, and then the software perhaps is more about the code. Did the code have to be this way? Could it have been a different way? And people talk about the optimization of the code, and there’s some suggestion for that. I think it’s weak, actually. But you could imagine you can come out with a million different codes and this would be one of the best ones.
Lex Fridman
Well, we don’t know this. We don’t know this.
Well, we don’t know this. We don’t know this.
Nick Lane
People have tried to model it based on the effect that mutations would have. So no, you’re right, we don’t know because that’s a single assumption that a mutation is what’s being selected on there and there’s other possibilities too.
People have tried to model it based on the effect that mutations would have. So no, you’re right, we don’t know because that’s a single assumption that a mutation is what’s being selected on there and there’s other possibilities too.
Lex Fridman
I mean, there does seem to be a resilience and a redundancy to the whole thing.
I mean, there does seem to be a resilience and a redundancy to the whole thing.
Nick Lane
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
It’s hard to mess up in the way you mess it up often is likely to produce interesting results.
It’s hard to mess up in the way you mess it up often is likely to produce interesting results.
Nick Lane
Are you talking about JavaScript or the genetic code now?
Are you talking about JavaScript or the genetic code now?
Lex Fridman
Both.
Both.
Nick Lane
Yeah? Well, I mean, it’s almost, biology is underpinned by this kind of mess as well. And you look at the human genome and it is full of stuff that is really either broken or dysfunctional or was a virus once or whatever it may be, and somehow it works and maybe we need a lot of this mess. We know that some functional genes are taken from this mess.
Yeah? Well, I mean, it’s almost, biology is underpinned by this kind of mess as well. And you look at the human genome and it is full of stuff that is really either broken or dysfunctional or was a virus once or whatever it may be, and somehow it works and maybe we need a lot of this mess. We know that some functional genes are taken from this mess.
Violence
Lex Fridman
So what about, you mentioned predatory behavior.
So what about, you mentioned predatory behavior.
Nick Lane
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
We talked about sex. What about violence? Predator and prey dynamics? When was that invented? And poetic and biological ways of putting it, how do you describe predator prey relationship? Is it a beautiful dance or is it a violent atrocity?
We talked about sex. What about violence? Predator and prey dynamics? When was that invented? And poetic and biological ways of putting it, how do you describe predator prey relationship? Is it a beautiful dance or is it a violent atrocity?
Nick Lane
Well, I guess it’s both, isn’t it? I mean, when does it start? It starts in bacteria, you see these amazing predators Bdellovibrio is one that Lynn Margulis used to talk about a lot. It’s got a kind of a drill piece that drills through the wall and the membrane of the bacterium, and then it effectively eats the bacterium from just inside the periplasmic space and makes copies of itself that way, so that’s straight predation. There are predators among bacteria.
Well, I guess it’s both, isn’t it? I mean, when does it start? It starts in bacteria, you see these amazing predators Bdellovibrio is one that Lynn Margulis used to talk about a lot. It’s got a kind of a drill piece that drills through the wall and the membrane of the bacterium, and then it effectively eats the bacterium from just inside the periplasmic space and makes copies of itself that way, so that’s straight predation. There are predators among bacteria.
Lex Fridman
So predation in that, sorry to interrupt, means you murder somebody and use their body as a resource in some way?
So predation in that, sorry to interrupt, means you murder somebody and use their body as a resource in some way?
Nick Lane
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
But it’s not parasitic in that you need them to be still alive?
But it’s not parasitic in that you need them to be still alive?
Nick Lane
No, no. I mean, predation is you kill them really.
No, no. I mean, predation is you kill them really.
Lex Fridman
Murder.
Murder.
Nick Lane
Parasitis, you kind of live on them.
Parasitis, you kind of live on them.
Lex Fridman
Okay. But it seems the predator is the really popular tool?
Okay. But it seems the predator is the really popular tool?
Nick Lane
So what we see, if we go back 560, 570 million years before the Cambrian Explosion, there is what’s known as the Ediacaran Fauna, or sometimes they call Vendobionts, which is a lovely name and it’s not obvious that they’re animals at all. They’re stalked things, they often have fronds that look a lot like leaves with kind of fractual branching patterns on them and-
So what we see, if we go back 560, 570 million years before the Cambrian Explosion, there is what’s known as the Ediacaran Fauna, or sometimes they call Vendobionts, which is a lovely name and it’s not obvious that they’re animals at all. They’re stalked things, they often have fronds that look a lot like leaves with kind of fractual branching patterns on them and-
Nick Lane
… branching patterns on them. And the thing is they’re found, sometimes, geologists can figure out the environment that they were in and say, “This is more than 200 meters deep because there’s no sign of any waves. There’s no storm damage down here,” this kind of thing. They were more than 200 meters deep, so they’re definitely not photosynthetic. These are animals, and they’re filter feeders. We know sponges and corals and things are filter-feeding animals; they’re stuck to the spot. And little bits of carbon that come their way, they filter it out, and that’s what they’re eating. So no predation involved in this, beyond stuff just dies anyway, and it feels like a very gentle, rather beautiful, rather limited world, you might say. There’s not a lot going on there.
… branching patterns on them. And the thing is they’re found, sometimes, geologists can figure out the environment that they were in and say, “This is more than 200 meters deep because there’s no sign of any waves. There’s no storm damage down here,” this kind of thing. They were more than 200 meters deep, so they’re definitely not photosynthetic. These are animals, and they’re filter feeders. We know sponges and corals and things are filter-feeding animals; they’re stuck to the spot. And little bits of carbon that come their way, they filter it out, and that’s what they’re eating. So no predation involved in this, beyond stuff just dies anyway, and it feels like a very gentle, rather beautiful, rather limited world, you might say. There’s not a lot going on there.
And something changes. Oxygen definitely changes during this period. Other things may have changed as well. But the next thing you really see in the fossil record is the Cambrian explosion. And what do we see there? We’re now seeing animals that we would recognize, they’ve got eyes, they’ve got claws, they’ve got shells. They’re plainly killing things or running away and hiding. So we’ve gone from a rather gentle, but limited world, to a rather vicious, unpleasant world that we recognize, which leads to kind of arms races, evolutionary arms races, which again is something that when we think about a nuclear arms race, we think, “Jesus, we don’t want to go there. It’s not done anybody any good.” In some ways, maybe it does do good. I don’t want to make an argument for nuclear arms, but predation as a mechanism forces organisms to adapt, to change, to be better, to escape, or to kill. If you need to eat, then you’ve got to eat. A cheetah is not going to run at that speed unless it has to because the zebra is capable of escaping. So it leads to much greater feats of evolution would ever have been possible without it, and in the end, to a much more beautiful world. So it’s not all bad, by any means.
But the thing is, you can’t have this if you don’t have an oxygenated planet because it’s all, in the end, it’s about how much energy can you extract from the food you eat? And if you don’t have an oxygenated planet, you can get about 10% out, not much more than that. And if you’ve got an oxygenated planet, you can get about 40% out. And that means you can have, instead of having one or two trophic levels, you can have five or six trophic levels, and that means things can eat things that eat other things and so on, and you’ve gone to a level of ecological complexity, which is completely impossible in the absence of oxygen.
Lex Fridman
This reminds me of the Hunter S. Thompson quote that, “For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.” The history of life on Earth unfortunately is that of violence, just the trillions and trillions of multi-cell organisms that were murdered in the struggle for survival.
This reminds me of the Hunter S. Thompson quote that, “For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.” The history of life on Earth unfortunately is that of violence, just the trillions and trillions of multi-cell organisms that were murdered in the struggle for survival.
Nick Lane
It’s a sorry statement, but yes, it’s basically true.
It’s a sorry statement, but yes, it’s basically true.
Lex Fridman
And that somehow is a catalyst from an evolutionary perspective for creativity, for creating more and more complex organisms that are better and better at surviving-
And that somehow is a catalyst from an evolutionary perspective for creativity, for creating more and more complex organisms that are better and better at surviving-
Nick Lane
Survival of the fittest, if you just go back to that old phrase, means death of the weakest. Now, what’s fit? What’s weak? These are terms that don’t have much intrinsic meaning, but the thing is, evolution only happens because of death.
Survival of the fittest, if you just go back to that old phrase, means death of the weakest. Now, what’s fit? What’s weak? These are terms that don’t have much intrinsic meaning, but the thing is, evolution only happens because of death.
Lex Fridman
One way to die is that the constraints, the scarcity of the resources in the environment, but that seems to be not nearly as good of a mechanism for death than other creatures roaming about in the environment. When I say environment, I mean the static environment, but then there’s the dynamic environment of bigger things trying to eat you and use you for your energy.
One way to die is that the constraints, the scarcity of the resources in the environment, but that seems to be not nearly as good of a mechanism for death than other creatures roaming about in the environment. When I say environment, I mean the static environment, but then there’s the dynamic environment of bigger things trying to eat you and use you for your energy.
Nick Lane
It forces you to come up with a solution to your specific problem that is inventive and is new and hasn’t been done before. So it forces literally change, literally evolution on populations. They have to become different.
It forces you to come up with a solution to your specific problem that is inventive and is new and hasn’t been done before. So it forces literally change, literally evolution on populations. They have to become different.
Lex Fridman
And it’s interesting that humans have channeled that into more… I guess what humans are doing is they’re inventing more productive and safe ways of doing that. This whole idea of morality and all those kinds of things, I think they ultimately lead to competition versus violence. Because I think violence can have a cold, brutal, inefficient aspect to it, but if you channel that into more controlled competition in the space of ideas, in the space of approaches to life, maybe you can be even more productive than evolution is. Because evolution is very wasteful. The amount of murder required to really test the good idea, genetically speaking, is just a lot. Many, many, many generations.
And it’s interesting that humans have channeled that into more… I guess what humans are doing is they’re inventing more productive and safe ways of doing that. This whole idea of morality and all those kinds of things, I think they ultimately lead to competition versus violence. Because I think violence can have a cold, brutal, inefficient aspect to it, but if you channel that into more controlled competition in the space of ideas, in the space of approaches to life, maybe you can be even more productive than evolution is. Because evolution is very wasteful. The amount of murder required to really test the good idea, genetically speaking, is just a lot. Many, many, many generations.
Nick Lane
Morally, we cannot base society on the way that evolution works.
Morally, we cannot base society on the way that evolution works.
Lex Fridman
But that’s an invention, right, to morality?
But that’s an invention, right, to morality?
Nick Lane
But actually, in some respects, we do, which is to say, “This is how science works. We have competing hypotheses that have to get better, otherwise they die.” It’s the way that society works. In Ancient Greece, we had Athens and Sparta and city states, and then we had the Renaissance and nation states, and universities compete with each other tremendous amount, companies competing with each other all the time. It drives innovation. And if we want to do it without all the death that we see in nature, then we have to have some kind of societal-level control that says, “Well, there’s some limits, guys, and these are what the limits are going to be,” and society as a whole has to say, “Right, we want to limit the amount of death here, so you can’t do this and you can’t do that.” Who makes up these rules, and how do we know? It’s a tough thing, but it’s basically trying to find a moral basis for avoiding the death of evolution and natural selection and keeping the innovation and the richness of it.
But actually, in some respects, we do, which is to say, “This is how science works. We have competing hypotheses that have to get better, otherwise they die.” It’s the way that society works. In Ancient Greece, we had Athens and Sparta and city states, and then we had the Renaissance and nation states, and universities compete with each other tremendous amount, companies competing with each other all the time. It drives innovation. And if we want to do it without all the death that we see in nature, then we have to have some kind of societal-level control that says, “Well, there’s some limits, guys, and these are what the limits are going to be,” and society as a whole has to say, “Right, we want to limit the amount of death here, so you can’t do this and you can’t do that.” Who makes up these rules, and how do we know? It’s a tough thing, but it’s basically trying to find a moral basis for avoiding the death of evolution and natural selection and keeping the innovation and the richness of it.
Lex Fridman
I forgot who said it, but that murder is illegal… Probably Kurt Vonnegut. Murder is illegal except when it’s done to the sound of trumpets and at a large scale. So we still have wars, but we are struggling with this idea that murder is a bad thing. It’s so interesting how we’re channeling the best of the evolutionary imperative and trying to get rid of the stuff that’s not productive, trying to almost accelerate evolution. The same kind of thing that makes evolution creative, we’re trying to use that.
I forgot who said it, but that murder is illegal… Probably Kurt Vonnegut. Murder is illegal except when it’s done to the sound of trumpets and at a large scale. So we still have wars, but we are struggling with this idea that murder is a bad thing. It’s so interesting how we’re channeling the best of the evolutionary imperative and trying to get rid of the stuff that’s not productive, trying to almost accelerate evolution. The same kind of thing that makes evolution creative, we’re trying to use that.
Nick Lane
I think we naturally do it. I don’t think we can help ourselves to it.
I think we naturally do it. I don’t think we can help ourselves to it.
Lex Fridman
It’s so hard to know.
It’s so hard to know.
Nick Lane
Capitalism as a form is basically about competition and differential rewards. But society, and we have a, I keep using this word, moral obligation, but we cannot operate as a society if we go that way. It’s interesting that we’ve had problems achieving balance. For example, in the financial crash in 2009, do you let banks go to the wall or not, this kind of question. In evolution, certainly, you let them go to the wall. And in that sense, you don’t need the regulation because they just die. Whereas if we as a society think about what’s required for society as a whole, then you don’t necessarily let them go to the wall, in which case you then have to impose some kind of regulation that the bankers themselves will, in an evolutionary manner, exploit.
Capitalism as a form is basically about competition and differential rewards. But society, and we have a, I keep using this word, moral obligation, but we cannot operate as a society if we go that way. It’s interesting that we’ve had problems achieving balance. For example, in the financial crash in 2009, do you let banks go to the wall or not, this kind of question. In evolution, certainly, you let them go to the wall. And in that sense, you don’t need the regulation because they just die. Whereas if we as a society think about what’s required for society as a whole, then you don’t necessarily let them go to the wall, in which case you then have to impose some kind of regulation that the bankers themselves will, in an evolutionary manner, exploit.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, we’ve been struggling with this kind of idea of capitalism, the cold brutality of capitalism that seems to create so much beautiful things in this world, and then the ideals of communism that seem to create so much brutal destruction in history. We struggle with ideas of, “Well, maybe we didn’t do it right. How can we do things better,” and then the ideas are the things we’re playing with, as opposed to people. If a PhD student has a bad idea, we don’t shoot the PhD student. We just criticize their idea and hope they improve.
Yeah, we’ve been struggling with this kind of idea of capitalism, the cold brutality of capitalism that seems to create so much beautiful things in this world, and then the ideals of communism that seem to create so much brutal destruction in history. We struggle with ideas of, “Well, maybe we didn’t do it right. How can we do things better,” and then the ideas are the things we’re playing with, as opposed to people. If a PhD student has a bad idea, we don’t shoot the PhD student. We just criticize their idea and hope they improve.
Nick Lane
You have a very humane [inaudible 01:12:43].
You have a very humane [inaudible 01:12:43].
Human evolution
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know how you guys do it. The way I run things, it’s always life and death. Okay. So it is interesting about humans that there is an inner sense of morality, which begs the question of, how did homo sapiens evolve? If we think about the early invention of sex and early invention of predation, what was the thing invented to make humans? What would you say?
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know how you guys do it. The way I run things, it’s always life and death. Okay. So it is interesting about humans that there is an inner sense of morality, which begs the question of, how did homo sapiens evolve? If we think about the early invention of sex and early invention of predation, what was the thing invented to make humans? What would you say?
Nick Lane
I suppose a couple of things I’d say. Number one is you don’t have to wind the clock back very far, five, six million years or so, and let it run forwards again, and the chances of humans as we know them is not necessarily that high. Imagine as an alien, you find planet Earth, and it’s got everything apart from humans on it. It’s an amazing, wonderful, marvelous planet, but nothing that we would recognize as extremely intelligent life, space-faring civilization. So when we think about aliens, we’re kind of after something like ourselves or after a space-faring civilization. We’re not after zebras and giraffes and lions and things, amazing though they are. But the additional kind of evolutionary steps to go from large, complex mammals, monkeys, let’s say, to humans doesn’t strike me as that long a distance. It’s all about the brain. And where’s the brain and morality coming from? It seems to me to be all about groups, human groups and interactions between groups.
I suppose a couple of things I’d say. Number one is you don’t have to wind the clock back very far, five, six million years or so, and let it run forwards again, and the chances of humans as we know them is not necessarily that high. Imagine as an alien, you find planet Earth, and it’s got everything apart from humans on it. It’s an amazing, wonderful, marvelous planet, but nothing that we would recognize as extremely intelligent life, space-faring civilization. So when we think about aliens, we’re kind of after something like ourselves or after a space-faring civilization. We’re not after zebras and giraffes and lions and things, amazing though they are. But the additional kind of evolutionary steps to go from large, complex mammals, monkeys, let’s say, to humans doesn’t strike me as that long a distance. It’s all about the brain. And where’s the brain and morality coming from? It seems to me to be all about groups, human groups and interactions between groups.
Lex Fridman
The collective intelligence of it.
The collective intelligence of it.
Nick Lane
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nick Lane
The interactions, really. And there’s a guy at UCL called Mark Thomas, who’s done a lot of really beautiful work, I think, on this kind of question. I talk to him every now and then, so my views are influenced by him. But a lot seems to depend on population density. The more interactions you have going on between different groups, the more transfer of information, if you like, between groups, of people moving from one group to another group, almost like lateral gene transfer in bacteria. The more expertise you’re able to develop and maintain, the more culturally complex your society can become. And groups that have become detached, like on Easter Island, for example, very often degenerate in terms of the complexity of their civilization.
The interactions, really. And there’s a guy at UCL called Mark Thomas, who’s done a lot of really beautiful work, I think, on this kind of question. I talk to him every now and then, so my views are influenced by him. But a lot seems to depend on population density. The more interactions you have going on between different groups, the more transfer of information, if you like, between groups, of people moving from one group to another group, almost like lateral gene transfer in bacteria. The more expertise you’re able to develop and maintain, the more culturally complex your society can become. And groups that have become detached, like on Easter Island, for example, very often degenerate in terms of the complexity of their civilization.
Lex Fridman
Is that true for complex organisms in general, population density-
Is that true for complex organisms in general, population density-
Nick Lane
Really matters.
Really matters.
Lex Fridman
… is often productive?
… is often productive?
Nick Lane
Really matters. But in human terms, I don’t know what the actual factors were that were driving a large brain, but you can talk about fire, you can talk about tool use, you can talk about language, and none of them seem to correlate especially well with the actual known trajectory of human evolution in terms of cave art and these kind of things. That seems to work much better just with population density in number of interactions between different groups, all of which is really about human interactions, human-human interactions, and the complexity of those.
Really matters. But in human terms, I don’t know what the actual factors were that were driving a large brain, but you can talk about fire, you can talk about tool use, you can talk about language, and none of them seem to correlate especially well with the actual known trajectory of human evolution in terms of cave art and these kind of things. That seems to work much better just with population density in number of interactions between different groups, all of which is really about human interactions, human-human interactions, and the complexity of those.
Lex Fridman
But population density is the thing that increases the number of interactions, but then there must have been inventions forced by that number of interactions that actually led to humans. So Richard Wrangham talks about that it’s basically the beta males had to beat up the alpha male, so that’s what collaboration looks like is when you’re living together, they don’t like, our early ancestors, don’t like the dictatorial aspect of a single individual at the top of a tribe, so they learn to collaborate how to basically create a democracy of sorts, a democracy that prevents, minimizes, or lessens the amount of violence, which essentially gives strength to the tribe and make the war between tribes versus the dictator [inaudible 01:16:55]-
But population density is the thing that increases the number of interactions, but then there must have been inventions forced by that number of interactions that actually led to humans. So Richard Wrangham talks about that it’s basically the beta males had to beat up the alpha male, so that’s what collaboration looks like is when you’re living together, they don’t like, our early ancestors, don’t like the dictatorial aspect of a single individual at the top of a tribe, so they learn to collaborate how to basically create a democracy of sorts, a democracy that prevents, minimizes, or lessens the amount of violence, which essentially gives strength to the tribe and make the war between tribes versus the dictator [inaudible 01:16:55]-
Nick Lane
I think one of the most wonderful things about humans is we’re all of those things. We are deeply social as a species, and we’re also deeply selfish. And it seems to me the conflict between capitalism and communism is really just two aspects of human nature, both of which are-
I think one of the most wonderful things about humans is we’re all of those things. We are deeply social as a species, and we’re also deeply selfish. And it seems to me the conflict between capitalism and communism is really just two aspects of human nature, both of which are-
Lex Fridman
We’ve got both.
We’ve got both.
Nick Lane
We have both. And we have a constant kind of vying between the two sides. We really do care about other people, beyond our families, beyond our immediate people. We care about society and the society that we live in. And you could say that’s a drawing towards socialism or communism. On the other side, we really do care about ourselves. We really do care about our families, about working for something that we gain from, and that’s the capitalist side of it. They’re both really deeply ingrained in human nature.
We have both. And we have a constant kind of vying between the two sides. We really do care about other people, beyond our families, beyond our immediate people. We care about society and the society that we live in. And you could say that’s a drawing towards socialism or communism. On the other side, we really do care about ourselves. We really do care about our families, about working for something that we gain from, and that’s the capitalist side of it. They’re both really deeply ingrained in human nature.
In terms of violence and interactions between groups, yes, all this dynamic of if you’re interacting between groups, you can be certain that they’re going to be burning each other and all kinds of physical, violent interactions as well, which will drive the kind of cleverness of, how do you resist this? Let’s build a tower. What are we going to do to prevent being overrun by those marauding gangs from over there? And you look outside humans, and you look at chimps and bonobos and so on, and they’re very, very different structures to society. Chimps tend to have an aggressive alpha male-type structure, and bonobos, there’s basically a female society, where the males are predominantly excluded and only brought in at the behest of the female. We have a lot in common with both of those groups.
Lex Fridman
And there’s, again, tension there. Probably chimps, more violence, the bonobos, probably more sex. That’s another tension. How serious do we want to be? How much fun we want to be?
And there’s, again, tension there. Probably chimps, more violence, the bonobos, probably more sex. That’s another tension. How serious do we want to be? How much fun we want to be?
Neanderthals
Asking for a friend again, what do you think happened to Neanderthals? What did we cheeky humans do to the Neanderthals, homo sapiens? Do you think we murdered them? How do we murder them? How do we out-compete them, or do we out-mate them?
Nick Lane
I don’t know. I think there’s unequivocal evidence that we mated with them.
I don’t know. I think there’s unequivocal evidence that we mated with them.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. We always try to mate with everything.
Yeah. We always try to mate with everything.
Nick Lane
Yes, pretty much. There’s some interesting… The first sequences that came along were in mitochondrial DNA, and that was back to about 2002 or thereabouts. And what was found was that Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA was very different to human mitochondrial DNA-
Yes, pretty much. There’s some interesting… The first sequences that came along were in mitochondrial DNA, and that was back to about 2002 or thereabouts. And what was found was that Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA was very different to human mitochondrial DNA-
Lex Fridman
Oh, that’s so interesting.
Oh, that’s so interesting.
Nick Lane
And you could do a clock on it, and it said the divergent state was about 600,000 years ago or something like that, so not so long ago. And then the first full genomes were sequenced maybe 10 years after that, and they showed plenty of signs of mating between. So the mitochondrial DNA effectively says no mating, and the nuclear genes say, yeah, lots of mating, but we don’t know-
And you could do a clock on it, and it said the divergent state was about 600,000 years ago or something like that, so not so long ago. And then the first full genomes were sequenced maybe 10 years after that, and they showed plenty of signs of mating between. So the mitochondrial DNA effectively says no mating, and the nuclear genes say, yeah, lots of mating, but we don’t know-
Lex Fridman
How is that possible? Sorry, can you explain the difference between mitochondrial DNA-
How is that possible? Sorry, can you explain the difference between mitochondrial DNA-
Nick Lane
Sorry, yes.
Sorry, yes.
Lex Fridman
… and nucleus?
… and nucleus?
Nick Lane
I’ve talked before about the mitochondria, which are the power packs in cells. These are the pared-down control units is their DNA. It’s passed on by the mother only. And in the egg cell, we might have half a million copies of mitochondrial DNA. There’s only 37 genes left. And it’s basically the control unit of energy production. That’s what it’s doing.
I’ve talked before about the mitochondria, which are the power packs in cells. These are the pared-down control units is their DNA. It’s passed on by the mother only. And in the egg cell, we might have half a million copies of mitochondrial DNA. There’s only 37 genes left. And it’s basically the control unit of energy production. That’s what it’s doing.
Lex Fridman
It’s a basic, old-school machine that does energy production.
It’s a basic, old-school machine that does energy production.
Nick Lane
It’s got genes that were considered to be effectively trivial because they did a very narrowly defined job, but they’re not trivial in the sense that that narrowly defined job is about everything that is being alive. So they’re much easier to sequence. You’ve got many more copies of these things, and you can sequence them very quickly.
It’s got genes that were considered to be effectively trivial because they did a very narrowly defined job, but they’re not trivial in the sense that that narrowly defined job is about everything that is being alive. So they’re much easier to sequence. You’ve got many more copies of these things, and you can sequence them very quickly.
But the problem is, because they go down only the maternal line, from mother to daughter, your mitochondrial DNA and mine, it’s going nowhere. It doesn’t matter. Any kids we have, they get their mother’s mitochondrial DNA, except in very, very rare and strange circumstances. So it tells a different story, and it’s not a story which is easy to reconcile always. And what it seems to suggest, to my mind at least, is that there was one-way traffic of genes probably going from humans into Neanderthals rather than the other way around.
Why did the Neanderthals disappear? I don’t know. I suspect they were probably less violent, less clever, less populous, less willing to fight. I don’t know. I think we probably drove them to extinction at the margins of Europe.
Lex Fridman
And it’s interesting how much, if we ran Earth over and over again, how many of these branches of intelligent beings that have figured out how to leverage collective intelligence, which ones of them emerge, which ones of them succeed? Is it the more violent ones? Is it the more isolated one? What dynamics result to more productivity? And I suppose we’ll never know. The more complex the organism, the harder it is to run the experiment in the lab.
And it’s interesting how much, if we ran Earth over and over again, how many of these branches of intelligent beings that have figured out how to leverage collective intelligence, which ones of them emerge, which ones of them succeed? Is it the more violent ones? Is it the more isolated one? What dynamics result to more productivity? And I suppose we’ll never know. The more complex the organism, the harder it is to run the experiment in the lab.
Nick Lane
Yes. And in some respects, maybe it’s best if we don’t know.
Yes. And in some respects, maybe it’s best if we don’t know.
Sensory inputs
Lex Fridman
Yeah. The truth might be very painful. What about, if we actually step back, a couple of interesting things that we humans do? One is object manipulation and movement, and of course, movement was something that was done… That was another big invention, being able to move around the environment. And the other one is this sensory mechanism, how we sense the environment. One of the coolest high-definition ones is vision. How big are those inventions in the history of life on Earth?
Yeah. The truth might be very painful. What about, if we actually step back, a couple of interesting things that we humans do? One is object manipulation and movement, and of course, movement was something that was done… That was another big invention, being able to move around the environment. And the other one is this sensory mechanism, how we sense the environment. One of the coolest high-definition ones is vision. How big are those inventions in the history of life on Earth?
Nick Lane
Vision, movement, again, extremely important going back to the origin of animals, the Cambrian explosion, where suddenly you’re seeing eyes in the fossil record. And it’s not necessarily… Again, lots of people historically have said, “What use is half an eye,” and you can go in a series of steps from a light-sensitive spot on a flat piece of tissue to an eyeball with a lens and so on if you assume no more than… I don’t remember. This was a specific model that I have in mind, but it was 1% change or half a percent change for each generation how long would it take to evolve an eye as we know it, and the answer is half a million years. It doesn’t have to take long. That’s not how evolution works. That’s not an answer to the question. It just shows you can reconstruct the steps and you can work out roughly how it can work.
Vision, movement, again, extremely important going back to the origin of animals, the Cambrian explosion, where suddenly you’re seeing eyes in the fossil record. And it’s not necessarily… Again, lots of people historically have said, “What use is half an eye,” and you can go in a series of steps from a light-sensitive spot on a flat piece of tissue to an eyeball with a lens and so on if you assume no more than… I don’t remember. This was a specific model that I have in mind, but it was 1% change or half a percent change for each generation how long would it take to evolve an eye as we know it, and the answer is half a million years. It doesn’t have to take long. That’s not how evolution works. That’s not an answer to the question. It just shows you can reconstruct the steps and you can work out roughly how it can work.
So it’s not that big a deal to evolve an eye. But once you have one, then there’s nowhere to hide. Again, we’re back to predator-prey relationships. We’re back to all the benefits that being able to see brings you. And if you think philosophically what bats are doing with ecolocation and so on, I have no idea, but I suspect that they form an image of the world in pretty much the same way that we do. It’s just a matter of mental reconstruction.
So I suppose the other thing about sight, there are single-celled organisms that have got a lens and a retina and a cornea and so on. Basically they’ve got a camera-type eye in a single cell. They don’t have a brain; what they understand about their world is impossible to say, but they’re capable of coming up with the same structures to do so. So I suppose then, is that once you’ve got things like eyes, then you have a big driving pressure on the central nervous system to figure out what it all means.
And then we come around to your other point about manipulation, sensory input, and so on about now you have a huge requirement to understand what your environment is and what it means and how it reacts and how you should run away and where you should stay put.
Lex Fridman
Actually on that point, let me… I don’t know if you know the work of Donald Hoffman, who uses the argument, the mechanism of evolution, to say that there’s not necessarily a strong evolutionary value to seeing the world as it is, so objective reality, that our perception actually is very different from what’s objectively real. We’re living inside an illusion and we’re basically… The entire set of species on Earth, I think, I guess, are competing in a space that’s an illusion that’s distinct from, that’s far away from physical reality as defined by physics.
Actually on that point, let me… I don’t know if you know the work of Donald Hoffman, who uses the argument, the mechanism of evolution, to say that there’s not necessarily a strong evolutionary value to seeing the world as it is, so objective reality, that our perception actually is very different from what’s objectively real. We’re living inside an illusion and we’re basically… The entire set of species on Earth, I think, I guess, are competing in a space that’s an illusion that’s distinct from, that’s far away from physical reality as defined by physics.
Nick Lane
I’m not sure it’s an illusion so much as a bubble. We have a sensory input, which is a fraction of what we could have a sensory input on, and we interpret it in terms of what’s useful for us to know to stay alive. So, yes, it’s an illusion in that sense, but-
I’m not sure it’s an illusion so much as a bubble. We have a sensory input, which is a fraction of what we could have a sensory input on, and we interpret it in terms of what’s useful for us to know to stay alive. So, yes, it’s an illusion in that sense, but-
Lex Fridman
So it’s a subset-
So it’s a subset-
Nick Lane
… a tree is physically there, and if you walk into that tree, it’s not purely a delusion. There’s some physical reality to it.
… a tree is physically there, and if you walk into that tree, it’s not purely a delusion. There’s some physical reality to it.
Lex Fridman
So it’s a sensory slice into reality as it is, but because it’s just a slice, you’re missing a big picture. But he says that that slice doesn’t necessarily need to be a slice. It could be a complete fabrication that’s just consistent amongst the species, which is an interesting, or at least it’s a humbling realization that our perception is limited and our cognitive abilities are limited. And at least to me, his argument from evolution, I don’t know how strong that is as an argument, but I do think that life can exist in the mind.
So it’s a sensory slice into reality as it is, but because it’s just a slice, you’re missing a big picture. But he says that that slice doesn’t necessarily need to be a slice. It could be a complete fabrication that’s just consistent amongst the species, which is an interesting, or at least it’s a humbling realization that our perception is limited and our cognitive abilities are limited. And at least to me, his argument from evolution, I don’t know how strong that is as an argument, but I do think that life can exist in the mind.
Nick Lane
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
In the same way that you can do a virtual reality video game and you can have a vibrant life inside that place, and that place is not real in some sense, but you could still have a vibe… All the same forces of evolution, all the same competition, the dynamics between humans you can have, but I don’t know if there’s evidence for that being the thing that happened on Earth. It seems that Earth-
In the same way that you can do a virtual reality video game and you can have a vibrant life inside that place, and that place is not real in some sense, but you could still have a vibe… All the same forces of evolution, all the same competition, the dynamics between humans you can have, but I don’t know if there’s evidence for that being the thing that happened on Earth. It seems that Earth-
Nick Lane
I think in either environment, I wouldn’t deny that you could have exactly the world that you talk about, and it would be very difficult to… the idea in Matrix movies and so on, that the whole world is completely a construction, and we’re fundamentally deluded. It’s difficult to say that’s impossible or couldn’t happen, and certainly we construct in our minds what the outside world is. But we do it on input, and that input, I would hesitate to say it’s not real because it’s precisely how we do understand the world. We have eyes, but if you keep someone, and apparently this kind of thing happens, someone kept in a dark room for five years or something like that, they never see properly again because the neural wiring that underpins how we interpret vision never developed.
I think in either environment, I wouldn’t deny that you could have exactly the world that you talk about, and it would be very difficult to… the idea in Matrix movies and so on, that the whole world is completely a construction, and we’re fundamentally deluded. It’s difficult to say that’s impossible or couldn’t happen, and certainly we construct in our minds what the outside world is. But we do it on input, and that input, I would hesitate to say it’s not real because it’s precisely how we do understand the world. We have eyes, but if you keep someone, and apparently this kind of thing happens, someone kept in a dark room for five years or something like that, they never see properly again because the neural wiring that underpins how we interpret vision never developed.
When you watch a child develop, it walks into a table. It bangs its head on the table and it hurts. Now you’ve got two inputs. You’ve got one pain from this sharp edge, and number two, probably you’ve touched it and realized it’s there, it’s a sharp edge, and you’ve got the visual input. And you put the three things together and think, “I don’t want to walk into a table again.” So you’re learning, and it’s a limited reality, but it’s a true reality. And if you don’t learn that properly, then you will get eaten, you will get hit by a bus, you will not survive. And same if you’re in some kind of, let’s say, computer construction of reality. I’m not in my ground here, but if you construct the laws that this is what reality is inside this, then you play by those laws.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Well, as long as the laws are consistent. So just like you said in the lab, the interesting thing about the simulation question, yes, it’s hard to know if we’re living inside a simulation, but also, yes, it’s possible to do these kinds of experiments in the lab now more and more. To me, the interesting question is, how realistic does a virtual reality game need to be for us to not be able to tell the difference? A more interesting question to me is, how realistic or interesting does the virtual reality world need to be in order for us to want to stay there forever or much longer than physical reality, prefer that place, and also prefer it not as we prefer hard drugs, but prefer it in a deep, meaningful way in the way we enjoy life itself?
Yeah. Well, as long as the laws are consistent. So just like you said in the lab, the interesting thing about the simulation question, yes, it’s hard to know if we’re living inside a simulation, but also, yes, it’s possible to do these kinds of experiments in the lab now more and more. To me, the interesting question is, how realistic does a virtual reality game need to be for us to not be able to tell the difference? A more interesting question to me is, how realistic or interesting does the virtual reality world need to be in order for us to want to stay there forever or much longer than physical reality, prefer that place, and also prefer it not as we prefer hard drugs, but prefer it in a deep, meaningful way in the way we enjoy life itself?
Nick Lane
I suppose the issue with the matrix, I imagine that it’s possible to delude the mind sufficiently that you genuinely in that way do think that you are interacting with the real world, when in fact, the whole thing’s a simulation. How good does a simulation need to be able to do that? Well, it needs to convince you that all your sensory input is correct and accurate and joins up and make sense. Now, that sensory input is not something that we’re born with. We’re born with a sense of touch. We’re born with eyes and so on, but we don’t know how to use them. We don’t know what to make of them. We go around, we bump into trees. We cry a lot. We’re in pain a lot. We’re basically booting up the system so that it can make head or tail of the sensory input that it’s getting. And that sensory input’s not just a one-way flux of things. It’s also you have to walk into things. You have to hear things. You have to put it together.
I suppose the issue with the matrix, I imagine that it’s possible to delude the mind sufficiently that you genuinely in that way do think that you are interacting with the real world, when in fact, the whole thing’s a simulation. How good does a simulation need to be able to do that? Well, it needs to convince you that all your sensory input is correct and accurate and joins up and make sense. Now, that sensory input is not something that we’re born with. We’re born with a sense of touch. We’re born with eyes and so on, but we don’t know how to use them. We don’t know what to make of them. We go around, we bump into trees. We cry a lot. We’re in pain a lot. We’re basically booting up the system so that it can make head or tail of the sensory input that it’s getting. And that sensory input’s not just a one-way flux of things. It’s also you have to walk into things. You have to hear things. You have to put it together.
Now, if you’ve got just babies in the matrix who are slotted into this, I don’t think they have that kind of sensory input. I don’t think they would have any way to make sense of New York as a world that they’re part of. The brain is just not developed in that way.
Lex Fridman
Well, I can’t make sense of New York in this physical reality either. But yeah, but you said pain and the walking into things. Well, you can create a pain signal, and as long as it’s consistent that certain things result in pain, you can start to construct a reality. Maybe you disagree with this, but I think we are born almost with a desire to be convinced by our reality, like a desire to make sense of our reality.
Well, I can’t make sense of New York in this physical reality either. But yeah, but you said pain and the walking into things. Well, you can create a pain signal, and as long as it’s consistent that certain things result in pain, you can start to construct a reality. Maybe you disagree with this, but I think we are born almost with a desire to be convinced by our reality, like a desire to make sense of our reality.
Nick Lane
Oh, I’m sure we are, yes.
Oh, I’m sure we are, yes.
Lex Fridman
So there’s an imperative… So whatever that reality is given to us, like the table hurts, fire is hot, I think we want to be deluded in the sense that we want to make a simple… Einstein’s simple theory of the thing around us, we want that simplicity. So maybe the hunger for the simplicity is the thing that could be used to construct a pretty dumb simulation that tricks us. So maybe tricking humans doesn’t require building a universe.
So there’s an imperative… So whatever that reality is given to us, like the table hurts, fire is hot, I think we want to be deluded in the sense that we want to make a simple… Einstein’s simple theory of the thing around us, we want that simplicity. So maybe the hunger for the simplicity is the thing that could be used to construct a pretty dumb simulation that tricks us. So maybe tricking humans doesn’t require building a universe.
Nick Lane
No, this is not what I work on, so I don’t know how close to it we are-
No, this is not what I work on, so I don’t know how close to it we are-
Lex Fridman
I don’t think anyone works on this.
I don’t think anyone works on this.
Nick Lane
But I agree with you-
But I agree with you-
Lex Fridman
Mark Zuckerberg.
Mark Zuckerberg.
Nick Lane
Yeah, I’m not sure that it’s a morally justifiable thing to do, but is it possible in principle? I think it’d be very difficult, but I don’t see why in principle it wouldn’t be possible. And I agree with you that we try to understand the world, we try to integrate the sensory inputs that we have, and we try to come up with a hypothesis that explains what’s going on. I think, though, that we have huge input from the social context that we’re in. We don’t do it by ourselves. We don’t kind of blunder around in a universe by ourself and understand the whole thing. We’re told by the people around us what things are and what they do, and the languages coming in here and so on. So it would have to be an extremely impressive simulation to simulate all of that.
Yeah, I’m not sure that it’s a morally justifiable thing to do, but is it possible in principle? I think it’d be very difficult, but I don’t see why in principle it wouldn’t be possible. And I agree with you that we try to understand the world, we try to integrate the sensory inputs that we have, and we try to come up with a hypothesis that explains what’s going on. I think, though, that we have huge input from the social context that we’re in. We don’t do it by ourselves. We don’t kind of blunder around in a universe by ourself and understand the whole thing. We’re told by the people around us what things are and what they do, and the languages coming in here and so on. So it would have to be an extremely impressive simulation to simulate all of that.
Consciousness
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Simulate all of that, including the social construct, the spread of ideas and the exchange of ideas. I don’t know. But those questions are really important to understand as we become more and more digital creatures. It seems like the next step of evolution is us becoming partial… All the same mechanisms we’ve talked about are becoming more and more plugged in into the machine. We’re becoming cyborgs. And there’s an interesting interplay between wires and biology, zeroes and ones and the biological systems, and I don’t think we’ll have the luxury to see humans as disjoint from the technology we’ve created for much longer. We are, in organisms, that’s [inaudible 01:33:56].
Yeah. Simulate all of that, including the social construct, the spread of ideas and the exchange of ideas. I don’t know. But those questions are really important to understand as we become more and more digital creatures. It seems like the next step of evolution is us becoming partial… All the same mechanisms we’ve talked about are becoming more and more plugged in into the machine. We’re becoming cyborgs. And there’s an interesting interplay between wires and biology, zeroes and ones and the biological systems, and I don’t think we’ll have the luxury to see humans as disjoint from the technology we’ve created for much longer. We are, in organisms, that’s [inaudible 01:33:56].
Nick Lane
Yeah. I agree with you, but we come really with this to consciousness, and is there a distinction there? Because what you are saying, the natural end point says we are indistinguishable, that if you are capable of building an AI, which is sufficiently close and similar, that we merge with it, then to all intents and purposes, that AI is conscious as we know it. And I don’t have a strong view, but I have a view, and I wrote about it in the epilogue to my last book.
Yeah. I agree with you, but we come really with this to consciousness, and is there a distinction there? Because what you are saying, the natural end point says we are indistinguishable, that if you are capable of building an AI, which is sufficiently close and similar, that we merge with it, then to all intents and purposes, that AI is conscious as we know it. And I don’t have a strong view, but I have a view, and I wrote about it in the epilogue to my last book.
Because 10 years ago I wrote a chapter in a book called Life Ascending about consciousness. And the subtitle of Life Ascending was The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, and I couldn’t possibly write a book with a subtitle like that that did not include consciousness, and specifically consciousness as one of the great inventions. And it was in part because I was just curious to know more and I read more for that chapter. I never worked on it, but I’ve always… How can anyone not be interested in the question?
And I was left with the feeling that, A, nobody knows, and B, there are two main schools of thought out there with a big kind of skew in distribution. One of them says, oh, it’s a property of matter. It’s an unknown law of physics. Panpsychism, everything is conscious. The sun is conscious. It’s just a matter… A rock is conscious. It’s just a matter of how much. And I find that very unpersuasive. I can’t say that it’s wrong. It’s just that I think we somehow can tell the difference between something that’s living and something that’s not. And then the other end is it’s an emergent property of a very complex, central nervous system. I never quite understand what people mean by words like emergence. There are genuine examples, but I think we very often tend to-
Nick Lane
…and examples, but I think we very often tend to use it to plaster over ignorance. As a biochemist. The question for me then was, okay, so it’s a concoction of a central nervous system. A depolarizing neuron gives rise to a feeling, to a feeling of pain or to a feeling of love or anger, or whatever it may be. So what is then a feeling in biophysical terms in the central nervous system, which bit of the wiring gives rise to, and I’ve never seen anyone answer that question in a way that makes sense to me.
…and examples, but I think we very often tend to use it to plaster over ignorance. As a biochemist. The question for me then was, okay, so it’s a concoction of a central nervous system. A depolarizing neuron gives rise to a feeling, to a feeling of pain or to a feeling of love or anger, or whatever it may be. So what is then a feeling in biophysical terms in the central nervous system, which bit of the wiring gives rise to, and I’ve never seen anyone answer that question in a way that makes sense to me.
Lex Fridman
And that’s an important question to answer.
And that’s an important question to answer.
Nick Lane
I think if we want to understand consciousness, that’s the only question to answer because certainly an AI is capable of out-thinking and it is only a matter of time. Maybe it’s already happened in terms of just information processing and computational skill. I don’t think we have any problem in designing a mind, which is at least the equal of the human mind. But in terms of what we value the most as humans, which is to say our feelings, our emotions, our sense of what the world is in a very personal way that I think means as much or more to people than their information processing. And that’s where I don’t think that AI necessarily will become conscious because I think it’s the property of life.
I think if we want to understand consciousness, that’s the only question to answer because certainly an AI is capable of out-thinking and it is only a matter of time. Maybe it’s already happened in terms of just information processing and computational skill. I don’t think we have any problem in designing a mind, which is at least the equal of the human mind. But in terms of what we value the most as humans, which is to say our feelings, our emotions, our sense of what the world is in a very personal way that I think means as much or more to people than their information processing. And that’s where I don’t think that AI necessarily will become conscious because I think it’s the property of life.
Lex Fridman
Well, let’s talk about it more. You’re an incredible writer, one of my favorite writers. So let me read from your latest book, Transformer is what you write about consciousness. “‘I think therefore I am,’ said Descartes is one of the most celebrated lines ever written. But what am I, exactly? And artificial intelligence can think too by definition and therefore is yet few of us could agree whether AI is capable in principle of anything resembling human emotions, of love or hate, fear and joy, of spiritual yearning, for oneness or oblivion, or corporeal pangs of thirst and hunger. The problem is we don’t know what emotions are,” as you were saying, “What is the feeling in physical terms? How does a discharging neuron give rise to a feeling of anything at all? This is the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, the seeming duality of mind and matter, the physical makeup of our innermost self. We can understand in principle how an extremely sophisticated parallel processing system could be capable of wondrous feats of intelligence. But we can’t answer in principle whether such a supreme intelligence would experience joy or melancholy. What is the quantum of solace?”
Well, let’s talk about it more. You’re an incredible writer, one of my favorite writers. So let me read from your latest book, Transformer is what you write about consciousness. “‘I think therefore I am,’ said Descartes is one of the most celebrated lines ever written. But what am I, exactly? And artificial intelligence can think too by definition and therefore is yet few of us could agree whether AI is capable in principle of anything resembling human emotions, of love or hate, fear and joy, of spiritual yearning, for oneness or oblivion, or corporeal pangs of thirst and hunger. The problem is we don’t know what emotions are,” as you were saying, “What is the feeling in physical terms? How does a discharging neuron give rise to a feeling of anything at all? This is the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, the seeming duality of mind and matter, the physical makeup of our innermost self. We can understand in principle how an extremely sophisticated parallel processing system could be capable of wondrous feats of intelligence. But we can’t answer in principle whether such a supreme intelligence would experience joy or melancholy. What is the quantum of solace?”
Speaking to the question of emergence, there’s just technical… There’s an excellent paper on this recently about this phase transition emergence of performance in neural networks on problem of NLP, natural language processing. So language models, there seems to be this question of size. At some point, there is a phase transition as you grow the size of the neural network. So the question is, this is somewhat of a technical question that you can philosophize over.
The technical question is, is there a size of a neural network that starts to be able to form the kind of representations that can capture a language and therefore be able to not just language, but linguistically capture knowledge that’s sufficient to solve a lot of problems in language? Like be able to have a conversation and there seems to be not a gradual increase, but a phase transition and they’re trying to construct the science of where that is, what is a good size of a neural network and why does such a face transition happen. Anyway, that points to emergence that there could be stages where a thing goes from being you’re very intelligent toaster to a toaster that’s feeling sad today and turns away and looks out the window sighing having an existential crisis.
Nick Lane
I’m thinking of Marvin The Paranoid Android.
I’m thinking of Marvin The Paranoid Android.
Lex Fridman
Well, no, Marvin is simplistic because Marvin is just cranky.
Well, no, Marvin is simplistic because Marvin is just cranky.
Nick Lane
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
He’s-
He’s-
Nick Lane
So easily programmed.
So easily programmed.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Easily programmed. Non-stop existential crisis. You’re almost basically… What is it? Notes From Underground by Dostoevsky like just constantly complaining about life. No, capturing the full rollercoaster of human emotion, the excitement, the bliss, the connection, the empathy, and all that kind of stuff. And then the selfishness, the anger, the depression, all that kind of stuff. Capturing all of that and be able to experience it deeply. It’s the most important thing you could possibly experience today. The highest highs. The lowest lows. This is it. My life will be over. I cannot possibly go on that feeling and then after a nap, you’re feeling amazing. That might be something that emerges.
Yeah. Easily programmed. Non-stop existential crisis. You’re almost basically… What is it? Notes From Underground by Dostoevsky like just constantly complaining about life. No, capturing the full rollercoaster of human emotion, the excitement, the bliss, the connection, the empathy, and all that kind of stuff. And then the selfishness, the anger, the depression, all that kind of stuff. Capturing all of that and be able to experience it deeply. It’s the most important thing you could possibly experience today. The highest highs. The lowest lows. This is it. My life will be over. I cannot possibly go on that feeling and then after a nap, you’re feeling amazing. That might be something that emerges.
Nick Lane
So why would a nap make an AI being feel better?
So why would a nap make an AI being feel better?
Lex Fridman
First of all, we don’t know that for a human either, right?
First of all, we don’t know that for a human either, right?
Nick Lane
But we do know that that’s actually true for many people much of the time. Maybe you’re utterly depressed and you have a nap and you do in fact feel better.
But we do know that that’s actually true for many people much of the time. Maybe you’re utterly depressed and you have a nap and you do in fact feel better.
Lex Fridman
Oh, you are actually asking the technical question there is… So there’s a biological answer to that. And so the question is whether AI needs to have the same kind of attachments to its body, bodily function, and preservation of the brain’s successful function. Self-preservation essentially in some deep biological sense.
Oh, you are actually asking the technical question there is… So there’s a biological answer to that. And so the question is whether AI needs to have the same kind of attachments to its body, bodily function, and preservation of the brain’s successful function. Self-preservation essentially in some deep biological sense.
Nick Lane
I mean to my mind it comes back round to the problem we were talking about before about simulations and sensory input and learning what all of this stuff means and life and death. That biology, unlike society, has a death penalty over everything. And natural selection works on that death penalty that if you make this decision wrongly, you die. And the next generation is represented by beings that made a slightly different decision on balance. And that is something that’s intrinsically difficult to simulate in all its richness I would say. So what is-
I mean to my mind it comes back round to the problem we were talking about before about simulations and sensory input and learning what all of this stuff means and life and death. That biology, unlike society, has a death penalty over everything. And natural selection works on that death penalty that if you make this decision wrongly, you die. And the next generation is represented by beings that made a slightly different decision on balance. And that is something that’s intrinsically difficult to simulate in all its richness I would say. So what is-
Lex Fridman
Death in all its richness. Our relationship with death or the whole of it? So when you say richness, of course, there’s a lot in that which is hard to simulate. What’s part of the richness that’s hard to simulate?
Death in all its richness. Our relationship with death or the whole of it? So when you say richness, of course, there’s a lot in that which is hard to simulate. What’s part of the richness that’s hard to simulate?
Nick Lane
I suppose the complexity of the environment and your position or the position of an organism in that environment, in the full richness of that environment over its entire life, over multiple generations with changes in gene sequence over those generations. So slight changes in the makeup of those individuals over generations. But if you take it back to the level of single cells, which I do in the book, and ask how does a single cell in effect know it exists as a unit, as an entity. I mean, ‘no’, obviously it doesn’t know anything, but it acts as a unit and it acts with astonishing precision as a unit. And I had suggested that that’s linked to the electrical fields on the membranes themselves and that they give some indication of how am I doing in relation to my environment as a real-time feedback on the world.
I suppose the complexity of the environment and your position or the position of an organism in that environment, in the full richness of that environment over its entire life, over multiple generations with changes in gene sequence over those generations. So slight changes in the makeup of those individuals over generations. But if you take it back to the level of single cells, which I do in the book, and ask how does a single cell in effect know it exists as a unit, as an entity. I mean, ‘no’, obviously it doesn’t know anything, but it acts as a unit and it acts with astonishing precision as a unit. And I had suggested that that’s linked to the electrical fields on the membranes themselves and that they give some indication of how am I doing in relation to my environment as a real-time feedback on the world.
And this is something physical which can be selected over generations that if you get this wrong, it’s linked with this set of circumstances that I’ve just… As an individual, I have a moment of blind panic and run. As a bacterium or something you have some electrical discharge that says blind panic and it runs whatever it may be. And you associate over generations, multiple generations that this electrical phase that I’m in now is associated with a response like that. And it’s easy to see how feelings come in through the back door almost with that kind of giving real-time feedback on your position in the world in relation to how am I doing?
And then you complexify the system and yes, I have no problem with phase transition. And can all of this be done purely by the language, by the issues with how the system understands itself? Maybe it can, I honestly don’t know, but the philosophers for a long time have talked about the possibility that you can have zombie intelligence and that there are no feelings there, but everything else is the same. I mean I have to throw this back to you really. How do you deal with the zombie intelligence?
Lex Fridman
So first of all, I can see that from a biologist perspective, you think of all the complexities that led up to the human being, the entirety of the history of four billion years that in some deep sense integrated the human being into this environment and that dance of the organism and the environment. You could see how emotions arise from that and then our emotions are deeply connected and creating a human experience and from that you mix in consciousness and the full mess of it. But from a perspective of an intelligent organism that’s already here like a baby that learns it doesn’t need to learn how to be a collection of cells or how to do all the things he needs to do. The basic function of a baby, as it learns, is to interact with its environment, to learn from its environment, to learn how to fit into the social society.
So first of all, I can see that from a biologist perspective, you think of all the complexities that led up to the human being, the entirety of the history of four billion years that in some deep sense integrated the human being into this environment and that dance of the organism and the environment. You could see how emotions arise from that and then our emotions are deeply connected and creating a human experience and from that you mix in consciousness and the full mess of it. But from a perspective of an intelligent organism that’s already here like a baby that learns it doesn’t need to learn how to be a collection of cells or how to do all the things he needs to do. The basic function of a baby, as it learns, is to interact with its environment, to learn from its environment, to learn how to fit into the social society.
Nick Lane
And the basic response of the baby is to cry a lot of the time.
And the basic response of the baby is to cry a lot of the time.
Lex Fridman
Cry. Well maybe convinced the humans to protect it or to discipline it, to teach it, whatever. I mean we’ve developed a bunch of different tricks, how to get our parents to take care of us, to educate us, to teach us about the world. Also, we’ve constructed the world in such a way that it’s safe enough for us to survive in and yet dangerous enough to learn the valuable lessons they are still hard with corners, so we can still run into them. It hurts like hell. So AI needs to solve that problem, not the problem of constructing this super complex organism that leads up to run the whole… To make an apple pie, to build the whole universe. You need to build a whole universe. I think the zombie question is, it’s something I would leave to the philosophers because, and I will also leave to them the definition of love and what happens between two human beings when there’s a magic that just grabs them like nothing else matters in the world.
Cry. Well maybe convinced the humans to protect it or to discipline it, to teach it, whatever. I mean we’ve developed a bunch of different tricks, how to get our parents to take care of us, to educate us, to teach us about the world. Also, we’ve constructed the world in such a way that it’s safe enough for us to survive in and yet dangerous enough to learn the valuable lessons they are still hard with corners, so we can still run into them. It hurts like hell. So AI needs to solve that problem, not the problem of constructing this super complex organism that leads up to run the whole… To make an apple pie, to build the whole universe. You need to build a whole universe. I think the zombie question is, it’s something I would leave to the philosophers because, and I will also leave to them the definition of love and what happens between two human beings when there’s a magic that just grabs them like nothing else matters in the world.
And somehow you’ve been searching for this feeling, this moment, this person your whole life, that feeling. The philosophers can have a lot of fun with that one. And also say that that’s just… You could have a biological explanation, you could have all kinds of… It’s all fake. It’s actually Ayn Rand will say it’s all selfish. There’s a lot of different interpretations. I’ll leave it to the philosophers. The point is the feeling sure as hell feels very real. And if my toaster makes me feel like it’s the only toaster in the world, and when I leave and I miss the toaster and when I come back, I’m excited to see the toaster and my life is meaningful and joyful and the friends I have around me get a better version of me because that toaster exists. That sure as hell feels-
Nick Lane
I mean-
I mean-
Lex Fridman
…conscious toaster.
…conscious toaster.
Nick Lane
…is that psychologically different to having a dog?
…is that psychologically different to having a dog?
Lex Fridman
No.
No.
Nick Lane
Because I mean most people would dispute whether we can say a dog… I would say a dog is undoubtedly conscious, but some people would say-
Because I mean most people would dispute whether we can say a dog… I would say a dog is undoubtedly conscious, but some people would say-
Lex Fridman
But there’s degrees of consciousness and so on. But people are definitely much more uncomfortable saying a toaster can be conscious than a dog. And there’s still a deep connection. And you could say our relationship with the dog has more to do with anthropomorphism. Like we kind of project the human being onto it.
But there’s degrees of consciousness and so on. But people are definitely much more uncomfortable saying a toaster can be conscious than a dog. And there’s still a deep connection. And you could say our relationship with the dog has more to do with anthropomorphism. Like we kind of project the human being onto it.
Nick Lane
Maybe.
Maybe.
Lex Fridman
We can do the same damn thing with a toaster.
We can do the same damn thing with a toaster.
Nick Lane
Yes, but you can look into the dog’s eyes and you can see that it’s sad, that it’s delighted to see you again. I don’t have a dog by the way. It’s not that I’m a dog person. I’m a cat person-
Yes, but you can look into the dog’s eyes and you can see that it’s sad, that it’s delighted to see you again. I don’t have a dog by the way. It’s not that I’m a dog person. I’m a cat person-
Lex Fridman
And dogs are actually incredibly good at using their eyes to do just that.
And dogs are actually incredibly good at using their eyes to do just that.
Nick Lane
They are. Now, I don’t imagine that a dog is remotely as close to being intelligent as an AI intelligence, but it’s certainly capable of communicating emotionally with us.
They are. Now, I don’t imagine that a dog is remotely as close to being intelligent as an AI intelligence, but it’s certainly capable of communicating emotionally with us.
Lex Fridman
But here’s what I would venture to say. We tend to think because AI plays chess well and is able to fold proteins now, well that it’s intelligent. I would argue that in order to communicate with humans, in order to have emotional intelligence, it actually requires another order of magnitude of intelligence. It’s not easy to be flawed. Solving a mathematical puzzle is not the same as the full complexity of human-to-human interaction. That’s actually we humans just take for granted the things we’re really good at. Nonstop people tell me how shitty people are at driving. No, humans are incredible at driving. Bipedal walking, walking, object, manipulation. We’re incredible at this. And so people tend to-
But here’s what I would venture to say. We tend to think because AI plays chess well and is able to fold proteins now, well that it’s intelligent. I would argue that in order to communicate with humans, in order to have emotional intelligence, it actually requires another order of magnitude of intelligence. It’s not easy to be flawed. Solving a mathematical puzzle is not the same as the full complexity of human-to-human interaction. That’s actually we humans just take for granted the things we’re really good at. Nonstop people tell me how shitty people are at driving. No, humans are incredible at driving. Bipedal walking, walking, object, manipulation. We’re incredible at this. And so people tend to-
Nick Lane
Discount the things we all just take for granted.
Discount the things we all just take for granted.
Lex Fridman
And one of those things that they discount is our ability, the dance of conversation and interaction with each other, the ability to morph ideas together, the ability to get angry at each other and then to miss each other, to create a tension that makes life fun and difficult and challenging in a way that’s meaningful, that is a skill that’s learned and AI would need to solve that problem.
And one of those things that they discount is our ability, the dance of conversation and interaction with each other, the ability to morph ideas together, the ability to get angry at each other and then to miss each other, to create a tension that makes life fun and difficult and challenging in a way that’s meaningful, that is a skill that’s learned and AI would need to solve that problem.
Nick Lane
I mean, in some sense what you’re saying is AI cannot become meaningfully emotional, let’s say, until it experiences some kind of internal conflict that it’s unable to reconcile these various aspects of reality or its reality with a decision to make. And then it feels sad necessarily because it doesn’t know what to do. I certainly can’t dispute that. That may very well be how it works. I think the only way to find out is to do it and-
I mean, in some sense what you’re saying is AI cannot become meaningfully emotional, let’s say, until it experiences some kind of internal conflict that it’s unable to reconcile these various aspects of reality or its reality with a decision to make. And then it feels sad necessarily because it doesn’t know what to do. I certainly can’t dispute that. That may very well be how it works. I think the only way to find out is to do it and-
Lex Fridman
And to build it and leave it to the philosophers if it actually feels sad or not. The point is the robot will be sitting there alone having an internal conflict, an existential crisis, and that’s required for it to have a deep meaningful connection with another human being. Now does it actually feel that? I don’t know.
And to build it and leave it to the philosophers if it actually feels sad or not. The point is the robot will be sitting there alone having an internal conflict, an existential crisis, and that’s required for it to have a deep meaningful connection with another human being. Now does it actually feel that? I don’t know.
Nick Lane
But I’d like to throw something else at you which troubles me on reading it. Noah Harari’s book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. And he’s written about this kind of thing on various occasions and he sees biochemistry as an algorithm and then AI will necessarily be able to hack that algorithm and do it better than humans. So there will be AI better at writing music that we appreciate, the Mozart ever could, or writing better than Shakespeare ever did, and so on, because biochemistry is algorithmic and all you need to do is figure out which bits of the algorithm to play to make us feel good or bad or appreciate things. And as a biochemist, I find that argument close to irrefutable and not very enjoyable. I don’t like the sound of it, that’s just my reaction as a human being. You might like the sound of it because that says that AI is capable of the same kind of emotional feelings about the world as we are because the whole thing is an algorithm and you can program an algorithm and there you are. He then has a peculiar final chapter where he talks about consciousness in rather separate terms and he’s talking about meditating and so on and getting in touch with his inner conscious. I don’t meditate, I don’t know anything about that. But he wrote in very different terms about it as if somehow it’s a way out of the algorithm. Now it seems to me that consciousness in that sense is capable of scuppering the algorithm. I think in terms of the biochemical feedback loops and so on, it is undoubtedly algorithmic. But in terms of what we decide to do, it can be much more… Based on an emotion we can just think, ah, I don’t care. I can’t resolve this complex situation.
But I’d like to throw something else at you which troubles me on reading it. Noah Harari’s book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. And he’s written about this kind of thing on various occasions and he sees biochemistry as an algorithm and then AI will necessarily be able to hack that algorithm and do it better than humans. So there will be AI better at writing music that we appreciate, the Mozart ever could, or writing better than Shakespeare ever did, and so on, because biochemistry is algorithmic and all you need to do is figure out which bits of the algorithm to play to make us feel good or bad or appreciate things. And as a biochemist, I find that argument close to irrefutable and not very enjoyable. I don’t like the sound of it, that’s just my reaction as a human being. You might like the sound of it because that says that AI is capable of the same kind of emotional feelings about the world as we are because the whole thing is an algorithm and you can program an algorithm and there you are. He then has a peculiar final chapter where he talks about consciousness in rather separate terms and he’s talking about meditating and so on and getting in touch with his inner conscious. I don’t meditate, I don’t know anything about that. But he wrote in very different terms about it as if somehow it’s a way out of the algorithm. Now it seems to me that consciousness in that sense is capable of scuppering the algorithm. I think in terms of the biochemical feedback loops and so on, it is undoubtedly algorithmic. But in terms of what we decide to do, it can be much more… Based on an emotion we can just think, ah, I don’t care. I can’t resolve this complex situation.
I’m going to do that. And that can be based on in effect a different currency, which is the currency of feelings and something where we don’t have very much personal control over. And then it comes back around to you and what are you trying to get at with AI? Do we need to have some system which is capable of overriding a rational decision which cannot be made because there’s too much conflicting information by effectively an emotional judgmental decision that just says do this and see what happens? That’s what consciousness is really doing in my view.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. And the question is whether it’s a different process or just a higher-level process. The idea that biochemistry is an algorithm is to me an oversimplistic view. There’s a lot of things that the moment you say it it’s irrefutable, but it simplifies-
Yeah. And the question is whether it’s a different process or just a higher-level process. The idea that biochemistry is an algorithm is to me an oversimplistic view. There’s a lot of things that the moment you say it it’s irrefutable, but it simplifies-
Nick Lane
I’m sure it’s an extremely complex-
I’m sure it’s an extremely complex-
Lex Fridman
…and in the process loses something fundamental. So for example, calling a universe an information processing system. Sure, yes, you can make that. It’s a computer that’s performing computations, but you’re missing the process of the entropy somehow leading to pockets of complexity that creates these beautiful artifacts that are incredibly complex and they’re like machines. And then those machines are through the process of evolution are constructing even further complexity. Like in calling universe information a processing machine, you’re missing those little local pockets and how difficult it’s to create them.
…and in the process loses something fundamental. So for example, calling a universe an information processing system. Sure, yes, you can make that. It’s a computer that’s performing computations, but you’re missing the process of the entropy somehow leading to pockets of complexity that creates these beautiful artifacts that are incredibly complex and they’re like machines. And then those machines are through the process of evolution are constructing even further complexity. Like in calling universe information a processing machine, you’re missing those little local pockets and how difficult it’s to create them.
So the question to me is if biochemistry is an algorithm, how difficult is it to create a software system that runs the human body, which I think is incorrect? I think that is going to take so long, I mean, that’s going to be centuries from now to be able to reconstruct a human. Now what I would venture to say, to get some of the magic of a human being, what we’re saying with the emotions and the interactions and like a dog makes a smile and joyful and all those kinds of things, that will come much sooner. But that doesn’t require us to reverse engineer the algorithm of biochemistry.
Nick Lane
Yes, but the toaster is making you happy.
Yes, but the toaster is making you happy.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Nick Lane
It’s not about whether you make the toaster happy.
It’s not about whether you make the toaster happy.
Lex Fridman
No, it has to be. It has to be. It has to be. The toaster has to be able to leave me happy.
No, it has to be. It has to be. It has to be. The toaster has to be able to leave me happy.
Nick Lane
The toaster has to be happy. Yes. But it’s the toaster is the AI in this case is a very intelligent-
The toaster has to be happy. Yes. But it’s the toaster is the AI in this case is a very intelligent-
Lex Fridman
Yeah. The toaster has to be able to be unhappy and leave me. That’s essential.
Yeah. The toaster has to be able to be unhappy and leave me. That’s essential.
Nick Lane
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
That’s essential for my being able to miss the toaster. If the toaster is just my servant that’s not, or a provider of services like tells me the weather makes toast, that’s not going to deep connection. It has to have internal conflict. You write about life and death. It has to be able to be conscious of its mortality and the finiteness of its existence and that life is for its temporary and therefore it needs to be more selective with the kind of people it hangs out with.
That’s essential for my being able to miss the toaster. If the toaster is just my servant that’s not, or a provider of services like tells me the weather makes toast, that’s not going to deep connection. It has to have internal conflict. You write about life and death. It has to be able to be conscious of its mortality and the finiteness of its existence and that life is for its temporary and therefore it needs to be more selective with the kind of people it hangs out with.
Nick Lane
One of the most moving moments in the movies from when I was a boy was the unplugging of HAL in 2001 where that was the death of a sentient being and HAL knew it. So I think we all kind of know that a sufficiently intelligent being is going to have some form of consciousness, but whether it would be like biological consciousness, I just don’t know. And if you’re thinking about how do we bring together, I mean obviously we’re going to interact more closely with AI, but are we really? Is a dog really like a toaster or is there really some kind of difference there? You were talking biochemistry is algorithmic, but it’s not single algorithm and it’s very complex. Of course, it is. So it may be that there are again conflicts in the circuits of biochemistry, but I have a feeling that the level of complexity of the total biochemical system at the level of a single cell is less complex than the level of neural networking in the human brain or in an AI.
One of the most moving moments in the movies from when I was a boy was the unplugging of HAL in 2001 where that was the death of a sentient being and HAL knew it. So I think we all kind of know that a sufficiently intelligent being is going to have some form of consciousness, but whether it would be like biological consciousness, I just don’t know. And if you’re thinking about how do we bring together, I mean obviously we’re going to interact more closely with AI, but are we really? Is a dog really like a toaster or is there really some kind of difference there? You were talking biochemistry is algorithmic, but it’s not single algorithm and it’s very complex. Of course, it is. So it may be that there are again conflicts in the circuits of biochemistry, but I have a feeling that the level of complexity of the total biochemical system at the level of a single cell is less complex than the level of neural networking in the human brain or in an AI.
Lex Fridman
Well, I guess I assumed that we were including the brain in the biochemistry algorithm because you have to-
Well, I guess I assumed that we were including the brain in the biochemistry algorithm because you have to-
Nick Lane
I would see that as a higher level of organization of neural networks. They’re all using the same biochemical wiring within themselves.
I would see that as a higher level of organization of neural networks. They’re all using the same biochemical wiring within themselves.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. But the human brain is not just neurons, it’s the immune system. It’s the whole package. I mean, to have a biochemical algorithm that runs an intelligent biological system, you have to include the whole damn thing. And it’s pretty fascinating. It comes from an embryo. The whole… I mean boy. I mean if you can… What is the human being? Because it’s-
Yeah. But the human brain is not just neurons, it’s the immune system. It’s the whole package. I mean, to have a biochemical algorithm that runs an intelligent biological system, you have to include the whole damn thing. And it’s pretty fascinating. It comes from an embryo. The whole… I mean boy. I mean if you can… What is the human being? Because it’s-
Nick Lane
But if you look-
But if you look-
Lex Fridman
…just some code. And then, so DNA doesn’t just tell you what to build, but how to build it. I mean the thing is impressive and the question is how difficult is it to reverse engineer the whole shebang?
…just some code. And then, so DNA doesn’t just tell you what to build, but how to build it. I mean the thing is impressive and the question is how difficult is it to reverse engineer the whole shebang?
Nick Lane
Very difficult.
Very difficult.
Lex Fridman
I would say it’s… I don’t want to say impossible, but it’s much easier to build a human than to reverse engineer… To build a fake human, human-like thing than to reverse engineer the entirety of the process, the evolution of that.
I would say it’s… I don’t want to say impossible, but it’s much easier to build a human than to reverse engineer… To build a fake human, human-like thing than to reverse engineer the entirety of the process, the evolution of that.
Nick Lane
I’m not sure if we are capable of reverse-engineering the whole thing. If the human mind is capable of doing that. I mean I wouldn’t be a biologist if I wasn’t trying, But I know I can’t understand the whole problem. I’m just trying to understand the rudimentary outlines of the problem. There’s another aspect though, you’re talking about developing from a single cell to the human mind and all the subsystems that are part of the immune system and so on. This is something that you’ll talk about I imagine with Michael Levin, but so little is known about… You talk about reverse engineers. So little is known about the developmental pathways that go from a genome to going to a fully wired organism. And a lot of it seems to depend on the same electrical interactions that I was talking about happening at the level of single cells and its interaction with the environment. There’s a whole electrical field side to biology that is not yet written into any of the textbooks, which is about how does an embryo develop into or a single cell develop into these complex systems.
I’m not sure if we are capable of reverse-engineering the whole thing. If the human mind is capable of doing that. I mean I wouldn’t be a biologist if I wasn’t trying, But I know I can’t understand the whole problem. I’m just trying to understand the rudimentary outlines of the problem. There’s another aspect though, you’re talking about developing from a single cell to the human mind and all the subsystems that are part of the immune system and so on. This is something that you’ll talk about I imagine with Michael Levin, but so little is known about… You talk about reverse engineers. So little is known about the developmental pathways that go from a genome to going to a fully wired organism. And a lot of it seems to depend on the same electrical interactions that I was talking about happening at the level of single cells and its interaction with the environment. There’s a whole electrical field side to biology that is not yet written into any of the textbooks, which is about how does an embryo develop into or a single cell develop into these complex systems.
What defines the head, what defines the immune system, what defines the brain, and so on? That really is written in a language that we’re only just beginning to understand. And frankly biologists, most biologists are still very reluctant to even get themselves tangled up in questions like electrical fields influencing development. It seems like mumbo jumbo to a lot of biologists and it should not be because this is the 21st century biology. This is where it’s going, but we’re not going to reverse engineer a human being or the mind or any of these subsystems until we understand how this developmental processes work, how electricity and biology really works, and if it is linked with feelings or with consciousness and so on. In the meantime, we have to try, but I think that’s where the answer lies.
Lex Fridman
So you think it’s possible that the key to things like consciousness are some of the more tricky aspects of cognition might lie in that early development, the interaction of electricity and biology? Electrical fields, oh God.
So you think it’s possible that the key to things like consciousness are some of the more tricky aspects of cognition might lie in that early development, the interaction of electricity and biology? Electrical fields, oh God.
Nick Lane
But we already know the EEG and so on is telling us a lot about brain function, but we don’t know which cells, which parts of a neural network is giving rise to the EEG. We don’t know the basics. The assumption is, I mean we know it’s neural networks, we know it’s multiple cells, hundreds or thousands of cells involved in it, and we assume that it’s to do with depolarization during action potentials and so on. But the mitochondria which are in there have much more membranes than the plasma membrane of the neuron.
But we already know the EEG and so on is telling us a lot about brain function, but we don’t know which cells, which parts of a neural network is giving rise to the EEG. We don’t know the basics. The assumption is, I mean we know it’s neural networks, we know it’s multiple cells, hundreds or thousands of cells involved in it, and we assume that it’s to do with depolarization during action potentials and so on. But the mitochondria which are in there have much more membranes than the plasma membrane of the neuron.
And there’s a much greater membrane potential and it’s formed in, very often parallel Christi, which are capable of reinforcing a field and generating fields over longer distances. And nobody knows if that plays a role in consciousness or not. There’s reasons to argue that it could, but frankly, we simply do not know and it’s not taken into consideration. You look at the structure of the mitochondrial membranes in the brains of simple things like Drosophila, the fruit fly, and they have amazing structures. You can see lots of little rectangular things all lined up in amazing patterns. What are they doing? Why are they like that? We haven’t the first clue.
Lex Fridman
What do you think about organoids and brain organoids and so in a lab trying to study the development of these in the Petri dish development of organs, do you think that’s promising or do you have to look at the whole systems?
What do you think about organoids and brain organoids and so in a lab trying to study the development of these in the Petri dish development of organs, do you think that’s promising or do you have to look at the whole systems?
Nick Lane
I’ve never done anything like that. I don’t know much about it. The people who I’ve talked to who do work on it say amazing things can happen and a bit of a brain grown in a dish is capable of experiencing some kind of feelings or even memories of its former brain. Again, I have a feeling that until we understand how to control the electrical fields that control development, we’re not going to understand how to turn an organoid into a real functional system.
I’ve never done anything like that. I don’t know much about it. The people who I’ve talked to who do work on it say amazing things can happen and a bit of a brain grown in a dish is capable of experiencing some kind of feelings or even memories of its former brain. Again, I have a feeling that until we understand how to control the electrical fields that control development, we’re not going to understand how to turn an organoid into a real functional system.
AI and biology
Lex Fridman
But how do we get that understanding? It’s so incredibly difficult. I mean, you would have to… One promising direction, I’d love to get your opinion on this. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the work of DeepMind and AlphaFold with protein folding and so on. Do you think it’s possible that that will give us some breakthroughs in biology trying to basically simulate and model the behavior of trivial biological systems as they become complex biological systems?
But how do we get that understanding? It’s so incredibly difficult. I mean, you would have to… One promising direction, I’d love to get your opinion on this. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the work of DeepMind and AlphaFold with protein folding and so on. Do you think it’s possible that that will give us some breakthroughs in biology trying to basically simulate and model the behavior of trivial biological systems as they become complex biological systems?
Nick Lane
I’m sure it will. The interesting thing to me about protein folding is that for a long time, my understanding, this is not what I work on, so I may have got this wrong, but my understanding is that you take the sequence of a protein and you try to fold it, and there are multiple ways in which it can fold. And to come up with the correct confirmation is not a very easy thing because you’re doing it from first principles from a string of letters, which specify the string of amino acids. But what actually happens is when a protein is coming out of a ribosome, it’s coming out of a charged tunnel and it’s in a very specific environment which is going to force this to go there now and then this one to go there and this one to come like that. And so you’re forcing a specific conformational set of changes onto it as it comes out of the ribosome.
I’m sure it will. The interesting thing to me about protein folding is that for a long time, my understanding, this is not what I work on, so I may have got this wrong, but my understanding is that you take the sequence of a protein and you try to fold it, and there are multiple ways in which it can fold. And to come up with the correct confirmation is not a very easy thing because you’re doing it from first principles from a string of letters, which specify the string of amino acids. But what actually happens is when a protein is coming out of a ribosome, it’s coming out of a charged tunnel and it’s in a very specific environment which is going to force this to go there now and then this one to go there and this one to come like that. And so you’re forcing a specific conformational set of changes onto it as it comes out of the ribosome.
So by the time it’s fully emerged, it’s already got its shape. And that shape depended on the immediate environment that it was emerging into one letter, one amino acid at a time. And I don’t think that the field was looking at it that way. And if that’s correct, then that’s very characteristic of science, which is to say it asks very often the wrong question and then does really amazingly sophisticated analyses on something having never thought to actually think, well, what is biology doing? And biology is giving you a charged electrical environment that forces you to be this way. Now did DeepMind come up through patterns with some answer that was like that? I’ve got absolutely no idea. It ought to be possible to deduce that from the shapes of proteins. It would require much greater skill than the human mind has. But the human mind is capable of saying, “Well, hang on, let’s look at this exit tunnel and try and work out what shape is this protein going to take.” And we can figure that out.
Lex Fridman
Well, that’s really interesting about the exit tunnel. But sometimes we get lucky and just like in science, the simplified view or the static view will actually solve the problem for us. So in this case, it’s very possible that the sequence of letters has a unique mapping to our structure without considering how it unraveled. So without considering the tunnel, that seems to be the case in this situation where the cool thing about proteins, all the different shapes that it can possibly take, it actually seems to take very specific unique shapes given the sequence.
Well, that’s really interesting about the exit tunnel. But sometimes we get lucky and just like in science, the simplified view or the static view will actually solve the problem for us. So in this case, it’s very possible that the sequence of letters has a unique mapping to our structure without considering how it unraveled. So without considering the tunnel, that seems to be the case in this situation where the cool thing about proteins, all the different shapes that it can possibly take, it actually seems to take very specific unique shapes given the sequence.
Nick Lane
That’s forced on you by an exit tunnel. So the problem is actually much simpler than you thought. And then there’s a whole army of proteins which changed the conformational state, chaperone proteins, and they’re only used when there’s some presumably issue with how it came out of the exit tunnel, and you want to do it differently to that. So very often the chaperone proteins will go there and will influence the way in which it folds. So-
That’s forced on you by an exit tunnel. So the problem is actually much simpler than you thought. And then there’s a whole army of proteins which changed the conformational state, chaperone proteins, and they’re only used when there’s some presumably issue with how it came out of the exit tunnel, and you want to do it differently to that. So very often the chaperone proteins will go there and will influence the way in which it folds. So-
Nick Lane
… go there and will influence the way in which it falls. So there’s two ways of doing it. Either you can look at the structures and the sequences of all the proteins, and you can apply an immense mind to it, and figure out what the patterns are and figure out what… Or, you can look at the actual situation where it is and say, “Well, hang on, it was actually quite simple.” It’s got a charged environment and then of course, it’s forced to come out this way. And then, the question will be, “Well, do different ribosomes have different charged environments? What happens if a chaperone…” You’re asking a different set of questions to come to the same answer, in a way which is telling you a much simpler story, and explains why it is. Rather than saying, “It could be. This is one in a billion different possible conformational states that this protein could have,” you’re saying, “Well, it has this one because that was the only one it could take, given its setting.”
… go there and will influence the way in which it falls. So there’s two ways of doing it. Either you can look at the structures and the sequences of all the proteins, and you can apply an immense mind to it, and figure out what the patterns are and figure out what… Or, you can look at the actual situation where it is and say, “Well, hang on, it was actually quite simple.” It’s got a charged environment and then of course, it’s forced to come out this way. And then, the question will be, “Well, do different ribosomes have different charged environments? What happens if a chaperone…” You’re asking a different set of questions to come to the same answer, in a way which is telling you a much simpler story, and explains why it is. Rather than saying, “It could be. This is one in a billion different possible conformational states that this protein could have,” you’re saying, “Well, it has this one because that was the only one it could take, given its setting.”
Lex Fridman
Well, yeah, I mean, currently humans are very good at that kind of first principles thinking, of stepping back.
Well, yeah, I mean, currently humans are very good at that kind of first principles thinking, of stepping back.
Nick Lane
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
But I think AI is really good at collecting a huge amount of data, and a huge amount of data of observation of planets, and figure out that Earth is not at the center of the universe, that there’s actually a sun, we’re orbiting the Sun. But then, you can, as a human being ask, “Well, how do solar systems come to be? What are the different forces that are required to make this kind of pattern emerge?” And then, you start to invent things like gravity. I mean, obviously-
But I think AI is really good at collecting a huge amount of data, and a huge amount of data of observation of planets, and figure out that Earth is not at the center of the universe, that there’s actually a sun, we’re orbiting the Sun. But then, you can, as a human being ask, “Well, how do solar systems come to be? What are the different forces that are required to make this kind of pattern emerge?” And then, you start to invent things like gravity. I mean, obviously-
Nick Lane
Is it something [inaudible 02:09:26]-
Is it something [inaudible 02:09:26]-
Lex Fridman
I mixed up the ordering of gravity wasn’t considered as a thing that connects planets, but we are able to think about those big picture things as human beings. AI is just very good to infer simple models from a huge amount of data. And the question is, with biology, we kind of go back and forth how we solve biology. Listen, protein folding was thought to be impossible to solve. And there’s a lot of brilliant PhD students that worked one protein at a time, trying to figure out the structure, and the fact that it was able to do that…
I mixed up the ordering of gravity wasn’t considered as a thing that connects planets, but we are able to think about those big picture things as human beings. AI is just very good to infer simple models from a huge amount of data. And the question is, with biology, we kind of go back and forth how we solve biology. Listen, protein folding was thought to be impossible to solve. And there’s a lot of brilliant PhD students that worked one protein at a time, trying to figure out the structure, and the fact that it was able to do that…
Nick Lane
Oh, I’m not knocking it at all, but I think that people have been asking the wrong question.
Oh, I’m not knocking it at all, but I think that people have been asking the wrong question.
Lex Fridman
But then, as the people start to ask better and bigger questions, the AI kind of enters the chat and says, “I’ll help you out with that.”
But then, as the people start to ask better and bigger questions, the AI kind of enters the chat and says, “I’ll help you out with that.”
Nick Lane
Can I give you another example from my own work? The risk of getting a disease as we get older, there are genetic aspects to it. If you spend your whole life overeating, and smoking, and whatever, that’s a whole separate question, but there’s a genetic side to the risk, and we know a few genes that increase your risk of certain things. And for probably 20 years now, people have been doing what’s called GWAS, which is genome-wide association studies.
Can I give you another example from my own work? The risk of getting a disease as we get older, there are genetic aspects to it. If you spend your whole life overeating, and smoking, and whatever, that’s a whole separate question, but there’s a genetic side to the risk, and we know a few genes that increase your risk of certain things. And for probably 20 years now, people have been doing what’s called GWAS, which is genome-wide association studies.
So you effectively scan the entire genome for any single nucleotide polymorphisms, which is to say a single letter change in one place that has a higher association of being linked with a particular disease or not. And you can come out with thousands of these things across the genome. And if you add them all up and try and say, “Well, so do they add up to explain the known genetic risk of this disease?” And the known genetic risk often comes from twin studies, and you can say that if this twin gets epilepsy, there’s a 40 or 50% risk that the other twin, identical twin, will also get epilepsy. Therefore, the genetic factor is about 50%, and so the gene similarities that you see should account for 50% of that known risk.
Very often, it accounts for less than a 10th of the known risk. And there’s two possible explanations, and there’s one which people tend to do, which is to say, “Ah, well, we don’t have enough statistical power. Maybe there’s a million. We’ve only found a 1,000 of them, but if we find the other million, they’re weakly related, but there’s a huge number of them, and so we’ll account for that whole risk.” Maybe there’s a billion of them, [inaudible 02:12:10]. So that’s one way. The other way is to say, “Well, hang on a minute. You’re missing a system here. That system is the mitochondrial DNA,” which people tend to dismiss, because it’s small and it doesn’t change very much.
But a few single letter changes in that mitochondrial DNA, it controls some really basic processes. It controls not only all the energy that we need to live, and to move around, and do everything we do, but also biosynthesis, to make the new building blocks, to make new cells. And cancer cells very often take over the mitochondria and rewire them, so that instead of using them for making energy, they’re effectively using them as precursors for the building blocks, for biosynthesis. You need to make new amino acids, new nucleotides for DNA. You want to make new lipids to make your membranes and so on. So they kind of rewire metabolism.
Now, the problem is that we’ve got all these interactions between mitochondrial DNA and the genes in the nucleus that are overlooked completely, because people literally throw away the mitochondrial genes, and we can see in fruit flies that they interact and produce big differences in risk. So you can set AI onto this question of exactly how many of these base changes there are, and that’s just one possible solution, that maybe there are a million of them and it does account for the greater part of the risk, or the other one is they aren’t. It’s just not there, that actually the risk lies in something you weren’t even looking at. And this is where human intuition is very important, and there’s this feeling that, “Well, I’m working on this, and I think it’s important, and I’m bloody minded about it.” And in the end, some people are right. It turns out that it was important. Can you get AI to do that, to be bloody minded?
Lex Fridman
And that, “Hang on a minute, you might be missing a whole other system here that’s much bigger,” that’s the moment of discovery, of scientific revolution. I’m giving up on saying AI can’t do something. I’ve said it enough times about enough things. I think there’s been a lot of progress. And instead, I’m excited by the possibility of AI helping humans. But at the same time, just like I said, we seem to dismiss the power of humans.
And that, “Hang on a minute, you might be missing a whole other system here that’s much bigger,” that’s the moment of discovery, of scientific revolution. I’m giving up on saying AI can’t do something. I’ve said it enough times about enough things. I think there’s been a lot of progress. And instead, I’m excited by the possibility of AI helping humans. But at the same time, just like I said, we seem to dismiss the power of humans.
Nick Lane
Yes, yes.
Yes, yes.
Lex Fridman
We’re so limited in so many ways that kind of, in what we feel like dumb ways, like we’re not strong, we’re kind of, our attention, our memory is limited, our ability to focus on things is limited, in our own perception of what limited is. But that, actually, there’s an incredible computer behind the whole thing that makes this whole system work. Our ability to interact with the environment, to reason about the environment, there’s magic there.
We’re so limited in so many ways that kind of, in what we feel like dumb ways, like we’re not strong, we’re kind of, our attention, our memory is limited, our ability to focus on things is limited, in our own perception of what limited is. But that, actually, there’s an incredible computer behind the whole thing that makes this whole system work. Our ability to interact with the environment, to reason about the environment, there’s magic there.
Nick Lane
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
And I am hopeful that AI can capture some of that same magic, but that magic is not going to look like a Deep Blue playing chess.
And I am hopeful that AI can capture some of that same magic, but that magic is not going to look like a Deep Blue playing chess.
Nick Lane
No.
No.
Lex Fridman
It’s going to be more interesting.
It’s going to be more interesting.
Nick Lane
But I don’t think it’s going to look like pattern finding, either. I mean, that’s essentially what you’re telling me it does very well at the moment. And my point is it works very well where you’re looking for the right pattern, but we are storytelling animals. And a hypothesis is a story. It’s a testable story, but a new hypothesis is a leap into the unknown, and it’s a new story, basically. And it says, “This leads to this, leads to that.” It’s a causal set of storytelling.
But I don’t think it’s going to look like pattern finding, either. I mean, that’s essentially what you’re telling me it does very well at the moment. And my point is it works very well where you’re looking for the right pattern, but we are storytelling animals. And a hypothesis is a story. It’s a testable story, but a new hypothesis is a leap into the unknown, and it’s a new story, basically. And it says, “This leads to this, leads to that.” It’s a causal set of storytelling.
Lex Fridman
It’s also possible that the leap into the unknown has a pattern of its own.
It’s also possible that the leap into the unknown has a pattern of its own.
Nick Lane
Yes, it is.
Yes, it is.
Lex Fridman
And it’s possible that it’s learnable.
And it’s possible that it’s learnable.
Nick Lane
I’m sure it is. There’s a nice book by Arthur Koestler on the nature of creativity, and he likens it to a joke where the punchline goes off in a completely unexpected direction, and says that this is the basis of human creativity, that some creative switch of direction to an unexpected place is similar to a… I’m not saying that’s how it works, but it’s a nice idea, and there must be some truth in it. Most of the stories we tell are probably the wrong story, and probably going nowhere, and probably not helpful, and we definitely don’t do as well at seeing patterns in things.
I’m sure it is. There’s a nice book by Arthur Koestler on the nature of creativity, and he likens it to a joke where the punchline goes off in a completely unexpected direction, and says that this is the basis of human creativity, that some creative switch of direction to an unexpected place is similar to a… I’m not saying that’s how it works, but it’s a nice idea, and there must be some truth in it. Most of the stories we tell are probably the wrong story, and probably going nowhere, and probably not helpful, and we definitely don’t do as well at seeing patterns in things.
But some of the most enjoyable human aspects is finding a new story that goes to an unexpected place. And again, these are all aspects of what being human means to me. And maybe these are all things that AI figures out for itself, or maybe they’re just aspects… But I just have the feeling sometimes that the people who are trying to understand what we are like, if we wish to craft an AI system which is somehow human-like, that we don’t have a firm enough grasp of what humans really are like, in terms of how we are built,
Lex Fridman
But we get a better understanding of that. I agree with you completely. We try to build a thing and then we go, “Hang on in a minute, there’s another system here.” And that’s, actually, the attempt to build AI that’s human-like is getting us to a deeper understanding of human beings. The funny thing that I recently talked to Magnus Carlsen, widely considered to be the greatest chess player of all time, and he talked about AlphaZero, which is a system from DeepMind that plays chess. And he had a funny comment, he has a kind of dry sense of humor, but he was extremely impressed when he first saw AlphaZero play, and he said that it did a lot of things that could easily be mistaken for creativity.
But we get a better understanding of that. I agree with you completely. We try to build a thing and then we go, “Hang on in a minute, there’s another system here.” And that’s, actually, the attempt to build AI that’s human-like is getting us to a deeper understanding of human beings. The funny thing that I recently talked to Magnus Carlsen, widely considered to be the greatest chess player of all time, and he talked about AlphaZero, which is a system from DeepMind that plays chess. And he had a funny comment, he has a kind of dry sense of humor, but he was extremely impressed when he first saw AlphaZero play, and he said that it did a lot of things that could easily be mistaken for creativity.
So he refused, as a typical human, refused to give the system sort of its due, because he came up with a lot of things that a lot of people are extremely impressed by, not just the sheer calculation, but the brilliance of play. So one of the things that it does in really interesting ways is it sacrifices pieces. So in chess, that means you basically take a few steps back in order to take a step forward. You give away pieces for some future reward. And that, for us humans, is where art is in chess. You take big risks that, for us humans, those risks are especially painful, because you have a fog of uncertainty before you. So to take a risk now based on intuition of, “I think this is the right risk to take, but there’s so many possibilities,” that that’s where it takes guts. That’s where art is, that’s that danger.
And then, AlphaZero takes those same kind of risks, and does them even greater degree, but of course, it does it from where you could easily reduce down to a cold calculation over patterns. But boy, when you see the final result, it sure looks like the same kind of magic that we see, and creativity, when we see creative play on the chess board. But the chess board is very limited, and the question is, as we get better and better, can we do that same kind of creativity in mathematics, in programming, and then eventually in biology, psychology, and expand into more and more complex systems?
Nick Lane
I used to go running when I was a boy, and fell running, which is to say running up and down mountains, and I was never particularly great at it, but there were some people who were amazingly fast, especially at running down. And I realized, in trying to do this, that there’s three possible ways of doing it, and there’s only two that work. Either, you go extremely slowly and carefully, and you figure out, “Okay, there’s a stone. I’ll put my foot on this stone, and then there’s a muddy puddle I’m going to avoid.” And it’s slow, it’s laborious. You figure it out, step by step, or you can just go incredibly fast, and you don’t think about it at all. The entire conscious mind is shut out of it, and it’s probably the same playing table tennis or something. There’s something in the mind which is doing a whole lot of subconscious calculations about exactly…
I used to go running when I was a boy, and fell running, which is to say running up and down mountains, and I was never particularly great at it, but there were some people who were amazingly fast, especially at running down. And I realized, in trying to do this, that there’s three possible ways of doing it, and there’s only two that work. Either, you go extremely slowly and carefully, and you figure out, “Okay, there’s a stone. I’ll put my foot on this stone, and then there’s a muddy puddle I’m going to avoid.” And it’s slow, it’s laborious. You figure it out, step by step, or you can just go incredibly fast, and you don’t think about it at all. The entire conscious mind is shut out of it, and it’s probably the same playing table tennis or something. There’s something in the mind which is doing a whole lot of subconscious calculations about exactly…
And it’s amazing. You can run at astonishing speed down a hillside, with no idea how you did it at all. And then, you panic and you think, “I’m going to break my leg if I keep doing this. I’ve got to think about where I’m going to put my foot.” So you slow down a bit and try to bring this conscious mind in, and then you do, you crash. You cannot think consciously while running downhill. And so it’s amazing how many calculations the mind is able to make.
Now, the problem with playing chess or something, if you were able to make all of those subconscious, forward calculations about what is the likely outcome of this move now in the way that we can by running down a hillside or something, it’s partly about what we have adapted to do. It’s partly about the reality of the world that we’re in. Running fast downhill is something that we better be bloody good at, otherwise we’re going to be eaten. Whereas, trying to calculate multiple, multiple moves into the future is not something we’ve ever been called on to do. Two or three, four moves into the future is quite enough for most of us, most of the time.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, just solving chess, we may not be as far towards solving the problem of downhill running as we might think, just because we solved chess. Still, it’s beautiful to see creativity. Humans create machines. They’re able to create art, and art on the chessboard and art otherwise. Who knows how far that takes us? So I mentioned Andrej Karpathy earlier. Him and I are big fans of yours. If you’re taking votes, his suggestion was you should write your next book on the Fermi paradox. So let me ask you, on the topic of alien life, since we’ve been talking about life and we’re a kind of aliens, how many alien civilizations are out there, do you think?
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, just solving chess, we may not be as far towards solving the problem of downhill running as we might think, just because we solved chess. Still, it’s beautiful to see creativity. Humans create machines. They’re able to create art, and art on the chessboard and art otherwise. Who knows how far that takes us? So I mentioned Andrej Karpathy earlier. Him and I are big fans of yours. If you’re taking votes, his suggestion was you should write your next book on the Fermi paradox. So let me ask you, on the topic of alien life, since we’ve been talking about life and we’re a kind of aliens, how many alien civilizations are out there, do you think?
Nick Lane
Well, the universe is very big, but not as many as most people would like to think is my view, because the idea that there is a trajectory going from simple cellular life like bacteria, all the way through to humans, seems to me there’s some big gaps along that way, that the eukaryotic cell, the complex cell that we have is the biggest of them. But also, photosynthesis is another. Another interesting gap is a long gap from the origin of the eukaryotic cell to the first animals. That was about a billion years, maybe more than that, and a long delay in where oxygen began to accumulate in the atmosphere.
Well, the universe is very big, but not as many as most people would like to think is my view, because the idea that there is a trajectory going from simple cellular life like bacteria, all the way through to humans, seems to me there’s some big gaps along that way, that the eukaryotic cell, the complex cell that we have is the biggest of them. But also, photosynthesis is another. Another interesting gap is a long gap from the origin of the eukaryotic cell to the first animals. That was about a billion years, maybe more than that, and a long delay in where oxygen began to accumulate in the atmosphere.
So from the first appearance of oxygen in the Great Oxidation Event to enough for animals to respire was close to 2 billion years. Why so long? It seems to be planetary factors. It seems to be geology, as much as anything else, and we don’t really know what was going on. So the idea that there’s a kind of an inevitable march towards complexity and sentient life I don’t think is right. Not to say it’s not going to happen, but I think it’s not going to happen often.
Lex Fridman
So if you think of Earth, given the geological constraints and all that kind of stuff, do you have a sense that life, complex life, intelligent life happened really quickly on Earth, or really long? So just to get a sense of are you more sort of saying that it’s very unlikely to get the kind of conditions required to create humans, or is it, even if you have the condition, it’s just statistically difficult?
So if you think of Earth, given the geological constraints and all that kind of stuff, do you have a sense that life, complex life, intelligent life happened really quickly on Earth, or really long? So just to get a sense of are you more sort of saying that it’s very unlikely to get the kind of conditions required to create humans, or is it, even if you have the condition, it’s just statistically difficult?
Nick Lane
I think, I mean, the problem, the single great problem at the center of all of that, to my mind, is the origin of the eukaryotic cell, which happened once, and without eukaryotes, nothing else would’ve happened, and that is something that-
I think, I mean, the problem, the single great problem at the center of all of that, to my mind, is the origin of the eukaryotic cell, which happened once, and without eukaryotes, nothing else would’ve happened, and that is something that-
Lex Fridman
Because you’re saying it’s super important, the eukaryotes, but-
Because you’re saying it’s super important, the eukaryotes, but-
Nick Lane
I’m saying tantamount of saying that it is impossible to build something as complex as a human being from bacterial cells.
I’m saying tantamount of saying that it is impossible to build something as complex as a human being from bacterial cells.
Lex Fridman
Totally agree in some deep, fundamental way, but it’s just like one cell going inside another. Is that so difficult to get to work right, that like [inaudible 02:25:18]-
Totally agree in some deep, fundamental way, but it’s just like one cell going inside another. Is that so difficult to get to work right, that like [inaudible 02:25:18]-
Nick Lane
Well, again, it happened once, and if you think about, I’m in a minority view in this position, most biologists probably wouldn’t agree with me anyway, but if you think about the starting point, we’ve got a simple cell, it’s an archaeal cell, we can be fairly sure about that. So it looks a lot like a bacterium, but is in fact from this other domain of life. So it looks a lot like a bacterial cell. That means it doesn’t have anything. It doesn’t have a nucleus, it doesn’t really have complex endomembrane. It has a little bit of stuff, but not that much, and it takes up an endosymbiont. So what happens next? And the answer is basically everything to do with complexity.
Well, again, it happened once, and if you think about, I’m in a minority view in this position, most biologists probably wouldn’t agree with me anyway, but if you think about the starting point, we’ve got a simple cell, it’s an archaeal cell, we can be fairly sure about that. So it looks a lot like a bacterium, but is in fact from this other domain of life. So it looks a lot like a bacterial cell. That means it doesn’t have anything. It doesn’t have a nucleus, it doesn’t really have complex endomembrane. It has a little bit of stuff, but not that much, and it takes up an endosymbiont. So what happens next? And the answer is basically everything to do with complexity.
To me, there’s a beautiful paradox here. Plants, and animals, and fungi all have exactly the same type of cell, but they all have really different ways of living. So a plant cell is photosynthetic, they started out as algae in the oceans and so on. So think of algal bloom, single-cell things. The basic cell structure that it’s built from is exactly the same, with a couple of small differences. It’s got chloroplasts as well, it’s got a vacuole, it’s got a cell wall, but that’s about it. Pretty much everything else is exactly the same in a plant cell and an animal cell. And yet, the ways of life are completely different. So this cell structure did not evolve in response to different ways of life, different environments. I’m in the ocean doing photosynthesis, I’m on land running around as part of an animal, I’m a fungus in a soil, spinning out long kind of shoots into whatever it may be, mycelium.
So they all have the same underlying cell structure. Why? Almost certainly, it was driven by adaptation to the internal environment, of having these pesky endosymbionts that forced all kinds of change on the host cell. Now, in one way, you could see that as a really good thing, because it may be that there’s some inevitability to this process. It’s as soon as you’ve got endosymbionts, you’re more or less bound to go in that direction. Or, it could be that there’s a huge fluke about it, and it’s almost certain to go wrong in just about every case possible, that the conflict will lead to, effectively, war, leading to death and extinction, and it simply doesn’t work out. So maybe it happened millions of times and it went wrong every time, or maybe it only happened once, and it worked out because it was inevitable. And actually, we simply do not know enough now to say which of those two possibilities is true, but both of them are a bit grim.
Lex Fridman
But you’re leaning towards we just got really lucky in that one leap. So do you have a sense that our galaxy, for example, has just maybe millions of planets with bacteria living on it?
But you’re leaning towards we just got really lucky in that one leap. So do you have a sense that our galaxy, for example, has just maybe millions of planets with bacteria living on it?
Nick Lane
I would expect billions, tens of billions of planets with bacteria living on it, practically. I mean, there’s probably what, 5 to 10 planets per star, of which I would hope that at least one would have bacteria on. So I expect bacteria to be very common. I simply can’t put a number otherwise. I mean, I expect it will happen elsewhere. It’s not that I think we’re living in a completely empty universe.
I would expect billions, tens of billions of planets with bacteria living on it, practically. I mean, there’s probably what, 5 to 10 planets per star, of which I would hope that at least one would have bacteria on. So I expect bacteria to be very common. I simply can’t put a number otherwise. I mean, I expect it will happen elsewhere. It’s not that I think we’re living in a completely empty universe.
Lex Fridman
That’s so fascinating.
That’s so fascinating.
Nick Lane
But I think that it’s not going to happen inevitably, and there’s something… That’s not the only problem with complex life on Earth. I mentioned oxygen, and animals, and so on as well. And even humans, we came along very late. You go back 5 million years, and would we be that impressed if we came across a planet full of giraffes? I mean, you’d think, “Hey, there’s life here. There’s a nice planet to colonize or something.” We wouldn’t think, “Oh, let’s try and have a conversation with this giraffe.”
But I think that it’s not going to happen inevitably, and there’s something… That’s not the only problem with complex life on Earth. I mentioned oxygen, and animals, and so on as well. And even humans, we came along very late. You go back 5 million years, and would we be that impressed if we came across a planet full of giraffes? I mean, you’d think, “Hey, there’s life here. There’s a nice planet to colonize or something.” We wouldn’t think, “Oh, let’s try and have a conversation with this giraffe.”
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I’m not sure what exactly we would think. I’m not exactly sure what makes humans so interesting from an alien perspective or how they would notice. I’ll talk to you about cities, too, because an interesting perspective of how to look at human civilization. But your suns… I mean, of course you don’t know, but it’s an interesting world, it’s an interesting galaxy, and it’s an interesting universe to live in, that’s just like every sun, like 90% of solar systems have bacteria in it. Imagine that world, and the galaxy maybe has just a handful, if not one intelligent civilization. That’s a wild world.
Yeah, I’m not sure what exactly we would think. I’m not exactly sure what makes humans so interesting from an alien perspective or how they would notice. I’ll talk to you about cities, too, because an interesting perspective of how to look at human civilization. But your suns… I mean, of course you don’t know, but it’s an interesting world, it’s an interesting galaxy, and it’s an interesting universe to live in, that’s just like every sun, like 90% of solar systems have bacteria in it. Imagine that world, and the galaxy maybe has just a handful, if not one intelligent civilization. That’s a wild world.
Nick Lane
It’s a wild world.
It’s a wild world.
Lex Fridman
I didn’t even think about that world. There’s a kind of thought that one of the reasons it would be so exciting to find life on Mars, or Titan, or whatever is like if life is elsewhere, then surely, statistically, that life, no matter how unlikely you curry us multicellular organisms, sex, violence, what else is extremely difficult? I mean, photosynthesis, is figuring out some machinery that involves the chemistry and the environment to allow the building up of complex organisms, surely that would arise. But man, I don’t know how I would feel about just bacteria everywhere.
I didn’t even think about that world. There’s a kind of thought that one of the reasons it would be so exciting to find life on Mars, or Titan, or whatever is like if life is elsewhere, then surely, statistically, that life, no matter how unlikely you curry us multicellular organisms, sex, violence, what else is extremely difficult? I mean, photosynthesis, is figuring out some machinery that involves the chemistry and the environment to allow the building up of complex organisms, surely that would arise. But man, I don’t know how I would feel about just bacteria everywhere.
Nick Lane
Well, it would be depressing, if it was true. I suppose, depressing-
Well, it would be depressing, if it was true. I suppose, depressing-
Lex Fridman
[inaudible 02:30:42].
[inaudible 02:30:42].
Nick Lane
I don’t think-
I don’t think-
Lex Fridman
I don’t know what’s more depressing, bacteria everywhere, nothing everywhere.
I don’t know what’s more depressing, bacteria everywhere, nothing everywhere.
Nick Lane
Yes, either of them are chilling. But whether it’s chilling or not I don’t think should force us to change our view about whether it’s real or not.
Yes, either of them are chilling. But whether it’s chilling or not I don’t think should force us to change our view about whether it’s real or not.
Lex Fridman
Yes, yes.
Yes, yes.
Nick Lane
And what I’m saying may or may not be true.
And what I’m saying may or may not be true.
Lex Fridman
So how would you feel if we discovered life on Mars? It sounds like you would be less excited than some others, because you’re like, “Well…”
So how would you feel if we discovered life on Mars? It sounds like you would be less excited than some others, because you’re like, “Well…”
Nick Lane
What I would be most interested in is how similar to life on Earth it would be. It would actually turn into quite a subtle problem, because the likelihood of life having gone to and fro between Mars and the Earth is quite… I wouldn’t say high, but it’s not low. It’s quite feasible. And so if we found life on Mars and it had very similar genetic code, but it was slightly different, most people would interpret that immediately as evidence that there’d been transit one way or the other, and that it was a common origin of life on Mars or on the Earth, and it went one way or the other way.
What I would be most interested in is how similar to life on Earth it would be. It would actually turn into quite a subtle problem, because the likelihood of life having gone to and fro between Mars and the Earth is quite… I wouldn’t say high, but it’s not low. It’s quite feasible. And so if we found life on Mars and it had very similar genetic code, but it was slightly different, most people would interpret that immediately as evidence that there’d been transit one way or the other, and that it was a common origin of life on Mars or on the Earth, and it went one way or the other way.
The other way to see that question, though, would be to say, “Well, actually the whole beginnings of life lie in deterministic chemistry and thermodynamics, starting with the most likely abundant materials, CO₂, and water, and wet, rocky planet,” and Mars was wet and rocky at the beginning and will, I won’t say inevitably, but potentially almost inevitably come up with a genetic code which is not very far away from the genetic code that we already have. So we see subtle differences in the genetic code, what does it mean? It could be very difficult to interpret.
Lex Fridman
Is it possible, do you think, to tell the difference of something that truly originated…
Is it possible, do you think, to tell the difference of something that truly originated…
Nick Lane
I think if the stereochemistry was different, we have sugars, for example, that are the L form or the D form, and we have D sugars and L amino acids right across all of life. But lipids, the bacteria have one stereoisomer and the bacteria have the other, the opposite stereoisomer. So it’s perfectly possible to use one or the other one. And the same would almost certainly go for… And I think George Church has been trying to make life based on the opposite stereoisomer. So it’s perfectly possible to do, and it will work. And if we were to find life on Mars that was using the opposite stereoisomer, that would be unequivocal evidence that life had started independently there.
I think if the stereochemistry was different, we have sugars, for example, that are the L form or the D form, and we have D sugars and L amino acids right across all of life. But lipids, the bacteria have one stereoisomer and the bacteria have the other, the opposite stereoisomer. So it’s perfectly possible to use one or the other one. And the same would almost certainly go for… And I think George Church has been trying to make life based on the opposite stereoisomer. So it’s perfectly possible to do, and it will work. And if we were to find life on Mars that was using the opposite stereoisomer, that would be unequivocal evidence that life had started independently there.
Lex Fridman
So hopefully, the life we find will be on Titan, on Europa or something like that, where it’s less likely that we shared… And it’s harsher conditions, so there’s going to be weirder kind of life?
So hopefully, the life we find will be on Titan, on Europa or something like that, where it’s less likely that we shared… And it’s harsher conditions, so there’s going to be weirder kind of life?
Nick Lane
I wouldn’t count on that, because-
I wouldn’t count on that, because-
Lex Fridman
Of water.
Of water.
Nick Lane
… life started in deep sea hydrothermal vents here.
… life started in deep sea hydrothermal vents here.
Lex Fridman
It’s a harsh-
It’s a harsh-
Nick Lane
It’s pretty harsh, yeah. So Titan is different. Europa is probably quite similar to Earth, in the sense that we’re dealing with an ocean. It’s an acidic ocean there, as the early Earth would’ve been. And it almost certainly has hydrothermal systems. Same with Enceladus. We can tell that from these plumes coming from the surface, through the ice. We know there’s a liquid ocean and we can tell roughly what the chemistry is. For Titan, we’re dealing with liquid methane and things like that. So that would really, if there really is life there, it would really have to be very, very different to anything that we know on Earth.
It’s pretty harsh, yeah. So Titan is different. Europa is probably quite similar to Earth, in the sense that we’re dealing with an ocean. It’s an acidic ocean there, as the early Earth would’ve been. And it almost certainly has hydrothermal systems. Same with Enceladus. We can tell that from these plumes coming from the surface, through the ice. We know there’s a liquid ocean and we can tell roughly what the chemistry is. For Titan, we’re dealing with liquid methane and things like that. So that would really, if there really is life there, it would really have to be very, very different to anything that we know on Earth.
Evolution
Lex Fridman
So the hard leap, the hardest leap, the most important leap is from prokaryotes to eukaryotes. What’s the second, if we were ranking? You gave a lot of emphasis on photosynthesis.
So the hard leap, the hardest leap, the most important leap is from prokaryotes to eukaryotes. What’s the second, if we were ranking? You gave a lot of emphasis on photosynthesis.
Nick Lane
Yeah, and that would be my second one, I think. But it’s not so much… I mean, photosynthesis is part of the problem. It’s a difficult thing to do. Again, we know it happened once, we don’t know why it happened once, but the fact that it was kind of taken on board completely by plants, and algae, and so on as chloroplasts, and did very well in completely different environments, and then on land and whatever else, seems to suggest that there’s no problem with exploring. You could have a separate origin that explored this whole domain over there that the bacteria had never gone into.
Yeah, and that would be my second one, I think. But it’s not so much… I mean, photosynthesis is part of the problem. It’s a difficult thing to do. Again, we know it happened once, we don’t know why it happened once, but the fact that it was kind of taken on board completely by plants, and algae, and so on as chloroplasts, and did very well in completely different environments, and then on land and whatever else, seems to suggest that there’s no problem with exploring. You could have a separate origin that explored this whole domain over there that the bacteria had never gone into.
So that kind of says that the reason that it only happened once is probably because it’s difficult, because the wiring is difficult. But then, it happened at least 2.2 billion years ago, right before the GOE, maybe as long as 3 billion years ago, when some people say there are whiffs of oxygen, there’s just kind of traces in the fossil, in the geochemical record that say maybe there was a bit of oxygen then. That’s really disputed. Some people say it goes all the way back 4 billion years ago, and that it was the common ancestor of life on Earth was photosynthetic. So immediately, you’ve got groups of people who disagree over a 2 billion-year period of time about when it started.
But let’s take the latest date when it’s unequivocal. That’s 2.2 billion years ago, through to around about the time of the Cambrian explosion, when oxygen levels definitely got close to modern levels, which was around about 550 million years ago. So we’ve gone more than one and a half billion years, where the Earth was in stasis. Nothing much changed. It’s known as the Boring Billion, in fact. Probably, stuff was… That was when Eukaryotes arose somewhere in there, but it’s… So this idea that the world is constantly changing, that we’re constantly evolving, that we’re moving up some ramp, it’s a very human idea, but in reality, there are kind of tipping points to a new stable equilibrium, where the cells that are producing oxygen are precisely counterbalanced by the cells that are consuming that oxygen, which is why it’s 21% now and has been that way for hundreds of millions of years. We have a very precise balance.
You go through a tipping point, and you don’t know where the next stable state’s going to be, but it can be a long way from here. And so if we change the world with global warming, there will be a tipping point. Question is where, and when, and what’s the next stable state? It may be uninhabitable to us. It’ll be habitable to life, for sure, but there may be something like the Permian extinction, where 95% of species go extinct, and there’s a 5-to-10 million year gap, and then life recovers, but without humans.
Lex Fridman
And the question, statistically, well, without humans, but statistically, does that ultimately lead to greater complexity, more interesting life, more intelligent life?
And the question, statistically, well, without humans, but statistically, does that ultimately lead to greater complexity, more interesting life, more intelligent life?
Nick Lane
Well, after the first appearance of oxygen with the GOE, there was a tipping point which led to a long-term stable state that was equivalent to the Black Sea today, which is to say oxygenated at the very surface and stagnant, sterile… Not sterile, but sulfurous lower down. And that was stable, certainly around the continental margins, for more than a billion years. It was not a state that led to progression in an obvious way.
Well, after the first appearance of oxygen with the GOE, there was a tipping point which led to a long-term stable state that was equivalent to the Black Sea today, which is to say oxygenated at the very surface and stagnant, sterile… Not sterile, but sulfurous lower down. And that was stable, certainly around the continental margins, for more than a billion years. It was not a state that led to progression in an obvious way.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting to think about evolution, like what leads to stable states, and how often are evolutionary pressures emerging from the environment? So maybe other planets are able to create evolutionary pressures, chemical pressures, whatever, some kind of pressure that say, “You’re screwed unless you get your shit together in the next 10,000 years.”
Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting to think about evolution, like what leads to stable states, and how often are evolutionary pressures emerging from the environment? So maybe other planets are able to create evolutionary pressures, chemical pressures, whatever, some kind of pressure that say, “You’re screwed unless you get your shit together in the next 10,000 years.”
Nick Lane
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Like, a lot of pressure. It seems like Earth, the Boring Billion might be explained in two ways. One, it’s super difficult to take any kind of next step. And the second way it could be explained is there’s no reason to take the next step.
Like, a lot of pressure. It seems like Earth, the Boring Billion might be explained in two ways. One, it’s super difficult to take any kind of next step. And the second way it could be explained is there’s no reason to take the next step.
Nick Lane
No, I think there is no reason. But at the end of it, there was a snowball Earth. So there was a planetary catastrophe on a huge scale, where the ice, the sea was frozen at the equator, and that forced change in one way or another. It’s not long after that, a hundred million years, perhaps after that, so not a short time, but this is when we begin to see animals. There was a shift, again, another tipping point that led to catastrophic change that led to a takeoff then. We don’t really know why, but one of the reasons why that I discussed in the book is about sulfate being washed into the oceans, which sounds incredibly parochial.
No, I think there is no reason. But at the end of it, there was a snowball Earth. So there was a planetary catastrophe on a huge scale, where the ice, the sea was frozen at the equator, and that forced change in one way or another. It’s not long after that, a hundred million years, perhaps after that, so not a short time, but this is when we begin to see animals. There was a shift, again, another tipping point that led to catastrophic change that led to a takeoff then. We don’t really know why, but one of the reasons why that I discussed in the book is about sulfate being washed into the oceans, which sounds incredibly parochial.
But the issue is, I mean, what the data is showing, we can track roughly how oxygen was going into the atmosphere from carbon isotopes. So there’s two main isotopes of carbon that we need to think about here. One is carbon-12, 99% of carbon is carbon-12, and then 1% of carbon is carbon-13, which is a stable isotope. And then, there’s carbon-14, which is a trivial radioactive, it’s trivial amount. So carbon-13 is 1%, and life and enzymes, generally, you can think of carbon atoms as little balls bouncing around, ping-pong balls bouncing around. Carbon-12 moves a little bit faster than carbon-13.
Nick Lane
… bouncing around, ping-pong balls bouncing around. carbon-12 moves a little bit faster than carbon-13 because it’s lighter and it’s more likely to encounter an enzyme, and so it’s more likely to be fixed into organic matter. Organic matter is enriched, and this is just an observation. It’s enriched in Carbon-12 by a few percent compared to carbon-13 relative to what you would expect if it was just equal. If you then bury organic matter as coal or oil or whatever it may be, then it’s no longer oxidized. Some oxygen remains left over in the atmosphere and that’s how oxygen accumulates in the atmosphere.
… bouncing around, ping-pong balls bouncing around. carbon-12 moves a little bit faster than carbon-13 because it’s lighter and it’s more likely to encounter an enzyme, and so it’s more likely to be fixed into organic matter. Organic matter is enriched, and this is just an observation. It’s enriched in Carbon-12 by a few percent compared to carbon-13 relative to what you would expect if it was just equal. If you then bury organic matter as coal or oil or whatever it may be, then it’s no longer oxidized. Some oxygen remains left over in the atmosphere and that’s how oxygen accumulates in the atmosphere.
You can work out historically how much oxygen there must’ve been in the atmosphere by how much carbon was being buried. You think, well, how can we possibly know how much carbon was being buried? The answer is, well, if you’re burying carbon-12, what you’re leaving behind is more Carbon-13 in the oceans, and that precipitates out into limestone. You can look at limestones over these ages and work out what’s the Carbon-13 signal. That gives you a feedback on what the oxygen content.
Right before the Cambrian explosion, there was what’s called a negative isotope anomaly excursion, which is basically the carbon-13 goes down by a massive amount and then back up again 10 million years later. What that seems to be saying is the amount of carbon-12 in the oceans was disappearing, which is to say it was being oxidized. If it’s being oxidized, it’s consuming oxygen and that should … A big carbon-13 signal says the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13 is really going down, which means there’s much more carbon-12 being taken out and being oxidized.
Sorry, this is getting too complex, but-
Lex Fridman
Well, it’s a good way to estimate the amount of oxygen.
Well, it’s a good way to estimate the amount of oxygen.
Nick Lane
If you calculate the amount of oxygen based on the assumption that all this carbon-12 that’s being taken out is being oxidized by oxygen, the answer is all the oxygen in the atmosphere gets stripped out, there is none left. Yet the rest of the geological indicators say, no, there’s oxygen in the atmosphere. It’s a paradox and the only way to explain this paradox just on mass balance of how much stuff is in the air, how much stuff is in the oceans and so on, is to assume that oxygen was not the oxygen, it was sulfate. Sulfate was being washed into the oceans. It’s used as an electron acceptor by sulfate-reducing bacteria just as we use oxygen as an electron acceptor, so they pass their electrons to sulfate instead of oxygen.
If you calculate the amount of oxygen based on the assumption that all this carbon-12 that’s being taken out is being oxidized by oxygen, the answer is all the oxygen in the atmosphere gets stripped out, there is none left. Yet the rest of the geological indicators say, no, there’s oxygen in the atmosphere. It’s a paradox and the only way to explain this paradox just on mass balance of how much stuff is in the air, how much stuff is in the oceans and so on, is to assume that oxygen was not the oxygen, it was sulfate. Sulfate was being washed into the oceans. It’s used as an electron acceptor by sulfate-reducing bacteria just as we use oxygen as an electron acceptor, so they pass their electrons to sulfate instead of oxygen.
Lex Fridman
Bacteria did?
Bacteria did?
Nick Lane
Yeah, so these are bacteria. They’re oxidizing carbon, organic carbon with sulfate passing the electrons onto sulfate, that reacts with iron to form iron pyrites or fool’s gold, sinks down to the bottom, gets buried out of the system. This can account for the mass balance. Why does it matter? It matters because what it says is there was a chance event. Tectonically, there was a lot of sulfate sitting on land as some kind of mineral. Calcium sulfate minerals, for example are evaporitic and because there happened to be some continental collisions, mountain building, the sulfate was pushed up the side of a mountain and happened to get washed into the ocean.
Yeah, so these are bacteria. They’re oxidizing carbon, organic carbon with sulfate passing the electrons onto sulfate, that reacts with iron to form iron pyrites or fool’s gold, sinks down to the bottom, gets buried out of the system. This can account for the mass balance. Why does it matter? It matters because what it says is there was a chance event. Tectonically, there was a lot of sulfate sitting on land as some kind of mineral. Calcium sulfate minerals, for example are evaporitic and because there happened to be some continental collisions, mountain building, the sulfate was pushed up the side of a mountain and happened to get washed into the ocean.
Lex Fridman
I wonder how many happy accidents like that are possible.
I wonder how many happy accidents like that are possible.
Nick Lane
Yeah, statistically it’s really hard. Maybe you can rule that in statistically or rule out, but this is the course of life on Earth. Without all that sulfate being raised up, the Cambrian explosion almost certainly would not have happened and then we wouldn’t have had animals and so on and so on.
Yeah, statistically it’s really hard. Maybe you can rule that in statistically or rule out, but this is the course of life on Earth. Without all that sulfate being raised up, the Cambrian explosion almost certainly would not have happened and then we wouldn’t have had animals and so on and so on.
Lex Fridman
This explanation of the Cambrian explosion. Let me actually say in several ways, so folks who challenge the validity of the theory of evolution will give us an example that the Cambrian explosion is like this thing is weird. Now I’m not well studied in this.
This explanation of the Cambrian explosion. Let me actually say in several ways, so folks who challenge the validity of the theory of evolution will give us an example that the Cambrian explosion is like this thing is weird. Now I’m not well studied in this.
Nick Lane
Oh, it’s weird. Yeah.
Oh, it’s weird. Yeah.
Lex Fridman
The question I would have is what’s the biggest mystery or gap in understanding about evolution? Is it the Cambrian explosion? If so, first of all, what is it? In my understanding, in the short amount of time, maybe 10 million years, 100 million years, something like that, a huge number of animals, a variety, diversity of animals were created. Anyway, there’s five questions in there. Is that the biggest mystery to you about evolution?
The question I would have is what’s the biggest mystery or gap in understanding about evolution? Is it the Cambrian explosion? If so, first of all, what is it? In my understanding, in the short amount of time, maybe 10 million years, 100 million years, something like that, a huge number of animals, a variety, diversity of animals were created. Anyway, there’s five questions in there. Is that the biggest mystery to you about evolution?
Nick Lane
No, I don’t think it’s particularly a big mystery really anymore. There are still mysteries about why then? I’ve just said being washed into the oceans is one. It needs oxygen and oxygen levels rose around that time. Probably before that, they weren’t high enough for animals. What we’re seeing with the Cambrian explosion is the beginning of predators and prey relationships. We’re seeing modern ecosystems and we’re seeing arms races, and we’re seeing the full creativity of evolution unleashed. I talked about the boring billion. Nothing happens for one and a half, one billion years, one and a half billion years.
No, I don’t think it’s particularly a big mystery really anymore. There are still mysteries about why then? I’ve just said being washed into the oceans is one. It needs oxygen and oxygen levels rose around that time. Probably before that, they weren’t high enough for animals. What we’re seeing with the Cambrian explosion is the beginning of predators and prey relationships. We’re seeing modern ecosystems and we’re seeing arms races, and we’re seeing the full creativity of evolution unleashed. I talked about the boring billion. Nothing happens for one and a half, one billion years, one and a half billion years.
The assumption and this is completely wrong, this assumption is then that evolution works really slowly and that you need billions of years to affect some small change and then another billion years to do something. It’s completely wrong. Evolution gets stuck in a stasis and it stays that way for tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years. Stephen J. Gould used to argue this, he called it punctuated equilibrium, but he was doing it to do with animals and to do with the last 500 million years or so where it’s much less obvious than if you think about the entire planetary history. Then you realize that the first 2 billion years was bacteria only. You have the origin of life, 2 billion years of just bacteria, oxygenic, photosynthesis arising here. Then you have a global catastrophe, snowball Earths, and great oxidation event, and then another billion years of nothing happening, and then some period of upheavals and then another snowball Earth. Then suddenly you see the Cambrian explosion.
This is long periods of stasis where the world is in a stable state and is not geared towards increasing complexity. It’s just everything is in balance. Only when you have a catastrophic level of global level problem, like of snowball Earth, it forces everything out of balance and there’s a tipping point and you end up somewhere else. Now, the idea that evolution is slow is wrong. It can be incredibly fast. I mentioned earlier on that in theory it would take half a million years to invent an eye, for example, from a light sensitive spot. It doesn’t take long to convert one kind of tube into a tube with nobbles on it into a tube with arms on it, and then multiple arms, and then one end is a head with it starts out as a swelling. It’s not difficult intellectually to understand how these things can happen.
It boggles the mind that it can happen so quickly, but we’re used to human time scales. What we need to talk about is generations of things that live for a year in the ocean, and then a million years is a million generations. The amount of change that you can do can affect in that period of time is enormous. We’re dealing with large populations of things where selection is sensitive to pretty small changes. Again, as soon as you throw in the competition of predators and prey and you’re ramping up the scale of evolution, it’s not very surprising that it happens very quickly when the environment allows it to happen.
I don’t think there’s a big mystery. There’s lots of details that need to be filled in. The big mystery in biology is consciousness.
Lex Fridman
The big mystery in biology is consciousness? Well, intelligence is a mystery too. You said biology, not psychology, because from a biology perspective, it seems like intelligence and consciousness all are the same weird, all the brain stuff.
The big mystery in biology is consciousness? Well, intelligence is a mystery too. You said biology, not psychology, because from a biology perspective, it seems like intelligence and consciousness all are the same weird, all the brain stuff.
Nick Lane
I don’t see intelligence as necessarily that difficult, I suppose. I see it as a form of computing, and I don’t know much about computing.
I don’t see intelligence as necessarily that difficult, I suppose. I see it as a form of computing, and I don’t know much about computing.
Lex Fridman
Well, you don’t know much about consciousness either. Oh, I see, I see, I see, I see. That consciousness you do know a lot about as a human being.
Well, you don’t know much about consciousness either. Oh, I see, I see, I see, I see. That consciousness you do know a lot about as a human being.
Nick Lane
No, no. I can understand the wiring of a brain in pretty much the same way as a computer in theory, in terms of the circuitry of it. The mystery to me is how this system gives rise to feelings, as we were talking about earlier on.
No, no. I can understand the wiring of a brain in pretty much the same way as a computer in theory, in terms of the circuitry of it. The mystery to me is how this system gives rise to feelings, as we were talking about earlier on.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I think we oversimplify intelligence. I think the dance, the magic of reasoning is as interesting as the magic of feeling. We tend to think of reasoning as running a very simplistic algorithm. I think reasoning is the interplay between memory, whatever the hell is going on, the unconscious mind, all of that.
Yeah, I think we oversimplify intelligence. I think the dance, the magic of reasoning is as interesting as the magic of feeling. We tend to think of reasoning as running a very simplistic algorithm. I think reasoning is the interplay between memory, whatever the hell is going on, the unconscious mind, all of that.
Nick Lane
I’m not trying to diminish it in any way at all. Obviously, it’s extraordinarily exquisitely complex, but I don’t see a logical difficulty with how it works.
I’m not trying to diminish it in any way at all. Obviously, it’s extraordinarily exquisitely complex, but I don’t see a logical difficulty with how it works.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, no, I agree with you, but sometimes, yeah, there’s a big cloak of mystery around consciousness.
Yeah, no, I agree with you, but sometimes, yeah, there’s a big cloak of mystery around consciousness.
Nick Lane
Let me compare it with classical versus quantum physics. Classical physics is logical and you can understand the language we’re dealing with. It’s almost at the human level, we’re dealing with stars and things that we can see. When you get to quantum mechanics and things, it’s practically impossible for the human mind to compute what just happened there.
Let me compare it with classical versus quantum physics. Classical physics is logical and you can understand the language we’re dealing with. It’s almost at the human level, we’re dealing with stars and things that we can see. When you get to quantum mechanics and things, it’s practically impossible for the human mind to compute what just happened there.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that is the same. It’s like you understand mathematically the notes of a musical composition, that’s intelligence. But why it makes you feel a certain way? That is much harder to understand. Yeah, that’s really, but it was an interesting framing that that’s a mystery at the core of biology. I wonder who solves consciousness. I tend to think consciousness will be solved by the engineer, meaning the person who builds it, who keeps trying to build the thing, versus biology is such a complicated system. I feel like the building blocks of consciousness from a biological perspective are that’s the final creation of a human being, so you have to understand the whole damn thing. You said the electrical fields, but electrical fields plus, plus everything, the whole shebang.
Yeah, that is the same. It’s like you understand mathematically the notes of a musical composition, that’s intelligence. But why it makes you feel a certain way? That is much harder to understand. Yeah, that’s really, but it was an interesting framing that that’s a mystery at the core of biology. I wonder who solves consciousness. I tend to think consciousness will be solved by the engineer, meaning the person who builds it, who keeps trying to build the thing, versus biology is such a complicated system. I feel like the building blocks of consciousness from a biological perspective are that’s the final creation of a human being, so you have to understand the whole damn thing. You said the electrical fields, but electrical fields plus, plus everything, the whole shebang.
Nick Lane
I’m inclined to agree. My feeling is from my meager knowledge of the history of science is that the biggest breakthrough has usually come through from a field that was not related to. If anyone is not going to be a biologist who solves consciousness, just because biologists are too embedded in the nature of the problem. Then nobody’s going to believe you when you’ve done it because nobody’s going to be able to prove that this AI is in fact conscious and sad in any case and any more than you can prove that a dog is conscious and sad, so it tells you that it is in good language and you must believe it.
I’m inclined to agree. My feeling is from my meager knowledge of the history of science is that the biggest breakthrough has usually come through from a field that was not related to. If anyone is not going to be a biologist who solves consciousness, just because biologists are too embedded in the nature of the problem. Then nobody’s going to believe you when you’ve done it because nobody’s going to be able to prove that this AI is in fact conscious and sad in any case and any more than you can prove that a dog is conscious and sad, so it tells you that it is in good language and you must believe it.
But I think most people will accept if faced with that, that that’s what it is. All of this probability though of complex life. In one way, I think why it matters is that my expectation I suppose is that we will be over the next 100 years or so, if we survive it all, that AI will increasingly dominate. Pretty much anything that we put out into space looking for the universe, for what’s out there will be AI. It won’t be us, we won’t be doing that, or when we do, it will be on a much more limited scale. I suppose the same would apply to any alien civilization.
Perhaps rather than looking for signs of life out there, we should be looking for AI out there, but then we face the problem that I don’t see how a planet is going to give rise directly to AI. I can see how a planet can give rise directly to organic life, and if the principles that govern the evolution of life on Earth apply to other planets as well. I think a lot of them would, then the likelihood of ending up with a human-like civilization capable of giving rise to AI in the first place is massively limited. Once you’ve done it once, perhaps it takes over the universe and maybe there’s no issue, but it seems to me that the two are necessarily linked, that you’re not going to just turn a sterile planet into an AI life form without the intermediary of the organics first.
Lex Fridman
You have to run the full evolutionary computation with your organics to create AI?
You have to run the full evolutionary computation with your organics to create AI?
Nick Lane
How does AI bootstrap itself up without the aid, if you like, of an intelligent designer?
How does AI bootstrap itself up without the aid, if you like, of an intelligent designer?
Fermi paradox
Lex Fridman
The origin of AI is going to have to be in the chemistry of a planet, but that’s not a limiting factor. Let me ask the Fermi Paradox question. Let’s say we live in this incredibly dark and beautiful world of just billions of planets with bacteria on it and very few intelligent civilizations, and yet there’s a few out there. Why haven’t we at scale seen them visit us? What’s your sense? Is it because they don’t exist? It it because-
The origin of AI is going to have to be in the chemistry of a planet, but that’s not a limiting factor. Let me ask the Fermi Paradox question. Let’s say we live in this incredibly dark and beautiful world of just billions of planets with bacteria on it and very few intelligent civilizations, and yet there’s a few out there. Why haven’t we at scale seen them visit us? What’s your sense? Is it because they don’t exist? It it because-
Nick Lane
Well, they don’t exist in the right part of the universe at the right time. That’s the simplest answer for it.
Well, they don’t exist in the right part of the universe at the right time. That’s the simplest answer for it.
Lex Fridman
Is that the one you find the most compelling or is there some other explanation?
Is that the one you find the most compelling or is there some other explanation?
Nick Lane
No, it’s not that I find it more compelling, it’s that I find more probable and I find all of them. There’s a lot of hand waving in this, we just don’t know. I’m trying to read out from what I know about life on Earth to what might happen somewhere else. It gives to my mind a bit of a pessimistic view of bacteria everywhere and only occasional intelligent life. Running forward, humans only once on Earth and nothing else that you would necessarily be any more excited about making contact with than you would be making contact with them on Earth.
No, it’s not that I find it more compelling, it’s that I find more probable and I find all of them. There’s a lot of hand waving in this, we just don’t know. I’m trying to read out from what I know about life on Earth to what might happen somewhere else. It gives to my mind a bit of a pessimistic view of bacteria everywhere and only occasional intelligent life. Running forward, humans only once on Earth and nothing else that you would necessarily be any more excited about making contact with than you would be making contact with them on Earth.
I think the chances are pretty limited and the chances of us surviving are pretty limited too. The way we’re going on at the moment, the likelihood of us not making ourselves extinct within the next few 100 years, possibly within the next 50 or 100 years seems quite small. I hope we can do better than that. Maybe the only thing that will survive from humanity will be AI and maybe AI once it exists, and once it’s capable of effectively copying itself and cutting humans out of the loop, then maybe that will take over the universe.
Lex Fridman
There’s an inherent sadness to the way you described that, but isn’t that also potentially beautiful that that’s the next step of life? I suppose from your perspective, as long as it carries the flame of consciousness somehow.
There’s an inherent sadness to the way you described that, but isn’t that also potentially beautiful that that’s the next step of life? I suppose from your perspective, as long as it carries the flame of consciousness somehow.
Nick Lane
I think yes, there can be some beauty to it being the next step of life. I don’t know if consciousness matters or not from that point of view, to be honest with you, but there’s some sadness, yes, probably because I think it comes down to the selfishness that we were talking about earlier on. I am an individual with a desire not to be displaced from life. I want to stay alive, I want to be here. I suppose the threat that a lot of people would feel is that we will just be wiped out, so there will be potential conflicts between AI and humans, and that AI will win because it’s a lot smarter.
I think yes, there can be some beauty to it being the next step of life. I don’t know if consciousness matters or not from that point of view, to be honest with you, but there’s some sadness, yes, probably because I think it comes down to the selfishness that we were talking about earlier on. I am an individual with a desire not to be displaced from life. I want to stay alive, I want to be here. I suppose the threat that a lot of people would feel is that we will just be wiped out, so there will be potential conflicts between AI and humans, and that AI will win because it’s a lot smarter.
Lex Fridman
Boy, would that be a sad state of affairs if consciousness is just an intermediate stage between bacteria and AI.
Boy, would that be a sad state of affairs if consciousness is just an intermediate stage between bacteria and AI.
Nick Lane
Well, I would see bacteria as being potentially a primitive form of consciousness anyway. The whole of life on Earth to my mind-
Well, I would see bacteria as being potentially a primitive form of consciousness anyway. The whole of life on Earth to my mind-
Lex Fridman
Is conscious.
Is conscious.
Nick Lane
… Is capable of some form of feelings in response to the environment. That’s not to say it’s intelligent, though it’s got his own algorithms for intelligence, but nothing comparable with us. I think it’s beautiful what a sterile planet can come up with. It’s astonishing that it’s come up with all of this stuff that we see around us and that either we or whatever we produce is capable of destroying all of that is a sad thought, but it’s also hugely pessimistic. I’d like to think that we’re capable of giving rise to something which is at least as good, if not better than us as AI.
… Is capable of some form of feelings in response to the environment. That’s not to say it’s intelligent, though it’s got his own algorithms for intelligence, but nothing comparable with us. I think it’s beautiful what a sterile planet can come up with. It’s astonishing that it’s come up with all of this stuff that we see around us and that either we or whatever we produce is capable of destroying all of that is a sad thought, but it’s also hugely pessimistic. I’d like to think that we’re capable of giving rise to something which is at least as good, if not better than us as AI.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I have that same optimism, especially a thing that is able to propagate throughout the universe more efficiently than humans can or extensions of humans, some merger with AI and humans, whether that comes from bioengineering of the human body to extend its life somehow to carry that flame of consciousness and that personality and the beautiful tension that’s within all of us, carry that through to multiple planets, to multiple solar systems all out there in the universe. That’s a beautiful vision. Whether AI can do that or bio engineered humans can, that’s an exciting possibility. Especially meeting other alien civilizations in that same way.
Yeah, I have that same optimism, especially a thing that is able to propagate throughout the universe more efficiently than humans can or extensions of humans, some merger with AI and humans, whether that comes from bioengineering of the human body to extend its life somehow to carry that flame of consciousness and that personality and the beautiful tension that’s within all of us, carry that through to multiple planets, to multiple solar systems all out there in the universe. That’s a beautiful vision. Whether AI can do that or bio engineered humans can, that’s an exciting possibility. Especially meeting other alien civilizations in that same way.
Do you think aliens have consciousness?
Nick Lane
If they’re organic, yes.
If they’re organic, yes.
Lex Fridman
Organic, connected to consciousness?
Organic, connected to consciousness?
Nick Lane
I think any system which is going to bootstrap itself up from planetary origins. Let me finish this and then I come onto something else … but from planetary origins is going to face similar constraints, and those constraints are going to be addressed in similar basic engineering ways. I think it will be cellular, and I think it will have electrical charges, and I think it will have to be selected in populations over time. All of these things will tend to give rise to the same processes as the simplest fix to a difficult problem. I would expect it to be conscious, yes, and I would expect it to resemble life on Earth in many ways. When I was about 15 or 16, I remember reading a book by Fred Hoyle called The Black Cloud, which I was a budding biologist at the time and this was the first time I’d come across someone really challenging the heart of biology and saying, “You are far too parochial. You’re thinking about life as carbon-based. Here’s a life form which is kind of dust, interstellar dust on a solar system scale.”
I think any system which is going to bootstrap itself up from planetary origins. Let me finish this and then I come onto something else … but from planetary origins is going to face similar constraints, and those constraints are going to be addressed in similar basic engineering ways. I think it will be cellular, and I think it will have electrical charges, and I think it will have to be selected in populations over time. All of these things will tend to give rise to the same processes as the simplest fix to a difficult problem. I would expect it to be conscious, yes, and I would expect it to resemble life on Earth in many ways. When I was about 15 or 16, I remember reading a book by Fred Hoyle called The Black Cloud, which I was a budding biologist at the time and this was the first time I’d come across someone really challenging the heart of biology and saying, “You are far too parochial. You’re thinking about life as carbon-based. Here’s a life form which is kind of dust, interstellar dust on a solar system scale.”
It’s a novel, but I felt enormously challenged by that novel because it hadn’t occurred to me how limited my thinking was, how narrow-minded I was being. Here was a great physicist with a completely different conception of what life be. Since then, I’ve seen him attacked in various ways. I’m reluctant to say the attacks make more sense to me than the original story, which is to say even in terms of information processing, if you’re on that scale and there’s a limit of the speed of how quickly can something think, if you’re needing to broadcast across the solar system, it is going to be slow.
It’s not going to hold a conversation with you on the timelines that Fred Hoyle was imagining, or at least not by any easy way of doing it, assuming that the speed of light is a limit. Then again, you really can’t. This is something Richard Dawkins argued long ago and I do think he’s right. There is no other way to generate this level of complexity than natural selection. Nothing else can do it. You need populations and you need selection in populations and an isolated interstellar cloud. Again, there’s unlimited time and maybe there’s no problems with distance, but you need to have a certain frequency of generational time to generate a serious level of complexity. I just have a feeling it’s never going to work.
Lex Fridman
Well, as far as we know. Natural selection, evolution is really a powerful tool here on Earth, but there could be other mechanisms. I don’t know if you’re familiar with cellular automaton, but complex systems that have really simple components and seemingly move based on simple rules when they’re taken as a whole, really interesting complexity emerges. I don’t know what the pressures on that are. It’s not really selection, but interesting complexity seems to emerge, and that’s not well understood exactly why that complexity emerges.
Well, as far as we know. Natural selection, evolution is really a powerful tool here on Earth, but there could be other mechanisms. I don’t know if you’re familiar with cellular automaton, but complex systems that have really simple components and seemingly move based on simple rules when they’re taken as a whole, really interesting complexity emerges. I don’t know what the pressures on that are. It’s not really selection, but interesting complexity seems to emerge, and that’s not well understood exactly why that complexity emerges.
Nick Lane
I think there’s a difference between complexity and evolution. Some of the work we’re doing on the origin of life is thinking about how do genes arise? How does information arise in biology? Thinking about it from the point of view of reacting CO₂ with hydrogen, what do you get? Well, what you’re going to get is carboxylic acids, then amino acids. It’s quite hard to make nucleotides. It’s possible to make them, and it’s been done and it’s being done following this pathway as well, but you make trace amounts. The next question, assuming that this is the right way of seeing the question, which maybe it’s just not, but let’s assume it is well, how do you reliably make more nucleotides? How do you become more complex and better at becoming a nucleotide generating machine? The answer is, well, you need positive feedback loops, some form of autocatalysis.
I think there’s a difference between complexity and evolution. Some of the work we’re doing on the origin of life is thinking about how do genes arise? How does information arise in biology? Thinking about it from the point of view of reacting CO₂ with hydrogen, what do you get? Well, what you’re going to get is carboxylic acids, then amino acids. It’s quite hard to make nucleotides. It’s possible to make them, and it’s been done and it’s being done following this pathway as well, but you make trace amounts. The next question, assuming that this is the right way of seeing the question, which maybe it’s just not, but let’s assume it is well, how do you reliably make more nucleotides? How do you become more complex and better at becoming a nucleotide generating machine? The answer is, well, you need positive feedback loops, some form of autocatalysis.
That can work and we know it happens in biology. If this nucleotide, for example, catalyzes CO₂ fixation, then you’re going to increase the rate of flux through the whole system, and you’re going to effectively steepen the driving force to make more nucleotides. This can be inherited because there are forms of membrane heredity that you can have and there are effectively, if a cell divides in two and it’s got a lot of stuff inside it and that stuff is basically bound as a network which is capable of regenerating itself, then it will inevitably regenerate itself.
You can develop greater complexity, but everything that I’ve said depends on the underlying rules of thermodynamics. There is no evolvability about that. It’s simply an inevitable outcome of your starting point, assuming that you’re able to increase the driving force through the system. You will generate more of the same, you’ll expand on what you can do, but you’ll never get anything different than that. It’s only when you introduce information into that as a gene, as a small stretch of RNA, which can be random stretch, then you get real evolvability. Then you get biology as we know it, but you’ll also have selection as we know it.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I don’t know how to think about information. That’s the memory of the system. At the local level, it’s propagation of copying yourself and changing and improving your adaptability to the environment, but if you look at Earth as a whole, it has a memory. That’s the key feature of it.
Yeah. I don’t know how to think about information. That’s the memory of the system. At the local level, it’s propagation of copying yourself and changing and improving your adaptability to the environment, but if you look at Earth as a whole, it has a memory. That’s the key feature of it.
Nick Lane
In what way?
In what way?
Lex Fridman
It remembers the stuff it tries. If you were to describe Earth, I think evolution is something that we experience as individual organisms. That’s how the individual organisms interact with each other, there’s a natural selection. But when you look at Earth as an organism in its entirety, how would you describe it?
It remembers the stuff it tries. If you were to describe Earth, I think evolution is something that we experience as individual organisms. That’s how the individual organisms interact with each other, there’s a natural selection. But when you look at Earth as an organism in its entirety, how would you describe it?
Nick Lane
Well, not as an organism. The idea of Gaia is lovely and James Lovelock originally put Gaia out as an organism that had somehow evolved and he was immediately attacked by lots of people. He’s not wrong, but he backpedaled somewhat because that was more of a poetic vision than the science. The science is now called Earth systems science, and it’s really about how does the world regulate itself so it remains within the limits which are hospitable to life, and it does it amazingly well. It is working at a planetary level of integration of regulation, but it’s not evolving by natural selection. It can’t because there’s only one of it. It can change over time, but it’s not evolving. All the evolution is happening in the parts of the system.
Well, not as an organism. The idea of Gaia is lovely and James Lovelock originally put Gaia out as an organism that had somehow evolved and he was immediately attacked by lots of people. He’s not wrong, but he backpedaled somewhat because that was more of a poetic vision than the science. The science is now called Earth systems science, and it’s really about how does the world regulate itself so it remains within the limits which are hospitable to life, and it does it amazingly well. It is working at a planetary level of integration of regulation, but it’s not evolving by natural selection. It can’t because there’s only one of it. It can change over time, but it’s not evolving. All the evolution is happening in the parts of the system.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, but it’s a self-sustaining organism.
Yeah, but it’s a self-sustaining organism.
Nick Lane
No, it’s self-sustained by the sun.
No, it’s self-sustained by the sun.
Lex Fridman
Right, you don’t think it’s possible to see Earth as its own organism?
Right, you don’t think it’s possible to see Earth as its own organism?
Nick Lane
I think it’s poetic and beautiful, and I often refer to the Earth as a living planet, but it’s not in biological terms an organism, no.
I think it’s poetic and beautiful, and I often refer to the Earth as a living planet, but it’s not in biological terms an organism, no.
Lex Fridman
If aliens were to visit Earth, what would they notice? What would be the basic unit of light that would notice?
If aliens were to visit Earth, what would they notice? What would be the basic unit of light that would notice?
Nick Lane
Trees probably, it’s green and it’s green and blue. I think that’s the first thing you’d notice is it stands out from space as being different to any of the other planets.
Trees probably, it’s green and it’s green and blue. I think that’s the first thing you’d notice is it stands out from space as being different to any of the other planets.
Lex Fridman
Would notice the trees at first because the green?
Would notice the trees at first because the green?
Nick Lane
Well, I would. I notice the green, yes.
Well, I would. I notice the green, yes.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Then probably notice to figure out the photosynthesis and then-
Yeah. Then probably notice to figure out the photosynthesis and then-
Nick Lane
Probably notice cities a second there, I suspect. Maybe first. If they arrived at night, they noticed cities first, that’s for sure.
Probably notice cities a second there, I suspect. Maybe first. If they arrived at night, they noticed cities first, that’s for sure.
Cities
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it depends the time. You write quite beautifully in Transformers. Once again, I think you opened the book in this way. I don’t remember. From space describing Earth, it’s such an interesting idea of what Earth is. Hitchhiker’s Guide summarizing it as harmless or mostly harmless. It’s a beautifully poetic thing.
Yeah, it depends the time. You write quite beautifully in Transformers. Once again, I think you opened the book in this way. I don’t remember. From space describing Earth, it’s such an interesting idea of what Earth is. Hitchhiker’s Guide summarizing it as harmless or mostly harmless. It’s a beautifully poetic thing.
You open Transformers with “From space, it looks gray and crystalline, obliterating the blue-green colors of the living Earth. It is crisscrossed by regular patterns and convergence striations. There’s a central amorphous density where these scratches seem lighter. This ‘growth’ does not look alive, although it has extended out along some lines and there is something grasping and parasitic about it. Across the globe, there are thousands of them varying in shape and detail, but all of them, gray, angular, inorganic, spreading. Yet at night they light up, glowing up the dark sky, suddenly beautiful. Perhaps these cankers on the landscape are in some sense living. There’s a controlled flow of energy. There must be information and some form of metabolism, some turnover of materials. Are they alive? No, of course not. They are cities.”
Is there some sense that cities are living beings? You think aliens would think of them as living beings?
Nick Lane
Well, it’d be easy to see it that way, wouldn’t it?
Well, it’d be easy to see it that way, wouldn’t it?
Lex Fridman
It wakes up at night, they wake up at night.
It wakes up at night, they wake up at night.
Nick Lane
Strictly nocturnal, yes. I imagine that any aliens that are smart enough to get here would understand that they’re not living beings. My reason for saying that is that we tend to think of biology in terms of information and forget about the cells. I was trying to draw a comparison between the cell as a city and the energy flow through the city and the energy flow through cells and the turnover of materials. An interesting thing about cities is that they’re not really exactly governed by anybody. There are regulations and systems and whatever else, but it’s pretty loose. They have their own life, their own way of developing over time.
Strictly nocturnal, yes. I imagine that any aliens that are smart enough to get here would understand that they’re not living beings. My reason for saying that is that we tend to think of biology in terms of information and forget about the cells. I was trying to draw a comparison between the cell as a city and the energy flow through the city and the energy flow through cells and the turnover of materials. An interesting thing about cities is that they’re not really exactly governed by anybody. There are regulations and systems and whatever else, but it’s pretty loose. They have their own life, their own way of developing over time.
In that sense, they’re quite biological. There was a plan after the Great Fire of London, Christopher Wren was making plans not only for St. Paul’s Cathedral, but also to rebuild in large Parisian-type boulevards, a large part of the area of central London that was burnt. It never happened because they didn’t have enough money I think, but it’s interesting what was in the plan. There were all these boulevards, but there were no pubs and no coffee houses or anything like that. The reality was London just grew up in a set of jumbled streets.
It was the coffee houses and the pubs where all the business of the City of London was being done. That was where the real life of the city was. No one had planned it. The whole thing was unplanned and works much better that way. In that sense, the cell is completely unplanned. It’s not controlled by the genes in the nucleus in the way that we might like to think that it is, but it’s an evolved entity that has the same flux, the same animation, the same life. I think it’s a beautiful analogy, but I wouldn’t get too stuck with it as a metaphor.
Lex Fridman
See, I disagree with you. I disagree with you. I think you are so steeped. Actually, the entirety of science, the history of science is steeped in a biological framework of thinking about what is life. Not just biological, is very human-centric too, that the human organism is the epitome of life on Earth. I don’t know, I think there is some deep fundamental way-
See, I disagree with you. I disagree with you. I think you are so steeped. Actually, the entirety of science, the history of science is steeped in a biological framework of thinking about what is life. Not just biological, is very human-centric too, that the human organism is the epitome of life on Earth. I don’t know, I think there is some deep fundamental way-
Lex Fridman
On earth, I don’t know. I think there is some defundimental way in which a city is a living being in the same way that a-
On earth, I don’t know. I think there is some defundimental way in which a city is a living being in the same way that a-
Nick Lane
It doesn’t give rise to an offspring city. So it doesn’t work by natural selection, it works by, if anything, memes, it works by.
It doesn’t give rise to an offspring city. So it doesn’t work by natural selection, it works by, if anything, memes, it works by.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. But isn’t it-
Yeah. But isn’t it-
Nick Lane
Copying itself conceptually as a mode of being?
Copying itself conceptually as a mode of being?
Lex Fridman
So, maybe memes, maybe ideas are the organisms that are really essential to life on Earth. Maybe it’s much more important about the collective aspect of human nature, the collective intelligence than the individual intelligence. Maybe the collective humanity is the organism and the thing that defines the collective intelligence of humanity is the ideas. And maybe the way that manifests itself is cities maybe, or societies or geographically constrained societies or nations and all that kind of stuff. From an alien perspective, it’s possible that that is the more deeply noticeable thing, not from a place of ignorance.
So, maybe memes, maybe ideas are the organisms that are really essential to life on Earth. Maybe it’s much more important about the collective aspect of human nature, the collective intelligence than the individual intelligence. Maybe the collective humanity is the organism and the thing that defines the collective intelligence of humanity is the ideas. And maybe the way that manifests itself is cities maybe, or societies or geographically constrained societies or nations and all that kind of stuff. From an alien perspective, it’s possible that that is the more deeply noticeable thing, not from a place of ignorance.
Nick Lane
Yes, but what’s noticeable doesn’t tell you how it works. I don’t have any problem with what you’re saying really, except that it’s not possible without the humans. We went from a hunter-gatherers type economy, if you like, without cities, through to cities. And as soon as we get into human evolution and culture and society and so on, then yes, there are other forms of evolution, other forms of change. But cities don’t directly propagate themselves, they propagate themselves through human societies. And human societies only exist because humans as individuals propagate themselves. So there is a hierarchy there. And without the humans in the first place, none of the rest of it exists.
Yes, but what’s noticeable doesn’t tell you how it works. I don’t have any problem with what you’re saying really, except that it’s not possible without the humans. We went from a hunter-gatherers type economy, if you like, without cities, through to cities. And as soon as we get into human evolution and culture and society and so on, then yes, there are other forms of evolution, other forms of change. But cities don’t directly propagate themselves, they propagate themselves through human societies. And human societies only exist because humans as individuals propagate themselves. So there is a hierarchy there. And without the humans in the first place, none of the rest of it exists.
Lex Fridman
So for you, life is primarily defined by the basic unit on which evolution can operate on Earth.
So for you, life is primarily defined by the basic unit on which evolution can operate on Earth.
Nick Lane
I think it’s really important thing. Yes.
I think it’s really important thing. Yes.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. And we don’t have any other better ideas than evolution for how to create life.
Yeah. And we don’t have any other better ideas than evolution for how to create life.
Nick Lane
I never came across a better idea than evolution. Maybe I’m just ignorant and I don’t know. And you mentioned that’s automator and so on, and I don’t think specifically about that, but I have thought about it in terms of selective units at the origin of life and the difference between evolvability and complexity or just increasing complexity, but within very narrowly defined limits. The great thing about genes and about selection is it just knocks down all those limits. It gives you a world of information in the end, which is limited only by the biophysical reality of what kind of an organism you are, what kind of a planet you live on and so on. And cities and all these other forms that look alive and could be described as alive, because they can’t propagate themselves can only exist as the product of something that did propagate itself.
I never came across a better idea than evolution. Maybe I’m just ignorant and I don’t know. And you mentioned that’s automator and so on, and I don’t think specifically about that, but I have thought about it in terms of selective units at the origin of life and the difference between evolvability and complexity or just increasing complexity, but within very narrowly defined limits. The great thing about genes and about selection is it just knocks down all those limits. It gives you a world of information in the end, which is limited only by the biophysical reality of what kind of an organism you are, what kind of a planet you live on and so on. And cities and all these other forms that look alive and could be described as alive, because they can’t propagate themselves can only exist as the product of something that did propagate itself.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, there’s a deeply compelling truth to that kind of way of looking at things, but I just hope that we don’t miss the giant cloud among us.
Yeah, there’s a deeply compelling truth to that kind of way of looking at things, but I just hope that we don’t miss the giant cloud among us.
Nick Lane
I kind of hope that I’m wrong about a lot of this because I can’t say that my worldview is particularly uplifting, but in some sense it doesn’t matter if it’s uplifting or not, science is about what’s reality. What’s out there? Why is it this way? And I think there’s beauty in that too.
I kind of hope that I’m wrong about a lot of this because I can’t say that my worldview is particularly uplifting, but in some sense it doesn’t matter if it’s uplifting or not, science is about what’s reality. What’s out there? Why is it this way? And I think there’s beauty in that too.
Depression
Lex Fridman
There’s beauty in darkness. You write about life and death sort of at the biological level. Does the question of suicide, why live? Does the question of why the human mind is capable of depression? Are you able to introspect that from a place of biology? Why our minds, why we humans can go to such dark places? Why can we commit suicide? Why can we go suffer? Suffer, period, but also suffer from a feeling of meaninglessness of going to a dark place that depression can take you? Is this a feature of life or is it a bug?
There’s beauty in darkness. You write about life and death sort of at the biological level. Does the question of suicide, why live? Does the question of why the human mind is capable of depression? Are you able to introspect that from a place of biology? Why our minds, why we humans can go to such dark places? Why can we commit suicide? Why can we go suffer? Suffer, period, but also suffer from a feeling of meaninglessness of going to a dark place that depression can take you? Is this a feature of life or is it a bug?
Nick Lane
I don’t know. If it’s a feature of life, then I suppose it would have to be true of other organisms as well. And I don’t know. We were talking about dogs earlier on and they can certainly be very sad and upset and may mooch for days after their owner died or something like that. So I suspect in some sense it’s a feature of biology. It is probably a feature of mortality. It’s probably a… But beyond all of that, I guess there’s two ways you could come at it. One of them would be to say, well, you can effectively do the math and come to the conclusion that it’s all pointless and that there’s really no point in me being here any longer. And maybe that’s true in the greater scheme of things. You can justify yourself in terms of society, but society will be gone soon enough as well. And you end up with a very bleak place just by logic.
I don’t know. If it’s a feature of life, then I suppose it would have to be true of other organisms as well. And I don’t know. We were talking about dogs earlier on and they can certainly be very sad and upset and may mooch for days after their owner died or something like that. So I suspect in some sense it’s a feature of biology. It is probably a feature of mortality. It’s probably a… But beyond all of that, I guess there’s two ways you could come at it. One of them would be to say, well, you can effectively do the math and come to the conclusion that it’s all pointless and that there’s really no point in me being here any longer. And maybe that’s true in the greater scheme of things. You can justify yourself in terms of society, but society will be gone soon enough as well. And you end up with a very bleak place just by logic.
Lex Fridman
In some sense, it’s surprising that we can find any meaning at all.
In some sense, it’s surprising that we can find any meaning at all.
Nick Lane
Well, maybe this is where consciousness comes in that we have transient joy, but with transient joy, we have transient misery as well. And sometimes with everything in biology, getting the regulation right is practically impossible. You will always have a bell-shaped curve where some people unfortunately are at the joy end and some people are at the misery end, and that’s the way brains are wired. And I doubt there’s ever an escape from that. It’s the same with sex and everything else as well, where dealing with you can’t regulate it. So anything goes. It’s all part of biology.
Well, maybe this is where consciousness comes in that we have transient joy, but with transient joy, we have transient misery as well. And sometimes with everything in biology, getting the regulation right is practically impossible. You will always have a bell-shaped curve where some people unfortunately are at the joy end and some people are at the misery end, and that’s the way brains are wired. And I doubt there’s ever an escape from that. It’s the same with sex and everything else as well, where dealing with you can’t regulate it. So anything goes. It’s all part of biology.
Writing
Lex Fridman
Amen to that. Let me, on writing in your book, Power, Sex and Suicide. First of all, can I just read off the books you’ve written, if there’s any better titles and topics to be covered, I don’t know what they are. It makes me look forward to whatever you’re going to write next. I hope there’s things you write next. So first you wrote Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World as we’ve talked about this idea of the role of oxygen in life on Earth. Then wait for it, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life. Then Life Ascending: The 10 Great Inventions of Evolution. The Vital Question, the first book I’ve read of yours, the Vital Question: Why is Life the Way It Is? And the new book Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death. In Power, sex and Suicide, you write about writing or about a lot of things, but I have a question about writing.
Amen to that. Let me, on writing in your book, Power, Sex and Suicide. First of all, can I just read off the books you’ve written, if there’s any better titles and topics to be covered, I don’t know what they are. It makes me look forward to whatever you’re going to write next. I hope there’s things you write next. So first you wrote Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World as we’ve talked about this idea of the role of oxygen in life on Earth. Then wait for it, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life. Then Life Ascending: The 10 Great Inventions of Evolution. The Vital Question, the first book I’ve read of yours, the Vital Question: Why is Life the Way It Is? And the new book Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death. In Power, sex and Suicide, you write about writing or about a lot of things, but I have a question about writing.
You write in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Ford Prefect spends 15 years researching his revision to the Guide’s entry on the Earth, which originally read, “Harmless,” by the way, I would also as a side question, I would like to ask you what would be your summary of what Earth is.
But you write, “His long essay on the subject is edited down by the guide to read “Mostly Harmless.” I suspect that too many new editions suffer similar fate, if not through absurd editing decisions, at least through a lack of meaningful change in content. As it happens, nearly 15 years have passed since the first edition of Power, Sex, Suicide was published, and I am resisting the temptation to make any lame revisions. Some say that even Darwin lessened the power of his arguments in the Origin of species through his multiple revisions in which he dealt with criticisms and sometimes shifted his views in the wrong direction. I prefer my original to speak for itself even if it turns out to be wrong.”
Let me ask the question about writing, both your students in the academic setting, but also writing some of the most brilliant writings on science and humanity I’ve ever read. What’s the process of writing? How do you advise other humans? If you were to talk to young Darwin or the young you and just young anybody and give advice about how to write and how to write well about these big topics, what would you say?
Nick Lane
I suppose there’s a couple of points. One of them is, what’s the story? What do I want to know? What do I want to convey? Why does it matter to anybody? And very often the biggest, most interesting questions, the childlike questions are the one that actually everybody wants to ask, but daren’t quite do it in case they look stupid. And one of the nice things about being in science is the longer you’re in, the more you realize that everybody doesn’t know the answer to these questions and it’s not so stupid to ask them after all.
I suppose there’s a couple of points. One of them is, what’s the story? What do I want to know? What do I want to convey? Why does it matter to anybody? And very often the biggest, most interesting questions, the childlike questions are the one that actually everybody wants to ask, but daren’t quite do it in case they look stupid. And one of the nice things about being in science is the longer you’re in, the more you realize that everybody doesn’t know the answer to these questions and it’s not so stupid to ask them after all.
So trying to ask the questions that I would’ve been asking myself at the age of 15, 16 when I was really hungry to know about the world and didn’t know very much about it and wanted to go to the edge of what we know but be helped to get there. I don’t want too much terminology. And so I want someone to keep a clean eye on what the question is. Beyond that, I’ve wondered a lot about who am I writing for? And that was in the end, the only answer I had was myself at the age of 15 or 16. Because even if you just don’t know who’s reading it, but also where are they reading it? Are they reading it in the bath or in bed or on the metro or are they listening to an audiobook? Do you want to have a recapitulation every few pages because you read three pages at a time?
Or are you really irritated by that? You’re going to get criticism from people who are irritated by what you’re doing and you don’t know who they are or what you’re going to do that’s going to irritate people. And in the end, all you can do is just try and please yourself. And that means what are these big, fun, fascinating, big questions, and what do we know about it? And can I convey that? And I kind of learned in trying to write, first of all, say what we know. And I was shocked in the first couple of books how often I came up quickly against all the stuff we don’t know.
And if you’re trying to… I realized later on in supervising various physicists and mathematicians who are PhD students and I know their math is way beyond what I can do. But the process of trying to work out what are we actually going to model here, what’s going into this equation? It’s a very similar one to writing, what am I going to put on a page? What’s the simplest possible way I can encapsulate this idea so that I now have it as a unit that I can kind of see how it interacts with the other units? And you realize that, well, if this is like that and this is like this, then that can’t be true.
So you end up navigating your own path through this landscape and that can be thrilling because you don’t know where it’s going. And I’d like to think that that’s one of the reasons my books have worked for people because this sense of thrilling adventure ride, I don’t know where it’s going either.
Lex Fridman
So finding the simplest possible way to explain the things we know and the simplest possible way to explain the things we don’t know and the tension between those two, that’s where the story emerges. What about the edit? Do you find yourself to the point of this editing down to most harmless. To arrive at simplicity, do you find the edit is productive or does it destroy the magic that was originally there?
So finding the simplest possible way to explain the things we know and the simplest possible way to explain the things we don’t know and the tension between those two, that’s where the story emerges. What about the edit? Do you find yourself to the point of this editing down to most harmless. To arrive at simplicity, do you find the edit is productive or does it destroy the magic that was originally there?
Nick Lane
No, I usually find… I think I’m perhaps a better editor than I’m a writer. I write and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite.
No, I usually find… I think I’m perhaps a better editor than I’m a writer. I write and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite.
Lex Fridman
Put a bunch of crap on the page first and then see where the edit takes it.
Put a bunch of crap on the page first and then see where the edit takes it.
Nick Lane
But then there’s the professional editors who come along as well. And in Transformer, the editor came back to me after I’d sent… Two months after I sent the first edition, he’d read the whole thing and he said, “The first two chapters prevent a formidable hurdle to the general reader, go and do something about it.” And that was the last thing I really wanted to hear.
But then there’s the professional editors who come along as well. And in Transformer, the editor came back to me after I’d sent… Two months after I sent the first edition, he’d read the whole thing and he said, “The first two chapters prevent a formidable hurdle to the general reader, go and do something about it.” And that was the last thing I really wanted to hear.
Lex Fridman
But your editor sounds very eloquent in speech.
But your editor sounds very eloquent in speech.
Nick Lane
Yeah. Well, this was an email, but I thought about it. The bottom line is he was right. And so I put the whole thing aside for about two months, spent the summer, this would’ve been I guess last summer, and then turned to it with full attention in about September or something and rewrote those chapters almost from scratch. I kept some of the material, but it took me a long time to process it, to work out what needs to change, where does it need to… I wasn’t writing in this time, how am I going to tell this story better so it’s more accessible and interesting. And in the end, I think it worked. It is still difficult, it’s still biochemistry, but he ended up saying, “Now it’s got a barreling energy to it.” And because he’d told me the truth the first time I decided to believe that he was telling me the truth the second time as well and was delighted.
Yeah. Well, this was an email, but I thought about it. The bottom line is he was right. And so I put the whole thing aside for about two months, spent the summer, this would’ve been I guess last summer, and then turned to it with full attention in about September or something and rewrote those chapters almost from scratch. I kept some of the material, but it took me a long time to process it, to work out what needs to change, where does it need to… I wasn’t writing in this time, how am I going to tell this story better so it’s more accessible and interesting. And in the end, I think it worked. It is still difficult, it’s still biochemistry, but he ended up saying, “Now it’s got a barreling energy to it.” And because he’d told me the truth the first time I decided to believe that he was telling me the truth the second time as well and was delighted.
Advice for young people
Lex Fridman
Could you give advice to young people in general, folks in high school, folks in college, how to take on some of the big questions you’ve taken on. Now you’ve done that in the space of biology and expand it out, how can they have a career they can be proud of or have a life they can be proud of?
Could you give advice to young people in general, folks in high school, folks in college, how to take on some of the big questions you’ve taken on. Now you’ve done that in the space of biology and expand it out, how can they have a career they can be proud of or have a life they can be proud of?
Nick Lane
Gosh, that’s a big question.
Gosh, that’s a big question.
Lex Fridman
I’m sure you’ve gathered some wisdom that you can impart.
I’m sure you’ve gathered some wisdom that you can impart.
Nick Lane
So the only advice that I actually ever give to my students is follow what you’re interested in. Because they’re often worried that if they make this decision now and do this course instead of that course, then they’re going to restrict their career opportunities. And there isn’t a career path in science. There is but isn’t. There’s a lot of competition. There’s a lot of death symbolically. So who survives? The people who survive are the people who care enough to still do it. And they’re very often the people who don’t worry too much about the future and are able to live in the present. If you do a PhD, you’ve competed hard to get onto the PhD, then you have to compete hard to get a post-doc job and you have the next bond maybe on another continent, and it’s only two years anyway, and there’s no guarantee you’re going to get a faculty position at the end of it.
So the only advice that I actually ever give to my students is follow what you’re interested in. Because they’re often worried that if they make this decision now and do this course instead of that course, then they’re going to restrict their career opportunities. And there isn’t a career path in science. There is but isn’t. There’s a lot of competition. There’s a lot of death symbolically. So who survives? The people who survive are the people who care enough to still do it. And they’re very often the people who don’t worry too much about the future and are able to live in the present. If you do a PhD, you’ve competed hard to get onto the PhD, then you have to compete hard to get a post-doc job and you have the next bond maybe on another continent, and it’s only two years anyway, and there’s no guarantee you’re going to get a faculty position at the end of it.
Lex Fridman
And there’s always the next step to compete. If you get a faculty position, you get a tenure, and with tenure you go full professor and full professor, then you go to some kind of whatever the discipline is, there’s an award. If you’re in physics, you’re always competing for the Nobel Prize, there’s different awards and then eventually you’re all competing to… There’s always a competition.
And there’s always the next step to compete. If you get a faculty position, you get a tenure, and with tenure you go full professor and full professor, then you go to some kind of whatever the discipline is, there’s an award. If you’re in physics, you’re always competing for the Nobel Prize, there’s different awards and then eventually you’re all competing to… There’s always a competition.
Nick Lane
So there is no happiness. Happiness does not lie.
So there is no happiness. Happiness does not lie.
Lex Fridman
If you’re looking into the future, yes.
If you’re looking into the future, yes.
Nick Lane
And if what you’re caring about is a career, then it’s probably not the one for you. If though, you can put that aside. And I’ve also worked in industry for a brief period and I was made redundant twice, so I know that there’s no guarantee that you’ve got a career that way either.
And if what you’re caring about is a career, then it’s probably not the one for you. If though, you can put that aside. And I’ve also worked in industry for a brief period and I was made redundant twice, so I know that there’s no guarantee that you’ve got a career that way either.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Nick Lane
So live in the moment and try and enjoy what you’re doing. And that means really go to the themes that you’re most interested in and try and follow them as well as you can. And that tends to pay back in surprising ways. I don’t know if you’ve found this as well, but I found that people will help you often, if they see some light shining in the eye and you are excited about their subject and just want to talk about it. And they know that their friend in California’s got a job coming up, they’ll say, “Go for this. This guy’s all right.” They’ll use the network to help you out if you really care. And you’re not going to have a job two years down the line, but what you really care about is what you’re doing now, then it doesn’t matter if you have a job in two years time or not. It’ll work itself out if you’ve got the light in your eye. And so that’s the only advice I can give. And most people probably drop out through that system because the fight is just not worth it for them.
So live in the moment and try and enjoy what you’re doing. And that means really go to the themes that you’re most interested in and try and follow them as well as you can. And that tends to pay back in surprising ways. I don’t know if you’ve found this as well, but I found that people will help you often, if they see some light shining in the eye and you are excited about their subject and just want to talk about it. And they know that their friend in California’s got a job coming up, they’ll say, “Go for this. This guy’s all right.” They’ll use the network to help you out if you really care. And you’re not going to have a job two years down the line, but what you really care about is what you’re doing now, then it doesn’t matter if you have a job in two years time or not. It’ll work itself out if you’ve got the light in your eye. And so that’s the only advice I can give. And most people probably drop out through that system because the fight is just not worth it for them.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, when you have the light in your eye, when you have the excitement for the thing, what happens is you start to surround yourself with others that are interested in that same thing that also have the light. If you really are rigorous about this, I think it takes effort to make…
Yeah, when you have the light in your eye, when you have the excitement for the thing, what happens is you start to surround yourself with others that are interested in that same thing that also have the light. If you really are rigorous about this, I think it takes effort to make…
Nick Lane
Oh, you’ve got to be obsessive. But if you’re doing what you really love doing, then it’s not work anymore, it’s what you do.
Oh, you’ve got to be obsessive. But if you’re doing what you really love doing, then it’s not work anymore, it’s what you do.
Lex Fridman
But I also mean the surrounding yourself with other people that are obsessed about the same thing because depending on-
But I also mean the surrounding yourself with other people that are obsessed about the same thing because depending on-
Nick Lane
Oh, that takes some work as well.
Oh, that takes some work as well.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Nick Lane
And luck
And luck
Lex Fridman
Finding the right mentors, the collaborators. Because I think one of the problem with the PhD process is people are not careful enough in picking their mentors. Those are people… Mentors and colleagues and so on, those people are going to define the direction of your life, how much you love a thing. The power of just the few little conversations you have in the hallway is incredible. So you have to be a little bit careful in that sometimes you just get randomly almost assigned. Really pursue, I suppose, the subject as much as you pursue the people that do that subject. So both the whole dance of it.
Finding the right mentors, the collaborators. Because I think one of the problem with the PhD process is people are not careful enough in picking their mentors. Those are people… Mentors and colleagues and so on, those people are going to define the direction of your life, how much you love a thing. The power of just the few little conversations you have in the hallway is incredible. So you have to be a little bit careful in that sometimes you just get randomly almost assigned. Really pursue, I suppose, the subject as much as you pursue the people that do that subject. So both the whole dance of it.
Nick Lane
They kind of go together really.
They kind of go together really.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, they do. They really do. But take that part seriously, and probably in the way you’re describing it, careful how you define success because-
Yeah, they do. They really do. But take that part seriously, and probably in the way you’re describing it, careful how you define success because-
Nick Lane
You’ll never find happiness in success. I think there’s a lovely quote from Robert Louis, Stevenson, I think, who said, “Nothing in life is so disenchanting as attainment.”
You’ll never find happiness in success. I think there’s a lovely quote from Robert Louis, Stevenson, I think, who said, “Nothing in life is so disenchanting as attainment.”
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So in some sense, the true definition of success is getting to do today, what you really enjoy doing, just what fills you with joy. And that’s ultimately success. Success isn’t the thing beyond the horizon, the big trophy, the financial-
Yeah. So in some sense, the true definition of success is getting to do today, what you really enjoy doing, just what fills you with joy. And that’s ultimately success. Success isn’t the thing beyond the horizon, the big trophy, the financial-
Nick Lane
I think it’s as close as we can get to happiness. That’s not to say you’re full of joy all the time, but it’s as close as we can get to a sustained human happiness is by getting some fulfillment from what you’re doing on a daily basis. And if what you’re looking for is the world giving you the stamp of approval with a Nobel Prize or a fellowship or whatever it is, then I’ve known people like this who they’re eaten away by the anger, the kind of caustic resentment that they’ve not been awarded this prize that they deserve.
I think it’s as close as we can get to happiness. That’s not to say you’re full of joy all the time, but it’s as close as we can get to a sustained human happiness is by getting some fulfillment from what you’re doing on a daily basis. And if what you’re looking for is the world giving you the stamp of approval with a Nobel Prize or a fellowship or whatever it is, then I’ve known people like this who they’re eaten away by the anger, the kind of caustic resentment that they’ve not been awarded this prize that they deserve.
Lex Fridman
And the other way, if you put too much value into those kinds of prizes and you win them, I’ve gotten the chance to see that the more “successful” you are in that sense, the more you run the danger of growing ego so big that you don’t get to actually enjoy the beauty of this life. You start to believe that you figured it all out, as opposed to, I think what ultimately the most fun thing is being curious about everything around you, being constantly surprised and these little moments of discovery, of enjoying beauty in small and big ways all around you.
And the other way, if you put too much value into those kinds of prizes and you win them, I’ve gotten the chance to see that the more “successful” you are in that sense, the more you run the danger of growing ego so big that you don’t get to actually enjoy the beauty of this life. You start to believe that you figured it all out, as opposed to, I think what ultimately the most fun thing is being curious about everything around you, being constantly surprised and these little moments of discovery, of enjoying beauty in small and big ways all around you.
And I think the bigger your ego grows, the more you start to take yourself seriously, the less you’re able to enjoy that.
Nick Lane
Oh man, I couldn’t agree more.
Oh man, I couldn’t agree more.
Earth
Lex Fridman
So the summary from harmless to mostly harmless in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, how would you try to summarize Earth? And if you had to summarize the whole thing in a couple of sentences and maybe throw in meaning of life in there, why? Maybe is that a defining thing about humans that we care about the meaning of the whole thing? I wonder if that should be part of the… These creatures seem to be very lost.
So the summary from harmless to mostly harmless in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, how would you try to summarize Earth? And if you had to summarize the whole thing in a couple of sentences and maybe throw in meaning of life in there, why? Maybe is that a defining thing about humans that we care about the meaning of the whole thing? I wonder if that should be part of the… These creatures seem to be very lost.
Nick Lane
Yes. They’re always asking why. That’s my defining question is why. People used to made a joke, I have a small scar on my forehead from a climbing accident years ago, and the guy I was climbing with had dislodged a rock and he shouted something, he shouted, “Below,” I think, meaning that the rock was coming down and I hadn’t caught what he said. So I looked up and he went smashed straight on my forehead, and everybody around me took the piss saying, “He looked up to ask why.”
Yes. They’re always asking why. That’s my defining question is why. People used to made a joke, I have a small scar on my forehead from a climbing accident years ago, and the guy I was climbing with had dislodged a rock and he shouted something, he shouted, “Below,” I think, meaning that the rock was coming down and I hadn’t caught what he said. So I looked up and he went smashed straight on my forehead, and everybody around me took the piss saying, “He looked up to ask why.”
Lex Fridman
Yeah, but that’s a human imperative, that’s part of what it means to be human. Look up to the sky and ask why.
Yeah, but that’s a human imperative, that’s part of what it means to be human. Look up to the sky and ask why.
Nick Lane
So your question, define the Earth. I’m not sure I can do that. The first word that comes to mind is living, I wouldn’t like to say mostly living, but perhaps.
So your question, define the Earth. I’m not sure I can do that. The first word that comes to mind is living, I wouldn’t like to say mostly living, but perhaps.
Lex Fridman
Mostly living. Well, it’s interesting because if you were to write The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I suppose say our idea that we talked about, the bacteria is the most prominent form of life throughout the galaxy in the universe. I suppose that Earth would be kind of unique and would require-
Mostly living. Well, it’s interesting because if you were to write The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I suppose say our idea that we talked about, the bacteria is the most prominent form of life throughout the galaxy in the universe. I suppose that Earth would be kind of unique and would require-
Nick Lane
There’s abundance in that case.
There’s abundance in that case.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nick Lane
It’s profligate, it’s rich. It’s enormously, enormously living.
It’s profligate, it’s rich. It’s enormously, enormously living.
Lex Fridman
So how would you describe that it’s not bacteria, it’s…
So how would you describe that it’s not bacteria, it’s…
Nick Lane
Eukaryotic.
Eukaryotic.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nick Lane
Well that’s the technical term, but it is basically.
Well that’s the technical term, but it is basically.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. [inaudible 03:35:47]
Yeah. [inaudible 03:35:47]
Nick Lane
How would I describe that? I’ve actually really struggled with that term because the word… There’s few words quite as good as eukaryotic to put everybody off immediately. You start using words like that and maybe they’ll leave the room. Krebs cycle is another one that gets people to leave the room.
How would I describe that? I’ve actually really struggled with that term because the word… There’s few words quite as good as eukaryotic to put everybody off immediately. You start using words like that and maybe they’ll leave the room. Krebs cycle is another one that gets people to leave the room.
Lex Fridman
That’s interesting.
That’s interesting.
Nick Lane
So I’m trying to think, is there another word for eukaryotic that I can use? And really the only word that I’ve been able to use is complex, complex cells, complex life and so on. And that word, it serves one immediate purpose, which is to convey an impression, but then it means so many different things to everybody that actually is lost immediately. And so it is kind of…
So I’m trying to think, is there another word for eukaryotic that I can use? And really the only word that I’ve been able to use is complex, complex cells, complex life and so on. And that word, it serves one immediate purpose, which is to convey an impression, but then it means so many different things to everybody that actually is lost immediately. And so it is kind of…
Lex Fridman
Well, that’s a noticeable from the perspective of other planets, that is a noticeable face transition of complexity is the eukaryotic. What about the harmless and the mostly harmless? Is that kind of…
Well, that’s a noticeable from the perspective of other planets, that is a noticeable face transition of complexity is the eukaryotic. What about the harmless and the mostly harmless? Is that kind of…
Nick Lane
Probably accurate on a universal kind of scale. I don’t think that humanity is in any danger of disturbing the universe at the moment.
Probably accurate on a universal kind of scale. I don’t think that humanity is in any danger of disturbing the universe at the moment.
Lex Fridman
At the moment, which is why the mostly, we don’t know. Depends what Elon is up to. Depends how many rockets. I think-
At the moment, which is why the mostly, we don’t know. Depends what Elon is up to. Depends how many rockets. I think-
Nick Lane
It’ll be still even then a while, I think, before we disturb the fabric of time and space.
It’ll be still even then a while, I think, before we disturb the fabric of time and space.
Lex Fridman
Was the aforementioned Andrej Karpathy. I think he summarized earth as a system where you hammer it with a bunch of photons. The input is like photons and the output is rockets. If you just-
Was the aforementioned Andrej Karpathy. I think he summarized earth as a system where you hammer it with a bunch of photons. The input is like photons and the output is rockets. If you just-
Nick Lane
Well, that’s a hell of a lot of photons before it was a rocket.
Well, that’s a hell of a lot of photons before it was a rocket.
Lex Fridman
But maybe in the span of the universe, it’s not that much time. And I do wonder what the future is, whether we’re just in the early beginnings of this Earth, which is important when you try to summarize it or we’re at the end where humans have finally gained the ability to destroy the entirety of this beautiful project we’ve got going on now with nuclear weapons, with engineered viruses, with all those kinds of things.
But maybe in the span of the universe, it’s not that much time. And I do wonder what the future is, whether we’re just in the early beginnings of this Earth, which is important when you try to summarize it or we’re at the end where humans have finally gained the ability to destroy the entirety of this beautiful project we’ve got going on now with nuclear weapons, with engineered viruses, with all those kinds of things.
Nick Lane
Or just inadvertently through global warming and pollution and so on. We’re quite capable. We just need to pass the point.
Or just inadvertently through global warming and pollution and so on. We’re quite capable. We just need to pass the point.
Lex Fridman
[inaudible 03:38:18]
[inaudible 03:38:18]
Nick Lane
I think we’re more likely to do it inadvertently than through a nuclear war, which could happen at any time. But my fear is we just don’t know where the tipping points are and we will kind of think we’re smart enough to fix the problem quickly if we really need to. I think that’s the overriding assumption that, “We’re all right for now. Maybe in 20 years time it’s going to be a calamitous problem, and then we’ll really need to put some serious mental power into fixing it.” Without seriously worrying that perhaps that is too late and that however brilliant we are, we miss the boat.
I think we’re more likely to do it inadvertently than through a nuclear war, which could happen at any time. But my fear is we just don’t know where the tipping points are and we will kind of think we’re smart enough to fix the problem quickly if we really need to. I think that’s the overriding assumption that, “We’re all right for now. Maybe in 20 years time it’s going to be a calamitous problem, and then we’ll really need to put some serious mental power into fixing it.” Without seriously worrying that perhaps that is too late and that however brilliant we are, we miss the boat.
Lex Fridman
And just walk off the cliff. I don’t know. I have optimism in humans being clever descendants.
And just walk off the cliff. I don’t know. I have optimism in humans being clever descendants.
Nick Lane
Oh, I have no doubt that we can fix the problem, but it’s an urgent problem and we need to fix it pretty sharpish.
Oh, I have no doubt that we can fix the problem, but it’s an urgent problem and we need to fix it pretty sharpish.
Lex Fridman
And-
And-
Nick Lane
I do have doubts about whether politically we are capable of coming together enough to not just in any one country, but around the planet to… I know we can do it, but do we have the will? Do we have the vision to accomplish it?
I do have doubts about whether politically we are capable of coming together enough to not just in any one country, but around the planet to… I know we can do it, but do we have the will? Do we have the vision to accomplish it?
Lex Fridman
That’s what makes this whole ride fun. We don’t know, not only do we not know if we can handle the crises before us, we don’t even know all the crises that are going to be before us in the next 20 years. The ones, I think, that will most likely challenge us in the 21st century are the ones we don’t even expect. People didn’t expect World War II at the end of World War I.
That’s what makes this whole ride fun. We don’t know, not only do we not know if we can handle the crises before us, we don’t even know all the crises that are going to be before us in the next 20 years. The ones, I think, that will most likely challenge us in the 21st century are the ones we don’t even expect. People didn’t expect World War II at the end of World War I.
Nick Lane
Not at the end of World War I, but by the late 1920s, I think people were beginning to worry about it.
Not at the end of World War I, but by the late 1920s, I think people were beginning to worry about it.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, no, there’s always people worrying about everything. So if you focus on the thing that-
Yeah, no, there’s always people worrying about everything. So if you focus on the thing that-
Nick Lane
People worry about, yes.
People worry about, yes.
Lex Fridman
Because there’s a million things people worry about and 99.99999% of them don’t come to be. Of course, the people that turn out to be right, they’ll say, I knew all along,” but that’s not an accurate way of knowing what you could have predicted. I think rationally speaking, you can worry about it, but nobody thought you could have another world war, the war to end all wars. Why would you have another war? And the idea of nuclear weapons just technologically is a very difficult thing to anticipate, to create a weapon that just jumps orders of magnitude and destructive capability. And of course, we can intuit all the things like engineered viruses, nanobots, artificial intelligence. Yes, all the different complicated global effects of global warming. So how that changes the allocation of resources, the flow of energy, the tension between countries, the military conflict between countries, the reallocation of power.
Because there’s a million things people worry about and 99.99999% of them don’t come to be. Of course, the people that turn out to be right, they’ll say, I knew all along,” but that’s not an accurate way of knowing what you could have predicted. I think rationally speaking, you can worry about it, but nobody thought you could have another world war, the war to end all wars. Why would you have another war? And the idea of nuclear weapons just technologically is a very difficult thing to anticipate, to create a weapon that just jumps orders of magnitude and destructive capability. And of course, we can intuit all the things like engineered viruses, nanobots, artificial intelligence. Yes, all the different complicated global effects of global warming. So how that changes the allocation of resources, the flow of energy, the tension between countries, the military conflict between countries, the reallocation of power.
Then looking at the role of China and this whole thing with Russia and growing influence of Africa and the weird dynamics of Europe and then America falling apart through the political division, fueled by recommender systems through Twitter and Facebook. The whole beautiful mess is just fun. And I think there’s a lot of incredible engineers, incredible scientists, incredible human beings, that while everyone is bickering and so on online for the fun of it, on the weekends, they’re actually trying to build solutions. And those are the people that will create something beautiful. At least that’s the process of evolution. It all started with a Chuck Norris single cell organism that went out from the vents and was the parent to all of us. And for that guy or lady or both, I guess, is a big thank you. And I can’t wait to what happens next. And I’m glad there’s incredible humans writing and studying it like you are. Nick, it’s a huge honor that you would talk to me.
Nick Lane
This has been fantastic.
This has been fantastic.
Lex Fridman
This is really amazing. I can’t wait to read what you write next. Thank you for existing and thank you for talking today.
This is really amazing. I can’t wait to read what you write next. Thank you for existing and thank you for talking today.
Nick Lane
Thank you.
Thank you.
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Nick Lane. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Steve Jobs. “I think the biggest innovations of the 21st century will be at the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Nick Lane. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Steve Jobs. “I think the biggest innovations of the 21st century will be at the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Transcript for Ben Shapiro: Politics, Kanye, Trump, Biden, Hitler, Extremism, and War | Lex Fridman Podcast #336
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #336 with Ben Shapiro.
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I seek only to understand, and in so doing, hopefully add a bit of love to the world. This is Lex Fridman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Ben Shapiro.
So I would imagine it’s coming from that. From his comments, I would also imagine that he’s doing the logical mistake that a lot of anti-Semites or racist or bigots do, which is somebody hurt me, that person is a Jew, therefore all Jews are bad. And that jump from a person did something to me I don’t like, who’s a member of a particular race or class, and therefore everybody of that race or class is bad. That’s textbook bigotry and that’s pretty obviously what Ye’s, engaging in here.
If you’re racist against the Jews, you’re antisemitic. Then there are actually a few different ways that breaks down. You have antisemitism in terms of ethnicity, which is like Nazi antisemitism. You have Jewish parentage, you have Jewish grandparent, therefore your blood is corrupt and you are inherently going to have bad properties. Then there’s old school religious antisemitism, which is that the Jews are the killers of Christ, or the Jews are the sons of pigs and monkeys, and therefore Judaism is bad and therefore Jews are bad. And the way that you get out of that antisemitism historically speaking is mass conversion, which most antisemitism for a couple thousand years actually was not ethnic. It was much more rooted in this sort of stuff. If a Jew converted out of the faith, then the antisemitism was alleviated.
And then there’s a bizarre antisemitism that’s political antisemitism, and that is members of a group that I don’t like are disproportionately Jewish. Therefore all Jews are members of this group or are predominantly represented in this group. So you’ll see Nazis saying the communists are Jews. You’ll see communist saying the Nazis are Jews. Or you’ll see communist saying that the capitalists rather are Jews. And so that’s the weird thing about antisemitism. It’s like the Jews behind every corner. It’s basically a big conspiracy theory. Unlike a lot of other forms of racism, which are not really conspiracy theory, antisemitism tends to be a conspiracy theory about the levers of power being controlled by a shadowy cadre of people who are getting together behind closed doors to control things.
It was Papen who had stumped for Hitler to become chancellor. Papen was a Catholic Democrat. He didn’t like Hitler. He thought that Hitler was a radical and a nut job, but he also thought that Hitler being a buffoon, as he saw it, was going to essentially be usable by the right forces in order to prevent the communists from taking power, maybe in order to restore some legitimacy to the regime because he was popular in order for Papen to retain power himself. And then immediately after Hitler taking power, Hitler basically kills all of Papen’s friends. Papen out of ‘loyalty’ stays on. He ends up helping the Anschluss in Austria. All this stuff is really interesting, mainly because what it speaks to is the great lie we tell ourselves that people who are evil are not like us. They’re class apart. People who do evil things, people who support evil people, they’re not like us.
And that’s an easy call everybody in history who has sinned is a person who’s very different from me. Robert George, the philosopher over at Princeton, he’s fond of doing a thought experiment in his classes where he asks people to raise their hand If they had lived in Alabama in 1861, how many of you would be abolitionists? And everybody raises their hand and he says, “Of course that’s not true.” The best protection against evil is recognizing that it lies in every human heart and the possibility that it takes you over.
And so you have to be very cautious in how you approach these issues and the back and forth of politics, the bipolarity of politics or polarization in politics might be a better way to put it, makes it very easy to fall into the Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots that eventually could theoretically allow you to support somebody who’s truly frightening and hideous in order to stop somebody who you think is more frightening and hideous. And you see this kind of language by the way now, predominating almost all over the western world. My political enemy is an enemy of democracy. My political enemy is going to end the republic. My political enemy is going to be the person who destroys the country we live in. And so that person has to be stopped by any means necessary, and that’s dangerous stuff.
So yeah, I think you have to constantly be thinking along those lines and hopefully you try to avoid it. You can only do the best that a human being can do. But yeah, the answer is yes. I would say that I spend an inordinate amount of time reflecting on whether I’m doing the right thing and I may not always do the right thing. I’m sure a lot of people think that I’m doing the wrong thing on a daily basis. But it’s definitely a question that has to enter your mind as a historically aware and hopefully morally decent person.
So I understand both sides of it. I wasn’t offended by Ye’s comments in that way though, because if you’re a pro-life human being, then you do think that what’s happening is a great tragedy on scale that involves the dehumanization of an entire class of people, the pre-born.
The second distinction again is when I talk about the right versus the left, typically I’m talking about a battle of competing philosophies. And so I’m not speaking about, typically… It would be hard to, if you put a person in front of me and said, “Is this person of the left or of the right?” Having just met them, I wouldn’t be able to label them in the same way that if you met somebody in the name of Greenstein, you’d immediately go Jew, or you make a black person, they’re a black person. And that the adherence to a philosophy makes you a member of a group. If I think the philosophy is bad, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you as a person are bad. But it does mean that I think your philosophy is bad.
That’s a conversation that we can have. And then we’ll have to discuss how much power they have, what the actual perspective is, delve into it. But I think that he was being over broad and labeling all of his political enemies under one rubric. Now again, in politics, this stuff happens all the time. I’m not going to plead clean hands here because I’m sure that I’ve been in exact. But somebody who would be good in that particular situation is for somebody to read me back the quote and I’ll let you know where I’ve been inaccurate. I’ll try to do that.
And so the difficulty for me is I take politics seriously, but also I have the ability to of flip the switch and suddenly it all becomes incredibly funny because it really is like if you just watch it from a pure entertainment perspective and you put aside the fact that it affects hundreds of millions of people. Then watching President Trump being president, he’s one of the funniest humans who’s ever lived watching Kamala Harris be Kamala Harris and talking about how much he loves Venn diagrams or electric buses. That’s funny stuff. So if I can’t make fun of that, then my job becomes pretty morose pretty quickly.
We can play this game all day long. And I find that the people who are most intensely focused on playing this game are people who tend to oppose the politics of the person as opposed to actually believing sincerely that this has driven somebody into the arms of the God of violence. But I have 4.7 million Twitter followers. I have 8 million Facebook followers, I have 5 million YouTube followers. I would imagine that some of them are people who are violent. I would imagine that some of them are people who do evil things or want to do evil things. And I wish that there were a wand that we could wave that would prevent those people from deliberately or mistakenly misinterpreting things as a call of violence. It’s just a negative byproduct of the fact that you can reach a lot of people. And so if somebody could point me to the comment that I suppose ‘drove’ somebody to going literally murder human beings, then I would appreciate it.
So I could talk about the comment, but don’t… Mainly because I just think that if we remove agency from individuals, and if we blame broad scale political rhetoric for every act of violence the people who are going to pay the price are actually the general population because free speech will go away. If the idea is that things that we say could drive somebody who is unbalanced to go do something evil, the necessary byproduct is hate, is that speech is a form of hate. Hate is a form of violence, speech is a form of violence. Speech needs to be curbed. And that to me is deeply disturbing.
She wouldn’t say that Somalis wouldn’t deserve a state in Somalia. She wouldn’t say that that Germans don’t deserve a state in Germany. She wouldn’t say for the 50 plus Islamic states that exist across the world, that they don’t deserve states of their own. It is only the Jewish state that has fallen under her significant scrutiny. And she also promulgates laws about one specific state in the form of suggesting, for example, that Israel is an apartheid state, which it is most eminently not considering that the last unity government in Israel included an Arab party, that there are Arabs who sit on the Israeli Supreme Court and all the rest. And then beyond that, obviously she’s engaged in some of the same antisemitic ropes that you heard from Ye. The stuff about, it’s all about the Benjamins, that American support for Israel is all about the Benjamins, and she’s had to be [inaudible 00:29:36] by members of her own party about this stuff before.
The basic rule for the region, in my view, is if these groups were willing to make peace of Israel, they would have a state literally tomorrow. And if they are not, then there will be no peace. And it really is that simple. The formulas typically used, it’s become a bit of a bumper sticker, but it happens to be factually correct. If the Palestinians put down their guns tomorrow, there would be a state. If the Israelis put down their guns, there’d be no Israel,
I’m very lucky. I got married when I was 24, my wife was 20, so she’s known me long before I was famous or wealthy or anything. So she’s a good sounding board. I have a family that’s willing to call me out on my bullshit as you talk to Ye about. I have friends who are able to do that. I try to have open lines of communications with people who I believe have my best interests at heart. But one of the sort of conditions of being friends is that when you see me do something wrong, I’d like for you to let me know that so I can correct it, and I don’t want to leave that impressions out there.
Then the internet explodes and all of a sudden you can get news everywhere, and the way that people are accessing that news is… You’re, I believe, significantly younger than I am. But we used to do this thing called bookmarking, where you would bookmark a series of websites and then you would visit them every morning, and then social media came up.
Suddenly outlets like mine were able to see new eyeballs because it was all centralized in one place. You didn’t have to do it through Google optimization. You could now just put it on Facebook and so many eyeballs were on Facebook, you’d get more traffic. Everybody seemed pretty happy with this arrangement until precisely the moment Donald Trump became president. At that point, then, the sort of pre-existing supposition of a lot of the powers that be, which was, “Democrats, are going to continue winning from here on out, so we can sort of use these social media platforms as ways to push our information and still allow for there to be other information out there.” The immediate response was, “We need to reestablish this siphoning of information. It was misinformation and disinformation that won Donald Trump the election. We need to pressure the social media companies to start cracking down on misinformation and disinformation.”
Actually see this in the historical record. I mean, you can see how Jack Dorsey’s talk about free speech shifted from about 2015 to about 2018. You can see Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech at Georgetown in 2018, which he talked about free speech in its value, and by 2019 he was going in front of Congress talking about how he was responsible for the stuff that was on Facebook, which is not true. He’s not responsible for the stuff on Facebook. It’s a platform. Is AT&T responsible for the stuff you say on your phone? The answer is typically no. So when that happened, because all the eyeballs had now been centralized in these social media sites, they were able to suddenly control what you could see and what you could not see. The most obvious example was obviously leading up to 2020, the election; the killing of the Hunter Biden story is a great example of this.
So Elon coming in and taking over one of the social media services and saying, “I’m not playing by your rules. There’s not going to be this sort of group of people in the halls of power who are going to decide what we can see and here. Instead, I’m going to let a thousand flowers bloom. There’ll be limits, but it’s going to be on more case-by-case basis. We’re going to allow perspectives that are mainstream but maybe not mainstream in the halls of academia or in the halls of media. Let those be said.” I think it’s a really good thing. Now that comes with some responsibilities, I think, on his personal part, which would be to be, for example, I think more responsible and dissemination of information himself. Sometimes he got himself in trouble the other day for tweeting out that story about Paul Pelosi that was speculative and untrue.
I don’t think what he did is horrific. He deleted it when he found out that it was false. That’s actually a free speech working. He said something wrong, people ripped into him, he realized he was wrong, and he’s deleted it, which seems to be a better solution than preemptively banning content, which only raises more questions than it actually stops. With that said, as the face of responsible free speech, and that’s sort of what he’s pitching at Twitter, he I think should enact that himself and be a little more careful in the stuff that he tweets out.
The other one by posting the Pelosi thing is probably to expand the Overton window. Like saying, “We could post stuff, we could post conspiracy theories and then through discourse figure out what is and isn’t true.”
I mean, I’m not criticizing MSNBC for not putting on right wing opinions. I mean that’s fine. I run a conservative site. We’re not going to put up left wing opinions on a wide variety of issues because we are conservative site. But if you pitch yourself as a platform, that’s a different thing. If you pitch yourself as the town square, as Elon likes to call it, then I think Elon has a better idea of that than many of the former employees did. Especially now that we have that report from the Intercept suggesting that there are people from Twitter working with DHS to monitor “disinformation” and being rather vague about what disinformation meant.
Every so often, I’ll still do some of that. I do think actually the amount of snark on my Twitter feed has gone down fairly significantly. I think if you go back a couple of years, it was probably a little more snarky. Today, I’m trying to use it a little bit more in terms of strategy to get out information. Now that doesn’t mean I’m not going to make jokes about, for example, Joe Biden. I will make jokes about Joe Biden. He’s the president of the United States. Nobody else will mock him. So the entire comedic establishment has decided they actually work for him.
The downside of Trump is that he has no capacity to use any sort of… There’s no filter between brain and mouth. Whatever happens in his brain is the thing that comes out of his mouth. I know a lot of people find that charming and wonderful, and it is very funny. But I don’t think that it is a particularly excellent personal quality in a person who has as much responsibility as President Trump has. I think he says a lot of damaging and bad things on Twitter. I think that he seems consumed in some ways by his own grievances, which is why you’ve seen him focusing on election 2020 so much. I think that that is very negative about President Trump. So I’m very grateful to President Trump is a conservative for many of the things that he did. I think that a lot of his personality issues are pretty severe.
As far as his politics, he seems like a slap-on-the-back kind of guy, and I don’t mind that. I think that’s nice so far as it goes. It’s sort of an old school politics where things are done with handshake and personal relationships. The thing I don’t like about him is I think sometimes that’s really not genuine. I think that that’s sometimes. I think that’s his personal tendency, but I think sometimes he allows the prevailing wins of his party to carry him to incredibly radical places, and then he just doubles down on the radicalism in some pretty disingenuous ways, and there I would cite the Independence Day speech, or the independence hall speech, which I thought was truly one of the worst speeches I’ve seen a president give.
I mean, this kind of stuff is very radical stuff, and this is not a president who has pursued a unifying agenda, which is why his approval rating sank from 60% when he entered office to low 40s or high 30s today, unlike President Trump, who never had a high approval rating. Trump came into office and he had a 45% approval rating, and when he left office he had about a 43% approval rating, and bounced around between 45 and 37, pretty much his entire presidency. Biden went from being a very popular guy coming in to a very unpopular guy right now, and if you’re Joe Biden, you should be looking in the mirror and wondering exactly why.
Then the secondary reason that the story is big is actually because the reaction of the story. The banning of the story is in and of itself a major story. If there’s any story that implicates a presidential candidate in the last month of an election and there is a media blackout including a social media blackout, that obviously raises some very serious questions about informational flow and dissemination in the United States.
The biggest problem with this story is that it wasn’t allowed to take the normal life cycle of a story, which is original story breaks, follow-on questions are asked, follow-on questions are answered. Story is either now a big story or it’s nothing. When the life cycle of a story is cut off at the very beginning when it’s born, then that allows you to speculate in any direction you want. You can speculate, “It means nothing. It’s nonsense. It’s a Russian laptop. It’s disinformation,” or on the other hand, “This means that Joe Biden was personally calling Hunter and telling him to pick up a sack of cash over in Beijing, and then he became president and he’s influence pedaling.”
So this is why it’s important to allow these stories to go forward. So this is why actually the bigger story for the moment is not the laptop, it’s the reaction to the laptop because it cut off that life cycle of the story. Then at some point I would assume that there will be some follow-on questions that are actually answered. I mean, the House is pledging if it goes Republican, to investigate all of this. Again, I wouldn’t be supremely surprised if it turns out that there was no direct involvement of Joe in this sort of stuff. Because it turns out, as I said before, that all of politics is veep.
This is always the story with half the scandals that you see is that everybody assumes that there’s some sort of deep and abiding clever plan, that some politician is implementing it, and then you look at it and it turns out now it’s just something dumb, right? This is perfect example of this, President Trump with the classified documents in Maralago. So people on the [inaudible 00:54:05], “It’s probably nuclear codes. Probably he’s taking secret documents and selling them to the Russians or the Chinese.” The real most obvious explanation is Trump looked at the papers and he said, “I like these papers.” Then he just decided to keep them right. Then people came to him and said, “Mr. President, you’re not allowed to keep those papers.” He said, “Who are those people? I don’t care about what they have to say. I’m putting them in the other room, in a box.”
Which is, it is highly likely that that is what happened. It’s very disappointing to people, I think, when they realize it. I mean, you know this better than I do, but the human brain is built to find patterns. It’s what we like to do. We like to find plans and patterns because this is how we survived in the wild; is you found a plan, you found a pattern, you cracked the code of the universe. When it comes to politics. The conspiracy theories that we see so often, often it’s largely because we’re seeing inexplicable events. Unless you just assume everyone’s more on. If you assume that there’s a lot of stupidity going on, everything becomes quickly explicable. If you assume that there must be some rationale behind it. You have to come up with increasingly convoluted conspiracy theories to explain just why people are acting the way that they’re acting. I find that, I don’t say 100% of the time, but 94% of the time the conspiracy theory turns out just to be people being dumb, and then other people reacting in dumb ways to the original people being dumb.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be from a foreign source; it can be from a domestic source. It could be somebody misinterpreting something here. It could be somebody interpreting something correctly, but PolitiFact things that it’s out of context, and that sort of stuff gets very murky very quickly. So I’m deeply uncomfortable with the idea that Facebook, I mean, Zuckerberg was on with Rogan and talking about how the FBI had basically said lookout for Russian interference in the election, and then all of these people were out there saying that the laptop was Russian disinformation. So he basically shut it down. That sort of stuff is frightening, especially because it wasn’t Russian disinformation. I mean, the laptop was real. So the fact that you have people who seemed to… Let’s put it this way, maybe this is wrong. It seems as though when a story gets killed preemptively like this, it is almost universally a story that negatively affects one side of the political aisle.
I can’t remember the last time there was a story on the right that was disinformation or misinformation where social media stepped in and they went, “We cannot have this. This cannot be distributed. We’re going to all colludes that this information is not distributed.” Maybe in response to the story being proof false, it gets taken down. But, well, what made the Hunter Biden thing so amazing is that it wasn’t relieving in response to anything. It was like the story got posted. There were no actual doubts expressed as to the verified falsity of the story. It was just supposition that it had to be false and everybody jumped in. So I think that confirmed a lot of the conspiracy theories people had about social media and how it works.
I think when I was younger I was much more pro-drug legalization than I am now, at least on the local level. On a federal level, I think the federal government can’t really do much other than close the borders with regard to fentanyl trafficking, for example. But when it comes to how drugs ruin local communities, you can see how drugs ruin local communities pretty easily.
So that was mistakes in the run up to the war. Once the war began, then the responsibility of the West began and became to give Ukraine as much material as is necessary to repel the invasion. And the West did really well with that. I think we were late on the ball in the United States. It seemed like Europe led the way a little bit more than the United States did there. But in terms of effectuating American interests in the region, which being an American is what I’m chiefly concerned about, the American interests were several fold. One is preserve borders. Two is degrade the Russian aggressive military because Russia’s military has been aggressive and they are geopolitical rival of the United States. Three, recalibrate the European balance with China. Europe was sort of balancing with Russia and China, and then because of the war they sort of rebalanced away from China and Russia, which is a real geo-strategic opportunity for the United States.
It seemed like most of those goals have already been achieved at this point for the United States. And so then the question becomes what’s the off ramp here and what is the thing you’re trying to prevent? So what’s the best opportunity, what’s the best case scenario, what’s the worst case scenario? And then what’s realistic? So best case scenario is Ukraine forces Russia entirely out of Ukraine, including Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea. That’s the best case scenario. Virtually no one thinks that’s accomplishable, including the United States. The White House has basically said as much, it’s still cool to imagine particularly Crimea, the Russians being forced out of Crimea.
The Ukrainians have been successful in pushing the Russians out of certain parts of Luhansk and Donetsk, but the idea they’re going to be able to push the entire Russian army completely back to the Russian borders, that would be at best a very, very long and difficult slog in the middle of a collapsing Ukrainian economy, which is a point that Zelensky has made. It’s like it’s not enough for you guys to give us military aid. We’re in the middle of a war, we’re going to need economic aid as well. So it’s a pretty open-ended and strong commitment.
It’s an unpredictable scenario that could devolve into really, really significant problems. The other worst case scenario could be a best case scenario. It could be a worse, we just don’t know, is Putin falls, what happens after that? Who takes over for Putin? Is that person more moderate than Putin? Is that person a liberalizer? It probably won’t be Navalny, if he’s going to be ousted, it’ll probably somebody who’s a top member of Putin’s brass right now and has capacity to control the military, or it’s possible the entire regime breaks down. What you end up with is Syria in Russia where you just have an entirely out of control region with no centralizing power, which is also a disaster area. And so in the nature of risk mitigation, in sort of an attempt at risk mitigation, what actually should be happening right now is some off ramp has to be offered to Putin.
The off ramp likely is going to be him maintaining Crimea and parts of Luhansk and Donetsk. It’s probably going to be a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO formally, but a guarantee by the West to defend Ukraine in case of an invasion of it borders again by Russia like an actual treaty obligation, not like the BS treaty obligation and when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in the nineties, and that is likely how this is going to have to go. The problem is that requires political courage, not from Zelensky, it requires courage from probably Biden because the only… Zelensky is not in a political position where he can go back to his own people who have made unbelievable sacrifices on behalf of their nation in freedom and say to them, “Guys, now I’m calling it quits. We’re going to have to give them Luhansk and Donetsk and give Putin an off ramp.”
I don’t think that’s an acceptable answer to most Ukrainians at this point in time. From the polling data and from the available data we have on the ground, it’s going to actually take Biden biting the bullet and being the bad guy and saying to Zelensky, “Listen, we’ve made a commitment of material aid. We’re offering you all these things, including essentially a defense pact. We’re offering you all this stuff, but if you don’t come to the table then we’re going to have to start weaning you off.” There will have to be a stick there, it can’t just be a carrot. And so that will allow Zelensky, if Biden were to do that, it allows Zelensky to blame Biden for the solution everybody knows has to happen. So Zelensky can go back to his own people and he can say, “Listen, this is the way it has to go. I don’t want it to go this way, but it’s not my… I’m signing other people’s checks, right? I mean, this is not my money.”
And Biden would take the hit because he wouldn’t then be able to blame Ukraine for whatever happens next, which has been the easy road off I think for a lot of politicians in the West. It’s for them to just say, “Well this is up to the Ukrainians to decide. It’s up to the Ukrainians to decide.” Well is it totally up to the Ukrainians to decide, because it seems like the West is signing an awful lot of checks and all of Europe is going to freeze this winter?
If it’s a private meeting, maybe that’s the best thing. If it’s a public facing forum, I think it’s a problem because Putin’s afraid of being humiliated at this point. If it’s a private meeting, then sure, except that again, I wonder whether when it comes to a person as canny as Putin and to a politician that I really don’t think is a particularly sophisticated player in Joe Biden. And again this is not unique to Biden, I think that most of our presidents for the last 30, 40 years have not been particularly sophisticated players. I think that’s a risky scenario.
So if it’s going to be a debate of ideas and we’re just going to discuss and critique and clarify, then we can do that. If somebody comes loaded for bear, then I will respond in kind, because one of the big problems I think in sort of the debate/ discussion sphere is very often misdiagnosis of what exactly is going on. People who think that a discussion is debate and vice versa. And that can be a real problem. And there are people who will treat what ought to be a discussion as, for example, an exercise and performance art. And so what that is mugging or trolling or saying trolley things in order to just get to the… That’s something I actually don’t do during debate. I mean, if you actually watch me talk to people, I don’t actually do the trolling thing. The trolling thing is almost solely relegated to Twitter and me making jokes on my show. When it comes to actually debating people. That sounds actually a lot. What we’re doing right now is just the person maybe taking just an adverse position to mine. And so that’s fine. Usually half the debate or discussion is me just asking for clarification of terms. “What exactly do you mean by this?” So I can drill down on where the actual disagreement may lie. Because some of the time people think they’re disagreeing and they’re actually not disagreeing. When I’m talking with Ana Kasparian, and she’s talking about how corporate and government have too much power together, I’m like, “Well, you sound like the Tea Party. You and I are on the same page about that.” That sort of stuff does tend to happen a lot in discussion. I think that when discussion gets termed “Debate”, it’s a problem, when debate gets termed “Discussion”, it’s even more problematic because debate is a different thing.
That is verboten. That is not something that can be had. It’s one of the strangenesses of our politics. It’s what I’ve called the “Happy Birthday Problem”, which is I have a lot of friends who are of the left and are publicly of the left and on my birthday they’ll send you a text message, ” Happy birthday”, but they will never tweet happy birthday, less they be acknowledging that you were born of woman and that this can’t be allowed. So on the Sunday special, I’ve had a bevy of people who are on the other side of the aisle, a lot of them ranging from people in Hollywood like Jason Blum, to Larry Wilmore, to Sam, to just a lot of people on the left.
I think we’re in the near future, probably going to do a Sunday special with Ro Khanna, the California congressperson. Very nice guy. I had him on the show. That kind of stuff is fun and interesting. But I think that the easy way out for a clip that people don’t like is to either immediately clip the clip, it’s like a two minute clip and clip it down to 15 seconds where somebody insults me and then that goes viral, which is, welcome to the internet. Or to say, “Well, you’re only debating college… You’re only talking to 20…” I mean, I talked to a lot more people than that. That’s just not the stuff you’re watching.
And so I’m going through the list with him and this interview was solidly 20 minutes. I mean, it was a long interview and I make a couple of particularly annoyed mistakes in the interview. So annoyed mistake number one is the ego play. So there’s a point in the middle of the interview where I say, “I don’t even know who you are,” which was true. I didn’t know who he was. It turns out he was a very famous person in Britain. And so you can’t make that ego play.
And finally I got up and I took off the microphone, and I walked out. And immediately I knew it was a mistake. Within 30 seconds of the end of interview, I knew it was a mistake. And that’s why even before the interview came out, I believe I corrected the record that Andrew Neil is not on the left, that’s a mistake by me. And then took the hit for a bad interview. And so as far as what I wish I had done differently, I wish I had known who he was. I wish I’d done my research. I wish that I had treated it as though there was a possibility that it was going to be more adversarial than it was.
I think I was incautious about the interview because it was pitched as, “It’s just another book interview,” and it wasn’t just another book interview, it was treated much more adversarially than that. So I wish… That’s on me. I got to research the people who are talking to me and watch their shows and learn about that. And then obviously the kind of gut level appeal to ego or arrogance, that’s a bad look and shouldn’t have done that. And losing your cool is always a bad look.
That stuff is really it. So yes, the source of my greatest happiness, the source of my greatest stress. So they get me up at about 6:15 in the morning. I feed them breakfast. I’m kind of scrolling the news while I’m making the eggs and just updating myself on anything that may have happened overnight. I go into the office, put on the makeup and the wardrobe or whatever, and then I sit down and do the show. A lot of the prep is actually done the night before because the news cycle doesn’t change all that much between kind of late at night and in the morning. So I can supplement in the morning. So I do the show.
Because my show relies very heavily on being able to play people so you can hear them in their own words. And so that’s sort of the media eye. So I sit down, I do the show, and then once I’m done with the show, I usually have between… Now it’s like 11:15 in the morning maybe, because sometimes I’ll prerecord the show. So it’s 11:15 in the morning, I’ll go home and if my wife’s available, I’ll grab lunch with her. If not, then I will go and work out. I try to work out five times a week with a trainer, something like that. And then I will…
Which is a good way for me to remember what it is that I’ve read. Because I read probably somewhere between three and five books a week, and then in a good week five, and then I write, I read, and then I go pick up my kids from school at 3:30. So according to my kids, I have no job. I’m there in the mornings until they leave for school. I pick them up from school, I hang out with them until they go to bed, which is usually 7:30 or so. So I’m helping them with their homework and I’m playing with them, and I’m taking them on rides in the brand new Tesla, which my son is obsessed with.
And then I put them to bed and then I sit back down, I prep for the next day, go through all those media sources I was talking about, compile kind of a schedule for what I want the show to look like, and run a show. It’s very detail oriented. Nobody writes anything for me. I write all my own stuff. So every word that comes out of my mouth is my fault. And then hopefully I have a couple hours or an hour to hang out with my wife before we go to bed.
The good news for me is that my job isn’t to be a full expert on any of these subjects, and I don’t claim to be. I’m not a Russia expert. I know enough on Russia to be able to understand when people talk about Russia, what the system looks like, how it works and all of that, and then to explicate that for the common man, which a lot of people who are infused with the expertise can’t really do. If you’re so deep in the weeds that you’re a full on academic expert on a thing, sometimes it’s hard to translate that over to a mass audience, which is really my job.
Then in the modern world, we’ve really driven toward the idea that what we are is how we feel on the inside without reference to the outside world, and it’s the job of the outside world to celebrate and reflect what we think about ourselves on the inside. So what that means is that we are driven now toward fighting institutions because institutions are in positions. So everything around us, societal institutions, these are things that are crimping our style. They’re making us not feel the way that we want to feel, and if we just destroy those things, then we’ll be freer and more liberated. It’s a, I think, much deeper model of how to think about why our social politics particular, are moving in a particular direction is that a ground shift has happened in how people think about themselves. This has had some somewhat shocking effect in terms of social politics.
If pregnancy changes women in a way that it doesn’t change men, it’s a form of sex discrimination for women to ever have to go through with pregnancy, which is an argument that was made by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, kind of. Those are the arguments, the softer version is the more, I would say, emotionally resonant version of the argument, which is that bodily autonomy ought to outweigh the interests of the fetus up till point X. Then people have different feelings about what point X looks like. Is it up to the point of viability? Is it up to the point of the heartbeat? Is it up to 12 weeks or 15 weeks? That really is where the American public is, broadly speaking, not state by state where there are various really, really varied opinions. But broadly speaking, it seems like the American public by polling data wants somewhere between a 12 and 15 week abortion restriction. They believe that up until 12 or 15 weeks, there’s not enough there to not be specific, but to be how people feel about it to outweigh a woman’s bodily autonomy. then beyond that point, then there’s enough of an interest in the life of the pre-born child that’s developed enough then now we care about it enough that it outweighs a woman’s bodily autonomy.
Now you will find people who will say, “Well, the good reason is that it’s not sufficiently developed to outweigh the mental trauma or emotional trauma that a woman goes through if, for example, she was raped or the victim of incest.” That is a fairly emotionally resonant argument, but it’s not necessarily dispositive. You can make the argument that just because something horrific and horrible happened to a woman does not rob the human life of its interest in life. One of the big problems in trying to draw any line for the self-interest of life in the human life is that it’s very difficult to draw any other line that doesn’t seem somewhat arbitrary. You say that independent heartbeat, well, people have pacemakers. If you say brain function, people have various levels of brain function as adults. If you say viability, babies are not viable after they are born. If I left a newborn baby on a table and did not take care of it would be dead in two days. So once you start getting into these lines, it starts to get very fuzzy very quickly. So if you’re looking for a bright line moral rule, that would be the bright line moral rule, and that’s the pro-life case.
The reason for that was because then if you have sex and you produce a child, then the child will grow up in a two-parent family with stability, so not a ton of sympathy there. When it comes to rape and incest, obviously heavy, heavy sympathy. So that’s why I think you see, statistically speaking, a huge percentage of Americans, including many pro-life Americans, people who consider themselves pro-life would consider exceptions for rape and incest. One of the dishonest things that I think happens in abortion debates is arguing from the fringes. This tends to happen a lot, is pro-choice activists will argue from rape and incest to the other 99.8% of abortions, or you’ll see people on the pro-life side argue from partial birth abortion to all of abortion, that you actually have to take on the mainstream case and then decide whether or not that’s acceptable or not.
If you’re talking about Green New Deal, net zero by 2050, the carbon is up there in the air and the climate change is going to happen. Also, you’re assuming that geopolitical dynamics don’t exist, so everybody’s going to magically get on the same page and we’re all going to be imposing massive carbon taxes to get to net zero by 2050, hundreds of times higher than they currently are. Now, that’s not me saying that, that’s Klaus Schwab saying this of the World Economic Forum who’s a big advocate of exactly this policy. The reality is that we’re going to have to accept that at least 1.5 degrees Celsius of climate change is baked into the cake by the end of the century. Again, not me talking, William Nordhaus, the economist who just won the Nobel Prize on this stuff talking. So what that suggests to me is what we’ve always known, human beings are crap at mitigation and excellent in adaptation.
We are very bad at mitigating our own fault. We are very, very good at adapting to the problems as they exist, which means that all of the estimates that billions will die, that there will be mass starvation, that we’ll see the migration in just a few years of hundreds of millions of people. Those are wrong. What you’ll see is a gradual change of living. People will move away from areas that are inundated on the coast. You’ll see people building sea walls. You’ll see people adapting new technologies to suck carbon out of the air. You’ll see geoengineering. This is the stuff that we should be focused on. The bizarre focus on what if we just keep tossing hundreds of billions of dollars at the same three technologies over and over in the hopes that if we subsidize it, this will magically make it more efficient, I’ve seen no evidence whatsoever that that is going to be the way that we get ourselves out of this. Necessity being the mother invention, I think human beings will adapt because we have adapted and we’ll continue to adapt.
Then what I’m proposing is that there’s something that I would call role ethics, which is there are a series of roles that we play across our lives, which are also the things that we tend to put on our tombstones and find the most meaningful. So when you go to a cemetery, you can see what people found the most meaningful because it’s the stuff they put on the stone that has four words on it, like beloved father, beloved mother, sister, brother, and you might have a job once in a while, a creator, a religious person. These are all roles that have existed across societies and across humanity, and those are the things where we actually find meaning. The way that we navigate those roles brings us meaning. I think that God created us in order to fulfill those roles for purposes that I can’t begin to understand because I ain’t him.
The more we recognize those roles and the more we live those roles and then we can express freedom within those roles, I think that the liberty exists inside each of those roles and that’s what makes all of our lives different and fun. We all parent in different ways, but being a parent is a meaningful role. We all have spouses, but how you interact that relationship is what makes your life meaningful and interesting. That is what we were put on earth to do. If we perform those roles properly, and those roles do include things like being a creator, we have a creative instinct as human beings, being a creator, being an innovator, being a defender of your family, being a social member of your community, which is something that we’re built to do. If we fulfill those roles properly, then we will have made the world a better place than we inherited it. And we’ll also have had the joy of experiencing the flow they talk about in psychology where when you engage in these roles, you actually do feel a flow.
And where does liberty come into that? How do you avoid the idea of a tyranny in that? Right? You have to be a mother, you must be a father, you must be a… Where does freedom come into that? Can you reject those roles totally as a society and be okay? The answer probably is not. So you need society that actually promotes and protects those roles, but also protects the freedom inside those roles.
And that raises a more fundamental question of what exactly liberty is for. And I think that both the right and the left actually tend to make a mistake when they discuss liberty. The left tends to think that liberty is an ultimate good. That simple choice makes a bad thing good, which is not true. And I think the right talks about liberty in almost the same terms sometimes. And I think that’s not true either. The question is whether liberty is of inherent value or instrumental value. Is liberty good in and of itself or is liberty good because it allows you to achieve X, Y or Z?
And I’ve thought about this one a lot and I tend to come down on the latter side of the aisle. I mean, you asked me areas where I move, this may be an area where I’ve moved. Because I think when you think more shallowly about politics, or maybe more quickly, because this is how we talk in America, is about liberties and rights, we tend to think that the right is what make… not the political right, rights make things good, liberties make things good.
The question really is what are those rights and liberties for? Now, you have to be careful so that doesn’t shade into tyranny, right? You can only have liberty to do the thing that I say that you can do. But there have to be spheres of liberty that are roiling and interesting and filled with debate, but without threatening the chief institutions that surround those liberties. Because if you destroy the institutions, liberties will go too. If you knock down the pillars of the society, the liberties that are on top of those pillars are going to collapse. And I think that if people are feeling as though we’re on the verge tyranny, I think that’s why.
And then there’s the question of just the natural cruelty and vicissitudes of life. And the answer there is, I think that God obscures himself. I think that if God were to appear in all of his glory to people on a regular basis, I think they would make faith and you wouldn’t need it. There’d be no such thing as faith. It would just be reality, right? Nobody has to prove to you that the sun rises every day. But if God is to allow us the choice to believe in him, which is the ultimate choice from a religious point of view, then he’s going to have to obscure himself behind tragedy and horror and all those other things.
I mean, there’s a fairly well known capitalistic concept called [foreign language 02:08:08] in Judaism, which is the idea that when God created the universe, he sort of withdrew in order to make space for all of these things to happen.
You can perfectly well be an atheist living a good, moral, decent life, because you can live a good, moral, decent life with regard to other people without believing in God. I don’t think you can build a society on that because I think that that relies on the sort of goodness of mankind, natural goodness of mankind. I don’t believe in the natural goodness of mankind.
So this is, universalism I’m not a believer in. I think that you have some values that are fairly limited that all human beings should hold in common. And that’s pretty much it. I think that everybody should have the ability to join with their own culture. I think how we define tribe is a different thing. So I think that tribes should not be defined by innate physical characteristics, for example. Because I think that, thank God, as a civilization, we’ve outgrown that. And I think that that is a childish way to view the world. All the tall people aren’t a tribe. All the black people [inaudible 02:12:25], all the white people aren’t a tribe.
So if you’re a good father, this means that you are bringing up your child in durable values that is going to bring them up healthy, capable of protecting themselves and passing on the traditional wisdom of the ages to future generations, while allowing for the capacity for innovation. That’d be being a good father. Being a good spouse would mean protecting and unifying with your spouse and building a safe family and a place to raise children. Being a good citizen of your community means protecting the fellow citizens of your community while incentivizing them to build for themselves. It becomes actually much easier to think of how to…
This is why I like the Role Theory because it’s very hard, since sort of in Virtue Theory to say be generous. Okay, how does that manifest? I don’t what that looks like. Sometimes being generous might be being not generous to other people. When Aristotle says that you should be benevolent, what does that mean? This is very vague. When I say be a good dad, most people sort of have a gut level understanding of what it means to be a good dad. And mostly, they have a gut level understanding what it means to really be a really bad dad. And so what it means to be a good man is to fulfill those roles, as many of them as you can properly and at full function. And that’s a very hard job.
And I’ve said before that, because I engage a lot with the public and all of this, the word great comes up a lot. What is it to be a great leader? What is it to be a great person? And I’ve always said to people, it’s actually fairly easy to be great. It’s very difficult to be good. There are a lot of very great people who are not very good. And there are not a lot of good people. And most of them, frankly, most good people die, mourned by their family and friends and two generations later they’re forgotten. But those are the people who incrementally move the ball forward in the world sometimes much more than the people who are considered great.
As far as other advice, I’d say engage in your community. There’s no substitute for engaging in your community. And engage in interpersonal action because that will soften you and make you a better person. I’ve become a better person since I got married. I’ve become an even better person since I’ve had kids. So you can imagine how terrible I was before all these things. And engaging your community does allow you to build the things that matter on the most local, possible level.
I mean the outcome, by the way, of the sort of politics, of the politics of fulfillment that I was talking about earlier, is a lot of localism. Because the roles that I’m talking about are largely local roles. So that stuff has to be protected locally. I think we focus way too much in this country and others, on world beating solutions, national solutions, solutions that apply to hundreds of millions of people. How we get to the solutions that apply for 5, and then we get to the solutions that apply to 20, and then we get to the solutions that involve 200 people or 1,000 people. Let’s solve that stuff. And I think the solutions at the higher level flow bottom up, not top down.
From my mom, practicality. My dad is more of a dreamer. My mom is much more practical. And so the sort of lessons that I learned from my dad are that you can have… This is the counter-lesson, is that you can have a good idea, but if you don’t have a plan for implementation, then it doesn’t end up as reality. And I think actually, he’s learned that better over the course of his life too.
But my dad, from the time I was very young, he wanted me to engage with other adults and he wanted me to learn from other people. And one of his roles was if he didn’t know something, he would find somebody who he thought did know the thing for me to talk to. That was a big thing. So I’m very lucky. I have wonderful parents.
As far as of other mentors, in terms of the media, Andrew Breitbart was a mentor. Andrew, obviously, he was kind of known in his latter days, I think more for the militancy than when I was very close with him.
And then I think Twitter got to him. Twitter is one of the lessons I learned from Andrew, is the counter-lesson, which is Twitter can poison you. Twitter can really wreck you. If you spend all day on Twitter, reading the comments and getting angry at people who are talking about you, it becomes a very difficult life. And I think that in the last year of his life, Andrew got very caught up in that because of a series of circumstances.
As far as sort of other mentors, I had some teachers when I was a kid who said things that stuck with me. I had a fourth grade teacher named Miss Genetti who said, “Don’t let potential be written on your tombstone.” Which is a pretty-
And so what that means is sometimes you take to heart the wrong thing or you take it to heart too much, you’re not light enough about it. You take it very, very seriously. You lose sleep over it. Man, I can’t tell you the number of nights where I’ve just not slept because of some critique somebody’s made of me. And I’ve thought to myself, maybe that’s right. And sometimes it is right.
The role of love is important in binding together human beings who ought to be bound together. And the role of respect is even more important in binding together broader groups of people. I think one of the mistakes that we make in politics is trying to substitute love for respect or respect for love. And I think that’s a big mistake. So I do not bear tremendous love in the same sense that I do for my family for random strangers. I don’t. I love my family, I love my kids. Anybody who tells you they love your kid as much as you love your kid is lying to you. It’s not true. I love my community more than I love other communities. I love my state more than I love other states. I love my country more than I love other countries. That’s all normal and that’s all good.
The problem of empathy can be when that becomes so tight-knit that you’re not outward looking, that you don’t actually have respect for other people. So in the local level, you need love in order to protect you and shield you and give you the strength to go forward. And then beyond that, you need a lot of respect for people who are not in the circle of love. And I think trying to extend love to people who either are not going to love you back or are going to slap you in the face for it, or who you’re just not that close to, it’s either it runs the risk of being ersatz and fake or it can actually be counterproductive in some senses.
There might be the rare human being who’s capable of literally loving a homeless man on the street the way they do loves his own family. But if you respect the homeless man on the street, the way that you respect your own family, because everyone deserves that respect, I think that you get to the same end without forcing people into a position of unrealistically expecting themselves to feel a thing they don’t feel.
One of the big questions in religion that comes up is God makes certain requests that you feel certain ways. You’re supposed to be [foreign language 02:28:05], you’re supposed to be happy about certain things or you’re supposed to love thy neighbor as thyself. Right? You’ll notice that in that statement, it’s thy neighbor, it’s not just generally anyone. It’s love thy neighbors. In any case, the-
Because with love comes a certain expectation of solidarity. And I think, right, I mean, when you love your family, you love your wife, there’s a certain level of solidarity that is required inside the home in order to preserve the most loving kind of home. And so if you love everybody, then that sort of implies a certain level of solidarity that may not exist. So maybe the idea is, for me, start with respect and then maybe as people respect each other more, then love is an outgrowth of that. As opposed to starting with love, and then hoping that respect develops.
And now, let me leave you with some words from Ben Shapiro himself. “Freedom of speech and thought matters, especially when it is speech and thought with which we disagree. The moment the majority decides to destroy people from engaging in thought it dislikes, thought crime becomes a reality.”
Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time.
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 2:01 – Kanye ‘Ye’ West
- 9:41 – Hitler and the nature of evil
- 17:47 – Political attacks on the left and the right
- 23:31 – Quebec mosque shooting
- 33:26 – Elon Musk buying Twitter
- 46:29 – Trump and Biden
- 51:03 – Hunter Biden’s laptop
- 1:02:36 – Candace Owens
- 1:06:15 – War in Ukraine
- 1:16:24 – Rhetoric vs truth
- 1:21:19 – Infamous BBC interview
- 1:24:35 – Day in the life
- 1:39:31 – Abortion
- 1:52:26 – Climate change
- 1:59:48 – God and faith
- 2:10:58 – Tribalism
- 2:15:34 – Advice for young people
- 2:19:20 – Andrew Breitbart
- 2:21:50 – Self-doubt
- 2:23:52 – Love
Ben Shapiro
The great lie we tell ourselves is that people who are evil are not like us. They’re class apart. Everybody in history who has sinned is a person who’s very different from me. Robert George, the philosopher over at Princeton, he’s fond of doing a thought experiment in his classes where he asks people to raise their hand If they had lived in Alabama in 1861, how many of you would be abolitionists? And everybody raises their hand and he says, “Of course that’s not true.” The best protection against evil is recognizing that it lies in every human heart and the possibility that it takes you over.
The great lie we tell ourselves is that people who are evil are not like us. They’re class apart. Everybody in history who has sinned is a person who’s very different from me. Robert George, the philosopher over at Princeton, he’s fond of doing a thought experiment in his classes where he asks people to raise their hand If they had lived in Alabama in 1861, how many of you would be abolitionists? And everybody raises their hand and he says, “Of course that’s not true.” The best protection against evil is recognizing that it lies in every human heart and the possibility that it takes you over.
Lex Fridman
Do you ever sit back in the quiet of your mind and think, Am I participating in evil?
Do you ever sit back in the quiet of your mind and think, Am I participating in evil?
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Ben Shapiro, a conservative political commentator, host of the Ben Shapiro show, co-founder of The Daily Wire, and author of several books, including The Authoritarian Moment, The Right Side of History and Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings. Whatever Your political leanings, I humbly asked that you tried to put those aside and listen with an open mind trying to give the most charitable interpretation of the words we say. This is true in general for this podcast, whether the guest is Ben Shapiro or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Donald Trump, or Barack Obama, I will talk to everyone from every side, from the far left to the far right, from presidents to prisoners, from artists to scientists, from the powerful to the powerless, because we are all human, all capable of good and evil, all with fascinating stories and ideas to explore.
The following is a conversation with Ben Shapiro, a conservative political commentator, host of the Ben Shapiro show, co-founder of The Daily Wire, and author of several books, including The Authoritarian Moment, The Right Side of History and Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings. Whatever Your political leanings, I humbly asked that you tried to put those aside and listen with an open mind trying to give the most charitable interpretation of the words we say. This is true in general for this podcast, whether the guest is Ben Shapiro or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Donald Trump, or Barack Obama, I will talk to everyone from every side, from the far left to the far right, from presidents to prisoners, from artists to scientists, from the powerful to the powerless, because we are all human, all capable of good and evil, all with fascinating stories and ideas to explore.
I seek only to understand, and in so doing, hopefully add a bit of love to the world. This is Lex Fridman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Ben Shapiro.
Kanye ‘Ye’ West
Lex Fridman
Let’s start with a difficult topic. What do you think about the comments made by Ye formerly known as Kanye West about Jewish people?
Let’s start with a difficult topic. What do you think about the comments made by Ye formerly known as Kanye West about Jewish people?
Ben Shapiro
They’re awful and antisemitic and they seem to get worse over time. They started off with the bizarre death con 3 tweet, and then they went into even more stereotypical garbage about Jews and Jews being sexual manipulators. I think that was the Pete Davidson, Kim Kardashian stuff, and then Jews running all of the media, Jews being in charge of the financial sector. Jewish people… I called it on my show, there’s Sherman Nazism, and it is. It’s like right from protocols of the Elders of Zion type stuff.
They’re awful and antisemitic and they seem to get worse over time. They started off with the bizarre death con 3 tweet, and then they went into even more stereotypical garbage about Jews and Jews being sexual manipulators. I think that was the Pete Davidson, Kim Kardashian stuff, and then Jews running all of the media, Jews being in charge of the financial sector. Jewish people… I called it on my show, there’s Sherman Nazism, and it is. It’s like right from protocols of the Elders of Zion type stuff.
Lex Fridman
Do you think those words come from pain, where they come from?
Do you think those words come from pain, where they come from?
Ben Shapiro
And it’s always hard to try and read somebody’s mind what he looks like to me, just having experience in my own family with people who are bipolar is he seems like a bipolar personality. He seems like somebody who is in the middle of a manic episode. And when you’re manic, you tend to say a lot of things that you shouldn’t say, and you tend to believe that they’re the most brilliant things ever said. The Washington Post, posted an entire piece speculating about how bipolarism played into the stuff that Ye was saying, and it’s hard for me to think that it’s not playing into it, especially because even if he is an anti-Semite, and I have no reason to suspect he’s not given all of his comments, if he had an ounce of common sense, he would stop at a certain point. And Bipolarism tends to drive you well past the point where common sense applies.
And it’s always hard to try and read somebody’s mind what he looks like to me, just having experience in my own family with people who are bipolar is he seems like a bipolar personality. He seems like somebody who is in the middle of a manic episode. And when you’re manic, you tend to say a lot of things that you shouldn’t say, and you tend to believe that they’re the most brilliant things ever said. The Washington Post, posted an entire piece speculating about how bipolarism played into the stuff that Ye was saying, and it’s hard for me to think that it’s not playing into it, especially because even if he is an anti-Semite, and I have no reason to suspect he’s not given all of his comments, if he had an ounce of common sense, he would stop at a certain point. And Bipolarism tends to drive you well past the point where common sense applies.
So I would imagine it’s coming from that. From his comments, I would also imagine that he’s doing the logical mistake that a lot of anti-Semites or racist or bigots do, which is somebody hurt me, that person is a Jew, therefore all Jews are bad. And that jump from a person did something to me I don’t like, who’s a member of a particular race or class, and therefore everybody of that race or class is bad. That’s textbook bigotry and that’s pretty obviously what Ye’s, engaging in here.
Lex Fridman
So jumping from the individual to the group.
So jumping from the individual to the group.
Ben Shapiro
That’s the way he’s been expressing it, right? He keeps talking about his Jewish agents, and I watched your interview with him and you kept saying this, “So just name the agents. Just name the people who are screwing you.” And he wouldn’t do it. Instead, he just kept going back to the general, the group, the Jews in general. That’s textbook bigotry, and if we’re putting any other context, he would probably recognize it as such.
That’s the way he’s been expressing it, right? He keeps talking about his Jewish agents, and I watched your interview with him and you kept saying this, “So just name the agents. Just name the people who are screwing you.” And he wouldn’t do it. Instead, he just kept going back to the general, the group, the Jews in general. That’s textbook bigotry, and if we’re putting any other context, he would probably recognize it as such.
Lex Fridman
To the degree that’s what fuels hate in the world. What’s the way to reverse that process? What’s the way to alleviate the hate?
To the degree that’s what fuels hate in the world. What’s the way to reverse that process? What’s the way to alleviate the hate?
Ben Shapiro
When it comes to alleviating the stuff that he’s saying, obviously debunking it, making clear that what he’s saying is garbage. But the reality is that for most people who are in any way engaged with these issues, I don’t think they’re being convinced to be antisemitic by Ye. I think that there’s a group of people who may be swayed that antisemitism is acceptable because Ye is saying what he’s saying and he’s saying so very loudly and he’s saying it over and over. But for example, there were these signs that were popping up in Los Angeles saying, Ye is right. That group’s been out there posting antisemitic signs on the freeways for years, and their groups like that posting antisemitic signs where I live in Florida, they’ve been doing that for years, well before Ye was saying this sort of stuff. It’s just like the latest opportunity to jump on that particular bandwagon. But listen, I think that people do have a moral duty to call that stuff out.
When it comes to alleviating the stuff that he’s saying, obviously debunking it, making clear that what he’s saying is garbage. But the reality is that for most people who are in any way engaged with these issues, I don’t think they’re being convinced to be antisemitic by Ye. I think that there’s a group of people who may be swayed that antisemitism is acceptable because Ye is saying what he’s saying and he’s saying so very loudly and he’s saying it over and over. But for example, there were these signs that were popping up in Los Angeles saying, Ye is right. That group’s been out there posting antisemitic signs on the freeways for years, and their groups like that posting antisemitic signs where I live in Florida, they’ve been doing that for years, well before Ye was saying this sort of stuff. It’s just like the latest opportunity to jump on that particular bandwagon. But listen, I think that people do have a moral duty to call that stuff out.
Lex Fridman
So there is a degree to which it normalizes that idea that Jews control the media, Jews control X institution. Is there a way to talk about a high representation of a group like Jewish people in a certain institution like the media or Hollywood and so on without it being a hateful conversation?
So there is a degree to which it normalizes that idea that Jews control the media, Jews control X institution. Is there a way to talk about a high representation of a group like Jewish people in a certain institution like the media or Hollywood and so on without it being a hateful conversation?
Ben Shapiro
Sure, of course. A high percentage of higher than statistically represented in the population, percentage of Hollywood agents are probably Jewish. A higher percentage of lawyers generally are probably Jewish. A high percentage of accountants are probably Jewish. Also, A higher percentage of engineers are probably Asian. Like the statistical truths are statistical truths. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything about the nature of the people who are being talked about. They’re a myriad of reasons why people might be disproportionately in one arena or another. Ranging from the cultural to sometimes the genetic. There are certain areas of the world where people are better long distance runners because of their genetic adaptations in those particular areas of the world. That’s not racist, that’s just fact. What starts to get racist is when you are attributing a bad characteristic to an entire population based on the notion that some members of that population are doing bad things.
Sure, of course. A high percentage of higher than statistically represented in the population, percentage of Hollywood agents are probably Jewish. A higher percentage of lawyers generally are probably Jewish. A high percentage of accountants are probably Jewish. Also, A higher percentage of engineers are probably Asian. Like the statistical truths are statistical truths. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything about the nature of the people who are being talked about. They’re a myriad of reasons why people might be disproportionately in one arena or another. Ranging from the cultural to sometimes the genetic. There are certain areas of the world where people are better long distance runners because of their genetic adaptations in those particular areas of the world. That’s not racist, that’s just fact. What starts to get racist is when you are attributing a bad characteristic to an entire population based on the notion that some members of that population are doing bad things.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, there’s a jump between… It’s also possible that record label owners as a group have a culture that Fs over artists.
Yeah, there’s a jump between… It’s also possible that record label owners as a group have a culture that Fs over artists.
Ben Shapiro
Sure.
Sure.
Lex Fridman
Doesn’t treat artists fairly. And it’s also possible that there’s a high representation of Jews in the group of people that own record labels, but it’s that small, but a very big leap that people take from the group that own record labels to all Jews.
Doesn’t treat artists fairly. And it’s also possible that there’s a high representation of Jews in the group of people that own record labels, but it’s that small, but a very big leap that people take from the group that own record labels to all Jews.
Ben Shapiro
For sure. And I think that one of the other issues also is that antisemitism is fascinating because it breaks down into so many different parts, meaning that if you look at of different types of antisemitism, if you’re a racist against black people, it’s typically because you’re racist based on the color of their skin.
For sure. And I think that one of the other issues also is that antisemitism is fascinating because it breaks down into so many different parts, meaning that if you look at of different types of antisemitism, if you’re a racist against black people, it’s typically because you’re racist based on the color of their skin.
If you’re racist against the Jews, you’re antisemitic. Then there are actually a few different ways that breaks down. You have antisemitism in terms of ethnicity, which is like Nazi antisemitism. You have Jewish parentage, you have Jewish grandparent, therefore your blood is corrupt and you are inherently going to have bad properties. Then there’s old school religious antisemitism, which is that the Jews are the killers of Christ, or the Jews are the sons of pigs and monkeys, and therefore Judaism is bad and therefore Jews are bad. And the way that you get out of that antisemitism historically speaking is mass conversion, which most antisemitism for a couple thousand years actually was not ethnic. It was much more rooted in this sort of stuff. If a Jew converted out of the faith, then the antisemitism was alleviated.
And then there’s a bizarre antisemitism that’s political antisemitism, and that is members of a group that I don’t like are disproportionately Jewish. Therefore all Jews are members of this group or are predominantly represented in this group. So you’ll see Nazis saying the communists are Jews. You’ll see communist saying the Nazis are Jews. Or you’ll see communist saying that the capitalists rather are Jews. And so that’s the weird thing about antisemitism. It’s like the Jews behind every corner. It’s basically a big conspiracy theory. Unlike a lot of other forms of racism, which are not really conspiracy theory, antisemitism tends to be a conspiracy theory about the levers of power being controlled by a shadowy cadre of people who are getting together behind closed doors to control things.
Lex Fridman
The most absurd illustration of antisemitism, just like you said, is Stalin versus Hitler over Poland that every bad guy was a Jew. So every enemy… There’s a lot of different enemy groups, intellectuals, political and so on. Military. And behind any movement that is considered the enemy for the Nazis and any movement that’s considered the enemy for the Soviet army are the Jews. What is the fact that Hitler took power teach you about human nature? When you look back at the history of the 20th century, what do you learn from that time?
The most absurd illustration of antisemitism, just like you said, is Stalin versus Hitler over Poland that every bad guy was a Jew. So every enemy… There’s a lot of different enemy groups, intellectuals, political and so on. Military. And behind any movement that is considered the enemy for the Nazis and any movement that’s considered the enemy for the Soviet army are the Jews. What is the fact that Hitler took power teach you about human nature? When you look back at the history of the 20th century, what do you learn from that time?
Hitler and the nature of evil
Ben Shapiro
There are a bunch of lessons too. Hitler taking power. The first thing I think people ought to recognize about Hitler taking power is that the power had been centralized in the government before Hitler took it. So if you actually look at the history of Nazi Germany, the Weimar Republic had effectively collapsed. The power had been centralized in the Chancellor and really under Hindenburg for a couple of years before that. And so it was only a matter of time until someone who was bad grabbed the power. And so the struggle between the reds and the browns in Nazism, in pre Nazi Germany led to this up spiraling of radical sentiment that allowed Hitler in through the front door, not through the back door, he was elected.
There are a bunch of lessons too. Hitler taking power. The first thing I think people ought to recognize about Hitler taking power is that the power had been centralized in the government before Hitler took it. So if you actually look at the history of Nazi Germany, the Weimar Republic had effectively collapsed. The power had been centralized in the Chancellor and really under Hindenburg for a couple of years before that. And so it was only a matter of time until someone who was bad grabbed the power. And so the struggle between the reds and the browns in Nazism, in pre Nazi Germany led to this up spiraling of radical sentiment that allowed Hitler in through the front door, not through the back door, he was elected.
Lex Fridman
So you think Communists could have also taken power?
So you think Communists could have also taken power?
Ben Shapiro
There’s no question Communists could have taken power. There were serious force in pre Nazi Germany.
There’s no question Communists could have taken power. There were serious force in pre Nazi Germany.
Lex Fridman
Do you think there was an underlying current that would’ve led to an atrocity if the communist had taken power?
Do you think there was an underlying current that would’ve led to an atrocity if the communist had taken power?
Ben Shapiro
Wouldn’t have been quite the same atrocity, but obviously the Communists in Soviet Russia at exactly this time were committing the Holodomor. So there were very few good guys in terms of good parties. The moderate parties were being dragged by the radicals into alliance with them to prevent the worst case scenario from the other guy, so if you look at… I’m fascinated by the history of this period because it really does speak to how does a democracy break down? The 1920s, Weimar Republic was a very liberal democracy. How does a liberal democracy break down into complete fascism and then into genocide? And there’s a character who was very prominent in the history at that time named Franz von Papen, who was actually the second to last chancellor of the Republic before Hitler. So he was the chancellor, and then he handed over to Schleicher, and then he ended up collapsing, and that ended up handing power over to Hitler.
Wouldn’t have been quite the same atrocity, but obviously the Communists in Soviet Russia at exactly this time were committing the Holodomor. So there were very few good guys in terms of good parties. The moderate parties were being dragged by the radicals into alliance with them to prevent the worst case scenario from the other guy, so if you look at… I’m fascinated by the history of this period because it really does speak to how does a democracy break down? The 1920s, Weimar Republic was a very liberal democracy. How does a liberal democracy break down into complete fascism and then into genocide? And there’s a character who was very prominent in the history at that time named Franz von Papen, who was actually the second to last chancellor of the Republic before Hitler. So he was the chancellor, and then he handed over to Schleicher, and then he ended up collapsing, and that ended up handing power over to Hitler.
It was Papen who had stumped for Hitler to become chancellor. Papen was a Catholic Democrat. He didn’t like Hitler. He thought that Hitler was a radical and a nut job, but he also thought that Hitler being a buffoon, as he saw it, was going to essentially be usable by the right forces in order to prevent the communists from taking power, maybe in order to restore some legitimacy to the regime because he was popular in order for Papen to retain power himself. And then immediately after Hitler taking power, Hitler basically kills all of Papen’s friends. Papen out of ‘loyalty’ stays on. He ends up helping the Anschluss in Austria. All this stuff is really interesting, mainly because what it speaks to is the great lie we tell ourselves that people who are evil are not like us. They’re class apart. People who do evil things, people who support evil people, they’re not like us.
And that’s an easy call everybody in history who has sinned is a person who’s very different from me. Robert George, the philosopher over at Princeton, he’s fond of doing a thought experiment in his classes where he asks people to raise their hand If they had lived in Alabama in 1861, how many of you would be abolitionists? And everybody raises their hand and he says, “Of course that’s not true.” The best protection against evil is recognizing that it lies in every human heart and the possibility that it takes you over.
And so you have to be very cautious in how you approach these issues and the back and forth of politics, the bipolarity of politics or polarization in politics might be a better way to put it, makes it very easy to fall into the Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots that eventually could theoretically allow you to support somebody who’s truly frightening and hideous in order to stop somebody who you think is more frightening and hideous. And you see this kind of language by the way now, predominating almost all over the western world. My political enemy is an enemy of democracy. My political enemy is going to end the republic. My political enemy is going to be the person who destroys the country we live in. And so that person has to be stopped by any means necessary, and that’s dangerous stuff.
Lex Fridman
So the communists had to be stopped in Nazi Germany, and so they’re the devil. And so any useful buffoon, as long as they’re effective against the communists would do. Do you ever wonder because the people that are participating in evil may not understand that they’re doing evil. Do you ever sit back in the quiet of your mind and think, Am I participating in evil?
So the communists had to be stopped in Nazi Germany, and so they’re the devil. And so any useful buffoon, as long as they’re effective against the communists would do. Do you ever wonder because the people that are participating in evil may not understand that they’re doing evil. Do you ever sit back in the quiet of your mind and think, Am I participating in evil?
Ben Shapiro
So my business partner and I, one of our favorite memes is from… There’s a British comedy show, the name escapes me, of these two guys who are members of the SS and they’re dressed in the SS uniforms and the black uniforms, the skulls on them, and they’re saying to each other, one says to the other guy, “You notice the British, the symbol is something nice, it’s like an eagle. But ours it’s a skull and crossbones. You see the Americans, you see the blue uniforms very nice and pretty. Ours are a jet black. Are we the baddies?” And that’s it. And the truth is, we look back at the Nazis and we say, “Of course they were the baddies. They wore black uniforms and they had jack boots and they had this and that.” And of course they were the bad guys. But evil rarely presents its face so clearly.
So my business partner and I, one of our favorite memes is from… There’s a British comedy show, the name escapes me, of these two guys who are members of the SS and they’re dressed in the SS uniforms and the black uniforms, the skulls on them, and they’re saying to each other, one says to the other guy, “You notice the British, the symbol is something nice, it’s like an eagle. But ours it’s a skull and crossbones. You see the Americans, you see the blue uniforms very nice and pretty. Ours are a jet black. Are we the baddies?” And that’s it. And the truth is, we look back at the Nazis and we say, “Of course they were the baddies. They wore black uniforms and they had jack boots and they had this and that.” And of course they were the bad guys. But evil rarely presents its face so clearly.
So yeah, I think you have to constantly be thinking along those lines and hopefully you try to avoid it. You can only do the best that a human being can do. But yeah, the answer is yes. I would say that I spend an inordinate amount of time reflecting on whether I’m doing the right thing and I may not always do the right thing. I’m sure a lot of people think that I’m doing the wrong thing on a daily basis. But it’s definitely a question that has to enter your mind as a historically aware and hopefully morally decent person.
Lex Fridman
Do you think you’re mentally strong enough if you realize that you are on the wrong side of history to switch sides? Very few people in history seem to be strong enough to do that.
Do you think you’re mentally strong enough if you realize that you are on the wrong side of history to switch sides? Very few people in history seem to be strong enough to do that.
Ben Shapiro
I think that the answer I hope would be yes. You never know until the time comes and you have to do it. I will say that having heterodox opinions in a wide variety of areas is something that I have done before. I’m the only person I’ve ever heard of in public life who actually has a list on their website of all the dumb stupid things I’ve ever said. So where I go through and I either say, “This is why I still believe this, or this is why what I said was terrible and stupid.” And I’m sure that list will get a lot longer.
I think that the answer I hope would be yes. You never know until the time comes and you have to do it. I will say that having heterodox opinions in a wide variety of areas is something that I have done before. I’m the only person I’ve ever heard of in public life who actually has a list on their website of all the dumb stupid things I’ve ever said. So where I go through and I either say, “This is why I still believe this, or this is why what I said was terrible and stupid.” And I’m sure that list will get a lot longer.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I look forward to new additions to that list.
Yeah, I look forward to new additions to that list.
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
Lex Fridman
It actually is a super, super long list. People should check it out. And it’s quite honest and raw. It’s interesting to ask you, given how pro-life you are about, Ye’s, comments about comparing the Holocaust to the 900, 000 abortions in the United States a year.
It actually is a super, super long list. People should check it out. And it’s quite honest and raw. It’s interesting to ask you, given how pro-life you are about, Ye’s, comments about comparing the Holocaust to the 900, 000 abortions in the United States a year.
Ben Shapiro
So I’ll take this from two angles. As a pro-life person, I actually didn’t find it offensive because if you believe as I do that unborn and pre-born lives deserve protection, then the slaughter of just under a million of them every year for the last almost 50 years is a historic tragedy on par with a holocaust. From the outside perspective, I get why people would say there’s a difference in how people view the pre-born as to how people view, say a seven year old who’s being killed in the Holocaust, like the visceral power and evil of the Nazi shoving full grown human beings and small children in the gas chambers, can’t be compared to a person who even from pro-life perspective, may not fully understand the consequences of their own decisions or from a pro-choice perspective, fully understands the consequences, but just doesn’t think that that person is a person. That, that’s actually different.
So I’ll take this from two angles. As a pro-life person, I actually didn’t find it offensive because if you believe as I do that unborn and pre-born lives deserve protection, then the slaughter of just under a million of them every year for the last almost 50 years is a historic tragedy on par with a holocaust. From the outside perspective, I get why people would say there’s a difference in how people view the pre-born as to how people view, say a seven year old who’s being killed in the Holocaust, like the visceral power and evil of the Nazi shoving full grown human beings and small children in the gas chambers, can’t be compared to a person who even from pro-life perspective, may not fully understand the consequences of their own decisions or from a pro-choice perspective, fully understands the consequences, but just doesn’t think that that person is a person. That, that’s actually different.
So I understand both sides of it. I wasn’t offended by Ye’s comments in that way though, because if you’re a pro-life human being, then you do think that what’s happening is a great tragedy on scale that involves the dehumanization of an entire class of people, the pre-born.
Lex Fridman
So the philosophical you understand the comparison.
So the philosophical you understand the comparison.
Ben Shapiro
I do. Sure.
I do. Sure.
Political attacks on the left and the right
Lex Fridman
So in his comments, in the jumping from the individual to the group, I’d like to ask you… You’re one of the most effective people in the world that are attacking the left, and sometimes it can slip into attacking the group. Do you worry that’s the same kind of oversimplification that Ye’s, doing about Jewish people that you can sometimes do with the left as a group?
So in his comments, in the jumping from the individual to the group, I’d like to ask you… You’re one of the most effective people in the world that are attacking the left, and sometimes it can slip into attacking the group. Do you worry that’s the same kind of oversimplification that Ye’s, doing about Jewish people that you can sometimes do with the left as a group?
Ben Shapiro
So when I speak about the left, I’m speaking about a philosophy not really speaking about individual human beings as the leftist like group, and then try to name who the members of this individual group are. I also make a distinction between the left and liberals. There are a lot of people who are liberal who disagree with me on taxes, disagree with the foreign policy, disagree with me on a lot of things. The people who I’m talking about generally, and I talk about the left in the United States, are people who believe that alternative points of view ought to be silenced because they are damaging and harmful simply based on the disagreement. So that’s one distinction.
So when I speak about the left, I’m speaking about a philosophy not really speaking about individual human beings as the leftist like group, and then try to name who the members of this individual group are. I also make a distinction between the left and liberals. There are a lot of people who are liberal who disagree with me on taxes, disagree with the foreign policy, disagree with me on a lot of things. The people who I’m talking about generally, and I talk about the left in the United States, are people who believe that alternative points of view ought to be silenced because they are damaging and harmful simply based on the disagreement. So that’s one distinction.
The second distinction again is when I talk about the right versus the left, typically I’m talking about a battle of competing philosophies. And so I’m not speaking about, typically… It would be hard to, if you put a person in front of me and said, “Is this person of the left or of the right?” Having just met them, I wouldn’t be able to label them in the same way that if you met somebody in the name of Greenstein, you’d immediately go Jew, or you make a black person, they’re a black person. And that the adherence to a philosophy makes you a member of a group. If I think the philosophy is bad, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you as a person are bad. But it does mean that I think your philosophy is bad.
Lex Fridman
So the grouping is based on the philosophy versus something like a race. The color of your skin or race as in the case of the Jewish people. So it’s a different thing. You can be a little bit more nonchalant and careless in attacking a group because it’s ultimately attacking a set of ideas.
So the grouping is based on the philosophy versus something like a race. The color of your skin or race as in the case of the Jewish people. So it’s a different thing. You can be a little bit more nonchalant and careless in attacking a group because it’s ultimately attacking a set of ideas.
Ben Shapiro
It is really nonchalant in attacking the set of ideas. And I don’t know that nonchalant would be the way I’d put it. I try to be exact, you don’t always hit. But if I say that I oppose the Communists and then presumably I’m speaking of people who believe in the Communists philosophy. Now the question is whether I’m mislabeling, whether I’m taking somebody who’s not actually a communist and then shoving them in that group of Communists, that would be inaccurate.
It is really nonchalant in attacking the set of ideas. And I don’t know that nonchalant would be the way I’d put it. I try to be exact, you don’t always hit. But if I say that I oppose the Communists and then presumably I’m speaking of people who believe in the Communists philosophy. Now the question is whether I’m mislabeling, whether I’m taking somebody who’s not actually a communist and then shoving them in that group of Communists, that would be inaccurate.
Lex Fridman
The dangerous thing is it expands the group as opposed to you talking about the philosophy you’re throwing everybody who’s ever said, “I’m curious about communism. I’m curious about socialism.” There’s like a gradient. It’s like to throw something at you, I think Joe Biden said, “Maga Republicans.” I think that’s a very careless statement because the thing you jump to immediately is all Republicans.
The dangerous thing is it expands the group as opposed to you talking about the philosophy you’re throwing everybody who’s ever said, “I’m curious about communism. I’m curious about socialism.” There’s like a gradient. It’s like to throw something at you, I think Joe Biden said, “Maga Republicans.” I think that’s a very careless statement because the thing you jump to immediately is all Republicans.
Ben Shapiro
All Republicans voted for Trump.
All Republicans voted for Trump.
Lex Fridman
Vote for Trump versus I think in the charitable interpretation that means a set of ideas.
Vote for Trump versus I think in the charitable interpretation that means a set of ideas.
Ben Shapiro
My actually problem with the maga Republicans line from Biden is that he went on in the speech that he made in front of Independence Hall to actually trying to define what it meant to be a maga Republican who was a threat to the republic, was the kind of language that he was using. And later on in the speech, he actually suggested, “There are moderate Republicans and the moderate Republicans are people, people who agree with me on the inflation reduction acts.” It’s like, that can’t be the dividing line between a maga Republican and a moderate Republican is somebody who agrees with you. You got to name me a Republican who disagrees with you fairly strenuously, but is not in this group of threats to the republic. You make that distinction, we can have a fair discussion about whether the idea of election denial, for example, makes somebody a threat to institutions.
My actually problem with the maga Republicans line from Biden is that he went on in the speech that he made in front of Independence Hall to actually trying to define what it meant to be a maga Republican who was a threat to the republic, was the kind of language that he was using. And later on in the speech, he actually suggested, “There are moderate Republicans and the moderate Republicans are people, people who agree with me on the inflation reduction acts.” It’s like, that can’t be the dividing line between a maga Republican and a moderate Republican is somebody who agrees with you. You got to name me a Republican who disagrees with you fairly strenuously, but is not in this group of threats to the republic. You make that distinction, we can have a fair discussion about whether the idea of election denial, for example, makes somebody a threat to institutions.
That’s a conversation that we can have. And then we’ll have to discuss how much power they have, what the actual perspective is, delve into it. But I think that he was being over broad and labeling all of his political enemies under one rubric. Now again, in politics, this stuff happens all the time. I’m not going to plead clean hands here because I’m sure that I’ve been in exact. But somebody who would be good in that particular situation is for somebody to read me back the quote and I’ll let you know where I’ve been inaccurate. I’ll try to do that.
Lex Fridman
And also you don’t shy away from humor and occasional trolling and mockery and all that kind of stuff for the fun, for chaos, all that kind of stuff?
And also you don’t shy away from humor and occasional trolling and mockery and all that kind of stuff for the fun, for chaos, all that kind of stuff?
Ben Shapiro
I try not to do trollery for trollery’s sake, but if the show’s not entertaining and not fun, people aren’t going to listen. And so if you can’t have fun with politics… The truth about politics is we all take it very seriously because it has some serious ramifications. Politics is Veep, it is not House of Cards. The general rule of politics is that everyone is a moron unless proven otherwise, that virtually everything is done out of stupidity rather than malice. And that if you actually watch politics as a comedy, you’ll have a lot more fun.
I try not to do trollery for trollery’s sake, but if the show’s not entertaining and not fun, people aren’t going to listen. And so if you can’t have fun with politics… The truth about politics is we all take it very seriously because it has some serious ramifications. Politics is Veep, it is not House of Cards. The general rule of politics is that everyone is a moron unless proven otherwise, that virtually everything is done out of stupidity rather than malice. And that if you actually watch politics as a comedy, you’ll have a lot more fun.
And so the difficulty for me is I take politics seriously, but also I have the ability to of flip the switch and suddenly it all becomes incredibly funny because it really is like if you just watch it from a pure entertainment perspective and you put aside the fact that it affects hundreds of millions of people. Then watching President Trump being president, he’s one of the funniest humans who’s ever lived watching Kamala Harris be Kamala Harris and talking about how much he loves Venn diagrams or electric buses. That’s funny stuff. So if I can’t make fun of that, then my job becomes pretty morose pretty quickly.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s funny to figure out what is the perfect balance between seeing the humor and the absurdity of the game of it versus taking it seriously enough because it does affect hundreds of millions of people. It’s a weird balance to strike. It’s like I am afraid with the internet that everything becomes a joke.
Yeah, it’s funny to figure out what is the perfect balance between seeing the humor and the absurdity of the game of it versus taking it seriously enough because it does affect hundreds of millions of people. It’s a weird balance to strike. It’s like I am afraid with the internet that everything becomes a joke.
Ben Shapiro
I totally agree with this. I will say this, I try to make less jokes about the ideas and more jokes about the people in the same way that I make jokes about myself. I’m pretty self-effacing in terms of my humor. I would say at least half the jokes on my show are about me when I’m reading ads for Tommy John and they’re talking about their no wedgie guarantee, I’ll say things like that would’ve helped me in high school because it would’ve, just factually speaking. So if I can speak that way about myself, I feel like everybody else can take it as well.
I totally agree with this. I will say this, I try to make less jokes about the ideas and more jokes about the people in the same way that I make jokes about myself. I’m pretty self-effacing in terms of my humor. I would say at least half the jokes on my show are about me when I’m reading ads for Tommy John and they’re talking about their no wedgie guarantee, I’ll say things like that would’ve helped me in high school because it would’ve, just factually speaking. So if I can speak that way about myself, I feel like everybody else can take it as well.
Quebec mosque shooting
Lex Fridman
Difficult question. In 2017, there was a mosque shooting in Quebec City, six people died, five others seriously injured. The 27 year old gunman consumed a lot of content online and checked Twitter accounts a lot, of a lot of people. But one of the people he checked quite a lot of is you 93 times in the month leading up to the shooting. If you could talk to that young man, what would you tell him? And maybe other young men listening to this that have hate in their heart in that same way. What would you tell them?
Difficult question. In 2017, there was a mosque shooting in Quebec City, six people died, five others seriously injured. The 27 year old gunman consumed a lot of content online and checked Twitter accounts a lot, of a lot of people. But one of the people he checked quite a lot of is you 93 times in the month leading up to the shooting. If you could talk to that young man, what would you tell him? And maybe other young men listening to this that have hate in their heart in that same way. What would you tell them?
Ben Shapiro
You’re getting it wrong. If anything that or anyone else in mainstream politics says drives you to violence, you’re getting it wrong. Now again, when it comes to stuff like this, I have a hard and fast rule that I’ve applied evenly across the spectrum. And that is I never blame people’s politics for other people committing acts of violence unless they’re actively advocating violence. So when a fan of Bernie Sanders shoots up a congressional baseball game, that is not Bernie Sanders’s fault. I may not like his rhetoric. I may disagree with him on everything. Bernie Sanders did not tell somebody to go shoot up a congressional baseball game when a nut case in San Francisco goes and hits Paul Pelosi with a hammer. I’m not going to blame Kevin McCarthy, the house speaker for that. When somebody threatens Brett Kavanaugh, I’m not going to suggest that that was Joe Biden’s fault because it’s not Joe Biden’s fault.
You’re getting it wrong. If anything that or anyone else in mainstream politics says drives you to violence, you’re getting it wrong. Now again, when it comes to stuff like this, I have a hard and fast rule that I’ve applied evenly across the spectrum. And that is I never blame people’s politics for other people committing acts of violence unless they’re actively advocating violence. So when a fan of Bernie Sanders shoots up a congressional baseball game, that is not Bernie Sanders’s fault. I may not like his rhetoric. I may disagree with him on everything. Bernie Sanders did not tell somebody to go shoot up a congressional baseball game when a nut case in San Francisco goes and hits Paul Pelosi with a hammer. I’m not going to blame Kevin McCarthy, the house speaker for that. When somebody threatens Brett Kavanaugh, I’m not going to suggest that that was Joe Biden’s fault because it’s not Joe Biden’s fault.
We can play this game all day long. And I find that the people who are most intensely focused on playing this game are people who tend to oppose the politics of the person as opposed to actually believing sincerely that this has driven somebody into the arms of the God of violence. But I have 4.7 million Twitter followers. I have 8 million Facebook followers, I have 5 million YouTube followers. I would imagine that some of them are people who are violent. I would imagine that some of them are people who do evil things or want to do evil things. And I wish that there were a wand that we could wave that would prevent those people from deliberately or mistakenly misinterpreting things as a call of violence. It’s just a negative byproduct of the fact that you can reach a lot of people. And so if somebody could point me to the comment that I suppose ‘drove’ somebody to going literally murder human beings, then I would appreciate it.
So I could talk about the comment, but don’t… Mainly because I just think that if we remove agency from individuals, and if we blame broad scale political rhetoric for every act of violence the people who are going to pay the price are actually the general population because free speech will go away. If the idea is that things that we say could drive somebody who is unbalanced to go do something evil, the necessary byproduct is hate, is that speech is a form of hate. Hate is a form of violence, speech is a form of violence. Speech needs to be curbed. And that to me is deeply disturbing.
Lex Fridman
So definitely that man, that 27 year old man is the only one responsible for the evil he did. But what if he and others like him are not nut cases? What if they’re people with pain, with anger in their heart? What would you say to them? You’re exceptionally influential and other people like you that speak passionately about ideas. What do you think is your opportunity to alleviate the hate in their heart?
So definitely that man, that 27 year old man is the only one responsible for the evil he did. But what if he and others like him are not nut cases? What if they’re people with pain, with anger in their heart? What would you say to them? You’re exceptionally influential and other people like you that speak passionately about ideas. What do you think is your opportunity to alleviate the hate in their heart?
Ben Shapiro
If we’re speaking about people who aren’t mentally ill and people who are just misguided, I’d say to him the thing I said to every other young man in the country, you need to find meaning and purpose in forming connections that actually matter in a belief system that actually promotes general prosperity and promotes helping other people. And this is why the message that I most commonly say to young men is, It’s time for you to grow up, mature, get a job, get married, have a family, take care of the people around you, become a useful part of your community. Never at any point in my entire career suggested violence as a resort to political issues. The whole point of having a political conversation is that it’s a conversation. If I didn’t think that it were worth trying to convince people of my point of view, I wouldn’t do what I do for a living.
If we’re speaking about people who aren’t mentally ill and people who are just misguided, I’d say to him the thing I said to every other young man in the country, you need to find meaning and purpose in forming connections that actually matter in a belief system that actually promotes general prosperity and promotes helping other people. And this is why the message that I most commonly say to young men is, It’s time for you to grow up, mature, get a job, get married, have a family, take care of the people around you, become a useful part of your community. Never at any point in my entire career suggested violence as a resort to political issues. The whole point of having a political conversation is that it’s a conversation. If I didn’t think that it were worth trying to convince people of my point of view, I wouldn’t do what I do for a living.
Lex Fridman
So violence doesn’t solve anything?
So violence doesn’t solve anything?
Ben Shapiro
No, it doesn’t.
No, it doesn’t.
Lex Fridman
As if this wasn’t already a difficult conversation. Let me ask about Ilhan Omar, you’ve called out her criticism of Israel policies as antisemitic. Is there a difference between criticizing a race of people like the Jews and criticizing the policies of a nation like Israel?
As if this wasn’t already a difficult conversation. Let me ask about Ilhan Omar, you’ve called out her criticism of Israel policies as antisemitic. Is there a difference between criticizing a race of people like the Jews and criticizing the policies of a nation like Israel?
Ben Shapiro
Of course. I criticize the policies of Israel on a fairly regular basis, I would assume from a different angle than Ilhan Omar does. But yeah, I criticize the policies of a wide variety of states. And to take an example, I’ve criticized Israel’s policy in giving control of the temple mounts to the Islamic walk, which effectively prevents anybody except for Muslims praying up there. I’ve also criticized the Israeli government for their Covid crackdown. You can criticize the policies of any government, but that’s not what, Ilhan Omar does. Ilhan Omar doesn’t actually believe that there should be a state of Israel. She believes that Zionism is racism and that the existence of a Jewish state in Israel is in and of itself the great sin. That is a statement she would make about no other people in no other land. She would not say that the French don’t deserve a state for the French.
Of course. I criticize the policies of Israel on a fairly regular basis, I would assume from a different angle than Ilhan Omar does. But yeah, I criticize the policies of a wide variety of states. And to take an example, I’ve criticized Israel’s policy in giving control of the temple mounts to the Islamic walk, which effectively prevents anybody except for Muslims praying up there. I’ve also criticized the Israeli government for their Covid crackdown. You can criticize the policies of any government, but that’s not what, Ilhan Omar does. Ilhan Omar doesn’t actually believe that there should be a state of Israel. She believes that Zionism is racism and that the existence of a Jewish state in Israel is in and of itself the great sin. That is a statement she would make about no other people in no other land. She would not say that the French don’t deserve a state for the French.
She wouldn’t say that Somalis wouldn’t deserve a state in Somalia. She wouldn’t say that that Germans don’t deserve a state in Germany. She wouldn’t say for the 50 plus Islamic states that exist across the world, that they don’t deserve states of their own. It is only the Jewish state that has fallen under her significant scrutiny. And she also promulgates laws about one specific state in the form of suggesting, for example, that Israel is an apartheid state, which it is most eminently not considering that the last unity government in Israel included an Arab party, that there are Arabs who sit on the Israeli Supreme Court and all the rest. And then beyond that, obviously she’s engaged in some of the same antisemitic ropes that you heard from Ye. The stuff about, it’s all about the Benjamins, that American support for Israel is all about the Benjamins, and she’s had to be [inaudible 00:29:36] by members of her own party about this stuff before.
Lex Fridman
Can you empathize with the plight of Palestinian people?
Can you empathize with the plight of Palestinian people?
Ben Shapiro
Absolutely. Some of the uglier things that I’ve ever said in my career are things that I said very early on. When I was 17, 18, 19, I started writing a syndicated column, I was 17, I’m now 38. So virtually all the dumb things… I’d say virtually all, many of the dumb things, the plurality of the dumb things that I’ve said came from the ages of, I would say 17 to maybe 23. And they are rooted again in sloppy thinking. I feel terrible for people who have lived under the thumb and currently live under the thumb of Hamas, which is a national terrorist group, or the Palestinian authority, which is a corrupt oligarchy that steals money from its people and leaves them in misery or Islamic Jihad, which is an actual terrorist group.
Absolutely. Some of the uglier things that I’ve ever said in my career are things that I said very early on. When I was 17, 18, 19, I started writing a syndicated column, I was 17, I’m now 38. So virtually all the dumb things… I’d say virtually all, many of the dumb things, the plurality of the dumb things that I’ve said came from the ages of, I would say 17 to maybe 23. And they are rooted again in sloppy thinking. I feel terrible for people who have lived under the thumb and currently live under the thumb of Hamas, which is a national terrorist group, or the Palestinian authority, which is a corrupt oligarchy that steals money from its people and leaves them in misery or Islamic Jihad, which is an actual terrorist group.
The basic rule for the region, in my view, is if these groups were willing to make peace of Israel, they would have a state literally tomorrow. And if they are not, then there will be no peace. And it really is that simple. The formulas typically used, it’s become a bit of a bumper sticker, but it happens to be factually correct. If the Palestinians put down their guns tomorrow, there would be a state. If the Israelis put down their guns, there’d be no Israel,
Lex Fridman
You get attacked a lot on the internet.
You get attacked a lot on the internet.
Ben Shapiro
Oh yeah, you noticed.
Oh yeah, you noticed.
Lex Fridman
I got to ask you about your own psychology. How do you not let that break you mentally? And how do you avoid letting that lead to a resentment of the groups that attack you?
I got to ask you about your own psychology. How do you not let that break you mentally? And how do you avoid letting that lead to a resentment of the groups that attack you?
Ben Shapiro
So there are a few-
So there are a few-
Lex Fridman
… that meant of the groups that attack you.
… that meant of the groups that attack you.
Ben Shapiro
I mean, so there are a few sort of practical things that I’ve done. So, for example, I would say that four years ago, Twitter was all-consuming. Twitter is an ego machine, especially the notifications button, right? The notifications button is just people talking about you all the time and the normal human tendency as, Wow, people talking about me, I got to see what they’re saying about me. Which is a recipe for insanity. So my wife actually said, “Twitter is making your life miserable. You need to take it off your phone.” So Twitter is not on my phone. If I want to log onto Twitter, I have to go onto my computer and I have to make the conscious decision to go onto Twitter and then take a look at what’s going on.
I mean, so there are a few sort of practical things that I’ve done. So, for example, I would say that four years ago, Twitter was all-consuming. Twitter is an ego machine, especially the notifications button, right? The notifications button is just people talking about you all the time and the normal human tendency as, Wow, people talking about me, I got to see what they’re saying about me. Which is a recipe for insanity. So my wife actually said, “Twitter is making your life miserable. You need to take it off your phone.” So Twitter is not on my phone. If I want to log onto Twitter, I have to go onto my computer and I have to make the conscious decision to go onto Twitter and then take a look at what’s going on.
Lex Fridman
I could just imagine you, there’s a computer in the basement; you dissent in to check Twitter in the darkness-
I could just imagine you, there’s a computer in the basement; you dissent in to check Twitter in the darkness-
Ben Shapiro
That’s pretty much, I mean, if you look at when I actually tweet, it’s generally in the run-up to recording my show, or when I’m prepping for my show later in the afternoon, for example.
That’s pretty much, I mean, if you look at when I actually tweet, it’s generally in the run-up to recording my show, or when I’m prepping for my show later in the afternoon, for example.
Lex Fridman
That doesn’t affect you negatively, mentally, like put you in a bad mental space.
That doesn’t affect you negatively, mentally, like put you in a bad mental space.
Ben Shapiro
Not particularly if it’s restricted to what’s being watched. Now I will say that I think the most important thing is you have to surround yourself with a group of people who you trust enough to make serious critiques of you when you’re doing something wrong, but also that they have your best interest at heart. Because the internet is filled with people who don’t have your best interests at heart and who hate your gods. So you can’t really take those critiques seriously or it does wreck you. The world is also filled with sycophants, right? The more successful you become, there are a lot of people who will tell you you’re always doing the right thing.
Not particularly if it’s restricted to what’s being watched. Now I will say that I think the most important thing is you have to surround yourself with a group of people who you trust enough to make serious critiques of you when you’re doing something wrong, but also that they have your best interest at heart. Because the internet is filled with people who don’t have your best interests at heart and who hate your gods. So you can’t really take those critiques seriously or it does wreck you. The world is also filled with sycophants, right? The more successful you become, there are a lot of people who will tell you you’re always doing the right thing.
I’m very lucky. I got married when I was 24, my wife was 20, so she’s known me long before I was famous or wealthy or anything. So she’s a good sounding board. I have a family that’s willing to call me out on my bullshit as you talk to Ye about. I have friends who are able to do that. I try to have open lines of communications with people who I believe have my best interests at heart. But one of the sort of conditions of being friends is that when you see me do something wrong, I’d like for you to let me know that so I can correct it, and I don’t want to leave that impressions out there.
Lex Fridman
The sad thing about the internet, just looking at the critiques you get, I see very few critiques from people that actually want you to succeed, want you to grow. I mean, they’re not sophisticated. I don’t know, they’re cruel. It’s not actual critiques; it’s just cruelty.
The sad thing about the internet, just looking at the critiques you get, I see very few critiques from people that actually want you to succeed, want you to grow. I mean, they’re not sophisticated. I don’t know, they’re cruel. It’s not actual critiques; it’s just cruelty.
Ben Shapiro
That’s most of Twitter. I mean, as I said, Twitter is a place to smack, and be smacked. I mean, anybody who uses Twitter for an intellectual conversation I think is engaging in category error.
That’s most of Twitter. I mean, as I said, Twitter is a place to smack, and be smacked. I mean, anybody who uses Twitter for an intellectual conversation I think is engaging in category error.
Lex Fridman
I use it to spread love. I think it’s [inaudible 00:33:24]-
I use it to spread love. I think it’s [inaudible 00:33:24]-
Ben Shapiro
You’re the only one. It’s you and no one else, my friend.
You’re the only one. It’s you and no one else, my friend.
Elon Musk buying Twitter
Lex Fridman
Right. On that topic, what do you think about Elon buying Twitter? What are you hopeful on that front? What would you like to see Twitter improve?
Right. On that topic, what do you think about Elon buying Twitter? What are you hopeful on that front? What would you like to see Twitter improve?
Ben Shapiro
So I’m very hopeful about Elon buying Twitter. I mean, I think that Elon is significantly more transparent than what has taken place up till now. He seems committed to the idea that he’s going to broaden the Overton window to allow for conversations that simply were banned before. Everything ranging from efficacy of masks, with regard to COVID to whether men can become women and all the rest. A lot of things that would get you banned on Twitter before without any sort of real explanation. It seems like he’s dedicated to at least explaining what the standards are going to be and being broader in allowing a variety of perspectives on the outlet, which I think is wonderful. I think that’s also why people are freaking out. I think the kind of wailing and mashing of teeth and wearing of sad cloth and ash by so many members of the legacy media, I think a lot of that is because Twitter essentially was an oligarchy in which certain perspectives were allowed and certain perspectives just were not. That was part of a broader social media-reimposed oligarchy in the aftermath of 2017. So in order for just to really understand, I think what it means for Elon to take over Twitter, I think that we have to take a look at of the history of media in the United States in two minutes or less, the United States, the media for most of its existence, up until about 1990, at least from about 1930s until the 1990s, virtually all media was three major television networks, a couple major newspapers and the wire services. Everybody had a local newspaper with wire services that basically did all the foreign policy and all the national policy. McClatchy, Reuters, AP, AFP, et cetera. So that monopoly oligopoly existed until the rise of the internet. There were sort of pokes at it in talk radio and on Fox News, but there certainly was not this plethora of sources.
So I’m very hopeful about Elon buying Twitter. I mean, I think that Elon is significantly more transparent than what has taken place up till now. He seems committed to the idea that he’s going to broaden the Overton window to allow for conversations that simply were banned before. Everything ranging from efficacy of masks, with regard to COVID to whether men can become women and all the rest. A lot of things that would get you banned on Twitter before without any sort of real explanation. It seems like he’s dedicated to at least explaining what the standards are going to be and being broader in allowing a variety of perspectives on the outlet, which I think is wonderful. I think that’s also why people are freaking out. I think the kind of wailing and mashing of teeth and wearing of sad cloth and ash by so many members of the legacy media, I think a lot of that is because Twitter essentially was an oligarchy in which certain perspectives were allowed and certain perspectives just were not. That was part of a broader social media-reimposed oligarchy in the aftermath of 2017. So in order for just to really understand, I think what it means for Elon to take over Twitter, I think that we have to take a look at of the history of media in the United States in two minutes or less, the United States, the media for most of its existence, up until about 1990, at least from about 1930s until the 1990s, virtually all media was three major television networks, a couple major newspapers and the wire services. Everybody had a local newspaper with wire services that basically did all the foreign policy and all the national policy. McClatchy, Reuters, AP, AFP, et cetera. So that monopoly oligopoly existed until the rise of the internet. There were sort of pokes at it in talk radio and on Fox News, but there certainly was not this plethora of sources.
Then the internet explodes and all of a sudden you can get news everywhere, and the way that people are accessing that news is… You’re, I believe, significantly younger than I am. But we used to do this thing called bookmarking, where you would bookmark a series of websites and then you would visit them every morning, and then social media came up.
Lex Fridman
Is this on AOL or-
Is this on AOL or-
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, exactly. You had the dial-up and it’s actually a can connected to a string and it would go. Then there came a point where social media arose and social media was sort of a boon for everybody because you no longer had to bookmark anything. You just followed your favorite accounts and all of them would pop up and you follow everything on Facebook and it would all pop up and it was all centralized. For a while everybody was super happy because this was the brand new wave of the future, made everything super easy.
Yeah, exactly. You had the dial-up and it’s actually a can connected to a string and it would go. Then there came a point where social media arose and social media was sort of a boon for everybody because you no longer had to bookmark anything. You just followed your favorite accounts and all of them would pop up and you follow everything on Facebook and it would all pop up and it was all centralized. For a while everybody was super happy because this was the brand new wave of the future, made everything super easy.
Suddenly outlets like mine were able to see new eyeballs because it was all centralized in one place. You didn’t have to do it through Google optimization. You could now just put it on Facebook and so many eyeballs were on Facebook, you’d get more traffic. Everybody seemed pretty happy with this arrangement until precisely the moment Donald Trump became president. At that point, then, the sort of pre-existing supposition of a lot of the powers that be, which was, “Democrats, are going to continue winning from here on out, so we can sort of use these social media platforms as ways to push our information and still allow for there to be other information out there.” The immediate response was, “We need to reestablish this siphoning of information. It was misinformation and disinformation that won Donald Trump the election. We need to pressure the social media companies to start cracking down on misinformation and disinformation.”
Actually see this in the historical record. I mean, you can see how Jack Dorsey’s talk about free speech shifted from about 2015 to about 2018. You can see Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech at Georgetown in 2018, which he talked about free speech in its value, and by 2019 he was going in front of Congress talking about how he was responsible for the stuff that was on Facebook, which is not true. He’s not responsible for the stuff on Facebook. It’s a platform. Is AT&T responsible for the stuff you say on your phone? The answer is typically no. So when that happened, because all the eyeballs had now been centralized in these social media sites, they were able to suddenly control what you could see and what you could not see. The most obvious example was obviously leading up to 2020, the election; the killing of the Hunter Biden story is a great example of this.
So Elon coming in and taking over one of the social media services and saying, “I’m not playing by your rules. There’s not going to be this sort of group of people in the halls of power who are going to decide what we can see and here. Instead, I’m going to let a thousand flowers bloom. There’ll be limits, but it’s going to be on more case-by-case basis. We’re going to allow perspectives that are mainstream but maybe not mainstream in the halls of academia or in the halls of media. Let those be said.” I think it’s a really good thing. Now that comes with some responsibilities, I think, on his personal part, which would be to be, for example, I think more responsible and dissemination of information himself. Sometimes he got himself in trouble the other day for tweeting out that story about Paul Pelosi that was speculative and untrue.
I don’t think what he did is horrific. He deleted it when he found out that it was false. That’s actually a free speech working. He said something wrong, people ripped into him, he realized he was wrong, and he’s deleted it, which seems to be a better solution than preemptively banning content, which only raises more questions than it actually stops. With that said, as the face of responsible free speech, and that’s sort of what he’s pitching at Twitter, he I think should enact that himself and be a little more careful in the stuff that he tweets out.
Lex Fridman
Well, that’s a tricky balance. The reason a lot of people are freaking out is because one, he’s putting his thumb on the scale by saying he is more likely to vote Republican. He’s showing himself to be center-right, and just having a political opinion versus being this amorphous thing that doesn’t have a political opinion. I think, I haven’t talked to him about it, but if I were to guess, he’s sending a kind of signal that’s important for Twitter, the company itself, because if we’re being honest, most of the employees are left-leaning. So you have to send a signal like a resisting mechanism to say, since most of the employees are left, it’s good for Elon to be more right to balance out the way the actual engineering is done to say, “We’re not going to do any kind of act activism inside the engineering.” If I were to guess, that’s the effective aspect of that mechanism.
Well, that’s a tricky balance. The reason a lot of people are freaking out is because one, he’s putting his thumb on the scale by saying he is more likely to vote Republican. He’s showing himself to be center-right, and just having a political opinion versus being this amorphous thing that doesn’t have a political opinion. I think, I haven’t talked to him about it, but if I were to guess, he’s sending a kind of signal that’s important for Twitter, the company itself, because if we’re being honest, most of the employees are left-leaning. So you have to send a signal like a resisting mechanism to say, since most of the employees are left, it’s good for Elon to be more right to balance out the way the actual engineering is done to say, “We’re not going to do any kind of act activism inside the engineering.” If I were to guess, that’s the effective aspect of that mechanism.
The other one by posting the Pelosi thing is probably to expand the Overton window. Like saying, “We could post stuff, we could post conspiracy theories and then through discourse figure out what is and isn’t true.”
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, again, like I say, I mean, I think that is a better mechanism in action than what it was before. I just think it gave people who hate his guts the opening to slap him for no reason. But I can see the strategy of it for sure. I think that the general idea that he’s pushing right where the company had pushed left before, I think that there is actually unilateral polarization right now in politics, at least with the regard of social media in which one side basically says, the solution to disinformation is to shut down free speech from the other side. The other side is basically people like me are saying, the solution to disinformation is to let a thousand… I’d rather have people on the left also being able to put out stuff that I disagree with than for there to be anybody who’s sort of in charge of these social media platforms and using them as editorial sites.
Yeah, again, like I say, I mean, I think that is a better mechanism in action than what it was before. I just think it gave people who hate his guts the opening to slap him for no reason. But I can see the strategy of it for sure. I think that the general idea that he’s pushing right where the company had pushed left before, I think that there is actually unilateral polarization right now in politics, at least with the regard of social media in which one side basically says, the solution to disinformation is to shut down free speech from the other side. The other side is basically people like me are saying, the solution to disinformation is to let a thousand… I’d rather have people on the left also being able to put out stuff that I disagree with than for there to be anybody who’s sort of in charge of these social media platforms and using them as editorial sites.
I mean, I’m not criticizing MSNBC for not putting on right wing opinions. I mean that’s fine. I run a conservative site. We’re not going to put up left wing opinions on a wide variety of issues because we are conservative site. But if you pitch yourself as a platform, that’s a different thing. If you pitch yourself as the town square, as Elon likes to call it, then I think Elon has a better idea of that than many of the former employees did. Especially now that we have that report from the Intercept suggesting that there are people from Twitter working with DHS to monitor “disinformation” and being rather vague about what disinformation meant.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I don’t think activism has a place in what is fundamentally an engineering company that’s building a platform. The people inside the company should not be putting a thumb on the scale of what is and isn’t allowed. You should create a mechanism for the people to decide what is and isn’t allowed. Do you think Trump should have been removed from Twitter? Should his account be restored?
Yeah, I don’t think activism has a place in what is fundamentally an engineering company that’s building a platform. The people inside the company should not be putting a thumb on the scale of what is and isn’t allowed. You should create a mechanism for the people to decide what is and isn’t allowed. Do you think Trump should have been removed from Twitter? Should his account be restored?
Ben Shapiro
His account should be restored. This is coming from somebody who really dislikes an enormous number of Donald Trump’s tweets. Again, he’s a very important political personage. Even if he weren’t, I don’t think that he should be banned from Twitter or Facebook in coordinated fashion. By the way, I hold that opinion about people who I think are far worse than Donald Trump. Everyone knows I’m not Alex ones guy. I don’t like Alex Jones. I think Alex Jones parades-
His account should be restored. This is coming from somebody who really dislikes an enormous number of Donald Trump’s tweets. Again, he’s a very important political personage. Even if he weren’t, I don’t think that he should be banned from Twitter or Facebook in coordinated fashion. By the way, I hold that opinion about people who I think are far worse than Donald Trump. Everyone knows I’m not Alex ones guy. I don’t like Alex Jones. I think Alex Jones parades-
Lex Fridman
You think Alex should be back on Twitter?
You think Alex should be back on Twitter?
Ben Shapiro
I do actually. Because I think that there are plenty of people who are willing to say that what he’s saying is wrong. I’m not a big fan of this idea that because people I disagree with and people who have personally targeted me… By the way, I mean, Alex Jones has said some things about me personally that I’m not real fond of it.
I do actually. Because I think that there are plenty of people who are willing to say that what he’s saying is wrong. I’m not a big fan of this idea that because people I disagree with and people who have personally targeted me… By the way, I mean, Alex Jones has said some things about me personally that I’m not real fond of it.
Lex Fridman
You guys are not-
You guys are not-
Ben Shapiro
Well, we’re not besties. No, it turns out, yeah, all I’ve said is I don’t really enjoy his show. He’s said some other stuff about the anti-Christ and such, but that’s a bit of a different thing, I suppose. Even so, I’m just not a big fan of this idea. I’ve defended people who have really gone after me on a personal level; have targeted me. The town square is online. Banning people from the town square is unpersoning them. Unless you violated a criminal statute, you should not be unpersoned in American society as a general rule. It doesn’t mean that companies that are not platforms don’t have the ability to respond to you. I think Adidas is right to terminate its contract with Kanye, for example, with Ye, but Twitter ain’t Adidas.
Well, we’re not besties. No, it turns out, yeah, all I’ve said is I don’t really enjoy his show. He’s said some other stuff about the anti-Christ and such, but that’s a bit of a different thing, I suppose. Even so, I’m just not a big fan of this idea. I’ve defended people who have really gone after me on a personal level; have targeted me. The town square is online. Banning people from the town square is unpersoning them. Unless you violated a criminal statute, you should not be unpersoned in American society as a general rule. It doesn’t mean that companies that are not platforms don’t have the ability to respond to you. I think Adidas is right to terminate its contract with Kanye, for example, with Ye, but Twitter ain’t Adidas.
Lex Fridman
So the way your stance on free speech to the degree it’s possible to achieve on a platform like Twitter is you fight bad speech with more speech, with better speech. So if Alex Jones and Trump was allowed back on in the coming months and years leading up to the 2024 election, you think that’s going to make for a better world in the long term?
So the way your stance on free speech to the degree it’s possible to achieve on a platform like Twitter is you fight bad speech with more speech, with better speech. So if Alex Jones and Trump was allowed back on in the coming months and years leading up to the 2024 election, you think that’s going to make for a better world in the long term?
Ben Shapiro
I think that on the principle that people should be allowed to do this, and the alternative being a group of thought bosses telling us what we can and cannot see. Yes. So I think in the short term it’s going to mean a lot of things that I don’t like very much. Sure. [inaudible 00:43:49] the cost of doing business. I think that one of the cost of freedom is people doing things that I don’t particularly like, and I would prefer the freedom with all the stuff I don’t like than not the freedom.
I think that on the principle that people should be allowed to do this, and the alternative being a group of thought bosses telling us what we can and cannot see. Yes. So I think in the short term it’s going to mean a lot of things that I don’t like very much. Sure. [inaudible 00:43:49] the cost of doing business. I think that one of the cost of freedom is people doing things that I don’t particularly like, and I would prefer the freedom with all the stuff I don’t like than not the freedom.
Lex Fridman
Let me linger on the love a little bit. You and a lot of people are pretty snarky on Twitter, sometimes to the point of mockery derision, even a bit of, if I were to say, bad faith in the kind of mockery, and you see it as a war. I disagree with both you and Elon on this. Elon sees Twitter as a war zone, or at least has saw it that way in the past. Have you ever considered being nicer on Twitter as a voice that a lot of people look up to? That if Ben Shapiro becomes a little bit more about love, that’s going to inspire a lot of people or no? Is it just too fun for you?
Let me linger on the love a little bit. You and a lot of people are pretty snarky on Twitter, sometimes to the point of mockery derision, even a bit of, if I were to say, bad faith in the kind of mockery, and you see it as a war. I disagree with both you and Elon on this. Elon sees Twitter as a war zone, or at least has saw it that way in the past. Have you ever considered being nicer on Twitter as a voice that a lot of people look up to? That if Ben Shapiro becomes a little bit more about love, that’s going to inspire a lot of people or no? Is it just too fun for you?
Ben Shapiro
The answer is yes. Sure. It’s occurred to me. Let’s put it this way. There are a lot of tweets that actually don’t go out that I delete. I’ll say that Twitter’s new function, that 30 seconds function, is a friend of mine. Every so often, I’ll tweet something, and I’ll think about it in a second. I’ll be like, “Do I need to say this? Probably not.”
The answer is yes. Sure. It’s occurred to me. Let’s put it this way. There are a lot of tweets that actually don’t go out that I delete. I’ll say that Twitter’s new function, that 30 seconds function, is a friend of mine. Every so often, I’ll tweet something, and I’ll think about it in a second. I’ll be like, “Do I need to say this? Probably not.”
Lex Fridman
Can you make a book published after you pass away of all the tweets that you didn’t send?
Can you make a book published after you pass away of all the tweets that you didn’t send?
Ben Shapiro
I don’t know. My kids are still going to be around. I hope-
I don’t know. My kids are still going to be around. I hope-
Lex Fridman
[inaudible 00:45:09]-
[inaudible 00:45:09]-
Ben Shapiro
The legacy.
The legacy.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ben Shapiro
I mean, sure, the answer is yes. There’s a good piece of what we would call [inaudible 00:45:15]. This is like, he’s giving a muse and schmooze right now. This is the kind of be a better person stuff. I agree with you. I agree with you. Yeah, I mean, I will say that Twitter is sometimes too much fun. I try to be at least, if not even, handed, then equal opportunity in my derision. I remember that during the 2016 primaries, I used to post rather snarky tweets about virtually all of the candidates Republican and Democrat.
I mean, sure, the answer is yes. There’s a good piece of what we would call [inaudible 00:45:15]. This is like, he’s giving a muse and schmooze right now. This is the kind of be a better person stuff. I agree with you. I agree with you. Yeah, I mean, I will say that Twitter is sometimes too much fun. I try to be at least, if not even, handed, then equal opportunity in my derision. I remember that during the 2016 primaries, I used to post rather snarky tweets about virtually all of the candidates Republican and Democrat.
Every so often, I’ll still do some of that. I do think actually the amount of snark on my Twitter feed has gone down fairly significantly. I think if you go back a couple of years, it was probably a little more snarky. Today, I’m trying to use it a little bit more in terms of strategy to get out information. Now that doesn’t mean I’m not going to make jokes about, for example, Joe Biden. I will make jokes about Joe Biden. He’s the president of the United States. Nobody else will mock him. So the entire comedic establishment has decided they actually work for him.
Lex Fridman
So the president of the United States, no matter who they are, get the snark [inaudible 00:46:17]-
So the president of the United States, no matter who they are, get the snark [inaudible 00:46:17]-
Ben Shapiro
Yes. President Trump, I think, is fairly aware that he got the snark from me as well. When it comes to snaring the president, I’m not going to stop that. I think the president deserves to be snark.
Yes. President Trump, I think, is fairly aware that he got the snark from me as well. When it comes to snaring the president, I’m not going to stop that. I think the president deserves to be snark.
Lex Fridman
So you’re not afraid of attacking Trump?
So you’re not afraid of attacking Trump?
Ben Shapiro
No, I mean, I’ve done it before.
No, I mean, I’ve done it before.
Trump and Biden
Lex Fridman
Can you say what your favorite and least favorite things are about President Trump and President Biden one at a time? So maybe one thing that you can say is super positive about Trump and one thing super negative about Trump?
Can you say what your favorite and least favorite things are about President Trump and President Biden one at a time? So maybe one thing that you can say is super positive about Trump and one thing super negative about Trump?
Ben Shapiro
Okay, so the super positive thing about Trump is that because he has no preconceived views that are establishmentarian, he sometimes willing to go out of the box and do things that haven’t been tried before, and sometimes that works. I mean, the best example being the entire foreign policy establishment telling him that he couldn’t get a Middle Eastern deal done unless he centered the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Instead, he just went right around that and ended up cutting a bunch of peace deals in the Middle East or moving the embassy in Jerusalem. Sometimes he does stuff and it’s really out of the box and it actually works. That’s awesome in politics and neat to see.
Okay, so the super positive thing about Trump is that because he has no preconceived views that are establishmentarian, he sometimes willing to go out of the box and do things that haven’t been tried before, and sometimes that works. I mean, the best example being the entire foreign policy establishment telling him that he couldn’t get a Middle Eastern deal done unless he centered the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Instead, he just went right around that and ended up cutting a bunch of peace deals in the Middle East or moving the embassy in Jerusalem. Sometimes he does stuff and it’s really out of the box and it actually works. That’s awesome in politics and neat to see.
The downside of Trump is that he has no capacity to use any sort of… There’s no filter between brain and mouth. Whatever happens in his brain is the thing that comes out of his mouth. I know a lot of people find that charming and wonderful, and it is very funny. But I don’t think that it is a particularly excellent personal quality in a person who has as much responsibility as President Trump has. I think he says a lot of damaging and bad things on Twitter. I think that he seems consumed in some ways by his own grievances, which is why you’ve seen him focusing on election 2020 so much. I think that that is very negative about President Trump. So I’m very grateful to President Trump is a conservative for many of the things that he did. I think that a lot of his personality issues are pretty severe.
Lex Fridman
What about Joe Biden?
What about Joe Biden?
Ben Shapiro
So I think that the thing that I like most about Joe Biden, two things. One, Biden seems to be a very good father by all available evidence. There are a lot of people who have put out tape of him talking to Hunter, and Hunter’s having trouble with drugs or whatever. I keep listening to that tape and thinking, “He seems like a really good dad.” The stuff that he’s saying to his son is stuff that, God forbid, if that were happening with my kid, I’d be singing to my kid. So you can’t help but feel for the guys. He had an incredibly difficult go of it with his first wife and the death of members of his family and then Beau dying. I mean, that kind of stuff obviously is deeply sympathetic. He seems like a deeply sympathetic father.
So I think that the thing that I like most about Joe Biden, two things. One, Biden seems to be a very good father by all available evidence. There are a lot of people who have put out tape of him talking to Hunter, and Hunter’s having trouble with drugs or whatever. I keep listening to that tape and thinking, “He seems like a really good dad.” The stuff that he’s saying to his son is stuff that, God forbid, if that were happening with my kid, I’d be singing to my kid. So you can’t help but feel for the guys. He had an incredibly difficult go of it with his first wife and the death of members of his family and then Beau dying. I mean, that kind of stuff obviously is deeply sympathetic. He seems like a deeply sympathetic father.
As far as his politics, he seems like a slap-on-the-back kind of guy, and I don’t mind that. I think that’s nice so far as it goes. It’s sort of an old school politics where things are done with handshake and personal relationships. The thing I don’t like about him is I think sometimes that’s really not genuine. I think that that’s sometimes. I think that’s his personal tendency, but I think sometimes he allows the prevailing wins of his party to carry him to incredibly radical places, and then he just doubles down on the radicalism in some pretty disingenuous ways, and there I would cite the Independence Day speech, or the independence hall speech, which I thought was truly one of the worst speeches I’ve seen a president give.
Lex Fridman
So you don’t think he’s trying to be a unifier in general?
So you don’t think he’s trying to be a unifier in general?
Ben Shapiro
Not at all. I mean, that’s what he was elected to do. He was elected to do two things; not be alive and be a unifier. Those were the two things. When I say not be alive, I don’t mean physically dead. This is where the snark comes in. But what I do mean is that he was elected to not be particularly activists. Basically, the mandate was, “Don’t be Trump, be sane, don’t be Trump, calm everything down.” Instead he got in, he’s like, “What if we spend 7 trillion? What if we pull out of Afghanistan without any sort of plan? What if I start labeling all of my political enemies, enemies of the republic? What if I start bringing Dylan Mulvaney to the White House and talking about how it is a moral sin to prevent the general mutilation of minors?”
Not at all. I mean, that’s what he was elected to do. He was elected to do two things; not be alive and be a unifier. Those were the two things. When I say not be alive, I don’t mean physically dead. This is where the snark comes in. But what I do mean is that he was elected to not be particularly activists. Basically, the mandate was, “Don’t be Trump, be sane, don’t be Trump, calm everything down.” Instead he got in, he’s like, “What if we spend 7 trillion? What if we pull out of Afghanistan without any sort of plan? What if I start labeling all of my political enemies, enemies of the republic? What if I start bringing Dylan Mulvaney to the White House and talking about how it is a moral sin to prevent the general mutilation of minors?”
I mean, this kind of stuff is very radical stuff, and this is not a president who has pursued a unifying agenda, which is why his approval rating sank from 60% when he entered office to low 40s or high 30s today, unlike President Trump, who never had a high approval rating. Trump came into office and he had a 45% approval rating, and when he left office he had about a 43% approval rating, and bounced around between 45 and 37, pretty much his entire presidency. Biden went from being a very popular guy coming in to a very unpopular guy right now, and if you’re Joe Biden, you should be looking in the mirror and wondering exactly why.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Do you think that pulling out from Afghanistan could be flipped as a pro for Biden in terms of he actually did it?
Yeah. Do you think that pulling out from Afghanistan could be flipped as a pro for Biden in terms of he actually did it?
Ben Shapiro
I think it’s going to be almost impossible. I think the American people are incredibly inconsistent about their own views on foreign policy. In other words, we like to be isolationist, until it comes time for us to be defeated and humiliated. When that happens, we tend not to like it very much.
I think it’s going to be almost impossible. I think the American people are incredibly inconsistent about their own views on foreign policy. In other words, we like to be isolationist, until it comes time for us to be defeated and humiliated. When that happens, we tend not to like it very much.
Hunter Biden’s laptop
Lex Fridman
You mentioned Biden being a good father. Can you make the case for and against the Hunter Biden laptop story for it being a big deal and against it being a big deal?
You mentioned Biden being a good father. Can you make the case for and against the Hunter Biden laptop story for it being a big deal and against it being a big deal?
Ben Shapiro
Sure. So the case for it being a big deal is basically twofold. One is that it is clearly relevant if the president’s son is running around to foreign countries picking up bags of cash because his last name is Biden, while his father is vice president of the United States. It raises questions as to influence peddling for either the vice president or the former vice president using political connections. Did he make any money? Who was the big guy, right? All these open questions, that obviously implicates the questions to be asked.
Sure. So the case for it being a big deal is basically twofold. One is that it is clearly relevant if the president’s son is running around to foreign countries picking up bags of cash because his last name is Biden, while his father is vice president of the United States. It raises questions as to influence peddling for either the vice president or the former vice president using political connections. Did he make any money? Who was the big guy, right? All these open questions, that obviously implicates the questions to be asked.
Then the secondary reason that the story is big is actually because the reaction of the story. The banning of the story is in and of itself a major story. If there’s any story that implicates a presidential candidate in the last month of an election and there is a media blackout including a social media blackout, that obviously raises some very serious questions about informational flow and dissemination in the United States.
Lex Fridman
So no matter how big of a deal the story is, it is a big deal that there’s a censorship of any relevant story?
So no matter how big of a deal the story is, it is a big deal that there’s a censorship of any relevant story?
Ben Shapiro
When there’s a coordinated collusive blackout. Yeah, that’s a serious and major problem. So those are the two reasons why it would be a big story. A reason why it would not be a big story, perhaps, is if it turns out, and we don’t really know this yet, but let’s say that that Hunter Biden was basically off on his own, doing what he was doing, being a derelict or drug addict or acting badly, and his dad had nothing to do with it, and Joe was telling the truth and he really knew. But the problem is, we never actually got those questions answered. So if it turned out to be nothing of a story, the nice thing about stories that turned out to be nothing is that after they turned out to be nothing, they’re nothing.
When there’s a coordinated collusive blackout. Yeah, that’s a serious and major problem. So those are the two reasons why it would be a big story. A reason why it would not be a big story, perhaps, is if it turns out, and we don’t really know this yet, but let’s say that that Hunter Biden was basically off on his own, doing what he was doing, being a derelict or drug addict or acting badly, and his dad had nothing to do with it, and Joe was telling the truth and he really knew. But the problem is, we never actually got those questions answered. So if it turned out to be nothing of a story, the nice thing about stories that turned out to be nothing is that after they turned out to be nothing, they’re nothing.
The biggest problem with this story is that it wasn’t allowed to take the normal life cycle of a story, which is original story breaks, follow-on questions are asked, follow-on questions are answered. Story is either now a big story or it’s nothing. When the life cycle of a story is cut off at the very beginning when it’s born, then that allows you to speculate in any direction you want. You can speculate, “It means nothing. It’s nonsense. It’s a Russian laptop. It’s disinformation,” or on the other hand, “This means that Joe Biden was personally calling Hunter and telling him to pick up a sack of cash over in Beijing, and then he became president and he’s influence pedaling.”
So this is why it’s important to allow these stories to go forward. So this is why actually the bigger story for the moment is not the laptop, it’s the reaction to the laptop because it cut off that life cycle of the story. Then at some point I would assume that there will be some follow-on questions that are actually answered. I mean, the House is pledging if it goes Republican, to investigate all of this. Again, I wouldn’t be supremely surprised if it turns out that there was no direct involvement of Joe in this sort of stuff. Because it turns out, as I said before, that all of politics is veep.
This is always the story with half the scandals that you see is that everybody assumes that there’s some sort of deep and abiding clever plan, that some politician is implementing it, and then you look at it and it turns out now it’s just something dumb, right? This is perfect example of this, President Trump with the classified documents in Maralago. So people on the [inaudible 00:54:05], “It’s probably nuclear codes. Probably he’s taking secret documents and selling them to the Russians or the Chinese.” The real most obvious explanation is Trump looked at the papers and he said, “I like these papers.” Then he just decided to keep them right. Then people came to him and said, “Mr. President, you’re not allowed to keep those papers.” He said, “Who are those people? I don’t care about what they have to say. I’m putting them in the other room, in a box.”
Which is, it is highly likely that that is what happened. It’s very disappointing to people, I think, when they realize it. I mean, you know this better than I do, but the human brain is built to find patterns. It’s what we like to do. We like to find plans and patterns because this is how we survived in the wild; is you found a plan, you found a pattern, you cracked the code of the universe. When it comes to politics. The conspiracy theories that we see so often, often it’s largely because we’re seeing inexplicable events. Unless you just assume everyone’s more on. If you assume that there’s a lot of stupidity going on, everything becomes quickly explicable. If you assume that there must be some rationale behind it. You have to come up with increasingly convoluted conspiracy theories to explain just why people are acting the way that they’re acting. I find that, I don’t say 100% of the time, but 94% of the time the conspiracy theory turns out just to be people being dumb, and then other people reacting in dumb ways to the original people being dumb.
Lex Fridman
But it’s also to me in that same way, very possible, very likely, that Hunter Biden getting money in Ukraine, I guess, for consulting and all that kind of stuff is nothing burger, is he’s qualified, he’s getting money as he should. There’s a lot of influence pedaling in general, that’s not it corrupt.
But it’s also to me in that same way, very possible, very likely, that Hunter Biden getting money in Ukraine, I guess, for consulting and all that kind of stuff is nothing burger, is he’s qualified, he’s getting money as he should. There’s a lot of influence pedaling in general, that’s not it corrupt.
Ben Shapiro
I think the most obvious explanation there probably is that he was fake influence pedaling. Meaning he wants Ukraine and he’s like, “Guess what? My dad’s Joe,” and they’re like, “Well, you don’t have any qualifications in oil and natural gas, and you don’t really have a great resume, but your dad is Joe.” Then that was the end of it. They gave him a bag of cash, hoping he would do something. He never did anything.
I think the most obvious explanation there probably is that he was fake influence pedaling. Meaning he wants Ukraine and he’s like, “Guess what? My dad’s Joe,” and they’re like, “Well, you don’t have any qualifications in oil and natural gas, and you don’t really have a great resume, but your dad is Joe.” Then that was the end of it. They gave him a bag of cash, hoping he would do something. He never did anything.
Lex Fridman
I think you’re making it sound worse than it is. I think this in general consulting is done in that way. It’s not like you’re not-
I think you’re making it sound worse than it is. I think this in general consulting is done in that way. It’s not like you’re not-
Ben Shapiro
I agree with.
I agree with.
Lex Fridman
It’s not like he is some rare case, and this is an illustration of corruption. If you can criticize consulting, which I would-
It’s not like he is some rare case, and this is an illustration of corruption. If you can criticize consulting, which I would-
Ben Shapiro
That’s fair.
That’s fair.
Lex Fridman
… which they’re basically not providing. You look at a resume and who’s who. If you went to Harvard, I can criticize the same thing. If you have Harvard on your resume, you’re more likely to be hired as a consultant. Maybe there’s a network there of people that you know and you hire them in that same way. If your last name is Biden… There’s a lot of last names that sound pretty good at it, right?
… which they’re basically not providing. You look at a resume and who’s who. If you went to Harvard, I can criticize the same thing. If you have Harvard on your resume, you’re more likely to be hired as a consultant. Maybe there’s a network there of people that you know and you hire them in that same way. If your last name is Biden… There’s a lot of last names that sound pretty good at it, right?
Ben Shapiro
That’s for sure, for sure, for sure.
That’s for sure, for sure, for sure.
Lex Fridman
It’s not like [inaudible 00:56:32]-
It’s not like [inaudible 00:56:32]-
Ben Shapiro
Hunter Biden admitted that much, by the way, right. In an open interview. He was like, “If your last name weren’t Biden when you got that job?” He is like, “Probably not.” And you’re right.
Hunter Biden admitted that much, by the way, right. In an open interview. He was like, “If your last name weren’t Biden when you got that job?” He is like, “Probably not.” And you’re right.
Lex Fridman
That’s an honest-
That’s an honest-
Ben Shapiro
I agree with you.
I agree with you.
Lex Fridman
It’s not like he’s getting a ridiculous amount of money. He was getting a pretty standard consulting kind of money, which also would criticize because they get a ridiculous amount of money. But sort of even to push back on the life cycle or [inaudible 00:56:52] madness, the side that was concerned about the Hunter Biden laptop story. I don’t know if there is a natural life cycle of a story because there’s something about the virality of the internet that we can’t predict that a story can just take hold and the conspiracy around it builds, especially around politics, where some popular sexy interpretation of a story that might not be connected to reality at all will become viral. That from Facebook’s perspective is probably what they’re worried about is organized misinformation campaign that makes up a sexy story or sexy interpretation of the vague story that we have, and that has an influence on the populace.
It’s not like he’s getting a ridiculous amount of money. He was getting a pretty standard consulting kind of money, which also would criticize because they get a ridiculous amount of money. But sort of even to push back on the life cycle or [inaudible 00:56:52] madness, the side that was concerned about the Hunter Biden laptop story. I don’t know if there is a natural life cycle of a story because there’s something about the virality of the internet that we can’t predict that a story can just take hold and the conspiracy around it builds, especially around politics, where some popular sexy interpretation of a story that might not be connected to reality at all will become viral. That from Facebook’s perspective is probably what they’re worried about is organized misinformation campaign that makes up a sexy story or sexy interpretation of the vague story that we have, and that has an influence on the populace.
Ben Shapiro
I mean, I think that’s true. But I think the question becomes, who’s the great adjudicator there? Who adjudicates when the story ought to be allowed to go through even a bad life cycle or allowed to go viral as opposed to not. Now, that’s one thing if you want to say, “Okay, we can spot the Russian accounts that are actually promoting this stuff. They belong to the Russian government. Got to shut that down.” I think everybody agrees. This is actually one of the slides that’s happened linguistically that I really object to is the slide between disinformation and misinformation. You noticed there was this evolution. In 2017, there was a lot of talk about disinformation. There was Russian disinformation. The Russians were putting out deliberately false information in order to skew election results, was the accusation. Then people started using disinformation or misinformation, and misinformation is either mistaken information or information that is, “out of context” that becomes very subjective very quickly as to what out of context means.
I mean, I think that’s true. But I think the question becomes, who’s the great adjudicator there? Who adjudicates when the story ought to be allowed to go through even a bad life cycle or allowed to go viral as opposed to not. Now, that’s one thing if you want to say, “Okay, we can spot the Russian accounts that are actually promoting this stuff. They belong to the Russian government. Got to shut that down.” I think everybody agrees. This is actually one of the slides that’s happened linguistically that I really object to is the slide between disinformation and misinformation. You noticed there was this evolution. In 2017, there was a lot of talk about disinformation. There was Russian disinformation. The Russians were putting out deliberately false information in order to skew election results, was the accusation. Then people started using disinformation or misinformation, and misinformation is either mistaken information or information that is, “out of context” that becomes very subjective very quickly as to what out of context means.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be from a foreign source; it can be from a domestic source. It could be somebody misinterpreting something here. It could be somebody interpreting something correctly, but PolitiFact things that it’s out of context, and that sort of stuff gets very murky very quickly. So I’m deeply uncomfortable with the idea that Facebook, I mean, Zuckerberg was on with Rogan and talking about how the FBI had basically said lookout for Russian interference in the election, and then all of these people were out there saying that the laptop was Russian disinformation. So he basically shut it down. That sort of stuff is frightening, especially because it wasn’t Russian disinformation. I mean, the laptop was real. So the fact that you have people who seemed to… Let’s put it this way, maybe this is wrong. It seems as though when a story gets killed preemptively like this, it is almost universally a story that negatively affects one side of the political aisle.
I can’t remember the last time there was a story on the right that was disinformation or misinformation where social media stepped in and they went, “We cannot have this. This cannot be distributed. We’re going to all colludes that this information is not distributed.” Maybe in response to the story being proof false, it gets taken down. But, well, what made the Hunter Biden thing so amazing is that it wasn’t relieving in response to anything. It was like the story got posted. There were no actual doubts expressed as to the verified falsity of the story. It was just supposition that it had to be false and everybody jumped in. So I think that confirmed a lot of the conspiracy theories people had about social media and how it works.
Lex Fridman
So if the reason you want to slow down the viral spread of a thing is at all grounded in partisanship, that’s a problem. You should be very honest with yourself and ask yourself that question, ” Is it because I’m on the left or on the right that I want to slow this down?” Versus, is it hate, bipartisan hate speech? But it’s really tricky. But like you, I’m very uncomfortable in general, but then you kind of slowing down with any kind of censorship. But if there’s something like a conspiracy theory that spreads hate, that becomes viral. I still lean to let that conspiracy theory spread because the alternative is dangerous, more dangerous.
So if the reason you want to slow down the viral spread of a thing is at all grounded in partisanship, that’s a problem. You should be very honest with yourself and ask yourself that question, ” Is it because I’m on the left or on the right that I want to slow this down?” Versus, is it hate, bipartisan hate speech? But it’s really tricky. But like you, I’m very uncomfortable in general, but then you kind of slowing down with any kind of censorship. But if there’s something like a conspiracy theory that spreads hate, that becomes viral. I still lean to let that conspiracy theory spread because the alternative is dangerous, more dangerous.
Ben Shapiro
It’s sort of like the ring of power. Everybody wants the ring because with the ring, you can stop the bad guys from going forward. But it turns out that the ring gives you enormous power, and that power can be used in the wrong ways, too.
It’s sort of like the ring of power. Everybody wants the ring because with the ring, you can stop the bad guys from going forward. But it turns out that the ring gives you enormous power, and that power can be used in the wrong ways, too.
Lex Fridman
You had The Daily Wire, which I’m a member of.
You had The Daily Wire, which I’m a member of.
Ben Shapiro
I appreciate that. Thank you.
I appreciate that. Thank you.
Lex Fridman
I recommend everybody sign up to it. It should be part of your regular diet, whether you’re on the left and the right, the far left or the far right. Everybody should be part of your regular diet. Okay. That said, do you worry about the audience capture aspect of it because it is a platform for conservatives and you have a powerful voice on there. It might be difficult for you to go against the talking points or against the stream of ideas that is usually connected to conservative thought. Do you worry about that?
I recommend everybody sign up to it. It should be part of your regular diet, whether you’re on the left and the right, the far left or the far right. Everybody should be part of your regular diet. Okay. That said, do you worry about the audience capture aspect of it because it is a platform for conservatives and you have a powerful voice on there. It might be difficult for you to go against the talking points or against the stream of ideas that is usually connected to conservative thought. Do you worry about that?
Ben Shapiro
I mean, the audience would obviously be upset with me and would have a right to be upset with me if I suddenly flipped all of my positions on a dime. I have enough faith in my audience that I can say things that I think are true and that may disagree with the audience on a fairly regular basis, I would say. But they understand that on the deeper principle, we’re on the same side, at least, I hope, that much from the audience. It’s also why we provide a number of different views on the platforms, many of which I disagree with, but are sort of within the generalized range of conservative thought. It’s something I do have to think about every day though. Yeah, I mean, you have to think about, “Am I saying this because I’m afraid of taking off my audience or am I saying this because I actually believe?”
I mean, the audience would obviously be upset with me and would have a right to be upset with me if I suddenly flipped all of my positions on a dime. I have enough faith in my audience that I can say things that I think are true and that may disagree with the audience on a fairly regular basis, I would say. But they understand that on the deeper principle, we’re on the same side, at least, I hope, that much from the audience. It’s also why we provide a number of different views on the platforms, many of which I disagree with, but are sort of within the generalized range of conservative thought. It’s something I do have to think about every day though. Yeah, I mean, you have to think about, “Am I saying this because I’m afraid of taking off my audience or am I saying this because I actually believe?”
Ben Shapiro
I’m afraid of ticking off my audience or am I saying this because I actually believe this? And that’s a delicate dance a little bit. You have to be sort of honest with yourself.
I’m afraid of ticking off my audience or am I saying this because I actually believe this? And that’s a delicate dance a little bit. You have to be sort of honest with yourself.
Lex Fridman
Somebody like Sam Harris is pretty good at this, at fighting and saying the most outrageous thing that he knows. He almost leans into it. He knows it will piss off a lot of his audience. Sometimes you almost have to test the system. It’s like if you feel, you almost exaggerate your feelings just to make sure to send a signal to the audience that you’re not captured by them. So speaking of people you disagree with, what is your favorite thing about Candace Owens and what is one thing you disagree with her on?
Somebody like Sam Harris is pretty good at this, at fighting and saying the most outrageous thing that he knows. He almost leans into it. He knows it will piss off a lot of his audience. Sometimes you almost have to test the system. It’s like if you feel, you almost exaggerate your feelings just to make sure to send a signal to the audience that you’re not captured by them. So speaking of people you disagree with, what is your favorite thing about Candace Owens and what is one thing you disagree with her on?
Candace Owens
Ben Shapiro
Well, my favorite thing about Candace is that she will say things that nobody else will say. My least favorite thing about Candace is that she will say things that nobody else will say. I mean, listen, she says things that are audacious and I think need to be said. Sometimes I think that she is morally wrong. I think the way she responded to Kanye, I’ve said this clearly was dead wrong and morally wrong.
Well, my favorite thing about Candace is that she will say things that nobody else will say. My least favorite thing about Candace is that she will say things that nobody else will say. I mean, listen, she says things that are audacious and I think need to be said. Sometimes I think that she is morally wrong. I think the way she responded to Kanye, I’ve said this clearly was dead wrong and morally wrong.
Lex Fridman
What was her response?
What was her response?
Ben Shapiro
Her original response was that she proffered confusion of what Ye was actually talking about and then she was defending her friend. I wish that the way that she had responded was by saying, “He’s my friend and also he said something bad and antisemitic.” I wish that she had said that.
Her original response was that she proffered confusion of what Ye was actually talking about and then she was defending her friend. I wish that the way that she had responded was by saying, “He’s my friend and also he said something bad and antisemitic.” I wish that she had said that.
Lex Fridman
Right away.
Right away.
Ben Shapiro
Right away.
Right away.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I think you can also… This is the interesting human thing. You can be friends with people that you disagree with and you can be friends with people that actually say hateful stuff, and one of the ways to help alleviate hate is being friends with people that say hateful things.
Yeah. I think you can also… This is the interesting human thing. You can be friends with people that you disagree with and you can be friends with people that actually say hateful stuff, and one of the ways to help alleviate hate is being friends with people that say hateful things.
Ben Shapiro
And calling them out on a personal level when they do say wrong or hateful things.
And calling them out on a personal level when they do say wrong or hateful things.
Lex Fridman
From a place of love and respect, and privately.
From a place of love and respect, and privately.
Ben Shapiro
Privately is also a big thing. I mean like the public demand for denunciation from friends to friends is difficult. And I certainly have compassion for Candace given the fact that she’s so close with Ye.
Privately is also a big thing. I mean like the public demand for denunciation from friends to friends is difficult. And I certainly have compassion for Candace given the fact that she’s so close with Ye.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it breaks my heart sometimes the public fights between friends and broken friendships. I’ve seen quite a few friendships publicly break over COVID. COVID made people behave their worst in many cases, which breaks my heart a little bit because the human connection is a prerequisite for effective debate and discussion and battles over ideas. Has there been any argument from the opposite political aisle that has made you change your mind about something If you look back?
Yeah, it breaks my heart sometimes the public fights between friends and broken friendships. I’ve seen quite a few friendships publicly break over COVID. COVID made people behave their worst in many cases, which breaks my heart a little bit because the human connection is a prerequisite for effective debate and discussion and battles over ideas. Has there been any argument from the opposite political aisle that has made you change your mind about something If you look back?
Ben Shapiro
So I will say that the… I’m thinking it through because I think that my views probably on foreign policy have morphed somewhat. I would say that I was much more interventionist when I was younger. I’m significantly less interventionist now.
So I will say that the… I’m thinking it through because I think that my views probably on foreign policy have morphed somewhat. I would say that I was much more interventionist when I was younger. I’m significantly less interventionist now.
Lex Fridman
Can you give an example?
Can you give an example?
Ben Shapiro
Sure. I was a big backer of the Iraq war. I think now in retrospect, I might not be a backer of the Iraq war. If the same situation arose again based on the amount of evidence that had been presented or based on the sort of willingness of the American public to go at it. If you’re going to get involved in a war, you have to know what the endpoint looks like and you have to know what the American people really are willing to bear. The American people are not willing to bear open-ended occupations. And so knowing that you have to consider that going in. So on foreign policy, I become a lot more of a, I’d say almost Henry Kissinger realist, in some ways. When it comes to social policy, I would say that I’m fairly strong where I may have become slightly convinced actually by more of the conservative side of the aisle on things like drug legalization.
Sure. I was a big backer of the Iraq war. I think now in retrospect, I might not be a backer of the Iraq war. If the same situation arose again based on the amount of evidence that had been presented or based on the sort of willingness of the American public to go at it. If you’re going to get involved in a war, you have to know what the endpoint looks like and you have to know what the American people really are willing to bear. The American people are not willing to bear open-ended occupations. And so knowing that you have to consider that going in. So on foreign policy, I become a lot more of a, I’d say almost Henry Kissinger realist, in some ways. When it comes to social policy, I would say that I’m fairly strong where I may have become slightly convinced actually by more of the conservative side of the aisle on things like drug legalization.
I think when I was younger I was much more pro-drug legalization than I am now, at least on the local level. On a federal level, I think the federal government can’t really do much other than close the borders with regard to fentanyl trafficking, for example. But when it comes to how drugs ruin local communities, you can see how drugs ruin local communities pretty easily.
Lex Fridman
Which is weird because I saw you smoke a joint right before this conversation.
Which is weird because I saw you smoke a joint right before this conversation.
Ben Shapiro
It’s my biggest thing. I mean, I try to keep that secret.
It’s my biggest thing. I mean, I try to keep that secret.
War in Ukraine
Lex Fridman
Right. Well that’s interesting about intervention. Can you comment about the war in Ukraine? So for me it’s a deeply personal thing, but I think you’re able to look at it from a geopolitics perspective. What is the role of the United States in this conflict? Before the conflict, during the conflict, and right now in helping achieve peace?
Right. Well that’s interesting about intervention. Can you comment about the war in Ukraine? So for me it’s a deeply personal thing, but I think you’re able to look at it from a geopolitics perspective. What is the role of the United States in this conflict? Before the conflict, during the conflict, and right now in helping achieve peace?
Ben Shapiro
I think before the conflict, the big problem is that the West took almost the worst possible view, which was encourage Ukraine to keep trying to join NATO and the EU, but don’t let them in. And so what that does is it achieves the purpose of getting Russia really, really, really ticked off and feeling threatened, but also does not give any of the protections of NATO or the EU to Ukraine. I mean Zelensky is on film when he was a comedy actor making that exact joke. He has Merkel on the other line and she’s like, “Oh, welcome to the NATO.” And he’s like, “Great.” And she’s like, “Wait, is this Ukraine on the line? Oops.” But so that sort of policy is sort of nonsensical. If you’re going to offer alliance to somebody, offer alliance to them, and if you’re going to guarantee their security, guarantee their security and the West failed signally to do that.
I think before the conflict, the big problem is that the West took almost the worst possible view, which was encourage Ukraine to keep trying to join NATO and the EU, but don’t let them in. And so what that does is it achieves the purpose of getting Russia really, really, really ticked off and feeling threatened, but also does not give any of the protections of NATO or the EU to Ukraine. I mean Zelensky is on film when he was a comedy actor making that exact joke. He has Merkel on the other line and she’s like, “Oh, welcome to the NATO.” And he’s like, “Great.” And she’s like, “Wait, is this Ukraine on the line? Oops.” But so that sort of policy is sort of nonsensical. If you’re going to offer alliance to somebody, offer alliance to them, and if you’re going to guarantee their security, guarantee their security and the West failed signally to do that.
So that was mistakes in the run up to the war. Once the war began, then the responsibility of the West began and became to give Ukraine as much material as is necessary to repel the invasion. And the West did really well with that. I think we were late on the ball in the United States. It seemed like Europe led the way a little bit more than the United States did there. But in terms of effectuating American interests in the region, which being an American is what I’m chiefly concerned about, the American interests were several fold. One is preserve borders. Two is degrade the Russian aggressive military because Russia’s military has been aggressive and they are geopolitical rival of the United States. Three, recalibrate the European balance with China. Europe was sort of balancing with Russia and China, and then because of the war they sort of rebalanced away from China and Russia, which is a real geo-strategic opportunity for the United States.
It seemed like most of those goals have already been achieved at this point for the United States. And so then the question becomes what’s the off ramp here and what is the thing you’re trying to prevent? So what’s the best opportunity, what’s the best case scenario, what’s the worst case scenario? And then what’s realistic? So best case scenario is Ukraine forces Russia entirely out of Ukraine, including Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea. That’s the best case scenario. Virtually no one thinks that’s accomplishable, including the United States. The White House has basically said as much, it’s still cool to imagine particularly Crimea, the Russians being forced out of Crimea.
The Ukrainians have been successful in pushing the Russians out of certain parts of Luhansk and Donetsk, but the idea they’re going to be able to push the entire Russian army completely back to the Russian borders, that would be at best a very, very long and difficult slog in the middle of a collapsing Ukrainian economy, which is a point that Zelensky has made. It’s like it’s not enough for you guys to give us military aid. We’re in the middle of a war, we’re going to need economic aid as well. So it’s a pretty open-ended and strong commitment.
Lex Fridman
Can I take a small tangent on that and best case scenario, if that does militarily happen, including Crimea, do you think there’s a world in which Vladimir Putin would be able to convince the Russian people that this was a good conclusion to the war?
Can I take a small tangent on that and best case scenario, if that does militarily happen, including Crimea, do you think there’s a world in which Vladimir Putin would be able to convince the Russian people that this was a good conclusion to the war?
Ben Shapiro
So the problem is that the best case scenario might also be the worst case scenario. Meaning that there are a couple of scenarios that are sort of the worst case scenario and this is of the puzzlement of the situation. One is that Putin feels so boxed in, so unable to go back to his own people and say, “We just wasted tens of thousands of lives here for no reason,” that he unleashes a tactical, a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield. Nobody knows what happens after that. So we put NATO planes in the air to take out Russian assets, so Russians start shooting down planes, does Russia then threaten to escalate even further by attacking an actual NATO civilian center or even Ukrainian civilian center with nuclear weapons? Where it goes from there nobody knows because nuclear weapons haven’t been used since 1945. So that is a worst case scenario.
So the problem is that the best case scenario might also be the worst case scenario. Meaning that there are a couple of scenarios that are sort of the worst case scenario and this is of the puzzlement of the situation. One is that Putin feels so boxed in, so unable to go back to his own people and say, “We just wasted tens of thousands of lives here for no reason,” that he unleashes a tactical, a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield. Nobody knows what happens after that. So we put NATO planes in the air to take out Russian assets, so Russians start shooting down planes, does Russia then threaten to escalate even further by attacking an actual NATO civilian center or even Ukrainian civilian center with nuclear weapons? Where it goes from there nobody knows because nuclear weapons haven’t been used since 1945. So that is a worst case scenario.
It’s an unpredictable scenario that could devolve into really, really significant problems. The other worst case scenario could be a best case scenario. It could be a worse, we just don’t know, is Putin falls, what happens after that? Who takes over for Putin? Is that person more moderate than Putin? Is that person a liberalizer? It probably won’t be Navalny, if he’s going to be ousted, it’ll probably somebody who’s a top member of Putin’s brass right now and has capacity to control the military, or it’s possible the entire regime breaks down. What you end up with is Syria in Russia where you just have an entirely out of control region with no centralizing power, which is also a disaster area. And so in the nature of risk mitigation, in sort of an attempt at risk mitigation, what actually should be happening right now is some off ramp has to be offered to Putin.
The off ramp likely is going to be him maintaining Crimea and parts of Luhansk and Donetsk. It’s probably going to be a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO formally, but a guarantee by the West to defend Ukraine in case of an invasion of it borders again by Russia like an actual treaty obligation, not like the BS treaty obligation and when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in the nineties, and that is likely how this is going to have to go. The problem is that requires political courage, not from Zelensky, it requires courage from probably Biden because the only… Zelensky is not in a political position where he can go back to his own people who have made unbelievable sacrifices on behalf of their nation in freedom and say to them, “Guys, now I’m calling it quits. We’re going to have to give them Luhansk and Donetsk and give Putin an off ramp.”
I don’t think that’s an acceptable answer to most Ukrainians at this point in time. From the polling data and from the available data we have on the ground, it’s going to actually take Biden biting the bullet and being the bad guy and saying to Zelensky, “Listen, we’ve made a commitment of material aid. We’re offering you all these things, including essentially a defense pact. We’re offering you all this stuff, but if you don’t come to the table then we’re going to have to start weaning you off.” There will have to be a stick there, it can’t just be a carrot. And so that will allow Zelensky, if Biden were to do that, it allows Zelensky to blame Biden for the solution everybody knows has to happen. So Zelensky can go back to his own people and he can say, “Listen, this is the way it has to go. I don’t want it to go this way, but it’s not my… I’m signing other people’s checks, right? I mean, this is not my money.”
And Biden would take the hit because he wouldn’t then be able to blame Ukraine for whatever happens next, which has been the easy road off I think for a lot of politicians in the West. It’s for them to just say, “Well this is up to the Ukrainians to decide. It’s up to the Ukrainians to decide.” Well is it totally up to the Ukrainians to decide, because it seems like the West is signing an awful lot of checks and all of Europe is going to freeze this winter?
Lex Fridman
This is the importance of great leadership by the way. That’s why the people we elect is very important. Do you think there’s power to just one on one conversation, or Biden sits down with Zelensky, and Biden sits down with Putin, almost in person? Or maybe I’m romanticizing the notion, but having done these podcasts in person, I think there’s something fundamentally different than through a remote call and also a distant kind of recorded political type speak, versus like man to man.
This is the importance of great leadership by the way. That’s why the people we elect is very important. Do you think there’s power to just one on one conversation, or Biden sits down with Zelensky, and Biden sits down with Putin, almost in person? Or maybe I’m romanticizing the notion, but having done these podcasts in person, I think there’s something fundamentally different than through a remote call and also a distant kind of recorded political type speak, versus like man to man.
Ben Shapiro
So I’m deeply afraid that Putin outplays people in the one-on-one scenarios because he’s done it to multiple presidents already. He gets in one-on-one scenarios with Bush, with Obama, with Trump, with Biden, and he seems to be a very canny operator and a very sort of hard-nosed operator in those situations. I think that if you were going to do something like that, like an actual political face-to-face summit, what you would need is for Biden to first have a conversation with Zelensky where Zelensky knows what’s going on. So he’s aware and then Biden walks in and he says to Putin on camera, “Here’s the offer, let’s get it together, let’s make peace. You get to keep this stuff.” And then let Putin respond how Putin is going to respond. But the big problem for Putin, I think, and the problem with public facing forum, maybe it’s a private meeting.
So I’m deeply afraid that Putin outplays people in the one-on-one scenarios because he’s done it to multiple presidents already. He gets in one-on-one scenarios with Bush, with Obama, with Trump, with Biden, and he seems to be a very canny operator and a very sort of hard-nosed operator in those situations. I think that if you were going to do something like that, like an actual political face-to-face summit, what you would need is for Biden to first have a conversation with Zelensky where Zelensky knows what’s going on. So he’s aware and then Biden walks in and he says to Putin on camera, “Here’s the offer, let’s get it together, let’s make peace. You get to keep this stuff.” And then let Putin respond how Putin is going to respond. But the big problem for Putin, I think, and the problem with public facing forum, maybe it’s a private meeting.
If it’s a private meeting, maybe that’s the best thing. If it’s a public facing forum, I think it’s a problem because Putin’s afraid of being humiliated at this point. If it’s a private meeting, then sure, except that again, I wonder whether when it comes to a person as canny as Putin and to a politician that I really don’t think is a particularly sophisticated player in Joe Biden. And again this is not unique to Biden, I think that most of our presidents for the last 30, 40 years have not been particularly sophisticated players. I think that’s a risky scenario.
Lex Fridman
I still believe in the power of that because otherwise, I don’t know. I don’t think stuff on paper and political speak will solve these kinds of problems because from the Zelensky perspective, nothing but complete victory will do. As a nation, has people sacrificed way too much and they’re all in. If you look at, because I traveled to Ukraine, I spent time there. I’ll be going back there hopefully also going back to Russia, just speaking to Ukrainians, they’re all in. They’re all in.
I still believe in the power of that because otherwise, I don’t know. I don’t think stuff on paper and political speak will solve these kinds of problems because from the Zelensky perspective, nothing but complete victory will do. As a nation, has people sacrificed way too much and they’re all in. If you look at, because I traveled to Ukraine, I spent time there. I’ll be going back there hopefully also going back to Russia, just speaking to Ukrainians, they’re all in. They’re all in.
Ben Shapiro
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Nothing but complete victory.
Nothing but complete victory.
Ben Shapiro
Yep, that’s right.
Yep, that’s right.
Lex Fridman
And so for that, the only way to achieve peace is through honest human to human conversation. Giving both people a way to off ramp to walk away victorious. And some of that requires speaking honestly as a human being, but also for America to the… Actually, not even America, honestly, just the president be able to eat their own ego a bit and be the punching bag a little. Just enough for both presidents to be able to walk away and say, “Listen, we got the American president to come to us.” And I think that makes the President look strong, not weak.
And so for that, the only way to achieve peace is through honest human to human conversation. Giving both people a way to off ramp to walk away victorious. And some of that requires speaking honestly as a human being, but also for America to the… Actually, not even America, honestly, just the president be able to eat their own ego a bit and be the punching bag a little. Just enough for both presidents to be able to walk away and say, “Listen, we got the American president to come to us.” And I think that makes the President look strong, not weak.
Ben Shapiro
I mean, I agree with you. I think it would also require some people on the right, people like me, if it’s Joe Biden, to say, “If Biden does that, I see what he’s doing and it’s the right move.” I think one of the things that he’s afraid of to steel man him, I think one of the things he’s afraid of is he goes and he makes that sort of deal and the right says, “You just cower in front of Russia, you just gave away Ukraine,” whatever it is. But it’s going to require some people on the right to say that that move is the right move and then hold by it, if Biden actually performs that move.
I mean, I agree with you. I think it would also require some people on the right, people like me, if it’s Joe Biden, to say, “If Biden does that, I see what he’s doing and it’s the right move.” I think one of the things that he’s afraid of to steel man him, I think one of the things he’s afraid of is he goes and he makes that sort of deal and the right says, “You just cower in front of Russia, you just gave away Ukraine,” whatever it is. But it’s going to require some people on the right to say that that move is the right move and then hold by it, if Biden actually performs that move.
Rhetoric vs truth
Lex Fridman
You’re exceptionally good at debate. You wrote How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them. You’re kind of known for this kind of stuff, just exceptionally skilled, the conversation, the debate, at getting to the facts of the matter and using logic to get to the conclusion in the debate. Do you ever worry that this power… Talk about the ring, this power you were given has corrupted you and your ability to see what’s… To pursue the truth versus just winning debates?
You’re exceptionally good at debate. You wrote How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them. You’re kind of known for this kind of stuff, just exceptionally skilled, the conversation, the debate, at getting to the facts of the matter and using logic to get to the conclusion in the debate. Do you ever worry that this power… Talk about the ring, this power you were given has corrupted you and your ability to see what’s… To pursue the truth versus just winning debates?
Ben Shapiro
I hope not. I so I think one of the things that’s kind of funny about the branding versus the reality is that most of the things that get characterized as “Destroying” in debates with facts and logic, most of those things are basically me having a conversation with somebody on a college campus. It actually isn’t like a formal debate where we sit there and we critique each other’s positions or it’s not me insulting anybody. A lot of the clips that have gone very viral is me making an argument and then they’re not being an amazing counter argument. Many of the debates that I’ve held have been extremely cordial. I take the latest example about a year ago I debated Ana Kasparian from Young Turks. It was very cordial, it was very nice, right? Yeah. That’s sort of the way that I like to debate. My rule when it comes to debate and or discussion is that my opponent actually gets to pick the mode in which we work.
I hope not. I so I think one of the things that’s kind of funny about the branding versus the reality is that most of the things that get characterized as “Destroying” in debates with facts and logic, most of those things are basically me having a conversation with somebody on a college campus. It actually isn’t like a formal debate where we sit there and we critique each other’s positions or it’s not me insulting anybody. A lot of the clips that have gone very viral is me making an argument and then they’re not being an amazing counter argument. Many of the debates that I’ve held have been extremely cordial. I take the latest example about a year ago I debated Ana Kasparian from Young Turks. It was very cordial, it was very nice, right? Yeah. That’s sort of the way that I like to debate. My rule when it comes to debate and or discussion is that my opponent actually gets to pick the mode in which we work.
So if it’s going to be a debate of ideas and we’re just going to discuss and critique and clarify, then we can do that. If somebody comes loaded for bear, then I will respond in kind, because one of the big problems I think in sort of the debate/ discussion sphere is very often misdiagnosis of what exactly is going on. People who think that a discussion is debate and vice versa. And that can be a real problem. And there are people who will treat what ought to be a discussion as, for example, an exercise and performance art. And so what that is mugging or trolling or saying trolley things in order to just get to the… That’s something I actually don’t do during debate. I mean, if you actually watch me talk to people, I don’t actually do the trolling thing. The trolling thing is almost solely relegated to Twitter and me making jokes on my show. When it comes to actually debating people. That sounds actually a lot. What we’re doing right now is just the person maybe taking just an adverse position to mine. And so that’s fine. Usually half the debate or discussion is me just asking for clarification of terms. “What exactly do you mean by this?” So I can drill down on where the actual disagreement may lie. Because some of the time people think they’re disagreeing and they’re actually not disagreeing. When I’m talking with Ana Kasparian, and she’s talking about how corporate and government have too much power together, I’m like, “Well, you sound like the Tea Party. You and I are on the same page about that.” That sort of stuff does tend to happen a lot in discussion. I think that when discussion gets termed “Debate”, it’s a problem, when debate gets termed “Discussion”, it’s even more problematic because debate is a different thing.
Lex Fridman
And I find that your debate and your conversation is often in good faith. You’re able to steel man on the other side, you’re actually listening, you’re considering the other side. The times when I see that “Ben Shapiro destroys leftist”, it’s usually just like you said, the other side is doing the trolling because I mean the people that do criticize you for that interaction is the people that usually get destroyed are like 20 years old and they’re usually not sophisticated in any kind of degree in terms of being able to use logic and reason and facts and so on.
And I find that your debate and your conversation is often in good faith. You’re able to steel man on the other side, you’re actually listening, you’re considering the other side. The times when I see that “Ben Shapiro destroys leftist”, it’s usually just like you said, the other side is doing the trolling because I mean the people that do criticize you for that interaction is the people that usually get destroyed are like 20 years old and they’re usually not sophisticated in any kind of degree in terms of being able to use logic and reason and facts and so on.
Ben Shapiro
And that’s totally fine, by the way. I mean if people want to criticize me for speaking on college campuses where a lot of political conversation happens both right and left, that’s fine. I mean, I’ve had lots of conversations with people on the other side of the aisle too. I mean, right. I’ve done podcasts with Sam Harris and we’ve talked about atheism, or I’ve done debates with Ana Kasparian, or I’ve done debate with Cenk Uygur, or I’ve had conversations with lots of people on the other side of the aisle. In fact, I believe I’ve the only person on the right who recommends that people listen to his shows on the other side of the aisle. I mean, I say on my show, on a fairly regular basis, that people should listen to Pod Save America. Now, no one on Pod Save America will ever say that somebody should listen to my show.
And that’s totally fine, by the way. I mean if people want to criticize me for speaking on college campuses where a lot of political conversation happens both right and left, that’s fine. I mean, I’ve had lots of conversations with people on the other side of the aisle too. I mean, right. I’ve done podcasts with Sam Harris and we’ve talked about atheism, or I’ve done debates with Ana Kasparian, or I’ve done debate with Cenk Uygur, or I’ve had conversations with lots of people on the other side of the aisle. In fact, I believe I’ve the only person on the right who recommends that people listen to his shows on the other side of the aisle. I mean, I say on my show, on a fairly regular basis, that people should listen to Pod Save America. Now, no one on Pod Save America will ever say that somebody should listen to my show.
That is verboten. That is not something that can be had. It’s one of the strangenesses of our politics. It’s what I’ve called the “Happy Birthday Problem”, which is I have a lot of friends who are of the left and are publicly of the left and on my birthday they’ll send you a text message, ” Happy birthday”, but they will never tweet happy birthday, less they be acknowledging that you were born of woman and that this can’t be allowed. So on the Sunday special, I’ve had a bevy of people who are on the other side of the aisle, a lot of them ranging from people in Hollywood like Jason Blum, to Larry Wilmore, to Sam, to just a lot of people on the left.
I think we’re in the near future, probably going to do a Sunday special with Ro Khanna, the California congressperson. Very nice guy. I had him on the show. That kind of stuff is fun and interesting. But I think that the easy way out for a clip that people don’t like is to either immediately clip the clip, it’s like a two minute clip and clip it down to 15 seconds where somebody insults me and then that goes viral, which is, welcome to the internet. Or to say, “Well, you’re only debating college… You’re only talking to 20…” I mean, I talked to a lot more people than that. That’s just not the stuff you’re watching.
Infamous BBC interview
Lex Fridman
You lost your cool in an interview with BBC’s Andrew and Neil, and you were really honest about it after, which was kind of refreshing and enjoyable. As the internet said, “They’ve never seen anyone lose an interview.” So to me, honestly, it was like seeing Floyd Mayweather Jr. or somebody knocked down. Can you take me through that experience?
You lost your cool in an interview with BBC’s Andrew and Neil, and you were really honest about it after, which was kind of refreshing and enjoyable. As the internet said, “They’ve never seen anyone lose an interview.” So to me, honestly, it was like seeing Floyd Mayweather Jr. or somebody knocked down. Can you take me through that experience?
Ben Shapiro
Here’s that day. That day is I have a book released, didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before, and this is the last interview of the day, and it’s an interview with BBC. I don’t know anything about BBC, I don’t watch BBC, I don’t know any of the hosts. So we get on the interview and it’s supposed to be about the book and the host, Andrew Neil doesn’t ask virtually a single question about the book. He just starts reading me bad, old tweets. Which I hate, I mean, it is annoying and it’s stupid and it’s the worst form of interview when somebody just reads you bad, old tweets. Especially when I’ve acknowledged bad, old tweets before.
Here’s that day. That day is I have a book released, didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before, and this is the last interview of the day, and it’s an interview with BBC. I don’t know anything about BBC, I don’t watch BBC, I don’t know any of the hosts. So we get on the interview and it’s supposed to be about the book and the host, Andrew Neil doesn’t ask virtually a single question about the book. He just starts reading me bad, old tweets. Which I hate, I mean, it is annoying and it’s stupid and it’s the worst form of interview when somebody just reads you bad, old tweets. Especially when I’ve acknowledged bad, old tweets before.
And so I’m going through the list with him and this interview was solidly 20 minutes. I mean, it was a long interview and I make a couple of particularly annoyed mistakes in the interview. So annoyed mistake number one is the ego play. So there’s a point in the middle of the interview where I say, “I don’t even know who you are,” which was true. I didn’t know who he was. It turns out he was a very famous person in Britain. And so you can’t make that ego play.
Lex Fridman
But even if he’s not famous, that’s not…
But even if he’s not famous, that’s not…
Ben Shapiro
It’s a dumb thing to do and it’s an ass thing to do. So, saying that was more just kind of peak silliness. So, that was mistake.
It’s a dumb thing to do and it’s an ass thing to do. So, saying that was more just kind of peak silliness. So, that was mistake.
Lex Fridman
I enjoyed watching that. It was like, “Oh, Ben is human.”
I enjoyed watching that. It was like, “Oh, Ben is human.”
Ben Shapiro
Yes, I’m glad somebody enjoyed it. So, there’s that. And then the other mistake was that I just don’t watch enough British TV. So the way that interviews are done there, are much more adversarial than American TV. In American TV, If somebody is adversarial with you, you assume that they’re a member of the other side. That’s typically how it is. And so I’m critiquing some of his questions at the beginning and I thought that the critique of some of his questions is actually fair. He was asking me about abortion and I thought he was asking it from a way of framing the question that wasn’t accurate. And so I assumed that he was on the left, because again, I’d never heard of him. And so I mischaracterize him and I apologize later for mischaracterizing him. We finally go through the interview. It’s 20 minutes. He just keeps going with the bad, old tweets.
Yes, I’m glad somebody enjoyed it. So, there’s that. And then the other mistake was that I just don’t watch enough British TV. So the way that interviews are done there, are much more adversarial than American TV. In American TV, If somebody is adversarial with you, you assume that they’re a member of the other side. That’s typically how it is. And so I’m critiquing some of his questions at the beginning and I thought that the critique of some of his questions is actually fair. He was asking me about abortion and I thought he was asking it from a way of framing the question that wasn’t accurate. And so I assumed that he was on the left, because again, I’d never heard of him. And so I mischaracterize him and I apologize later for mischaracterizing him. We finally go through the interview. It’s 20 minutes. He just keeps going with the bad, old tweets.
And finally I got up and I took off the microphone, and I walked out. And immediately I knew it was a mistake. Within 30 seconds of the end of interview, I knew it was a mistake. And that’s why even before the interview came out, I believe I corrected the record that Andrew Neil is not on the left, that’s a mistake by me. And then took the hit for a bad interview. And so as far as what I wish I had done differently, I wish I had known who he was. I wish I’d done my research. I wish that I had treated it as though there was a possibility that it was going to be more adversarial than it was.
I think I was incautious about the interview because it was pitched as, “It’s just another book interview,” and it wasn’t just another book interview, it was treated much more adversarially than that. So I wish… That’s on me. I got to research the people who are talking to me and watch their shows and learn about that. And then obviously the kind of gut level appeal to ego or arrogance, that’s a bad look and shouldn’t have done that. And losing your cool is always a bad look.
Day in the life
Lex Fridman
So the fact that that became somewhat viral and stood out just shows that it happens so rarely to you. So just to look at the day in the life of Ben Shapiro, you speak a lot, very eloquently, about difficult topics. What goes into the research, the mental part… And you always look pretty energetic and you’re not exhausted by the burden, the heaviness of the topics you’re covering day, after day, after day, after day. So what goes through the preparation mentally, diet wise, anything like that? When do you wake up?
So the fact that that became somewhat viral and stood out just shows that it happens so rarely to you. So just to look at the day in the life of Ben Shapiro, you speak a lot, very eloquently, about difficult topics. What goes into the research, the mental part… And you always look pretty energetic and you’re not exhausted by the burden, the heaviness of the topics you’re covering day, after day, after day, after day. So what goes through the preparation mentally, diet wise, anything like that? When do you wake up?
Ben Shapiro
Okay, so I wake up when my kids wake me up, usually that’s my baby daughter who’s two and a half. We hear on the monitor usually about 6:15, 6:20 AM So I get up, my wife sleeps in a little bit. I go get the baby, then my son gets up, and then my oldest daughter gets up. I have eight, six, and two. The boy is the middle child.
Okay, so I wake up when my kids wake me up, usually that’s my baby daughter who’s two and a half. We hear on the monitor usually about 6:15, 6:20 AM So I get up, my wife sleeps in a little bit. I go get the baby, then my son gets up, and then my oldest daughter gets up. I have eight, six, and two. The boy is the middle child.
Lex Fridman
Is that both the source of stress and happiness?
Is that both the source of stress and happiness?
Ben Shapiro
It’s the height of both, right? I mean, it’s the source of the greatest happiness. So the way that I characterize it is this, when it comes to sort of kids in life, so when you’re single, your boundaries of happiness and unhappiness, you can be a zero in terms of happiness, you can be a 10 in terms of happiness. Then you get married and it goes up to a 20 and a negative 20, because your happiest stuff is with your wife, and then the most unhappy stuff is when something happens to your spouse, it’s the worst thing in the entire world. Then you have kids and all limits are removed. So the best things that have ever happened to me are things where I’m watching my kids and they’re playing together and they’re being wonderful and sweet and cute and I love them so much. And the worst things are when my son is screaming at me for no reason because he’s being insane and I have to deal with that, or something bad happens to my daughter at school or something like that.
It’s the height of both, right? I mean, it’s the source of the greatest happiness. So the way that I characterize it is this, when it comes to sort of kids in life, so when you’re single, your boundaries of happiness and unhappiness, you can be a zero in terms of happiness, you can be a 10 in terms of happiness. Then you get married and it goes up to a 20 and a negative 20, because your happiest stuff is with your wife, and then the most unhappy stuff is when something happens to your spouse, it’s the worst thing in the entire world. Then you have kids and all limits are removed. So the best things that have ever happened to me are things where I’m watching my kids and they’re playing together and they’re being wonderful and sweet and cute and I love them so much. And the worst things are when my son is screaming at me for no reason because he’s being insane and I have to deal with that, or something bad happens to my daughter at school or something like that.
That stuff is really it. So yes, the source of my greatest happiness, the source of my greatest stress. So they get me up at about 6:15 in the morning. I feed them breakfast. I’m kind of scrolling the news while I’m making the eggs and just updating myself on anything that may have happened overnight. I go into the office, put on the makeup and the wardrobe or whatever, and then I sit down and do the show. A lot of the prep is actually done the night before because the news cycle doesn’t change all that much between kind of late at night and in the morning. So I can supplement in the morning. So I do the show.
Lex Fridman
So a lot of the preparation, thinking through what are the big issues in the world is done the night before?
So a lot of the preparation, thinking through what are the big issues in the world is done the night before?
Ben Shapiro
Yeah. And that’s reading pretty much all the legacy media. So I rip on legacy media a lot, but that’s because a lot of what they do is really good and a lot of what they do is really bad. I cover a lot of legacy media, so that’s probably covering Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Daily Mail. And then I’ll look over at some of the alternative media. I’ll look at my own website, Daily Wire, I’ll look at Breitbart, I’ll look at The Blaze, I’ll look at maybe The Intercept. I’ll look at a bunch of different sources, and then I will look at different clips online. So Media Eye comes in handy here, [inaudible 01:27:14] comes in handy here, that sort of stuff.
Yeah. And that’s reading pretty much all the legacy media. So I rip on legacy media a lot, but that’s because a lot of what they do is really good and a lot of what they do is really bad. I cover a lot of legacy media, so that’s probably covering Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Daily Mail. And then I’ll look over at some of the alternative media. I’ll look at my own website, Daily Wire, I’ll look at Breitbart, I’ll look at The Blaze, I’ll look at maybe The Intercept. I’ll look at a bunch of different sources, and then I will look at different clips online. So Media Eye comes in handy here, [inaudible 01:27:14] comes in handy here, that sort of stuff.
Because my show relies very heavily on being able to play people so you can hear them in their own words. And so that’s sort of the media eye. So I sit down, I do the show, and then once I’m done with the show, I usually have between… Now it’s like 11:15 in the morning maybe, because sometimes I’ll prerecord the show. So it’s 11:15 in the morning, I’ll go home and if my wife’s available, I’ll grab lunch with her. If not, then I will go and work out. I try to work out five times a week with a trainer, something like that. And then I will…
Lex Fridman
Just regular gym stuff.
Just regular gym stuff.
Ben Shapiro
Weights and plyometrics and some CrossFit kind of stuff. I mean beneath this mild stool lies a hulking monster. And so I’ll do that. Then I will do reading and writing. So I’m usually working on a book at any given time.
Weights and plyometrics and some CrossFit kind of stuff. I mean beneath this mild stool lies a hulking monster. And so I’ll do that. Then I will do reading and writing. So I’m usually working on a book at any given time.
Lex Fridman
You shut off the rest of the world for that?
You shut off the rest of the world for that?
Ben Shapiro
So I put some music in my ears. Usually Brahms, or Bach, sometimes Beethoven, or Mozart, it’s those four. Usually those are on rotation.
So I put some music in my ears. Usually Brahms, or Bach, sometimes Beethoven, or Mozart, it’s those four. Usually those are on rotation.
Lex Fridman
No rap?
No rap?
Ben Shapiro
No rap. No rap. Despite my extraordinary rendition of “WAP”. Yeah, I’m not in fact a rap man.
No rap. No rap. Despite my extraordinary rendition of “WAP”. Yeah, I’m not in fact a rap man.
Lex Fridman
Do you still hate “WAP”, the song?
Do you still hate “WAP”, the song?
Ben Shapiro
I will say I do not think that it is the peak of western civilized art.
I will say I do not think that it is the peak of western civilized art.
Lex Fridman
Okay.
Okay.
Ben Shapiro
I don’t think that a hundred years from now people will be gluing their faces to a “WAP”, and protest at the environment.
I don’t think that a hundred years from now people will be gluing their faces to a “WAP”, and protest at the environment.
Lex Fridman
But about Brahms the rest will still be around.
But about Brahms the rest will still be around.
Ben Shapiro
Yes. I would assume if people still have a functioning prefrontal cortex in any sort of taste.
Yes. I would assume if people still have a functioning prefrontal cortex in any sort of taste.
Lex Fridman
Strong words from Ben Shapiro. So you got some classical music in your ears and you’re focusing, are you at the computer when you’re writing?
Strong words from Ben Shapiro. So you got some classical music in your ears and you’re focusing, are you at the computer when you’re writing?
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, at the computer. Usually we have a kind of room that has some sun coming in, so it’s nice in there. Or I’ll go up to a library that we just completed for me. So I’ll go up there and I’ll write and read.
Yeah, at the computer. Usually we have a kind of room that has some sun coming in, so it’s nice in there. Or I’ll go up to a library that we just completed for me. So I’ll go up there and I’ll write and read.
Lex Fridman
With physical books?
With physical books?
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, I love physical books. And because I keep Sabbath, I don’t use Kindle because when I’m reading a book and I hit Sabbath, I have to turn off the Kindle. So that means that I have tons and tons and tons of physical books. When we moved from Los Angeles to Florida, I had about 7,000 volumes. I had to discard probably 4,000 of them. And then I’ve built that back up now. So I’m probably going to have to go through another round where I put them somewhere else. I tend to tab books rather than highlighting them because I can’t highlight on Sabbath. So I have the little stickers and I put them in the book. So a typical book from me, you can see it on the book club, will be filled with tabs on the side. Things that I want to take note… Actually, I’d gotten a person who I pay to go through and write down in files the quotes that I like from the book, so I have those handy.
Yeah, I love physical books. And because I keep Sabbath, I don’t use Kindle because when I’m reading a book and I hit Sabbath, I have to turn off the Kindle. So that means that I have tons and tons and tons of physical books. When we moved from Los Angeles to Florida, I had about 7,000 volumes. I had to discard probably 4,000 of them. And then I’ve built that back up now. So I’m probably going to have to go through another round where I put them somewhere else. I tend to tab books rather than highlighting them because I can’t highlight on Sabbath. So I have the little stickers and I put them in the book. So a typical book from me, you can see it on the book club, will be filled with tabs on the side. Things that I want to take note… Actually, I’d gotten a person who I pay to go through and write down in files the quotes that I like from the book, so I have those handy.
Which is a good way for me to remember what it is that I’ve read. Because I read probably somewhere between three and five books a week, and then in a good week five, and then I write, I read, and then I go pick up my kids from school at 3:30. So according to my kids, I have no job. I’m there in the mornings until they leave for school. I pick them up from school, I hang out with them until they go to bed, which is usually 7:30 or so. So I’m helping them with their homework and I’m playing with them, and I’m taking them on rides in the brand new Tesla, which my son is obsessed with.
And then I put them to bed and then I sit back down, I prep for the next day, go through all those media sources I was talking about, compile kind of a schedule for what I want the show to look like, and run a show. It’s very detail oriented. Nobody writes anything for me. I write all my own stuff. So every word that comes out of my mouth is my fault. And then hopefully I have a couple hours or an hour to hang out with my wife before we go to bed.
Lex Fridman
The words you write, do you edit a lot or does it just come out, you’re thinking, “What are the key ideas I want to express?”
The words you write, do you edit a lot or does it just come out, you’re thinking, “What are the key ideas I want to express?”
Ben Shapiro
No, I don’t tend to edit a lot. So I thank God I’m able to write extraordinarily quickly. So I write very, very fast. In fact, in a previous life I was…
No, I don’t tend to edit a lot. So I thank God I’m able to write extraordinarily quickly. So I write very, very fast. In fact, in a previous life I was…
Lex Fridman
You also speak fast, so it’s similar.
You also speak fast, so it’s similar.
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, exactly. And I speak in paragraphs, so it’s exactly the same thing. In a previous life I was a ghost writer, so I used to be sort of known as a turnaround specialist in the publishing industry. And it’d be somebody who came to the publisher and says, “I have three weeks to get this book done. I don’t have a word done.” And they would call me up and be like, “This person needs a book written.” And so in three weeks I’d knock out 60,000 words or so.
Yeah, exactly. And I speak in paragraphs, so it’s exactly the same thing. In a previous life I was a ghost writer, so I used to be sort of known as a turnaround specialist in the publishing industry. And it’d be somebody who came to the publisher and says, “I have three weeks to get this book done. I don’t have a word done.” And they would call me up and be like, “This person needs a book written.” And so in three weeks I’d knock out 60,000 words or so.
Lex Fridman
Is there something you can say to the process that you follow to think. How you think about ideas like you… Stuff is going on in the world and trying to understand what is happening. What are the explanations? What are the forces behind this? Do you have a process or just you wait for the muse to give you the interpretation of the world?
Is there something you can say to the process that you follow to think. How you think about ideas like you… Stuff is going on in the world and trying to understand what is happening. What are the explanations? What are the forces behind this? Do you have a process or just you wait for the muse to give you the interpretation of the world?
Ben Shapiro
Well, I don’t think it’s a formal process, but because I read… So there’s two ways to do it. One is that sometimes the daily grind of the news is going to refer back to core principles that are broader and deeper. So I thank God, because I’ve read so much on so many different things of a lot of different point of views. Then if something breaks and a piece of news breaks, I can immediately channel that into, in the mental Rolodex, these three big ideas that I think are really important. And then I can talk at length about what those ideas are and I can explicate those. And so for example, when we were talking about Musk taking over Twitter before, and I immediately go to the history of media, that’s me tying it into a broader theme. And I do that, I would say fairly frequently. Well, we’re talking about say, subsidization of industry, and I can immediately tie that into, okay, what’s the history of subsidization in the United States going all the way back to Woodrow Wilson and forward through FDR’s industrial policy, and how does that tie into of broader economic policy internationally? So it allows me to tie into bigger themes because what I tend to read is mostly not news. What I tend to read is mostly books. I would say most of my media diet is actually not the stuff… That’s the icing on the cake, but the actual cake is the hundreds of pages in…
Well, I don’t think it’s a formal process, but because I read… So there’s two ways to do it. One is that sometimes the daily grind of the news is going to refer back to core principles that are broader and deeper. So I thank God, because I’ve read so much on so many different things of a lot of different point of views. Then if something breaks and a piece of news breaks, I can immediately channel that into, in the mental Rolodex, these three big ideas that I think are really important. And then I can talk at length about what those ideas are and I can explicate those. And so for example, when we were talking about Musk taking over Twitter before, and I immediately go to the history of media, that’s me tying it into a broader theme. And I do that, I would say fairly frequently. Well, we’re talking about say, subsidization of industry, and I can immediately tie that into, okay, what’s the history of subsidization in the United States going all the way back to Woodrow Wilson and forward through FDR’s industrial policy, and how does that tie into of broader economic policy internationally? So it allows me to tie into bigger themes because what I tend to read is mostly not news. What I tend to read is mostly books. I would say most of my media diet is actually not the stuff… That’s the icing on the cake, but the actual cake is the hundreds of pages in…
Ben Shapiro
… on the cake, but the actual cake is the hundreds of pages in history, econ, geography, social science that I’m reading every week, and so that stuff allows me to think more deeply about these things. That’s one way of doing it. The other way of doing it is Russia breaks in the news. I don’t know anything about Russia. I immediately go and I purchase five books about Russia and I read all of them. Well, the fortunate thing for me and the unfortunate thing about the world, and the unfortunate thing about the world is that if you read two books on a subject, you are now considered by the media an expert on the subject. That’s sad and shallow, but that is the way that it is.
… on the cake, but the actual cake is the hundreds of pages in history, econ, geography, social science that I’m reading every week, and so that stuff allows me to think more deeply about these things. That’s one way of doing it. The other way of doing it is Russia breaks in the news. I don’t know anything about Russia. I immediately go and I purchase five books about Russia and I read all of them. Well, the fortunate thing for me and the unfortunate thing about the world, and the unfortunate thing about the world is that if you read two books on a subject, you are now considered by the media an expert on the subject. That’s sad and shallow, but that is the way that it is.
The good news for me is that my job isn’t to be a full expert on any of these subjects, and I don’t claim to be. I’m not a Russia expert. I know enough on Russia to be able to understand when people talk about Russia, what the system looks like, how it works and all of that, and then to explicate that for the common man, which a lot of people who are infused with the expertise can’t really do. If you’re so deep in the weeds that you’re a full on academic expert on a thing, sometimes it’s hard to translate that over to a mass audience, which is really my job.
Lex Fridman
Well, I think it’s funny with the two books you can actually get a pretty deep understanding if you read and also think deeply about it. It allows you to approach a thing from first principles. A lot of times if you’re a quote, unquote, “expert,” you get carried away by the momentum of what the field has been thinking about, versus stepping back, “All right, what is really going on?” The challenge is to pick the right two books.
Well, I think it’s funny with the two books you can actually get a pretty deep understanding if you read and also think deeply about it. It allows you to approach a thing from first principles. A lot of times if you’re a quote, unquote, “expert,” you get carried away by the momentum of what the field has been thinking about, versus stepping back, “All right, what is really going on?” The challenge is to pick the right two books.
Ben Shapiro
Right. Usually, what I’ll try to find is somebody who knows the topic pretty well, or a couple people, and have them recommend books. A couple years ago I knew nothing about Bitcoin. I was at a conference and a couple of people who you’ve had on your show actually were there and I asked them, “Give me your top three books on Bitcoin.” Then I went and I read nine books on Bitcoin. So if you read nine books on Bitcoin, you at least know enough to get by. So I can actually explain what Bitcoin is and why it works or why it doesn’t work in some cases and what’s happening in the markets that way, so that’s very, very helpful.
Right. Usually, what I’ll try to find is somebody who knows the topic pretty well, or a couple people, and have them recommend books. A couple years ago I knew nothing about Bitcoin. I was at a conference and a couple of people who you’ve had on your show actually were there and I asked them, “Give me your top three books on Bitcoin.” Then I went and I read nine books on Bitcoin. So if you read nine books on Bitcoin, you at least know enough to get by. So I can actually explain what Bitcoin is and why it works or why it doesn’t work in some cases and what’s happening in the markets that way, so that’s very, very helpful.
Lex Fridman
Well, Putin is an example, that’s a difficult one to find the right books on. I think The New Tsar is the one I read where it was the most objective.
Well, Putin is an example, that’s a difficult one to find the right books on. I think The New Tsar is the one I read where it was the most objective.
Ben Shapiro
The one I read I think about Putin, it was one called Strongman and it was very highly critical of Putin, but it gave a good background on him, at the very least.
The one I read I think about Putin, it was one called Strongman and it was very highly critical of Putin, but it gave a good background on him, at the very least.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I’m very skeptical of things that are critical of Putin, because it feels like there’s activism injected into the history. The way The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is written about Hitler I like because there’s almost not a criticism of Hitler. It’s a description of Hitler, which it’s easier to do about a historical figure, which with William Shirer with The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, it’s impressive because he lived through it. But it’s very tough to find objective descriptions about the history of the man in a country of Putin, of Zelensky, of any difficult … Trump was the same. I feel like-
Yeah. I’m very skeptical of things that are critical of Putin, because it feels like there’s activism injected into the history. The way The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is written about Hitler I like because there’s almost not a criticism of Hitler. It’s a description of Hitler, which it’s easier to do about a historical figure, which with William Shirer with The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, it’s impressive because he lived through it. But it’s very tough to find objective descriptions about the history of the man in a country of Putin, of Zelensky, of any difficult … Trump was the same. I feel like-
Ben Shapiro
That’s the hero villain archetype, right?
That’s the hero villain archetype, right?
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Ben Shapiro
It’s like either somebody’s completely a hero or completely a villain, and the truth is pretty much no one is completely a hero or completely a villain. In fact, I’m not sure that I love descriptions of people as heroes or villains, generally. I think that people tend to do heroic things or do villainous things. The same way that I’m not sure I love descriptions of people as a genius, my dad used to say this when I was growing up, he used to say he didn’t believe that there were geniuses. He said he believed that there were people with a genius for something, because yes, there are people who are very high IQ and we call them geniuses, but does that mean that they’re good at EQ stuff? Not necessarily, but there are people who are geniuses at EQ stuff. In other words, it would be more specific to say that somebody’s a genius at engineering than to say just broad spectrum they’re a genius. That does avoid the problem of thinking that they’re good at something that they’re not good at. It’s a little more specific.
It’s like either somebody’s completely a hero or completely a villain, and the truth is pretty much no one is completely a hero or completely a villain. In fact, I’m not sure that I love descriptions of people as heroes or villains, generally. I think that people tend to do heroic things or do villainous things. The same way that I’m not sure I love descriptions of people as a genius, my dad used to say this when I was growing up, he used to say he didn’t believe that there were geniuses. He said he believed that there were people with a genius for something, because yes, there are people who are very high IQ and we call them geniuses, but does that mean that they’re good at EQ stuff? Not necessarily, but there are people who are geniuses at EQ stuff. In other words, it would be more specific to say that somebody’s a genius at engineering than to say just broad spectrum they’re a genius. That does avoid the problem of thinking that they’re good at something that they’re not good at. It’s a little more specific.
Lex Fridman
So because you read a lot of books, can you look back and it’s always a tough question because so many, it’s like your favorite song, but are there books that have been influential in your life that are impacting your thinking, or maybe ones you go back to that still carry insight for you?
So because you read a lot of books, can you look back and it’s always a tough question because so many, it’s like your favorite song, but are there books that have been influential in your life that are impacting your thinking, or maybe ones you go back to that still carry insight for you?
Ben Shapiro
The Federalist Papers is a big one in terms of how American politics works. The first econ book that I thought was really great because it was written for teenagers essentially, is one called Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. It’s 150 pages. I recommend it to everybody 15 and up. It’s easier than say, Thomas Sowell’s Basic Econ, which is four or 500 pages.
The Federalist Papers is a big one in terms of how American politics works. The first econ book that I thought was really great because it was written for teenagers essentially, is one called Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. It’s 150 pages. I recommend it to everybody 15 and up. It’s easier than say, Thomas Sowell’s Basic Econ, which is four or 500 pages.
Lex Fridman
It’s looking what at macroeconomics, microeconomics-
It’s looking what at macroeconomics, microeconomics-
Ben Shapiro
Mm-hmm, macro-
Mm-hmm, macro-
Lex Fridman
… that kind of stuff?
… that kind of stuff?
Ben Shapiro
Macro.
Macro.
Lex Fridman
Macro.
Macro.
Ben Shapiro
Then in terms of, there’s a great book by Carl Truman called Rise and Triumph for the Modern Self, which I think is the best book in the last 10 years. That’s been impactful on some of the thoughts I’ve been having lately.
Then in terms of, there’s a great book by Carl Truman called Rise and Triumph for the Modern Self, which I think is the best book in the last 10 years. That’s been impactful on some of the thoughts I’ve been having lately.
Lex Fridman
What’s the key idea in there that’s [inaudible 01:37:38]
What’s the key idea in there that’s [inaudible 01:37:38]
Ben Shapiro
The key idea is that we’ve shifted the nature of how identity is done in the West from how it was historically done, that basically for nearly all of human history, the way that we identify as human beings is as a mix of our biological drives and then how that interacts with the social institutions around us. So when you’re a child, you’re a bunch of unfettered biological drives and it’s your parents’ job to civilize you. Civilize you literally means bring you into civilization. You learn the rules of the road. You learn how to integrate into institutions that already exist and are designed to shape you. It’s how you interact with those institutions that makes you you. It’s not just a set of biological drives.
The key idea is that we’ve shifted the nature of how identity is done in the West from how it was historically done, that basically for nearly all of human history, the way that we identify as human beings is as a mix of our biological drives and then how that interacts with the social institutions around us. So when you’re a child, you’re a bunch of unfettered biological drives and it’s your parents’ job to civilize you. Civilize you literally means bring you into civilization. You learn the rules of the road. You learn how to integrate into institutions that already exist and are designed to shape you. It’s how you interact with those institutions that makes you you. It’s not just a set of biological drives.
Then in the modern world, we’ve really driven toward the idea that what we are is how we feel on the inside without reference to the outside world, and it’s the job of the outside world to celebrate and reflect what we think about ourselves on the inside. So what that means is that we are driven now toward fighting institutions because institutions are in positions. So everything around us, societal institutions, these are things that are crimping our style. They’re making us not feel the way that we want to feel, and if we just destroy those things, then we’ll be freer and more liberated. It’s a, I think, much deeper model of how to think about why our social politics particular, are moving in a particular direction is that a ground shift has happened in how people think about themselves. This has had some somewhat shocking effect in terms of social politics.
Lex Fridman
There’s negative consequences in your view of that, but is there also a positive consequence of more power, more agency to the individual?
There’s negative consequences in your view of that, but is there also a positive consequence of more power, more agency to the individual?
Ben Shapiro
I think that you can make the argument that institutions were weighing too heavily in how people form their identity, but I think that what we’ve done is gone significantly too far on the other side. We basically decided to blow up the institutions in favor of unfettered feeling/identity. I think that that is not only a large mistake, I think it’s going to have ramifications for everything from suicidal ideation to institutional longevity in politics and in society more broadly.
I think that you can make the argument that institutions were weighing too heavily in how people form their identity, but I think that what we’ve done is gone significantly too far on the other side. We basically decided to blow up the institutions in favor of unfettered feeling/identity. I think that that is not only a large mistake, I think it’s going to have ramifications for everything from suicidal ideation to institutional longevity in politics and in society more broadly.
Abortion
Lex Fridman
Speaking about the nature of self, you’ve been an outspoken proponent of pro-life. Can we start by you tried to steel man the case for pro-choice that abortion is not murder ,and a woman’s right to choose is a fundamental human right freedom.
Speaking about the nature of self, you’ve been an outspoken proponent of pro-life. Can we start by you tried to steel man the case for pro-choice that abortion is not murder ,and a woman’s right to choose is a fundamental human right freedom.
Ben Shapiro
I think that the only way to steel man the pro-choice case and be ideologically consistent is to suggest that there is no interest in the life of the unborn that counter weighs at all freedom of choice. What that means is we can take the full example or we can take the partial example. If we take the full example, what that would mean is that up until point of birth, which is the Democratic Party platform position that a woman’s right to choose ought to extend for any reason whatsoever up to point of birth. The only way to argue that is that bodily autonomy is the only factor. There is no countervailing factor that would ever outweigh bodily autonomy. That would be the strongest version of the argument. Another version of that argument would be that the reason that bodily autonomy ought to weigh so heavily is because women can’t be the equals of men If this institutes of biology are allowed to decide their futures.
I think that the only way to steel man the pro-choice case and be ideologically consistent is to suggest that there is no interest in the life of the unborn that counter weighs at all freedom of choice. What that means is we can take the full example or we can take the partial example. If we take the full example, what that would mean is that up until point of birth, which is the Democratic Party platform position that a woman’s right to choose ought to extend for any reason whatsoever up to point of birth. The only way to argue that is that bodily autonomy is the only factor. There is no countervailing factor that would ever outweigh bodily autonomy. That would be the strongest version of the argument. Another version of that argument would be that the reason that bodily autonomy ought to weigh so heavily is because women can’t be the equals of men If this institutes of biology are allowed to decide their futures.
If pregnancy changes women in a way that it doesn’t change men, it’s a form of sex discrimination for women to ever have to go through with pregnancy, which is an argument that was made by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, kind of. Those are the arguments, the softer version is the more, I would say, emotionally resonant version of the argument, which is that bodily autonomy ought to outweigh the interests of the fetus up till point X. Then people have different feelings about what point X looks like. Is it up to the point of viability? Is it up to the point of the heartbeat? Is it up to 12 weeks or 15 weeks? That really is where the American public is, broadly speaking, not state by state where there are various really, really varied opinions. But broadly speaking, it seems like the American public by polling data wants somewhere between a 12 and 15 week abortion restriction. They believe that up until 12 or 15 weeks, there’s not enough there to not be specific, but to be how people feel about it to outweigh a woman’s bodily autonomy. then beyond that point, then there’s enough of an interest in the life of the pre-born child that’s developed enough then now we care about it enough that it outweighs a woman’s bodily autonomy.
Lex Fridman
What’s the strongest case for pro-life in your mind?
What’s the strongest case for pro-life in your mind?
Ben Shapiro
The strongest case for pro-life is that from conception, a human life has been created. It is a human life with potential. That human life potential with potential now has an independent interest in its own existence.
The strongest case for pro-life is that from conception, a human life has been created. It is a human life with potential. That human life potential with potential now has an independent interest in its own existence.
Lex Fridman
If I may just ask a quick question, so conception is when a sperm fertilizes an egg?
If I may just ask a quick question, so conception is when a sperm fertilizes an egg?
Ben Shapiro
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
Okay. Just to clarify, the biological beginning of what conception means.
Okay. Just to clarify, the biological beginning of what conception means.
Ben Shapiro
Because that is the beginning of human life. Now there are other standards that people have drawn. Some people say implantation in the uterus, some people will suggest viability, some brain development or heart development. But the clear dividing line between a human life exists in a human life does not exist, is the biological creation of an independent human life with its own DNA strands and et cetera, which happens at conception. Once you acknowledge that there is that independent human life with potential, and I keep calling it that because people sometimes say potential human life, it’s not a potential human life; it’s a human life that is not developed yet to the full extent that it will develop. Once you say that, and once you say that it has its own interest, now the burden of proof is to explain why bodily autonomy ought to allow for the snuffing out of that human life. If we believe that human life ought not to be killed for quote, unquote, “no good reason.” You have to come up with a good reason. The burden of proof has now shifted.
Because that is the beginning of human life. Now there are other standards that people have drawn. Some people say implantation in the uterus, some people will suggest viability, some brain development or heart development. But the clear dividing line between a human life exists in a human life does not exist, is the biological creation of an independent human life with its own DNA strands and et cetera, which happens at conception. Once you acknowledge that there is that independent human life with potential, and I keep calling it that because people sometimes say potential human life, it’s not a potential human life; it’s a human life that is not developed yet to the full extent that it will develop. Once you say that, and once you say that it has its own interest, now the burden of proof is to explain why bodily autonomy ought to allow for the snuffing out of that human life. If we believe that human life ought not to be killed for quote, unquote, “no good reason.” You have to come up with a good reason. The burden of proof has now shifted.
Now you will find people who will say, “Well, the good reason is that it’s not sufficiently developed to outweigh the mental trauma or emotional trauma that a woman goes through if, for example, she was raped or the victim of incest.” That is a fairly emotionally resonant argument, but it’s not necessarily dispositive. You can make the argument that just because something horrific and horrible happened to a woman does not rob the human life of its interest in life. One of the big problems in trying to draw any line for the self-interest of life in the human life is that it’s very difficult to draw any other line that doesn’t seem somewhat arbitrary. You say that independent heartbeat, well, people have pacemakers. If you say brain function, people have various levels of brain function as adults. If you say viability, babies are not viable after they are born. If I left a newborn baby on a table and did not take care of it would be dead in two days. So once you start getting into these lines, it starts to get very fuzzy very quickly. So if you’re looking for a bright line moral rule, that would be the bright line moral rule, and that’s the pro-life case.
Lex Fridman
Well, there’s still mysterious difficult scientific questions of things like consciousness. So does the question of consciousness, how does it come into play into this debate?
Well, there’s still mysterious difficult scientific questions of things like consciousness. So does the question of consciousness, how does it come into play into this debate?
Ben Shapiro
I don’t believe that consciousness is the sole criterion by which we judge the self-interest in human life. So we are unconscious a good deal of our lives. We will be conscious again. When you’re unconscious, when you’re asleep, for example, presumably your life is still worth living. If somebody came in and killed you, that’d be a serious moral quandary at the very least.
I don’t believe that consciousness is the sole criterion by which we judge the self-interest in human life. So we are unconscious a good deal of our lives. We will be conscious again. When you’re unconscious, when you’re asleep, for example, presumably your life is still worth living. If somebody came in and killed you, that’d be a serious moral quandary at the very least.
Lex Fridman
But the birth of consciousness, the lighting up of the flame, the initial lighting up of the flame, there does seem to be something special about that. It’s a mystery of when that happens.
But the birth of consciousness, the lighting up of the flame, the initial lighting up of the flame, there does seem to be something special about that. It’s a mystery of when that happens.
Ben Shapiro
Well, Peter Singer makes the case that basically self-consciousness doesn’t exist until you’re two-and-a-half. So he says that even in infanticide should be oka. He’s the bioethicist over at Princeton. So you get into some real dicey territory once you get into consciousness. Also, the truth is that consciousness is more of a spectrum than it is a dividing line, meaning that there are people with various degrees of brain function, we don’t actually know how conscious they are. You can get into eugenic territory pretty quickly when we start dividing between lives that are worth living based on levels of consciousness and lives that are not worth living based on levels of consciousness.
Well, Peter Singer makes the case that basically self-consciousness doesn’t exist until you’re two-and-a-half. So he says that even in infanticide should be oka. He’s the bioethicist over at Princeton. So you get into some real dicey territory once you get into consciousness. Also, the truth is that consciousness is more of a spectrum than it is a dividing line, meaning that there are people with various degrees of brain function, we don’t actually know how conscious they are. You can get into eugenic territory pretty quickly when we start dividing between lives that are worth living based on levels of consciousness and lives that are not worth living based on levels of consciousness.
Lex Fridman
Do you find the aspect of women’s freedom, do you feel the tension between that ability to choose the trajectory of your own life versus the rights of the unborn child?
Do you find the aspect of women’s freedom, do you feel the tension between that ability to choose the trajectory of your own life versus the rights of the unborn child?
Ben Shapiro
In one situation, yes. In one situation, no. If you’ve had sex with a person voluntarily and as a product of that you are now pregnant, no. You’ve taken an action with a perfectly predictable result, even if you took birth control. This is the way that human beings have procreated for literally all of human existence, and by the way, also how all mammals procreate. The idea that this was an entirely unforeseen consequence of your activity, I find I have less sympathy for you in that particular situation because you could have made decisions that would not lead you to this particular impasse. In fact, this used to be the basis of marriage was when we were a apparently more terrible society. We used to say that people should wait until they get married to have sex, a position that I still hold.
In one situation, yes. In one situation, no. If you’ve had sex with a person voluntarily and as a product of that you are now pregnant, no. You’ve taken an action with a perfectly predictable result, even if you took birth control. This is the way that human beings have procreated for literally all of human existence, and by the way, also how all mammals procreate. The idea that this was an entirely unforeseen consequence of your activity, I find I have less sympathy for you in that particular situation because you could have made decisions that would not lead you to this particular impasse. In fact, this used to be the basis of marriage was when we were a apparently more terrible society. We used to say that people should wait until they get married to have sex, a position that I still hold.
The reason for that was because then if you have sex and you produce a child, then the child will grow up in a two-parent family with stability, so not a ton of sympathy there. When it comes to rape and incest, obviously heavy, heavy sympathy. So that’s why I think you see, statistically speaking, a huge percentage of Americans, including many pro-life Americans, people who consider themselves pro-life would consider exceptions for rape and incest. One of the dishonest things that I think happens in abortion debates is arguing from the fringes. This tends to happen a lot, is pro-choice activists will argue from rape and incest to the other 99.8% of abortions, or you’ll see people on the pro-life side argue from partial birth abortion to all of abortion, that you actually have to take on the mainstream case and then decide whether or not that’s acceptable or not.
Lex Fridman
But to you, the exception, just ethically without generalizing it, that is a valid ethically exception.
But to you, the exception, just ethically without generalizing it, that is a valid ethically exception.
Ben Shapiro
I don’t hold that there should be an exception for rape or incest because again, I hold by the bright line rule that once a human life with potential exists, then it has its own interest in life that cannot be curbed by your self-interest. The only exception that I hold by is the same exception that literally all pro-lifers hold by, which is the life of the mother is put in danger.
I don’t hold that there should be an exception for rape or incest because again, I hold by the bright line rule that once a human life with potential exists, then it has its own interest in life that cannot be curbed by your self-interest. The only exception that I hold by is the same exception that literally all pro-lifers hold by, which is the life of the mother is put in danger.
Lex Fridman
Such a tough, tough topic because if you believe that that’s the line, then we’re committing mass murder.
Such a tough, tough topic because if you believe that that’s the line, then we’re committing mass murder.
Ben Shapiro
Well, or at least mass killing, so I would say that murder typically requires a level of mens rea that may be absent in many cases of abortion, because the usual follow-on question is, “Well, if it’s murder, why don’t prosecute the woman?” The answer is because the vast majority of people who are having abortions don’t actually believe that they’re killing a person. They have a very different view of what is exactly happening. I would say that there are all sorts of interesting hypotheticals that come in to play when it comes to abortion, and you can play them any which way. Let’s put this way, there are gradations of wrongs. I don’t think that all abortions are equally blameworthy, even if I would ban virtually all of them. I think that there are mitigating circumstances that makes well being wrong, some abortions less morally blameworthy than others. I think that I can admit a difference between killing a two-week-old embryo in the womb and stabbing a seven-year-old in the face. I can recognize all that while still saying I think that it would be wrong to terminate a pregnancy.
Well, or at least mass killing, so I would say that murder typically requires a level of mens rea that may be absent in many cases of abortion, because the usual follow-on question is, “Well, if it’s murder, why don’t prosecute the woman?” The answer is because the vast majority of people who are having abortions don’t actually believe that they’re killing a person. They have a very different view of what is exactly happening. I would say that there are all sorts of interesting hypotheticals that come in to play when it comes to abortion, and you can play them any which way. Let’s put this way, there are gradations of wrongs. I don’t think that all abortions are equally blameworthy, even if I would ban virtually all of them. I think that there are mitigating circumstances that makes well being wrong, some abortions less morally blameworthy than others. I think that I can admit a difference between killing a two-week-old embryo in the womb and stabbing a seven-year-old in the face. I can recognize all that while still saying I think that it would be wrong to terminate a pregnancy.
Lex Fridman
Do you think the question of when life begins, which I think is a fascinating question, is it a question of science or a question of religion?
Do you think the question of when life begins, which I think is a fascinating question, is it a question of science or a question of religion?
Ben Shapiro
When life begins is a question of science. When that life becomes valuable enough for people to want to protect it is going to be a question that is beyond science. Science doesn’t have moral judgements to make about the value of human life. This is one of the problems that … Sam Harris and I have had this argument many times and it’s always interesting because Sam is of the opinion that you can get to ought from is, that science says is therefore we can learn ought. So human flourishing is the goal of life. I always say to him, “I don’t see where you get that from evolutionary biology.” You can assume it, just say you’re assuming it, but don’t pretend that that is a conclusion that you can draw straight from biological reality itself because obviously that doesn’t exist in the animal world, for example. Nobody assumes the innate value of every ant.
When life begins is a question of science. When that life becomes valuable enough for people to want to protect it is going to be a question that is beyond science. Science doesn’t have moral judgements to make about the value of human life. This is one of the problems that … Sam Harris and I have had this argument many times and it’s always interesting because Sam is of the opinion that you can get to ought from is, that science says is therefore we can learn ought. So human flourishing is the goal of life. I always say to him, “I don’t see where you get that from evolutionary biology.” You can assume it, just say you’re assuming it, but don’t pretend that that is a conclusion that you can draw straight from biological reality itself because obviously that doesn’t exist in the animal world, for example. Nobody assumes the innate value of every ant.
Lex Fridman
I think I know your answer to this, but let’s test it because I think you’re going to be wrong. So there’s a robot behind you. Do you think there will be a time in the future when it will be unethical and illegal to kill a robot because they will have sentience? My guess is you would say, “No, Lex, there’s because there’s a fundamental difference between humans and robots. I just want to get you on record because I think you’ll be wrong.
I think I know your answer to this, but let’s test it because I think you’re going to be wrong. So there’s a robot behind you. Do you think there will be a time in the future when it will be unethical and illegal to kill a robot because they will have sentience? My guess is you would say, “No, Lex, there’s because there’s a fundamental difference between humans and robots. I just want to get you on record because I think you’ll be wrong.
Ben Shapiro
It depends on the level of development, I would assume of the robots. You’re assuming a complexity in the robots that eventually imitates what we in the religious life would call the human soul-
It depends on the level of development, I would assume of the robots. You’re assuming a complexity in the robots that eventually imitates what we in the religious life would call the human soul-
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Ben Shapiro
The ability to choose freely, for example-
The ability to choose freely, for example-
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Ben Shapiro
… which I believe is the capacity for human beings.
… which I believe is the capacity for human beings.
Lex Fridman
The ability to suffer?
The ability to suffer?
Ben Shapiro
Yeah. If all of that could be proved and not programmed, meaning the freely willed capacity of a machine to do X, Y, or Z.
Yeah. If all of that could be proved and not programmed, meaning the freely willed capacity of a machine to do X, Y, or Z.
Lex Fridman
Could not pinpoint exactly where it happens in the program.
Could not pinpoint exactly where it happens in the program.
Ben Shapiro
Right.
Right.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ben Shapiro
It’s not deterministic.
It’s not deterministic.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ben Shapiro
Then it would raise serious moral issues for sure. I’m not sure I know the answer to that question.
Then it would raise serious moral issues for sure. I’m not sure I know the answer to that question.
Lex Fridman
Are you afraid of that time?
Are you afraid of that time?
Ben Shapiro
I’m not sure I’m afraid of that time any more than I’d be afraid if aliens arrived on in the world and had these characteristics.
I’m not sure I’m afraid of that time any more than I’d be afraid if aliens arrived on in the world and had these characteristics.
Lex Fridman
Well, there’s just a lot of moral complexities and they don’t necessarily have to be in the physical space, they can be in the digital space. There’s an increased sophistication in the number of bots on the internet, including on Twitter. As they become more and more intelligent, there’s going to be serious questions about “What is our moral duty to protect ones that have or claim to have an identity itself?”
Well, there’s just a lot of moral complexities and they don’t necessarily have to be in the physical space, they can be in the digital space. There’s an increased sophistication in the number of bots on the internet, including on Twitter. As they become more and more intelligent, there’s going to be serious questions about “What is our moral duty to protect ones that have or claim to have an identity itself?”
Ben Shapiro
That’ll be really interesting. Actually, what I’m afraid of is the opposite happening, meaning that people … the worst that should happen is that we develop robots so sophisticated that they appear to have free will and then we treat them with human dignity. That should be the worst that happens. What I’m afraid of is the opposite, is that if we’re talking about this particular hypothetical that we develop robots that have all of these apparent abilities and then we dehumanize them, which leads us to also dehumanize the other humans around us, which you could easily see happening, and the devaluation of life to the point where it doesn’t really matter. People have always treated, unfortunately, newly discovered other humans this way. So I don’t think there’s actually a new problem. I think it’s a pretty old problem. It’ll just be interesting when it’s made of human hands.
That’ll be really interesting. Actually, what I’m afraid of is the opposite happening, meaning that people … the worst that should happen is that we develop robots so sophisticated that they appear to have free will and then we treat them with human dignity. That should be the worst that happens. What I’m afraid of is the opposite, is that if we’re talking about this particular hypothetical that we develop robots that have all of these apparent abilities and then we dehumanize them, which leads us to also dehumanize the other humans around us, which you could easily see happening, and the devaluation of life to the point where it doesn’t really matter. People have always treated, unfortunately, newly discovered other humans this way. So I don’t think there’s actually a new problem. I think it’s a pretty old problem. It’ll just be interesting when it’s made of human hands.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s an opportunity to either celebrate humanity or to bring out the worst in humanity, so the derision that naturally happens, like you said with pointing out the other. Let me ask you about climate change. Let’s go from the meme to the profound philosophy.
Yeah, it’s an opportunity to either celebrate humanity or to bring out the worst in humanity, so the derision that naturally happens, like you said with pointing out the other. Let me ask you about climate change. Let’s go from the meme to the profound philosophy.
Climate change
Ben Shapiro
Sure.
Sure.
Lex Fridman
Okay. The meme is, there’s a clip of you talking about climate change and saying that =
Okay. The meme is, there’s a clip of you talking about climate change and saying that =
Ben Shapiro
Oh, The Aquaman meme.
Oh, The Aquaman meme.
Lex Fridman
You said that for the sake of argument, and, “If the water level rises five to 10 feet in the next 100 years, people will just sell their homes and move.” Then the meme was, “Sell to who?” Can you argue both sides of that?
You said that for the sake of argument, and, “If the water level rises five to 10 feet in the next 100 years, people will just sell their homes and move.” Then the meme was, “Sell to who?” Can you argue both sides of that?
Ben Shapiro
That the argument that they’re making as a straw man, the argument that I’m making is over time, I don’t mean that if a tsunami’s about to hit your house, you can list it on eBay. That’s not what I mean, obviously. What I mean is that human beings have an extraordinary ability to adapt. It’s actually our best quality, and that as water levels rise, real estate prices in those areas tends to fall, that over time, people tend to abandon those areas. They tend to leave, they tend to, right now, sell their houses and then they tend to move. Eventually, those houses will be worthless and you won’t have anybody to sell to. But presumably not that many people will be living there by that point, which is one of the reasons why the price would be low because there’s no demand.
That the argument that they’re making as a straw man, the argument that I’m making is over time, I don’t mean that if a tsunami’s about to hit your house, you can list it on eBay. That’s not what I mean, obviously. What I mean is that human beings have an extraordinary ability to adapt. It’s actually our best quality, and that as water levels rise, real estate prices in those areas tends to fall, that over time, people tend to abandon those areas. They tend to leave, they tend to, right now, sell their houses and then they tend to move. Eventually, those houses will be worthless and you won’t have anybody to sell to. But presumably not that many people will be living there by that point, which is one of the reasons why the price would be low because there’s no demand.
Lex Fridman
So it’s over 100 years, so all of these price dynamics are very gradual relative to the other price dynamics-
So it’s over 100 years, so all of these price dynamics are very gradual relative to the other price dynamics-
Ben Shapiro
Correct. That’s why the joke of it, of course, is that I’m saying that tomorrow there’s a tsunami on your doorstep and you’re like, “Oh, Bob will buy my house.” Bob ain’t going to buy your house. We all get that, but it’s a funny name. I’ll admit, I laughed at it.
Correct. That’s why the joke of it, of course, is that I’m saying that tomorrow there’s a tsunami on your doorstep and you’re like, “Oh, Bob will buy my house.” Bob ain’t going to buy your house. We all get that, but it’s a funny name. I’ll admit, I laughed at it.
Lex Fridman
How is your view on climate change, the human contribution to climate change, what we should do in terms of policy to respond to climate change? How has that changed over the years?
How is your view on climate change, the human contribution to climate change, what we should do in terms of policy to respond to climate change? How has that changed over the years?
Ben Shapiro
I would say the truth is for years and years, I’ve believed that climate change was a reality and that anthropogenic climate change is a reality. I don’t argue with the IPCC estimates. I know climatologists at places like MIT or Caltech and they know this stuff better than I do. So the notion that climate change is just not happening or that human beings have not contributed to climate change, I find doubtful. The question is to what extent human beings are contributing to climate change, is it 50%? Is it 70%? Is it 90%? I think there’s a little bit more play in the joints there, so it’s not totally clear. The one thing I do know, and this I know with factual accuracy, is that all of the measures that are currently being proposed are unworkable and will not happen. So when people say Paris Climate Accords, even if those were imposed, you’re talking about lowering the potential trajectory of climate change by a fraction of a degree.
I would say the truth is for years and years, I’ve believed that climate change was a reality and that anthropogenic climate change is a reality. I don’t argue with the IPCC estimates. I know climatologists at places like MIT or Caltech and they know this stuff better than I do. So the notion that climate change is just not happening or that human beings have not contributed to climate change, I find doubtful. The question is to what extent human beings are contributing to climate change, is it 50%? Is it 70%? Is it 90%? I think there’s a little bit more play in the joints there, so it’s not totally clear. The one thing I do know, and this I know with factual accuracy, is that all of the measures that are currently being proposed are unworkable and will not happen. So when people say Paris Climate Accords, even if those were imposed, you’re talking about lowering the potential trajectory of climate change by a fraction of a degree.
If you’re talking about Green New Deal, net zero by 2050, the carbon is up there in the air and the climate change is going to happen. Also, you’re assuming that geopolitical dynamics don’t exist, so everybody’s going to magically get on the same page and we’re all going to be imposing massive carbon taxes to get to net zero by 2050, hundreds of times higher than they currently are. Now, that’s not me saying that, that’s Klaus Schwab saying this of the World Economic Forum who’s a big advocate of exactly this policy. The reality is that we’re going to have to accept that at least 1.5 degrees Celsius of climate change is baked into the cake by the end of the century. Again, not me talking, William Nordhaus, the economist who just won the Nobel Prize on this stuff talking. So what that suggests to me is what we’ve always known, human beings are crap at mitigation and excellent in adaptation.
We are very bad at mitigating our own fault. We are very, very good at adapting to the problems as they exist, which means that all of the estimates that billions will die, that there will be mass starvation, that we’ll see the migration in just a few years of hundreds of millions of people. Those are wrong. What you’ll see is a gradual change of living. People will move away from areas that are inundated on the coast. You’ll see people building sea walls. You’ll see people adapting new technologies to suck carbon out of the air. You’ll see geoengineering. This is the stuff that we should be focused on. The bizarre focus on what if we just keep tossing hundreds of billions of dollars at the same three technologies over and over in the hopes that if we subsidize it, this will magically make it more efficient, I’ve seen no evidence whatsoever that that is going to be the way that we get ourselves out of this. Necessity being the mother invention, I think human beings will adapt because we have adapted and we’ll continue to adapt.
Lex Fridman
So to the degree we invest in the threat of this, it should be into the policies that help with the adaptation versus the mitigation?
So to the degree we invest in the threat of this, it should be into the policies that help with the adaptation versus the mitigation?
Ben Shapiro
Right, seawalls, geoengineering, developing technology to suck carbon out of the air. Again, if I thought that there was more hope for the green technologies currently in play than subsidization of those technologies, I might be a little bit more for, but I haven’t seen tremendous progress over the course of the last 30 years in the reliability of, for example, wind energy or the ability to store solar energy to the extent necessary to actually power a grid.
Right, seawalls, geoengineering, developing technology to suck carbon out of the air. Again, if I thought that there was more hope for the green technologies currently in play than subsidization of those technologies, I might be a little bit more for, but I haven’t seen tremendous progress over the course of the last 30 years in the reliability of, for example, wind energy or the ability to store solar energy to the extent necessary to actually power a grid.
Lex Fridman
What’s your thoughts on nuclear energy? Is it [inaudible 01:56:51]
What’s your thoughts on nuclear energy? Is it [inaudible 01:56:51]
Ben Shapiro
Nuclear energy is great. Nuclear energy is a proven source of energy, and we should be radically extending the use of nuclear energy. To me, honestly, this is a litmus test question as to whether you take climate change seriously. If you’re on right or left and you take climate change seriously, you should be in favor of nuclear energy. If you’re not, I know that you have other priorities.
Nuclear energy is great. Nuclear energy is a proven source of energy, and we should be radically extending the use of nuclear energy. To me, honestly, this is a litmus test question as to whether you take climate change seriously. If you’re on right or left and you take climate change seriously, you should be in favor of nuclear energy. If you’re not, I know that you have other priorities.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, the fascinating thing about the climate change debate is the dynamics of the fearmongering over the past few decades, because some of the nuclear energy was tied up into that somehow. There’s a lot of fear about nuclear energy. It seems like there’s a lot of social phenomena, social dynamics involved versus dealing with just science. It’s interesting to watch. On my darker days, it makes me cynical about our ability to use reason in science to deal with the threats of the world.
Yeah, the fascinating thing about the climate change debate is the dynamics of the fearmongering over the past few decades, because some of the nuclear energy was tied up into that somehow. There’s a lot of fear about nuclear energy. It seems like there’s a lot of social phenomena, social dynamics involved versus dealing with just science. It’s interesting to watch. On my darker days, it makes me cynical about our ability to use reason in science to deal with the threats of the world.
Ben Shapiro
I think that our ability to use reason and science to deal with threats of the world is almost a timeframe question. So I think, again, we’re very bad at looking down the road and saying … because people can’t handle, for example, even things like compound interest. The idea that if, “I put a dollar in the bank today, that 15 years from now that’s going to be worth a lot more than a dollar,” people can’t actually see that. So the idea of, “Let’s foresee a problem then we’ll deal with it right now as opposed to 30 years down the road.” Typically, we let the problem happen and then we solve it and it’s bloodier and worse than it would’ve been if we had solved it 30 years ago, but it is, in fact, effective. And sometimes it turns out the solution that we’re proposing 30 years in advance is not effective and that can be a major problem as well.
I think that our ability to use reason and science to deal with threats of the world is almost a timeframe question. So I think, again, we’re very bad at looking down the road and saying … because people can’t handle, for example, even things like compound interest. The idea that if, “I put a dollar in the bank today, that 15 years from now that’s going to be worth a lot more than a dollar,” people can’t actually see that. So the idea of, “Let’s foresee a problem then we’ll deal with it right now as opposed to 30 years down the road.” Typically, we let the problem happen and then we solve it and it’s bloodier and worse than it would’ve been if we had solved it 30 years ago, but it is, in fact, effective. And sometimes it turns out the solution that we’re proposing 30 years in advance is not effective and that can be a major problem as well.
Lex Fridman
Well, that’s then the steel man, the case for fearmongering, for irrational fearmongering, we need to be scared shitless in order for us to do anything. I’m generally against that, but maybe on a population scale, maybe some of that is necessary for us to respond appropriate for two long-term threats. We should be scared shitless.
Well, that’s then the steel man, the case for fearmongering, for irrational fearmongering, we need to be scared shitless in order for us to do anything. I’m generally against that, but maybe on a population scale, maybe some of that is necessary for us to respond appropriate for two long-term threats. We should be scared shitless.
Ben Shapiro
I don’t think that we can actually do that, though. First of all, I think that it’s platonic lies or generally bad. Then second of all, I don’t think that we actually have the capacity to do this. I think that the people who are the elites of our society who get together in rooms and talk about this stuff, and I’ve been in some of those meetings at my synagogues Friday night, actually. No, but I’ve been-
I don’t think that we can actually do that, though. First of all, I think that it’s platonic lies or generally bad. Then second of all, I don’t think that we actually have the capacity to do this. I think that the people who are the elites of our society who get together in rooms and talk about this stuff, and I’ve been in some of those meetings at my synagogues Friday night, actually. No, but I’ve been-
Lex Fridman
I was going to make the joke but I’m glad you did.
I was going to make the joke but I’m glad you did.
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, I’ve been in rooms like Davos-like rooms, and when people discuss these sorts of topics and they’re like, “What if we just tell people that it’s going to be a disaster with tsunamis and day after tomorrow?” It’s like, you guys don’t have that power. You don’t. By the way, you’d dramatically undercut your own power because of COVID to do this stuff, because a lot of the, “What if we scare the living hell out of you to the point where you stay in your own house for two years and we tell you you can’t send your kids to school? Then we tell you that the vaccine is going to prevent transmission? Then we also tell you that we need to spend $7 trillion in one year and it won’t have any inflationary effect?” And it turns out you’re wrong on literally all of those things. The last two years have done more to undermine institutional trust than any time in probably American history. It’s pretty amazing.
Yeah, I’ve been in rooms like Davos-like rooms, and when people discuss these sorts of topics and they’re like, “What if we just tell people that it’s going to be a disaster with tsunamis and day after tomorrow?” It’s like, you guys don’t have that power. You don’t. By the way, you’d dramatically undercut your own power because of COVID to do this stuff, because a lot of the, “What if we scare the living hell out of you to the point where you stay in your own house for two years and we tell you you can’t send your kids to school? Then we tell you that the vaccine is going to prevent transmission? Then we also tell you that we need to spend $7 trillion in one year and it won’t have any inflationary effect?” And it turns out you’re wrong on literally all of those things. The last two years have done more to undermine institutional trust than any time in probably American history. It’s pretty amazing.
God and faith
Lex Fridman
Yeah, I tend to agree with the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Let me ask you back to the question of God, and a big ridiculous question, who’s God?
Yeah, I tend to agree with the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Let me ask you back to the question of God, and a big ridiculous question, who’s God?
Ben Shapiro
Who is God? I’m going to use the Aquinas formulation of what God is, that if there is a cause of all things, not physical things, if there is a cause underlying the reason of the universe, then that is the thing we call God, so not a big guy in the sky with a beard. He is the forest underlying the logic of the universe, if there is a logic to the universe, and he is the creator in the Judeo view of that universe. He does have an interest in us living in accordance with the laws of the universe that if you’re a religious Jew are encoded in the Torah. But if you’re not a religious Jew, it would be encoded in the natural law by Catholic theology.
Who is God? I’m going to use the Aquinas formulation of what God is, that if there is a cause of all things, not physical things, if there is a cause underlying the reason of the universe, then that is the thing we call God, so not a big guy in the sky with a beard. He is the forest underlying the logic of the universe, if there is a logic to the universe, and he is the creator in the Judeo view of that universe. He does have an interest in us living in accordance with the laws of the universe that if you’re a religious Jew are encoded in the Torah. But if you’re not a religious Jew, it would be encoded in the natural law by Catholic theology.
Lex Fridman
Why do you think God created the universe or as is popularly asked, what do you think is the meaning behind it? What’s the meaning of life?
Why do you think God created the universe or as is popularly asked, what do you think is the meaning behind it? What’s the meaning of life?
Ben Shapiro
What’s the meaning of life? I think that the meaning of life is to fulfill what God made you to do and that is a series of roles. I think that human beings, and here you have to look to human nature rather than looking to big questions. I’ve evolved something that I’ve really been working on, I’m writing a book about this actually, that I call colloquially role theory. Basically the idea is that the way that we interact with the world is through a series of roles, and those are also the things we find most important and most implementable. There’s virtue ethics which suggests that if we act in accordance with virtue like Aristotle, then we will be living the most fulfilled and meaningful life. Then you have deontological ethics like content ethics, it’s a rule-based ethic. You follow the rules, then you’ll find the meaning of life.
What’s the meaning of life? I think that the meaning of life is to fulfill what God made you to do and that is a series of roles. I think that human beings, and here you have to look to human nature rather than looking to big questions. I’ve evolved something that I’ve really been working on, I’m writing a book about this actually, that I call colloquially role theory. Basically the idea is that the way that we interact with the world is through a series of roles, and those are also the things we find most important and most implementable. There’s virtue ethics which suggests that if we act in accordance with virtue like Aristotle, then we will be living the most fulfilled and meaningful life. Then you have deontological ethics like content ethics, it’s a rule-based ethic. You follow the rules, then you’ll find the meaning of life.
Then what I’m proposing is that there’s something that I would call role ethics, which is there are a series of roles that we play across our lives, which are also the things that we tend to put on our tombstones and find the most meaningful. So when you go to a cemetery, you can see what people found the most meaningful because it’s the stuff they put on the stone that has four words on it, like beloved father, beloved mother, sister, brother, and you might have a job once in a while, a creator, a religious person. These are all roles that have existed across societies and across humanity, and those are the things where we actually find meaning. The way that we navigate those roles brings us meaning. I think that God created us in order to fulfill those roles for purposes that I can’t begin to understand because I ain’t him.
The more we recognize those roles and the more we live those roles and then we can express freedom within those roles, I think that the liberty exists inside each of those roles and that’s what makes all of our lives different and fun. We all parent in different ways, but being a parent is a meaningful role. We all have spouses, but how you interact that relationship is what makes your life meaningful and interesting. That is what we were put on earth to do. If we perform those roles properly, and those roles do include things like being a creator, we have a creative instinct as human beings, being a creator, being an innovator, being a defender of your family, being a social member of your community, which is something that we’re built to do. If we fulfill those roles properly, then we will have made the world a better place than we inherited it. And we’ll also have had the joy of experiencing the flow they talk about in psychology where when you engage in these roles, you actually do feel a flow.
Lex Fridman
So these roles are a fundamental part of the human condition?
So these roles are a fundamental part of the human condition?
Ben Shapiro
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
The book you’re working on is constructing a system to help us understand these roles?
The book you’re working on is constructing a system to help us understand these roles?
Ben Shapiro
It’s looking at, let’s assume that all that’s true. The real question in the book is, how do you construct a flourishing and useful society in politics?
It’s looking at, let’s assume that all that’s true. The real question in the book is, how do you construct a flourishing and useful society in politics?
Lex Fridman
So a society level, if this is our understanding of a human being, how do we construct a good society?
So a society level, if this is our understanding of a human being, how do we construct a good society?
Ben Shapiro
Right. Exactly, because I think that a lot of political theory is right now based in either J.S. Mill kind of thought, which is, all that a good politics does is it allows you wave your hand around until you hit somebody in the face-
Right. Exactly, because I think that a lot of political theory is right now based in either J.S. Mill kind of thought, which is, all that a good politics does is it allows you wave your hand around until you hit somebody in the face-
Ben Shapiro
All that a good politics does allows you to wave your hand around until you hit somebody in the face, or a [inaudible 02:04:05] thought, which is what if we constructed society in order to achieve the most for the least, essentially? What if we constructed society around what actually makes humans the most fulfilled, and that is the fulfillment of these particular roles?
All that a good politics does allows you to wave your hand around until you hit somebody in the face, or a [inaudible 02:04:05] thought, which is what if we constructed society in order to achieve the most for the least, essentially? What if we constructed society around what actually makes humans the most fulfilled, and that is the fulfillment of these particular roles?
And where does liberty come into that? How do you avoid the idea of a tyranny in that? Right? You have to be a mother, you must be a father, you must be a… Where does freedom come into that? Can you reject those roles totally as a society and be okay? The answer probably is not. So you need society that actually promotes and protects those roles, but also protects the freedom inside those roles.
And that raises a more fundamental question of what exactly liberty is for. And I think that both the right and the left actually tend to make a mistake when they discuss liberty. The left tends to think that liberty is an ultimate good. That simple choice makes a bad thing good, which is not true. And I think the right talks about liberty in almost the same terms sometimes. And I think that’s not true either. The question is whether liberty is of inherent value or instrumental value. Is liberty good in and of itself or is liberty good because it allows you to achieve X, Y or Z?
And I’ve thought about this one a lot and I tend to come down on the latter side of the aisle. I mean, you asked me areas where I move, this may be an area where I’ve moved. Because I think when you think more shallowly about politics, or maybe more quickly, because this is how we talk in America, is about liberties and rights, we tend to think that the right is what make… not the political right, rights make things good, liberties make things good.
The question really is what are those rights and liberties for? Now, you have to be careful so that doesn’t shade into tyranny, right? You can only have liberty to do the thing that I say that you can do. But there have to be spheres of liberty that are roiling and interesting and filled with debate, but without threatening the chief institutions that surround those liberties. Because if you destroy the institutions, liberties will go too. If you knock down the pillars of the society, the liberties that are on top of those pillars are going to collapse. And I think that if people are feeling as though we’re on the verge tyranny, I think that’s why.
Lex Fridman
This is fascinating by the way, it’s an instrumental perspective on liberty. That’s going to give me a lot to think about. Let me ask a personal question. Was there ever a time that you had a crisis of faith where you questioned your belief in God?
This is fascinating by the way, it’s an instrumental perspective on liberty. That’s going to give me a lot to think about. Let me ask a personal question. Was there ever a time that you had a crisis of faith where you questioned your belief in God?
Ben Shapiro
Sure. Let’s call it a crisis of faith and an ongoing question of faith, which I think is, I hope most religious people… And the word Israel in Hebrew, Israel, means to struggle with God. That’s literally what the word means. And so the idea of struggling with God, if you’re Jewish or Bnei Yisrael, the idea of struggling with God, I think is endemic to the human condition. If you understand what God’s doing, then I think you’re wrong. And if you think that that question doesn’t matter, then I think you’re also wrong. I think that God is a very necessary hypothesis.
Sure. Let’s call it a crisis of faith and an ongoing question of faith, which I think is, I hope most religious people… And the word Israel in Hebrew, Israel, means to struggle with God. That’s literally what the word means. And so the idea of struggling with God, if you’re Jewish or Bnei Yisrael, the idea of struggling with God, I think is endemic to the human condition. If you understand what God’s doing, then I think you’re wrong. And if you think that that question doesn’t matter, then I think you’re also wrong. I think that God is a very necessary hypothesis.
Lex Fridman
So struggle, the struggle with God, is life. That is the process of life.
So struggle, the struggle with God, is life. That is the process of life.
Ben Shapiro
That’s right. Because you’re never going to get to that answer otherwise you’re God and you aren’t.
That’s right. Because you’re never going to get to that answer otherwise you’re God and you aren’t.
Lex Fridman
Why does God allow cruelty and suffering in the world? One of the tough questions.
Why does God allow cruelty and suffering in the world? One of the tough questions.
Ben Shapiro
So we’re going deep here. There’re two types of cruelty and suffering. So if we’re talking about human cruelty and suffering, because God does not intervene to prevent people from exercising their free will, because to do so would be to deprive human beings of the choice that makes them human. This is the sin of the Garden of Eden basically, is that God could make you an angel, in which case you wouldn’t have the choice to do the wrong thing. But so long as we are going to allow for cause and effect in a universe shaped by your choice, cruelty and evil are going to exist.
So we’re going deep here. There’re two types of cruelty and suffering. So if we’re talking about human cruelty and suffering, because God does not intervene to prevent people from exercising their free will, because to do so would be to deprive human beings of the choice that makes them human. This is the sin of the Garden of Eden basically, is that God could make you an angel, in which case you wouldn’t have the choice to do the wrong thing. But so long as we are going to allow for cause and effect in a universe shaped by your choice, cruelty and evil are going to exist.
And then there’s the question of just the natural cruelty and vicissitudes of life. And the answer there is, I think that God obscures himself. I think that if God were to appear in all of his glory to people on a regular basis, I think they would make faith and you wouldn’t need it. There’d be no such thing as faith. It would just be reality, right? Nobody has to prove to you that the sun rises every day. But if God is to allow us the choice to believe in him, which is the ultimate choice from a religious point of view, then he’s going to have to obscure himself behind tragedy and horror and all those other things.
I mean, there’s a fairly well known capitalistic concept called [foreign language 02:08:08] in Judaism, which is the idea that when God created the universe, he sort of withdrew in order to make space for all of these things to happen.
Lex Fridman
So God doesn’t have an instrumental perspective on liberty?
So God doesn’t have an instrumental perspective on liberty?
Ben Shapiro
In a chief sense He does. Because the best use of liberty is going to be belief in Him. And you can misuse your liberty. There will be consequences if you believe in an afterlife, or if you believe in sort of a generalized better version of life led by faith, then liberty does have a purpose. But He also believes that you have to give people from a cosmic perspective the liberty to do wrong without threatening all the institutions of society. I mean, that’s why it does say in the Bible that if man sheds blood, by man shall his blood be shed, right? There are punishments that are in biblical thought for doing things that are wrong.
In a chief sense He does. Because the best use of liberty is going to be belief in Him. And you can misuse your liberty. There will be consequences if you believe in an afterlife, or if you believe in sort of a generalized better version of life led by faith, then liberty does have a purpose. But He also believes that you have to give people from a cosmic perspective the liberty to do wrong without threatening all the institutions of society. I mean, that’s why it does say in the Bible that if man sheds blood, by man shall his blood be shed, right? There are punishments that are in biblical thought for doing things that are wrong.
Lex Fridman
So for a human being who lacks the faith in God, so if you’re an atheist, can you still be a good person?
So for a human being who lacks the faith in God, so if you’re an atheist, can you still be a good person?
Ben Shapiro
Of course, a hundred percent. And there are a lot of religious people who are crappy people.
Of course, a hundred percent. And there are a lot of religious people who are crappy people.
Lex Fridman
How do I understand that tension?
How do I understand that tension?
Ben Shapiro
Well, from a religious perspective, what you would say is that it is perfectly plausible to live in accordance with a set of rules that don’t damage other people without believing in God. You just might be understanding the reason for doing that wrong, is what a religious person would say. There’s the conversation, again, that I had with Sam, basically, is you and I agree, I said this to Sam, you and I agree on nearly everything when it comes to morality, we probably disagree on 15 to 20% of things. The other 80% is because you grew up in a Judeo-Christian society and so did I. We grew up 10 miles from each other around the turn of the millennium. So there’s that.
Well, from a religious perspective, what you would say is that it is perfectly plausible to live in accordance with a set of rules that don’t damage other people without believing in God. You just might be understanding the reason for doing that wrong, is what a religious person would say. There’s the conversation, again, that I had with Sam, basically, is you and I agree, I said this to Sam, you and I agree on nearly everything when it comes to morality, we probably disagree on 15 to 20% of things. The other 80% is because you grew up in a Judeo-Christian society and so did I. We grew up 10 miles from each other around the turn of the millennium. So there’s that.
You can perfectly well be an atheist living a good, moral, decent life, because you can live a good, moral, decent life with regard to other people without believing in God. I don’t think you can build a society on that because I think that that relies on the sort of goodness of mankind, natural goodness of mankind. I don’t believe in the natural goodness of mankind.
Lex Fridman
You don’t?
You don’t?
Ben Shapiro
No. I believe that man has created both sinful and with the capacity for sin and the capacity for good.
No. I believe that man has created both sinful and with the capacity for sin and the capacity for good.
Lex Fridman
But if you let them be on their own, doesn’t-
But if you let them be on their own, doesn’t-
Ben Shapiro
Without social institutions to shape them, I think that that’s very likely to go poorly.
Without social institutions to shape them, I think that that’s very likely to go poorly.
Lex Fridman
Oh, interesting. Well, we came to something we disagree on, but that might reflect itself in our approach to Twitter as well. I think if humans are left on their own, they tend towards good. They definitely have the capacity for good and evil. But when left on their own, I tend to believe they’re good.
Oh, interesting. Well, we came to something we disagree on, but that might reflect itself in our approach to Twitter as well. I think if humans are left on their own, they tend towards good. They definitely have the capacity for good and evil. But when left on their own, I tend to believe they’re good.
Ben Shapiro
I think they might be good with limits. What I mean by that is that what the evidence, I think, tends to show, is that human beings are quite tribal. So what you’ll end up with is people who are good with their immediate family and maybe their immediate neighbors, and then when they’re threatened by an outside tribe, then they kill everyone. Which is sort of the history of civilization in the pre-civilization era, which was a very violent time. Pre-civilization era was quite violent.
I think they might be good with limits. What I mean by that is that what the evidence, I think, tends to show, is that human beings are quite tribal. So what you’ll end up with is people who are good with their immediate family and maybe their immediate neighbors, and then when they’re threatened by an outside tribe, then they kill everyone. Which is sort of the history of civilization in the pre-civilization era, which was a very violent time. Pre-civilization era was quite violent.
Tribalism
Lex Fridman
Do you think on the topic of tribalism in our modern world, what are the pros and cons of tribes? Is that something we should try to outgrow as a civilization?
Do you think on the topic of tribalism in our modern world, what are the pros and cons of tribes? Is that something we should try to outgrow as a civilization?
Ben Shapiro
I don’t think it’s ever going to be possible to fully outgrow tribalism. I think it’s a natural human condition to want to be with people who think like you or have a common set of beliefs. And I think trying to obliterate that in the name of a universalism, likely leads to utopian results that have devastating consequences. Utopian sort of universalism has been failing every time it’s tried, whether you’re talking about, now it seems to be sort of a liberal universalism, which is being rejected by a huge number of people around the world in various different cultures. Or you’re talking about religious universalism, which typically comes with religious tyranny or you’re talking about communistic or Nazi-ist sort of universalism, which comes with mass slaughter.
I don’t think it’s ever going to be possible to fully outgrow tribalism. I think it’s a natural human condition to want to be with people who think like you or have a common set of beliefs. And I think trying to obliterate that in the name of a universalism, likely leads to utopian results that have devastating consequences. Utopian sort of universalism has been failing every time it’s tried, whether you’re talking about, now it seems to be sort of a liberal universalism, which is being rejected by a huge number of people around the world in various different cultures. Or you’re talking about religious universalism, which typically comes with religious tyranny or you’re talking about communistic or Nazi-ist sort of universalism, which comes with mass slaughter.
So this is, universalism I’m not a believer in. I think that you have some values that are fairly limited that all human beings should hold in common. And that’s pretty much it. I think that everybody should have the ability to join with their own culture. I think how we define tribe is a different thing. So I think that tribes should not be defined by innate physical characteristics, for example. Because I think that, thank God, as a civilization, we’ve outgrown that. And I think that that is a childish way to view the world. All the tall people aren’t a tribe. All the black people [inaudible 02:12:25], all the white people aren’t a tribe.
Lex Fridman
So the tribes should be formed over ideas versus physical characteristic.
So the tribes should be formed over ideas versus physical characteristic.
Ben Shapiro
That’s right. Which is why, actually, to go back to the beginning of the conversation, when it comes to Jews, I’m not a big believer in ethnic Judaism. As a person who takes Judaism seriously, Judaism is more to me than you were born with a last name like Berg or Stein. And so-
That’s right. Which is why, actually, to go back to the beginning of the conversation, when it comes to Jews, I’m not a big believer in ethnic Judaism. As a person who takes Judaism seriously, Judaism is more to me than you were born with a last name like Berg or Stein. And so-
Lex Fridman
Hitler would disagree with you.
Hitler would disagree with you.
Ben Shapiro
He would disagree with me. But that’s because he was a tribalist, right? Who thought in racial terms.
He would disagree with me. But that’s because he was a tribalist, right? Who thought in racial terms.
Lex Fridman
Maybe robots will help us see humans as one tribe. Maybe that, as long as-
Maybe robots will help us see humans as one tribe. Maybe that, as long as-
Ben Shapiro
This is Reagan’s idea, right? Reagan said, “Well if there’s an alien invasion, then we’ll all be on the same side. So I’ll go over to the Soviets and we’ll talk about it.”
This is Reagan’s idea, right? Reagan said, “Well if there’s an alien invasion, then we’ll all be on the same side. So I’ll go over to the Soviets and we’ll talk about it.”
Lex Fridman
There’s some deep truth to that. What does it mean to be a good man? The various roles that a human being takes on in this Role Theory that you’ve spoken about. What does it mean to be a good…
There’s some deep truth to that. What does it mean to be a good man? The various roles that a human being takes on in this Role Theory that you’ve spoken about. What does it mean to be a good…
Ben Shapiro
It means to perform… Now, I will do Aristotle. It means to be, perform the function well. What Aristotle says, is the good is not like moral good, moral evil in the way that we tend to think about it. He meant that a good cup holds liquid, a good spoon holds soup. It means that a thing that is broken can’t hold those things, right? So the idea of being a good person means that you are fulfilling the function for which you were made. It’s a teleological view of humanity.
It means to perform… Now, I will do Aristotle. It means to be, perform the function well. What Aristotle says, is the good is not like moral good, moral evil in the way that we tend to think about it. He meant that a good cup holds liquid, a good spoon holds soup. It means that a thing that is broken can’t hold those things, right? So the idea of being a good person means that you are fulfilling the function for which you were made. It’s a teleological view of humanity.
So if you’re a good father, this means that you are bringing up your child in durable values that is going to bring them up healthy, capable of protecting themselves and passing on the traditional wisdom of the ages to future generations, while allowing for the capacity for innovation. That’d be being a good father. Being a good spouse would mean protecting and unifying with your spouse and building a safe family and a place to raise children. Being a good citizen of your community means protecting the fellow citizens of your community while incentivizing them to build for themselves. It becomes actually much easier to think of how to…
This is why I like the Role Theory because it’s very hard, since sort of in Virtue Theory to say be generous. Okay, how does that manifest? I don’t what that looks like. Sometimes being generous might be being not generous to other people. When Aristotle says that you should be benevolent, what does that mean? This is very vague. When I say be a good dad, most people sort of have a gut level understanding of what it means to be a good dad. And mostly, they have a gut level understanding what it means to really be a really bad dad. And so what it means to be a good man is to fulfill those roles, as many of them as you can properly and at full function. And that’s a very hard job.
And I’ve said before that, because I engage a lot with the public and all of this, the word great comes up a lot. What is it to be a great leader? What is it to be a great person? And I’ve always said to people, it’s actually fairly easy to be great. It’s very difficult to be good. There are a lot of very great people who are not very good. And there are not a lot of good people. And most of them, frankly, most good people die, mourned by their family and friends and two generations later they’re forgotten. But those are the people who incrementally move the ball forward in the world sometimes much more than the people who are considered great.
Lex Fridman
“Understand the role in your life that involves being a cup and be damned good at it.”
“Understand the role in your life that involves being a cup and be damned good at it.”
Ben Shapiro
Exactly. That’s right.
Exactly. That’s right.
Lex Fridman
“Hold the soup.” It’s very
“Hold the soup.” It’s very
Ben Shapiro
Jordan Peterson [inaudible 02:15:31].
Jordan Peterson [inaudible 02:15:31].
Lex Fridman
It’s very like [inaudible 02:15:32] or Jordan Peterson.
It’s very like [inaudible 02:15:32] or Jordan Peterson.
Ben Shapiro
Exactly.
Exactly.
Advice for young people
Lex Fridman
I think people will quote you for years and years to come on that. What advice would you give, a lot of young people look up to you, what advice, despite their better judgment? No, I’m just kidding. Only kidding. They seriously look up to you and draw inspiration from your ideas, from your bold thinking. What advice would you give to them? How to live a life worth living, how to have a career they can be proud of and everything like that?
I think people will quote you for years and years to come on that. What advice would you give, a lot of young people look up to you, what advice, despite their better judgment? No, I’m just kidding. Only kidding. They seriously look up to you and draw inspiration from your ideas, from your bold thinking. What advice would you give to them? How to live a life worth living, how to have a career they can be proud of and everything like that?
Ben Shapiro
So live out the values that you think are really important and seek those values in others would be the first piece of advice. Second piece of advice, don’t go on Twitter until you’re 26.
So live out the values that you think are really important and seek those values in others would be the first piece of advice. Second piece of advice, don’t go on Twitter until you’re 26.
Lex Fridman
Why 26?
Why 26?
Ben Shapiro
Because your brain is fully developed at that point. As I said early on, I was on social media and writing columns from the time I was 17. It was a great opportunity. And as it turns out, a great temptation to say enormous numbers of stupid things when you’re young. I mean, you’re kind of trying out ideas and you’re putting them on, you’re taking them off. And social media permanentizes those things and engraves them in stone and then that’s used against you for the rest of your life. So I tell young people this all the time, if you’re going to be on social media, be on social media but don’t post, watch, if you want to take in information. And more importantly, you should read books.
Because your brain is fully developed at that point. As I said early on, I was on social media and writing columns from the time I was 17. It was a great opportunity. And as it turns out, a great temptation to say enormous numbers of stupid things when you’re young. I mean, you’re kind of trying out ideas and you’re putting them on, you’re taking them off. And social media permanentizes those things and engraves them in stone and then that’s used against you for the rest of your life. So I tell young people this all the time, if you’re going to be on social media, be on social media but don’t post, watch, if you want to take in information. And more importantly, you should read books.
As far as other advice, I’d say engage in your community. There’s no substitute for engaging in your community. And engage in interpersonal action because that will soften you and make you a better person. I’ve become a better person since I got married. I’ve become an even better person since I’ve had kids. So you can imagine how terrible I was before all these things. And engaging your community does allow you to build the things that matter on the most local, possible level.
I mean the outcome, by the way, of the sort of politics, of the politics of fulfillment that I was talking about earlier, is a lot of localism. Because the roles that I’m talking about are largely local roles. So that stuff has to be protected locally. I think we focus way too much in this country and others, on world beating solutions, national solutions, solutions that apply to hundreds of millions of people. How we get to the solutions that apply for 5, and then we get to the solutions that apply to 20, and then we get to the solutions that involve 200 people or 1,000 people. Let’s solve that stuff. And I think the solutions at the higher level flow bottom up, not top down.
Lex Fridman
What about mentors and maybe role models? Have you had a mentor or maybe people you look up to, either you interacted on a local scale, like you actually knew them or somebody you really looked up to?
What about mentors and maybe role models? Have you had a mentor or maybe people you look up to, either you interacted on a local scale, like you actually knew them or somebody you really looked up to?
Ben Shapiro
For me, I’m very lucky, I grew up in a very solid, two-parent household. I’m extremely close with my parents. I’ve lived near my parents literally my entire life with the exception of three years of law school. And right now, they live a mile and a half from us.
For me, I’m very lucky, I grew up in a very solid, two-parent household. I’m extremely close with my parents. I’ve lived near my parents literally my entire life with the exception of three years of law school. And right now, they live a mile and a half from us.
Lex Fridman
What did you learn about life from your parents and your father?
What did you learn about life from your parents and your father?
Ben Shapiro
Oh man, so many things from my parents.
Oh man, so many things from my parents.
Lex Fridman
Good and bad.
Good and bad.
Ben Shapiro
That’s a hard one. I mean, I think the good stuff from my dad is that you should hold true to your values. He’s very big on, you have values, those values are important, hold true to them.
That’s a hard one. I mean, I think the good stuff from my dad is that you should hold true to your values. He’s very big on, you have values, those values are important, hold true to them.
Lex Fridman
Did you understand what your values are, what your principles are early on?
Did you understand what your values are, what your principles are early on?
Ben Shapiro
Fairly quickly. Yeah. Yeah. And so he was very big on that, which is why, for example, I get asked a lot in the Jewish community why I wear a kippah. And the answer is, it never occurred to me to take off the kippah. I always wore it. Why would I take it off at any point? That’s the life that I want to live. And that’s the way it is. So that was a big one from my dad.
Fairly quickly. Yeah. Yeah. And so he was very big on that, which is why, for example, I get asked a lot in the Jewish community why I wear a kippah. And the answer is, it never occurred to me to take off the kippah. I always wore it. Why would I take it off at any point? That’s the life that I want to live. And that’s the way it is. So that was a big one from my dad.
From my mom, practicality. My dad is more of a dreamer. My mom is much more practical. And so the sort of lessons that I learned from my dad are that you can have… This is the counter-lesson, is that you can have a good idea, but if you don’t have a plan for implementation, then it doesn’t end up as reality. And I think actually, he’s learned that better over the course of his life too.
But my dad, from the time I was very young, he wanted me to engage with other adults and he wanted me to learn from other people. And one of his roles was if he didn’t know something, he would find somebody who he thought did know the thing for me to talk to. That was a big thing. So I’m very lucky. I have wonderful parents.
Andrew Breitbart
As far as of other mentors, in terms of the media, Andrew Breitbart was a mentor. Andrew, obviously, he was kind of known in his latter days, I think more for the militancy than when I was very close with him.
Lex Fridman
So for somebody like me who knows more about the militancy, can you tell me what makes him a great man?
So for somebody like me who knows more about the militancy, can you tell me what makes him a great man?
Ben Shapiro
Well, what made Andrew great is that he engaged with everyone. I mean everyone. So there are videos of him rollerblading down the boulevard and people would be protesting and he would literally rollerblade up to them and he would say, “Let’s go to lunch together.” And he would just do this. That’s actually who Andrew was.
Well, what made Andrew great is that he engaged with everyone. I mean everyone. So there are videos of him rollerblading down the boulevard and people would be protesting and he would literally rollerblade up to them and he would say, “Let’s go to lunch together.” And he would just do this. That’s actually who Andrew was.
Lex Fridman
What was the thinking behind that? Just-
What was the thinking behind that? Just-
Ben Shapiro
That’s who he was. He was just careless. He was much more outgoing than I am actually. He was very warm with people. For me, I would say that with Andrew, I knew Andrew for, say I’m around 16, he passed away when I would’ve been 28. So I knew Andrew for 10, 12 years. And people who met Andrew for about 10 minutes knew Andrew 99% as well as I knew Andrew. Because he was just all outfront, like everything was out here. And he loved talking to people. He loved engaging with people. And so this made him a lot of fun and unpredictable and fun to watch and all of that.
That’s who he was. He was just careless. He was much more outgoing than I am actually. He was very warm with people. For me, I would say that with Andrew, I knew Andrew for, say I’m around 16, he passed away when I would’ve been 28. So I knew Andrew for 10, 12 years. And people who met Andrew for about 10 minutes knew Andrew 99% as well as I knew Andrew. Because he was just all outfront, like everything was out here. And he loved talking to people. He loved engaging with people. And so this made him a lot of fun and unpredictable and fun to watch and all of that.
And then I think Twitter got to him. Twitter is one of the lessons I learned from Andrew, is the counter-lesson, which is Twitter can poison you. Twitter can really wreck you. If you spend all day on Twitter, reading the comments and getting angry at people who are talking about you, it becomes a very difficult life. And I think that in the last year of his life, Andrew got very caught up in that because of a series of circumstances.
Lex Fridman
It can actually affect your mind, it can actually make you resentful, all that kind of stuff.
It can actually affect your mind, it can actually make you resentful, all that kind of stuff.
Ben Shapiro
I tend to agree with that. But the lesson that I learned from Andrew is engage with everybody. Take joy in the mission that you’re given. And you can’t always fulfill that, sometimes it’s really rough and difficult. I’m not going to pretend that it’s all fun and rainbows all the time, because it isn’t. And some of the stuff that I have to cover, I don’t like. And some of the things I have to say, I don’t particularly like. That happens. But that’s what I learned from Andrew.
I tend to agree with that. But the lesson that I learned from Andrew is engage with everybody. Take joy in the mission that you’re given. And you can’t always fulfill that, sometimes it’s really rough and difficult. I’m not going to pretend that it’s all fun and rainbows all the time, because it isn’t. And some of the stuff that I have to cover, I don’t like. And some of the things I have to say, I don’t particularly like. That happens. But that’s what I learned from Andrew.
As far as sort of other mentors, I had some teachers when I was a kid who said things that stuck with me. I had a fourth grade teacher named Miss Genetti who said, “Don’t let potential be written on your tombstone.” Which is a pretty-
Lex Fridman
That’s a good line.
That’s a good line.
Ben Shapiro
It’s a great line, particularly to a fourth grader. There was a guy in 11th grade, English teacher named Anthony Miller, who was terrific, really good writer. He had studied with James Joyce at Trinity College in Dublin. And so he and I really got along and he helped my writing a lot.
It’s a great line, particularly to a fourth grader. There was a guy in 11th grade, English teacher named Anthony Miller, who was terrific, really good writer. He had studied with James Joyce at Trinity College in Dublin. And so he and I really got along and he helped my writing a lot.
Self-doubt
Lex Fridman
Did you ever have doubt in yourself? I mean, especially as you gotten into the public eye with all the attacks, did you ever doubt your ability to stay strong, to be able to be a voice of the ideas that you represent?
Did you ever have doubt in yourself? I mean, especially as you gotten into the public eye with all the attacks, did you ever doubt your ability to stay strong, to be able to be a voice of the ideas that you represent?
Ben Shapiro
Definitely. I doubt my ability to say what I want to say. I doubt my ability to handle the emotional blowback of saying it, meaning that that’s difficult. I mean, again, to take just one example, in 2016, the ADL measured that I was the number one target of antisemitism on planet earth. That’s not fun. It’s unpleasant. And when you take critiques, not from anti-Semites, but when you take critiques from people generally, we talked about near the beginning, how you surround yourself with people who are going to give you good feedback. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Sometimes people are giving you feedback and you don’t know whether it’s well motivated or poorly motivated. And if you are trying to be a decent person, you can’t cut off the mechanism of feedback.
Definitely. I doubt my ability to say what I want to say. I doubt my ability to handle the emotional blowback of saying it, meaning that that’s difficult. I mean, again, to take just one example, in 2016, the ADL measured that I was the number one target of antisemitism on planet earth. That’s not fun. It’s unpleasant. And when you take critiques, not from anti-Semites, but when you take critiques from people generally, we talked about near the beginning, how you surround yourself with people who are going to give you good feedback. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Sometimes people are giving you feedback and you don’t know whether it’s well motivated or poorly motivated. And if you are trying to be a decent person, you can’t cut off the mechanism of feedback.
And so what that means is sometimes you take to heart the wrong thing or you take it to heart too much, you’re not light enough about it. You take it very, very seriously. You lose sleep over it. Man, I can’t tell you the number of nights where I’ve just not slept because of some critique somebody’s made of me. And I’ve thought to myself, maybe that’s right. And sometimes it is right.
Lex Fridman
Some of that is good, to stew in that criticism, but some of that can destroy you. Do you have a shortcut? So Rogan has talked about taking a lot of mushrooms, since you’re not into the mushroom thing, what’s your escape from that when you get low, when you can’t sleep?
Some of that is good, to stew in that criticism, but some of that can destroy you. Do you have a shortcut? So Rogan has talked about taking a lot of mushrooms, since you’re not into the mushroom thing, what’s your escape from that when you get low, when you can’t sleep?
Ben Shapiro
Usually, writing is a big one for me. So the writing for me is cathartic. I love writing. That is a huge one. Spending time with my family. Again, I usually have a close circle of friends who I will talk with in order to bounce ideas off of them. And then, once I’ve kind of talked it through, I tend to feel a little bit better. Exercise is also a big one. I mean, if I go a few days without exercise, I tend to get pretty grumpy pretty quickly. I mean, I got to keep the six pack going somehow, man.
Usually, writing is a big one for me. So the writing for me is cathartic. I love writing. That is a huge one. Spending time with my family. Again, I usually have a close circle of friends who I will talk with in order to bounce ideas off of them. And then, once I’ve kind of talked it through, I tend to feel a little bit better. Exercise is also a big one. I mean, if I go a few days without exercise, I tend to get pretty grumpy pretty quickly. I mean, I got to keep the six pack going somehow, man.
Lex Fridman
There you and Rogan agree. Well, we haven’t, aside from Twitter, mentioned love. What’s the role of love in the human condition? Ben Shapiro?
There you and Rogan agree. Well, we haven’t, aside from Twitter, mentioned love. What’s the role of love in the human condition? Ben Shapiro?
Love
Ben Shapiro
Man, don’t get asked for love too much. In fact, I was-
Man, don’t get asked for love too much. In fact, I was-
Lex Fridman
You don’t get that question on college campuses?
You don’t get that question on college campuses?
Ben Shapiro
No, I typically don’t actually. In fact, we were at an event recently, a Daily Wire event. And in the middle of this event, it’s a meet and greet with some of the audience. And in the middle of this event, this guy walks by with this girl, they’re talking and they’re talking to me and their time kind of runs, the security’s moving them. And he says, “No, no, no, wait. Hold on a minute.” And he gets down on one knee and he proposes the girl in front of me. And I said to him, “This is the weirdest proposal in human history. What is happening right now? I was your choice of cupid here?” He said, “Well, we actually got together because we listened to your show.” And I said, “I can perform a Jewish marriage right now. We’re going to need a glass, we’re going to need some wine. It’s going to get weird real fast.” But yeah, so love doctor, I’m typically not asked too much about.
No, I typically don’t actually. In fact, we were at an event recently, a Daily Wire event. And in the middle of this event, it’s a meet and greet with some of the audience. And in the middle of this event, this guy walks by with this girl, they’re talking and they’re talking to me and their time kind of runs, the security’s moving them. And he says, “No, no, no, wait. Hold on a minute.” And he gets down on one knee and he proposes the girl in front of me. And I said to him, “This is the weirdest proposal in human history. What is happening right now? I was your choice of cupid here?” He said, “Well, we actually got together because we listened to your show.” And I said, “I can perform a Jewish marriage right now. We’re going to need a glass, we’re going to need some wine. It’s going to get weird real fast.” But yeah, so love doctor, I’m typically not asked too much about.
The role of love is important in binding together human beings who ought to be bound together. And the role of respect is even more important in binding together broader groups of people. I think one of the mistakes that we make in politics is trying to substitute love for respect or respect for love. And I think that’s a big mistake. So I do not bear tremendous love in the same sense that I do for my family for random strangers. I don’t. I love my family, I love my kids. Anybody who tells you they love your kid as much as you love your kid is lying to you. It’s not true. I love my community more than I love other communities. I love my state more than I love other states. I love my country more than I love other countries. That’s all normal and that’s all good.
The problem of empathy can be when that becomes so tight-knit that you’re not outward looking, that you don’t actually have respect for other people. So in the local level, you need love in order to protect you and shield you and give you the strength to go forward. And then beyond that, you need a lot of respect for people who are not in the circle of love. And I think trying to extend love to people who either are not going to love you back or are going to slap you in the face for it, or who you’re just not that close to, it’s either it runs the risk of being ersatz and fake or it can actually be counterproductive in some senses.
Lex Fridman
Well, there’s some sense in which you could have love for other human beings just based on the humanity that connects everybody. So you love this whole project that we’re a part of. And actually, sort of another thing we disagree on, so loving a stranger, like having that basic empathy and compassion towards a stranger, even if it can hurt you, I think it’s ultimately, that to me, is what it means to be a good man. To live a good life is to have that compassion towards strangers. Because to me, it’s easy and natural and obvious to love people close to you, but to step outside yourself and to love others, I think that’s the fabric of a good society. You don’t think there’s value to that?
Well, there’s some sense in which you could have love for other human beings just based on the humanity that connects everybody. So you love this whole project that we’re a part of. And actually, sort of another thing we disagree on, so loving a stranger, like having that basic empathy and compassion towards a stranger, even if it can hurt you, I think it’s ultimately, that to me, is what it means to be a good man. To live a good life is to have that compassion towards strangers. Because to me, it’s easy and natural and obvious to love people close to you, but to step outside yourself and to love others, I think that’s the fabric of a good society. You don’t think there’s value to that?
Ben Shapiro
I think there can be, but I think we’re also discussing love almost in two different senses. Meaning that when I talk about love, what I think of immediately is the love I bear for my wife and kids or my parents or my siblings.
I think there can be, but I think we’re also discussing love almost in two different senses. Meaning that when I talk about love, what I think of immediately is the love I bear for my wife and kids or my parents or my siblings.
Lex Fridman
Or friendship.
Or friendship.
Ben Shapiro
Or the love of my close friends. But I think, that using that same term to describe how I feel about strangers, I think would just be inaccurate. And so that’s why I’m suggesting that respect might be a more solid and realistic foundation for the way that we treat people far away from us or people who are strangers. Respect for their dignity, respect for their priorities, respect for their role in life. It might be too much of an ask, in other words.
Or the love of my close friends. But I think, that using that same term to describe how I feel about strangers, I think would just be inaccurate. And so that’s why I’m suggesting that respect might be a more solid and realistic foundation for the way that we treat people far away from us or people who are strangers. Respect for their dignity, respect for their priorities, respect for their role in life. It might be too much of an ask, in other words.
There might be the rare human being who’s capable of literally loving a homeless man on the street the way they do loves his own family. But if you respect the homeless man on the street, the way that you respect your own family, because everyone deserves that respect, I think that you get to the same end without forcing people into a position of unrealistically expecting themselves to feel a thing they don’t feel.
One of the big questions in religion that comes up is God makes certain requests that you feel certain ways. You’re supposed to be [foreign language 02:28:05], you’re supposed to be happy about certain things or you’re supposed to love thy neighbor as thyself. Right? You’ll notice that in that statement, it’s thy neighbor, it’s not just generally anyone. It’s love thy neighbors. In any case, the-
Lex Fridman
I think that extends to anyone that follows you on Twitter, thy neighbor. Because God anticipated the social network aspect. That is not constrained by geography.
I think that extends to anyone that follows you on Twitter, thy neighbor. Because God anticipated the social network aspect. That is not constrained by geography.
Ben Shapiro
I’m going to differ with you on the interpretation on that. But in any case, the sort of extension of love outwards might be too big an ask. So maybe we can start with respect and then, hopefully, out of that respect can grow something more if people earn their way in. Because I think that one of the big problems when we were talking about universalism, is when people say, “I’m a world citizen. I love people of the other country as much as I love myself, or as much as I love my country,” it tends to actually lead to an almost crammed down utopianism. That, I think, can be kind of difficult.
I’m going to differ with you on the interpretation on that. But in any case, the sort of extension of love outwards might be too big an ask. So maybe we can start with respect and then, hopefully, out of that respect can grow something more if people earn their way in. Because I think that one of the big problems when we were talking about universalism, is when people say, “I’m a world citizen. I love people of the other country as much as I love myself, or as much as I love my country,” it tends to actually lead to an almost crammed down utopianism. That, I think, can be kind of difficult.
Because with love comes a certain expectation of solidarity. And I think, right, I mean, when you love your family, you love your wife, there’s a certain level of solidarity that is required inside the home in order to preserve the most loving kind of home. And so if you love everybody, then that sort of implies a certain level of solidarity that may not exist. So maybe the idea is, for me, start with respect and then maybe as people respect each other more, then love is an outgrowth of that. As opposed to starting with love, and then hoping that respect develops.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, there’s a danger that word becomes empty, and instead is used for dogmatic kind of utopianism versus-
Yeah, there’s a danger that word becomes empty, and instead is used for dogmatic kind of utopianism versus-
Ben Shapiro
I mean, this is the way that, for example, religious theocracies very often work. We love you so much, we have to convert you.
I mean, this is the way that, for example, religious theocracies very often work. We love you so much, we have to convert you.
Lex Fridman
So let’s start with respect. What I would love to see after our conversation today, is to see a Ben Shapiro that continues the growth on Twitter of being even more respectful than you’ve already been. And maybe one day, converting that into love on Twitter. That would, if I could see that in this world, that would make me die a happy man.
So let’s start with respect. What I would love to see after our conversation today, is to see a Ben Shapiro that continues the growth on Twitter of being even more respectful than you’ve already been. And maybe one day, converting that into love on Twitter. That would, if I could see that in this world, that would make me die a happy man.
Ben Shapiro
Wow. I can make that happen for you.
Wow. I can make that happen for you.
Lex Fridman
A little bit more in love in the world. For me, as a gift, for me.
A little bit more in love in the world. For me, as a gift, for me.
Ben Shapiro
I’ll try to make that happen. I do have one question. I’m going to need you to tell me, which jokes are okay? Are jokes still okay?
I’ll try to make that happen. I do have one question. I’m going to need you to tell me, which jokes are okay? Are jokes still okay?
Lex Fridman
So yeah, can I just run your Twitter from now on? You just send it to me.
So yeah, can I just run your Twitter from now on? You just send it to me.
Ben Shapiro
A hundred percent. I’ll prescreen you the jokes and you can tell me if this is a loving joke or if this is a hate-filled [inaudible 02:30:26].
A hundred percent. I’ll prescreen you the jokes and you can tell me if this is a loving joke or if this is a hate-filled [inaudible 02:30:26].
Lex Fridman
People will be very surprised by all the heart emojis that start popping up on your Twitter. But thank you so much for being bold and fearless and exploring ideas. And your Twitter aside, thank you for being just good faith in all the arguments and all the conversations you’re having with people. It’s a huge honor. Thank you for talking to me.
People will be very surprised by all the heart emojis that start popping up on your Twitter. But thank you so much for being bold and fearless and exploring ideas. And your Twitter aside, thank you for being just good faith in all the arguments and all the conversations you’re having with people. It’s a huge honor. Thank you for talking to me.
Ben Shapiro
Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ben Shapiro. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ben Shapiro. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now, let me leave you with some words from Ben Shapiro himself. “Freedom of speech and thought matters, especially when it is speech and thought with which we disagree. The moment the majority decides to destroy people from engaging in thought it dislikes, thought crime becomes a reality.”
Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time.
Transcript for Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War | Lex Fridman Podcast #445
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #445 with Vivek Ramaswamy.
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It’s an assault and a crusade on the nanny state itself. And that nanny state presents itself in several forms. There’s the entitlement state, it’s the welfare state, presents itself in the form of the regulatory state. That’s what we’re talking about. And then there’s the foreign nanny state where effectively we are subsidizing other countries that aren’t paying their fair share of protection or other resources we provide them. If I was to summarize my ideology, in a nutshell, it is to terminate the nanny state in the United States of America in all of its forms, the entitlement state, the regulatory state and the foreign policy nanny state. Once we’ve done that, we’ve revived the republic that I think would make George Washington proud.
So what do we stand for as conservatives? I think we stand for the ideals that we fought the American Revolution for in 1776. Ideals like merit. That the best person gets the job without regard to their genetics. That you get ahead in this country, not on the color of your skin, but on the content of your character. Free speech, an open debate, not just as some sort of catchphrase, but the idea that any opinion, no matter how heinous, you get to express it in the United States of America. Self-governance and this is a big one right now, is that the people we elect to run the government, they’re no longer the ones who actually run the government. We, in the conservative movement, I believe, should believe in restoring self-governance where it’s not bureaucrats running the show, but actually elected representatives.
And then the other ideal that the nation was founded on that I think we need to revive and I think as a north star of the conservative movement is restoring the rule of law in this country. You think about even the abandonment of the rule of law at the southern border. It’s particularly personal to me as the kid of legal immigrants to this country. You and I actually share a couple of aspects in common in that regard. That also though means your first act of entering this country can’t break the law. So there’s some policy commitments and principles, merit, free speech, self-governance, rule of law. And then I think culturally what does it mean to be a conservative is it means we believe in the anchors of our identity, in truth, the value of the individual family, nation and God beat race, gender, sexuality and climate. If we have the courage to actually stand for our own vision. And that’s a big part of what’s been missing. And it’s a big part of not just through the campaign, but through a lot of my future advocacy, that’s the vacuum I’m aiming to fill.
That’s the core view of the modern left. I’m not criticizing it right now, I’m steel manning it, I’m trying to give you I think a good of why the left believes they have a compelling case for the government stepping into correct for historical or present inequalities. I can give you my counter rebuttal of that, but the best statement of the left, I think that it’s the fact that we’ve been imperfect in living up to those ideals. In order to fix that, we’re going to have to take steps that are severe steps if needed to correct for those historical inequalities before we actually have true equality of opportunity in this country. That’s the case for the left-wing view in modern America.
Why are we seeing that resurgence? In part, it’s because of I believe that left-wing obsession with racial equity over the course of the last 20 years in this country. And so when you take something away from someone based on their skin color, and that’s what correcting for prior injustice was supposed to do, the left-wing view is you have to correct for prior injustice by saying that whether you’re a white, straight, cis, man, you have certain privileges that you have to actually correct for. When you take something away from somebody based on their genetics, you actually foster greater animus towards other groups around you. And so the problem with that philosophy is that it creates several problems with it, but the most significant problem that I think everybody can agree we want to avoid is to actually fan the flames of the very divisions that you supposedly wanted to heal.
I see that in our context of our immigration policy as well. You think about even what’s going on in, I’m from Ohio, I was born and raised in Ohio and I live there today, the controversy in Springfield, Ohio. I personally don’t blame really any of the people who are in Springfield, either the native people born and raised in Springfield or even the Haitians who have been moved to Springfield. But it ends up becoming a divide and conquer strategy and outcome where if you put 20,000 people in a community where, 50,000 people, where the 20,000 are coming in don’t know the language, are unable to follow the traffic laws, are unable to assimilate, you know there’s going to be a reactionary backlash. And so even though that began perhaps with some type of charitable instinct, some type of sympathy for people who went through the earthquake in 2010 in Haiti and achieved temporary protective status in the United States, what began with sympathy, what began with earnest intentions actually creates the very division and reactionary response that supposedly we say we wanted to avoid. So that’s my number one criticism of that left-wing worldview.
Number two is I do believe that merit and equity are actually incompatible. Merit and group quotas are incompatible. You can have one or the other, you can’t have both. And the reason why is no two people, and I think it’s the beautiful things, true between you and I, between you, I and all of our friends or family or strangers or neighbors or colleagues, no two people have the same skillsets. We’re each endowed by different gifts. We’re each endowed with different talents. And that’s the beauty of human diversity.
And a true meritocracy is a system in which you’re able to achieve the maximum of your God-given potential without anybody standing in your way. But that means necessarily there’s going to be differences in outcomes in a wide range of parameters, not just financial, not just money, not just fame or currency or whatever it is. There’s just going to be different outcomes for different people in different spheres of lives. And that’s what meritocracy demands. It’s what it requires. And so the left’s vision of group equity necessarily comes at the cost of meritocracy. And so those would be my two reasons for opposing the view is one is it’s not meritocratic, but number two is it often even has the effect of hurting the very people they claimed to have wanted to help. And I think that’s part of what we’re seeing in modern America.
I can give you a very specific example. That might sound like, “Okay, well, is it such a bad thing if an organization doesn’t want to exclude people who are saying racist things on a given day?” We could debate that. But let’s get to the tangible world of how that actually plays out. I, for my part, have not really heard in ordinary America people uttering racial epithets if you’re going to restaurant or in the grocery store. It’s not something I’ve encountered, certainly not in the workplace. But that’s a theoretical case, let’s talk about the real world case of how this plays out. So there was an instance, it was a case that presented itself before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the EEOC, one of the government enforcers of the DEI agenda. And there was a case of a woman who wore a red sweater on Fridays in celebration of veterans and those who had served the military and invited others in the workplace to do the same thing.
And they had a kind of affinity group, you could call it that, a veteran type affinity group, appreciating those who had served. Her son had served as well. There was a minority employee at that business who said that he found that to be a microaggression. So the employer asked her to stop wearing said clothes too, the office. Well, she still felt like she wanted to celebrate, I think, it was Friday was the day of the week where they did it. She still wore the red sweater and she didn’t wear it, but she would hang it on the back of her seat, put it on the back of her seat at the office. They said, “No, you can’t do that either.” So the irony is in the name of this capital D diversity, which is creating a supposedly welcoming workplace for all kinds of Americans by focusing only on certain kinds of so-called diversity, that translates into actually not even a diversity of your genetics, which is what they claim to be solving for, but also a hostility to diversity of thought.
And I think that’s dangerous. And you’re seeing that happen in the last four years across this country. It’s been pretty rampant. I think it leaves America worse off. The beauty of America is we’re a country where we should be able to have institutions that are stronger from different points of view being expressed. But my number one criticism of the DEI agenda is not even that it’s anti-meritocratic, it is anti-meritocratic, but my number one criticism is it’s actually hostile to the free and open exchange of ideas by creating often legal liabilities for organizations that even permit certain viewpoints to be expressed. And I think that’s the biggest concern.
Today, to be a government contractor, for example, you have to adopt certain racial and gender representation targets in your workforce. That’s not the free market working. So I think you can’t have it both ways either. It’s going to be good for companies and companies are going to do what’s in their self-interest. That’s what capitalists like Mark Cuban and I believe. But if we really believe that, then we should let the market work rather than forcing it to adopt these top-down standards. That’s my issue with it.
It’s what I call the practice of blowing woke smoke to deflect accountability. You could say the same thing with respect to the educational system. It’s a lot easier to claim that, and I’m not the one making this claim, but others have made this claim, that math is racist because there are inequitable results on objective tests of mathematics based on different demographic attributes. You can claim using that then math is racist. It’s a lot easier to blow that woke smoke than it is to accept accountability for failing to teach black kids in the inner city how to actually do math and fix our public school systems and the zip code coded mechanism for trapping kids in poor communities in bad schools. So I think that in many cases, what these bureaucracies do is they use the appearance of signaling this virtue as a way of not really advancing a social cause, but of strengthening the power of the bureaucracy itself and insulating that bureaucracy from criticism.
So in many ways, bureaucracy, I think, cars the channels through which much of this woke ideology has flowed over the last several years. And that’s why part of my focus has shifted away from just combating wokeness because that’s just a symptom, I think, versus combating actual bureaucracy itself. The rise of this managerial class, the rise of the deep state. We talk about that in the government, but the deep state doesn’t just exist in the government. It exists I think in every sphere of our lives, from companies to nonprofits to universities. It’s the rise of we call the managerial class, the committee class, the people who professionally sit on committees, I think are wielding far more power today than actual creators, entrepreneurs, original ideators and ordinary citizens alike.
That’s why you need professional technocrats, educated elites, enlightened bureaucrats to be able to set limits that actually protect people from their own worst impulses. That’s the Old World view and most nations in human history have operated this way, but what made the United States of America itself, to know what made America great, we have to know what made America itself, what made America itself is we said hell no to that vision, that we the people, for better or worse, are going to self-govern without the committee class restraining what we do. And the likes of Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and I could give you examples of John Adams or Robert Livingston, you go straight down the list of founding fathers who were inventors, creators, pioneers, explorers, who also were the very people who came together to sign the Declaration of Independence. And so yeah, this rise of bureaucracy in America in every sphere of life, I view it as anti-American actually. And I hope that conservatives and liberals alike can get behind my crusade certainly to get in there and shut most of it down.
I can’t give you option C, which is to say that I’m going to cut exactly the right amount, I’m going to do it perfectly. Okay, you don’t know ex-ante, you don’t know beforehand that it’s exactly how it’s going to, so that’s a meaningless claim. It’s only a question of which risk you’re going to take. I believe in the moment we live in right now, the second risk is the risk we have to be willing to take. And we haven’t had a class of politician, Donald Trump in 2016 was I think the closest we’ve gotten and I think the second term will be even closer to what we need, but short of that, I don’t think we’ve really had a class of politician who has gotten very serious about cutting so much that you’re also going to cut some fat, but not only some fat, but also some muscle.
That’s the risk we have to take. So the way I would do it, 75% headcount reduction across the board in the federal bureaucracy, send them home packing, shut down agencies that shouldn’t exist, rescind every unconstitutional regulation that Congress never passed. In a true self-governing democracy, it should be our elected representatives that make the laws and the rules not unelected bureaucrats. And that is the single greatest form of economic stimulus we could have in this country, but it is also the single most effective way to restore self-governance in our country as well. And it is the blueprint for, I think, how we save this country.
So is it possible? Yeah, it’s really possible. I’ll tell you one easy way to do it. This is a little bit, I’m being a little bit glib here, but I think it’s not crazy, at least as a thought experiment. Get in there on day one, say that anybody in the federal bureaucracy who is not elected, elected representatives obviously were elected by the people, but the people who are not elected, if your social security number ends in an odd number, you’re out, if it ends in an even number, you’re in. There’s a 50% cut right there. Of those who remain, if your social security number starts in an even number, you’re in and if it starts with an odd number, you’re out. Boom. That’s a 75% reduction done. Literally, stochastically, okay, one of the virtues of that, it’s a thought experiment, not a policy prescription, but one of the virtues of that thought experiment is that you don’t have a bunch of lawsuits you’re dealing with about gender discrimination or racial discrimination or political viewpoint discrimination.
Actually, the reality is you’ve at mass, you didn’t bring the chisel, you brought a chainsaw, I guarantee you do that on day one and do step two on day two, on day three, not a thing will have changed for the ordinary American other than this size of their government being a lot smaller and more restrained, spending a lot less money to operate it. And most people who have run a company, especially larger companies know this, it’s 25% of the people who do 80 to 90% of the useful work, these government agencies are no different. So now imagine you could do that same thought experiment, but not just doing it at random, but do it still at large scale while having some metric of screening for those who actually had both the greatest competence as well as the greatest commitment and knowledge of the Constitution.
That I think would immediately raise not only the civic character of the United States, now we feel, okay, the people we elect to run the government, they’ve got the power back, they’re running the government again, as opposed to the unelected bureaucrats who wield the power today, it would also stimulate the economy. The regulatory state is like a wet blanket on the American economy. Most of it is unconstitutional. All we require is leadership with a spine to get in there and actually do what conservative presidents have maybe gestured towards and talked about, but have not really effectuated ever in modern history.
I’ll give you what the number one reason was, is that they felt like they were unable to do the true maximum of what their potential was in their prior role. That’s the number one reason people leave their job. And by the way, I would say that as I’m saying that in a self boastful way that we would attract these people. I think that’s also true for most of the people who left the company as well, Roivant. And that was true at Roivant, it’s at other companies I’ve started. I think the number one reason people join companies and number one people leave companies, whether they’ve been to join mine or to leave mine in the past, have been that they feel like they’re able to do more than they’re able to with their skillset than that environment permits them to actually achieve. And so I think that’s what people hung for.
When we think about capitalism and true free market capitalism, and we used words earlier like meritocracy, it’s about building a system, whether it’s in a nation or whether it’s even within an organization, that allows every individual to flourish and achieve the maximum of their potential. And sometimes it just doesn’t match for an organization, where let’s say the mission is here and somebody’s skillsets could be really well aligned to a different mission, then the right answer is it’s not a negative thing, it’s just that person needs to leave and find their mission somewhere else. But to bring that back to government, I think part of what’s happened right now is that the rise of that bureaucracy in so many of these government agencies has actually obfuscated the mission of these agencies. I think if you went to most federal bureaucracies and just asked them what’s the mission, I’m just making one up off the top of my head right now, the Department of Health and Human Services, what is the mission of HHS in the United States of America? I doubt somebody who works there, even the person who leads it, could give you…
You could even say for the US military, what’s the purpose of the US military, the Department of Defense? I can give you one. I think it is to win wars, and more importantly, through its strength, to avoid wars, that’s it.
Well, okay, if that’s the mission, then you know, okay, it’s not tinkering around and messing around in some foreign conflict where we feel like it sometimes, and other ones where we don’t. And who decides that, I don’t really know, but whoever the people are that decide that, we follow those orders.
No, our mission is to protect the United States of America, to win wars, and to avoid wars, boom, those three things. What does protecting the United States of America mean? Number one, the homeland of the United States of America and the people who reside there. Good, that’s a clear mission.
The Department of Health and Human Services, maybe, could be a reasonable mission to say that I want to make America the healthiest country on Planet Earth, and we will develop the metrics and meet those metrics, and that’s the goal of the Department of HHS, to set policies, or at least to implement policies that best achieve that goal.
And maybe that’s the right statement of mission, maybe it’s not, but one of the things that happens is, when you’re governed by the committee class, it dilutes the sense of mission out of any organization, whether it’s a company or government agency or bureaucracy.
And once you’ve done that, then you lose the ability to track the best and the brightest, because in order for somebody to achieve the maximum of their potential, they have to know what it’s towards. There has to be a mission in the first place.
Then you’re not getting the best and brightest, you get more from the committee class, and that becomes a self-perpetuating downward spiral, and that is what the blob of the federal bureaucracy really looks like today.
It’s like a defensive mechanism that’s designed to reduce dynamism. But I think when that becomes cancerous in its scope, it then actually kills the host itself, whether that’s a school, whether that’s a company, whether that’s a government.
And so, the way I think about it, Lex, is, there’s sort of a balance of distributed power. And I don’t mean power in the Foucault sense of social power, but I mean just power in the sense of the ability to affect relevant change in any organization between what you could call the founder class, the creator class, the everyday citizen, the stakeholder class, and then the managerial class.
And there’s a role for all three of them. You could have the constituents of an organization, say in a constitutional republic, that’s the citizen, you could have the equivalent of the creator class, the people who create things in that polity, and then you have the bureaucratic class that’s designed to administer and serve as a liaison between the two.
I’m not denying that there’s some role somewhere for people who are in that managerial class, but right now, in this moment in American history, and I think it’s been more or less true for the last century, but it’s grown, starting with Woodrow Wilson’s advent of the Modern Administrative State, metastasizing through FDR’s New Deal and what was required to administer it, blown over and metastasizing further through LBJ’s Great Society, and everything that’s happened since, even aided and abetted by Republican presidents along the way like Richard Nixon, has created a United States of America where that committee class, both in and outside the government and our culture, wields far too much influence and power relative to the everyday citizen stakeholder and to the creators, who are, in many ways, constrained, hamstrung, shackled in straitjacket from achieving the maximum of their own potential contributions.
And I certainly feel that myself. I probably identify as being a member of that creator class most closely. It’s just what I’ve done, I create things. And I think we live in an environment in the United States of America where we’re still probably the best country on earth where that creator has that shot, so that’s the positive side of it, but one where we are far more constrictive to the creator class than we have been when we’ve been at our best, and that’s what I want to see change.
It might be at least a relevant question to ask before we decided what are we doing with it or not, what was the purpose of this thing that we created? To me, it seems to be a highly relevant question.
Yet, in this discussion about government reform, it’s interesting how eager people are to skip over that question and just to talk about, “Okay, but we’ve got the status quo, and it’s just going to be disruptive,” versus asking the question of, okay, this institution was created, it had an original purpose, is that purpose still relevant? Is this organization at all fulfilling that purpose today?
To me, those are some relevant questions to ask. So, let’s talk about that for the Department of Education. Its purpose was relevant at that time, which was to make sure that localities, and particularly states, were not siphoning taxpayer dollars away from predominantly Black school districts to predominantly White ones.
And that was not a theoretical concern at the time. It was happening, or there was at least some evidence that that was happening in certain states in the South. And so, you may say you don’t like the federal solution, you may say you like the federal solution, but like it or not, that was the original purpose of the US Department of Education, to make sure that, from a federal perspective, that states were not systematically disadvantaging Black school districts over predominantly White ones.
However noble and relevant that purpose may have been six decades ago, it’s not a relevant purpose today. There’s no evidence today of states intentionally mapping out which are the Black versus White school districts and siphoning money in one direction versus another.
To the contrary, one of the things we’ve learned is that the school districts in the inner city, many of which are predominantly Black, actually spend more money per student than other school districts for a worse result, as measured by test scores and other performance, on a per-student basis, suggesting that there are other factors than the dollar expenditures per school determining student success, and actually suggesting that even the over-funding of some of those already poorly run schools rewards them for their actual bureaucratic failures.
So, against that backdrop, the Department of Education has, instead, extrapolated that original purpose of what was a racial equality purpose, to, instead, implement a different vision of racial equity through the ideologies that they demand in the content of the curriculum that these public schools actually teach.
So, Department of Education funding, so federal funding, accounts for about, I’m giving you round numbers here, but around 10% of the funding of most public schools across the country. But that comes with strings attached.
So, in today’s Department of Education, this didn’t happen back in 1970, but it’s happening today, ironically it’s funny how these things change with the bureaucracies that fail, they blow oak smoke to cover up for their own failures, what happens with today’s Department of Education?
They effectively say you don’t get that funding unless you adopt certain goals deemed at achieving racial or gender equity goals. And in fact, they also intervene in the curriculum where there’s evidence of schools in the Midwest or in the Great Plains that have been denied funding because Department of Education funding, so long as they have certain subjects like Archery…
There was one instance of a school that had archery in its curriculum. I find that to be pretty interesting, actually. I think you have different kinds of physical education. This is one that combines mental focus with physical aptitude, but hey, maybe I’m biased, it doesn’t matter.
Whether you like archery or not, I don’t think it’s the federal government’s job to withhold funding from a school because they include something in their curriculum that the federal government deems inappropriate where that locality found that to be a relevant locus of education.
So, what you see then is an abandonment of the original purpose. That’s long past. You don’t have this problem that the Department of Education was originally formed to solve, of siphoning money from Black school districts to White school districts and laundering that, effectively, in public funds, that doesn’t exist anymore.
So, they find new purposes instead, creating a lot more damage along the way. So, you asked me to steelman, and can I say something constructive rather than just pounding down on the other side? One way to think about this is, for a lot of these agencies, were many of them formed with a positive intention at the outset? Yes. Whether that positive intention existed, I’m still a skeptic of creating bureaucracies, but if you’re going to create one, at least make it, what shall we call it, a taskforce. Make it a taskforce.
A taskforce versus an agency means, after it’s done, you celebrate, you’ve done your work, pat yourself on the back, and then move on, rather than creating a standing bureaucracy which actually finds things to do after it has already solved or addressed the first reason it was born in the first place.
And I think we don’t have enough of that in our culture. Even if you have a company that’s generated tons of cash flow, and it’s solved a problem, let’s say it’s a biopharmaceutical company that developed a cure to some disease, and the only thing people knew at that company was how to develop a cure to that disease, and they generated a boatload of cash from doing it, at a certain point you could just give it to your shareholders and close up shop.
And that’s actually a beautiful thing to do. You don’t see that happen enough in the American consciousness, in the American culture of, when an institution has achieved its purpose, celebrate it, and then move on. And I think that that culture in our government would result in a vastly restrained scope of government, rather than, today it’s a one-way ratchet.
Once you cause it to come into existence, you cause new things to come into existence, but the old one that came into existence continues to persist and exist as well, and that’s where you get this metastasis over the last century.
And I think a nation, it’s literally, I think, one of the chapters of this book, “A nation without borders is not a nation.” It’s almost a tautology, an open border is not a border. Capitalism is not going to solve that. What’s going to solve that is a nation.
Part of the job of the federal government is to protect the homeland of its nation, in this case, the United States of America. That’s an example of a proper function of the federal government, to provide physical security to its citizens.
Another proper role of that federal government is to look after, or in this case it could be state government, to make sure that private parties cannot externalize their costs onto somebody else without their consent. It’s a fancy way economists would use to describe it. What does that mean?
It means if you go dump your chemicals in somebody else’s river, then you’re liable for that. It’s not that, okay, I’m a capitalist and so I want to create things, and I’m going to do hell or high water, whether or not that harms people around me.
The job of a proper government is to make sure that you protect the rights of those who may be harmed by those who are pursuing their own rights through a system of capitalism.
In seeking prosperity, you’re free to do it, but if you’re hurting somebody, else without their consent, in the process, the government is there to enforce what is really just a different form of enforcing a private property right.
So, I would say that those are two central functions of government, is to preserve national boundaries in the national security of a homeland, and number two is to protect and preserve private property rights and the enforcement of those private property rights. And I think, at that point, you’ve described about 80 to 90% of the proper role of a government.
I don’t think you could rely exclusively on the private sector to provide the optimal level of that protection to a nation. But interstate highways, I think you could think about whether or not that’s a common good that everybody benefits from but nobody had the incentive to create. I think you could make an argument for the existence of interstate highways.
I think you could also make powerful arguments for the fact that, actually, you could have enough private sector co-ops that could cause that to come into existence as well. But I’m not dogmatic about this.
But broadly speaking, 80 to 90% of the goal of the federal government, I’m not going to say 100, 80 to 90% of the goal of the existence of a federal government, of government, period, should be to protect national boundaries and provide security for the people who live there, and to protect the private property rights of the people who reside there.
If we restore that, I think we’re well on our way to a revival of what our founding fathers envisioned, and I think many of them would give you the same answer that I just did.
For that to be a matter for municipalities and townships to actually decide, democratically, how they actually want that governed, whether it’s balance between a public school district versus making that same money available to families in the form of vouchers or other forms of ability to educational savings accounts, or whichever mechanism it is, to opt out of that, if that’s done locally, I’ll have views on that that tend to go further in the direction of true educational choice and diversity of choice.
The implementation of charter schools, the granting of state charters, or even lowering the barriers to granting one, I favor those kinds of policies. But if we’ve gotten the federal government out of it, that’s achieved 75% of what I think we need to achieve, that I’m focused on solving other problems, and leave that to the states and municipalities to cover from there.
I got to know him, as I was running for US president, in a couple of events that he came to, and then we built a friendship after that. So, obviously, I think it’s a great idea.
I think it would be a fun competition to see who ends up more hardcore. I don’t think there’s someone out there who’s going to be more hardcore than he or I would be. And the reason is, I think we share in common a willingness to take the risk and see what happens.
The sun will still rise in the east and set in the west. That much I guarantee you. Is there are going to be some broken glass and some damage? Yes, there is. There’s no way around that. But once you’re willing to take that risk, then it doesn’t become so scary anymore. And here’s the thing, Lex, so it’s easy to say this, let’s talk about where the rubber hits the road here. Even in a second Trump term this would be the discussion. President Trump and I have had this conversation, but I think we would continue to have this conversation, is where does it rank on our prioritization list, because there’s always going to be a trade-off.
If you have a different policy objective that you want to achieve, a good policy objective, whatever that is, you could talk about immigration policy, you could talk about economic policy, there are other policy objectives, if you’re going to trade off a little bit, in the short-run, the effectiveness of your ability to carry out that policy goal, if you’re also committed to actually thinning out the federal government by 75%…
Because there’s just going to be some clunkiness there’s just going to be frictional costs for that level of cut. So the question is, where does that rank on your prioritization list?
To pull that off, to pull off a 75% reduction in the size and scale of the federal government, the regulatory state, and the headcount, I think that only happens if that’s your top priority. You could do it at a smaller scale, but at that scale, it only happens if that’s your top priority.
Because then, as President, you’re in a position to say, “I know in the super short run, that might even make it a little bit harder for me to do this other thing that I want to do, and use the regulatory state to do it, but I’m gonna pass on that.
I’m gonna pass that up, I’m gonna bear that hardship and inconvenience because I know this other goal is more important on the scale of decades and centuries for the country.” So it’s a question of prioritization. And certainly, my own view is that, now is the moment where that needs to be a top priority for saving this country.
And if there’s one thing about my campaign, if I was to do it again, I would be even clearer about… Actually, I talked about a lot of things in the campaign, and we can cover a lot of that too. But if there’s one thing that I care about more than anything else, it’s dismantling that bureaucracy.
And moreover, it’s an assault and a crusade on the nanny state itself. And that nanny state presents itself in several forms. There’s the entitlement state, there’s the welfare state, presents itself in the form of the regulatory state, that’s what we’re talking about, and then there’s the foreign nanny state where, effectively, we are subsidizing other countries that aren’t paying their fair share of protection or other resources we provide them.
If I was to summarize my ideology in a nutshell, it is to terminate the nanny state in the United States of America in all of its forms; the entitlement state, the regulatory state, and the foreign policy nanny state. Once we’ve done that, we’ve revived the Republic that I think would make George Washington proud.
And I think it’s important for two reasons. The less important reason, it’s still an important reason, the less important reason is, it’s still money for us. It’s not like we’re swimming in a cash surplus right now. We’ve got a $34 trillion national debt, and growing, and I think pretty soon the interest payments are going to be the largest line item in our own federal budget.
So, it’s not like we have money willy-nilly to just hand over for free. That’s the less important reason, though. The more important reason is that it makes sure that our allies have actual skin in the game to not have skewed incentives to actually enter conflicts where they’re not actually bearing the full cost of those conflicts. So, take NATO for example, most NATO countries, literally a majority of NATO countries today do not pay or contribute 2% of their GDP to their own National Defense, which is supposedly a requirement to be in NATO. So the majority of NATO countries are failing to meet their basic commitment to be in NATO in the first place.
Germany particularly is, I think, arbitraging the hell out of the United States of America. And I don’t think that… I’m not going to be some shrill voice here saying, “So therefore, we should not be supporting any allies or providing security blankets.” No, I’m not going in that direction. What I would say is, you’ve got to pay for it.
Pay for your fair share, A, because we’re not swimming in excess money ourselves, but B, is, it tells us that you actually have skin in the game for your own Defense, which actually then makes nations far more prudent in the risks that they take, whether or not they’re in a war, versus if somebody else is paying for it and somebody else is providing our security guarantee, yeah, I might as well take the gamble and see where I end up at the end of a war, versus the restraint that that imposes on the decision-making of those allies.
So, now, let’s bring this home to the Department of Defense. I think the top goal of the US Defense Policy establishment should be to provide for the national defense of the United States of America. And the irony is, that’s what we’re actually doing most poorly.
Other than the Coast Guard, we’re not really using the US Military to prevent crossings at our own southern border and crossings at our other borders. In fact, the United States of America, our homeland, I believe is less secure today than it has been in a very long time.
Vulnerable to threats from hypersonic missiles where China and Russia… Russia certainly has capabilities in excess of that of the United States, missiles. Hypersonic means faster than the speed of sound that could hit the United States, including those carrying nuclear warheads.
We are more vulnerable to super EMP attacks, Electromagnetic Pulse attacks, that could, without exaggeration, some of this could be from other nations, some of this could even be from solar flares, cause significant mass casualty in the United States of America.
If the electric grid’s gone, it’s not exaggeration to say, if that happened, planes would be falling out of the sky because our chips really depend on those, well, will be affected by those electromagnetic pulses. More vulnerable to cyber attacks. I know people, okay, start yawning and say, “Okay, boring stuff, super EMP, cyber,” or whatever.
No. Actually, it is pretty relevant to whether or not you actually are facing the risk of not getting your insulin because your refrigerator doesn’t work anymore or your food can’t be stored or your car or your ability to fly on an airplane is impaired. So, I think that these are risks where our own National Defense spending has been wholly inadequate.
So, I’m not one of these people that says decrease versus increase National Defense spending. We’re not spending it in the right places. The number one place we need to be spending it is actually protecting our National Defense, protecting our own physical homeland.
And I think we actually need an increase in spending on protecting our own homeland. But that is different from the agenda of foreign interventionism and foreign nanny state-ism for its own sake, where we should expect more and demand more of our allies to provide for their own national defense and then provide the relevant security guarantees to allies where that actually advances the interest of the United States of America. So, that’s what I believe.
And I think this process has been corrupted by what Dwight Eisenhower famously in his farewell address called the Military Industrial Complex in the United States. But I think it’s bigger than just the… I think it’s easy to tell the tales of the financial corruption.
It’s kind of cultural corruption and conceit that just because certain number of people in that expert class have a belief, that their belief happens to be the right one because they can scare you with what the consequence would be if you don’t follow their advice.
And one of the beauties of the United States is, at least in principle, we have civilian control of the military. The person who we elect to be the US President is the one that actually is the true Commander in Chief. I have my doubts of whether it operates that way.
I think it’s quite obvious that Joe Biden is not a functioning Commander in Chief of the United States of America, yet, on paper, supposedly we’re still are supposed to call him that. But at least in theory, we’re supposed to have civilian control of the US Military.
And I think that one of the things that that leader needs to do is to ask the question of, again, the mission. What’s the purpose of this US Military in the first place? At the top of the list should be to protect the homeland and the people who actually live here, which we’re failing to do. So, that’s where I land on that question.
He wasn’t even sufficiently functioning to be the candidate after a debate that was held in June. There’s no way he’s going to be in a position to make the most important decisions on a daily and demanding basis to protect the leading nation in the world.
Now, more generally, though, I think we have a deeper problem, that even when it’s not Joe Biden, in general, the people we elect to run the government haven’t really been the ones running the government, it’s been the unelected bureaucrats in the bureaucratic deep state underneath that’s really been making the decisions.
I’ve done business in a number of places. I’ve traveled to Japan. There’s an interesting corporate analogy. Sometimes, if you get outside of politics, people can, I find, listen, and pay attention a little bit more, because politics, it’s so fraught right now that if you start talking to somebody who disagrees with you about the politics of it, you’re just butting heads but not really making progress.
So, let’s just make the same point, but go outside of politics for a second. So, I was traveling Japan, I was having a late night dinner with a CEO of a Japanese pharmaceutical company.
And it takes a while to really get him to open up, culturally speaking in Japan, a couple of nights of karaoke, and whatnot, maybe late night restaurant, whatever it is. Well, we built a good enough relationship where he was very candid with me.
He said, “I’m the CEO of the company. I could go and find the Head of a research unit and tell him, ‘Okay, this is a project we’re no longer working on as a company. We don’t wanna spend money on it, we’re gonna spend money somewhere else.’ And he’ll look me in the eye and he’ll say, ‘Yes, sir, yes sir.’.
I’ll come back six months later and find that they’re spending exactly the same amount of money on those exact same projects. And I’ll tell him, ‘No, we agreed. I told you that you’re not gonna spend money on this project, and we have to stop now. We should have stopped six months ago.’ Get a slap on the wrist for it.
He says, ‘Yes, sir, I’m sorry. Yes. No, no, no, of course, that’s correct.’ I come back six months later, same person is spending the same money on the same project.” And here’s why. Historically in Japan, and I should say, in Japan, this is changing now, it’s changing now, but historically, until very recently, and even to an extent now, it’s near impossible to fire people.
So, if somebody works for you and you can’t fire them, that means they don’t actually work for you. It means in some deeper, perverse sense, you work for them because you’re responsible for what they do, without any authority to actually change it.
So, I think most people who have traveled in Japan and Japanese corporate culture through the 1990s and 2000s and 2010s, and maybe even some vestiges in the 2020s, wouldn’t really dispute what I just told you. Now, we’re bringing it back to the more contentious terrain.
I think that’s basically how things have worked in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government of the United States of America. You have these so-called Civil Service protections on the books. Now, if you really read them carefully, I think that there are areas to provide daylight for a truly constitutionally, well-trained President to act.
That’s a contrary view that I have that bucks conventional wisdom. But apart from that caveat, in general, the conventional view has been, the US president can’t fire these people. There’s 4 million federal bureaucrats, 99.9% of them can’t be touched by the person who the people who elected to run the Executive Branch can’t even fire those people.
It’s the equivalent of that Japanese CEO. And so, that culture exists every bit as much in the federal bureaucracy of the United States of America as they did in Japanese corporate culture through the 1990s.
And that’s a lot of what’s wrong with not just the way that our Department of Defense is run and our Foreign Policy establishment is run, but I think it applies to a lot of the Domestic Policy establishment as well.
And to come back to the core point, how are we going to save this republic? This is the debate in the Conservative Movement right now. So, this is maybe a little bit spicy for some Republicans to swallow right now, and my top focus is making sure that we win the election, but let’s just move the ball forward a little bit and skate to where the puck is going here, okay?
Yes, let’s say we win the election, all is well and dandy. Okay, what’s the philosophy that determines how we govern? There’s a little bit of a fork in the road amongst Conservatives where there are those who believe that the right answer now is to use that regulatory state and use those levers of power to advance our own pro-Conservative, pro-American, pro-worker goals.
And I’m sympathetic to all of those goals, but I don’t think that the right way to do it is to create a Conservative regulatory state that replaces a Liberal regulatory state. I think the right answer is actually to get in there and shut it down. I don’t want to replace the left-wing nanny state with a right-wing nanny state. I want to get in there and actually dismantle the nanny state.
And I think it has been a long time in the United States, maybe ever in modern history, that we’ve had a Conservative leader at the national level who makes it their principal objective to dismantle the nanny state in all of its forms; the entitlement state, the regulatory state, and the foreign policy in nanny state.
That was a core focus of my candidacy. One of the things that I wish, and this is on me, not anybody else, that I should have done better, was to make that more crystal clear as a focus without getting distracted by a lot of the shenanigans, let’s just say, that happened as side-shows during a presidential campaign. But call that a lesson learned, because I do think it’s what the country needs now more than ever.
So, there’s some really important cases that have come down from the Supreme Court. One is West Virginia versus the EPA. I think it’s probably the most important case of our generation.
In 2022 that came down and said that if Congress has not passed a rule into law itself through the halls of Congress, and it relates to what they call a major question, a major policy or economic question, it can’t be done by the stroke of a pen by a regulator, an unelected bureaucrat either.
That quite literally means most federal regulations today are unconstitutional. Then, this year comes down a different big one, another big one from the Supreme Court in the Loper-Bright case, which held that, historically, for the last 50 years in this country, the doctrine has been, it’s called Chevron Deference. It’s a doctrine that says that federal courts have to defer to an agency…
The SEC, among other agencies, has tribunals inside that not only do they write the rules, not only do they enforce those rules, they also have these judges inside the agency that also interpret the rules and determine and dole out punishments. That doesn’t make sense if you believe in separation of powers in the United States, so the Supreme Court put an end to that and said that that practice at the SEC is unconstitutional. Actually, as a side note, the Supreme Court has said countless practices and rules written by the SEC, the EPA, the FTC in recent years, were outright unconstitutional.
Think about what that means for a constitutional republic, that supposedly, these law enforcement agencies, the courts have now said, especially this year, the courts have now said that their own behaviors actually break the law. So the very agencies entrusted with supposedly enforcing the law are actually behaving with utter, blatant disregard for the law itself. That’s un-American, it’s not tenable in the United States of America, but thankfully, we now have a Supreme Court that recognizes that.
So whether or not we have a second Trump term, well, that’s up to the voters, but even whether or not that now takes advantage of that backdrop the Supreme Court has given us to actually gut the regulatory state, we’ll find out. I’m optimistic, I certainly think it’s the best chance that we’ve had in a generation in this country, and that’s a big part of why I’m supporting Donald Trump and why I’m going to do everything in my power to help him, but I do think it is going to take a spine of steel to see that through.
And then after we’ve taken on the regulatory state, I think that’s the next step, but I do think there’s this broader project of dismantling the nanny state in all of its forms, the entitlement state, the regulatory state, and the foreign policy in any state. Three-word answer, if I was to summarize my worldview and my presidential campaign in three words, shut it down.
And so I think that’s one of the things that I’ve admired about President Trump is he’s actually been very open about that, very humble about that, to say that there’s a million learnings from that first term that make him ambitious and more ambitious in that second term. But everything I’m talking to you about, this is what needs to happen in the country. It’s not specific to Donald Trump. It lays out what needs to be done in the country. There’s the next four years, Donald Trump is our last, best hope and chance for moving that ball forward. But I think that the vision I’m laying out here is one that hopefully goes even beyond just the next two or four years of really fixing a century’s worth of mistakes.
I think we’re going to fix a lot of them in the next four years if Donald Trump’s president. But if you have a century’s worth of mistakes that have accumulated with the overgrowth of the entitlement state in the US, I think it’s going to take probably the better part of a decade at least to actually fix them.
And I think that I’m also open about the fact that this is a long run project, but we have the next step to actually take over the next few years. That’s kind of where I land on it. I mean, you talked to him I guess a few weeks ago. I saw you had a podcast with him, right?
I don’t come from that school of thought. I don’t want to see the bureaucracy expand in a pro-conservative direction. I want to see the bureaucracy shrink in every direction. And I do think that, from my conversations with Donald Trump, I believe that he is well-aligned with this vision of shrinking bureaucracy, but that’s a longer-term project.
So in that domain, that’s mission aligned with a proper purpose for the federal government. I think we’re a nation founded on the rule of law. I say this as the kid of legal immigrants. That means your first act of entering this country cannot break the law. And in some ways, if I was to summarize a formula for saving the country over the next four years, it would be a tale of two mass deportations. The mass deportations of millions of illegals who are in this country and should not be, and then the mass deportation of millions of unelected federal bureaucrats out of Washington D.C.
Now, all else equal, could say that those are intention, but I think that the reality is anything outside of the scope of what the core function of the government is, which is protecting borders and protecting private property rights, that’s really where I think the predominant cuts need to be. And if you look at the number of people who are looking after the border, it’s not even 0.1% of the federal employee base today. So 75% isn’t 99.99%, it’s 75%. It would still be a tiny fraction of the remaining 25%, which I actually think needs to be more rather than less. So it’s a good question, but that’s where I land on when it’s a proper role of the federal government, great. Act and actually do your job. The irony is 99.9999% of those resources are going to functions other than the protection of private property rights and the protection of our national physical protection.
And I just want to make that basic observation against the backdrop of if we’re a nation founded on the rule of law, we that there are trade-offs to enforcing the law, and we’ve acknowledged that in other contexts. I don’t think that we should have a special exemption for saying that somehow we weigh the other way when it comes to the issue of the border. We’re a nation founded in the rule of law. We enforce laws, that has costs, that has trade-offs, but it’s who we are. And the easiest fact I can cite is 350,000 or so mothers who are in prison and did not take their kids to prison with them.
Is that bad? Is it undesirable for the kids to grow up without those 350,000 mothers? It is, but it’s a difficult situation created by people who violated the law and faced the consequences of it, which is also a competing and important priority in the country. So that’s in the domestic context.
As it relates to this question of mass deportations, let’s just get very practical because all that was theoretical. Very practically, there’s ways to do this. Starting with people who have already broken the law, people who have not just broken the law of entering but are committing other crimes while already here in the United States. That’s a clear case for an instant mass deportation. You have a lot of people who haven’t integrated into their communities. You think about the economic impact of this, a lot of people are in detention already. A lot of those people should be immediately returned to their country of origin, or at least what is called a safe third country.
So safe third country means even if somebody’s claiming to seek asylum from political persecution, well, move them to another country that doesn’t have to be the United States of America that they passed through, say, Mexico before actually coming here. Other countries around the world are doing this. Australia is detaining people. They don’t let them out and live a normal, joyful life because they came to the country. They detain them until their case is adjudicated. Well, the rates of fraud in Australia, of what people lie about, what their conditions are, is way lower now than in the United States because people respond to those incentives.
So I think that in some ways, people make this sound much bigger and scarier than it needs to be. I feel we’re taking a deeply pragmatic approach, and the North Star for me is I want the policy that helps the United States citizens who are already here. What’s that policy? Clearly, that’s going to be a policy that includes a large number of deportations. I think by definition, it’s going to be the largest mass deportation in American history. Sounds like a punchline at a campaign rally, but actually, it’s just a factual statement that says if we’ve had the by far largest influx of illegal immigrants in American history, it just stands to reason, it’s logic that, okay, if we’re going to fix that, we’re going to have the largest mass deportation in American history.
And we can be rational. Start with people who are breaking the law in other ways here in the United States. Start with people who are already in detention or entering detention now. That comes at no cost and strict benefit. There isn’t even a little bit of an economic trade-off. Then you get to areas where you would say, okay, the costs actually continue to outweigh the benefits, and that’s exactly the way our policy should be guided here. I want to do it in as respectful and as humane of a manner as possible.
The reality is, I think one of the things we got to remember, I’ll give you the example I gave with the Haitian case in Springfield, town that I spent a lot of time in growing up in Ohio. I live about an hour from there today. I don’t blame the individual Haitians who came here. I’m not saying that they’re bad people because in that particular case, those weren’t even people who broke the law in coming here. They came as part of a program called Temporary Protective Status. Now, the operative word there was the first one, “temporary”. There have been all kinds of lawsuits for people who, even 8, 10, 12, 14 years after the earthquake in Haiti where many of them came, when they’re going to be removed, there are allegations of racial discrimination or otherwise.
No. Temporary protective status means it’s temporary, and we’re not abandoning the rule of law when we send them back, we’re abandoning the rule of law when we let them stay. Now, if that has a true benefit to the United States of America, economically or otherwise, go through the paths that allow somebody to enter this country for economic reasons, but don’t do it through asylum-based claims or Temporary Protected Status. I think one of the features of our immigration system right now is it is built on a lie and it incentivizes lying. The reason is the arguments for keeping people in the country, if those are economic reasons but the people actually entered using claims of asylum or refugee status, those two things don’t match up.
So just be honest about what our immigration system actually is. I think we do need dramatic reforms to the legal immigration system to select purposely for the people who are going to actually improve the United States of America. I think there are many people, I know some of them. I gave a story of one guy who I met who is educated at our best universities or among our best universities. He went to Princeton. He went to Harvard Business School. He has a great job in the investment community. He was a professional tennis player. He was a concert pianist. He could do a Rubik’s cube in less than a minute. I’m not making this stuff up. These are hard facts. He can’t get a green card in the United States. He’s been here for 10 years or something like this.
He asked me for the best advice I could give him. I unfortunately could not give him the actual best advice, which would be to just take a flight to Mexico and cross the border and claim to be somebody who is seeking asylum in the United States. That would have been morally wrong advice, so I didn’t give it to them. But practically, if you were giving him advice, that would be the best advice that you actually could give somebody, which is a broken system on both sides. People who are going to make those contributions to the United States and pledge allegiance to the United States and speak our language and assimilate, we should have a path for them to be able to add value to the United States. Yet they’re not the ones who are getting in.
Our immigration system selects for people who are willing to lie. That’s what it does. Selects for people who are willing to say they’re seeking refugee status or seeking asylum when in fact, they’re not. And then we have policymakers who lie after the fact using economic justifications to keep them here. But if it was an economic justification, that should have been the criteria you used to bring them in the first place, not this illusion of asylum or refugee status. There was a case, actually, even the New York Times reported on this, believe it or not, of a woman who came from Russia fleeing Vladimir Putin’s intolerant, anti-LGBTQ regime. She was fleeing persecution by the evil man, Putin.
She came here and eventually when she was pressed on the series of lies, it came out that, and she was crying finally, when she broke down and admitted this, she was like, “I’m not even gay. I don’t even like gay people.” That’s what she said. And yet she was pretending to be some sort of LGBTQ advocate who was persecuted in Russia when in fact, it was just somebody who was seeking better economic conditions in the United States. I’m not saying you’re wrong to seek better economic conditions in the United States, but you are wrong to lie about it, and that’s what you’re seeing a lot of people, even in this industry of quote, unquote, tourism to the United States, they’re having their kids in the United States. They go back to their home country, but their kids enjoy birthright citizenship. That’s built on a lie.
You have people claiming to suffer from persecution. In fact, they’re just working in the United States and then living in these relative mansions in parts of Mexico or Central America after they’ve spent four or five years making money here. Just abandon the lie. Let’s just have an immigration system built on honesty. Just tell the truth. If the argument is that we need more people here for economically filling jobs, I’m skeptical the extent to which a lot of those arguments actually end up being true. But let’s have that debate in the open rather than having it through the back door saying that it’s refugee and asylum status when we know it’s a lie, and then we justify it after the fact by saying that that economically helps the United States.
Cut the dishonesty. And I just think that that is a policy we would do well to expand every sphere. We talk about from the military industrial complex to the rise of the managerial class, to a lot of what our government’s covered up about our own history to even this question of immigration today. Just tell the people the truth, and I think our government would be better serving our people if it did.
I want an immigration system that is built on honesty. Identify what the objective is. We could debate the objective. We might have different opinions on the objectives. Some people may say the objective is the economic growth of the United States. I air that argument in this book, and I think that that’s insufficient, personally. Personally, I think the United States is more than just an economic zone. It is a country. It is a nation bound together by civic ideals. I think we need to screen not just for immigrants, who are going to make economic contributions, but those who speak our language, those who are able to assimilate and those who share those civic ideals and know the US history even better than the average US citizen who’s here. That’s what I believe.
But even if you disagree with me and say, “No, no, the sole goal is economic production in the United States,” then at least have an immigration system that’s honest about that rather than one which claims to solve for that goal by bringing in people who are rewarded for being a refugee, we should reward the people in that model, which I don’t even think should be the whole model. But even if that were your model, reward the people who have demonstrably proven that they would make economic contributions to the United States, not the people who have demonstrated that they’re willing to lie to achieve a goal.
And right now, our immigration system, if it rewards one quality over any other, if there’s one parameter that it rewards over any other, it isn’t civic allegiance to the United States, it isn’t fluency in English, it isn’t the ability to make an economic contribution to this country. The number one human attribute that our immigration system rewards is whether or not you are willing to lie. And the people who are telling those lies about whether they’re seeking asylum or not are the ones who are most likely to get in. And the people who are most unwilling to tell those lies are the ones who are actually not getting in.
That is a hard, uncomfortable truth about our immigration system. And the reason is because the law says you only get asylum if you’re going to face bodily harm or near-term risk of bodily injury based on your religion, your ethnicity, or certain other factors. And so when you come into the country, you’re asked, “Do you fulfill that criteria or not?” And the number one way to get into this country is to check the box and say yes. So that means just systematically, imagine if you’re a university, Harvard or Yale or whatever, you’re running your admissions process, the number one attribute you’re selecting for isn’t your SAT score, it isn’t your GPA, it isn’t your athletic accomplishments. It’s whether or not you’re willing to lie on the application. You’re going to have a class populated by a bunch of charlatans and frauds.
That’s exactly what our immigration system is doing to the United States of America, is it is literally selecting for the people who are willing to lie. Let’s say you have somebody who’s a person of integrity says, “Okay, I want a better life for my family, but I want to teach my kids that I’m not going to lie or break the law to do it.” That person is infinitely less likely to get into the United States. I know it sounds provocative to frame it that way, but it is not an opinion. It is a fact that that is the number one human attribute that our current immigration system is selecting for.
I want an immigration system centered on honesty. In order to implement that, we require acknowledging what the goals of our immigration system are in the first place. And there we have competing visions on the right, okay? Amongst conservatives, there’s a rift. Some conservatives believe, I respect them for their honesty, I disagree with them, believe that the goal of the immigration system should be to, in part, protect American workers from the effects of foreign wage competition. That if we have immigrants, it’s going to bring down prices and we need to protect American workers from the effects of that downward pressure on wages. It’s a goal. It’s a coherent goal. I don’t think it’s the right goal, but many of my friends on the right believe that’s a goal, but at least it’s honest. And then we can design an honest immigration system to achieve that goal if that’s their goal. I have other friends on the right that say the sole goal is economic growth, nothing else matters. I disagree with that as well. My view is the goal should be whatever enriches the civic quality of the United States of America. That includes those who know the language, know our ideals, pledge allegiance to those ideals, and also are willing to make economic contributions to the country, which is one of our ideals as well.
But whatever it is, we can have that debate, I have a very different view. I don’t think it’s a proper role of immigration policy to make it a form of labor policy because the United States of America is founded on excellence, we should be able to compete. But that’s a policy debate we can have. But right now, we are not even able to have the policy debate because the whole immigration policy is built on not only a lie, but on rewarding those who do lie. And that’s what I want to see change.
So those are two different views. I think that there is a view on the American right right now that says that we’re not a creedal nation, that our nation’s not about a creed. It’s about a physical place and a physical homeland. I think that view fails on several accounts. Obviously, every nation has to have a geographic space that it defines its own. So obviously we are, among other things, a geographic space. But the essence of the United States of America, I think is the common creed, the ideals that hold that common nation together.
Without that, a few things happen. First of all, American exceptionalism becomes impossible. And I’ll tell you why. Every other nation is also built on the same idea. Most nations have been built on common blood and soil arguments, genetic stock. Italy or Japan would have a stronger national identity than the United States in that case, because they have a much longer standing claim on what their genetic lineage really was. The ethnicity of the people is far more pure in those contexts than in the United States. So that’s the first reason. American exceptionalism becomes impossible.
The second is there’s all kinds of contradictions that then start to emerge. Your claim on American identity is defined based on how long you’ve been here. Well, then the Native Americans would have a far greater claim of being American than somebody who came here on the Mayflower or somebody who came here afterwards. Now, maybe that blood and soil view is, no, no, it’s not quite the Native Americans. You only have to start at this point and end at this point. So on this view of blood and soil identity, it has to be okay, you couldn’t have come before a certain year, then it doesn’t count. But if you came after a certain year, it doesn’t count either. That just becomes highly uncompelling as a view of what American national identity actually is.
Versus my view that American national identity is grounded on whether or not you pledge allegiance to the ideals codified in the Declaration of Independence and actualized in the US Constitution. And it’s been said, some of my friends on the right have said things like, people will not die for a set of ideals. People won’t fight for abstractions or abstract ideals. I actually disagree with that. The American Revolution basically disproves that. The American Revolution was fought, for anything, over abstract ideals that said that, you know what? We believe in self-governance and free speech and free exercise of religion. That’s what we believe in the United States, which is different from Old World England.
So I do think that there is this brewing debate on the right, and do I disagree like hell with Ann Coulter on this? Absolutely. And did I take serious issue with some of the things she told me? Absolutely. But I also believe that she had the stones to say, if I may say it that way, the things that many on the right believe but haven’t quite articulated in the way that she has. And I think we need to have that debate in the open.
Now, personally, I think most of the conservative movement actually is with me on this, but I think it’s become a very popular counter in the other direction to say that your vision of American identity is far more physical in nature. And to me, I think it is still ideals-based in nature. And I think that that’s a good debate for the future for us to have in the conservative movement. And I think it’s going to be a defining feature of what direction the conservative movement goes in the future.
Now, that being said, that’s just a philosophy, okay? That’s a personal philosophy. You asked me to do something different, and I’m always a fan. The standard I hope that people hold me to when they read this book as well, is I try to do that in this book, is to give the best possible argument for the other side. You don’t want to give some rinky-dink argument for the other side and knock it down. You want to give the best possible argument for the other side and then offer your own view or else you don’t understand your own. So you asked me what’s the strongest case against Donald Trump? Well, I ran for US President against Donald Trump. So I’m going to give you what my perspective is. I think it’s nothing of what you hear on MSNBC or from the left attacking him to be a threat to democracy. I think all of that’s actually nonsense.
I actually think it is, if you were making that case, and he has my full support as you know, but if you were making that case, I think for many voters who are of the next generation, they’re asking a question about, “How are you going to understand the position that I’m in as a member of a new generation?” The same criticism they had of Biden, they could say, “Oh, well, are you too old? Are you from a different generation that’s too far removed from my generation’s concerns?” And I think that that’s in many ways a factor that was weighing on both Trump and Biden. But when they played the trick of swapping out Joe Biden, it left that issue much more on the table for Donald Trump.
So you’re asking me to steel man it, that’s what I would say is that when I look at what’s the number one issue that I would need to persuade Independent voters of to say that, no, no, no, this is still the right choice is even though the other side claims to offer a new generation of leadership, here’s somebody who is one of the older presidents we will have had who was elected. How do we convince those people to vote from? That’s what I would give you in that category.
Now, I think the facts of the backdrop of the 2020 election actually really do matter. I don’t think you can isolate one particular aspect of criticizing the 2020 election without looking at it holistically. On the eve of the 2020 presidential election, we saw a systematic, bureaucratically, and government-aided suppression of probably the single most important piece of information released in the eve of that election, the Hunter Biden laptop story, revealing potentially a compromised US presidential candidate, his family was compromised by foreign interests, and it was suppressed as misinformation by every major tech company.
The New York Post had its own Twitter account locked at that time, and we now know that many of the censorship decisions made in the year 2020 were actually made at behest of US bureaucratic actors in the deep state threatening those tech companies to do it or else those tech companies would face consequence. I think it might be the most undemocratic thing that’s happened in the history of our country, actually, is the way in which government actors, who were never elected to the government, used private sector actors to suppress information on the eve of an election that based on polling afterwards likely did influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. That was election interference of the highest order.
So I think that that’s just a hard fact that we have to contend with, and I think a lot of what you’ve heard in terms of complaints about the 2020 election, whatever those complaints, oh, have been, take place against the backdrop of large technology companies interfering in that election in a way that I think did have an impact on the outcome. I personally believe if the Hunter Biden laptop story had not been suppressed and censored, Donald Trump would’ve been unambiguous… The President of the United States right now would be Donald Trump. No doubt about it in my mind if you look at polling before and after the impact that would’ve had on the independent voter.
Now you look at… Okay, let’s talk about constructive solutions because I care about moving the country forward. What is a constructive solution to this issue of concerns about election integrity? Here’s one. Single-day voting on election day as a national holiday with paper ballots and government-issued voter ID to match the voter file. I favor that. We do it even in Puerto Rico, which is a territory of the United States. Why not do that everywhere in the United States? And I’ll make a pledge. I’ll do it right here, right? My pledge is, as a leader in our movement, I will do everything in my power to make sure we are done complaining about stolen elections if we get to that simple place of basic election security measures.
I think they’d be unifying too. Make election day a national holiday that unites us around our civic purpose one day, single-day voting on election day as a national holiday with paper ballots and government-issued voter ID to match the voter file. Let’s get there as a country, and you have my word, I will lead our movement in whatever way I can to make sure we are done complaining about stolen elections and fake ballots. And I think that fact that you see resistance to that proposal, which is otherwise very practical, very reasonable, nonpartisan proposal, I think the fact of that resistance actually provokes a lot of understandable skepticism, understandable skepticism of what else is actually going on, if not that, what exactly is going on here?
So, this Hunter Biden laptop story, we now know that it contains evidence of foreign interference in potentially the Biden administration and their family’s incentive structure. That story was systematically suppressed. So, in the United States of America, if you wanted to find that on the internet through any major social media platform or through even Google search, that story was suppressed or downplayed algorithmically that you couldn’t see it. Even on Twitter, if you tried to send it via direct message, the equivalent of email, sending a peer-to-peer message, they blocked you from even being able to send that story using private messages. That is a different level of concern. That’s not bias at that point. That’s outright interference in the election.
Let’s do a thought experiment here. Let’s suppose that Russia orchestrated that. What would the backlash be? Let’s say the Russian government orchestrated the US election. They interfered in it by saying that tech companies… They worked with them covertly to stop US citizens from being able to see information on the eve of an election. There would be a mass uproar in this country if the Russian government orchestrated that. Well, if actors in the US government bureaucracy or the US technology industry bureaucracy orchestrated the same thing, then we can’t apply a different standard to say that if Russia did it, it’s really bad and interfered in our election. But if it happened right here in the United States of America… And by the way, they blamed Russia for it, falsely, on the Russian disinformation of the Hunter Biden laptop story that was a false claim. We have to apply the same standard in both cases, and so the fact that if that were Russian interference, it would’ve been an outcry, but now it happened domestically, and we just call that, “Hey, it’s a little bit of bias ahead of an election.” I don’t think that that’s a fair characterization of how important that event was.
And I think that the reaction to systematic censorship is never good. History teaches us that it’s not good in the United States. It’s not good in other points in the history of the United States. The reaction to systematic, coordinated censorship and restraints and the freedom of a free people is never good. And if you want to really understand what happened, one really wants to get to the bottom of it rather than figuring out who to point fingers at, that really was the essence of the national malaise at the end of 2020 is, it was a year of unjust policies including COVID-19 lockdowns, systematic lies about it, lies about the election that created a level of public frustration that I think was understandable.
Now, the job of leaders is to how do you channel that in the most productive direction possible, and to your question, to the independent voter out there evaluating, as you are, do I think that Donald Trump has exhibited a lot of growth based on his experience in his first term, and what he hopes to achieve in his second term? The answer is, absolutely yes, and so, even if you don’t agree with everything that he’s said or done in the choice ahead of us in this election, I still believe he’s unambiguously the best choice to revive that sense of national pride, and also prosperity in our country, so people aren’t in the condition where they’re suffering at behest of government policies that leave them angry and channel that anger in other unproductive ways. No, the best way to do it is actually, actions do speak louder than words, implement the policies that make people’s lives better, and I do think that that’s the next step of how we best save the country.
And I do think that it is irresponsible, at least for the Democratic Party to make their core case against Donald Trump. It was Joe Biden’s entire message for years that he’s a threat to democracy and to the existence of America. Well, if you keep saying that about somebody against the backdrop conditions that we live in as a country, I don’t think that’s good for a nation. And so, do I have concerns about the future of the country? Do I think we’re skating on thin ice? Absolutely. And I think the best way around it is really through it, through it in this election, win by a landslide. I think a unifying landslide could be the best thing that happens for this country, like Reagan delivered in 1980 and then again in 1984. And in a very practical note, a landslide minus some shenanigans, is still going to be a victory. That is how we unite this country.
And so, I don’t think 50.001 margin where cable news is declaring the winner six days after the election, I don’t think that’s going to be good for the country. I think a decisive victory that unites the country, turns the page on a lot of the challenges of the last four years, and says, “Okay, this is where we’re going. This is who we are, and what we stand for.” This is a revival of our national identity and revive national pride in the United States regardless of whether you’re a Democrat or Republican. That I think is achievable in this election too, and that’s the outcome I’m rooting for.
From the Western perspective, the hard fact is Russia was the aggressor in this conflict, crossing the boundaries of a sovereign nation, and that is a violation of international norms, and it’s a violation of the recognition of international law of nations without borders are not a nation. And so, against that backdrop, what’s the actual interest of each country here? I think if we’re able to do a reasonable deal that gives Russia the assurances it needs about what they might allege as NATO expansionism violating prior commitments, but get codified commitments for Russia, that we’re not going to see willy-nilly behavior of just randomly deciding they’re going to violate the sovereignty of neighboring nations and have hard assurances and consequences for that. That’s the beginnings of a deal.
But then, I want to be ambitious for the United States. I want to weaken the Russia-China alliance, and I think that we can do a deal that requires, that gives some real gifts to Russia conditioned on Russia withdrawing itself from its military alliance with China. And this could be good for Russia too, in the long run, because right now, Vladimir Putin does not enjoy being Xi Jinping’s little brother in that relationship. But Russia’s military combined with China’s naval capacity, and Russia’s hypersonic missiles, and China’s economic might, together those countries in an alliance pose a real threat to the United States. But if as a condition for a reasonable discussion about where different territories land, given what’s occupied right now, hard requirements that Russia remove its military presence from the Western hemisphere. People forget this, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, we don’t want a Russian military presence in the Western hemisphere. That too, would be a win for the United States, no more joint military exercises with China off the coast of the Aleutian Islands.
The kinds of wins that the United States wants to protect the West’s security, get Russia out of the Western hemisphere, certainly out of the North American periphery, and then also make sure that Russia’s no longer in that military alliance with China, in return for that, able to provide Russia some things that are important to Russia. We’d have to have a reasonable discussion about what the territorial concessions would be at the end of this war to bring it to peace and resolution and what the guarantees are to make sure that NATO is going to not expand beyond the scope of what the United States has at least historically guaranteed. That I think together would be a reasonable deal that gives every party what they’re looking for, that results in immediate peace, that results in greater stability, and most importantly, weakening the Russia-China Alliance, which I think is the actual threat that we have so far, no matter who in this debate of more or less Ukraine funding has really failed to confront, that I think is the way we de-escalate the risk of World War III, and weaken the threats to the West by actually dismantling that alliance.
Actually, I was a little bit critical of Nixon earlier in this discussion for his contribution to the overgrowth of the US entitlement state and regulatory state, but I’ll give Nixon credit here on a different point, which is that he was imaginative of being able to pull red China out from the clasp of the USSR. He broke the China-Russia alliance back then, which was an important step to bring us to the near end of the Cold War. So I think there’s an opportunity for similar unconventional maneuver now of using greater reopened economic relations with Russia to pull Russia out from the hands of China today. There’s no skin off Ukraine’s back for that, and I do think that’s a big carrot for Russia in this direction. I do think that will involve some level of territorial negotiation as well, that out of any good deal, not everyone’s going to like a hundred percent of what comes out of it, but that’s part of the cost of securing peace is that not everyone’s going to be happy about every attribute.
But I could make a case that an immediate peace deal is also now in the best interest of Ukraine. Let’s just rewind the clock. We’re looking at now, let’s just say we’re early 2022, maybe June of 2022, Zelenskyy was ready to come to the table for a deal back then until Boris Johnson traveled when he had his own domestic political travails to convince Zelenskyy to continue to fight. And that goes to the point where when nations aren’t asked to pay for their own national security, they have what the problem is of moral hazard, of taking risks that really are suboptimal risks for them to take because they’re not bearing the consequences of taking those risks, not fully in the cost.
If Ukraine had done a deal back then, I think it is unambiguous that they would’ve done a better deal for themselves than they’re doing now after having spent hundreds of billions of dollars and expended tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives. So the idea that Ukraine is somehow better off because it failed to do that deal before is a lie. And if we’re not willing to learn from those mistakes of the recent past, we’re doomed to repeat them again. So, this idea that it would be painful for Ukraine, you know what’s been painful, tens and tens and tens of thousands of people continuing to die without any increased leverage in actually getting the outcome that they want.
So, I think there’s an opportunity for a win-win-win, a win for the United States and the West more broadly in weakening the Russia-China alliance, a win for Ukraine in having an agreement that is backstopped by the United States of America’s interests that provides a greater degree of long-run security to the future existence of Ukraine and its sovereignty and also stopping the bloodshed today. And I think a win for Russia which is to reopen economic relations with the West and have certain guarantees about what the mission-creep or scop-creep of NATO will be. There’s no rule that says that when one party, before full outright World War, starts at least, there’s an opportunity for there to actually be a win for everybody on the table rather than to assume that a win for us is a loss to Russia, or that anything positive that happens for Russia is a loss for the United States or Ukraine.
So I think it should be encouraging the fact that there are as many different possible levers here, almost makes certain that a reasonable practicable peace deal as possible in contrast to situation where there’s only one thing that matters for each side, then I can’t tell you that there’s a deal to be done, there’s definitely a deal to be done here, and I think that it requires real leadership in the United States playing hardball, not just with one side of this, not just with Zelenskyy or with Putin, but across the board hardball for our own interest, which are the interests of stability here, and that that will happen to well serve both Ukraine and Russia in the process.
Right now, we do, okay, so right now, we depend on China for everything from the pharmaceuticals in our medicine cabinet, 95% of ibuprofen, one of the most basic medicines used in the United States, depends on China for its supply chain. We, depend on China, ironically, for our own military-industrial base. Think about how little sense that makes actually. Our own military, which supposedly exists to protect ourselves against adversaries, depends for its own supplies, semiconductors, and otherwise, on our top adversary, that doesn’t make sense. Even if you’re a libertarian in the school of Friedrich von Hayek, who somebody I admire as well, even then, you would not argue for a foreign dependence on adversary for your military. So, that’s the next step we need to take, is at least reduce US dependence on China for the most essential inputs for the functioning of the United States of America, including our own military.
As a side note, I believe that means not just on-shoring to the United States. It does, but if we’re really serious about that, it also means expanding our relationships with allies like Japan, South Korea, India, the Philippines. And that’s an interesting debate to have because some on the right would say, “Okay, I want to decouple from China, but I also want less trade with all these other places.” You can’t have both those things at the same time. You can have one or the other. You can’t have both. And so, we have to acknowledge and be honest with ourselves that there are trade-offs to declaring independence from China. But the question is, what are the long-run benefits?
Now, you think about the other way to do this is strategic clarity. I think the way that you see World Wars often emerge is strategic ambiguity from two adversaries who don’t really know what the other side’s red line is or isn’t, and accidentally crosses those red lines. And I think we need to be much clearer with what are our hard red lines and what aren’t they. And I think that’s the single most effective way to make sure this doesn’t spiral into major world war.
And then, let’s talk about ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict on the terms that I just discussed with you before. Weakening the Russia-China Alliance not only reduces the risk that Russia becomes an aggressor, it also reduces the risk that China takes the risks that could escalate us to World War III as well. So I think that geopolitically, you got to look at these things holistically, that end of the Russia-Ukraine war in that peace deal deescalates not only the Russia-Ukraine conflict but the risk of a broader conflict that includes China as well, by also weakening China.
And understand that that may be the red line is the national recognition of Taiwan as an independent nation would be a red line that China would have. But we would have a red line to say that we do not in any circumstance tolerate the annexation by physical force and anytime in the foreseeable future when that’s against the interest of the United States of America. So those are examples, but the principle here is you asked how do we avoid major conflict with China? I think it starts with clear red lines on both sides. I think it starts with also lowering the stakes for the United States by making sure we’re not dependent on China for our modern way of life. And I think it also starts with ironically using a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine war as a way of weakening the Russia-China alliance, which in the other direction of weakening China has significant benefits to us as well.
There’s a lot of levers here, but I think that if we are both strategically clear with our allies and with our adversaries about what our red lines are, what our priorities are, reasonable deals that pull Russia out of the hands of China and vice versa, reasonable allies and relationships that cause China to question whether it can continue to have the same access to Middle Eastern oil supplies as it does today. And then clear red lines with China itself about what we definitely aren’t okay with and understand that they may have certain red lines to, that allows us, I think to still avoid what many people will call the unavoidable conflict, the Thucydides trap against the circumstance of when there’s a rising power against the backdrop of a declining power conflict always becomes inevitable. That’s a theory. It’s not a law of physics and I don’t think that, A, we have to be a declining power, and B, I don’t think that that has to necessarily result in major conflict with China here.
It’s going to require real leadership, leadership with a spine and you don’t have to judge based on international relations theory to form your view on this. Four years under Trump, we didn’t have major conflicts in the Middle East, in places like Russia, Ukraine. We were on the cusp of war with North Korea when Obama left office and Trump took over. Four years under Biden, less than four years under Biden and Harris, what do you have? Major conflicts in the Middle East. Major conflict in Russia, Ukraine, judged by the results. And I mean I would say that even if you’re somebody who disagrees with a lot of Donald Trump and you don’t like his style, if you’re single issues, you want to stay out of World War III, I think there’s a pretty clear case for why you go for Trump in this election.
And there are elements of that in Modi’s approach as well, which I respect about him, is he doesn’t apologize for the fact that India has a national identity and that the nation should be proud of it. But I’m not saying that because I’m proud of Meloni or Modi for their own countries. I’m American. I think there are lessons to learn from leaders who are proud of their own nation’s identity rather than apologizing for it. And I think it’s a big part of, it’s why I ran for president on a campaign centered on national pride. It’s also why I’m not only voting for but actively supporting Donald Trump because I do think he’s going to be the one that restores that missing national pride in the United States. And I touch on this as well in the book, there’s a chapter here, it says, “Nationalism isn’t a bad word.”
I think nationalism can be a very positive thing if it’s grounded in the actual true attributes of a nation. And in the United States that doesn’t mean no nationalism because that was not what the national identity of the United States was based on in the first place. But a civic nationalism grounded in our actual national ideals, that is who we are. And I think that that is something that we’ve gotten uncomfortable with in the countries to say that, “Oh, I’m proud of being American and I believe in American exceptionalism.” Somehow that’s looking down on others. No, I’m not looking down on anybody, but I’m proud of my own country. And I think Modi’s revived that spirit in India in a way that was missing for a long time, right? India had an inferiority complex, a psychological inferiority complex, but now to be proud of its national heritage and its national mythmaking and its national legacy and history.
And to say that every nation does have to have a kind of mythmaking about its past and to be proud of that, it’s like Malcolm X actually said this here in the United States, he said, “A nation without an appreciation for its history is like a tree without roots, it’s dead.” And I think that that’s true not just for the United States, I think it’s true for every other nation. I think leaders like Meloni in Italy, leaders like Modi in India have done a great job that I wish to bring that type of pride back in the United States. And whatever I do next, Lex, I’ll tell you this is I think reviving that sense of identity and pride, especially in the next generation is one of the most important things we can do for this country.
I think it’s all of us in some ways are hungry for purpose and meaning at a time in our history when the things that used to fill that void in our heart, they’re missing. And I think we need a president who both the right policies for the country seal the border, grow the economy, stay out of World War III, end rampant crime. Yes, we need the right policies, but we also need leaders who in a sustained way revive our national character, revive our sense of pride in this country, revive our identity as Americans, and I think that that need exists as much today as it did when I first ran for president. I don’t think it’s going to be automatically solved in just a few years. I think Donald Trump is the right person to carry that banner forward for the next four years.
But after that, we’ll see where the country is headed into 2028 and whatever I do, it’ll be whatever has a maximal positive impact on the country. I’ll also tell you that my laser focus maybe as distinct from other politicians on both sides is to take America to the next level, to move beyond our victimhood culture, to restore our culture of excellence. We got to shut down that nanny state, the entitlement state, the regulatory state, the foreign policy nanny state, shut it down and revive who we really are as Americans, and I’m as passionate about that as ever. But the next step is not running for president. The next step is what happens in the next four years, and that’s why over the next four weeks I’m focused on doing whatever I can to make sure we succeed in this election.
I think it’s interesting. I think that you have in a number of other leaders probably emerging at lower levels on the left. Not everybody’s going to necessarily come from Washington DC. In fact, the longer they’re there, the more they in some ways get polluted by it. I think the governor of Colorado, he’s an interesting guy. He’s got a more libertarian tendency. I don’t know as much about his views on it from a national perspective, but it’s intriguing to see somebody who has at least libertarian freedom-oriented tendencies within the Democratic Party. I think that there are a number of, I mean, I don’t foresee him running for president, but I had a debate last year when I was running for president with Ro Khanna who say what you will about him. He’s an highly intelligent person and is somebody who is at least willing to buck the consensus of his party when necessary.
I think he recently, I would say lambasted, he phrased it very delicately, but criticized Kamala Harris’s proposed tax on unrealized capital gains. So I like people who are willing to challenge the orthodoxies in their own party because it says they actually have convictions. And so whoever the Democrats put up, I hope it’s someone like that. And for my part I have and continue to have beliefs that will challenge Republicans, that on the face of it may not be the policies that poll on paper as the policies you’re supposed to adopt as a Republican candidate, but what a true leader does doesn’t just tell people what they want to hear. You tell people what they need to hear and you tell people what your actual convictions are. And this idea that I don’t want to create a right-wing entitlement state or a nanny state, I want to shut it down.
That challenges the precept positions of where a lot of the conservative movement is right now. I don’t think the bill to cap credit card interest rates is a good idea because that’s a price control just like Kamala Harris’s price controls and it’ll reduce access to credit. I don’t think that we want a crony capitalist estate showering private benefits on selected industries that favor us or that we want to expand the CFPB or the FTC’s remit, and somehow we’re going to trust it because it’s under our watch. No, I believe in shutting it down. That challenges a lot of the current direction of the conservative movement. I believe in certain issues that, or maybe even outside the scope of what Republicans currently care about right now.
One of the things that I oppose, for example, is this is not a top issue in American politics, but just to give you a sense for how I think and view the world, I’m against factory farming of a large scale of, you could sort of say putting the mistreatment of, it’s one thing to say that you need it for your sustenance and that’s great. But it’s another to say that you have to do it in a factory farming setting that gives special exemptions from historical laws that have existed that are the product of crony capitalism. I’m against crony capitalism in all its forms. I’m against the influence of mega money in politics. I don’t think that’s been good either for Democrats or Republicans. Some of those views I think are not necessarily the traditional Republican orthodoxy reading chapter and verse from what the Republican Party platform has been. It’s not against the Republican Party platform, but it’s asking what the future of our movement is.
I would’ve just taken that as a pause where halfway through you’ve established relevance, now make sure the country sees who you actually are in full rather than just the momentum competitive driven version of you. And I just think that taking those moments to just take stock of where you are, do some writing. I didn’t do much writing during the presidential campaign. I enjoy writing. It’s part of how I center myself. It’s part of what this book allowed me to do is, okay, I ran that whirlwind of a campaign. The first thing I started doing after I collected myself for a couple of weeks was take the pen and start writing. And I was committed to writing that book. Whether or not anybody read it, I was just writing it for myself. And actually it started in a very different form. It was very personal reflection oriented. So most of that, funny enough I’ve learned about writing the books, Lex, is-
And I think that’s one of the things that I learned from this campaign is not just all the policy lessons, but even just as a matter of personal practice, the ability to take spaces of time to not only physically challenge yourself, work out, et cetera, but to give yourself the space to reflect, to recenter yourself on the why. Had I done that, I think I would’ve been even more centered on the mission the whole time. Rather than you get attacked on the way you’re thrown off your tilt or thrown off your balance, it becomes a lot harder for someone else to do that to you if you’ve really centered yourself on your own purpose. It’s probably one of my biggest learnings.
I thrive on it, I enjoy it. Even my relationships with my closest friends are built around heated debates and deep-seated disagreements. And I just think that’s beautiful, not just about human relationships, but it’s particularly beautiful about America, right? Because it’s part of the culture of this country more so than other countries in China, India, Asian cultures even a lot of European cultures are very different where that’s considered not genteel behavior. It’s not the respectful behavior. Whereas for us, part of what makes this country great is you could disagree like hell and still get together at the dinner table at the end of it. I think we’ve lost some of that, but I’m on a bit of a mission to bring that back. And so whether it’s in politics or not, I’m committed in that next step, whatever the path is over the next four years, one of the things I’m committed to doing is making sure that I go out of my way to talk to people who actually disagree with me. And I think it’s a big part of how we’re going to save our country.
I think as long as you’re curious about that, I mean the climate change protestors that have interrupted my events, I’m as fascinated by the psychology of what’s moving them and what they might be hungry for as I am concerned about rebutting the content of what they’re saying to me. And I think that that’s certainly something I care to revive. We don’t talk about in politics that much, but reviving that sense of curiosity I think is in a certain way, one of the ways we’re going to be able to disagree, but still remain friends and fellow citizens at the end of it.
And yeah, it’s one of the things I like about you and why I was looking forward to this conversation too, is it’s cool to have intellectual interests that span sports to culture, to politics, to philosophy. And it’s not like you just have to be an expert trained in one of those things to be able to engage in it, but actually maybe, just maybe you might even be better at each of those things because you’re curious about the other, the Renaissance man, if you will. I think we’ve lost a little bit of that concept in America, but it’s certainly something that is important to me. And this year it’s been kind of cool. After leaving the campaign, I’ve been doing a wide range of things. I’ve been picking up my tennis game again. I practiced at the Ohio State-
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 2:02 – Conservatism
- 5:18 – Progressivism
- 10:52 – DEI
- 15:45 – Bureaucracy
- 22:36 – Government efficiency
- 37:46 – Education
- 52:11 – Military Industrial Complex
- 1:14:29 – Illegal immigration
- 1:36:03 – Donald Trump
- 1:57:29 – War in Ukraine
- 2:08:43 – China
- 2:19:53 – Will Vivek run in 2028?
- 2:31:32 – Approach to debates
Introduction
Vivek Ramaswamy
The way I would do it, 75% headcount reduction across the board in the federal bureaucracy, send them home packing, shut down agencies that shouldn’t exist, rescind every unconstitutional regulation that Congress never passed. In a true self-governing democracy, it should be our elected representatives that make the laws and the rules, not unelected bureaucrats. Merit and equity are actually incompatible. Merit and group quotas are incompatible. You can have one or the other, you can’t have both.
The way I would do it, 75% headcount reduction across the board in the federal bureaucracy, send them home packing, shut down agencies that shouldn’t exist, rescind every unconstitutional regulation that Congress never passed. In a true self-governing democracy, it should be our elected representatives that make the laws and the rules, not unelected bureaucrats. Merit and equity are actually incompatible. Merit and group quotas are incompatible. You can have one or the other, you can’t have both.
It’s an assault and a crusade on the nanny state itself. And that nanny state presents itself in several forms. There’s the entitlement state, it’s the welfare state, presents itself in the form of the regulatory state. That’s what we’re talking about. And then there’s the foreign nanny state where effectively we are subsidizing other countries that aren’t paying their fair share of protection or other resources we provide them. If I was to summarize my ideology, in a nutshell, it is to terminate the nanny state in the United States of America in all of its forms, the entitlement state, the regulatory state and the foreign policy nanny state. Once we’ve done that, we’ve revived the republic that I think would make George Washington proud.
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy about the future of conservatism in America. He has written many books on this topic, including his latest called Truths: The Future of America First. He ran for president this year in the Republican primary and is considered by many to represent the future of the Republican Party. Before all that, he was a successful biotech entrepreneur and investor with a degree in biology from Harvard and a law degree from Yale. As always, when the topic is politics, I will continue talking to people on both the left and the right with empathy, curiosity and backbone. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Vivek Ramaswamy.
The following is a conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy about the future of conservatism in America. He has written many books on this topic, including his latest called Truths: The Future of America First. He ran for president this year in the Republican primary and is considered by many to represent the future of the Republican Party. Before all that, he was a successful biotech entrepreneur and investor with a degree in biology from Harvard and a law degree from Yale. As always, when the topic is politics, I will continue talking to people on both the left and the right with empathy, curiosity and backbone. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Vivek Ramaswamy.
Conservatism
Lex Fridman
You are one of the great elucidators of conservative ideas, so you’re the perfect person to ask. What is conservatism? What’s your, let’s say, conservative vision for America?
You are one of the great elucidators of conservative ideas, so you’re the perfect person to ask. What is conservatism? What’s your, let’s say, conservative vision for America?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, actually this is one of my criticisms of the modern Republican Party and direction of the conservative movement is that we’ve gotten so good at describing what we’re against. There’s a list of things that we could rail against, wokeism, transgender ideology, climate ideology, COVIDism, COVID policies, the radical Biden agenda, the radical Harris agenda, the list goes on. But actually what’s missing in the conservative movement right now is what we actually stand for. What is our vision for the future of the country? And I saw that as a deficit at the time I started my presidential campaign. It was in many ways the purpose of my campaign because I do feel that that’s why we didn’t have the red wave in 2022. They tried to blame Donald Trump. They tried to blame abortion. They blamed a bunch of individual specific issues or factors. I think the real reason we didn’t have that red wave was that we got so practiced at criticizing Joe Biden that we forgot to articulate who we are and what we stand for.
Well, actually this is one of my criticisms of the modern Republican Party and direction of the conservative movement is that we’ve gotten so good at describing what we’re against. There’s a list of things that we could rail against, wokeism, transgender ideology, climate ideology, COVIDism, COVID policies, the radical Biden agenda, the radical Harris agenda, the list goes on. But actually what’s missing in the conservative movement right now is what we actually stand for. What is our vision for the future of the country? And I saw that as a deficit at the time I started my presidential campaign. It was in many ways the purpose of my campaign because I do feel that that’s why we didn’t have the red wave in 2022. They tried to blame Donald Trump. They tried to blame abortion. They blamed a bunch of individual specific issues or factors. I think the real reason we didn’t have that red wave was that we got so practiced at criticizing Joe Biden that we forgot to articulate who we are and what we stand for.
So what do we stand for as conservatives? I think we stand for the ideals that we fought the American Revolution for in 1776. Ideals like merit. That the best person gets the job without regard to their genetics. That you get ahead in this country, not on the color of your skin, but on the content of your character. Free speech, an open debate, not just as some sort of catchphrase, but the idea that any opinion, no matter how heinous, you get to express it in the United States of America. Self-governance and this is a big one right now, is that the people we elect to run the government, they’re no longer the ones who actually run the government. We, in the conservative movement, I believe, should believe in restoring self-governance where it’s not bureaucrats running the show, but actually elected representatives.
And then the other ideal that the nation was founded on that I think we need to revive and I think as a north star of the conservative movement is restoring the rule of law in this country. You think about even the abandonment of the rule of law at the southern border. It’s particularly personal to me as the kid of legal immigrants to this country. You and I actually share a couple of aspects in common in that regard. That also though means your first act of entering this country can’t break the law. So there’s some policy commitments and principles, merit, free speech, self-governance, rule of law. And then I think culturally what does it mean to be a conservative is it means we believe in the anchors of our identity, in truth, the value of the individual family, nation and God beat race, gender, sexuality and climate. If we have the courage to actually stand for our own vision. And that’s a big part of what’s been missing. And it’s a big part of not just through the campaign, but through a lot of my future advocacy, that’s the vacuum I’m aiming to fill.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, we’ll talk about each of those issues. Immigration, the growing bureaucracy of government, religion is a really interesting topic, something you’ve spoken about a lot, but you’ve also had a lot of really tense debates. So you’re a perfect person to ask to steel man the other side.
Yeah, we’ll talk about each of those issues. Immigration, the growing bureaucracy of government, religion is a really interesting topic, something you’ve spoken about a lot, but you’ve also had a lot of really tense debates. So you’re a perfect person to ask to steel man the other side.
Progressivism
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
So let me ask you about progressivism.
So let me ask you about progressivism.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Sure.
Sure.
Lex Fridman
Can you steel man the case for progressivism and left- wing ideas?
Can you steel man the case for progressivism and left- wing ideas?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah, so look, I think the strongest case, particularly for left-wing ideas in the United States, so in the American context, is that the country has been imperfect in living up to its ideals. So even though our founding fathers preached the importance of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and freedom, they didn’t practice those values in terms of many of our founding fathers being slave owners, inequalities with respect to women and other disempowered such that they say that that created a power structure in this country that continues to last to this day. The vestiges of what happened even in 1860 in the course of human history isn’t that long ago and that we need to do everything in our power to correct for those imbalances in power in the United States.
Yeah, so look, I think the strongest case, particularly for left-wing ideas in the United States, so in the American context, is that the country has been imperfect in living up to its ideals. So even though our founding fathers preached the importance of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and freedom, they didn’t practice those values in terms of many of our founding fathers being slave owners, inequalities with respect to women and other disempowered such that they say that that created a power structure in this country that continues to last to this day. The vestiges of what happened even in 1860 in the course of human history isn’t that long ago and that we need to do everything in our power to correct for those imbalances in power in the United States.
That’s the core view of the modern left. I’m not criticizing it right now, I’m steel manning it, I’m trying to give you I think a good of why the left believes they have a compelling case for the government stepping into correct for historical or present inequalities. I can give you my counter rebuttal of that, but the best statement of the left, I think that it’s the fact that we’ve been imperfect in living up to those ideals. In order to fix that, we’re going to have to take steps that are severe steps if needed to correct for those historical inequalities before we actually have true equality of opportunity in this country. That’s the case for the left-wing view in modern America.
Lex Fridman
So what’s your criticism of that?
So what’s your criticism of that?
Vivek Ramaswamy
So my concern with it is even if that’s well-motivated, I think that it recreates many of the same problems that they were setting out to solve. I’ll give you a really tangible example of that in the present right now. I may be alone amongst prominent conservatives who would say something like this right now, but I think it’s true, so I’m going to say it. I’m actually even in the last year, last year and a half, seeing actually a rise in anti-black and anti-minority racism in this country, which is a little curious. When over the last 10 years we got as close to Martin Luther King’s promise land as you could envision, a place where you have every American, regardless of their skin color, able to vote without obstruction, a place where you have people able to get the highest jobs in the land without race standing in their way.
So my concern with it is even if that’s well-motivated, I think that it recreates many of the same problems that they were setting out to solve. I’ll give you a really tangible example of that in the present right now. I may be alone amongst prominent conservatives who would say something like this right now, but I think it’s true, so I’m going to say it. I’m actually even in the last year, last year and a half, seeing actually a rise in anti-black and anti-minority racism in this country, which is a little curious. When over the last 10 years we got as close to Martin Luther King’s promise land as you could envision, a place where you have every American, regardless of their skin color, able to vote without obstruction, a place where you have people able to get the highest jobs in the land without race standing in their way.
Why are we seeing that resurgence? In part, it’s because of I believe that left-wing obsession with racial equity over the course of the last 20 years in this country. And so when you take something away from someone based on their skin color, and that’s what correcting for prior injustice was supposed to do, the left-wing view is you have to correct for prior injustice by saying that whether you’re a white, straight, cis, man, you have certain privileges that you have to actually correct for. When you take something away from somebody based on their genetics, you actually foster greater animus towards other groups around you. And so the problem with that philosophy is that it creates several problems with it, but the most significant problem that I think everybody can agree we want to avoid is to actually fan the flames of the very divisions that you supposedly wanted to heal.
I see that in our context of our immigration policy as well. You think about even what’s going on in, I’m from Ohio, I was born and raised in Ohio and I live there today, the controversy in Springfield, Ohio. I personally don’t blame really any of the people who are in Springfield, either the native people born and raised in Springfield or even the Haitians who have been moved to Springfield. But it ends up becoming a divide and conquer strategy and outcome where if you put 20,000 people in a community where, 50,000 people, where the 20,000 are coming in don’t know the language, are unable to follow the traffic laws, are unable to assimilate, you know there’s going to be a reactionary backlash. And so even though that began perhaps with some type of charitable instinct, some type of sympathy for people who went through the earthquake in 2010 in Haiti and achieved temporary protective status in the United States, what began with sympathy, what began with earnest intentions actually creates the very division and reactionary response that supposedly we say we wanted to avoid. So that’s my number one criticism of that left-wing worldview.
Number two is I do believe that merit and equity are actually incompatible. Merit and group quotas are incompatible. You can have one or the other, you can’t have both. And the reason why is no two people, and I think it’s the beautiful things, true between you and I, between you, I and all of our friends or family or strangers or neighbors or colleagues, no two people have the same skillsets. We’re each endowed by different gifts. We’re each endowed with different talents. And that’s the beauty of human diversity.
And a true meritocracy is a system in which you’re able to achieve the maximum of your God-given potential without anybody standing in your way. But that means necessarily there’s going to be differences in outcomes in a wide range of parameters, not just financial, not just money, not just fame or currency or whatever it is. There’s just going to be different outcomes for different people in different spheres of lives. And that’s what meritocracy demands. It’s what it requires. And so the left’s vision of group equity necessarily comes at the cost of meritocracy. And so those would be my two reasons for opposing the view is one is it’s not meritocratic, but number two is it often even has the effect of hurting the very people they claimed to have wanted to help. And I think that’s part of what we’re seeing in modern America.
DEI
Lex Fridman
Yeah, you had a pretty intense debate with Mark Cuban, a great conversation. I think it’s on your podcast actually.
Yeah, you had a pretty intense debate with Mark Cuban, a great conversation. I think it’s on your podcast actually.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Yes. Yeah, it was great.
Yes. Yeah, it was great.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah, he was a good guy to talk to.
Yeah, he was a good guy to talk to.
Lex Fridman
It was great. Okay. Well, speaking of good guys, he messages me all the time with beautifully eloquent criticism. I appreciate that, Mark. What was one of the more convincing things he said to you? You’re mostly focused on kind of DEI.
It was great. Okay. Well, speaking of good guys, he messages me all the time with beautifully eloquent criticism. I appreciate that, Mark. What was one of the more convincing things he said to you? You’re mostly focused on kind of DEI.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So let’s just take a step back and understand because people use these acronyms and then they start saying it out of muscle memory and stop asking what it actually means. DEI refers to capital D, diversity, equity and inclusion, which is a philosophy adopted by institutions principally in the private sector, companies, nonprofits and universities, to say that they need to strive for specific forms of racial, gender and sexual orientation diversity. And it’s not just the D, it’s equity in ensuring that you have equal outcomes as measured by certain group quota targets or group representation targets that they would meet in their ranks. The problem with the DEI agenda is in the name of diversity, it actually has been a vehicle for sacrificing true diversity of thought. So the way the argument goes is this, is that we have to create an environment that is receptive to minorities and minority views, but if certain opinions are themselves deemed to be hostile to those minorities, then you have to exclude those opinions in the name of the capital D diversity. But that means that you’re necessarily sacrificing actual diversity of thought.
So let’s just take a step back and understand because people use these acronyms and then they start saying it out of muscle memory and stop asking what it actually means. DEI refers to capital D, diversity, equity and inclusion, which is a philosophy adopted by institutions principally in the private sector, companies, nonprofits and universities, to say that they need to strive for specific forms of racial, gender and sexual orientation diversity. And it’s not just the D, it’s equity in ensuring that you have equal outcomes as measured by certain group quota targets or group representation targets that they would meet in their ranks. The problem with the DEI agenda is in the name of diversity, it actually has been a vehicle for sacrificing true diversity of thought. So the way the argument goes is this, is that we have to create an environment that is receptive to minorities and minority views, but if certain opinions are themselves deemed to be hostile to those minorities, then you have to exclude those opinions in the name of the capital D diversity. But that means that you’re necessarily sacrificing actual diversity of thought.
I can give you a very specific example. That might sound like, “Okay, well, is it such a bad thing if an organization doesn’t want to exclude people who are saying racist things on a given day?” We could debate that. But let’s get to the tangible world of how that actually plays out. I, for my part, have not really heard in ordinary America people uttering racial epithets if you’re going to restaurant or in the grocery store. It’s not something I’ve encountered, certainly not in the workplace. But that’s a theoretical case, let’s talk about the real world case of how this plays out. So there was an instance, it was a case that presented itself before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the EEOC, one of the government enforcers of the DEI agenda. And there was a case of a woman who wore a red sweater on Fridays in celebration of veterans and those who had served the military and invited others in the workplace to do the same thing.
And they had a kind of affinity group, you could call it that, a veteran type affinity group, appreciating those who had served. Her son had served as well. There was a minority employee at that business who said that he found that to be a microaggression. So the employer asked her to stop wearing said clothes too, the office. Well, she still felt like she wanted to celebrate, I think, it was Friday was the day of the week where they did it. She still wore the red sweater and she didn’t wear it, but she would hang it on the back of her seat, put it on the back of her seat at the office. They said, “No, you can’t do that either.” So the irony is in the name of this capital D diversity, which is creating a supposedly welcoming workplace for all kinds of Americans by focusing only on certain kinds of so-called diversity, that translates into actually not even a diversity of your genetics, which is what they claim to be solving for, but also a hostility to diversity of thought.
And I think that’s dangerous. And you’re seeing that happen in the last four years across this country. It’s been pretty rampant. I think it leaves America worse off. The beauty of America is we’re a country where we should be able to have institutions that are stronger from different points of view being expressed. But my number one criticism of the DEI agenda is not even that it’s anti-meritocratic, it is anti-meritocratic, but my number one criticism is it’s actually hostile to the free and open exchange of ideas by creating often legal liabilities for organizations that even permit certain viewpoints to be expressed. And I think that’s the biggest concern.
Lex Fridman
I think what Mark would say is that diversity allows you to look for talent in places where you haven’t looked before and therefore find really special talents, special people. I think that’s the case he made.
I think what Mark would say is that diversity allows you to look for talent in places where you haven’t looked before and therefore find really special talents, special people. I think that’s the case he made.
Vivek Ramaswamy
He did make that case and it was a great conversation. And my response to that is great, that’s a good thing. We don’t need a three-letter acronym to do that. You don’t need special programmatic DEI incentives to do it because companies are always going to seek in a truly free market, which I think we’re missing in the United States today for a lot of reasons, but in a truly free market, companies will have the incentive to hire the best and brightest or else they’re going to be less competitive versus other companies. But you don’t need ESG, DEI, CSR regimes in part enforced by the government to do it.
He did make that case and it was a great conversation. And my response to that is great, that’s a good thing. We don’t need a three-letter acronym to do that. You don’t need special programmatic DEI incentives to do it because companies are always going to seek in a truly free market, which I think we’re missing in the United States today for a lot of reasons, but in a truly free market, companies will have the incentive to hire the best and brightest or else they’re going to be less competitive versus other companies. But you don’t need ESG, DEI, CSR regimes in part enforced by the government to do it.
Today, to be a government contractor, for example, you have to adopt certain racial and gender representation targets in your workforce. That’s not the free market working. So I think you can’t have it both ways either. It’s going to be good for companies and companies are going to do what’s in their self-interest. That’s what capitalists like Mark Cuban and I believe. But if we really believe that, then we should let the market work rather than forcing it to adopt these top-down standards. That’s my issue with it.
Bureaucracy
Lex Fridman
I don’t know what it is about human psychology, but whenever you have a sort of administration, a committee that gets together to do a good thing, the committee starts to use the good thing, the ideology behind wish there’s a good ideal, to bully people and to do bad things. I don’t know what it is.
I don’t know what it is about human psychology, but whenever you have a sort of administration, a committee that gets together to do a good thing, the committee starts to use the good thing, the ideology behind wish there’s a good ideal, to bully people and to do bad things. I don’t know what it is.
Vivek Ramaswamy
This has less to do with left-wing versus right-wing ideology and more the nature of a bureaucracy is one that looks after its own existence as its top goal. So part of what you’ve seen with the so-called perpetuation of wokeness in American life is that the bureaucracy has used the appearance of virtue to actually deflect accountabilities for its own failure. So you’ve seen that in several different spheres of American life. You could even talk about in the military. You think about our entry into Iraq after 9/11 had nothing to do with the state objectives that we had. And I think by all accounts, it was a policy move we regret. Our policy ranks and our foreign policy establishment made a mistake in entering Iraq, invading a country that really by all accounts was not at all responsible for 9/11. Nonetheless, if you’re part of the US military or you’re General Mark Milley, you would rather talk about white rage or systemic racism than you would actually talk about the military’s actual substantive failures.
This has less to do with left-wing versus right-wing ideology and more the nature of a bureaucracy is one that looks after its own existence as its top goal. So part of what you’ve seen with the so-called perpetuation of wokeness in American life is that the bureaucracy has used the appearance of virtue to actually deflect accountabilities for its own failure. So you’ve seen that in several different spheres of American life. You could even talk about in the military. You think about our entry into Iraq after 9/11 had nothing to do with the state objectives that we had. And I think by all accounts, it was a policy move we regret. Our policy ranks and our foreign policy establishment made a mistake in entering Iraq, invading a country that really by all accounts was not at all responsible for 9/11. Nonetheless, if you’re part of the US military or you’re General Mark Milley, you would rather talk about white rage or systemic racism than you would actually talk about the military’s actual substantive failures.
It’s what I call the practice of blowing woke smoke to deflect accountability. You could say the same thing with respect to the educational system. It’s a lot easier to claim that, and I’m not the one making this claim, but others have made this claim, that math is racist because there are inequitable results on objective tests of mathematics based on different demographic attributes. You can claim using that then math is racist. It’s a lot easier to blow that woke smoke than it is to accept accountability for failing to teach black kids in the inner city how to actually do math and fix our public school systems and the zip code coded mechanism for trapping kids in poor communities in bad schools. So I think that in many cases, what these bureaucracies do is they use the appearance of signaling this virtue as a way of not really advancing a social cause, but of strengthening the power of the bureaucracy itself and insulating that bureaucracy from criticism.
So in many ways, bureaucracy, I think, cars the channels through which much of this woke ideology has flowed over the last several years. And that’s why part of my focus has shifted away from just combating wokeness because that’s just a symptom, I think, versus combating actual bureaucracy itself. The rise of this managerial class, the rise of the deep state. We talk about that in the government, but the deep state doesn’t just exist in the government. It exists I think in every sphere of our lives, from companies to nonprofits to universities. It’s the rise of we call the managerial class, the committee class, the people who professionally sit on committees, I think are wielding far more power today than actual creators, entrepreneurs, original ideators and ordinary citizens alike.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, you need managers, but as few as possible. It seems like when you have a giant managerial class, the actual doers don’t get to do. But like you said, bureaucracy is a phenomena of both the left and the right. This is not-
Yeah, you need managers, but as few as possible. It seems like when you have a giant managerial class, the actual doers don’t get to do. But like you said, bureaucracy is a phenomena of both the left and the right. This is not-
Vivek Ramaswamy
It’s not even a left or right, it’s just transcends that, but it’s anti-American at its core. So our founding fathers, they were anti-bureaucratic at their core actually, they were the pioneers, the explorers, the unafraid. They were the inventors, the creators. People forget this about Benjamin Franklin who signed the Declaration of Independence, one of the great inventors that we have in the United States as well. He invented the lightning rod. He invented the Franklin stove, which was actually one of the great innovations in the field of thermodynamics. He even invented a number of musical instruments that Mozart and Beethoven went on to use. That’s just Benjamin Franklin. So you think, “Oh, he’s a one-off.” Everybody say, okay, he was the one zany founder who was also a creative scientific innovator who happened to be one of the founders of the country. Wrong, it wasn’t unique to him. You have Thomas Jefferson. What are you sitting in right now? You’re sitting on a swivel chair. Okay. Who invented the swivel chair?
It’s not even a left or right, it’s just transcends that, but it’s anti-American at its core. So our founding fathers, they were anti-bureaucratic at their core actually, they were the pioneers, the explorers, the unafraid. They were the inventors, the creators. People forget this about Benjamin Franklin who signed the Declaration of Independence, one of the great inventors that we have in the United States as well. He invented the lightning rod. He invented the Franklin stove, which was actually one of the great innovations in the field of thermodynamics. He even invented a number of musical instruments that Mozart and Beethoven went on to use. That’s just Benjamin Franklin. So you think, “Oh, he’s a one-off.” Everybody say, okay, he was the one zany founder who was also a creative scientific innovator who happened to be one of the founders of the country. Wrong, it wasn’t unique to him. You have Thomas Jefferson. What are you sitting in right now? You’re sitting on a swivel chair. Okay. Who invented the swivel chair?
Lex Fridman
Thomas Jefferson?
Thomas Jefferson?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yes, Thomas Jefferson.
Yes, Thomas Jefferson.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Funny enough, he invented the swivel chair while he was writing the Declaration of Independence, which is insane.
Funny enough, he invented the swivel chair while he was writing the Declaration of Independence, which is insane.
Lex Fridman
You’re the one that reminded me that he drafted, he wrote the Declaration of Independence when he was 33.
You’re the one that reminded me that he drafted, he wrote the Declaration of Independence when he was 33.
Vivek Ramaswamy
And he was 33 when he did it while inventing the swivel chair.
And he was 33 when he did it while inventing the swivel chair.
Lex Fridman
I like how you’re focused on the swivel chair. Can we just pause on the Declaration of Independence? It makes me feel horrible.
I like how you’re focused on the swivel chair. Can we just pause on the Declaration of Independence? It makes me feel horrible.
Vivek Ramaswamy
But the Declaration of Independence part, everybody knows. What people don’t know, he was an architect. So he worked in Virginia, but the Virginia State Capital Dome, so the building that’s in Virginia today where the state capital is, that dome was actually designed by Thomas Jefferson as well. So these people weren’t people who sat on professional committees, they weren’t bureaucrats, they hated bureaucracy. Part of Old World England is Old World England was committed to the idea of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy and monarchy go hand in hand. A monarch can’t actually administer or govern directly, it requires bureaucracy, a machine to actually technocratically govern for him. So the United States of America was founded on the idea that we reject that Old World view. The Old World vision was that we the people cannot be trusted to self-govern or make decisions for ourselves. We would burn ourselves off the planet, is the modern version of this, with existential risks like global climate change, if we just leave it to the people and their democratic will.
But the Declaration of Independence part, everybody knows. What people don’t know, he was an architect. So he worked in Virginia, but the Virginia State Capital Dome, so the building that’s in Virginia today where the state capital is, that dome was actually designed by Thomas Jefferson as well. So these people weren’t people who sat on professional committees, they weren’t bureaucrats, they hated bureaucracy. Part of Old World England is Old World England was committed to the idea of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy and monarchy go hand in hand. A monarch can’t actually administer or govern directly, it requires bureaucracy, a machine to actually technocratically govern for him. So the United States of America was founded on the idea that we reject that Old World view. The Old World vision was that we the people cannot be trusted to self-govern or make decisions for ourselves. We would burn ourselves off the planet, is the modern version of this, with existential risks like global climate change, if we just leave it to the people and their democratic will.
That’s why you need professional technocrats, educated elites, enlightened bureaucrats to be able to set limits that actually protect people from their own worst impulses. That’s the Old World view and most nations in human history have operated this way, but what made the United States of America itself, to know what made America great, we have to know what made America itself, what made America itself is we said hell no to that vision, that we the people, for better or worse, are going to self-govern without the committee class restraining what we do. And the likes of Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and I could give you examples of John Adams or Robert Livingston, you go straight down the list of founding fathers who were inventors, creators, pioneers, explorers, who also were the very people who came together to sign the Declaration of Independence. And so yeah, this rise of bureaucracy in America in every sphere of life, I view it as anti-American actually. And I hope that conservatives and liberals alike can get behind my crusade certainly to get in there and shut most of it down.
Government efficiency
Lex Fridman
Yeah, speaking of shutting most of it down, how do you propose we do that? How do we make government more efficient? How to make it smaller? What are the different ideas of how to do that?
Yeah, speaking of shutting most of it down, how do you propose we do that? How do we make government more efficient? How to make it smaller? What are the different ideas of how to do that?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, the first thing I’ll say is you’re always taking a risk. Okay, there’s no free lunch here. Mostly, at least. You’re always taking a risk. One risk is that you say I want to reform it gradually, I want to have a grand master plan and get to exactly what the right end state is and then carefully cut with a chisel, like a work of art, to get there. I don’t believe that approach works. I think that’s an approach that conservatives have taken for many years. I think it hasn’t gotten us very far. And the reason is if you have an eight-headed hydra and you cut off one of the heads, it grows right back. So that’s the risk of not cutting enough. The other risk you could take is the risk of cutting too much. To say that I’m going to cut so much that I’m going to take the risk of not just cutting the fat, but also cutting some muscle along the way, but I’m going to take that risk.
Well, the first thing I’ll say is you’re always taking a risk. Okay, there’s no free lunch here. Mostly, at least. You’re always taking a risk. One risk is that you say I want to reform it gradually, I want to have a grand master plan and get to exactly what the right end state is and then carefully cut with a chisel, like a work of art, to get there. I don’t believe that approach works. I think that’s an approach that conservatives have taken for many years. I think it hasn’t gotten us very far. And the reason is if you have an eight-headed hydra and you cut off one of the heads, it grows right back. So that’s the risk of not cutting enough. The other risk you could take is the risk of cutting too much. To say that I’m going to cut so much that I’m going to take the risk of not just cutting the fat, but also cutting some muscle along the way, but I’m going to take that risk.
I can’t give you option C, which is to say that I’m going to cut exactly the right amount, I’m going to do it perfectly. Okay, you don’t know ex-ante, you don’t know beforehand that it’s exactly how it’s going to, so that’s a meaningless claim. It’s only a question of which risk you’re going to take. I believe in the moment we live in right now, the second risk is the risk we have to be willing to take. And we haven’t had a class of politician, Donald Trump in 2016 was I think the closest we’ve gotten and I think the second term will be even closer to what we need, but short of that, I don’t think we’ve really had a class of politician who has gotten very serious about cutting so much that you’re also going to cut some fat, but not only some fat, but also some muscle.
That’s the risk we have to take. So the way I would do it, 75% headcount reduction across the board in the federal bureaucracy, send them home packing, shut down agencies that shouldn’t exist, rescind every unconstitutional regulation that Congress never passed. In a true self-governing democracy, it should be our elected representatives that make the laws and the rules not unelected bureaucrats. And that is the single greatest form of economic stimulus we could have in this country, but it is also the single most effective way to restore self-governance in our country as well. And it is the blueprint for, I think, how we save this country.
Lex Fridman
That’s pretty gangster, 75%. There’s this kind of almost meme like video of Argentinian President Javier Milei, where on a whiteboard, he has all the I think 18 ministries lined up and he’s ripping, “Department of Education, gone,” and he’s just going like this. Now, the situation in Argentina is pretty dire and the situation in the United States is not, despite everybody saying the empire is falling, this is still, in my opinion, the greatest nation on earth. Still, the economy is doing very well. Still, this is the hub of culture, the hub of innovation, the hub of so many amazing things. Do you think it’s possible to do something like firing 75% of people in government when things are going relatively well?
That’s pretty gangster, 75%. There’s this kind of almost meme like video of Argentinian President Javier Milei, where on a whiteboard, he has all the I think 18 ministries lined up and he’s ripping, “Department of Education, gone,” and he’s just going like this. Now, the situation in Argentina is pretty dire and the situation in the United States is not, despite everybody saying the empire is falling, this is still, in my opinion, the greatest nation on earth. Still, the economy is doing very well. Still, this is the hub of culture, the hub of innovation, the hub of so many amazing things. Do you think it’s possible to do something like firing 75% of people in government when things are going relatively well?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yes, in fact, I think it’s necessary and essential. I think things depends on what your level of well really is, what you’re benchmarking against. America’s not built on complacency. We’re built on the pursuit of excellence. And are we still the greatest nation on planet earth? I believe we are. I agree with you on that. But are we great as we could possibly be or even as we have been in the past, measured against our own standards of excellence? No, we’re not. I think the nation is in a trajectory of decline. That doesn’t mean it’s the end of the empire yet. But we are a nation in decline right now. I don’t think we have to be. But part of that decline is driven by the rise of this managerial class, the bureaucracy sucking the lifeblood out of the country, sucking the lifeblood out of our innovative culture, our culture of self-governance.
Yes, in fact, I think it’s necessary and essential. I think things depends on what your level of well really is, what you’re benchmarking against. America’s not built on complacency. We’re built on the pursuit of excellence. And are we still the greatest nation on planet earth? I believe we are. I agree with you on that. But are we great as we could possibly be or even as we have been in the past, measured against our own standards of excellence? No, we’re not. I think the nation is in a trajectory of decline. That doesn’t mean it’s the end of the empire yet. But we are a nation in decline right now. I don’t think we have to be. But part of that decline is driven by the rise of this managerial class, the bureaucracy sucking the lifeblood out of the country, sucking the lifeblood out of our innovative culture, our culture of self-governance.
So is it possible? Yeah, it’s really possible. I’ll tell you one easy way to do it. This is a little bit, I’m being a little bit glib here, but I think it’s not crazy, at least as a thought experiment. Get in there on day one, say that anybody in the federal bureaucracy who is not elected, elected representatives obviously were elected by the people, but the people who are not elected, if your social security number ends in an odd number, you’re out, if it ends in an even number, you’re in. There’s a 50% cut right there. Of those who remain, if your social security number starts in an even number, you’re in and if it starts with an odd number, you’re out. Boom. That’s a 75% reduction done. Literally, stochastically, okay, one of the virtues of that, it’s a thought experiment, not a policy prescription, but one of the virtues of that thought experiment is that you don’t have a bunch of lawsuits you’re dealing with about gender discrimination or racial discrimination or political viewpoint discrimination.
Actually, the reality is you’ve at mass, you didn’t bring the chisel, you brought a chainsaw, I guarantee you do that on day one and do step two on day two, on day three, not a thing will have changed for the ordinary American other than this size of their government being a lot smaller and more restrained, spending a lot less money to operate it. And most people who have run a company, especially larger companies know this, it’s 25% of the people who do 80 to 90% of the useful work, these government agencies are no different. So now imagine you could do that same thought experiment, but not just doing it at random, but do it still at large scale while having some metric of screening for those who actually had both the greatest competence as well as the greatest commitment and knowledge of the Constitution.
That I think would immediately raise not only the civic character of the United States, now we feel, okay, the people we elect to run the government, they’ve got the power back, they’re running the government again, as opposed to the unelected bureaucrats who wield the power today, it would also stimulate the economy. The regulatory state is like a wet blanket on the American economy. Most of it is unconstitutional. All we require is leadership with a spine to get in there and actually do what conservative presidents have maybe gestured towards and talked about, but have not really effectuated ever in modern history.
Lex Fridman
And by the way, that kind of thing would attract the ultra-competent that actually want to work in government.
And by the way, that kind of thing would attract the ultra-competent that actually want to work in government.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Exactly. Which you’re missing today because right now, the government would swallow them up. Most competent people feel like that bureaucratic machine will swallow them whole. You clear the decks of 75% of them, real innovators can then show up.
Exactly. Which you’re missing today because right now, the government would swallow them up. Most competent people feel like that bureaucratic machine will swallow them whole. You clear the decks of 75% of them, real innovators can then show up.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. There’s kind of this cynical view of capitals where people think that the only reason you do anything is to earn more money, but I think a lot of people would want to work in government to build something that’s helpful to a huge number of people.
Yeah. There’s kind of this cynical view of capitals where people think that the only reason you do anything is to earn more money, but I think a lot of people would want to work in government to build something that’s helpful to a huge number of people.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah. Well, look, I think there’s opportunities for the very best to have large scale impact in all kinds of different institutions in our universities to K through 12 education, through entrepreneurship, I’m obviously very biased in that regard. I think there’s a lot you’re able to create that you couldn’t create through government. But I do think in the moment that we live in where our government is as broken as it is and as responsible for the declining nature of our country, yeah, I think bringing in people who are unafraid, talented and able to have an impact could make all of the difference. And I agree with you, I don’t think actually most people, even most people who say they’re motivated by money, I don’t think are actually motivated by money. I think most people are driven by a belief that they can do more than they’re being permitted to do right now with their skillsets. I’ve run a number of companies and one of the things that I used to ask when I was, I’m not day-to-day involved in them anymore, but as a CEO, I would ask when I did interviews, in the first company I started, at Roivant, for four years in, company was pretty big by that point, I would still intent on interviewing every candidate before they joined, screening for the culture of that person. I can talk a lot more about things we did to build that culture. But one of the questions I would always ask them naturally just to start a conversation, it’s a pretty basic question, is why did you leave your last job or why are you leaving your last job? I’ll tell you what I didn’t hear very often, is that I wasn’t paid enough. And maybe they’d be shy to tell you that during an interview, but there’s indirect ways to signal that. That really wasn’t at all even a top 10 reason why people were leaving their job.
Yeah. Well, look, I think there’s opportunities for the very best to have large scale impact in all kinds of different institutions in our universities to K through 12 education, through entrepreneurship, I’m obviously very biased in that regard. I think there’s a lot you’re able to create that you couldn’t create through government. But I do think in the moment that we live in where our government is as broken as it is and as responsible for the declining nature of our country, yeah, I think bringing in people who are unafraid, talented and able to have an impact could make all of the difference. And I agree with you, I don’t think actually most people, even most people who say they’re motivated by money, I don’t think are actually motivated by money. I think most people are driven by a belief that they can do more than they’re being permitted to do right now with their skillsets. I’ve run a number of companies and one of the things that I used to ask when I was, I’m not day-to-day involved in them anymore, but as a CEO, I would ask when I did interviews, in the first company I started, at Roivant, for four years in, company was pretty big by that point, I would still intent on interviewing every candidate before they joined, screening for the culture of that person. I can talk a lot more about things we did to build that culture. But one of the questions I would always ask them naturally just to start a conversation, it’s a pretty basic question, is why did you leave your last job or why are you leaving your last job? I’ll tell you what I didn’t hear very often, is that I wasn’t paid enough. And maybe they’d be shy to tell you that during an interview, but there’s indirect ways to signal that. That really wasn’t at all even a top 10 reason why people were leaving their job.
I’ll give you what the number one reason was, is that they felt like they were unable to do the true maximum of what their potential was in their prior role. That’s the number one reason people leave their job. And by the way, I would say that as I’m saying that in a self boastful way that we would attract these people. I think that’s also true for most of the people who left the company as well, Roivant. And that was true at Roivant, it’s at other companies I’ve started. I think the number one reason people join companies and number one people leave companies, whether they’ve been to join mine or to leave mine in the past, have been that they feel like they’re able to do more than they’re able to with their skillset than that environment permits them to actually achieve. And so I think that’s what people hung for.
When we think about capitalism and true free market capitalism, and we used words earlier like meritocracy, it’s about building a system, whether it’s in a nation or whether it’s even within an organization, that allows every individual to flourish and achieve the maximum of their potential. And sometimes it just doesn’t match for an organization, where let’s say the mission is here and somebody’s skillsets could be really well aligned to a different mission, then the right answer is it’s not a negative thing, it’s just that person needs to leave and find their mission somewhere else. But to bring that back to government, I think part of what’s happened right now is that the rise of that bureaucracy in so many of these government agencies has actually obfuscated the mission of these agencies. I think if you went to most federal bureaucracies and just asked them what’s the mission, I’m just making one up off the top of my head right now, the Department of Health and Human Services, what is the mission of HHS in the United States of America? I doubt somebody who works there, even the person who leads it, could give you…
Vivek Ramaswamy
I doubt somebody who works there, even the person who leads it, could give you a coherent answer to that question. I just heavily doubt it. And you could fill in the blank for any range of… Department of Commerce, and we could just go straight down the list of each of these other ones, what is the mission of this organization?
I doubt somebody who works there, even the person who leads it, could give you a coherent answer to that question. I just heavily doubt it. And you could fill in the blank for any range of… Department of Commerce, and we could just go straight down the list of each of these other ones, what is the mission of this organization?
You could even say for the US military, what’s the purpose of the US military, the Department of Defense? I can give you one. I think it is to win wars, and more importantly, through its strength, to avoid wars, that’s it.
Well, okay, if that’s the mission, then you know, okay, it’s not tinkering around and messing around in some foreign conflict where we feel like it sometimes, and other ones where we don’t. And who decides that, I don’t really know, but whoever the people are that decide that, we follow those orders.
No, our mission is to protect the United States of America, to win wars, and to avoid wars, boom, those three things. What does protecting the United States of America mean? Number one, the homeland of the United States of America and the people who reside there. Good, that’s a clear mission.
The Department of Health and Human Services, maybe, could be a reasonable mission to say that I want to make America the healthiest country on Planet Earth, and we will develop the metrics and meet those metrics, and that’s the goal of the Department of HHS, to set policies, or at least to implement policies that best achieve that goal.
And maybe that’s the right statement of mission, maybe it’s not, but one of the things that happens is, when you’re governed by the committee class, it dilutes the sense of mission out of any organization, whether it’s a company or government agency or bureaucracy.
And once you’ve done that, then you lose the ability to track the best and the brightest, because in order for somebody to achieve the maximum of their potential, they have to know what it’s towards. There has to be a mission in the first place.
Then you’re not getting the best and brightest, you get more from the committee class, and that becomes a self-perpetuating downward spiral, and that is what the blob of the federal bureaucracy really looks like today.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, you said something really profound. At the individual scale of the individual contributor, doer, creator, what happens is, you have a certain capacity to do awesome shit, and then there’s barriers that come up. We have to wait a little bit. This happens, there’s friction always. When humans together are working on something, there’s friction. And so, the goal of a great company is to minimize that friction, minimize the number of barriers. And what happens is, the managerial class, the incentive is for it to create barriers.
Yeah, you said something really profound. At the individual scale of the individual contributor, doer, creator, what happens is, you have a certain capacity to do awesome shit, and then there’s barriers that come up. We have to wait a little bit. This happens, there’s friction always. When humans together are working on something, there’s friction. And so, the goal of a great company is to minimize that friction, minimize the number of barriers. And what happens is, the managerial class, the incentive is for it to create barriers.
Vivek Ramaswamy
It’s what it does. That’s just by the nature of a bureaucracy, it creates sand in the gears to slow down whatever the other process was. Is there some room for that somewhere in certain contexts? Sure.
It’s what it does. That’s just by the nature of a bureaucracy, it creates sand in the gears to slow down whatever the other process was. Is there some room for that somewhere in certain contexts? Sure.
It’s like a defensive mechanism that’s designed to reduce dynamism. But I think when that becomes cancerous in its scope, it then actually kills the host itself, whether that’s a school, whether that’s a company, whether that’s a government.
And so, the way I think about it, Lex, is, there’s sort of a balance of distributed power. And I don’t mean power in the Foucault sense of social power, but I mean just power in the sense of the ability to affect relevant change in any organization between what you could call the founder class, the creator class, the everyday citizen, the stakeholder class, and then the managerial class.
And there’s a role for all three of them. You could have the constituents of an organization, say in a constitutional republic, that’s the citizen, you could have the equivalent of the creator class, the people who create things in that polity, and then you have the bureaucratic class that’s designed to administer and serve as a liaison between the two.
I’m not denying that there’s some role somewhere for people who are in that managerial class, but right now, in this moment in American history, and I think it’s been more or less true for the last century, but it’s grown, starting with Woodrow Wilson’s advent of the Modern Administrative State, metastasizing through FDR’s New Deal and what was required to administer it, blown over and metastasizing further through LBJ’s Great Society, and everything that’s happened since, even aided and abetted by Republican presidents along the way like Richard Nixon, has created a United States of America where that committee class, both in and outside the government and our culture, wields far too much influence and power relative to the everyday citizen stakeholder and to the creators, who are, in many ways, constrained, hamstrung, shackled in straitjacket from achieving the maximum of their own potential contributions.
And I certainly feel that myself. I probably identify as being a member of that creator class most closely. It’s just what I’ve done, I create things. And I think we live in an environment in the United States of America where we’re still probably the best country on earth where that creator has that shot, so that’s the positive side of it, but one where we are far more constrictive to the creator class than we have been when we’ve been at our best, and that’s what I want to see change.
Education
Lex Fridman
Can you steelman the perspective of somebody that looks at a particular department, Department of Education, and are saying that the amount of pain that will be caused by closing it and firing 75% of people will be too much?
Can you steelman the perspective of somebody that looks at a particular department, Department of Education, and are saying that the amount of pain that will be caused by closing it and firing 75% of people will be too much?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah. So, I go back to this question of mission, right? A lot of people who make arguments for the Department of Education aren’t aware why the Department of Education was created in the first place, actually. So that might be a useful place to start, is that this thing was created, it had a purpose, presumably. What was that purpose?
Yeah. So, I go back to this question of mission, right? A lot of people who make arguments for the Department of Education aren’t aware why the Department of Education was created in the first place, actually. So that might be a useful place to start, is that this thing was created, it had a purpose, presumably. What was that purpose?
It might be at least a relevant question to ask before we decided what are we doing with it or not, what was the purpose of this thing that we created? To me, it seems to be a highly relevant question.
Yet, in this discussion about government reform, it’s interesting how eager people are to skip over that question and just to talk about, “Okay, but we’ve got the status quo, and it’s just going to be disruptive,” versus asking the question of, okay, this institution was created, it had an original purpose, is that purpose still relevant? Is this organization at all fulfilling that purpose today?
To me, those are some relevant questions to ask. So, let’s talk about that for the Department of Education. Its purpose was relevant at that time, which was to make sure that localities, and particularly states, were not siphoning taxpayer dollars away from predominantly Black school districts to predominantly White ones.
And that was not a theoretical concern at the time. It was happening, or there was at least some evidence that that was happening in certain states in the South. And so, you may say you don’t like the federal solution, you may say you like the federal solution, but like it or not, that was the original purpose of the US Department of Education, to make sure that, from a federal perspective, that states were not systematically disadvantaging Black school districts over predominantly White ones.
However noble and relevant that purpose may have been six decades ago, it’s not a relevant purpose today. There’s no evidence today of states intentionally mapping out which are the Black versus White school districts and siphoning money in one direction versus another.
To the contrary, one of the things we’ve learned is that the school districts in the inner city, many of which are predominantly Black, actually spend more money per student than other school districts for a worse result, as measured by test scores and other performance, on a per-student basis, suggesting that there are other factors than the dollar expenditures per school determining student success, and actually suggesting that even the over-funding of some of those already poorly run schools rewards them for their actual bureaucratic failures.
So, against that backdrop, the Department of Education has, instead, extrapolated that original purpose of what was a racial equality purpose, to, instead, implement a different vision of racial equity through the ideologies that they demand in the content of the curriculum that these public schools actually teach.
So, Department of Education funding, so federal funding, accounts for about, I’m giving you round numbers here, but around 10% of the funding of most public schools across the country. But that comes with strings attached.
So, in today’s Department of Education, this didn’t happen back in 1970, but it’s happening today, ironically it’s funny how these things change with the bureaucracies that fail, they blow oak smoke to cover up for their own failures, what happens with today’s Department of Education?
They effectively say you don’t get that funding unless you adopt certain goals deemed at achieving racial or gender equity goals. And in fact, they also intervene in the curriculum where there’s evidence of schools in the Midwest or in the Great Plains that have been denied funding because Department of Education funding, so long as they have certain subjects like Archery…
There was one instance of a school that had archery in its curriculum. I find that to be pretty interesting, actually. I think you have different kinds of physical education. This is one that combines mental focus with physical aptitude, but hey, maybe I’m biased, it doesn’t matter.
Whether you like archery or not, I don’t think it’s the federal government’s job to withhold funding from a school because they include something in their curriculum that the federal government deems inappropriate where that locality found that to be a relevant locus of education.
So, what you see then is an abandonment of the original purpose. That’s long past. You don’t have this problem that the Department of Education was originally formed to solve, of siphoning money from Black school districts to White school districts and laundering that, effectively, in public funds, that doesn’t exist anymore.
So, they find new purposes instead, creating a lot more damage along the way. So, you asked me to steelman, and can I say something constructive rather than just pounding down on the other side? One way to think about this is, for a lot of these agencies, were many of them formed with a positive intention at the outset? Yes. Whether that positive intention existed, I’m still a skeptic of creating bureaucracies, but if you’re going to create one, at least make it, what shall we call it, a taskforce. Make it a taskforce.
A taskforce versus an agency means, after it’s done, you celebrate, you’ve done your work, pat yourself on the back, and then move on, rather than creating a standing bureaucracy which actually finds things to do after it has already solved or addressed the first reason it was born in the first place.
And I think we don’t have enough of that in our culture. Even if you have a company that’s generated tons of cash flow, and it’s solved a problem, let’s say it’s a biopharmaceutical company that developed a cure to some disease, and the only thing people knew at that company was how to develop a cure to that disease, and they generated a boatload of cash from doing it, at a certain point you could just give it to your shareholders and close up shop.
And that’s actually a beautiful thing to do. You don’t see that happen enough in the American consciousness, in the American culture of, when an institution has achieved its purpose, celebrate it, and then move on. And I think that that culture in our government would result in a vastly restrained scope of government, rather than, today it’s a one-way ratchet.
Once you cause it to come into existence, you cause new things to come into existence, but the old one that came into existence continues to persist and exist as well, and that’s where you get this metastasis over the last century.
Lex Fridman
So, what kind of things do you think government should do that the private sector, the forces of capitalism would create drastic inequalities or create the kind of pain we don’t want to have in government?
So, what kind of things do you think government should do that the private sector, the forces of capitalism would create drastic inequalities or create the kind of pain we don’t want to have in government?
Vivek Ramaswamy
So, the question is, what should government do that the private sector cannot? I’ll give you one. Protect our border. Capitalism, it’s never going to be the job of capitalists, or never going to be the capability or inclination of capitalists to preserve a national border.
So, the question is, what should government do that the private sector cannot? I’ll give you one. Protect our border. Capitalism, it’s never going to be the job of capitalists, or never going to be the capability or inclination of capitalists to preserve a national border.
And I think a nation, it’s literally, I think, one of the chapters of this book, “A nation without borders is not a nation.” It’s almost a tautology, an open border is not a border. Capitalism is not going to solve that. What’s going to solve that is a nation.
Part of the job of the federal government is to protect the homeland of its nation, in this case, the United States of America. That’s an example of a proper function of the federal government, to provide physical security to its citizens.
Another proper role of that federal government is to look after, or in this case it could be state government, to make sure that private parties cannot externalize their costs onto somebody else without their consent. It’s a fancy way economists would use to describe it. What does that mean?
It means if you go dump your chemicals in somebody else’s river, then you’re liable for that. It’s not that, okay, I’m a capitalist and so I want to create things, and I’m going to do hell or high water, whether or not that harms people around me.
The job of a proper government is to make sure that you protect the rights of those who may be harmed by those who are pursuing their own rights through a system of capitalism.
In seeking prosperity, you’re free to do it, but if you’re hurting somebody, else without their consent, in the process, the government is there to enforce what is really just a different form of enforcing a private property right.
So, I would say that those are two central functions of government, is to preserve national boundaries in the national security of a homeland, and number two is to protect and preserve private property rights and the enforcement of those private property rights. And I think, at that point, you’ve described about 80 to 90% of the proper role of a government.
Lex Fridman
What about infrastructure?
What about infrastructure?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Look, I think that most infrastructure can be dealt with through the private sector. You can get into specifics. You could have infrastructure that’s specific to national security. No, I do think that military industrial base is essential to provide national security. That’s a form of infrastructure.
Look, I think that most infrastructure can be dealt with through the private sector. You can get into specifics. You could have infrastructure that’s specific to national security. No, I do think that military industrial base is essential to provide national security. That’s a form of infrastructure.
I don’t think you could rely exclusively on the private sector to provide the optimal level of that protection to a nation. But interstate highways, I think you could think about whether or not that’s a common good that everybody benefits from but nobody had the incentive to create. I think you could make an argument for the existence of interstate highways.
I think you could also make powerful arguments for the fact that, actually, you could have enough private sector co-ops that could cause that to come into existence as well. But I’m not dogmatic about this.
But broadly speaking, 80 to 90% of the goal of the federal government, I’m not going to say 100, 80 to 90% of the goal of the existence of a federal government, of government, period, should be to protect national boundaries and provide security for the people who live there, and to protect the private property rights of the people who reside there.
If we restore that, I think we’re well on our way to a revival of what our founding fathers envisioned, and I think many of them would give you the same answer that I just did.
Lex Fridman
So, if we get government out of education, would you be also for reducing this as a government in the states for something like education?
So, if we get government out of education, would you be also for reducing this as a government in the states for something like education?
Vivek Ramaswamy
I think if it goes closer to municipalities and the states, I’m fine with that being a locus for people determining as… For example, let’s just say school districts are taxed at the local level.
I think if it goes closer to municipalities and the states, I’m fine with that being a locus for people determining as… For example, let’s just say school districts are taxed at the local level.
For that to be a matter for municipalities and townships to actually decide, democratically, how they actually want that governed, whether it’s balance between a public school district versus making that same money available to families in the form of vouchers or other forms of ability to educational savings accounts, or whichever mechanism it is, to opt out of that, if that’s done locally, I’ll have views on that that tend to go further in the direction of true educational choice and diversity of choice.
The implementation of charter schools, the granting of state charters, or even lowering the barriers to granting one, I favor those kinds of policies. But if we’ve gotten the federal government out of it, that’s achieved 75% of what I think we need to achieve, that I’m focused on solving other problems, and leave that to the states and municipalities to cover from there.
Lex Fridman
So, given this conversation, what do you think of Elon’s proposal of the Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump Administration, or really, any administration?
So, given this conversation, what do you think of Elon’s proposal of the Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump Administration, or really, any administration?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, I’m, of course, biased because Elon and I had discussed that for the better part of the last year and a half, which I think it’s a great idea. It’s something that’s very consistent with the core premise of my presidential candidacy.
Well, I’m, of course, biased because Elon and I had discussed that for the better part of the last year and a half, which I think it’s a great idea. It’s something that’s very consistent with the core premise of my presidential candidacy.
I got to know him, as I was running for US president, in a couple of events that he came to, and then we built a friendship after that. So, obviously, I think it’s a great idea.
Lex Fridman
Who do you think is more hardcore on the cutting, you or Elon?
Who do you think is more hardcore on the cutting, you or Elon?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, I think Elon’s pretty hardcore. Because I said 75% of the federal bureaucrats, and while I was running for president, he said, “You need to put, ‘At least 75%’.” So I agree with him.
Well, I think Elon’s pretty hardcore. Because I said 75% of the federal bureaucrats, and while I was running for president, he said, “You need to put, ‘At least 75%’.” So I agree with him.
I think it would be a fun competition to see who ends up more hardcore. I don’t think there’s someone out there who’s going to be more hardcore than he or I would be. And the reason is, I think we share in common a willingness to take the risk and see what happens.
The sun will still rise in the east and set in the west. That much I guarantee you. Is there are going to be some broken glass and some damage? Yes, there is. There’s no way around that. But once you’re willing to take that risk, then it doesn’t become so scary anymore. And here’s the thing, Lex, so it’s easy to say this, let’s talk about where the rubber hits the road here. Even in a second Trump term this would be the discussion. President Trump and I have had this conversation, but I think we would continue to have this conversation, is where does it rank on our prioritization list, because there’s always going to be a trade-off.
If you have a different policy objective that you want to achieve, a good policy objective, whatever that is, you could talk about immigration policy, you could talk about economic policy, there are other policy objectives, if you’re going to trade off a little bit, in the short-run, the effectiveness of your ability to carry out that policy goal, if you’re also committed to actually thinning out the federal government by 75%…
Because there’s just going to be some clunkiness there’s just going to be frictional costs for that level of cut. So the question is, where does that rank on your prioritization list?
To pull that off, to pull off a 75% reduction in the size and scale of the federal government, the regulatory state, and the headcount, I think that only happens if that’s your top priority. You could do it at a smaller scale, but at that scale, it only happens if that’s your top priority.
Because then, as President, you’re in a position to say, “I know in the super short run, that might even make it a little bit harder for me to do this other thing that I want to do, and use the regulatory state to do it, but I’m gonna pass on that.
I’m gonna pass that up, I’m gonna bear that hardship and inconvenience because I know this other goal is more important on the scale of decades and centuries for the country.” So it’s a question of prioritization. And certainly, my own view is that, now is the moment where that needs to be a top priority for saving this country.
And if there’s one thing about my campaign, if I was to do it again, I would be even clearer about… Actually, I talked about a lot of things in the campaign, and we can cover a lot of that too. But if there’s one thing that I care about more than anything else, it’s dismantling that bureaucracy.
And moreover, it’s an assault and a crusade on the nanny state itself. And that nanny state presents itself in several forms. There’s the entitlement state, there’s the welfare state, presents itself in the form of the regulatory state, that’s what we’re talking about, and then there’s the foreign nanny state where, effectively, we are subsidizing other countries that aren’t paying their fair share of protection or other resources we provide them.
If I was to summarize my ideology in a nutshell, it is to terminate the nanny state in the United States of America in all of its forms; the entitlement state, the regulatory state, and the foreign policy nanny state. Once we’ve done that, we’ve revived the Republic that I think would make George Washington proud.
Military Industrial Complex
Lex Fridman
So, you mentioned Department of Education, but there’s also the Department of Defense.
So, you mentioned Department of Education, but there’s also the Department of Defense.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
And there’s a very large number of very powerful people that have gotten used to and a budget that’s increasing, and the number of wars and military conflicts that’s increasing. So, if we could just talk about that.
And there’s a very large number of very powerful people that have gotten used to and a budget that’s increasing, and the number of wars and military conflicts that’s increasing. So, if we could just talk about that.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Sure.
Sure.
Lex Fridman
So this is the number one priority. It’s like there’s difficulty levels here. The DOD would be, probably, the hardest, so let’s take that on. What’s your view on the Military Industrial Complex, Department of Defense, and wars in general?
So this is the number one priority. It’s like there’s difficulty levels here. The DOD would be, probably, the hardest, so let’s take that on. What’s your view on the Military Industrial Complex, Department of Defense, and wars in general?
Vivek Ramaswamy
So, I think the nanny state, I’m against it overall, I’m against the foreign policy nanny state as well. Let me just start from that as the starting-off point, and then I’ll tell you about my views on the DOD and our Defense. First of all, think that… And I think that it was easy for many people from the neocon school of thought to caricature my views with the media at their side, but actually, my own view is, if it’s in the interest of the United States of America to provide certain levels of protection to US allies, we can do that as long as those allies actually pay for it.
So, I think the nanny state, I’m against it overall, I’m against the foreign policy nanny state as well. Let me just start from that as the starting-off point, and then I’ll tell you about my views on the DOD and our Defense. First of all, think that… And I think that it was easy for many people from the neocon school of thought to caricature my views with the media at their side, but actually, my own view is, if it’s in the interest of the United States of America to provide certain levels of protection to US allies, we can do that as long as those allies actually pay for it.
And I think it’s important for two reasons. The less important reason, it’s still an important reason, the less important reason is, it’s still money for us. It’s not like we’re swimming in a cash surplus right now. We’ve got a $34 trillion national debt, and growing, and I think pretty soon the interest payments are going to be the largest line item in our own federal budget.
So, it’s not like we have money willy-nilly to just hand over for free. That’s the less important reason, though. The more important reason is that it makes sure that our allies have actual skin in the game to not have skewed incentives to actually enter conflicts where they’re not actually bearing the full cost of those conflicts. So, take NATO for example, most NATO countries, literally a majority of NATO countries today do not pay or contribute 2% of their GDP to their own National Defense, which is supposedly a requirement to be in NATO. So the majority of NATO countries are failing to meet their basic commitment to be in NATO in the first place.
Germany particularly is, I think, arbitraging the hell out of the United States of America. And I don’t think that… I’m not going to be some shrill voice here saying, “So therefore, we should not be supporting any allies or providing security blankets.” No, I’m not going in that direction. What I would say is, you’ve got to pay for it.
Pay for your fair share, A, because we’re not swimming in excess money ourselves, but B, is, it tells us that you actually have skin in the game for your own Defense, which actually then makes nations far more prudent in the risks that they take, whether or not they’re in a war, versus if somebody else is paying for it and somebody else is providing our security guarantee, yeah, I might as well take the gamble and see where I end up at the end of a war, versus the restraint that that imposes on the decision-making of those allies.
So, now, let’s bring this home to the Department of Defense. I think the top goal of the US Defense Policy establishment should be to provide for the national defense of the United States of America. And the irony is, that’s what we’re actually doing most poorly.
Other than the Coast Guard, we’re not really using the US Military to prevent crossings at our own southern border and crossings at our other borders. In fact, the United States of America, our homeland, I believe is less secure today than it has been in a very long time.
Vulnerable to threats from hypersonic missiles where China and Russia… Russia certainly has capabilities in excess of that of the United States, missiles. Hypersonic means faster than the speed of sound that could hit the United States, including those carrying nuclear warheads.
We are more vulnerable to super EMP attacks, Electromagnetic Pulse attacks, that could, without exaggeration, some of this could be from other nations, some of this could even be from solar flares, cause significant mass casualty in the United States of America.
If the electric grid’s gone, it’s not exaggeration to say, if that happened, planes would be falling out of the sky because our chips really depend on those, well, will be affected by those electromagnetic pulses. More vulnerable to cyber attacks. I know people, okay, start yawning and say, “Okay, boring stuff, super EMP, cyber,” or whatever.
No. Actually, it is pretty relevant to whether or not you actually are facing the risk of not getting your insulin because your refrigerator doesn’t work anymore or your food can’t be stored or your car or your ability to fly on an airplane is impaired. So, I think that these are risks where our own National Defense spending has been wholly inadequate.
So, I’m not one of these people that says decrease versus increase National Defense spending. We’re not spending it in the right places. The number one place we need to be spending it is actually protecting our National Defense, protecting our own physical homeland.
And I think we actually need an increase in spending on protecting our own homeland. But that is different from the agenda of foreign interventionism and foreign nanny state-ism for its own sake, where we should expect more and demand more of our allies to provide for their own national defense and then provide the relevant security guarantees to allies where that actually advances the interest of the United States of America. So, that’s what I believe.
And I think this process has been corrupted by what Dwight Eisenhower famously in his farewell address called the Military Industrial Complex in the United States. But I think it’s bigger than just the… I think it’s easy to tell the tales of the financial corruption.
It’s kind of cultural corruption and conceit that just because certain number of people in that expert class have a belief, that their belief happens to be the right one because they can scare you with what the consequence would be if you don’t follow their advice.
And one of the beauties of the United States is, at least in principle, we have civilian control of the military. The person who we elect to be the US President is the one that actually is the true Commander in Chief. I have my doubts of whether it operates that way.
I think it’s quite obvious that Joe Biden is not a functioning Commander in Chief of the United States of America, yet, on paper, supposedly we’re still are supposed to call him that. But at least in theory, we’re supposed to have civilian control of the US Military.
And I think that one of the things that that leader needs to do is to ask the question of, again, the mission. What’s the purpose of this US Military in the first place? At the top of the list should be to protect the homeland and the people who actually live here, which we’re failing to do. So, that’s where I land on that question.
Lex Fridman
Wait, okay, there’s a lot of stuff to ask. First of all, on Joe Biden, do you mean he’s functionally not in control of the US Military because of the age factor or because of the nature of the presidency?
Wait, okay, there’s a lot of stuff to ask. First of all, on Joe Biden, do you mean he’s functionally not in control of the US Military because of the age factor or because of the nature of the presidency?
Vivek Ramaswamy
It’s a good question. I would say, in his case it’s particularly accentuated because it’s both. In his case, I don’t think anybody in America, anymore, believes that Joe Biden is the functioning President of the United States of America. How could he be?
It’s a good question. I would say, in his case it’s particularly accentuated because it’s both. In his case, I don’t think anybody in America, anymore, believes that Joe Biden is the functioning President of the United States of America. How could he be?
He wasn’t even sufficiently functioning to be the candidate after a debate that was held in June. There’s no way he’s going to be in a position to make the most important decisions on a daily and demanding basis to protect the leading nation in the world.
Now, more generally, though, I think we have a deeper problem, that even when it’s not Joe Biden, in general, the people we elect to run the government haven’t really been the ones running the government, it’s been the unelected bureaucrats in the bureaucratic deep state underneath that’s really been making the decisions.
I’ve done business in a number of places. I’ve traveled to Japan. There’s an interesting corporate analogy. Sometimes, if you get outside of politics, people can, I find, listen, and pay attention a little bit more, because politics, it’s so fraught right now that if you start talking to somebody who disagrees with you about the politics of it, you’re just butting heads but not really making progress.
So, let’s just make the same point, but go outside of politics for a second. So, I was traveling Japan, I was having a late night dinner with a CEO of a Japanese pharmaceutical company.
And it takes a while to really get him to open up, culturally speaking in Japan, a couple of nights of karaoke, and whatnot, maybe late night restaurant, whatever it is. Well, we built a good enough relationship where he was very candid with me.
He said, “I’m the CEO of the company. I could go and find the Head of a research unit and tell him, ‘Okay, this is a project we’re no longer working on as a company. We don’t wanna spend money on it, we’re gonna spend money somewhere else.’ And he’ll look me in the eye and he’ll say, ‘Yes, sir, yes sir.’.
I’ll come back six months later and find that they’re spending exactly the same amount of money on those exact same projects. And I’ll tell him, ‘No, we agreed. I told you that you’re not gonna spend money on this project, and we have to stop now. We should have stopped six months ago.’ Get a slap on the wrist for it.
He says, ‘Yes, sir, I’m sorry. Yes. No, no, no, of course, that’s correct.’ I come back six months later, same person is spending the same money on the same project.” And here’s why. Historically in Japan, and I should say, in Japan, this is changing now, it’s changing now, but historically, until very recently, and even to an extent now, it’s near impossible to fire people.
So, if somebody works for you and you can’t fire them, that means they don’t actually work for you. It means in some deeper, perverse sense, you work for them because you’re responsible for what they do, without any authority to actually change it.
So, I think most people who have traveled in Japan and Japanese corporate culture through the 1990s and 2000s and 2010s, and maybe even some vestiges in the 2020s, wouldn’t really dispute what I just told you. Now, we’re bringing it back to the more contentious terrain.
I think that’s basically how things have worked in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government of the United States of America. You have these so-called Civil Service protections on the books. Now, if you really read them carefully, I think that there are areas to provide daylight for a truly constitutionally, well-trained President to act.
That’s a contrary view that I have that bucks conventional wisdom. But apart from that caveat, in general, the conventional view has been, the US president can’t fire these people. There’s 4 million federal bureaucrats, 99.9% of them can’t be touched by the person who the people who elected to run the Executive Branch can’t even fire those people.
It’s the equivalent of that Japanese CEO. And so, that culture exists every bit as much in the federal bureaucracy of the United States of America as they did in Japanese corporate culture through the 1990s.
And that’s a lot of what’s wrong with not just the way that our Department of Defense is run and our Foreign Policy establishment is run, but I think it applies to a lot of the Domestic Policy establishment as well.
And to come back to the core point, how are we going to save this republic? This is the debate in the Conservative Movement right now. So, this is maybe a little bit spicy for some Republicans to swallow right now, and my top focus is making sure that we win the election, but let’s just move the ball forward a little bit and skate to where the puck is going here, okay?
Yes, let’s say we win the election, all is well and dandy. Okay, what’s the philosophy that determines how we govern? There’s a little bit of a fork in the road amongst Conservatives where there are those who believe that the right answer now is to use that regulatory state and use those levers of power to advance our own pro-Conservative, pro-American, pro-worker goals.
And I’m sympathetic to all of those goals, but I don’t think that the right way to do it is to create a Conservative regulatory state that replaces a Liberal regulatory state. I think the right answer is actually to get in there and shut it down. I don’t want to replace the left-wing nanny state with a right-wing nanny state. I want to get in there and actually dismantle the nanny state.
And I think it has been a long time in the United States, maybe ever in modern history, that we’ve had a Conservative leader at the national level who makes it their principal objective to dismantle the nanny state in all of its forms; the entitlement state, the regulatory state, and the foreign policy in nanny state.
That was a core focus of my candidacy. One of the things that I wish, and this is on me, not anybody else, that I should have done better, was to make that more crystal clear as a focus without getting distracted by a lot of the shenanigans, let’s just say, that happened as side-shows during a presidential campaign. But call that a lesson learned, because I do think it’s what the country needs now more than ever.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s a really, really powerful idea. It’s actually something that Donald Trump ran on in 2016-
Yeah, it’s a really, really powerful idea. It’s actually something that Donald Trump ran on in 2016-
Vivek Ramaswamy
Is to drain the swamp.
Is to drain the swamp.
Lex Fridman
… drain the swamp. I think by most accounts, maybe you can disagree with me, he did not successfully do so. He did fire a bunch of people, more than usual, but-
… drain the swamp. I think by most accounts, maybe you can disagree with me, he did not successfully do so. He did fire a bunch of people, more than usual, but-
Vivek Ramaswamy
Can I say a word about the conditions he was operating in, because I think that’s why I’m far more excited for this time around, is that a lot has changed in the legal landscape. So, Donald Trump did not have the Supreme Court backdrop in 2016 that he does today.
Can I say a word about the conditions he was operating in, because I think that’s why I’m far more excited for this time around, is that a lot has changed in the legal landscape. So, Donald Trump did not have the Supreme Court backdrop in 2016 that he does today.
So, there’s some really important cases that have come down from the Supreme Court. One is West Virginia versus the EPA. I think it’s probably the most important case of our generation.
In 2022 that came down and said that if Congress has not passed a rule into law itself through the halls of Congress, and it relates to what they call a major question, a major policy or economic question, it can’t be done by the stroke of a pen by a regulator, an unelected bureaucrat either.
That quite literally means most federal regulations today are unconstitutional. Then, this year comes down a different big one, another big one from the Supreme Court in the Loper-Bright case, which held that, historically, for the last 50 years in this country, the doctrine has been, it’s called Chevron Deference. It’s a doctrine that says that federal courts have to defer to an agency…
Vivek Ramaswamy
Federal courts have to defer to an agency’s interpretation of the law. They now tossed that out the window and said, “No, no, no. The federal courts no longer have to defer to an agency’s interpretation of what the law actually is.” The combination of those two cases is seismic in its impact for the regulatory state. There’s also another great case that came down, was SEC versus Jarkesy, and the SEC is one of these agencies that embodies everything we’re talking about here.
Federal courts have to defer to an agency’s interpretation of the law. They now tossed that out the window and said, “No, no, no. The federal courts no longer have to defer to an agency’s interpretation of what the law actually is.” The combination of those two cases is seismic in its impact for the regulatory state. There’s also another great case that came down, was SEC versus Jarkesy, and the SEC is one of these agencies that embodies everything we’re talking about here.
The SEC, among other agencies, has tribunals inside that not only do they write the rules, not only do they enforce those rules, they also have these judges inside the agency that also interpret the rules and determine and dole out punishments. That doesn’t make sense if you believe in separation of powers in the United States, so the Supreme Court put an end to that and said that that practice at the SEC is unconstitutional. Actually, as a side note, the Supreme Court has said countless practices and rules written by the SEC, the EPA, the FTC in recent years, were outright unconstitutional.
Think about what that means for a constitutional republic, that supposedly, these law enforcement agencies, the courts have now said, especially this year, the courts have now said that their own behaviors actually break the law. So the very agencies entrusted with supposedly enforcing the law are actually behaving with utter, blatant disregard for the law itself. That’s un-American, it’s not tenable in the United States of America, but thankfully, we now have a Supreme Court that recognizes that.
So whether or not we have a second Trump term, well, that’s up to the voters, but even whether or not that now takes advantage of that backdrop the Supreme Court has given us to actually gut the regulatory state, we’ll find out. I’m optimistic, I certainly think it’s the best chance that we’ve had in a generation in this country, and that’s a big part of why I’m supporting Donald Trump and why I’m going to do everything in my power to help him, but I do think it is going to take a spine of steel to see that through.
And then after we’ve taken on the regulatory state, I think that’s the next step, but I do think there’s this broader project of dismantling the nanny state in all of its forms, the entitlement state, the regulatory state, and the foreign policy in any state. Three-word answer, if I was to summarize my worldview and my presidential campaign in three words, shut it down.
Lex Fridman
Shut it down. Okay, so the Supreme Court cases you mentioned, there’s a lot of nuance there.
Shut it down. Okay, so the Supreme Court cases you mentioned, there’s a lot of nuance there.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
I guess it’s weakening the immune system of the different departments.
I guess it’s weakening the immune system of the different departments.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah. It’s a good way of putting it.
Yeah. It’s a good way of putting it.
Lex Fridman
Okay. On the human psychology level, so you basically kind of implied that for Donald Trump or for any president, the legal situation was difficult. Is that the only thing really operating?
Okay. On the human psychology level, so you basically kind of implied that for Donald Trump or for any president, the legal situation was difficult. Is that the only thing really operating?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Probably not.
Probably not.
Lex Fridman
Isn’t it also just on a psychological level just hard to fire a very large number of people. Is that what it is? Is there a basic civility and momentum going on?
Isn’t it also just on a psychological level just hard to fire a very large number of people. Is that what it is? Is there a basic civility and momentum going on?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, I think there’s one other factor. So you’re right to point, the legal backdrop is a valid and understandable excuse and reason. I think there are other factors at play too. So I think there’s something to be said for never having been in government, showing up there the first time, and you’re having to understand the rules of the road as you’re operating within them, and also having to depend on people who actually aren’t aligned with your policy vision, but tell you to your face that they are.
Well, I think there’s one other factor. So you’re right to point, the legal backdrop is a valid and understandable excuse and reason. I think there are other factors at play too. So I think there’s something to be said for never having been in government, showing up there the first time, and you’re having to understand the rules of the road as you’re operating within them, and also having to depend on people who actually aren’t aligned with your policy vision, but tell you to your face that they are.
And so I think that’s one of the things that I’ve admired about President Trump is he’s actually been very open about that, very humble about that, to say that there’s a million learnings from that first term that make him ambitious and more ambitious in that second term. But everything I’m talking to you about, this is what needs to happen in the country. It’s not specific to Donald Trump. It lays out what needs to be done in the country. There’s the next four years, Donald Trump is our last, best hope and chance for moving that ball forward. But I think that the vision I’m laying out here is one that hopefully goes even beyond just the next two or four years of really fixing a century’s worth of mistakes.
I think we’re going to fix a lot of them in the next four years if Donald Trump’s president. But if you have a century’s worth of mistakes that have accumulated with the overgrowth of the entitlement state in the US, I think it’s going to take probably the better part of a decade at least to actually fix them.
Lex Fridman
I disagree with you on both the last and the best hope. Donald Trump is more likely to fire a lot of people, but is he the best person to do so?
I disagree with you on both the last and the best hope. Donald Trump is more likely to fire a lot of people, but is he the best person to do so?
Vivek Ramaswamy
We’ve got two candidates, right? People face a choice. This is a relevant election. One of my goals is to speak to people who do not agree with 100% of what Donald Trump says. And I can tell them, you know what? I don’t agree with a hundred percent of what he says. And I can tell you as somebody who ran against him for US President, that right now he is, when I say the last, best hope, I mean in this cycle, the last, best hope that we have for dismantling that bureaucratic class.
We’ve got two candidates, right? People face a choice. This is a relevant election. One of my goals is to speak to people who do not agree with 100% of what Donald Trump says. And I can tell them, you know what? I don’t agree with a hundred percent of what he says. And I can tell you as somebody who ran against him for US President, that right now he is, when I say the last, best hope, I mean in this cycle, the last, best hope that we have for dismantling that bureaucratic class.
And I think that I’m also open about the fact that this is a long run project, but we have the next step to actually take over the next few years. That’s kind of where I land on it. I mean, you talked to him I guess a few weeks ago. I saw you had a podcast with him, right?
Lex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Vivek Ramaswamy
What was your impression about his preparedness to do it?
What was your impression about his preparedness to do it?
Lex Fridman
My impression is his priority allocation was different than yours. I think he is more focused on some of the other topics that you are also focused on.
My impression is his priority allocation was different than yours. I think he is more focused on some of the other topics that you are also focused on.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Border. Laser focused on.
Border. Laser focused on.
Lex Fridman
And there is a tension there, just as you’ve clearly highlighted.
And there is a tension there, just as you’ve clearly highlighted.
Vivek Ramaswamy
We share the same priority with respect to the southern border, and those are near term fixes that we can hit out of the park in the first year. But at the same time, I think we got to think also on decade long time horizon. So my own view is I think that it is my conviction and belief that he does care about dismantling that federal bureaucracy, certainly more so than any Republican nominee we have had, certainly in my lifetime. But I do think that there are going to be competing schools of thought where some will say, “Okay, well, we want to create a right-wing entitlement state to shower federal subsidies on favored industries while keeping them away from disfavored industries and new bureaucracies to administer them.”
We share the same priority with respect to the southern border, and those are near term fixes that we can hit out of the park in the first year. But at the same time, I think we got to think also on decade long time horizon. So my own view is I think that it is my conviction and belief that he does care about dismantling that federal bureaucracy, certainly more so than any Republican nominee we have had, certainly in my lifetime. But I do think that there are going to be competing schools of thought where some will say, “Okay, well, we want to create a right-wing entitlement state to shower federal subsidies on favored industries while keeping them away from disfavored industries and new bureaucracies to administer them.”
I don’t come from that school of thought. I don’t want to see the bureaucracy expand in a pro-conservative direction. I want to see the bureaucracy shrink in every direction. And I do think that, from my conversations with Donald Trump, I believe that he is well-aligned with this vision of shrinking bureaucracy, but that’s a longer-term project.
Lex Fridman
There’s so many priorities at play here, though. You really do have to do the Elon thing of walking into Twitter headquarters-
There’s so many priorities at play here, though. You really do have to do the Elon thing of walking into Twitter headquarters-
Vivek Ramaswamy
Shut it down.
Shut it down.
Lex Fridman
… with a sink. Right? Let that sink in. That basically firing a very large number of people. And it’s not just about the firing, it’s about setting clear missions for the different departments that remain. Hiring back because you over fire. Hiring back based on meritocracy. It’s a full-time… and it’s not only full-time in terms of actual time’s, full-time psychologically, because you’re walking into a place unlike a company like Twitter, an already successful company. In government, everybody around you, all the experts and the advisors are going to tell you you’re wrong. And it’s a very difficult psychological place to operate in because you’re constantly the asshole. And the certainty you have to have about what you’re doing is nearly infinite because everybody, all the really smart people are telling you, “No, this is a terrible idea. Sir, this is a terrible idea.”
… with a sink. Right? Let that sink in. That basically firing a very large number of people. And it’s not just about the firing, it’s about setting clear missions for the different departments that remain. Hiring back because you over fire. Hiring back based on meritocracy. It’s a full-time… and it’s not only full-time in terms of actual time’s, full-time psychologically, because you’re walking into a place unlike a company like Twitter, an already successful company. In government, everybody around you, all the experts and the advisors are going to tell you you’re wrong. And it’s a very difficult psychological place to operate in because you’re constantly the asshole. And the certainty you have to have about what you’re doing is nearly infinite because everybody, all the really smart people are telling you, “No, this is a terrible idea. Sir, this is a terrible idea.”
Vivek Ramaswamy
You have to have this spine of steel to cut through what that short-term advice is you’re getting. And I’ll tell you, certainly, I intend to do whatever I can for this country, both in the next four years and beyond, but my voice on this will be crystal clear and President Trump knows that’s my view on it, and I believe he shares it deeply, is that all else equal, get in there and shut down as much of the excess bureaucracy as we can. Do it as quickly as possible. And that’s a big part of how we save our country.
You have to have this spine of steel to cut through what that short-term advice is you’re getting. And I’ll tell you, certainly, I intend to do whatever I can for this country, both in the next four years and beyond, but my voice on this will be crystal clear and President Trump knows that’s my view on it, and I believe he shares it deeply, is that all else equal, get in there and shut down as much of the excess bureaucracy as we can. Do it as quickly as possible. And that’s a big part of how we save our country.
Illegal immigration
Lex Fridman
Okay, I’ll give you an example that’s really difficult. Tension, given your priorities. Immigration, there’s an estimated 14 million illegal immigrants in the United States. You’ve spoken about mass deportation.
Okay, I’ll give you an example that’s really difficult. Tension, given your priorities. Immigration, there’s an estimated 14 million illegal immigrants in the United States. You’ve spoken about mass deportation.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
That requires a lot of effort. Money. I mean, how do you do it and how does that conflict with the shutting it down?
That requires a lot of effort. Money. I mean, how do you do it and how does that conflict with the shutting it down?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Sure. And so it goes back to that original discussion we had is what are the few proper roles of the federal government? I gave you two. Of the government, period. One is to protect the national borders and sovereignty of the United States, and two is to protect private property rights. There’s a lot else. Most of what the government’s doing today, both at the federal and state level, is something other than those two things. But in my book, those are the two things that are the proper function of government. So for everything else, the federal government should not be doing, the one thing they should be doing is to protect the homeland of the United States of America and the sovereignty and sanctity of our national borders.
Sure. And so it goes back to that original discussion we had is what are the few proper roles of the federal government? I gave you two. Of the government, period. One is to protect the national borders and sovereignty of the United States, and two is to protect private property rights. There’s a lot else. Most of what the government’s doing today, both at the federal and state level, is something other than those two things. But in my book, those are the two things that are the proper function of government. So for everything else, the federal government should not be doing, the one thing they should be doing is to protect the homeland of the United States of America and the sovereignty and sanctity of our national borders.
So in that domain, that’s mission aligned with a proper purpose for the federal government. I think we’re a nation founded on the rule of law. I say this as the kid of legal immigrants. That means your first act of entering this country cannot break the law. And in some ways, if I was to summarize a formula for saving the country over the next four years, it would be a tale of two mass deportations. The mass deportations of millions of illegals who are in this country and should not be, and then the mass deportation of millions of unelected federal bureaucrats out of Washington D.C.
Now, all else equal, could say that those are intention, but I think that the reality is anything outside of the scope of what the core function of the government is, which is protecting borders and protecting private property rights, that’s really where I think the predominant cuts need to be. And if you look at the number of people who are looking after the border, it’s not even 0.1% of the federal employee base today. So 75% isn’t 99.99%, it’s 75%. It would still be a tiny fraction of the remaining 25%, which I actually think needs to be more rather than less. So it’s a good question, but that’s where I land on when it’s a proper role of the federal government, great. Act and actually do your job. The irony is 99.9999% of those resources are going to functions other than the protection of private property rights and the protection of our national physical protection.
Lex Fridman
There is a lot of criticism of the idea of mass deportation though. So one-
There is a lot of criticism of the idea of mass deportation though. So one-
Vivek Ramaswamy
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
Lex Fridman
… it will cause a large amount of economic harm, at least in the short term. The other is there would be potentially violations of our higher ideals of how we like to treat human beings, in particular separation of families, for example, tearing families apart. And the other is just the logistical complexity of doing something like this. How do you answer some of those criticisms, I guess?
… it will cause a large amount of economic harm, at least in the short term. The other is there would be potentially violations of our higher ideals of how we like to treat human beings, in particular separation of families, for example, tearing families apart. And the other is just the logistical complexity of doing something like this. How do you answer some of those criticisms, I guess?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Fair enough. And I would call those even, not even criticisms, but just thoughtful questions. Even to somebody who’s really aligned with doing this, those are thoughtful questions to ask. So I do want to say something about this point on how we think about the breakage of the rule of law in other contexts. There are 350,000 mothers who are in prison in the United States today who committed crimes and were convicted of them. They didn’t take their kids with them to those prisons either, right? So we face difficult trade-offs in all kinds of contexts as it relates to the enforcement of law.
Fair enough. And I would call those even, not even criticisms, but just thoughtful questions. Even to somebody who’s really aligned with doing this, those are thoughtful questions to ask. So I do want to say something about this point on how we think about the breakage of the rule of law in other contexts. There are 350,000 mothers who are in prison in the United States today who committed crimes and were convicted of them. They didn’t take their kids with them to those prisons either, right? So we face difficult trade-offs in all kinds of contexts as it relates to the enforcement of law.
And I just want to make that basic observation against the backdrop of if we’re a nation founded on the rule of law, we that there are trade-offs to enforcing the law, and we’ve acknowledged that in other contexts. I don’t think that we should have a special exemption for saying that somehow we weigh the other way when it comes to the issue of the border. We’re a nation founded in the rule of law. We enforce laws, that has costs, that has trade-offs, but it’s who we are. And the easiest fact I can cite is 350,000 or so mothers who are in prison and did not take their kids to prison with them.
Is that bad? Is it undesirable for the kids to grow up without those 350,000 mothers? It is, but it’s a difficult situation created by people who violated the law and faced the consequences of it, which is also a competing and important priority in the country. So that’s in the domestic context.
As it relates to this question of mass deportations, let’s just get very practical because all that was theoretical. Very practically, there’s ways to do this. Starting with people who have already broken the law, people who have not just broken the law of entering but are committing other crimes while already here in the United States. That’s a clear case for an instant mass deportation. You have a lot of people who haven’t integrated into their communities. You think about the economic impact of this, a lot of people are in detention already. A lot of those people should be immediately returned to their country of origin, or at least what is called a safe third country.
So safe third country means even if somebody’s claiming to seek asylum from political persecution, well, move them to another country that doesn’t have to be the United States of America that they passed through, say, Mexico before actually coming here. Other countries around the world are doing this. Australia is detaining people. They don’t let them out and live a normal, joyful life because they came to the country. They detain them until their case is adjudicated. Well, the rates of fraud in Australia, of what people lie about, what their conditions are, is way lower now than in the United States because people respond to those incentives.
So I think that in some ways, people make this sound much bigger and scarier than it needs to be. I feel we’re taking a deeply pragmatic approach, and the North Star for me is I want the policy that helps the United States citizens who are already here. What’s that policy? Clearly, that’s going to be a policy that includes a large number of deportations. I think by definition, it’s going to be the largest mass deportation in American history. Sounds like a punchline at a campaign rally, but actually, it’s just a factual statement that says if we’ve had the by far largest influx of illegal immigrants in American history, it just stands to reason, it’s logic that, okay, if we’re going to fix that, we’re going to have the largest mass deportation in American history.
And we can be rational. Start with people who are breaking the law in other ways here in the United States. Start with people who are already in detention or entering detention now. That comes at no cost and strict benefit. There isn’t even a little bit of an economic trade-off. Then you get to areas where you would say, okay, the costs actually continue to outweigh the benefits, and that’s exactly the way our policy should be guided here. I want to do it in as respectful and as humane of a manner as possible.
The reality is, I think one of the things we got to remember, I’ll give you the example I gave with the Haitian case in Springfield, town that I spent a lot of time in growing up in Ohio. I live about an hour from there today. I don’t blame the individual Haitians who came here. I’m not saying that they’re bad people because in that particular case, those weren’t even people who broke the law in coming here. They came as part of a program called Temporary Protective Status. Now, the operative word there was the first one, “temporary”. There have been all kinds of lawsuits for people who, even 8, 10, 12, 14 years after the earthquake in Haiti where many of them came, when they’re going to be removed, there are allegations of racial discrimination or otherwise.
No. Temporary protective status means it’s temporary, and we’re not abandoning the rule of law when we send them back, we’re abandoning the rule of law when we let them stay. Now, if that has a true benefit to the United States of America, economically or otherwise, go through the paths that allow somebody to enter this country for economic reasons, but don’t do it through asylum-based claims or Temporary Protected Status. I think one of the features of our immigration system right now is it is built on a lie and it incentivizes lying. The reason is the arguments for keeping people in the country, if those are economic reasons but the people actually entered using claims of asylum or refugee status, those two things don’t match up.
So just be honest about what our immigration system actually is. I think we do need dramatic reforms to the legal immigration system to select purposely for the people who are going to actually improve the United States of America. I think there are many people, I know some of them. I gave a story of one guy who I met who is educated at our best universities or among our best universities. He went to Princeton. He went to Harvard Business School. He has a great job in the investment community. He was a professional tennis player. He was a concert pianist. He could do a Rubik’s cube in less than a minute. I’m not making this stuff up. These are hard facts. He can’t get a green card in the United States. He’s been here for 10 years or something like this.
He asked me for the best advice I could give him. I unfortunately could not give him the actual best advice, which would be to just take a flight to Mexico and cross the border and claim to be somebody who is seeking asylum in the United States. That would have been morally wrong advice, so I didn’t give it to them. But practically, if you were giving him advice, that would be the best advice that you actually could give somebody, which is a broken system on both sides. People who are going to make those contributions to the United States and pledge allegiance to the United States and speak our language and assimilate, we should have a path for them to be able to add value to the United States. Yet they’re not the ones who are getting in.
Our immigration system selects for people who are willing to lie. That’s what it does. Selects for people who are willing to say they’re seeking refugee status or seeking asylum when in fact, they’re not. And then we have policymakers who lie after the fact using economic justifications to keep them here. But if it was an economic justification, that should have been the criteria you used to bring them in the first place, not this illusion of asylum or refugee status. There was a case, actually, even the New York Times reported on this, believe it or not, of a woman who came from Russia fleeing Vladimir Putin’s intolerant, anti-LGBTQ regime. She was fleeing persecution by the evil man, Putin.
She came here and eventually when she was pressed on the series of lies, it came out that, and she was crying finally, when she broke down and admitted this, she was like, “I’m not even gay. I don’t even like gay people.” That’s what she said. And yet she was pretending to be some sort of LGBTQ advocate who was persecuted in Russia when in fact, it was just somebody who was seeking better economic conditions in the United States. I’m not saying you’re wrong to seek better economic conditions in the United States, but you are wrong to lie about it, and that’s what you’re seeing a lot of people, even in this industry of quote, unquote, tourism to the United States, they’re having their kids in the United States. They go back to their home country, but their kids enjoy birthright citizenship. That’s built on a lie.
You have people claiming to suffer from persecution. In fact, they’re just working in the United States and then living in these relative mansions in parts of Mexico or Central America after they’ve spent four or five years making money here. Just abandon the lie. Let’s just have an immigration system built on honesty. Just tell the truth. If the argument is that we need more people here for economically filling jobs, I’m skeptical the extent to which a lot of those arguments actually end up being true. But let’s have that debate in the open rather than having it through the back door saying that it’s refugee and asylum status when we know it’s a lie, and then we justify it after the fact by saying that that economically helps the United States.
Cut the dishonesty. And I just think that that is a policy we would do well to expand every sphere. We talk about from the military industrial complex to the rise of the managerial class, to a lot of what our government’s covered up about our own history to even this question of immigration today. Just tell the people the truth, and I think our government would be better serving our people if it did.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, in the way you describe eloquently, the immigration system is broken in that way that is built fundamentally on lies. But there’s the other side of it. Illegal immigrants are used in political campaigns for fearmongering, for example. So what I would like to understand is what is the actual harm that illegal immigrants are causing? So one of the more intense claims is of crime, and I haven’t studied this rigorously, but the surface level studies all show that legal and illegal immigrants commit less crime than US born citizens.
Yeah, in the way you describe eloquently, the immigration system is broken in that way that is built fundamentally on lies. But there’s the other side of it. Illegal immigrants are used in political campaigns for fearmongering, for example. So what I would like to understand is what is the actual harm that illegal immigrants are causing? So one of the more intense claims is of crime, and I haven’t studied this rigorously, but the surface level studies all show that legal and illegal immigrants commit less crime than US born citizens.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I think it’s true for legal immigrants. I think it’s not true for illegal immigrants.
I think it’s true for legal immigrants. I think it’s not true for illegal immigrants.
Lex Fridman
That’s not what I saw.
That’s not what I saw.
Vivek Ramaswamy
And this is part of why I wrote this book and the book is called Truths. So better darn well have well-sourced facts in here. Can’t be made up Hypotheses, hard truths. And there’s a chapter where, even in my own research on it, Lex, I know a lot about this issue from my time as a presidential candidate, but even in writing the chapter on the border here, I learned a lot from a lot of different dimensions and some of which even caused me to revise some of my premises going into it, okay. My main thesis in that chapter is forget the demonization of illegal or legal immigrants or whatever, as you put it, fearmongering. Just put all that to one side.
And this is part of why I wrote this book and the book is called Truths. So better darn well have well-sourced facts in here. Can’t be made up Hypotheses, hard truths. And there’s a chapter where, even in my own research on it, Lex, I know a lot about this issue from my time as a presidential candidate, but even in writing the chapter on the border here, I learned a lot from a lot of different dimensions and some of which even caused me to revise some of my premises going into it, okay. My main thesis in that chapter is forget the demonization of illegal or legal immigrants or whatever, as you put it, fearmongering. Just put all that to one side.
I want an immigration system that is built on honesty. Identify what the objective is. We could debate the objective. We might have different opinions on the objectives. Some people may say the objective is the economic growth of the United States. I air that argument in this book, and I think that that’s insufficient, personally. Personally, I think the United States is more than just an economic zone. It is a country. It is a nation bound together by civic ideals. I think we need to screen not just for immigrants, who are going to make economic contributions, but those who speak our language, those who are able to assimilate and those who share those civic ideals and know the US history even better than the average US citizen who’s here. That’s what I believe.
But even if you disagree with me and say, “No, no, the sole goal is economic production in the United States,” then at least have an immigration system that’s honest about that rather than one which claims to solve for that goal by bringing in people who are rewarded for being a refugee, we should reward the people in that model, which I don’t even think should be the whole model. But even if that were your model, reward the people who have demonstrably proven that they would make economic contributions to the United States, not the people who have demonstrated that they’re willing to lie to achieve a goal.
And right now, our immigration system, if it rewards one quality over any other, if there’s one parameter that it rewards over any other, it isn’t civic allegiance to the United States, it isn’t fluency in English, it isn’t the ability to make an economic contribution to this country. The number one human attribute that our immigration system rewards is whether or not you are willing to lie. And the people who are telling those lies about whether they’re seeking asylum or not are the ones who are most likely to get in. And the people who are most unwilling to tell those lies are the ones who are actually not getting in.
That is a hard, uncomfortable truth about our immigration system. And the reason is because the law says you only get asylum if you’re going to face bodily harm or near-term risk of bodily injury based on your religion, your ethnicity, or certain other factors. And so when you come into the country, you’re asked, “Do you fulfill that criteria or not?” And the number one way to get into this country is to check the box and say yes. So that means just systematically, imagine if you’re a university, Harvard or Yale or whatever, you’re running your admissions process, the number one attribute you’re selecting for isn’t your SAT score, it isn’t your GPA, it isn’t your athletic accomplishments. It’s whether or not you’re willing to lie on the application. You’re going to have a class populated by a bunch of charlatans and frauds.
That’s exactly what our immigration system is doing to the United States of America, is it is literally selecting for the people who are willing to lie. Let’s say you have somebody who’s a person of integrity says, “Okay, I want a better life for my family, but I want to teach my kids that I’m not going to lie or break the law to do it.” That person is infinitely less likely to get into the United States. I know it sounds provocative to frame it that way, but it is not an opinion. It is a fact that that is the number one human attribute that our current immigration system is selecting for.
I want an immigration system centered on honesty. In order to implement that, we require acknowledging what the goals of our immigration system are in the first place. And there we have competing visions on the right, okay? Amongst conservatives, there’s a rift. Some conservatives believe, I respect them for their honesty, I disagree with them, believe that the goal of the immigration system should be to, in part, protect American workers from the effects of foreign wage competition. That if we have immigrants, it’s going to bring down prices and we need to protect American workers from the effects of that downward pressure on wages. It’s a goal. It’s a coherent goal. I don’t think it’s the right goal, but many of my friends on the right believe that’s a goal, but at least it’s honest. And then we can design an honest immigration system to achieve that goal if that’s their goal. I have other friends on the right that say the sole goal is economic growth, nothing else matters. I disagree with that as well. My view is the goal should be whatever enriches the civic quality of the United States of America. That includes those who know the language, know our ideals, pledge allegiance to those ideals, and also are willing to make economic contributions to the country, which is one of our ideals as well.
But whatever it is, we can have that debate, I have a very different view. I don’t think it’s a proper role of immigration policy to make it a form of labor policy because the United States of America is founded on excellence, we should be able to compete. But that’s a policy debate we can have. But right now, we are not even able to have the policy debate because the whole immigration policy is built on not only a lie, but on rewarding those who do lie. And that’s what I want to see change.
Lex Fridman
Just to linger a little bit on the demonization and to bring Ann Coulter into the picture, which I recommend people should listen to your conversation with her, I haven’t listened to her much, but she had this thing where she’s clearly admires and respects you as a human being. And she’s basically saying. You’re one of the good ones. And this idea that you had this brilliant question of what does it mean to be an American? And she basically said, “Not you, Vivek.” But she said, “Well, maybe you, but not people like you.” So that whole kind of approach to immigration, I think is really anti-meritocratic fundamentally.
Just to linger a little bit on the demonization and to bring Ann Coulter into the picture, which I recommend people should listen to your conversation with her, I haven’t listened to her much, but she had this thing where she’s clearly admires and respects you as a human being. And she’s basically saying. You’re one of the good ones. And this idea that you had this brilliant question of what does it mean to be an American? And she basically said, “Not you, Vivek.” But she said, “Well, maybe you, but not people like you.” So that whole kind of approach to immigration, I think is really anti-meritocratic fundamentally.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Maybe even anti-American.
Maybe even anti-American.
Lex Fridman
Anti-American, yeah.
Anti-American, yeah.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So I want to confront this directly because it is a popular current on the American right. And the reason I’m not picking on Ann Coulter specifically is I think actually it’s a much more widely shared view, and I just give her at least credit for willing to articulate it, a view that the blood and soil is what makes for your American identity or genetic lineage. And I just reject that view, I think it’s anti-American. I think what makes for an American identity is your allegiance, your abiding allegiance to the founding ideals of this country and your willingness to pledge allegiance to those ideals.
So I want to confront this directly because it is a popular current on the American right. And the reason I’m not picking on Ann Coulter specifically is I think actually it’s a much more widely shared view, and I just give her at least credit for willing to articulate it, a view that the blood and soil is what makes for your American identity or genetic lineage. And I just reject that view, I think it’s anti-American. I think what makes for an American identity is your allegiance, your abiding allegiance to the founding ideals of this country and your willingness to pledge allegiance to those ideals.
So those are two different views. I think that there is a view on the American right right now that says that we’re not a creedal nation, that our nation’s not about a creed. It’s about a physical place and a physical homeland. I think that view fails on several accounts. Obviously, every nation has to have a geographic space that it defines its own. So obviously we are, among other things, a geographic space. But the essence of the United States of America, I think is the common creed, the ideals that hold that common nation together.
Without that, a few things happen. First of all, American exceptionalism becomes impossible. And I’ll tell you why. Every other nation is also built on the same idea. Most nations have been built on common blood and soil arguments, genetic stock. Italy or Japan would have a stronger national identity than the United States in that case, because they have a much longer standing claim on what their genetic lineage really was. The ethnicity of the people is far more pure in those contexts than in the United States. So that’s the first reason. American exceptionalism becomes impossible.
The second is there’s all kinds of contradictions that then start to emerge. Your claim on American identity is defined based on how long you’ve been here. Well, then the Native Americans would have a far greater claim of being American than somebody who came here on the Mayflower or somebody who came here afterwards. Now, maybe that blood and soil view is, no, no, it’s not quite the Native Americans. You only have to start at this point and end at this point. So on this view of blood and soil identity, it has to be okay, you couldn’t have come before a certain year, then it doesn’t count. But if you came after a certain year, it doesn’t count either. That just becomes highly uncompelling as a view of what American national identity actually is.
Versus my view that American national identity is grounded on whether or not you pledge allegiance to the ideals codified in the Declaration of Independence and actualized in the US Constitution. And it’s been said, some of my friends on the right have said things like, people will not die for a set of ideals. People won’t fight for abstractions or abstract ideals. I actually disagree with that. The American Revolution basically disproves that. The American Revolution was fought, for anything, over abstract ideals that said that, you know what? We believe in self-governance and free speech and free exercise of religion. That’s what we believe in the United States, which is different from Old World England.
So I do think that there is this brewing debate on the right, and do I disagree like hell with Ann Coulter on this? Absolutely. And did I take serious issue with some of the things she told me? Absolutely. But I also believe that she had the stones to say, if I may say it that way, the things that many on the right believe but haven’t quite articulated in the way that she has. And I think we need to have that debate in the open.
Now, personally, I think most of the conservative movement actually is with me on this, but I think it’s become a very popular counter in the other direction to say that your vision of American identity is far more physical in nature. And to me, I think it is still ideals-based in nature. And I think that that’s a good debate for the future for us to have in the conservative movement. And I think it’s going to be a defining feature of what direction the conservative movement goes in the future.
Lex Fridman
Quick pause. Bathroom break?
Quick pause. Bathroom break?
Donald Trump
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Let me ask you to, again, steel man the case for and against Trump. So my biggest criticism for him is the fake electors scheme, the 2020 election, and actually the 2020 election in the way you formulate it in the Nation of victims is just the entirety of that process, instead of focusing on winning, doing a lot of whining. I like people that win, not whine, even when the refs are biased in whatever direction.
Let me ask you to, again, steel man the case for and against Trump. So my biggest criticism for him is the fake electors scheme, the 2020 election, and actually the 2020 election in the way you formulate it in the Nation of victims is just the entirety of that process, instead of focusing on winning, doing a lot of whining. I like people that win, not whine, even when the refs are biased in whatever direction.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So look, I think the United States of America, I preach this to the left, I preach it to my kids, we got to accept it on our own side too, we’re not going to save this country by being victim, we’re going to save this country by being victorious. And I don’t care whether it’s left-wing victimhood, right-wing victimhood. I’m against victimhood culture. The number one factor that determines whether you achieve something in life is you. I believe that. It’s not the only factor that matters. There’s a lot of other factors that affect whether or not you succeed. Life is not fair, but I tell my kids the same thing. The number one factor that determines whether or not you succeed in achieving your goal is you. If I tell it to my kids and I preach it to the left, I’m going to preach that to our own side as well.
So look, I think the United States of America, I preach this to the left, I preach it to my kids, we got to accept it on our own side too, we’re not going to save this country by being victim, we’re going to save this country by being victorious. And I don’t care whether it’s left-wing victimhood, right-wing victimhood. I’m against victimhood culture. The number one factor that determines whether you achieve something in life is you. I believe that. It’s not the only factor that matters. There’s a lot of other factors that affect whether or not you succeed. Life is not fair, but I tell my kids the same thing. The number one factor that determines whether or not you succeed in achieving your goal is you. If I tell it to my kids and I preach it to the left, I’m going to preach that to our own side as well.
Now, that being said, that’s just a philosophy, okay? That’s a personal philosophy. You asked me to do something different, and I’m always a fan. The standard I hope that people hold me to when they read this book as well, is I try to do that in this book, is to give the best possible argument for the other side. You don’t want to give some rinky-dink argument for the other side and knock it down. You want to give the best possible argument for the other side and then offer your own view or else you don’t understand your own. So you asked me what’s the strongest case against Donald Trump? Well, I ran for US President against Donald Trump. So I’m going to give you what my perspective is. I think it’s nothing of what you hear on MSNBC or from the left attacking him to be a threat to democracy. I think all of that’s actually nonsense.
I actually think it is, if you were making that case, and he has my full support as you know, but if you were making that case, I think for many voters who are of the next generation, they’re asking a question about, “How are you going to understand the position that I’m in as a member of a new generation?” The same criticism they had of Biden, they could say, “Oh, well, are you too old? Are you from a different generation that’s too far removed from my generation’s concerns?” And I think that that’s in many ways a factor that was weighing on both Trump and Biden. But when they played the trick of swapping out Joe Biden, it left that issue much more on the table for Donald Trump.
So you’re asking me to steel man it, that’s what I would say is that when I look at what’s the number one issue that I would need to persuade Independent voters of to say that, no, no, no, this is still the right choice is even though the other side claims to offer a new generation of leadership, here’s somebody who is one of the older presidents we will have had who was elected. How do we convince those people to vote from? That’s what I would give you in that category.
Lex Fridman
Right. But I get it. And you share a lot of ideas with Donald Trump. So I get when you’re…
Right. But I get it. And you share a lot of ideas with Donald Trump. So I get when you’re…
Lex Fridman
And you share a lot of ideas with Donald Trump, so I get when you’re running for president that you would say that kind of thing, but there’s other criticism you could provide, and again, on the 2020 election.
And you share a lot of ideas with Donald Trump, so I get when you’re running for president that you would say that kind of thing, but there’s other criticism you could provide, and again, on the 2020 election.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Let me ask you, you spoke to Donald Trump recently, what’s your top objection to potentially voting for Donald Trump, and let me see if I can address that?
Let me ask you, you spoke to Donald Trump recently, what’s your top objection to potentially voting for Donald Trump, and let me see if I can address that?
Lex Fridman
The 2020 election, and not in the… What is it? TDS objection. It’s just I don’t think there’s clear definitive evidence that there was voter fraud.
The 2020 election, and not in the… What is it? TDS objection. It’s just I don’t think there’s clear definitive evidence that there was voter fraud.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Let me ask you about a different area.
Let me ask you about a different area.
Lex Fridman
Hold on a second. Hold on a second, hold on a second. I think there’s a lot of interesting topics about the influence of media, of tech, and so on, but I want a president that has a good, clear relationship with the truth and knows what truth is, what is true, and what is not true. And moreover, I want a person who doesn’t play victim, like you said, who focuses on winning and winning big, and if they lose, walk away with honor and win bigger next time, or channel that into growth and winning in some other direction. So, just the strength of being able to give everything you got to win and walk away with honor if you lose, and everything that happened around 2020 election, it just goes against that, to me.
Hold on a second. Hold on a second, hold on a second. I think there’s a lot of interesting topics about the influence of media, of tech, and so on, but I want a president that has a good, clear relationship with the truth and knows what truth is, what is true, and what is not true. And moreover, I want a person who doesn’t play victim, like you said, who focuses on winning and winning big, and if they lose, walk away with honor and win bigger next time, or channel that into growth and winning in some other direction. So, just the strength of being able to give everything you got to win and walk away with honor if you lose, and everything that happened around 2020 election, it just goes against that, to me.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So I’ll respond to that.
So I’ll respond to that.
Lex Fridman
Sure.
Sure.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Obviously, I’m not the candidate, but I’m going to give you my perspective nonetheless. I think we have seen some growth from Donald Trump over that first term in the experience of the 2020 election, and you hear a lot of that on the campaign trail. I heard a lot of that even in the conversation that he had with you. I think he is more ambitious for that second term than he was for that first term, so I thought that was the most interesting part of what you just said is, you’re looking for somebody who has growth from their own experiences. Say what you will, I have seen, personally I believe, some meaningful level of personal growth and ambition for what Donald Trump hopes to achieve for the country in the second term that he wasn’t able to, for one reason or another, COVID, you could put a lot of different things on it, but in that first term.
Obviously, I’m not the candidate, but I’m going to give you my perspective nonetheless. I think we have seen some growth from Donald Trump over that first term in the experience of the 2020 election, and you hear a lot of that on the campaign trail. I heard a lot of that even in the conversation that he had with you. I think he is more ambitious for that second term than he was for that first term, so I thought that was the most interesting part of what you just said is, you’re looking for somebody who has growth from their own experiences. Say what you will, I have seen, personally I believe, some meaningful level of personal growth and ambition for what Donald Trump hopes to achieve for the country in the second term that he wasn’t able to, for one reason or another, COVID, you could put a lot of different things on it, but in that first term.
Now, I think the facts of the backdrop of the 2020 election actually really do matter. I don’t think you can isolate one particular aspect of criticizing the 2020 election without looking at it holistically. On the eve of the 2020 presidential election, we saw a systematic, bureaucratically, and government-aided suppression of probably the single most important piece of information released in the eve of that election, the Hunter Biden laptop story, revealing potentially a compromised US presidential candidate, his family was compromised by foreign interests, and it was suppressed as misinformation by every major tech company.
The New York Post had its own Twitter account locked at that time, and we now know that many of the censorship decisions made in the year 2020 were actually made at behest of US bureaucratic actors in the deep state threatening those tech companies to do it or else those tech companies would face consequence. I think it might be the most undemocratic thing that’s happened in the history of our country, actually, is the way in which government actors, who were never elected to the government, used private sector actors to suppress information on the eve of an election that based on polling afterwards likely did influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. That was election interference of the highest order.
So I think that that’s just a hard fact that we have to contend with, and I think a lot of what you’ve heard in terms of complaints about the 2020 election, whatever those complaints, oh, have been, take place against the backdrop of large technology companies interfering in that election in a way that I think did have an impact on the outcome. I personally believe if the Hunter Biden laptop story had not been suppressed and censored, Donald Trump would’ve been unambiguous… The President of the United States right now would be Donald Trump. No doubt about it in my mind if you look at polling before and after the impact that would’ve had on the independent voter.
Now you look at… Okay, let’s talk about constructive solutions because I care about moving the country forward. What is a constructive solution to this issue of concerns about election integrity? Here’s one. Single-day voting on election day as a national holiday with paper ballots and government-issued voter ID to match the voter file. I favor that. We do it even in Puerto Rico, which is a territory of the United States. Why not do that everywhere in the United States? And I’ll make a pledge. I’ll do it right here, right? My pledge is, as a leader in our movement, I will do everything in my power to make sure we are done complaining about stolen elections if we get to that simple place of basic election security measures.
I think they’d be unifying too. Make election day a national holiday that unites us around our civic purpose one day, single-day voting on election day as a national holiday with paper ballots and government-issued voter ID to match the voter file. Let’s get there as a country, and you have my word, I will lead our movement in whatever way I can to make sure we are done complaining about stolen elections and fake ballots. And I think that fact that you see resistance to that proposal, which is otherwise very practical, very reasonable, nonpartisan proposal, I think the fact of that resistance actually provokes a lot of understandable skepticism, understandable skepticism of what else is actually going on, if not that, what exactly is going on here?
Lex Fridman
Well, I agree with a lot of things you said. Probably disagree, but it’s hard to disagree with a Hunter Biden laptop story whether that would’ve changed the results in the election.
Well, I agree with a lot of things you said. Probably disagree, but it’s hard to disagree with a Hunter Biden laptop story whether that would’ve changed the results in the election.
Vivek Ramaswamy
We can’t know obviously.
We can’t know obviously.
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I looked at some post-election polling about the views that would’ve had and I can’t prove that to you, but that’s my instinct, it’s my opinion.
I looked at some post-election polling about the views that would’ve had and I can’t prove that to you, but that’s my instinct, it’s my opinion.
Lex Fridman
I think that’s just one example, maybe a sexy example of a bias in the complex of the media and there’s bias in the other direction too, but probably there’s bias. It’s hard to characterize bias as one of the problems.
I think that’s just one example, maybe a sexy example of a bias in the complex of the media and there’s bias in the other direction too, but probably there’s bias. It’s hard to characterize bias as one of the problems.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Let me ask you one question about… Bias is one thing, bias in reporting. Censorship is another. So I would be open-minded to hearing an instance, and if I did hear it, I would condemn it, of the government systematically ordering tech companies to suppress information that was favorable to Democrats, suppress that information to lift up Republicans. If there was an instance that we know of government bureaucrats that were ordering technology companies covertly to silence information that voters otherwise would’ve had to advantage Republicans at the ballot box to censor it, I would be against that, and I would condemn that with equal force as I do to the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression, and censorship of the origin of COVID-19, all happened in 2020. These are hard facts. I’m not aware of one instance. If you are aware of one, let me know because I would condemn it.
Let me ask you one question about… Bias is one thing, bias in reporting. Censorship is another. So I would be open-minded to hearing an instance, and if I did hear it, I would condemn it, of the government systematically ordering tech companies to suppress information that was favorable to Democrats, suppress that information to lift up Republicans. If there was an instance that we know of government bureaucrats that were ordering technology companies covertly to silence information that voters otherwise would’ve had to advantage Republicans at the ballot box to censor it, I would be against that, and I would condemn that with equal force as I do to the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression, and censorship of the origin of COVID-19, all happened in 2020. These are hard facts. I’m not aware of one instance. If you are aware of one, let me know because I would condemn it.
Lex Fridman
Most people in tech companies are privately… Their political persuasion is on the left, and most journalists, majority of journalists, are on the left, but to characterize the actual reporting and the impact of the reporting in the media and the impact of the censorship is difficult to do, but that’s a real problem, just like we talked about a real problem in immigration.
Most people in tech companies are privately… Their political persuasion is on the left, and most journalists, majority of journalists, are on the left, but to characterize the actual reporting and the impact of the reporting in the media and the impact of the censorship is difficult to do, but that’s a real problem, just like we talked about a real problem in immigration.
Vivek Ramaswamy
But there’s two different problems, I just want to sort them out, right? I have problem with both. You talked about two issues, and I think both are important, but they’re different issues. One is bias in reporting. One is censorship of information. So bias in reporting, I felt certainly, the recent presidential debate moderated by ABC was biased in the way that it was conducted, but that’s a different issue from saying that voters don’t get access to information through any source.
But there’s two different problems, I just want to sort them out, right? I have problem with both. You talked about two issues, and I think both are important, but they’re different issues. One is bias in reporting. One is censorship of information. So bias in reporting, I felt certainly, the recent presidential debate moderated by ABC was biased in the way that it was conducted, but that’s a different issue from saying that voters don’t get access to information through any source.
So, this Hunter Biden laptop story, we now know that it contains evidence of foreign interference in potentially the Biden administration and their family’s incentive structure. That story was systematically suppressed. So, in the United States of America, if you wanted to find that on the internet through any major social media platform or through even Google search, that story was suppressed or downplayed algorithmically that you couldn’t see it. Even on Twitter, if you tried to send it via direct message, the equivalent of email, sending a peer-to-peer message, they blocked you from even being able to send that story using private messages. That is a different level of concern. That’s not bias at that point. That’s outright interference in the election.
Let’s do a thought experiment here. Let’s suppose that Russia orchestrated that. What would the backlash be? Let’s say the Russian government orchestrated the US election. They interfered in it by saying that tech companies… They worked with them covertly to stop US citizens from being able to see information on the eve of an election. There would be a mass uproar in this country if the Russian government orchestrated that. Well, if actors in the US government bureaucracy or the US technology industry bureaucracy orchestrated the same thing, then we can’t apply a different standard to say that if Russia did it, it’s really bad and interfered in our election. But if it happened right here in the United States of America… And by the way, they blamed Russia for it, falsely, on the Russian disinformation of the Hunter Biden laptop story that was a false claim. We have to apply the same standard in both cases, and so the fact that if that were Russian interference, it would’ve been an outcry, but now it happened domestically, and we just call that, “Hey, it’s a little bit of bias ahead of an election.” I don’t think that that’s a fair characterization of how important that event was.
Lex Fridman
Okay, so the connection of government to platform should not exist. The government, FBI, or anybody else should not be able to pressure platforms to censor information. Yes, we could talk about Pavel Durov and the censorship there. There should not be any censorship, and there should not be media bias, and you’re right to complain if there is media bias, and we can lay it out in the open and try to fix that system. That said, the voter fraud thing, you can’t right a wrong by doing another wrong. If there’s some shitty shady stuff going on in the media and the censorship complex, you can’t just make shit up. You can’t do the fake electors scheme, and then do a lot of shady, crappy behavior during January 6th and try to shortcut your way just because your friend is cheating at Monopoly when you’re playing Monopoly. You can’t cheat. You shouldn’t cheat yourself. You should be honest and with honor and use your platform to help fix the system versus cheat your way.
Okay, so the connection of government to platform should not exist. The government, FBI, or anybody else should not be able to pressure platforms to censor information. Yes, we could talk about Pavel Durov and the censorship there. There should not be any censorship, and there should not be media bias, and you’re right to complain if there is media bias, and we can lay it out in the open and try to fix that system. That said, the voter fraud thing, you can’t right a wrong by doing another wrong. If there’s some shitty shady stuff going on in the media and the censorship complex, you can’t just make shit up. You can’t do the fake electors scheme, and then do a lot of shady, crappy behavior during January 6th and try to shortcut your way just because your friend is cheating at Monopoly when you’re playing Monopoly. You can’t cheat. You shouldn’t cheat yourself. You should be honest and with honor and use your platform to help fix the system versus cheat your way.
Vivek Ramaswamy
So, here’s my view, has any US politician ever been perfect throughout the course of American history? No, but if you want to understand the essence of what was going around in 2020, the mindset of the country? We had a year where people in this country were systematically locked down, told to shut up, sit down, do as they’re told unless they’re BLM or Antifa rioters, in which case it’s perfectly fine for them to burn cities down. We were told that we’re going to have an election, a free and fair election, and then they were denied information systematically heading into that election, which was really important, and in this case, damning information about one of the parties. And then you tell these people that they still have to continue to shut up and comply. That creates, I think, a real culture of deep frustration in the United States of America.
So, here’s my view, has any US politician ever been perfect throughout the course of American history? No, but if you want to understand the essence of what was going around in 2020, the mindset of the country? We had a year where people in this country were systematically locked down, told to shut up, sit down, do as they’re told unless they’re BLM or Antifa rioters, in which case it’s perfectly fine for them to burn cities down. We were told that we’re going to have an election, a free and fair election, and then they were denied information systematically heading into that election, which was really important, and in this case, damning information about one of the parties. And then you tell these people that they still have to continue to shut up and comply. That creates, I think, a real culture of deep frustration in the United States of America.
And I think that the reaction to systematic censorship is never good. History teaches us that it’s not good in the United States. It’s not good in other points in the history of the United States. The reaction to systematic, coordinated censorship and restraints and the freedom of a free people is never good. And if you want to really understand what happened, one really wants to get to the bottom of it rather than figuring out who to point fingers at, that really was the essence of the national malaise at the end of 2020 is, it was a year of unjust policies including COVID-19 lockdowns, systematic lies about it, lies about the election that created a level of public frustration that I think was understandable.
Now, the job of leaders is to how do you channel that in the most productive direction possible, and to your question, to the independent voter out there evaluating, as you are, do I think that Donald Trump has exhibited a lot of growth based on his experience in his first term, and what he hopes to achieve in his second term? The answer is, absolutely yes, and so, even if you don’t agree with everything that he’s said or done in the choice ahead of us in this election, I still believe he’s unambiguously the best choice to revive that sense of national pride, and also prosperity in our country, so people aren’t in the condition where they’re suffering at behest of government policies that leave them angry and channel that anger in other unproductive ways. No, the best way to do it is actually, actions do speak louder than words, implement the policies that make people’s lives better, and I do think that that’s the next step of how we best save the country.
Lex Fridman
Are you worried if in this election, it’s a close election, and Donald Trump loses by a whisker, that there’s chaos that’s unleashed, and how do we minimize the chance of that?
Are you worried if in this election, it’s a close election, and Donald Trump loses by a whisker, that there’s chaos that’s unleashed, and how do we minimize the chance of that?
Vivek Ramaswamy
I don’t think that that’s a concern to frame narrowly in the context of Donald Trump winning it or losing it by whisker, this is a man, who in the last couple of months, in span of two months, has faced two assassination attempts. We’re not talking about theoretical attempts. We’re talking about gunshots fired. That is history changing in the context of American history. We haven’t seen that in a generation, and yet now that has become normalized in the US, so do I worry we’re skating on thin ice as a country? I do. I do think it is a little bit strange to obsess over our concerns, national or media concerns, over Donald Trump when, in fact, he’s the one on the receiving end of fire from assailants who reportedly are saying exactly the things about him that you hear from the Democratic machine.
I don’t think that that’s a concern to frame narrowly in the context of Donald Trump winning it or losing it by whisker, this is a man, who in the last couple of months, in span of two months, has faced two assassination attempts. We’re not talking about theoretical attempts. We’re talking about gunshots fired. That is history changing in the context of American history. We haven’t seen that in a generation, and yet now that has become normalized in the US, so do I worry we’re skating on thin ice as a country? I do. I do think it is a little bit strange to obsess over our concerns, national or media concerns, over Donald Trump when, in fact, he’s the one on the receiving end of fire from assailants who reportedly are saying exactly the things about him that you hear from the Democratic machine.
And I do think that it is irresponsible, at least for the Democratic Party to make their core case against Donald Trump. It was Joe Biden’s entire message for years that he’s a threat to democracy and to the existence of America. Well, if you keep saying that about somebody against the backdrop conditions that we live in as a country, I don’t think that’s good for a nation. And so, do I have concerns about the future of the country? Do I think we’re skating on thin ice? Absolutely. And I think the best way around it is really through it, through it in this election, win by a landslide. I think a unifying landslide could be the best thing that happens for this country, like Reagan delivered in 1980 and then again in 1984. And in a very practical note, a landslide minus some shenanigans, is still going to be a victory. That is how we unite this country.
And so, I don’t think 50.001 margin where cable news is declaring the winner six days after the election, I don’t think that’s going to be good for the country. I think a decisive victory that unites the country, turns the page on a lot of the challenges of the last four years, and says, “Okay, this is where we’re going. This is who we are, and what we stand for.” This is a revival of our national identity and revive national pride in the United States regardless of whether you’re a Democrat or Republican. That I think is achievable in this election too, and that’s the outcome I’m rooting for.
Lex Fridman
So just to pile on, since we’re still manning the criticism against Trump, is the rhetoric… I wish there was less of, although at times it is so ridiculous, it is entertaining, I hate Taylor Swift type of tweets or truths or whatever. I don’t think that’s-
So just to pile on, since we’re still manning the criticism against Trump, is the rhetoric… I wish there was less of, although at times it is so ridiculous, it is entertaining, I hate Taylor Swift type of tweets or truths or whatever. I don’t think that’s-
Vivek Ramaswamy
He’s a funny guy. The reality is different people have different attributes. One of the attributes for Donald Trump is, he’s one of the funnier presidents we’ve had in a long time. That might not be everybody’s cup of tea. Maybe different people don’t want… That’s not a quality they value in their president. I think at a moment where you’re also able to make… I will say this much is, everybody’s got different styles. Donald Trump’s style is different from mine. But I do think that if we’re able to use levity in a moment of national division, in some ways, I think right now is probably a role where really good standup comedians could probably do a big service to the country if they’re able to laugh at everybody 360 degrees, so they can go up there and make fun of Donald Trump all they want, do it in a lighthearted manner that loves the country, do the same thing to Kamala Harris with an equal standard. I think that’s actually good for the country. But I think I’m more interested, Lex, as you know, in discussing the future direction of the country, my own views. I was a presidential candidate who ran against Donald Trump, by the way, and is supporting him now. But I just prefer engaging on the substance of what I think each candidate’s going to achieve for the country rather than picking on really the personal attributes of either one, right? I’m not criticizing Kamala Harris’s manner of laugh, or whatever one might criticize as a personal attribute of hers that you may hear elsewhere. And I just think our country’s better off if we have a focus on both the policies, but also, who’s going to be more likely to revive the country, that I think is a healthy debate headed to an election. Everybody has their personality attributes, their flaws, what makes them funny and lovable to some people, makes them irritating to others, I think that that matters less heading into an election.
He’s a funny guy. The reality is different people have different attributes. One of the attributes for Donald Trump is, he’s one of the funnier presidents we’ve had in a long time. That might not be everybody’s cup of tea. Maybe different people don’t want… That’s not a quality they value in their president. I think at a moment where you’re also able to make… I will say this much is, everybody’s got different styles. Donald Trump’s style is different from mine. But I do think that if we’re able to use levity in a moment of national division, in some ways, I think right now is probably a role where really good standup comedians could probably do a big service to the country if they’re able to laugh at everybody 360 degrees, so they can go up there and make fun of Donald Trump all they want, do it in a lighthearted manner that loves the country, do the same thing to Kamala Harris with an equal standard. I think that’s actually good for the country. But I think I’m more interested, Lex, as you know, in discussing the future direction of the country, my own views. I was a presidential candidate who ran against Donald Trump, by the way, and is supporting him now. But I just prefer engaging on the substance of what I think each candidate’s going to achieve for the country rather than picking on really the personal attributes of either one, right? I’m not criticizing Kamala Harris’s manner of laugh, or whatever one might criticize as a personal attribute of hers that you may hear elsewhere. And I just think our country’s better off if we have a focus on both the policies, but also, who’s going to be more likely to revive the country, that I think is a healthy debate headed to an election. Everybody has their personality attributes, their flaws, what makes them funny and lovable to some people, makes them irritating to others, I think that that matters less heading into an election.
Lex Fridman
I love that you do that. I love that you focus on policy and can speak for hours on policy. Let’s look at foreign policy.
I love that you do that. I love that you focus on policy and can speak for hours on policy. Let’s look at foreign policy.
War in Ukraine
Vivek Ramaswamy
Sure.
Sure.
Lex Fridman
What kind of peace deal do you think is possible, feasible, optimal in Ukraine? If you sat down, you became president. If you sat down with Zelenskyy and sat down with Putin, what do you think is possible to talk to them about? One of the hilarious things you did, which were intense and entertaining, your debates in the primary, but anyway, is how you outgrow the other candidates that didn’t know any regions. They wanted to send money and troops, and lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and they didn’t know any of the regions in Ukraine. You had a lot of zingers in that one. But anyway, how do you think about negotiating with world leaders about what’s going on there?
What kind of peace deal do you think is possible, feasible, optimal in Ukraine? If you sat down, you became president. If you sat down with Zelenskyy and sat down with Putin, what do you think is possible to talk to them about? One of the hilarious things you did, which were intense and entertaining, your debates in the primary, but anyway, is how you outgrow the other candidates that didn’t know any regions. They wanted to send money and troops, and lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and they didn’t know any of the regions in Ukraine. You had a lot of zingers in that one. But anyway, how do you think about negotiating with world leaders about what’s going on there?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah, so look, let’s just get the self-interest of each party on the table, and to be very transparent about it. From everyone’s perspective, they think the other side is the aggressor, or whatever. Just get it on the table. Russia is concerned about NATO shifting the balance of power away from Russia to Western Europe when NATO has expanded far more than they expected to, and frankly, that Russia was told that NATO was going to expand. It’s an uncomfortable fact for some in America, but James Baker made a commitment to Mikhail Gorbachev in the early nineties, where he said NATO would expand not one inch past East Germany. Well, NATO has expanded far more after the fall of the USSR than it did during the existence of the USSR, and that is a reality we have to contend with. That’s the Russian perspective.
Yeah, so look, let’s just get the self-interest of each party on the table, and to be very transparent about it. From everyone’s perspective, they think the other side is the aggressor, or whatever. Just get it on the table. Russia is concerned about NATO shifting the balance of power away from Russia to Western Europe when NATO has expanded far more than they expected to, and frankly, that Russia was told that NATO was going to expand. It’s an uncomfortable fact for some in America, but James Baker made a commitment to Mikhail Gorbachev in the early nineties, where he said NATO would expand not one inch past East Germany. Well, NATO has expanded far more after the fall of the USSR than it did during the existence of the USSR, and that is a reality we have to contend with. That’s the Russian perspective.
From the Western perspective, the hard fact is Russia was the aggressor in this conflict, crossing the boundaries of a sovereign nation, and that is a violation of international norms, and it’s a violation of the recognition of international law of nations without borders are not a nation. And so, against that backdrop, what’s the actual interest of each country here? I think if we’re able to do a reasonable deal that gives Russia the assurances it needs about what they might allege as NATO expansionism violating prior commitments, but get codified commitments for Russia, that we’re not going to see willy-nilly behavior of just randomly deciding they’re going to violate the sovereignty of neighboring nations and have hard assurances and consequences for that. That’s the beginnings of a deal.
But then, I want to be ambitious for the United States. I want to weaken the Russia-China alliance, and I think that we can do a deal that requires, that gives some real gifts to Russia conditioned on Russia withdrawing itself from its military alliance with China. And this could be good for Russia too, in the long run, because right now, Vladimir Putin does not enjoy being Xi Jinping’s little brother in that relationship. But Russia’s military combined with China’s naval capacity, and Russia’s hypersonic missiles, and China’s economic might, together those countries in an alliance pose a real threat to the United States. But if as a condition for a reasonable discussion about where different territories land, given what’s occupied right now, hard requirements that Russia remove its military presence from the Western hemisphere. People forget this, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, we don’t want a Russian military presence in the Western hemisphere. That too, would be a win for the United States, no more joint military exercises with China off the coast of the Aleutian Islands.
The kinds of wins that the United States wants to protect the West’s security, get Russia out of the Western hemisphere, certainly out of the North American periphery, and then also make sure that Russia’s no longer in that military alliance with China, in return for that, able to provide Russia some things that are important to Russia. We’d have to have a reasonable discussion about what the territorial concessions would be at the end of this war to bring it to peace and resolution and what the guarantees are to make sure that NATO is going to not expand beyond the scope of what the United States has at least historically guaranteed. That I think together would be a reasonable deal that gives every party what they’re looking for, that results in immediate peace, that results in greater stability, and most importantly, weakening the Russia-China Alliance, which I think is the actual threat that we have so far, no matter who in this debate of more or less Ukraine funding has really failed to confront, that I think is the way we de-escalate the risk of World War III, and weaken the threats to the West by actually dismantling that alliance.
Lex Fridman
So from the American perspective, the main interest is weakening the alliance between Russia and China.
So from the American perspective, the main interest is weakening the alliance between Russia and China.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yes, I think the military alliance between Russia and China represents the single greatest threat we face. So, do a deal that’s very reasonable across the board but one of the main things we get out of it is weakening that alliance, so no joint military exercises, no military collaborations. These are monitorable attributes. If there’s cheating on that, we’re going to immediately have consequences as a consequence of their cheating. But we can’t cheat on our own obligations that we would make in the context of that deal as well.
Yes, I think the military alliance between Russia and China represents the single greatest threat we face. So, do a deal that’s very reasonable across the board but one of the main things we get out of it is weakening that alliance, so no joint military exercises, no military collaborations. These are monitorable attributes. If there’s cheating on that, we’re going to immediately have consequences as a consequence of their cheating. But we can’t cheat on our own obligations that we would make in the context of that deal as well.
Lex Fridman
There might be some extremely painful things for Ukraine here. So Ukraine currently captured a small region in Russia, the Kursk region, but Russia has captured giant chunks, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson regions, so it seems given what you’re laying out, it’s very unlikely for Russia to give up any other regions that’s already captured.
There might be some extremely painful things for Ukraine here. So Ukraine currently captured a small region in Russia, the Kursk region, but Russia has captured giant chunks, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson regions, so it seems given what you’re laying out, it’s very unlikely for Russia to give up any other regions that’s already captured.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I actually think that that would come down to the specifics of the negotiation. But the core goals of the negotiation are peace in this war, weaken the Russia-China Alliance. And for Russia, what do they get out of it? Part of this is… Here’s something that’s not negative for Ukraine but that could be positive for Russia as part of that deal because it’s not a zero-sum game alone with Ukraine on the losing end of this. I think reopening economic relations with the West would be a big win for Russia, but also a carrot that gets them out of that military relationship with China. So I do think that the foreign policy establishment has historically been, at the very least, unimaginative about the levers that we’re able to use.
I actually think that that would come down to the specifics of the negotiation. But the core goals of the negotiation are peace in this war, weaken the Russia-China Alliance. And for Russia, what do they get out of it? Part of this is… Here’s something that’s not negative for Ukraine but that could be positive for Russia as part of that deal because it’s not a zero-sum game alone with Ukraine on the losing end of this. I think reopening economic relations with the West would be a big win for Russia, but also a carrot that gets them out of that military relationship with China. So I do think that the foreign policy establishment has historically been, at the very least, unimaginative about the levers that we’re able to use.
Actually, I was a little bit critical of Nixon earlier in this discussion for his contribution to the overgrowth of the US entitlement state and regulatory state, but I’ll give Nixon credit here on a different point, which is that he was imaginative of being able to pull red China out from the clasp of the USSR. He broke the China-Russia alliance back then, which was an important step to bring us to the near end of the Cold War. So I think there’s an opportunity for similar unconventional maneuver now of using greater reopened economic relations with Russia to pull Russia out from the hands of China today. There’s no skin off Ukraine’s back for that, and I do think that’s a big carrot for Russia in this direction. I do think that will involve some level of territorial negotiation as well, that out of any good deal, not everyone’s going to like a hundred percent of what comes out of it, but that’s part of the cost of securing peace is that not everyone’s going to be happy about every attribute.
But I could make a case that an immediate peace deal is also now in the best interest of Ukraine. Let’s just rewind the clock. We’re looking at now, let’s just say we’re early 2022, maybe June of 2022, Zelenskyy was ready to come to the table for a deal back then until Boris Johnson traveled when he had his own domestic political travails to convince Zelenskyy to continue to fight. And that goes to the point where when nations aren’t asked to pay for their own national security, they have what the problem is of moral hazard, of taking risks that really are suboptimal risks for them to take because they’re not bearing the consequences of taking those risks, not fully in the cost.
If Ukraine had done a deal back then, I think it is unambiguous that they would’ve done a better deal for themselves than they’re doing now after having spent hundreds of billions of dollars and expended tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives. So the idea that Ukraine is somehow better off because it failed to do that deal before is a lie. And if we’re not willing to learn from those mistakes of the recent past, we’re doomed to repeat them again. So, this idea that it would be painful for Ukraine, you know what’s been painful, tens and tens and tens of thousands of people continuing to die without any increased leverage in actually getting the outcome that they want.
So, I think there’s an opportunity for a win-win-win, a win for the United States and the West more broadly in weakening the Russia-China alliance, a win for Ukraine in having an agreement that is backstopped by the United States of America’s interests that provides a greater degree of long-run security to the future existence of Ukraine and its sovereignty and also stopping the bloodshed today. And I think a win for Russia which is to reopen economic relations with the West and have certain guarantees about what the mission-creep or scop-creep of NATO will be. There’s no rule that says that when one party, before full outright World War, starts at least, there’s an opportunity for there to actually be a win for everybody on the table rather than to assume that a win for us is a loss to Russia, or that anything positive that happens for Russia is a loss for the United States or Ukraine.
Lex Fridman
Just to add to the table some things that Putin won’t like, but I think are possible to negotiate, which is Ukraine joining the European Union and not NATO, so establishing some economic relationships there, and also splitting the bill, guaranteeing some amount of money from both the Russia and the United States for rebuilding Ukraine. One of the challenges in Ukraine, a war-torn country, is how do you guarantee the flourishing of this particular nation, right? So, you want to not just stop the death of people and the destruction but also provide a foundation on which you can rebuild the country and build a flourishing future country.
Just to add to the table some things that Putin won’t like, but I think are possible to negotiate, which is Ukraine joining the European Union and not NATO, so establishing some economic relationships there, and also splitting the bill, guaranteeing some amount of money from both the Russia and the United States for rebuilding Ukraine. One of the challenges in Ukraine, a war-torn country, is how do you guarantee the flourishing of this particular nation, right? So, you want to not just stop the death of people and the destruction but also provide a foundation on which you can rebuild the country and build a flourishing future country.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Out of this conversation alone, there are a number of levers on the table for negotiation in a lot of different directions, and that’s where you want to be, if there’s only one factor that matters to each of the two parties, and those are their red line factors, then there’s no room for negotiation. This is a deeply complicated, historically intricate dynamic between Ukraine and Russia, and between NATO and the United States, and the Russia-China Alliance, and economic interests that are at issue combined with the geopolitical factors. There are a lot of levers for negotiation, and the more levers there are, the more likely there is to be a win-win-win deal that gets done for everybody.
Out of this conversation alone, there are a number of levers on the table for negotiation in a lot of different directions, and that’s where you want to be, if there’s only one factor that matters to each of the two parties, and those are their red line factors, then there’s no room for negotiation. This is a deeply complicated, historically intricate dynamic between Ukraine and Russia, and between NATO and the United States, and the Russia-China Alliance, and economic interests that are at issue combined with the geopolitical factors. There are a lot of levers for negotiation, and the more levers there are, the more likely there is to be a win-win-win deal that gets done for everybody.
So I think it should be encouraging the fact that there are as many different possible levers here, almost makes certain that a reasonable practicable peace deal as possible in contrast to situation where there’s only one thing that matters for each side, then I can’t tell you that there’s a deal to be done, there’s definitely a deal to be done here, and I think that it requires real leadership in the United States playing hardball, not just with one side of this, not just with Zelenskyy or with Putin, but across the board hardball for our own interest, which are the interests of stability here, and that that will happen to well serve both Ukraine and Russia in the process.
Lex Fridman
If you were president, would you call Putin?
If you were president, would you call Putin?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Absolutely, in any negotiation, you got to manage when you’re calling somebody and when you’re not, but I do believe that open conversation and the willingness to have that as another lever in the negotiation is totally fair game.
Absolutely, in any negotiation, you got to manage when you’re calling somebody and when you’re not, but I do believe that open conversation and the willingness to have that as another lever in the negotiation is totally fair game.
China
Lex Fridman
Okay, let’s go to the China side of this. The big concern here is that the brewing cold, or God forbid, hot war between the United States and China and the 21st century. How do we avoid that?
Okay, let’s go to the China side of this. The big concern here is that the brewing cold, or God forbid, hot war between the United States and China and the 21st century. How do we avoid that?
Vivek Ramaswamy
So a few things. One is, I do think, the best way we also avoid it is by reducing the consequences to the United States in the event of that type of conflict because, at that point, what you’re setting up for, if the consequences are existential for the United States, then what you’re buying yourself in the context of what could be a small conflict is an all-out great war. So, the first thing I want to make sure we avoid is a major conflict between the United States and China, like a world-war-level conflict. And the way to do that is to bring down the existential stakes for the US. And the way we bring down the existential stakes for the US, is make sure that the United States does not depend on China for our modern way of life.
So a few things. One is, I do think, the best way we also avoid it is by reducing the consequences to the United States in the event of that type of conflict because, at that point, what you’re setting up for, if the consequences are existential for the United States, then what you’re buying yourself in the context of what could be a small conflict is an all-out great war. So, the first thing I want to make sure we avoid is a major conflict between the United States and China, like a world-war-level conflict. And the way to do that is to bring down the existential stakes for the US. And the way we bring down the existential stakes for the US, is make sure that the United States does not depend on China for our modern way of life.
Right now, we do, okay, so right now, we depend on China for everything from the pharmaceuticals in our medicine cabinet, 95% of ibuprofen, one of the most basic medicines used in the United States, depends on China for its supply chain. We, depend on China, ironically, for our own military-industrial base. Think about how little sense that makes actually. Our own military, which supposedly exists to protect ourselves against adversaries, depends for its own supplies, semiconductors, and otherwise, on our top adversary, that doesn’t make sense. Even if you’re a libertarian in the school of Friedrich von Hayek, who somebody I admire as well, even then, you would not argue for a foreign dependence on adversary for your military. So, that’s the next step we need to take, is at least reduce US dependence on China for the most essential inputs for the functioning of the United States of America, including our own military.
As a side note, I believe that means not just on-shoring to the United States. It does, but if we’re really serious about that, it also means expanding our relationships with allies like Japan, South Korea, India, the Philippines. And that’s an interesting debate to have because some on the right would say, “Okay, I want to decouple from China, but I also want less trade with all these other places.” You can’t have both those things at the same time. You can have one or the other. You can’t have both. And so, we have to acknowledge and be honest with ourselves that there are trade-offs to declaring independence from China. But the question is, what are the long-run benefits?
Now, you think about the other way to do this is strategic clarity. I think the way that you see World Wars often emerge is strategic ambiguity from two adversaries who don’t really know what the other side’s red line is or isn’t, and accidentally crosses those red lines. And I think we need to be much clearer with what are our hard red lines and what aren’t they. And I think that’s the single most effective way to make sure this doesn’t spiral into major world war.
And then, let’s talk about ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict on the terms that I just discussed with you before. Weakening the Russia-China Alliance not only reduces the risk that Russia becomes an aggressor, it also reduces the risk that China takes the risks that could escalate us to World War III as well. So I think that geopolitically, you got to look at these things holistically, that end of the Russia-Ukraine war in that peace deal deescalates not only the Russia-Ukraine conflict but the risk of a broader conflict that includes China as well, by also weakening China.
Vivek Ramaswamy
… of a broader conflict that includes China as well by also weakening China because Russia also has hypersonic missiles and missile capabilities that are ahead of that China’s. If Russia is no longer in the military alliance with China, that changes China’s calculus as well. So that’s kind of I think, more strategic vision we need in our foreign policy than we’ve had since certainly the Nixon era. I think that you need people who are going to be able to challenge the status quo, question the existing orthodoxies, the willingness to use levers to get great deals done that otherwise wouldn’t have gotten done. And that’s why I do think someone like Donald Trump in the presidency, and obviously I ran for president as an outsider and a businessman as well. I think this is an area, our foreign policy is one where we actually benefit from having business leaders in those roles rather than people who are shackled by the traditional political manner of thinking.
… of a broader conflict that includes China as well by also weakening China because Russia also has hypersonic missiles and missile capabilities that are ahead of that China’s. If Russia is no longer in the military alliance with China, that changes China’s calculus as well. So that’s kind of I think, more strategic vision we need in our foreign policy than we’ve had since certainly the Nixon era. I think that you need people who are going to be able to challenge the status quo, question the existing orthodoxies, the willingness to use levers to get great deals done that otherwise wouldn’t have gotten done. And that’s why I do think someone like Donald Trump in the presidency, and obviously I ran for president as an outsider and a businessman as well. I think this is an area, our foreign policy is one where we actually benefit from having business leaders in those roles rather than people who are shackled by the traditional political manner of thinking.
Lex Fridman
I think the thing you didn’t quite make clear, but I think implied is that we have to accept the red line that China provides of the one China policy.
I think the thing you didn’t quite make clear, but I think implied is that we have to accept the red line that China provides of the one China policy.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Both sides need to have their red lines, both sides need to have their red line. So we can get into specifics, but it’s going to vary depending on the circumstances. But the principle that I would give you is that we have to have a hard red line that’s clear. I think that that hard red line, and I was clear during my campaign on this, so I’ll say it again, is I think that we have to have a clear red line that China will not and should not for any time in the foreseeable future, annex Taiwan. I do think that for the United States, it probably is prudent right now not to suddenly upend the diplomatic policy we’ve adopted for decades of what is recognizing the one China policy in our position of quiet deference to that.
Both sides need to have their red lines, both sides need to have their red line. So we can get into specifics, but it’s going to vary depending on the circumstances. But the principle that I would give you is that we have to have a hard red line that’s clear. I think that that hard red line, and I was clear during my campaign on this, so I’ll say it again, is I think that we have to have a clear red line that China will not and should not for any time in the foreseeable future, annex Taiwan. I do think that for the United States, it probably is prudent right now not to suddenly upend the diplomatic policy we’ve adopted for decades of what is recognizing the one China policy in our position of quiet deference to that.
And understand that that may be the red line is the national recognition of Taiwan as an independent nation would be a red line that China would have. But we would have a red line to say that we do not in any circumstance tolerate the annexation by physical force and anytime in the foreseeable future when that’s against the interest of the United States of America. So those are examples, but the principle here is you asked how do we avoid major conflict with China? I think it starts with clear red lines on both sides. I think it starts with also lowering the stakes for the United States by making sure we’re not dependent on China for our modern way of life. And I think it also starts with ironically using a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine war as a way of weakening the Russia-China alliance, which in the other direction of weakening China has significant benefits to us as well.
Lex Fridman
But what are you do when china says very politely, ” We’re going to annex Taiwan whether you like it or not.”
But what are you do when china says very politely, ” We’re going to annex Taiwan whether you like it or not.”
Vivek Ramaswamy
Against the backdrop that I just laid out, that’s not going to happen. That wouldn’t happen if we actually make sure that we are crystal clear about what our red lines and priorities are. We’re also dependent on Taiwan right now for our own semiconductor supply chain. So China knows that’s going to draw us into serious conflict in that circumstance. So against the backdrop of clearly drawn red lines against the backdrop of Russia no longer automatically being in China’s camp, that’s a big lever. I think also strengthening our relationship with other allies where we have room to strengthen those relationships, like India. And I’m not just saying that because my name is Vivek Ramaswamy, right? I’m saying it because it’s strategically important to the United States to understand that God forbid, in a conflict scenario, China would perceive some risk to the Indian Ocean or the Andaman Sea no longer being reliable for getting Middle Eastern oil supplies.
Against the backdrop that I just laid out, that’s not going to happen. That wouldn’t happen if we actually make sure that we are crystal clear about what our red lines and priorities are. We’re also dependent on Taiwan right now for our own semiconductor supply chain. So China knows that’s going to draw us into serious conflict in that circumstance. So against the backdrop of clearly drawn red lines against the backdrop of Russia no longer automatically being in China’s camp, that’s a big lever. I think also strengthening our relationship with other allies where we have room to strengthen those relationships, like India. And I’m not just saying that because my name is Vivek Ramaswamy, right? I’m saying it because it’s strategically important to the United States to understand that God forbid, in a conflict scenario, China would perceive some risk to the Indian Ocean or the Andaman Sea no longer being reliable for getting Middle Eastern oil supplies.
There’s a lot of levers here, but I think that if we are both strategically clear with our allies and with our adversaries about what our red lines are, what our priorities are, reasonable deals that pull Russia out of the hands of China and vice versa, reasonable allies and relationships that cause China to question whether it can continue to have the same access to Middle Eastern oil supplies as it does today. And then clear red lines with China itself about what we definitely aren’t okay with and understand that they may have certain red lines to, that allows us, I think to still avoid what many people will call the unavoidable conflict, the Thucydides trap against the circumstance of when there’s a rising power against the backdrop of a declining power conflict always becomes inevitable. That’s a theory. It’s not a law of physics and I don’t think that, A, we have to be a declining power, and B, I don’t think that that has to necessarily result in major conflict with China here.
It’s going to require real leadership, leadership with a spine and you don’t have to judge based on international relations theory to form your view on this. Four years under Trump, we didn’t have major conflicts in the Middle East, in places like Russia, Ukraine. We were on the cusp of war with North Korea when Obama left office and Trump took over. Four years under Biden, less than four years under Biden and Harris, what do you have? Major conflicts in the Middle East. Major conflict in Russia, Ukraine, judged by the results. And I mean I would say that even if you’re somebody who disagrees with a lot of Donald Trump and you don’t like his style, if you’re single issues, you want to stay out of World War III, I think there’s a pretty clear case for why you go for Trump in this election.
Lex Fridman
So Prime Minister Modi, I think you’ve complimented him in a bunch of different directions, one of which is when you’re discussing nationalism.
So Prime Minister Modi, I think you’ve complimented him in a bunch of different directions, one of which is when you’re discussing nationalism.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Yeah, I believe that someone I’ve gotten to know actually reasonably well for example, recently is Giorgia Meloni, who’s a leader of Italy, told her the same thing. One of the things I love about her as a leader of Italy is that she does not apologize for the national identity of the country and that she stands for certain values uncompromisingly and she doesn’t give a second care about what the media has to say about it. One of the things I love last time I spoke to her when she was in the US when we sat down was she talked about she doesn’t even read the newspaper, she doesn’t read and watch the media and it allows her to make decisions that are best for the people.
Yeah, I believe that someone I’ve gotten to know actually reasonably well for example, recently is Giorgia Meloni, who’s a leader of Italy, told her the same thing. One of the things I love about her as a leader of Italy is that she does not apologize for the national identity of the country and that she stands for certain values uncompromisingly and she doesn’t give a second care about what the media has to say about it. One of the things I love last time I spoke to her when she was in the US when we sat down was she talked about she doesn’t even read the newspaper, she doesn’t read and watch the media and it allows her to make decisions that are best for the people.
And there are elements of that in Modi’s approach as well, which I respect about him, is he doesn’t apologize for the fact that India has a national identity and that the nation should be proud of it. But I’m not saying that because I’m proud of Meloni or Modi for their own countries. I’m American. I think there are lessons to learn from leaders who are proud of their own nation’s identity rather than apologizing for it. And I think it’s a big part of, it’s why I ran for president on a campaign centered on national pride. It’s also why I’m not only voting for but actively supporting Donald Trump because I do think he’s going to be the one that restores that missing national pride in the United States. And I touch on this as well in the book, there’s a chapter here, it says, “Nationalism isn’t a bad word.”
I think nationalism can be a very positive thing if it’s grounded in the actual true attributes of a nation. And in the United States that doesn’t mean no nationalism because that was not what the national identity of the United States was based on in the first place. But a civic nationalism grounded in our actual national ideals, that is who we are. And I think that that is something that we’ve gotten uncomfortable with in the countries to say that, “Oh, I’m proud of being American and I believe in American exceptionalism.” Somehow that’s looking down on others. No, I’m not looking down on anybody, but I’m proud of my own country. And I think Modi’s revived that spirit in India in a way that was missing for a long time, right? India had an inferiority complex, a psychological inferiority complex, but now to be proud of its national heritage and its national mythmaking and its national legacy and history.
And to say that every nation does have to have a kind of mythmaking about its past and to be proud of that, it’s like Malcolm X actually said this here in the United States, he said, “A nation without an appreciation for its history is like a tree without roots, it’s dead.” And I think that that’s true not just for the United States, I think it’s true for every other nation. I think leaders like Meloni in Italy, leaders like Modi in India have done a great job that I wish to bring that type of pride back in the United States. And whatever I do next, Lex, I’ll tell you this is I think reviving that sense of identity and pride, especially in the next generation is one of the most important things we can do for this country.
Will Vivek run in 2028?
Lex Fridman
Speaking of what you do next, any chance you run in 2028?
Speaking of what you do next, any chance you run in 2028?
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, I’m not going to rule it out. I mean that’s a long time from now and I’m most focused on what I can do in the next chapter for the country. I ran for president, a million things that I learned from that experience that you can only learn by doing it. It was very much a fire first aim later when getting into the race. There was no way I could have planned and plotted this out as somebody who was coming from the outside. I was 37 years old, came from the business world, so there was a lot that only could learn by actually doing it and I did, but I care about the same things that led me into the presidential race and I don’t think the issues have been solved. I think that we have a generation that is lost in the country. It’s not just young people.
Well, I’m not going to rule it out. I mean that’s a long time from now and I’m most focused on what I can do in the next chapter for the country. I ran for president, a million things that I learned from that experience that you can only learn by doing it. It was very much a fire first aim later when getting into the race. There was no way I could have planned and plotted this out as somebody who was coming from the outside. I was 37 years old, came from the business world, so there was a lot that only could learn by actually doing it and I did, but I care about the same things that led me into the presidential race and I don’t think the issues have been solved. I think that we have a generation that is lost in the country. It’s not just young people.
I think it’s all of us in some ways are hungry for purpose and meaning at a time in our history when the things that used to fill that void in our heart, they’re missing. And I think we need a president who both the right policies for the country seal the border, grow the economy, stay out of World War III, end rampant crime. Yes, we need the right policies, but we also need leaders who in a sustained way revive our national character, revive our sense of pride in this country, revive our identity as Americans, and I think that that need exists as much today as it did when I first ran for president. I don’t think it’s going to be automatically solved in just a few years. I think Donald Trump is the right person to carry that banner forward for the next four years.
But after that, we’ll see where the country is headed into 2028 and whatever I do, it’ll be whatever has a maximal positive impact on the country. I’ll also tell you that my laser focus maybe as distinct from other politicians on both sides is to take America to the next level, to move beyond our victimhood culture, to restore our culture of excellence. We got to shut down that nanny state, the entitlement state, the regulatory state, the foreign policy nanny state, shut it down and revive who we really are as Americans, and I’m as passionate about that as ever. But the next step is not running for president. The next step is what happens in the next four years, and that’s why over the next four weeks I’m focused on doing whatever I can to make sure we succeed in this election.
Lex Fridman
Well, I hope you run because this was made clear on the stage in the primary debates. You have a unique clarity and honesty in expressing the ideas you stand for and it would be nice to see that. I would also like to see the same thing on the other side, which would make for some badass, interesting debates.
Well, I hope you run because this was made clear on the stage in the primary debates. You have a unique clarity and honesty in expressing the ideas you stand for and it would be nice to see that. I would also like to see the same thing on the other side, which would make for some badass, interesting debates.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I would love nothing more than a kick-ass set of top-tier Democrat candidates. After four years of Donald Trump, we have a primary filled with actually people who have real visions for the country on both sides, and the people of this country can choose between those competing visions without insult or injury being the way. I would love nothing more than to see that in 2028.
I would love nothing more than a kick-ass set of top-tier Democrat candidates. After four years of Donald Trump, we have a primary filled with actually people who have real visions for the country on both sides, and the people of this country can choose between those competing visions without insult or injury being the way. I would love nothing more than to see that in 2028.
Lex Fridman
Who do you think? So for me, I would love to see in some kind of future where it’s you versus somebody like Tim Walz. So to Tim Walz, maybe I’m lacking in knowledge, is first of all, a good dude, has similar to you, strongly held if not radical ideas of how to make progress in this country. So to just be on stage and debate honestly about the ideas, there’s a tension between those ideas. Is there other people? Shapiro’s interesting also.
Who do you think? So for me, I would love to see in some kind of future where it’s you versus somebody like Tim Walz. So to Tim Walz, maybe I’m lacking in knowledge, is first of all, a good dude, has similar to you, strongly held if not radical ideas of how to make progress in this country. So to just be on stage and debate honestly about the ideas, there’s a tension between those ideas. Is there other people? Shapiro’s interesting also.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I would like to take on in earnest, in civil but contested context of a debate. Who do we want to take on? You want to take on somebody who disagrees with you but still has deep ideology of their own. I think John Fetterman is pretty interesting, right? He’s demonstrated himself to be somebody who is thoughtful, able to change his mind on positions, but not in some sort of fake flip-floppity, flippity-floppity way. But in a thoughtful evolution, somebody’s been through personal struggles, somebody who I deeply disagree with on a lot of his views and most of his views. But who I can at least say he comes across at least as somebody who has been through that torturous process of really examining your beliefs and convictions and has when necessary, been able to preach to his own tribe where he thinks they’re wrong.
I would like to take on in earnest, in civil but contested context of a debate. Who do we want to take on? You want to take on somebody who disagrees with you but still has deep ideology of their own. I think John Fetterman is pretty interesting, right? He’s demonstrated himself to be somebody who is thoughtful, able to change his mind on positions, but not in some sort of fake flip-floppity, flippity-floppity way. But in a thoughtful evolution, somebody’s been through personal struggles, somebody who I deeply disagree with on a lot of his views and most of his views. But who I can at least say he comes across at least as somebody who has been through that torturous process of really examining your beliefs and convictions and has when necessary, been able to preach to his own tribe where he thinks they’re wrong.
I think it’s interesting. I think that you have in a number of other leaders probably emerging at lower levels on the left. Not everybody’s going to necessarily come from Washington DC. In fact, the longer they’re there, the more they in some ways get polluted by it. I think the governor of Colorado, he’s an interesting guy. He’s got a more libertarian tendency. I don’t know as much about his views on it from a national perspective, but it’s intriguing to see somebody who has at least libertarian freedom-oriented tendencies within the Democratic Party. I think that there are a number of, I mean, I don’t foresee him running for president, but I had a debate last year when I was running for president with Ro Khanna who say what you will about him. He’s an highly intelligent person and is somebody who is at least willing to buck the consensus of his party when necessary.
I think he recently, I would say lambasted, he phrased it very delicately, but criticized Kamala Harris’s proposed tax on unrealized capital gains. So I like people who are willing to challenge the orthodoxies in their own party because it says they actually have convictions. And so whoever the Democrats put up, I hope it’s someone like that. And for my part I have and continue to have beliefs that will challenge Republicans, that on the face of it may not be the policies that poll on paper as the policies you’re supposed to adopt as a Republican candidate, but what a true leader does doesn’t just tell people what they want to hear. You tell people what they need to hear and you tell people what your actual convictions are. And this idea that I don’t want to create a right-wing entitlement state or a nanny state, I want to shut it down.
That challenges the precept positions of where a lot of the conservative movement is right now. I don’t think the bill to cap credit card interest rates is a good idea because that’s a price control just like Kamala Harris’s price controls and it’ll reduce access to credit. I don’t think that we want a crony capitalist estate showering private benefits on selected industries that favor us or that we want to expand the CFPB or the FTC’s remit, and somehow we’re going to trust it because it’s under our watch. No, I believe in shutting it down. That challenges a lot of the current direction of the conservative movement. I believe in certain issues that, or maybe even outside the scope of what Republicans currently care about right now.
One of the things that I oppose, for example, is this is not a top issue in American politics, but just to give you a sense for how I think and view the world, I’m against factory farming of a large scale of, you could sort of say putting the mistreatment of, it’s one thing to say that you need it for your sustenance and that’s great. But it’s another to say that you have to do it in a factory farming setting that gives special exemptions from historical laws that have existed that are the product of crony capitalism. I’m against crony capitalism in all its forms. I’m against the influence of mega money in politics. I don’t think that’s been good either for Democrats or Republicans. Some of those views I think are not necessarily the traditional Republican orthodoxy reading chapter and verse from what the Republican Party platform has been. It’s not against the Republican Party platform, but it’s asking what the future of our movement is.
Lex Fridman
Some of these things are hard, like getting money out of politics.
Some of these things are hard, like getting money out of politics.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Getting mega money, getting mega money.
Getting mega money, getting mega money.
Lex Fridman
The mega money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so long as it exists, you got to play the game. I mean, if you’re going to play to win, I think one of the things I realized is that you just can’t compete without it, but you want to win the game in order to change the game. And I think that that’s something that I keep in mind as well.
The mega money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so long as it exists, you got to play the game. I mean, if you’re going to play to win, I think one of the things I realized is that you just can’t compete without it, but you want to win the game in order to change the game. And I think that that’s something that I keep in mind as well.
Lex Fridman
You have written a lot, you’re exceptionally productive. But even just looking book-wise written basically a book a year for the last four years. When you’re writing, when you’re thinking about how to solve the problems of the world to develop your policy, how do you think?
You have written a lot, you’re exceptionally productive. But even just looking book-wise written basically a book a year for the last four years. When you’re writing, when you’re thinking about how to solve the problems of the world to develop your policy, how do you think?
Vivek Ramaswamy
I need quiet time, extended periods of it that are separated from the rush of the day to day or the travel actually think a lot better when I’m working out and physically active. So if I’m running, playing tennis, lifting, somehow for me, that really opens up my mind and then I need a significant amount of time after that with a notebook. Usually carry around a notebook everywhere I go and write it down in there.
I need quiet time, extended periods of it that are separated from the rush of the day to day or the travel actually think a lot better when I’m working out and physically active. So if I’m running, playing tennis, lifting, somehow for me, that really opens up my mind and then I need a significant amount of time after that with a notebook. Usually carry around a notebook everywhere I go and write it down in there.
Lex Fridman
Is the notebook full of chaotic thoughts or is it structured? Does it-
Is the notebook full of chaotic thoughts or is it structured? Does it-
Vivek Ramaswamy
Sometimes it’s chaotic, sometimes it’s structured. It’s a little bit of both. Sometimes I have a thought that I know I don’t want to forget later, I’ll immediately jot it down. Other times on the flight over here, I had a much more structured layout of, I got a lot of different projects in the air, for example, and I cross pollinate, I was in the shower this morning, had a bunch of thoughts, collected those on my plane ride over here. So I think that writing is something in all of its forms that helps me. It’s one of the things actually helped me this year was actually writing this book. You’re going through a presidential campaign, you’re going at super speed. And if I was to do the presidential campaign again, the thing I would do is actually to take more structured breaks. I don’t mean breaks isn’t just like vacations, but I mean breaks to reflect on what’s actually happening. Probably the biggest mistake I made is last time around heading into the first debate, I was like in nine different states over seven days.
Sometimes it’s chaotic, sometimes it’s structured. It’s a little bit of both. Sometimes I have a thought that I know I don’t want to forget later, I’ll immediately jot it down. Other times on the flight over here, I had a much more structured layout of, I got a lot of different projects in the air, for example, and I cross pollinate, I was in the shower this morning, had a bunch of thoughts, collected those on my plane ride over here. So I think that writing is something in all of its forms that helps me. It’s one of the things actually helped me this year was actually writing this book. You’re going through a presidential campaign, you’re going at super speed. And if I was to do the presidential campaign again, the thing I would do is actually to take more structured breaks. I don’t mean breaks isn’t just like vacations, but I mean breaks to reflect on what’s actually happening. Probably the biggest mistake I made is last time around heading into the first debate, I was like in nine different states over seven days.
I would’ve just taken that as a pause where halfway through you’ve established relevance, now make sure the country sees who you actually are in full rather than just the momentum competitive driven version of you. And I just think that taking those moments to just take stock of where you are, do some writing. I didn’t do much writing during the presidential campaign. I enjoy writing. It’s part of how I center myself. It’s part of what this book allowed me to do is, okay, I ran that whirlwind of a campaign. The first thing I started doing after I collected myself for a couple of weeks was take the pen and start writing. And I was committed to writing that book. Whether or not anybody read it, I was just writing it for myself. And actually it started in a very different form. It was very personal reflection oriented. So most of that, funny enough I’ve learned about writing the books, Lex, is-
Lex Fridman
Just edit it out.
Just edit it out.
Vivek Ramaswamy
It just didn’t end up in the book because it went in a different direction than what’s interesting for a publisher to publish. And so for each of my books, the things that I started writing ended up never in the book anyway, just because the topic ended up morphing. But the journey that led me to write this book, a lot of it in this book is still in there. This is my fourth book in four years. You’re right. And I hope it’s the most important one, but it is certainly the product of an honest reflection that whatever it might do for the reader, it helped me to write it.
It just didn’t end up in the book because it went in a different direction than what’s interesting for a publisher to publish. And so for each of my books, the things that I started writing ended up never in the book anyway, just because the topic ended up morphing. But the journey that led me to write this book, a lot of it in this book is still in there. This is my fourth book in four years. You’re right. And I hope it’s the most important one, but it is certainly the product of an honest reflection that whatever it might do for the reader, it helped me to write it.
And I think that’s one of the things that I learned from this campaign is not just all the policy lessons, but even just as a matter of personal practice, the ability to take spaces of time to not only physically challenge yourself, work out, et cetera, but to give yourself the space to reflect, to recenter yourself on the why. Had I done that, I think I would’ve been even more centered on the mission the whole time. Rather than you get attacked on the way you’re thrown off your tilt or thrown off your balance, it becomes a lot harder for someone else to do that to you if you’ve really centered yourself on your own purpose. It’s probably one of my biggest learnings.
Approach to debates
Lex Fridman
So you’ve mentioned the first primary debate, so more than almost basically anybody I’ve ever seen you step into some really intense debates, And you’re on podcasts in general in all kinds of walks of life, whether it’s debates with sort of protestors or debates with people that really disagree with you, like the radical opposite of you. What’s the philosophy behind that, and what’s the psychology of being able to be calm through all of that, which you seem to be able to do.
So you’ve mentioned the first primary debate, so more than almost basically anybody I’ve ever seen you step into some really intense debates, And you’re on podcasts in general in all kinds of walks of life, whether it’s debates with sort of protestors or debates with people that really disagree with you, like the radical opposite of you. What’s the philosophy behind that, and what’s the psychology of being able to be calm through all of that, which you seem to be able to do.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Well, I enjoy debate and for me, I think just in ordinary life, forget about a formal debate setting. Whenever I’ve received criticism or a contrary view, my first impulse is always, “Are they right?” I mean it’s always a possibility, right? And most of the time what happens is you understand the other side’s argument, but you emerge with a stronger conviction in your own belief, you know your own beliefs better if you can state the best argument for the other side, but sometimes you do change your mind, and I think that that’s happened over the course of my life as well. I think no one’s a thinking human being unless that happens once in a while too. And so anyway, just the idea of the pursuit of truth through open debate and inquiry, that’s always just been part of my identity, part of who I am. I’m wired that way.
Well, I enjoy debate and for me, I think just in ordinary life, forget about a formal debate setting. Whenever I’ve received criticism or a contrary view, my first impulse is always, “Are they right?” I mean it’s always a possibility, right? And most of the time what happens is you understand the other side’s argument, but you emerge with a stronger conviction in your own belief, you know your own beliefs better if you can state the best argument for the other side, but sometimes you do change your mind, and I think that that’s happened over the course of my life as well. I think no one’s a thinking human being unless that happens once in a while too. And so anyway, just the idea of the pursuit of truth through open debate and inquiry, that’s always just been part of my identity, part of who I am. I’m wired that way.
I thrive on it, I enjoy it. Even my relationships with my closest friends are built around heated debates and deep-seated disagreements. And I just think that’s beautiful, not just about human relationships, but it’s particularly beautiful about America, right? Because it’s part of the culture of this country more so than other countries in China, India, Asian cultures even a lot of European cultures are very different where that’s considered not genteel behavior. It’s not the respectful behavior. Whereas for us, part of what makes this country great is you could disagree like hell and still get together at the dinner table at the end of it. I think we’ve lost some of that, but I’m on a bit of a mission to bring that back. And so whether it’s in politics or not, I’m committed in that next step, whatever the path is over the next four years, one of the things I’m committed to doing is making sure that I go out of my way to talk to people who actually disagree with me. And I think it’s a big part of how we’re going to save our country.
Lex Fridman
Are they right? Is a thing I actually literally see you do. So you are listening to the person.
Are they right? Is a thing I actually literally see you do. So you are listening to the person.
Vivek Ramaswamy
For my own benefit, to be honest, selfish.
For my own benefit, to be honest, selfish.
Lex Fridman
You also don’t lose your shit. So you don’t take it personally. You don’t get emotional, but you get emotional sort of in a positive way. You get passionate, but you don’t get… I’ve never seen you broken to where they get you outraged, probably because you just love the heat.
You also don’t lose your shit. So you don’t take it personally. You don’t get emotional, but you get emotional sort of in a positive way. You get passionate, but you don’t get… I’ve never seen you broken to where they get you outraged, probably because you just love the heat.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I love the heat and I’m a curious person, so I’m always curious about what’s motivating the person on the other side. That curiosity I think is actually the best antidote because if you’re just trying to stay calm in the face of somebody attacking you, that’s kind of fake. But if you’re kind of curious about them, genuinely just wondering, I think most people are good people inherently. We all maybe get misguided from time to time, but what is it that’s moving that person to go in such a different direction than you?
I love the heat and I’m a curious person, so I’m always curious about what’s motivating the person on the other side. That curiosity I think is actually the best antidote because if you’re just trying to stay calm in the face of somebody attacking you, that’s kind of fake. But if you’re kind of curious about them, genuinely just wondering, I think most people are good people inherently. We all maybe get misguided from time to time, but what is it that’s moving that person to go in such a different direction than you?
I think as long as you’re curious about that, I mean the climate change protestors that have interrupted my events, I’m as fascinated by the psychology of what’s moving them and what they might be hungry for as I am concerned about rebutting the content of what they’re saying to me. And I think that that’s certainly something I care to revive. We don’t talk about in politics that much, but reviving that sense of curiosity I think is in a certain way, one of the ways we’re going to be able to disagree, but still remain friends and fellow citizens at the end of it.
Lex Fridman
I agree with you. I think fundamentally most people are good. And one of the things I love most about humans is the very thing you said, which is curiosity. I think we should lean into that.
I agree with you. I think fundamentally most people are good. And one of the things I love most about humans is the very thing you said, which is curiosity. I think we should lean into that.
Vivek Ramaswamy
You’re a curious person. I know this podcast is basically born of your curiosity, I’m sure. And so I just think we need more of that in America that kind of… Remember when I talked about our founding fathers, we were joking about it, but they were inventors, they were writers, they were political theorists, they were founders of a nation. They kind of had that boundless curiosity too. And I think part of what’s happened culturally in the countries we’ve gotten to this place where we’ve been told that, “Stay in your lane. You don’t have an expert degree in that, therefore you can’t have an opinion about it.” I don’t know. I think it’s a little bit un-American in terms of the culture of it.
You’re a curious person. I know this podcast is basically born of your curiosity, I’m sure. And so I just think we need more of that in America that kind of… Remember when I talked about our founding fathers, we were joking about it, but they were inventors, they were writers, they were political theorists, they were founders of a nation. They kind of had that boundless curiosity too. And I think part of what’s happened culturally in the countries we’ve gotten to this place where we’ve been told that, “Stay in your lane. You don’t have an expert degree in that, therefore you can’t have an opinion about it.” I don’t know. I think it’s a little bit un-American in terms of the culture of it.
And yeah, it’s one of the things I like about you and why I was looking forward to this conversation too, is it’s cool to have intellectual interests that span sports to culture, to politics, to philosophy. And it’s not like you just have to be an expert trained in one of those things to be able to engage in it, but actually maybe, just maybe you might even be better at each of those things because you’re curious about the other, the Renaissance man, if you will. I think we’ve lost a little bit of that concept in America, but it’s certainly something that is important to me. And this year it’s been kind of cool. After leaving the campaign, I’ve been doing a wide range of things. I’ve been picking up my tennis game again. I practiced at the Ohio State-
Lex Fridman
You’re damn good at tennis. I was watching you-
You’re damn good at tennis. I was watching you-
Vivek Ramaswamy
I used to be better, but I’m picking it up again.
I used to be better, but I’m picking it up again.
Lex Fridman
Somebody online was trying to correctly, I think you shot a very particular angle of that video. I think they were criticizing your backhand was weak potentially because you’re-
Somebody online was trying to correctly, I think you shot a very particular angle of that video. I think they were criticizing your backhand was weak potentially because you’re-
Vivek Ramaswamy
That would be fair criticism. But it’s gotten better again. It’s gotten better recently. I’ve been playing, I’ve been practicing with the Ohio State team in the morning. They’re like number one in the country or close to it. Now the guys on the team play, but there’s a couple coaches who were recently on the team, one of whom used to be, a guy used to play within the juniors who invited me out. So I hit with them in the mornings alongside the team. My goal-
That would be fair criticism. But it’s gotten better again. It’s gotten better recently. I’ve been playing, I’ve been practicing with the Ohio State team in the morning. They’re like number one in the country or close to it. Now the guys on the team play, but there’s a couple coaches who were recently on the team, one of whom used to be, a guy used to play within the juniors who invited me out. So I hit with them in the mornings alongside the team. My goal-
Lex Fridman
Oh, don’t say it.
Oh, don’t say it.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I should be careful here. Oh no, my hips are telling others, so I’ve been playing so many days a week-
I should be careful here. Oh no, my hips are telling others, so I’ve been playing so many days a week-
Lex Fridman
No, no, please don’t.
No, no, please don’t.
Vivek Ramaswamy
… that I set a goal for myself to play in a particular tournament, but we’ll see if that happens or not.
… that I set a goal for myself to play in a particular tournament, but we’ll see if that happens or not.
Lex Fridman
No, no.
No, no.
Vivek Ramaswamy
But regardless if it’s been fun to get back into tennis, I was an executive producer in a movie, something I’ve never done before. It was called City of Dreams. It’s about a story of a young man who was trafficked into the United States. It’s a thriller, it’s a very cool movie to be a part of. I have actually started a couple companies, one company in particular that I think is going to be significant this year, guiding some of the other businesses that I’ve gotten off the ground in the past. So for me, I’m re-energized now where I was involved in the thick of politics for a full year there. And getting a little bit of oxygen outside of politics, doing some things in the private sector has actually given me a renewed sense of energy to get back into driving change through public service.
But regardless if it’s been fun to get back into tennis, I was an executive producer in a movie, something I’ve never done before. It was called City of Dreams. It’s about a story of a young man who was trafficked into the United States. It’s a thriller, it’s a very cool movie to be a part of. I have actually started a couple companies, one company in particular that I think is going to be significant this year, guiding some of the other businesses that I’ve gotten off the ground in the past. So for me, I’m re-energized now where I was involved in the thick of politics for a full year there. And getting a little bit of oxygen outside of politics, doing some things in the private sector has actually given me a renewed sense of energy to get back into driving change through public service.
Lex Fridman
Well, it’s been fun watching you do all these fascinating things, but I do hope that you have a future in politics as well, because it’s nice to have somebody that has rigorously developed their ideas and is honest about presenting them and is willing to debate those ideas out in public space. So I would love for you and people like you to represent the future of American politics. So Vivek, thank you so much. For every time I’m swiveling this chair, I’m thinking of Thomas Jefferson.
Well, it’s been fun watching you do all these fascinating things, but I do hope that you have a future in politics as well, because it’s nice to have somebody that has rigorously developed their ideas and is honest about presenting them and is willing to debate those ideas out in public space. So I would love for you and people like you to represent the future of American politics. So Vivek, thank you so much. For every time I’m swiveling this chair, I’m thinking of Thomas Jefferson.
Vivek Ramaswamy
It’s good. That was my goal.
It’s good. That was my goal.
Lex Fridman
So big shout out to Thomas Jefferson for the swivel chair, and thank you so much for talking today, Vivek. This was fun.
So big shout out to Thomas Jefferson for the swivel chair, and thank you so much for talking today, Vivek. This was fun.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Thank you, man. One final fact on Thomas Jefferson, whether you cut this or not.
Thank you, man. One final fact on Thomas Jefferson, whether you cut this or not.
Lex Fridman
Of course.
Of course.
Vivek Ramaswamy
He wrote 16,000 essays in his life, letters, right? So he said, “I’ve written four books in four years.” That is nothing compared to how prolific this guy was. Anyway, anyway, good stuff, man. Thanks for having me.
He wrote 16,000 essays in his life, letters, right? So he said, “I’ve written four books in four years.” That is nothing compared to how prolific this guy was. Anyway, anyway, good stuff, man. Thanks for having me.
Lex Fridman
Neither of us will ever live up to anything close to Thomas Jefferson.
Neither of us will ever live up to anything close to Thomas Jefferson.
Vivek Ramaswamy
I love your curiosity, man. Thanks for reading the book and appreciated your feedback on it as well. And hopefully we’ll do this again sometime.
I love your curiosity, man. Thanks for reading the book and appreciated your feedback on it as well. And hopefully we’ll do this again sometime.
Lex Fridman
Yep. Thank you brother.
Yep. Thank you brother.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Thanks dude.
Thanks dude.
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from George Orwell. ” Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from George Orwell. ” Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Transcript for Vejas Liulevicius: Communism, Marxism, Nazism, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler | Lex Fridman Podcast #444
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #444 with Vejas Liulevicius.
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You put very well some of the implications of this case study in how things look in the abstract versus in practice, and those phenomena were going to haunt the rest of the experience of the Soviet Union. The whole notion that up and down the chain of command, everybody is falsifying or tinkering with or purifying the statistics or their reports in order not to look bad and not to have vengeance visited upon them reaches the point where nobody, in spite of the pretense of comprehensive knowledge, there’s a state planning agency that creates five-year plans for the economy as a whole and which is supposed to have accurate statistics, all of this is founded upon a foundation of sand.
A deliberate plan to bring class conflict and bring civil war and then heighten it in the countryside does damage, and not least of that is this phenomenon of a negative selection. Those who have most enterprise, those who are most entrepreneurial, those who have most self-discipline, those who are best organized will be winnowed again and again and again, sending the message that mediocrity is comparatively much safer than talent.
Hitler and Himmler envisioned permanent war on the Eastern Front, not a peace treaty, not a settlement, not a border, but a constant moving of the border every generation hundreds of miles east in order to keep winning more and more living space and with analogy to other frontiers to always give more fighting experience and more training and aggression to generation after generation of German soldiers. In terms of nightmarish visions, this one’s right up there.
At the same time, in the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and his colleague Friedrich Engels also suggested that there was a role for special individuals who might even if history was still moving in this predetermined direction, might give it an extra push, might play a heroic role in that process. And I think that these two ideas added together, the notion that there is a science of revolution that suggests that you can move in a deliberate and meaningful, rational way towards the end of history and the resolution of all conflicts, a total liberation of the human person and that moreover that was inevitable, that that was pre-programmed and destined in the order of things, when you add to that the notion that there’s also room for heroism and the individual role, this ended up being tremendously powerful as a combination.
Earlier thinkers who were socialists had already dreamt of or projected futures where all conflict would be resolved and human life would achieve some sort of perfection. Marx added these other elements that made it far more powerful than the earlier versions that he decried as merely utopian socialism.
That said, hidden among Marx’s insistence that there are laws and structures as history moves through class conflict, modes of production towards its ultimate goal of a comprehensive final revolution that will see all exploitation overthrown and people finally being freed from necessity, smuggled in among those things are most definitely utopian elements. And there, they come especially at the end in which Marx sketches the notion of what things will look like after the revolution has resolved all problems.
There, vagueness sets in. It’s clear that it’s a blessed state that’s being talked about. People no longer exploiting one another, people no longer subject to necessity or poverty, but instead enjoying all of the productivity of industrialization that hitherto had been put to private profit now collectively owned and deployed. The notion that one will be able to work at one job in the morning and then engage in leisure activity at yet another fulfilling job in the afternoon. All of this free of any contradictions, free of necessity, free of the ordinary irritations that we experience in our the ordinary lives, that’s deeply utopian. The difference was that Marx charted a route towards that outcome that presented itself as cutting-edge science and moreover having the full credibility that science commanded so much, especially in the 19th and early 20th century.
In the case of Hegel, in this very Prussian and German context, he identified the realization of freedom also with the growth of the state because he thought that governments are the ones that are going to be able to deliver on laws and on the ideal of a state of the rule of law, in German the Rechtsstaat. That was a noble dream. At the same time, as we recognize from our perspective, state power has been put to all sorts of purposes besides guaranteeing the rule of law in our own times.
What Marx did was to take this characteristic insistence of Hegel that history is moving in a meaningful and discernible way towards the realization of an idea and flipped it on its head. Marx insisted that Hegel had so much that was right in his thinking, but what he had neglected to keep in mind was that in fact, history is based on matter. So hence, dialectical materialism, dialectical referring to things proceeding by clashes or conflict towards an ever greater realization of some essential idea.
And so Marx adapts a lot of ideas of Hegel. You can recognize entire rhetorical maneuvers that are indebted to that earlier training, but now taken in a very different direction. What remained though was the confidence of being on the right side of history. And there are few things that are as intoxicating as being convinced that your actions not only are right in the abstract, but are also destined to be successful.
And so Marx was able in this spirit that he avowed was very scientific to demarcate stages of historical transformation, primitive communism in the prehistoric period, then moving towards what was called state slavery. That’s to say the early civilizations deploying human resources and ordering them by all powerful monarchs. Then private slavery in the ancient period. And then moving to feudalism in the Middle Ages. And then here’s where Marx is able to deliver a pronouncement about his own times, seeing that the present day is the penultimate, the next to last stage of this historical development, because the feudal system of the Middle Ages and the dominance of the aristocracy has been overcome, has been displaced by the often heroic achievements, astonishing achievements in commerce and in world-building of the middle class, the bourgeoisie, who have taken the world into their own hands and are engaged in class conflict with the class below them, which is the working class or the proletariat.
And so this sort of conflict also, by the way, obtains within classes, so the bourgeoisie are going to be gravediggers Marx announces of their own supremacy because they’re also competing against one another. And members who don’t survive that competition get pressed down into the subordinate working class, which grows and grows and grows to the point where at some future moment, the inevitable explosion will come and a swift revolution will overturn this penultimate stage of human history and usher in instead the dictatorship of the working class and then the abolition of all classes because with only one class remaining, everyone is finally unified and without those internal contradictions that had marked class conflict before.
And hence, we arrive at Marx’s tantalizing promise that there will be a period where it will be necessary to have centralized control and there might have to be, as he puts it, despotic inroads against property in order to bring this revolution to pass. But then afterwards, the state, because it represents everybody rather than representing particular class interests that are in conflict with other classes, the state will eventually wither away, so there won’t be need for it.
Now, that’s not to say that pure stasis arrives or that the stabilization equals being frozen in time. It’s not as if that is what things will look like. But instead, the big issues will be settled and henceforth people will be able to enjoy lives of, as he would consider it, in authentic freedom without necessity, without poverty as a result of this blessed state that’s been arrived at.
In the way he saw this climax was that as things did not stay the same, the condition of the working class was constantly getting worse and hence their revolutionary potential was growing. And at the same time, the expropriators, the bourgeoisie, were also facing diminishing returns as they competed against one another with more and more wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and more and more elements of what had been the middle class detached from the ruling class and being pressed down into the working class. For Marx, this is really a key part. I mean, it’s a key part of this whole ratchet effect that’s going to produce this final historical explosion.
And in German, the word given to that process was verehlendung, which is very evocative. Elend means misery, so it’s the growing misery. When this gets translated into English, the results are never quite as evocative or satisfactory. The words that get used are immiseration or pauperization, meaning more and more people are being turned into paupers. But for Marx, that prediction is really key.
And even in his own lifetime, there were already hints that in fact, if you looked sociologically at the really developed working classes in places like Great Britain or Germany, that process was not playing out as he had expected. In fact, although there had been enormous dislocations and tremendous suffering in the early chaotic, Wild West stages of capitalism and of industrialization, there had been reform movements as well. And there had been unions which had sought to carve out rules and agreements with employers for how the conditions under which workers labored might be ameliorated.
Moreover, the middle class rather than dwindling and dwindling, seemed to actually be strengthening and growing in numbers or the appearance of new kinds of people like white-collar workers or technical experts. So already in Marx’s own lifetime, and then especially in what follows Marx’s lifetime, this becomes a real problem because it puts a stick into the spokes of this particular historical prediction.
And so it’s a great mix of ideas, ideologies, the old and the new religious ideas, religious revivals, as well as demands for secularization. And stepping into all of this are Marx and Engels together in what has been called, I think with justice, one of the most important and influential intellectual partnerships of history.
They were very different men. They were both German by origin. Marx had trained as an academic. He had married the daughter of a baron. Because of his radical ideas, he had foreclosed or just found himself cut off from a possible academic career and went the route of radical journalism. Engels was very different. Engels was the son of an industrialist and the family owned factories in Germany and in England. So he was most definitely not a member of the proletariat that he and Marx were celebrating as so significant in their future historical role.
There were also huge differences in character between these men. Marx, when people met him, they were astonished by his energy and his dynamism. They also saw him as a man who felt determined to dominate arguments. He wanted to win arguments and was not one to settle for compromise or a middle road. He was disorderly in his personal habits. We might mention among other things, that he impregnated the family maid and didn’t accept responsibility for the child. He was also not inclined to undertake regular employment in order to support his growing family. That’s where Engels came in. Engels essentially from his family fortune and then from his journalism afterwards supported both himself and the Marx family for decades. And so in a sense, Engels made things happen.
In the mysterious way that friendships work, the very differences between these men made them formidable as a dynamic duo because they balanced off one another’s idiosyncrasies and turned what might’ve been faults into potential strengths. British historian, A.J.P. Taylor always has a lovely turn of phrase, even when he’s wrong about a historical issue. In this case, he was right. He said that Engels had charm and brilliance, Marx was the genius. And Engels saw himself as definitely the junior partner in this relationship. But here’s the paradox. Without Engels, pretty clearly Marx would not have gone on to have the sort of lasting historical impact in the world of ideas that he had.
And it’s very true, as you point out, that Germany is intended to be the place where these predictions will play out, also in Britain, also in France, also eventually in the United States. But it’s Germany by virtue of its central location and then its rapid development later than Britain or France in industrialization give it the special role in Marx’s worldview.
And so it’s a lasting irony or a central irony of this whole story that when a government establishes itself that claims to be following Marx’s prescriptions and realizing his vision, it happens in the wreckage of the Russian Empire, a place that did not match the requirements of being industrialized, developed, well on its way in this historical process. And nobody knew this better than the Bolsheviks. Lenin and his colleagues had a keen sense that what they were doing, exciting as it was, was a gamble. It was a risk because in fact, the revolution to really take hold had to seize power in Germany. And that’s why immediately after taking power, they’re not sure they’re going to last. Their hope, their promise of salvation is that a workers’ revolution will erupt in Germany, defeated Germany in order to link up with the one that has been launched in this unlikely Russian location and henceforth great things will follow that do hue to Marx’s historical vision.
The last thing to mention about this is that this predominance of Germany in the thinking of Marx had two other reflections. One was that German socialists and later communists organize in order to fulfill Marx’s vision and they produce something that leaves other Westerners in awe in the late 19th century. And that’s the building of a strong German workers movement and a Social Democratic Party. That Social Democratic Party by 1912 is the largest party in German politics by vote. And there’s the possibility they might even come to power without needing radical revolution, which again, also goes against Marx’s original vision of the necessity for a revolution. Workers around the world, or rather radical socialists look with admiration and awe at what the Germans have achieved and they see themselves as trying to do what the Germans have done.
The final point is growing up during the Cold War, one thought that, well, if you want to represent somebody as being a communist, that person has to have a Russian accent, because Russia after all, the homeland of this form of government, the Soviet Union, that must be the point of origin. Before the Bolsheviks seized power, in order to really be a serious radical socialist, you needed to read German because you needed to read Marx, and you needed to read Kautsky, and you needed to read Bernstein and other thinkers in this tradition. And it’s only after the Soviet seizure of power that this all changes. So there’s lots of Marx of that phenomenon.
So Bakunin is part of a broader movement of socialists and anarchists who were demanding change and envisioning really fundamental transformation, but his particular anarchist vision steers him into conflict with Marx, and he makes some prophetic remarks about the problems with the system that Marx is proposing. You should add to this that the very fact that Marx is a German by background and Bakunin is Russian adds a further nationalist or element of ethnic difference there. Bakunin warned that a sort of creeping German authoritarianism might insinuate its way into a movement that hewed too closely to having hierarchies in the struggle to overthrow hierarchies, and his anarchist convictions are not in question here. They led him into conflict with Marx, and Marx railed against him, denounced him, and eventually had him expelled from The International.
One of the things though that also makes Bakunin so significant is Bakunin is the first in a longer series of approaches between anarchists and communists where they try to make common cause, and you have to say that in every case, it ends badly for the anarchists, because the communist vision in particular, especially in its Leninist version, argued for discipline and a tightly organized professional revolutionary movement. The anarchists who sought to make common cause with communists, whether it was in the days of the Russian Revolution or the Russian Civil War, or whether it was then in the Spanish Civil War, the anarchists found themselves targeted by the communists precisely because of their skepticism about what turned out to be an absolutely key element in the Leninist prescription for a successful revolution.
Another key point in all of this is that anarchy means something different to different people as a term, and so when you point out quite correctly that we have an anarchic international situation, that’s the Hobbesian model of the war of all against all, where man is a wolf to man. Generally, except if you’re talking about nihilists in the Russian revolutionary tradition, anarchists see anarchy as a blessed state and one where finally, people will be freed from the distorting influence of hierarchies, traditional beliefs, subjugation, inequalities. So for them, anarchy growing out of the liberation of the human being is seen as a positive good and peaceful.
Now, that’s at odds with the prescription of someone like Bakunin for how to get there. He sees overthrow as being necessary on the route to that, but as we point out, it’s absolutely key to this entire dynamic that to be an anarchist means that your efforts are not going to be organized the way a disciplined and tightly organized revolutionary movement would be.
Reinhold Niebuhr back in the 1930s had an article in The Atlantic magazine that talked about the Soviet Union’s communism as a religion. Eric Voegelin, a German-American scholar who fled the Nazis and relocated to Louisiana State University and wrote tomes about the new phenomenon of political religions in the modern period. And he saw fascism and Nazism and Soviet communism as bearing the stamp of political religions, meaning ideologies that promised what an earlier age would’ve understood in religious terms. Voegelin called this the eschaton and said that these end times, the eschaton, was being promised in the here and now, being made imminent, and he warned against that saying the results are likely to be disastrous.
And among the things I saw, there was a museum of atheism that had been established in a church that had been ripped apart from inside and was meant to embody the official stance of atheism. And I remember being baffled by the museum on the inside because you would expect exhibits, you would expect something dramatic, something that will be compelling, and instead, there was some folk art from the countryside showing bygone beliefs, there were some lithographs or engravings of the Spanish Inquisition and its horrors, and that was pretty much it. But as a child, I remember being reproved in that museum for not wearing my windbreaker, but instead carrying it on my arm, which was a very disrespectful thing to do in an official museum of atheism.
When I was able to visit the Soviet Union later for a language course in the summer of 1989, one of the obligatory tours that we took was to file reverently past the body of Lenin outside the Kremlin in the mausoleum at Red Square, and communist mummies, like those of Lenin, earlier, Stalin had been there as well, communist mummies like Mao or Ho Chi Minh really, I think, speak to a blending of earlier religious sensibility, reverence for relics of great figures, almost saintly figures, so that even what got proclaimed as atheism turned out to be a very demanding faith as well, and I think that’s a contradiction that other scholars have pointed out as well.
And what happens instead is a tradition of radical rupture emerges, and that’s really tough, because imagine in the last stages of the Soviet Union where keen observers can tell that there are problems that are building in society. There are discontents and demands that are going to clash, especially when someone like Gorbachev is proposing reforms and things are suddenly thrown open for discussion. The very notion that you have the celebration of revolutionaries and the Bolshevik legacy at a time when the state wants to enforce stability and an order that’s been received from the prior generation, think of Brezhnev’s time, for instance. All of that is an especially volatile mix and unlikely to work out very durably in the long run.
The Communist Manifesto moreover is also something of the nature of having a delayed fuse, you could say, because when it first appears amid the revolutions of 1848 that sweep across Europe, the work is contrary to what people often believe. That pamphlet did not cause the revolutions of 1848, many of which had national or liberal demands. The voice of Marx and Engels was barely to be heard over the din of other far more prominent actors. It is, however, in the aftermath that this work takes on tremendous significance and becomes popularly read and popularly distributed.
It’s especially the episode, the bloody episode of the Paris Commune in 1871 which comes to be identified with Marx. Even though it was not purely inspired by Marx alone, nor were all of the Communards devoted Marxists, it’s the identification of this famous or infamous episode in urban upheaval that really leads to worldwide notoriety for Marx and attention to those works.
And they’re very different in form. Das Kapital is intended to be the Origin of Species of its realm of economic thought, and represents years and years of work of Marx laboring in the British Museum library, working through statistics, working on little bits and pieces of a larger answer to big historical questions that he believes that he’s arrived at. Its tone is different from that of the Communist Manifesto, which is a call to arms. It announces with great confidence what the scheme of history will be, but rather than urging that the answer might be passivity and just waiting for history to play out in its preordained way, it’s also a clarion call to make the revolution happen and is intended to be a pragmatic, practical statement of how this is to play out, and starts in part with those ringing words about a ghost or a specter haunting Europe, the specter of communism, which wasn’t true at the time, but decades later, most definitely is the case.
You sometimes hear from undergraduates that they’ve heard from their high school history teachers that Marxism was just a theoretical construct that was the idle production of a philosopher who was not connected to the world and was never meant to be tried in practice. Marx would have been furious to hear this and it’s almost heroically wrong as a historical statement, because Marx insisted that all previous philosophers have theorized about reality. What now is really necessary is to change it. So you could say that in the abstract, a Marxist economist can certainly use Marx’s theoretical framework to compare to a given economic reality, but Marx would have seen that as incomplete and as deeply unsatisfactory.
There’s a kind of a footnote to all of this, which is that even though Marxist dialectical materialism grounds itself in these economic realities and the political prescription is supposed to flow from the economic realities and be inevitably growing out of them, in the real history of communist regimes, you’ve actually seen periods where the economics becomes detached from the politics. And I’m thinking in particular of the new economic period early in the history of the Soviet Union when Lenin realizes that the economy is so far gone that you need to reintroduce or allow, in a limited way, some elements of private enterprise, just to start getting Russia back on course in order to have the accumulation of surplus that will be necessary to build the project at all. And there are many Bolsheviks who see the new economic policy as a terrible compromise and a betrayal of their ideas, but it’s seen as necessary for a short while, and then Stalin will wreck it entirely.
Or consider for that matter China today, where you have a dominant political class, the Communist Party of China, which is allowing economic development and private enterprise, as long as it retains political control. So some of these elements already represent divergences from what Marx would’ve expected, and this points to a really key problem or question for all of the history of communism. It has to do with it being a tradition in spite of itself, and that could be expressed in the following way. An original set of ideas is going to evolve, it’s going to change, because circumstances change. What elaborations of any doctrine, whether it’s communism or a religious doctrine or any political ideology, what elaborations are natural stages in the evolution of any living set of ideas, or when do you reach the point where some shift or some adaptation is so radically different that it actually breaks with the tradition, and that’s an insoluble problem. You probably have to take it on a case-by-case basis.
It speaks to issues like the question that gets raised today. Is China in a meaningful sense a communist country anymore? And there’s a diversity of opinion on this score. Or if you’re looking at the history of communism and you look at North Korea, which now is on its third installment of a dynastic leader from the same family who rules like a God king over a regime that calls itself communist, is that still a form of communism? Is it an evolution of? Is it a complete reversal of?
I tend to want to take an anthropological perspective in the history of communism and to take very seriously those people who avow that they are communists and this is the project that they have underway. And then after hearing that avowal, I think as a historian, you have to say, well, let’s look at the details. Let’s see what changes have been made, what continuities might still exist, whether there’s a larger pattern to be discerned here. So it’s a very, very complicated history that we’re talking about.
So there were horrors that followed from those invocations of science, but its prestige was enormous, and that in part had to do with the lessening grip of religious ideas on intellectual elites, more generally, processes of secularization, not total secularization but processes of secularization in Western industrial societies, and the sense that here’s the doctrine that will allow escape from wars brought on by capitalist competition, poverty and economic cycles and depressions brought on by capitalist competition, the inequalities of societies that remain hierarchical and class-based. And this claim to being cutting edge science, I think allows people like Lenin to derive immense confidence in the prescription that they have for the future. And that paradoxically, the confidence that you have in broad strokes the right set of answers for how to get to the future also allows you to take huge liberties with the tactics and the strategies that you follow, as long as your ultimate goal remains the one sketched by this master plan.
So ultimately, some of the predictions of someone like Lenin, that once society has reached that stage of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the notion that governments will essentially be able to run themselves, and that the model he had in mind, oddly enough, was Swiss post offices. Being in Swiss exile must have impressed him so much with the orderliness and the sheer discipline and rationality of a Swiss post office, and he thought, “Why can’t you organize governments like this where you don’t need political leaders, you don’t need grand visions? You have procedures, you have bureaucracy, which does its job in a way that’s not alienating, but simply produces the greatest good.”
When you think of the experiences with bureaucracy in the 20th century, one’s hair stands on end to have the comparative naiveté on display with a prediction like that, but it derives from that confidence that it’s all going to be okay because we understand. We have the key, we have the plan to how to arrive at this final configuration of humanity.
That gap, that frequent reality of not being in touch with the very classes that the communists are aiming to represent is a very frequent theme in this story. It also speaks to a crucial part of this story, which is the breaking apart or the Civil War, the war of brother against…
And what this speaks to is a fundamental tension in radical movements. Because left to their own devices, Lenin announces, workers tend to focus on their reality, their families, their workplace. Want better working conditions, unionize, and then aim to negotiate with employers or to agitate for reforms on the part of the state to improve their living conditions. And then they’re happy for the advances that they have won. And for Lenin, that’s not enough, because that’s a half measure. That’s the sort of thing that leads you into an accommodation with the system rather than the overthrow of the system. So there’s a constant tension in this regard that plays itself out over the long haul.
Ironically, given the claim of communist leaders to having the key to history, just a few months previous in exile in Switzerland Lenin had been despairing and had been convinced that he may not even live to see the advent of that day. But then when revolution does break out in the Russian Empire in February of 1917, Lenin is absolutely frantic to get back. And when he does get back as a result of a deal that is negotiated with the German high command, a step that they’ll later live very much to regret. He is able to get back and to go into action and to press for nothing less than the seizure of power that brings his Bolshevik faction, the radical wing of the socialist movement, to power and then to build the Soviet Union.
Earlier generations of Russian radicals had founded populist groups that would aim to engage in terrorism and resistance against the Tsarist regime. And this included people who call themselves nihilists. And these nihilists were materialists who saw themselves ushering in a new age by absolute rejection of earlier religious traditions and aiming for material answers to the challenges of the day. Among them was Nikolai Chernyshevsky, who wrote what’s been called the worst book ever written. It was, in fact, one of Lenin’s favorite books, in Russian it’s [foreign language 01:10:12]. In English it gets translated What is to Be Done. And it’s a utopian novel about revolutionaries and how revolutionaries should act with one another in open ways, new ways, non-traditional ways in order to help usher in the coming revolution. Lenin loved the work and said it had the great merit of showing you how to be a revolutionary. So there’s the Marxist influence, and then there’s Russian populist nihilist influence, which is also a very live current in Lenin’s thinking.
When you add these things together, you get an explosive mix. Because Lenin, as a result, and part of this family trauma of his brother, becomes a absolutely irreconcilable enemy of the Tsarist regime and sets about turning himself into what you might call a guided missile for revolution. He turns himself into a machine to produce revolutionary change. And I mean that with little hyperbole. Lenin at one point shared with friends that he loved listening to music, but he tried not to listen to beautiful music like Beethoven because it made him feel gentle. What a revolution demanded was realism, hardness, absolute steely resolve. So Lenin worries even fellow revolutionaries by the intensity of his single-minded focus to revolution. He spends his days thinking about the revolution. He probably dreamt about the revolution. So 24/7 it’s an existence where he’s paired off other human elements, quite deliberately, in order to turn himself into an effective instigator of revolution. So, when the opportunity comes in 1917, he’s primed and ready for that role.
Lenin’s insistence upon discipline and upon good organization allowed the Bolsheviks to emerge as the winners. And yet a great disappointment follows. Lenin, as we said, had expected that revolution will break out soon everywhere and all it’ll be necessary for the Bolsheviks to do, having given the lead, is to link up with others. So he considered that what would be established would be a red bridge between a communist Russia, and once Germany inevitably plunged ahead into its revolutionary transformation, a communist Germany. That doesn’t end up happening. On the contrary, what happens in Germany is a out-and-out shooting war between different kinds of socialists. When Germany establishes a democracy that later goes by the name of the Weimar Republic, the government is a government of Social Democrats, moderate Social Democrats who are fearful of what they see as Russian conditions of disorder and who are not necessarily in sympathy with the Leninist vision of tightly-organized authoritarian rule. So communists who revolt in Germany are brutally suppressed by mercenaries, hardened front fighters and nationalist radicals hired by the German socialist government. And the result is a wound that just won’t heal in the German socialist movement as a result of this fratricide. It frustrates Lenin’s ambitions. So too does the fact that Poland, rather than going Bolshevik, resists attempts by the Bolsheviks to move forward and to connect up with Germany. The Poles, yet again, play a tremendously important historical role in changing the expected course of historical events. It’s in the aftermath of these unexpected turns that Lenin and his colleagues realize that they’re in this for the long haul. It’s necessary to wait longer. They don’t lose hope or confidence, you might say, in the eventual coming of international workers revolution.
But it’s been deferred, it’s been put off. So the question then arises, what do you build within a state that’s established called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the Soviet Union? Lenin, as a result of an assassination attempt, is deeply affected in his health and would’ve loved to continue for years longer to steer the regime. But he’s sidelined because of his declining health. And there emerges a contest. A contest between a very charismatic leader, Leo Trotsky on the one hand, who is an amazing orator, who is an intellectual, who has traveled widely in the world, who has seen much of the world, and who is a brilliant writer. A far-ranging intellect, and is seen as extremely radical because of his demand for permanent revolution, the acceleration of revolutionary processes to drive history forward, to strike while the iron is hot. And on the other hand is an extremely unlikely contender for power.
That’s a man who’s probably the antithesis of charisma if you were to meet him in person. A guy with a squeaky, somewhat high-pitched voice, not well-suited to revolutionary oratory. His face pockmarked with the scars of youthful illness and whom, moreover, doesn’t speak a fine sophisticated Russian. But speaks a Russian heavily inflected with a Georgian accent from that part of the Russian Empire from which he came. And that was Stalin. I know that you already have a marvelous interview with Stephen Kotkin, the brilliant biographer of Stalin who has so many insights on that subject. The one thing that, even after reading about Stalin, that never ceases to surprise me, even in retrospect, is that Stalin gains a reputation not as a fiery radical, but as a moderate. A man who’s a conciliator. Someone who’s calm when others are excited. Someone who is able because of his organizational skills to resolve merely theoretical disputes with practical solutions.
Now, to fully take this aboard, we have to unknow what we know from our vantage point about Stalin’s leadership, Stalin’s brutality and eliminating his opposition. The cult of personality that, against all odds, got built up around Stalin so successfully and the absolute dominant role that led him later to be described as Genghis Khan with a telephone. A brutal dictator with ancient barbarism allied to the use of modern technology. While Trotsky is delivering stirring speeches and theorizing, Stalin works behind the scenes to control personnel decisions in the Bolshevik movement and in the state. It’s a cliche because it’s true, that personnel is policy. Trotsky is increasingly sidelined and then demonized and eventually expelled from the Soviet Union and later murdered in Mexico City. For Stalin, eliminating his enemies turned out to be the solution that he was most comfortable with.
Lenin fundamentally saw himself as irreplaceable, so that doesn’t really help in a succession struggle. Stalin is able to rely on a secret police apparatus that had been built up under Lenin already. It’s very early in the foundation of the Soviet state that the Cheka or the Extraordinary Commission is established as a secret police to terrify the enemies, beat down the opponents of the regime, and to keep an eye on society more generally. The person who’s chosen for that task also is an anomaly among Bolsheviks. That is a man of Polish aristocratic background, Feliks Dzierzynski, who comes to be known by the nickname Iron Felix. Here’s a man about whom a cult of personality also is created. Dzierzynski is celebrated in the Soviet period as the model of someone who’s harsh but fair, an executioner but with a heart of gold. Somebody who loves children. Somebody who has a tender heart, but forces himself to be steely willed against the opponents of the ideological project of the Bolsheviks.
Dzierzynski is succeeded by figures who will be absolutely instrumental to Stalin’s exercise of power, and they’re not immune either. Stalin, in his purges, takes care also to purge the secret police as a way of finding others upon whom to deflect blame for earlier atrocities and to produce a situation where even committed Bolsheviks are uncertain of what’s going to happen next and feel their own position to be precarious. Incidentally, there are other influences that probably wrought to bear here as well. It gets said about Stalin that he used to spend a lot of time flipping through Machiavelli’s The Prince. It seems that Stalin’s personal copy of The Prince, nobody knows where that is, if it still exists. But historians have found annotations in works by Lenin that Stalin, who was a voracious reader, as it turns out, made in the back of one of the books. Which sounds almost like a commentary on Machiavelli’s, almost but not quite, suggestion that the ends justify the means.
Stalin’s own writing says that if someone is strong, active, and intelligent, even if they do things that other people condemn, they’re still a good person. So Stalin’s self-conception of himself is someone who along these lines and in line with Lenin’s emphasis on practical results and discipline, somebody who gets things done. That’s the crucial ethical standard. And ultimately in criticisms by later dissidents of Bolshevik morality, this question of, what is the ethical standard? What is the ethical law? We’ll bring this question into focus because by the… And this goes back to Marx as well, incidentally. The notion that any ethical system, any notion of right or wrong is purely a product of class identity. Because every class produces its distinctive ideas, its distinctive religion, its distinctive art forms, it’s distinctive styles. Means that with no one transcendent or absolute morality, it’s all up for grabs. And then it’s a question of power and the exercise of power with no limits, untrammeled by any laws whatsoever. Dictatorship in its purest form. Something that Lenin had avowed, and then Stalin comes to practice even more fully.
By contrast, industrialization, that’s progress. I mean, images that today would be deeply disturbing to an environmentalist’s sensibility. Smokestacks, belching smoke, the byproducts of industry, a landscape transformed by the factory model. That’s what Marx, and then later the Bolsheviks, have in mind. Similarly, the goal even as articulated in Marx’s writings, is to put agriculture and farming on a factory model so that you won’t need to deal with this traditional role of the independent farmer or the peasant. Instead, you’ll have people who benefit from progress, benefit from rationalization by working factory farms.
So, in approaching the question of collectivization, we have to keep in mind that for Stalin and his comrades who are bound and determined to drag Russia kicking and screaming into the modern age and not to allow it be beaten because of its backwardness, as Stalin puts it, traditional forms of agriculture are not what they have in mind. And in their rank of desired outcomes, industrialization, especially massive heavy industry is the sine qua non, that’s their envisioned future. Agriculture rates below.
So in that case, the crucial significance of collectivization is to get a handle on the food situation in order to make it predictable and not to find oneself in another crisis like during the Civil War, when the cities are starving, industry is robbed of labor and the factories are at a standstill. So, this is really the core approach to collectivization, to put the productive capacities of the farmers in a regimented way, in a state-controlled way under the control of the state.
This produces vast human suffering because for the farmers, their plot of land that they thought they had gained as a result of the revolution is now taken away. They no longer have the same incentives they had before to be successful farmers. In fact, if you’re a successful farmer and maybe have a cow as opposed to your neighbors who have no cow, you’re defamed and denounced as a kulak, a tight-fisted, exploiter, even though you might be helping to develop agriculture in the region that you’re from.
So, the result is human tragedy on a vast scale. And allied to that incidentally is Stalin’s sense that this is a chance to also target people who are opposed to the Bolshevik regime for other reasons, whether it’s because of their Ukrainian identity, whether it’s because of a desire for a different nationalist project. For Stalin, there are many motives that roll into collectivization. And the final thing to be said is you are quite right that collectivization proves to be a failure because the Soviet Union never finally gets a grasp on the problems of agricultural production.
By the end of the Soviet Union, they’re importing grain from the West in spite of having some tremendously rich farmland to be found worldwide. And the reason for that had to do in part, I think with the incentives that had been taken away. Prosperous individual farmers have a motive for working their land and maximizing production. By contrast, if you are an employee of a factory style agricultural enterprise, the incentives run in very different directions. And the joke that was common for decades in the Soviet Union and other communist countries with similar systems was, “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”
Even labor, which is rhetorically respected and valorized in practice is rewarded with very slim rewards. And the last point, immobility. The collectivization reduces the mobility of the peasants who are not allowed because of internal passports to move to the cities unless they have permission. They’re locked in place. And I got to say, at the time and afterwards, that looked a lot like feudalism or neo-feudalism in terms of the restrictions on workers in the countryside.
Added to that, there’s a growing quota that everybody’s supposed to deliver on that nobody can deliver on. And so now, because you can’t deliver on that quota, you’re basically exporting all your food and you can’t even feed yourself. And then you suffer more and more and more and there’s a vicious downward spiral of you can’t possibly produce that. Now there’s another human incentive where you’re going to lie. Everybody lies on the data.
The whole notion that up and down the chain of command, everybody is falsifying or tinkering with or prettifying the statistics or their reports in order not to look bad and not to have vengeance visited upon them reaches the point where nobody, in spite of the pretense of comprehensive knowledge, there’s a state planning agency that creates five-year plans for the economy as a whole, and which is supposed to have accurate statistics. All of this is founded upon a foundation of sand. That’s inadvertent. That’s not an intended side effect.
But what you described in terms of the internal dynamics of fostering conflict in a rural society was absolutely not inadvertent. That was deliberate. The doctrine was you bring civil war. Now had there been social tensions before? Of course there had. Had there been envies, had there been differentiations in wealth or status? Of course there had been, but a deliberate plan to bring class conflict and bring civil war and then heighten it in the countryside does damage, and not least of that is this phenomenon of a negative selection.
Those who have most enterprise, those who are most entrepreneurial, those who have most self-discipline, those who are best organized will be winnowed again and again and again, sending the message that mediocrity is comparatively much safer than talent. And this pattern incidentally gets transposed and in tremendously harrowing ways also to the entire group of Russian intelligentsia and intellectuals of other peoples who are in the Soviet Union. They discover similarly that to be independent, to have a voice which is not compliant, carries with it tremendous penalties, especially in Stalin’s reigns of terror.
And we have testimony to this in the case of people who later became dissidents, like Lev Kopelev, who wrote in his memoirs about how he was among those who were sent in to enact these policies, and he saw families with the last food being taken away even as signs of starvation were visible already in the present. And yet he did not go mad. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t fall into despair because he believed, because he had been taught and believed at least then that this was justified. This was a larger historical process and a greater good would result even from these enormities. So, I think that this was quite deliberate.
What’s so horrifying is the way in which a whole society stood paralyzed in this process and how neighbors would be taken away in the middle of the night and people would be wary of talking about it. Resistance, at least in these urban centers, was entirely paralyzed by fear when, if one had somehow find a way to mobilize ,somehow a way to resist the process, the results might’ve been different. There’s an astonishing book… I mean, there are so many great books that have come out quite recently even on these topics.
Orlando Figes has a amazing book called The Whisperers that traces several families’ history in the Stalin period, and it’s a testimony to how a whole society and some of its most intelligent people got winnowed again and again and again in that process of negative selection that we talked about. The lasting dislocation and scars that this left and the way in which how people were not able to talk about these things in public because that would put you next on the list, suspected of having less than total devotion to the state.
I think one of the things that also is so terrifying about the entire process is even total devotion wasn’t enough. The process took on a life of its own, and I think that it might even have surprised Stalin in some ways. Not enough to short-circuit the process, but the notion where people were invited to denounce neighbors, coworkers, maybe even family members, meant that ever larger groups of people would be brought into the orbit of the secret police, tortured in order to produce confessions. Those confessions then would lead to more lists of suspects of people who had to be investigated and either executed or sent to the gulags. The uncertainty that this produced was enormous.
Even loyalty was not enough to save people. The stories, Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago is full of stories of dedicated communists who find themselves in the Gulag and are sure that some mistake has been made. And if only comrade Stalin would hear about this terrible thing that has happened to them, surely it would be corrected and nothing like this would… Everyone else, by contrast, accused of terrible crimes, there must be some truth behind that. So, talk about ways of disaggregating a society, ways of breaking down bonds of trust. This left lasting traces on an entire society that endured to this very day.
Russia, which compared to the rest of Europe, was less developed even before the First World War is in a dire state after all of the ravage and the millions of deaths that continue even after the war has ended in the West. That leaves precious little in the way of structural restraints or a functioning society that would say, “Let’s not do things this way.” I think that in retrospect, that special role carved out for special individuals who can move this process forward and accelerate historical development allowed for people to step into those roles and appoint themselves executors of this ideological vision. So, I think those things played a role as well.
In utopian terms about the construction of the new man and the new woman, and that out of the raw material of humanity, once you really get going, and once you’ve established a system that matches your hopes for the future, it’ll be possible to reconfigure people. And talk about ambition, to create essentially the next stage in human evolution, a new species growing out of humanity. Those don’t sound like very modest or limited approaches, and I guess we just really won’t know.
What drives the whole thing forward, though, especially in its Leninist version, but already visible with Marx and Engels is the insistence on confidence. If you have the key to the future, all of these things are possible and necessary. This leads to an ethos. I think that that’s very hard for historians to quantify or to study in a methodical way, but it’s the insistence that you hear with Lenin and then especially with Stalin, that to be a Bolshevik means to be hard, to be realistic, to be consequential, meaning you don’t shy away from doing what needs to be done. Even if your primordial ethical remainders from whatever earlier experience you have, rebel against it.
Under Stalin, there’s a constant slogan of the Bolshevik tempo. The Bolsheviks, there’s no fortresses that they can’t storm. They can do everything. And in a way, this is the assertion that its will over everything. History can be moved forward and accelerated and probably your own actions justified as a result, no matter what they were, if you are sufficiently hard and determined and have the confidence to follow through. And then that obviously raises the ultimate question, what happens when that confidence ebbs or erodes or when it’s lost?
It is the assertion that the Nazis will uniquely bring to pass unity in the people, unity in the society that leads them to give themselves this odd name of national socialist. Some leaders like Goebbels among the Nazis, accent the socialist part to begin with. Others put the accent firmly on the nationalist part. In part, the term they chose for their movement was meant to be confusing. It was meant to take slogans or words from different parts of the political spectrum, to fuse them into something unfamiliar and new, and claim that they’d overcome all earlier political divisions. The Nazis claimed that they were a movement, not a party, even though their party was called a party.
So, what did Nazism and Bolshevism and Communism share, or how were they opposed to one another? What we need to start with, by making clear, they were ideological arch enemies. In both worldviews, the opposite side represented the ultimate expression of the evil that needed to be exercised from history in order for their desired utopia to be brought about. And this leads to strange and perverted beliefs about reality. From the perspective of the Nazis. The Nazis claimed that because they saw the Jews as a demonic element in human history, the Bolsheviks didn’t really believe all of this economic dialectical materialism. They were in fact a racial conspiracy, it was alleged.
And so the Nazis used a term of Judeo-Bolshevism to argue that communism is essentially a conspiracy steered by the Jews, which was complete nonsense. For their part, the communists, and from the perspective of the Soviet Union, the Nazis were in essence a super capitalist conspiracy. If the cosmological enemy are the capitalists and the owners, the exploiters, then all of the rigamarole about race and nationalism are distractions. They’re meant to fool the poor saps who enlist in that movement. It’s essentially steered by capitalist owners who, it is claimed, are reduced to this desperate expedient of coming up with this thuggish-
It had gotten you what? It got you, first, the First World War as a total conflict leaving tens of millions dead. And then, economically, The Great Depression, showing that the end was not far away. This produced, at one in the same time, both ideological opposition and instances, a vastly cynical cooperation. In terms of the Weimar Republic, it’s obvious, with the benefit of hindsight, that German democracy had ceased to function even before Hitler comes to power. But in the process of making democracy unworkable in Germany, the extremes, the Nazi Stormtrooper Army with their brown shirts and the Communist street fighters, had cooperated in heightening an atmosphere of civil war that left people searching for desperate expedience in the last days of the Weimar Republic.
The most compelling case of their cooperation was the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact on August 23rd, 1939, which enables Hitler to start World War II. A Non-Aggression Pact, in official terms, it contained secret clauses whereby the Nazis and the Soviets meeting in Moscow under Stalin’s wary eye, had agreed on territorial division of Eastern Europe and making common cause as each claiming to be the winner of the future. So, in spite of their oppositions, these were regimes that were able, very cynically, to work together to dire effect. In the course of the 1950s, in particular, there arose political scientists who also crafted an explanation for ways in which these regimes, although they were opposed to one another, actually bore morphological resemblances.
They operated in ways that, in spite of ideological differences, bore similarities. And such political scientists, Hannah Arendt, chief among them, crafted a model called Totalitarianism, borrowing a term that the Fascists had liked about themselves, to define regimes, like the Nazis, like Stalin’s Soviet Union, for a new kind of dictatorship that was not a backwards-cast revival of ancient barbarism but was something new, a new form of dictatorship that laid total claims on hearts and minds, that didn’t want just passive obedience but wanted fanatical loyalty. That combined fear with compulsion in order to generate belief in a system, or at the very least, atomize the masses to the point where they would go along with the plans of the regime.
This model has often met with very strong criticism on the grounds that no regime in human history has yet achieved total control of the population under its grip. That’s true, but that’s not what Hannah Arendt was saying. Hannah Arendt was saying, “There will always be inefficiencies, there will be resistance, there will be divergences.” What was new was not the alleged achievement of total control, it was the ambition, the articulation of the ambition that it might be possible to exercise such fundamental and thoroughgoing control of entire populations. And the final frightening thought that Arendt kept before her was, “What if this is not a model that comes to us from benighted uncivilized ages? What if this is what the future is going to look like?” That’s a horrifying intuition.
In particular, this sort of argument has been tried out in different ways before. In previous decades, there had been attempts by historians who were actually well-read and well-published to argue that World War II had been, in part, a contingent event that had been brought about by accidents or miscalculations. And such explanations argued that, if you put Hitler’s ideology aside you actually could interpret him as a pretty traditional German politician in the stripe of Bismarck. Now, when I say it like that I think you can spot the problem immediately, when you put the ideology aside. To try to analyze Hitler’s acts or alleged motives, in the absence of the ideology that he himself subscribed to and described in hateful detail in Mein Kampf and other manifestos and speeches, is an enterprise that’s doomed to failure justifiably.
The notion that the mass murder of Jews, Poles, Slavs, and Gypsies was an event that simply happened as a result of unforeseen events, and that it was understood as somehow being humane, also runs contrary to the historical fact. When Poland was invaded, the Nazis unleashed a killing wave in their so-called Operation Tannenberg, which sent in specially trained and ideologically pre-prepared killers who were given the name of the units of the Einsatzgruppen in order to wipe out the Polish leadership and also to kill Jews.
This predates any of the Operation Barbarossa and the Nazi’s invasion of the Soviet Union. The Nazis, moreover, in many different expressions of their ideology, had made clear that their plans, you can read this in Mein Kampf, for Eastern Europe, were subjugation and ethnic cleansing on a vast scale, so I consider both of these claims absolutely untenable, given the facts and documents.
And one thing that emerges from this investigation is that even before the Nazis come to power in Germany there are certainly negative and dehumanizing stereotypes about Eastern Europeans, some of them activated by the experiences of German occupation in some of these regions during the First World War. But the Nazis take the very most destructive and most negative of all those stereotypes and make them the dominant ones, making no secret of their expected future of domination and annihilation in the East.
The notion of slaves for our culture was part of his longer term expectation. And then, there’s finally a fact that speaks volumes about what the Nazis planned for the east. Hitler and Himmler envisioned permanent war on the Eastern Front, not a peace treaty, not a settlement, not a border, but a constant moving of the border, every generation, hundreds of miles east in order to keep winning more and more living space. And with analogy to other frontiers, to always give more fighting experience and more training and aggression to generation after generation of German soldiers. In terms of nightmarish visions, this one’s right up there.
That’s where the prior history comes into play. The very fact that the German revolution in 1919 sees Socialists killing Socialists produces a dynamic that’s so negative that it’s nearly impossible to settle on cooperation, added to the fact that the Communists see the Social Democrats as rivals for the loyalty of the working class. In terms of just statistical likelihood, a lot of experts at the time felt surely the German army is going to step in, and the most likely outcome would have been a German general shutting down the democracy and producing a military dictatorship. It says a lot about how dreadful and bloody the record of the Nazis was, that some people in retrospect would have felt that that military dictatorship would’ve been preferable, if it had obviated the need for the ordeal under the Nazis.
We mentioned at the outset that Marx felt it was unlikely that a workers’ revolution would break out in the Russian Empire because for that you needed lots of industrial workers and they didn’t have a lot of industry. There’s a footnote to add there, and it proves his flexibility. A Russian socialist wrote to Marx asking, “Might it not be possible for Russia to escape some stages of capitalist development? I mean, do you have to rigidly follow that scheme?” And Marx’s answer was convoluted, but it wasn’t a no, and that suggests that Marx was willing to entertain all sorts of possible scenarios. I think he would certainly have been very surprised at the course of events as it unfolded because it didn’t match his expectations at the outset.
But Marx says this is an improved version. This is an adapted and truer version of Marxism for the Chinese context. In case after case in Mao’s rise to power, we see a really complicated relationship with Stalin. He works hard to gain Stalin’s support because The Common Turn, the international organization headquartered in Moscow working to encourage and help revolutionaries worldwide, is skeptical about the Chinese Communists to begin with, and believes that China still has a long way to go before it’s reached the stage where it’s ripe for Communist revolution, and in a way that’s more orthodox Marxism than what Mao is championing.
Were supposed to demonstrate mastery over nature by sheer acts of will. These included things like adopting Soviet agricultural techniques that were pioneered by a crackpot biologist by the name of Trofim Lysenko that produced more agricultural disaster that involved things like plowing to depths that were not practical for the seeds to germinate and grow but were supposed to produce super plants that would produce bumper harvests and outpace the capitalist countries and the Soviet Union. So, the context for all of this is a race to get first to the achievement of full-scale communism.
One of the themes that I think it’s so valuable to pursue and to take seriously in the history of communism is what concrete promises were made. In the case of China, Mao made promises and projections for the future that were worrying even to some of his own assistants. He exclaimed that perhaps by 1961, perhaps by 1973, China would be the winner in this competition and it would’ve achieved full communism so that which Marx had sketched as the endpoint of humanity would be achieved first by the Chinese. Later, his own comrades, when he passed from the scene, felt the need to tamper that a little bit and promised that they would achieve full communism by the year 2000. Such promises are helpful to a regime to create enthusiasm and to hold out to people, the prospect of real successes just around the corner. But what happens when the date arrives and you haven’t actually achieved that goal? That’s one ticking time bomb that played a role in the increasing erosion of confidence in the Soviet Union and the case of China must have been something similar.
And then after some of them had ventured that to come in and purge them, to punish them ruthlessly for having done what he had invited them to do. That is the most cynical variant. Some historians argue that Mao himself was not prepared for the ideas that he himself had invited into the public square and that he grew anxious and worried and angry at this without having thought this through in a cynical way to begin with. The end result is the same. The end result is once again negative selection. The decimation of those who are most venturesome, those who are most talented and intelligent are punished relentlessly for that.
And the results of this wager are where we are today. China has been transformed out of all recognition in terms of not all of the living standards of the country, but many places. Its economic growth has been dramatic and the new dispensation is such that people will ask, “Is this a communist country anymore?” And that’s probably a question that haunts China’s current leadership as well. With Chairman Xi, we’ve seen a return to earlier patterns, Xi insisting that Mao’s achievement has to be held as equal to that of the reform period. Sometimes imitations or nostalgia for the Mao period or even the sufferings of the Cultural Revolution are part of this volatile mix. But all of this is outward appearance. Statistics can also be misleading, and I think that very much in question is China’s further revolution in our own times.
But what can we say by way of hope to resist the demonization? How can we avoid cold or hot war with China, we being the West or the United States in the 21st century?
It would only be with the rise to the leadership of the Communist Party of Earl Browder, a American-born political leader with vast ambitions for creating an American communist movement that that image would start to be modified. Earl Browder had a meteoric rise and then fall over the promise he made that went by the slogan Communism is 20th Century Americanism. The notion was that communism could find roots in American political discourse and experience. Where Earl Browder fell a foul of other communists was in his expectations during World War II, that it might be possible for the Soviet Union and the United States to make their current cooperation permanent and to come to some sort of accommodation that would moderate their rivalry. As it turns out, with the dawning already of Cold War tensions that would later flower more fully, that was unacceptable. And the movement divested itself of Earl Browder.
Another point that shaped American perceptions of the communist movement in the United States involved issues of espionage. During the 1930s and the 1940s, American communists, not all of them obviously, but select members of the movement were called upon by Soviet intelligence to play a historical role by gathering information, winning sympathies… One of the most amazing books of the 20th century is the book written by Whitaker Chambers, who had served as a Soviet spy, first a committed communist, then a Soviet spy, and then later a renegade from those allegiances. His book is entitled Witness, published in 1952, and it’s one of the most compelling books you could ever read because it’s so full of both the unique character of the author in all of his idiosyncrasies and a sense of huge issues being at stake ones upon which the future of humanity turns. So, talk about the ethical element being of importance there. Through the apparatus of the state, the Soviets managed to infiltrate spies into America’s military as well as government institutions. One great irony is that when Senator McCarthy in the ’50s made vast claims about communist infiltration of the government apparatus, claims that he was unable to substantiate with details, that reality had actually been closer to the reality of the 1930s and the 1940s, than his own time. But the Association of American Communists with the foreign power of the Soviet Union and ultimately an adherence to its interests did a lot to undermine any kind of hearing for American communists. An example, of course, was the notorious Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939.
The American Communist Movement found itself forced to turn on a dime in its propaganda. Before the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939, they had denounced Nazi Germany as the greatest threat to world peace. Just after the signing of the pact, they had to proclaim that this was a great win for peace and for human harmony and to completely change their earlier relationship of being mortal enemies with Nazi Germany. There were many American communists who couldn’t stomach this and who in disillusionment simply quit their party memberships or drifted away. But it’s a fascinating story of the ups and downs of a political movement with radical ambitions in American political history.
In other ex-communist countries, there was also precious little in the way of legal proceedings that would’ve established responsibility. And keep in mind, the Nuremberg trials had as one of their goals a very important one, as it turns out, not even individual verdicts for individual people found guilty, but to collect and publicize information, to create knowledge and transparency about what the reality had been in the past. In the case of the former Soviet Union, in the case of Russia today, instead of a clear-eyed recognition of the vast nature of what it all cost, Putin upon replacing Yeltsin was in a position to instead traffic in the most varied, eclectic, and often mutually contradictory historical memories or packages of memories.
So on the one hand, in Putin’s Russia, the Tsars are rehabilitated as heroes of Russian statehood. Putin sees Lenin in a negative light because Lenin by producing federalism as a model for the Soviet Union, laid a time bomb at the base of that state that eventually smashed it into many constituent parts as nations regained their independence. While Stalin, it’s acknowledged exacted a dreadful toll, but also was effective as a representative of Russian statehood.
This produced where we are today. It’s a commonplace echoed by many that Russia without Ukraine is a nation-state or could be a nation-state. Russia with Ukraine has to be an empire. Putin, who is not really seeking a revival of Stalin’s rule, but still is nostalgic about earlier forms of greatness and of the strength of Russian statehood to the exclusion of other values has undertaken a course of aggression that has produced results quite different from what he likely expected.
And I think that timing is crucial here. It’s fascinating to try to imagine, “What if this attempt to re-digest Ukraine into an expanded Russian imperial territory had taken place earlier?” I think that the arrival on the scene of a new generation of Ukrainians has produced a very different dynamic and a disinclination for any kind of nostalgia for the past, packaged however it might be, and however nostalgic it might be made to appear. And there, I think that Putin’s expectations in the invasion of 2022 were entirely overturned. His expectation was that Ukraine would be divided on this score and that some significant portion of Ukrainians would welcome-
Obviously such people are expert at being guarded and not being pinned down, but the categories in which they’re thinking a sense of what their own ethical grounding might be or their ethical code that gives hints to their behavior. It gets said, and again, it’s a cliche because it’s true, that one of the best measures of a person, especially a leader, is how they treat people from whom they don’t expect anything. Are they condescending? Are they, on the contrary, fundamentally interested in another person, even if that person can’t help them or be used in some way? Speaking of prominent world leaders to interview, there’s Napoleon.
Napoleon, psychologically, must have been a quite amazing person to make a bid for mastery of Europe and then already thinking about the mastery of the world. But contemporaries who met Napoleon said that it was very disturbing to talk with him because meeting with him one-on-one revealed that he could talk to you but look like he was looking right through you as if you were not fully real. You were more in the nature of a character on a chessboard, and for that reason, some of them called Napoleon, the master of the sightless stare. So if you’re talking with a world leader and he or she has a sightless stare, that’s probably a bad sign. But there might be other inadvertent clues or hints about the moral compass or the future expectations of a leader that emerge in one of your wonderful conversations.
There’s probably few things that are as exciting as a really keen and targeted reading recommendation. In addition, I’ve also done other courses on the history of World War I, on the diplomatic history of Europe from 1500 to the present, a course on the history of Eastern Europe, and also a course on dictatorships called Utopia and Terror, and then also a course on Explorers and a course on turning points in modern history. Every single one of those is so rewarding because you learn so much in the process and it’s really fantastic.
I’m still amazed by that. There’s also, in the spirit of recommending neglected classics, my favorite author, is now a late Canadian author by the name of Robertson Davies, who wrote novel after novel in a mode that probably would get called magical realism but is so much more. Robertson Davies was heavily influenced by Carl Jung and Jungian philosophy, but in literary form, he managed to create stories that blend the mythical, the mystical, and the brutally real to paint a picture of Canada as he knew it, Europe as he knew it, and the world as he knew it. He’s most famous probably for the Deptford Trilogy, three novels in a series that are linked and they’re just masterful if only there were more books like that.
If the result is not a renaissance and a resurgence of reading, but less reading, that will be dreadful because the experience of thinking your way into other people’s minds that sustained reading offers is so crucial to human empathy, a broadening of your own sensibilities of what’s possible, what’s in the full range of being human, and then what are the best models for what has been thought and felt and how people have acted, otherwise, we fall prey to manipulators and the ability of artificial intelligence to give us versions of realities that never existed and never will, and like.
I’ve been surprised, I’ve learned, I’ve trained my brain to be able to get the same thing from audiobooks. Also, it’s a little bit more difficult because you don’t control the pacing. Sometimes pausing is nice, but you could still get it from audiobooks. So it’s an audio version of books and that allows you to also go on a journey together and sometimes more convenient. You could take it to more places with you, but there is a magical thing. I also trying to train myself mostly to use Kindle, the digital version of books, but there is, unfortunately, still a magical thing about being there with the page.
Now, nobody, to my knowledge, has implemented a really intuitive interaction between AI and the text, unfortunately, partially because the books are protected under DRM, and so there’s a wall where the AI can’t access the thing. So if you want to play with that kind of thing, you have to break the law a little bit, which is not a good thing. But just like with music, Napster came up, people started illegally sharing music, and the answer to that was Spotify, which made the sharing of music revolutionized everything and made the sharing of music much easier. So there is some technological things that can enrich the experience of reading, but the actual painful, long process of reading is really useful. Just like boredom is useful.
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 3:10 – Marxism
- 30:55 – Anarchism
- 45:52 – The Communist Manifesto
- 54:51 – Communism in the Soviet Union
- 1:14:45 – Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin
- 1:24:33 – Stalin
- 1:31:48 – Holodomor
- 1:45:38 – The Great Terror
- 1:58:39 – Totalitarianism
- 2:09:40 – Response to Darryl Cooper
- 2:24:49 – Nazis vs Communists in Germany
- 2:31:11 – Mao
- 2:36:19 – Great Leap Forward
- 2:43:20 – China after Mao
- 2:48:52 – North Korea
- 2:52:56 – Communism in US
- 3:00:26 – Russia after Soviet Union
- 3:11:57 – Advice for Lex
- 3:19:39 – Book recommendations
- 3:22:38 – Advice for young people
- 3:29:29 – Hope
Introduction
Vejas Liulevicius
And the outcome here is a horrific man-made famine, not a natural disaster, not bad harvests, but a man-made famine as a result of then the compulsion that gets used by the Soviet state to extract those resources, cordoning off the area, not allowing starving people to escape.
And the outcome here is a horrific man-made famine, not a natural disaster, not bad harvests, but a man-made famine as a result of then the compulsion that gets used by the Soviet state to extract those resources, cordoning off the area, not allowing starving people to escape.
You put very well some of the implications of this case study in how things look in the abstract versus in practice, and those phenomena were going to haunt the rest of the experience of the Soviet Union. The whole notion that up and down the chain of command, everybody is falsifying or tinkering with or purifying the statistics or their reports in order not to look bad and not to have vengeance visited upon them reaches the point where nobody, in spite of the pretense of comprehensive knowledge, there’s a state planning agency that creates five-year plans for the economy as a whole and which is supposed to have accurate statistics, all of this is founded upon a foundation of sand.
A deliberate plan to bring class conflict and bring civil war and then heighten it in the countryside does damage, and not least of that is this phenomenon of a negative selection. Those who have most enterprise, those who are most entrepreneurial, those who have most self-discipline, those who are best organized will be winnowed again and again and again, sending the message that mediocrity is comparatively much safer than talent.
Hitler and Himmler envisioned permanent war on the Eastern Front, not a peace treaty, not a settlement, not a border, but a constant moving of the border every generation hundreds of miles east in order to keep winning more and more living space and with analogy to other frontiers to always give more fighting experience and more training and aggression to generation after generation of German soldiers. In terms of nightmarish visions, this one’s right up there.
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Vejas Liulevicius, a historian specializing in Germany and Eastern Europe. He has lectured extensively on the rise, the reign, and the fall of communism. Our discussion goes deep on this, the very heaviest of topics, the communist ideology that has led to over 100 million deaths in the 20th century. We also discuss Hitler, Nazi ideology, and World War II. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Vejas Liulevicius.
The following is a conversation with Vejas Liulevicius, a historian specializing in Germany and Eastern Europe. He has lectured extensively on the rise, the reign, and the fall of communism. Our discussion goes deep on this, the very heaviest of topics, the communist ideology that has led to over 100 million deaths in the 20th century. We also discuss Hitler, Nazi ideology, and World War II. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Vejas Liulevicius.
Marxism
Lex Fridman
Let’s start with Karl Marx. What were the central ideas of Marx that lay the foundation of communism?
Let’s start with Karl Marx. What were the central ideas of Marx that lay the foundation of communism?
Vejas Liulevicius
I think there were several key ideas that Marx deployed that were destined to have such an impact, and in some ways they were actually kind of contradictory. On the one hand, Marx insisted that history has a purpose. That history is not just random events, but that rather it’s history, we might say, with a capital H, history moving in a deliberate direction, history having a goal, a direction that it was predestined to move in.
I think there were several key ideas that Marx deployed that were destined to have such an impact, and in some ways they were actually kind of contradictory. On the one hand, Marx insisted that history has a purpose. That history is not just random events, but that rather it’s history, we might say, with a capital H, history moving in a deliberate direction, history having a goal, a direction that it was predestined to move in.
At the same time, in the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and his colleague Friedrich Engels also suggested that there was a role for special individuals who might even if history was still moving in this predetermined direction, might give it an extra push, might play a heroic role in that process. And I think that these two ideas added together, the notion that there is a science of revolution that suggests that you can move in a deliberate and meaningful, rational way towards the end of history and the resolution of all conflicts, a total liberation of the human person and that moreover that was inevitable, that that was pre-programmed and destined in the order of things, when you add to that the notion that there’s also room for heroism and the individual role, this ended up being tremendously powerful as a combination.
Earlier thinkers who were socialists had already dreamt of or projected futures where all conflict would be resolved and human life would achieve some sort of perfection. Marx added these other elements that made it far more powerful than the earlier versions that he decried as merely utopian socialism.
Lex Fridman
So there’s a million questions I could ask there. So on the utopian side. So there is a utopian component to the way he tried to conceive of his ideas.
So there’s a million questions I could ask there. So on the utopian side. So there is a utopian component to the way he tried to conceive of his ideas.
Vejas Liulevicius
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of all, one has to stress, Marx would’ve gotten extremely upset at this point in the conversation because to call someone a utopian was precisely to argue that you’re not scientific, you’re not rational, you are not laying out the iron laws of history. You’re merely hoping for the best. And that might be laudable, but it was fundamentally unrealistic.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of all, one has to stress, Marx would’ve gotten extremely upset at this point in the conversation because to call someone a utopian was precisely to argue that you’re not scientific, you’re not rational, you are not laying out the iron laws of history. You’re merely hoping for the best. And that might be laudable, but it was fundamentally unrealistic.
That said, hidden among Marx’s insistence that there are laws and structures as history moves through class conflict, modes of production towards its ultimate goal of a comprehensive final revolution that will see all exploitation overthrown and people finally being freed from necessity, smuggled in among those things are most definitely utopian elements. And there, they come especially at the end in which Marx sketches the notion of what things will look like after the revolution has resolved all problems.
There, vagueness sets in. It’s clear that it’s a blessed state that’s being talked about. People no longer exploiting one another, people no longer subject to necessity or poverty, but instead enjoying all of the productivity of industrialization that hitherto had been put to private profit now collectively owned and deployed. The notion that one will be able to work at one job in the morning and then engage in leisure activity at yet another fulfilling job in the afternoon. All of this free of any contradictions, free of necessity, free of the ordinary irritations that we experience in our the ordinary lives, that’s deeply utopian. The difference was that Marx charted a route towards that outcome that presented itself as cutting-edge science and moreover having the full credibility that science commanded so much, especially in the 19th and early 20th century.
Lex Fridman
So there is a long journey from capitalism to communism that includes a lot of problems. He thought once you resolve the problems, all the complexities of human interactions, the friction, the problems will be gone.
So there is a long journey from capitalism to communism that includes a lot of problems. He thought once you resolve the problems, all the complexities of human interactions, the friction, the problems will be gone.
Vejas Liulevicius
To the extent that they were based on inequalities and on man’s exploitation of man, the result was supposed to be a resolution of all of this. And inevitably, when you talk about the history of communism, you have to include the fact that this often tragic and dramatic history produced a lot of jokes. Jokes that were in part reactions sometimes to the ideological claims made by people like Marx. And one of the famous jokes was that what’s the difference between capitalism and communism? And the joke’s answer was capitalism is the exploitation of man by man and communism is the exact opposite.
To the extent that they were based on inequalities and on man’s exploitation of man, the result was supposed to be a resolution of all of this. And inevitably, when you talk about the history of communism, you have to include the fact that this often tragic and dramatic history produced a lot of jokes. Jokes that were in part reactions sometimes to the ideological claims made by people like Marx. And one of the famous jokes was that what’s the difference between capitalism and communism? And the joke’s answer was capitalism is the exploitation of man by man and communism is the exact opposite.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, you actually have electron humor. I love it. And you deliver in such a dry, beautiful way. Okay, there’s again, a million questions. So you outline a set of contradictions, but it’s interesting to talk about his view. For example, what was Marx’s view of history?
Yeah, you actually have electron humor. I love it. And you deliver in such a dry, beautiful way. Okay, there’s again, a million questions. So you outline a set of contradictions, but it’s interesting to talk about his view. For example, what was Marx’s view of history?
Vejas Liulevicius
Marx had been a student of Hegel. And Hegel as a German idealist philosopher had announced very definitively that history has a purpose. History is not a collection of random facts. And as an idealist, he proposed that the true movement of history, the true meaning of history, what made history, history with a capital H, something that’s transcendent and meaningful was that it was the working out of an idea through different civilizations, different stages of historical development. And that idea was the idea of human freedom. So it was not individuals or great thinkers alone making history and having an impact. It was the idea itself striving to come to fruition, striving to come to an evermore perfect realization.
Marx had been a student of Hegel. And Hegel as a German idealist philosopher had announced very definitively that history has a purpose. History is not a collection of random facts. And as an idealist, he proposed that the true movement of history, the true meaning of history, what made history, history with a capital H, something that’s transcendent and meaningful was that it was the working out of an idea through different civilizations, different stages of historical development. And that idea was the idea of human freedom. So it was not individuals or great thinkers alone making history and having an impact. It was the idea itself striving to come to fruition, striving to come to an evermore perfect realization.
In the case of Hegel, in this very Prussian and German context, he identified the realization of freedom also with the growth of the state because he thought that governments are the ones that are going to be able to deliver on laws and on the ideal of a state of the rule of law, in German the Rechtsstaat. That was a noble dream. At the same time, as we recognize from our perspective, state power has been put to all sorts of purposes besides guaranteeing the rule of law in our own times.
What Marx did was to take this characteristic insistence of Hegel that history is moving in a meaningful and discernible way towards the realization of an idea and flipped it on its head. Marx insisted that Hegel had so much that was right in his thinking, but what he had neglected to keep in mind was that in fact, history is based on matter. So hence, dialectical materialism, dialectical referring to things proceeding by clashes or conflict towards an ever greater realization of some essential idea.
And so Marx adapts a lot of ideas of Hegel. You can recognize entire rhetorical maneuvers that are indebted to that earlier training, but now taken in a very different direction. What remained though was the confidence of being on the right side of history. And there are few things that are as intoxicating as being convinced that your actions not only are right in the abstract, but are also destined to be successful.
Lex Fridman
And also that you have the rigor of science backing you in your journey towards the truth.
And also that you have the rigor of science backing you in your journey towards the truth.
Vejas Liulevicius
Absolutely. So Engels, when he gives the graveside eulogy for his beloved friend Marx, claims that Marx is essentially the Darwin of history, the Darwin of history. That he had done for the world of politics and of human history what Darwin had done with this theory of evolution, understanding the hidden mechanism, understanding the laws that are at work and that make that whole process meaningful rather than just one damn thing after another.
Absolutely. So Engels, when he gives the graveside eulogy for his beloved friend Marx, claims that Marx is essentially the Darwin of history, the Darwin of history. That he had done for the world of politics and of human history what Darwin had done with this theory of evolution, understanding the hidden mechanism, understanding the laws that are at work and that make that whole process meaningful rather than just one damn thing after another.
Lex Fridman
What about the sort of famous line that history of all existing societies is the history of class struggles? So what about this conception of history as a history of class struggle?
What about the sort of famous line that history of all existing societies is the history of class struggles? So what about this conception of history as a history of class struggle?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, so this was the mode of force that Karl Marx and Engels saw driving the historical process forward. And it’s important to keep in mind that class conflict doesn’t just mean revolutions, revolts, peasant uprisings. It’s the totality of frictions and of clashes, conflicts of interest that appear in any society.
Well, so this was the mode of force that Karl Marx and Engels saw driving the historical process forward. And it’s important to keep in mind that class conflict doesn’t just mean revolutions, revolts, peasant uprisings. It’s the totality of frictions and of clashes, conflicts of interest that appear in any society.
And so Marx was able in this spirit that he avowed was very scientific to demarcate stages of historical transformation, primitive communism in the prehistoric period, then moving towards what was called state slavery. That’s to say the early civilizations deploying human resources and ordering them by all powerful monarchs. Then private slavery in the ancient period. And then moving to feudalism in the Middle Ages. And then here’s where Marx is able to deliver a pronouncement about his own times, seeing that the present day is the penultimate, the next to last stage of this historical development, because the feudal system of the Middle Ages and the dominance of the aristocracy has been overcome, has been displaced by the often heroic achievements, astonishing achievements in commerce and in world-building of the middle class, the bourgeoisie, who have taken the world into their own hands and are engaged in class conflict with the class below them, which is the working class or the proletariat.
And so this sort of conflict also, by the way, obtains within classes, so the bourgeoisie are going to be gravediggers Marx announces of their own supremacy because they’re also competing against one another. And members who don’t survive that competition get pressed down into the subordinate working class, which grows and grows and grows to the point where at some future moment, the inevitable explosion will come and a swift revolution will overturn this penultimate stage of human history and usher in instead the dictatorship of the working class and then the abolition of all classes because with only one class remaining, everyone is finally unified and without those internal contradictions that had marked class conflict before.
Lex Fridman
The dictatorship of the working class is an interesting term. So what is the role of revolution in history?
The dictatorship of the working class is an interesting term. So what is the role of revolution in history?
Vejas Liulevicius
So this in particular for Marx, I think is a really key moment, which is what makes that such a good question. In his vision, the epic narrative that he’s presenting to us, revolution is key. It’s not enough to have evolutionary change. It’s not a question of compromises. It’s not a case of bargaining or balancing interests. Revolution is necessary as part of the process of a subjugated class coming to awareness of its own historical role. And when we get to the proletariat, this working class in its entirety to whom Marx assigns this epic Promethean role of being the ones who are going to liberate all of humanity, a class that is universal in its interests and in the sort of role in salvation history that they’ll be playing in this secular framework, they need revolution and the experience of revolution in order to come into their own. Because without it, you’ll only have half-hearted compromise and something less than the consciousness that they then need in order to rule, to administer, and to play the historical role that they’re fated to have.
So this in particular for Marx, I think is a really key moment, which is what makes that such a good question. In his vision, the epic narrative that he’s presenting to us, revolution is key. It’s not enough to have evolutionary change. It’s not a question of compromises. It’s not a case of bargaining or balancing interests. Revolution is necessary as part of the process of a subjugated class coming to awareness of its own historical role. And when we get to the proletariat, this working class in its entirety to whom Marx assigns this epic Promethean role of being the ones who are going to liberate all of humanity, a class that is universal in its interests and in the sort of role in salvation history that they’ll be playing in this secular framework, they need revolution and the experience of revolution in order to come into their own. Because without it, you’ll only have half-hearted compromise and something less than the consciousness that they then need in order to rule, to administer, and to play the historical role that they’re fated to have.
Lex Fridman
How did he conceive of a revolution, potentially a violent revolution stabilizing itself into something where the working class was able to rule?
How did he conceive of a revolution, potentially a violent revolution stabilizing itself into something where the working class was able to rule?
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s where things become a good deal less detailed in his and Engels accounts. The answer that they proposed in part was this is for the future to determine, so all of the details will be settled later. I think there was allied to this was a tremendous confidence in some very 19 century ideas about how society could be administered and what made for orderly society in a way where if the right infrastructure was in place, you might expect society to kind of run itself without the need for micromanagement from above.
That’s where things become a good deal less detailed in his and Engels accounts. The answer that they proposed in part was this is for the future to determine, so all of the details will be settled later. I think there was allied to this was a tremendous confidence in some very 19 century ideas about how society could be administered and what made for orderly society in a way where if the right infrastructure was in place, you might expect society to kind of run itself without the need for micromanagement from above.
And hence, we arrive at Marx’s tantalizing promise that there will be a period where it will be necessary to have centralized control and there might have to be, as he puts it, despotic inroads against property in order to bring this revolution to pass. But then afterwards, the state, because it represents everybody rather than representing particular class interests that are in conflict with other classes, the state will eventually wither away, so there won’t be need for it.
Now, that’s not to say that pure stasis arrives or that the stabilization equals being frozen in time. It’s not as if that is what things will look like. But instead, the big issues will be settled and henceforth people will be able to enjoy lives of, as he would consider it, in authentic freedom without necessity, without poverty as a result of this blessed state that’s been arrived at.
Lex Fridman
Despotic inroads against property. Did he elaborate on the despotic inroads?
Despotic inroads against property. Did he elaborate on the despotic inroads?
Vejas Liulevicius
Dispossession, dispossession of the middle classes and of the bourgeoisie. In his model, humanity is never standing still, right? So he’d probably argue in this dynamic vision of how history unfolds that there’s always conflict and it’s always moving, propelling history forward towards its predestined ending.
Dispossession, dispossession of the middle classes and of the bourgeoisie. In his model, humanity is never standing still, right? So he’d probably argue in this dynamic vision of how history unfolds that there’s always conflict and it’s always moving, propelling history forward towards its predestined ending.
In the way he saw this climax was that as things did not stay the same, the condition of the working class was constantly getting worse and hence their revolutionary potential was growing. And at the same time, the expropriators, the bourgeoisie, were also facing diminishing returns as they competed against one another with more and more wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and more and more elements of what had been the middle class detached from the ruling class and being pressed down into the working class. For Marx, this is really a key part. I mean, it’s a key part of this whole ratchet effect that’s going to produce this final historical explosion.
And in German, the word given to that process was verehlendung, which is very evocative. Elend means misery, so it’s the growing misery. When this gets translated into English, the results are never quite as evocative or satisfactory. The words that get used are immiseration or pauperization, meaning more and more people are being turned into paupers. But for Marx, that prediction is really key.
And even in his own lifetime, there were already hints that in fact, if you looked sociologically at the really developed working classes in places like Great Britain or Germany, that process was not playing out as he had expected. In fact, although there had been enormous dislocations and tremendous suffering in the early chaotic, Wild West stages of capitalism and of industrialization, there had been reform movements as well. And there had been unions which had sought to carve out rules and agreements with employers for how the conditions under which workers labored might be ameliorated.
Moreover, the middle class rather than dwindling and dwindling, seemed to actually be strengthening and growing in numbers or the appearance of new kinds of people like white-collar workers or technical experts. So already in Marx’s own lifetime, and then especially in what follows Marx’s lifetime, this becomes a real problem because it puts a stick into the spokes of this particular historical prediction.
Lex Fridman
Can you speak to this realm of ideas, which is fascinating, this battle of big ideas in the 19th century. What are the ideas that were swimming around here?
Can you speak to this realm of ideas, which is fascinating, this battle of big ideas in the 19th century. What are the ideas that were swimming around here?
Vejas Liulevicius
Yeah, yeah. Well, to describe the 19th century as sort of an age of ideologies is very apt because Europe is being wracked and being put through the wringer of nationalism, demands for self-expression of peoples who earlier have been in empires or under monarchical rule, demands to redraw the map. The tremendous transformations of the Industrial Revolution meant that in the course of about a generation, you would’ve seen the world around you change in ways that made it entirely unfamiliar. You’d be able to travel across the landscape at speeds that have been unthinkable when you were a child. So it’s enormous change and demands for yet more change.
Yeah, yeah. Well, to describe the 19th century as sort of an age of ideologies is very apt because Europe is being wracked and being put through the wringer of nationalism, demands for self-expression of peoples who earlier have been in empires or under monarchical rule, demands to redraw the map. The tremendous transformations of the Industrial Revolution meant that in the course of about a generation, you would’ve seen the world around you change in ways that made it entirely unfamiliar. You’d be able to travel across the landscape at speeds that have been unthinkable when you were a child. So it’s enormous change and demands for yet more change.
And so it’s a great mix of ideas, ideologies, the old and the new religious ideas, religious revivals, as well as demands for secularization. And stepping into all of this are Marx and Engels together in what has been called, I think with justice, one of the most important and influential intellectual partnerships of history.
They were very different men. They were both German by origin. Marx had trained as an academic. He had married the daughter of a baron. Because of his radical ideas, he had foreclosed or just found himself cut off from a possible academic career and went the route of radical journalism. Engels was very different. Engels was the son of an industrialist and the family owned factories in Germany and in England. So he was most definitely not a member of the proletariat that he and Marx were celebrating as so significant in their future historical role.
There were also huge differences in character between these men. Marx, when people met him, they were astonished by his energy and his dynamism. They also saw him as a man who felt determined to dominate arguments. He wanted to win arguments and was not one to settle for compromise or a middle road. He was disorderly in his personal habits. We might mention among other things, that he impregnated the family maid and didn’t accept responsibility for the child. He was also not inclined to undertake regular employment in order to support his growing family. That’s where Engels came in. Engels essentially from his family fortune and then from his journalism afterwards supported both himself and the Marx family for decades. And so in a sense, Engels made things happen.
In the mysterious way that friendships work, the very differences between these men made them formidable as a dynamic duo because they balanced off one another’s idiosyncrasies and turned what might’ve been faults into potential strengths. British historian, A.J.P. Taylor always has a lovely turn of phrase, even when he’s wrong about a historical issue. In this case, he was right. He said that Engels had charm and brilliance, Marx was the genius. And Engels saw himself as definitely the junior partner in this relationship. But here’s the paradox. Without Engels, pretty clearly Marx would not have gone on to have the sort of lasting historical impact in the world of ideas that he had.
Lex Fridman
Just to throw in the mix, there’s interesting characters swimming around. So you have Darwin. He has a… I mean, it’s difficult to characterize the level of impact he had. Even just in the religious context, it challenges our conception of who we are as humans. There’s Nietzsche who’s also, I don’t know, hanging around the area. On the Russian side, there’s Dostoevsky. So it’s interesting to ask maybe from your perspective, did these people interact in the space of ideas to where this is relevant to our discussion, or is this mostly isolated?
Just to throw in the mix, there’s interesting characters swimming around. So you have Darwin. He has a… I mean, it’s difficult to characterize the level of impact he had. Even just in the religious context, it challenges our conception of who we are as humans. There’s Nietzsche who’s also, I don’t know, hanging around the area. On the Russian side, there’s Dostoevsky. So it’s interesting to ask maybe from your perspective, did these people interact in the space of ideas to where this is relevant to our discussion, or is this mostly isolated?
Vejas Liulevicius
I think that it’s a part of a great conversation. I think that in their works, they’re reacting to one another. Dostoevsky’s thought ranges across the condition of modernity and he definitely has things to say about industrialization. I think that they react to one another in these oblique ways rather than always being at each other’s throats in direct confrontations. And that’s what makes the 19th century so compelling as a story just because of the sheer vitality of the arguments that are taking place in ways big and small.
I think that it’s a part of a great conversation. I think that in their works, they’re reacting to one another. Dostoevsky’s thought ranges across the condition of modernity and he definitely has things to say about industrialization. I think that they react to one another in these oblique ways rather than always being at each other’s throats in direct confrontations. And that’s what makes the 19th century so compelling as a story just because of the sheer vitality of the arguments that are taking place in ways big and small.
Lex Fridman
Well, we should say here, when you mentioned Karl Marx, maybe the color red comes up for people and they think the Soviet Union, maybe China, but they don’t think Germany necessarily. It’s interesting that Germany is where communism was supposed to happen.
Well, we should say here, when you mentioned Karl Marx, maybe the color red comes up for people and they think the Soviet Union, maybe China, but they don’t think Germany necessarily. It’s interesting that Germany is where communism was supposed to happen.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right.
That’s right.
Lex Fridman
And so can you maybe speak to that tension?
And so can you maybe speak to that tension?
Vejas Liulevicius
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is definitely a factor in the entire history that we’re referencing. Marx and Engels never really shed their identity as Germans. Many of their preconceptions, even those traces of nationalism that they had within themselves even as they were condemning nationalism as a fraud against the working class, their clearly, their entire formation had been affected by their German background.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is definitely a factor in the entire history that we’re referencing. Marx and Engels never really shed their identity as Germans. Many of their preconceptions, even those traces of nationalism that they had within themselves even as they were condemning nationalism as a fraud against the working class, their clearly, their entire formation had been affected by their German background.
And it’s very true, as you point out, that Germany is intended to be the place where these predictions will play out, also in Britain, also in France, also eventually in the United States. But it’s Germany by virtue of its central location and then its rapid development later than Britain or France in industrialization give it the special role in Marx’s worldview.
And so it’s a lasting irony or a central irony of this whole story that when a government establishes itself that claims to be following Marx’s prescriptions and realizing his vision, it happens in the wreckage of the Russian Empire, a place that did not match the requirements of being industrialized, developed, well on its way in this historical process. And nobody knew this better than the Bolsheviks. Lenin and his colleagues had a keen sense that what they were doing, exciting as it was, was a gamble. It was a risk because in fact, the revolution to really take hold had to seize power in Germany. And that’s why immediately after taking power, they’re not sure they’re going to last. Their hope, their promise of salvation is that a workers’ revolution will erupt in Germany, defeated Germany in order to link up with the one that has been launched in this unlikely Russian location and henceforth great things will follow that do hue to Marx’s historical vision.
The last thing to mention about this is that this predominance of Germany in the thinking of Marx had two other reflections. One was that German socialists and later communists organize in order to fulfill Marx’s vision and they produce something that leaves other Westerners in awe in the late 19th century. And that’s the building of a strong German workers movement and a Social Democratic Party. That Social Democratic Party by 1912 is the largest party in German politics by vote. And there’s the possibility they might even come to power without needing radical revolution, which again, also goes against Marx’s original vision of the necessity for a revolution. Workers around the world, or rather radical socialists look with admiration and awe at what the Germans have achieved and they see themselves as trying to do what the Germans have done.
The final point is growing up during the Cold War, one thought that, well, if you want to represent somebody as being a communist, that person has to have a Russian accent, because Russia after all, the homeland of this form of government, the Soviet Union, that must be the point of origin. Before the Bolsheviks seized power, in order to really be a serious radical socialist, you needed to read German because you needed to read Marx, and you needed to read Kautsky, and you needed to read Bernstein and other thinkers in this tradition. And it’s only after the Soviet seizure of power that this all changes. So there’s lots of Marx of that phenomenon.
Lex Fridman
Which is why the clash between nationalism and communism in Germany is such a fascinating aspect of history and all the different trajectories it could take. And we’ll talk about it. If we return to the 19th century, you’ve said that Marx’s chief rival was Russian anarchist…
Which is why the clash between nationalism and communism in Germany is such a fascinating aspect of history and all the different trajectories it could take. And we’ll talk about it. If we return to the 19th century, you’ve said that Marx’s chief rival was Russian anarchist…
Anarchism
Lex Fridman
Marx’s chief rival was Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, who famously said in 1942, “The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.” So what kind of future did Bakunin envision?
Marx’s chief rival was Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, who famously said in 1942, “The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.” So what kind of future did Bakunin envision?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, Bakunin in some things agreed with Marx, and in many others, disagreed. He was an anarchist rather than hewing to the sort of scheme of history that Marx was proposing. So he did see humanity as fighting a struggle for a better way of life. He envisioned, as your quote suggests, that revolution and sheer confrontation and overthrow the existing state of things, not compromise, was going to be the way to get there, but his vision was very different. Rather than organizing conspiratorial and hierarchical political movement, Bakunin envisioned that the ties would be far looser, that both the revolutionary movement and the future state of humanity would grow out of the free association, the anarchist thinking, the free association of individuals who rejected hierarchical thinking in their relations with one another, rejected the state as a form of organized violence, and rejected traditional religious ideas that he saw as buttressing hierarchies.
Well, Bakunin in some things agreed with Marx, and in many others, disagreed. He was an anarchist rather than hewing to the sort of scheme of history that Marx was proposing. So he did see humanity as fighting a struggle for a better way of life. He envisioned, as your quote suggests, that revolution and sheer confrontation and overthrow the existing state of things, not compromise, was going to be the way to get there, but his vision was very different. Rather than organizing conspiratorial and hierarchical political movement, Bakunin envisioned that the ties would be far looser, that both the revolutionary movement and the future state of humanity would grow out of the free association, the anarchist thinking, the free association of individuals who rejected hierarchical thinking in their relations with one another, rejected the state as a form of organized violence, and rejected traditional religious ideas that he saw as buttressing hierarchies.
So Bakunin is part of a broader movement of socialists and anarchists who were demanding change and envisioning really fundamental transformation, but his particular anarchist vision steers him into conflict with Marx, and he makes some prophetic remarks about the problems with the system that Marx is proposing. You should add to this that the very fact that Marx is a German by background and Bakunin is Russian adds a further nationalist or element of ethnic difference there. Bakunin warned that a sort of creeping German authoritarianism might insinuate its way into a movement that hewed too closely to having hierarchies in the struggle to overthrow hierarchies, and his anarchist convictions are not in question here. They led him into conflict with Marx, and Marx railed against him, denounced him, and eventually had him expelled from The International.
One of the things though that also makes Bakunin so significant is Bakunin is the first in a longer series of approaches between anarchists and communists where they try to make common cause, and you have to say that in every case, it ends badly for the anarchists, because the communist vision in particular, especially in its Leninist version, argued for discipline and a tightly organized professional revolutionary movement. The anarchists who sought to make common cause with communists, whether it was in the days of the Russian Revolution or the Russian Civil War, or whether it was then in the Spanish Civil War, the anarchists found themselves targeted by the communists precisely because of their skepticism about what turned out to be an absolutely key element in the Leninist prescription for a successful revolution.
Lex Fridman
If we can take that tangent a little bit, so I guess anarchists were less organized.
If we can take that tangent a little bit, so I guess anarchists were less organized.
Vejas Liulevicius
Yeah, by definition.
Yeah, by definition.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Why do you think anarchism hasn’t been rigorously tried in the way that communism was? If we just take a complete sort of tangent, in one sense, we are living in an anarchy today because the nations are in an anarchic state with each other, but why do you think there’s not been an anarchist revolution?
Yeah. Why do you think anarchism hasn’t been rigorously tried in the way that communism was? If we just take a complete sort of tangent, in one sense, we are living in an anarchy today because the nations are in an anarchic state with each other, but why do you think there’s not been an anarchist revolution?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, I think that probably some anarchists would beg to differ, right? They would see communes in Spain during the Spanish Civil War as an example of trying to put anarchist ideas into place. Bakunin flitted from one area of unrest to another, hoping to be in on finally the founding of the sort of free communes that he had in mind.
Well, I think that probably some anarchists would beg to differ, right? They would see communes in Spain during the Spanish Civil War as an example of trying to put anarchist ideas into place. Bakunin flitted from one area of unrest to another, hoping to be in on finally the founding of the sort of free communes that he had in mind.
Another key point in all of this is that anarchy means something different to different people as a term, and so when you point out quite correctly that we have an anarchic international situation, that’s the Hobbesian model of the war of all against all, where man is a wolf to man. Generally, except if you’re talking about nihilists in the Russian revolutionary tradition, anarchists see anarchy as a blessed state and one where finally, people will be freed from the distorting influence of hierarchies, traditional beliefs, subjugation, inequalities. So for them, anarchy growing out of the liberation of the human being is seen as a positive good and peaceful.
Now, that’s at odds with the prescription of someone like Bakunin for how to get there. He sees overthrow as being necessary on the route to that, but as we point out, it’s absolutely key to this entire dynamic that to be an anarchist means that your efforts are not going to be organized the way a disciplined and tightly organized revolutionary movement would be.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it’s an interesting stretch that a violent revolution will take us to a place of no violence or very little violence. It’s a leap.
Yeah, it’s an interesting stretch that a violent revolution will take us to a place of no violence or very little violence. It’s a leap.
Vejas Liulevicius
It’s a leap, and it points to a phenomenon that would’ve enraged Marx and would’ve been deeply alienating to others in the tradition who followed him, but that so many scholars have commented on, and that’s that there is a religious element. Not a vowed one, but a kind of hidden religious or secular religious element to Marx’s vision, to the tradition that follows Marx, and just think of the correspondences, right? Marx himself positioning himself as a savior figure, whether that’s a Prometheus or a Moses who will lead people to the promised land. The apocalypse or the end times is this final revolution that will usher in a blessed final state, a utopia, which is equivalent to a secular version of heaven. There’s the working class playing the role of humanity in its struggle to be redeemed, and scholar after scholar has pointed this out.
It’s a leap, and it points to a phenomenon that would’ve enraged Marx and would’ve been deeply alienating to others in the tradition who followed him, but that so many scholars have commented on, and that’s that there is a religious element. Not a vowed one, but a kind of hidden religious or secular religious element to Marx’s vision, to the tradition that follows Marx, and just think of the correspondences, right? Marx himself positioning himself as a savior figure, whether that’s a Prometheus or a Moses who will lead people to the promised land. The apocalypse or the end times is this final revolution that will usher in a blessed final state, a utopia, which is equivalent to a secular version of heaven. There’s the working class playing the role of humanity in its struggle to be redeemed, and scholar after scholar has pointed this out.
Reinhold Niebuhr back in the 1930s had an article in The Atlantic magazine that talked about the Soviet Union’s communism as a religion. Eric Voegelin, a German-American scholar who fled the Nazis and relocated to Louisiana State University and wrote tomes about the new phenomenon of political religions in the modern period. And he saw fascism and Nazism and Soviet communism as bearing the stamp of political religions, meaning ideologies that promised what an earlier age would’ve understood in religious terms. Voegelin called this the eschaton and said that these end times, the eschaton, was being promised in the here and now, being made imminent, and he warned against that saying the results are likely to be disastrous.
Lex Fridman
So that’s actually a disagreement with this idea that people sometimes say that the Soviet Union is an example of an atheistic society. So when you have atheism as the primary thing that underpins the society, this is what you get. So what you’re saying is a kind of rejection of that, saying that there’s a strong religious component to a communism.
So that’s actually a disagreement with this idea that people sometimes say that the Soviet Union is an example of an atheistic society. So when you have atheism as the primary thing that underpins the society, this is what you get. So what you’re saying is a kind of rejection of that, saying that there’s a strong religious component to a communism.
Vejas Liulevicius
A hidden component, one that’s not officially recognized. I had a chance to witness this actually. When I was a child, my family, I grew up in Chicago to a Lithuanian-American family, and my father, who was a mathematician, got a very rare invitation to travel to Soviet Lithuania, to the University of Vilnius to meet with colleagues. And at this point, journeys of more than a few days or a week were very rare to the Soviet Union for Americans, and the result was that I had unforgettable experiences visiting the Soviet Union in Brezhnev’s Day.
A hidden component, one that’s not officially recognized. I had a chance to witness this actually. When I was a child, my family, I grew up in Chicago to a Lithuanian-American family, and my father, who was a mathematician, got a very rare invitation to travel to Soviet Lithuania, to the University of Vilnius to meet with colleagues. And at this point, journeys of more than a few days or a week were very rare to the Soviet Union for Americans, and the result was that I had unforgettable experiences visiting the Soviet Union in Brezhnev’s Day.
And among the things I saw, there was a museum of atheism that had been established in a church that had been ripped apart from inside and was meant to embody the official stance of atheism. And I remember being baffled by the museum on the inside because you would expect exhibits, you would expect something dramatic, something that will be compelling, and instead, there was some folk art from the countryside showing bygone beliefs, there were some lithographs or engravings of the Spanish Inquisition and its horrors, and that was pretty much it. But as a child, I remember being reproved in that museum for not wearing my windbreaker, but instead carrying it on my arm, which was a very disrespectful thing to do in an official museum of atheism.
When I was able to visit the Soviet Union later for a language course in the summer of 1989, one of the obligatory tours that we took was to file reverently past the body of Lenin outside the Kremlin in the mausoleum at Red Square, and communist mummies, like those of Lenin, earlier, Stalin had been there as well, communist mummies like Mao or Ho Chi Minh really, I think, speak to a blending of earlier religious sensibility, reverence for relics of great figures, almost saintly figures, so that even what got proclaimed as atheism turned out to be a very demanding faith as well, and I think that’s a contradiction that other scholars have pointed out as well.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that’s a very complicated discussion. When you remove religion as a big component of a society, whether something like a framing of political ideologies in a religious way is the natural consequence of that.
Yeah, that’s a very complicated discussion. When you remove religion as a big component of a society, whether something like a framing of political ideologies in a religious way is the natural consequence of that.
Vejas Liulevicius
We hear nature abhorring a vacuum, and I think that there are places in human character that long for transcendental explanations, that it’s not all meaningless. In fact, there’s a larger purpose, and I think it’s not a coincidence that such a significant part of resistance to communist regimes has in part come from, on the one hand, religious believers, and on the other hand, from disillusioned true believers in communism who find themselves undergoing an internal experience of revulsion, finding that their ideals have not been followed through on.
We hear nature abhorring a vacuum, and I think that there are places in human character that long for transcendental explanations, that it’s not all meaningless. In fact, there’s a larger purpose, and I think it’s not a coincidence that such a significant part of resistance to communist regimes has in part come from, on the one hand, religious believers, and on the other hand, from disillusioned true believers in communism who find themselves undergoing an internal experience of revulsion, finding that their ideals have not been followed through on.
Lex Fridman
So this topic is one of several topics that you eloquently describe as contradictions within the ideas of Marx. So religious, there is a kind of religious adherence versus also the rejection of religious dogma that he stood for. We’ve talked about some of the others, the tension between nationalism that emerged when it was implemented versus what communism is supposed to be, which is global, so globalism. Then there’s the thing that we started talking with, is the individualism. So history is supposed to be defined by the large collection of humans, but there does seem to be the singular figures, including Marx himself, that are really important. Geography of global versus restricted to certain countries, and tradition. You’re supposed to break with the past under communism, but then Marxism became one of the strongest traditions in history.
So this topic is one of several topics that you eloquently describe as contradictions within the ideas of Marx. So religious, there is a kind of religious adherence versus also the rejection of religious dogma that he stood for. We’ve talked about some of the others, the tension between nationalism that emerged when it was implemented versus what communism is supposed to be, which is global, so globalism. Then there’s the thing that we started talking with, is the individualism. So history is supposed to be defined by the large collection of humans, but there does seem to be the singular figures, including Marx himself, that are really important. Geography of global versus restricted to certain countries, and tradition. You’re supposed to break with the past under communism, but then Marxism became one of the strongest traditions in history.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right, that’s right. I think that that last one is especially significant because it’s deeply paradoxical. Trying to outline these contradictions by the way is like subjecting Marx to the sort of analysis that Marx subjected other people to, which is to point out internal contradictions, things that are likely to become pressure points or cracks that might open up in what’s supposed to be a completely set and durable and effective framework. The one about tradition, Marx points out that the need for revolution is in order to break with the traditions that have hemmed people in – these earlier ways of thinking, earlier social structures – and to constantly renovate.
That’s right, that’s right. I think that that last one is especially significant because it’s deeply paradoxical. Trying to outline these contradictions by the way is like subjecting Marx to the sort of analysis that Marx subjected other people to, which is to point out internal contradictions, things that are likely to become pressure points or cracks that might open up in what’s supposed to be a completely set and durable and effective framework. The one about tradition, Marx points out that the need for revolution is in order to break with the traditions that have hemmed people in – these earlier ways of thinking, earlier social structures – and to constantly renovate.
And what happens instead is a tradition of radical rupture emerges, and that’s really tough, because imagine in the last stages of the Soviet Union where keen observers can tell that there are problems that are building in society. There are discontents and demands that are going to clash, especially when someone like Gorbachev is proposing reforms and things are suddenly thrown open for discussion. The very notion that you have the celebration of revolutionaries and the Bolshevik legacy at a time when the state wants to enforce stability and an order that’s been received from the prior generation, think of Brezhnev’s time, for instance. All of that is an especially volatile mix and unlikely to work out very durably in the long run.
The Communist Manifesto
Lex Fridman
I would love to talk about the works of Marx, the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. What can we say that’s interesting about the manifestation of his ideas on paper?
I would love to talk about the works of Marx, the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. What can we say that’s interesting about the manifestation of his ideas on paper?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, the first thing to note obviously is that those two works are very different. Das Kapital is an enormous multi-volume work that Marx worked at and only got the first volume out because Engels begged him to stop revising. “Please, just finally get it into press,” and then the rest, Engels had to actually reconstruct out of notes after Marx passed away. It’s a huge work. By contrast, the Communist Manifesto is a brief pamphlet that ended up affecting the lives of many millions worldwide, in spite of its comparative brevity.
Well, the first thing to note obviously is that those two works are very different. Das Kapital is an enormous multi-volume work that Marx worked at and only got the first volume out because Engels begged him to stop revising. “Please, just finally get it into press,” and then the rest, Engels had to actually reconstruct out of notes after Marx passed away. It’s a huge work. By contrast, the Communist Manifesto is a brief pamphlet that ended up affecting the lives of many millions worldwide, in spite of its comparative brevity.
The Communist Manifesto moreover is also something of the nature of having a delayed fuse, you could say, because when it first appears amid the revolutions of 1848 that sweep across Europe, the work is contrary to what people often believe. That pamphlet did not cause the revolutions of 1848, many of which had national or liberal demands. The voice of Marx and Engels was barely to be heard over the din of other far more prominent actors. It is, however, in the aftermath that this work takes on tremendous significance and becomes popularly read and popularly distributed.
It’s especially the episode, the bloody episode of the Paris Commune in 1871 which comes to be identified with Marx. Even though it was not purely inspired by Marx alone, nor were all of the Communards devoted Marxists, it’s the identification of this famous or infamous episode in urban upheaval that really leads to worldwide notoriety for Marx and attention to those works.
And they’re very different in form. Das Kapital is intended to be the Origin of Species of its realm of economic thought, and represents years and years of work of Marx laboring in the British Museum library, working through statistics, working on little bits and pieces of a larger answer to big historical questions that he believes that he’s arrived at. Its tone is different from that of the Communist Manifesto, which is a call to arms. It announces with great confidence what the scheme of history will be, but rather than urging that the answer might be passivity and just waiting for history to play out in its preordained way, it’s also a clarion call to make the revolution happen and is intended to be a pragmatic, practical statement of how this is to play out, and starts in part with those ringing words about a ghost or a specter haunting Europe, the specter of communism, which wasn’t true at the time, but decades later, most definitely is the case.
Lex Fridman
Is there something we could say about the difference between Marxian economics and Marx’s political ideology, so the political side of things and the economics side of things?
Is there something we could say about the difference between Marxian economics and Marx’s political ideology, so the political side of things and the economics side of things?
Vejas Liulevicius
So I think that Marx would probably have responded that in fact, those things are indivisible. The analysis as purely theoretical certainly can be performed on any economic reality that you care to mention, but the imperatives that grow out of that economic analysis are political. Marx and Engels emphasize the unity of theory and practice. So it’s not enough to dispassionately analyze. It’s a call to action as well, because if you’ve delivered the answer to how history evolves and changes, it obligates you, right? It demands certain action.
So I think that Marx would probably have responded that in fact, those things are indivisible. The analysis as purely theoretical certainly can be performed on any economic reality that you care to mention, but the imperatives that grow out of that economic analysis are political. Marx and Engels emphasize the unity of theory and practice. So it’s not enough to dispassionately analyze. It’s a call to action as well, because if you’ve delivered the answer to how history evolves and changes, it obligates you, right? It demands certain action.
You sometimes hear from undergraduates that they’ve heard from their high school history teachers that Marxism was just a theoretical construct that was the idle production of a philosopher who was not connected to the world and was never meant to be tried in practice. Marx would have been furious to hear this and it’s almost heroically wrong as a historical statement, because Marx insisted that all previous philosophers have theorized about reality. What now is really necessary is to change it. So you could say that in the abstract, a Marxist economist can certainly use Marx’s theoretical framework to compare to a given economic reality, but Marx would have seen that as incomplete and as deeply unsatisfactory.
There’s a kind of a footnote to all of this, which is that even though Marxist dialectical materialism grounds itself in these economic realities and the political prescription is supposed to flow from the economic realities and be inevitably growing out of them, in the real history of communist regimes, you’ve actually seen periods where the economics becomes detached from the politics. And I’m thinking in particular of the new economic period early in the history of the Soviet Union when Lenin realizes that the economy is so far gone that you need to reintroduce or allow, in a limited way, some elements of private enterprise, just to start getting Russia back on course in order to have the accumulation of surplus that will be necessary to build the project at all. And there are many Bolsheviks who see the new economic policy as a terrible compromise and a betrayal of their ideas, but it’s seen as necessary for a short while, and then Stalin will wreck it entirely.
Or consider for that matter China today, where you have a dominant political class, the Communist Party of China, which is allowing economic development and private enterprise, as long as it retains political control. So some of these elements already represent divergences from what Marx would’ve expected, and this points to a really key problem or question for all of the history of communism. It has to do with it being a tradition in spite of itself, and that could be expressed in the following way. An original set of ideas is going to evolve, it’s going to change, because circumstances change. What elaborations of any doctrine, whether it’s communism or a religious doctrine or any political ideology, what elaborations are natural stages in the evolution of any living set of ideas, or when do you reach the point where some shift or some adaptation is so radically different that it actually breaks with the tradition, and that’s an insoluble problem. You probably have to take it on a case-by-case basis.
It speaks to issues like the question that gets raised today. Is China in a meaningful sense a communist country anymore? And there’s a diversity of opinion on this score. Or if you’re looking at the history of communism and you look at North Korea, which now is on its third installment of a dynastic leader from the same family who rules like a God king over a regime that calls itself communist, is that still a form of communism? Is it an evolution of? Is it a complete reversal of?
I tend to want to take an anthropological perspective in the history of communism and to take very seriously those people who avow that they are communists and this is the project that they have underway. And then after hearing that avowal, I think as a historian, you have to say, well, let’s look at the details. Let’s see what changes have been made, what continuities might still exist, whether there’s a larger pattern to be discerned here. So it’s a very, very complicated history that we’re talking about.
Communism in the Soviet Union
Lex Fridman
Let’s step back to the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and let’s steel man the case for communism. Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the people there, not in this way where we could look back at what happened in the 20th century. Why was this such a compelling notion for millions of people? Can we make the case for it?
Let’s step back to the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and let’s steel man the case for communism. Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the people there, not in this way where we could look back at what happened in the 20th century. Why was this such a compelling notion for millions of people? Can we make the case for it?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, clearly it was a compelling case for millions of people, and part of this story overall has to do with the faith, conviction, stories of people sacrificing themselves as well as their countrymen in a cause that they believed was not just legitimate, but demanded their total obedience. I think that throughout the early part of the 20th century, the late 19th century, early part of the 20th century, so much of the compelling case for communism came from the confidence that people in the West more generally placed in science, the notion that science is answering problems. Science is giving us solutions to how the world around us works, how the world around us can be improved. Some varieties of that, and watch the quotation marks, “science” were crazy, like phrenology, so-called scientific racism that tried to divide humanity up into discreet blocks and to manipulate them in ways that were allegedly scientific or rational.
Well, clearly it was a compelling case for millions of people, and part of this story overall has to do with the faith, conviction, stories of people sacrificing themselves as well as their countrymen in a cause that they believed was not just legitimate, but demanded their total obedience. I think that throughout the early part of the 20th century, the late 19th century, early part of the 20th century, so much of the compelling case for communism came from the confidence that people in the West more generally placed in science, the notion that science is answering problems. Science is giving us solutions to how the world around us works, how the world around us can be improved. Some varieties of that, and watch the quotation marks, “science” were crazy, like phrenology, so-called scientific racism that tried to divide humanity up into discreet blocks and to manipulate them in ways that were allegedly scientific or rational.
So there were horrors that followed from those invocations of science, but its prestige was enormous, and that in part had to do with the lessening grip of religious ideas on intellectual elites, more generally, processes of secularization, not total secularization but processes of secularization in Western industrial societies, and the sense that here’s the doctrine that will allow escape from wars brought on by capitalist competition, poverty and economic cycles and depressions brought on by capitalist competition, the inequalities of societies that remain hierarchical and class-based. And this claim to being cutting edge science, I think allows people like Lenin to derive immense confidence in the prescription that they have for the future. And that paradoxically, the confidence that you have in broad strokes the right set of answers for how to get to the future also allows you to take huge liberties with the tactics and the strategies that you follow, as long as your ultimate goal remains the one sketched by this master plan.
So ultimately, some of the predictions of someone like Lenin, that once society has reached that stage of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the notion that governments will essentially be able to run themselves, and that the model he had in mind, oddly enough, was Swiss post offices. Being in Swiss exile must have impressed him so much with the orderliness and the sheer discipline and rationality of a Swiss post office, and he thought, “Why can’t you organize governments like this where you don’t need political leaders, you don’t need grand visions? You have procedures, you have bureaucracy, which does its job in a way that’s not alienating, but simply produces the greatest good.”
When you think of the experiences with bureaucracy in the 20th century, one’s hair stands on end to have the comparative naiveté on display with a prediction like that, but it derives from that confidence that it’s all going to be okay because we understand. We have the key, we have the plan to how to arrive at this final configuration of humanity.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, the certainty of science, in quotes, and the goal of utopia gets you in trouble. But also, just on the human level, from a working class person perspective, from the industrial revolution, you see the growing inequality, wealth inequality, and there is a kind of, you see people getting wealthy, and combined with the fact that life is difficult, life in general, life is suffering for many, for most, for all if you listen to some philosophers. And there is a powerful idea in that the man is exploiting me, and that’s a populist message that a lot of people resonate with because to a degree, it’s true in every system. And so before you know how these economic and political ideas manifest themselves, it is really powerful to say, “Here, beyond the horizon, there’s a world where the rich man will not exploit my hard work anymore,” and I think that’s a really powerful idea.
Yeah, the certainty of science, in quotes, and the goal of utopia gets you in trouble. But also, just on the human level, from a working class person perspective, from the industrial revolution, you see the growing inequality, wealth inequality, and there is a kind of, you see people getting wealthy, and combined with the fact that life is difficult, life in general, life is suffering for many, for most, for all if you listen to some philosophers. And there is a powerful idea in that the man is exploiting me, and that’s a populist message that a lot of people resonate with because to a degree, it’s true in every system. And so before you know how these economic and political ideas manifest themselves, it is really powerful to say, “Here, beyond the horizon, there’s a world where the rich man will not exploit my hard work anymore,” and I think that’s a really powerful idea.
Vejas Liulevicius
It is. At the same time though, it kind of points to a further problem and that’s the identity of the revolutionaries. It turned out that many of these revolutionary movements and then the founding elites of communist countries in the aftermath of the Soviet seizure of power turn out to be something quite different from people who have spent their lives in factories experiencing the industrial revolution firsthand. There’s a special role here for intellectuals, and when Marx and Engels write into the Communist Manifesto the notion that certain exceptional individuals can rise above their class origins in a way other people can’t and transcend their earlier role, their materially determined role in order to gain a perspective on the historical process as a whole and ally themselves with the working class and its struggle for communism, this sort of special role that they carved out for themselves is enormously appealing for intellectuals, because any celebration of intellectuals as world movers is going to appeal to intellectuals.
It is. At the same time though, it kind of points to a further problem and that’s the identity of the revolutionaries. It turned out that many of these revolutionary movements and then the founding elites of communist countries in the aftermath of the Soviet seizure of power turn out to be something quite different from people who have spent their lives in factories experiencing the industrial revolution firsthand. There’s a special role here for intellectuals, and when Marx and Engels write into the Communist Manifesto the notion that certain exceptional individuals can rise above their class origins in a way other people can’t and transcend their earlier role, their materially determined role in order to gain a perspective on the historical process as a whole and ally themselves with the working class and its struggle for communism, this sort of special role that they carved out for themselves is enormously appealing for intellectuals, because any celebration of intellectuals as world movers is going to appeal to intellectuals.
That gap, that frequent reality of not being in touch with the very classes that the communists are aiming to represent is a very frequent theme in this story. It also speaks to a crucial part of this story, which is the breaking apart or the Civil War, the war of brother against…
Vejas Liulevicius
Apart or the Civil War, the War of brother against brother, the fraternal struggle that splits socialism and splits followers of Marx. And that’s in the aftermath of the First World War in particular, or during this traumatic experience. The way in which Lenin encourages the foundation of radical parties that will break with social democracy of the sort that had been elaborated, especially in places like Germany, scorning their moderation. And instead announcing a new dispensation, which was the Leninist conception of a disciplined, hardcore professional revolutionaries who will act in ways that a mere trade union movement couldn’t.
Apart or the Civil War, the War of brother against brother, the fraternal struggle that splits socialism and splits followers of Marx. And that’s in the aftermath of the First World War in particular, or during this traumatic experience. The way in which Lenin encourages the foundation of radical parties that will break with social democracy of the sort that had been elaborated, especially in places like Germany, scorning their moderation. And instead announcing a new dispensation, which was the Leninist conception of a disciplined, hardcore professional revolutionaries who will act in ways that a mere trade union movement couldn’t.
And what this speaks to is a fundamental tension in radical movements. Because left to their own devices, Lenin announces, workers tend to focus on their reality, their families, their workplace. Want better working conditions, unionize, and then aim to negotiate with employers or to agitate for reforms on the part of the state to improve their living conditions. And then they’re happy for the advances that they have won. And for Lenin, that’s not enough, because that’s a half measure. That’s the sort of thing that leads you into an accommodation with the system rather than the overthrow of the system. So there’s a constant tension in this regard that plays itself out over the long haul.
Lex Fridman
Let’s go to Lenin and the Russian Revolution. How did communism come to power in the Soviet Union?
Let’s go to Lenin and the Russian Revolution. How did communism come to power in the Soviet Union?
Vejas Liulevicius
It came to power as a result of stepping into a power vacuum. And the power vacuum was created by the First World War, and the effect that it had as a total war. Unprecedented pressure placed on a regime that, in many ways, was a traditional, almost feudal monarchy, only experiencing the beginnings of the modernization that the rest of Europe had undergone. For this reason, communism comes to power in a place that Marx probably wouldn’t have expected, in the wreckage of the Russian Empire. Lenin is absolutely vital to this equation because he’s the one who presses the process forward.
It came to power as a result of stepping into a power vacuum. And the power vacuum was created by the First World War, and the effect that it had as a total war. Unprecedented pressure placed on a regime that, in many ways, was a traditional, almost feudal monarchy, only experiencing the beginnings of the modernization that the rest of Europe had undergone. For this reason, communism comes to power in a place that Marx probably wouldn’t have expected, in the wreckage of the Russian Empire. Lenin is absolutely vital to this equation because he’s the one who presses the process forward.
Ironically, given the claim of communist leaders to having the key to history, just a few months previous in exile in Switzerland Lenin had been despairing and had been convinced that he may not even live to see the advent of that day. But then when revolution does break out in the Russian Empire in February of 1917, Lenin is absolutely frantic to get back. And when he does get back as a result of a deal that is negotiated with the German high command, a step that they’ll later live very much to regret. He is able to get back and to go into action and to press for nothing less than the seizure of power that brings his Bolshevik faction, the radical wing of the socialist movement, to power and then to build the Soviet Union.
Lex Fridman
Even he was surprised how effective and how fast the revolution happened?
Even he was surprised how effective and how fast the revolution happened?
Vejas Liulevicius
He was, although I think that he would’ve agreed that what was necessary was a cataclysm on the scale of the First World War to make this happen. The First World War shatters so many of the certainties of the 19th century that we talked about as a dynamic period with argument between ideologies. It scrambles all sorts of earlier debates. It renegotiates the status of the individual versus an all-powerful state and the claims of the state. Because to win, or even just to survive in World War I, you need to centralize, centralize, centralize, and to put everything onto an authoritarian wartime footing in country after country. So Lenin earlier had already articulated the possibility that this might happen by talking about how the entire globe already was connected. And there’s a chain of capitalist development that is connecting different countries so that the weakest link in the chain, if it breaks, if it pops open, it might actually inaugurate much bigger processes and start a chain reaction. That’s what he intended to do and has the chance to do in the course of 1917. Incidentally, just to get a sense of the sheer chaos and the human, on an individual human level, what the absence of established authority meant. There’s few works of literature that is powerful as Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago for giving the whole sweep of contending forces in a power vacuum. It’s an amazing testimony to that time and place.
He was, although I think that he would’ve agreed that what was necessary was a cataclysm on the scale of the First World War to make this happen. The First World War shatters so many of the certainties of the 19th century that we talked about as a dynamic period with argument between ideologies. It scrambles all sorts of earlier debates. It renegotiates the status of the individual versus an all-powerful state and the claims of the state. Because to win, or even just to survive in World War I, you need to centralize, centralize, centralize, and to put everything onto an authoritarian wartime footing in country after country. So Lenin earlier had already articulated the possibility that this might happen by talking about how the entire globe already was connected. And there’s a chain of capitalist development that is connecting different countries so that the weakest link in the chain, if it breaks, if it pops open, it might actually inaugurate much bigger processes and start a chain reaction. That’s what he intended to do and has the chance to do in the course of 1917. Incidentally, just to get a sense of the sheer chaos and the human, on an individual human level, what the absence of established authority meant. There’s few works of literature that is powerful as Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago for giving the whole sweep of contending forces in a power vacuum. It’s an amazing testimony to that time and place.
Lex Fridman
You said that Bolsheviks saw violence and terror as necessary. Can you just speak to this aspect of their… Because they took power, so this was a part of the way they saw the world.
You said that Bolsheviks saw violence and terror as necessary. Can you just speak to this aspect of their… Because they took power, so this was a part of the way they saw the world.
Vejas Liulevicius
Right. And it had antecedents. Even though Lenin and his colleagues are competing amongst each other for the title of most faithful disciple of Marx, and most true to the received theory in practice, there’s other influences, earlier influences that operate in the Russian context that were not operative, let’s say, in the German context. Here you have to step back and think about the nature of Tsarism, which had maintained, still, into the 20th century, the notion of a divine right to rule. That God had ordained the Tsarist system and its hierarchies. And that to question these was sinful and politically not advisable. The restrictive nature of Russian society at this point dominated by the Tsarist establishment, its harshness, its reactionary nature meant that people who in another context, in another country might’ve been reformers, could instead very easily be provoked into becoming revolutionaries. And Lenin is a perfect example of this. Because his older brother was executed as a result of being in a radical revolutionary movement, who was arrested and executed for association with terrorism.
Right. And it had antecedents. Even though Lenin and his colleagues are competing amongst each other for the title of most faithful disciple of Marx, and most true to the received theory in practice, there’s other influences, earlier influences that operate in the Russian context that were not operative, let’s say, in the German context. Here you have to step back and think about the nature of Tsarism, which had maintained, still, into the 20th century, the notion of a divine right to rule. That God had ordained the Tsarist system and its hierarchies. And that to question these was sinful and politically not advisable. The restrictive nature of Russian society at this point dominated by the Tsarist establishment, its harshness, its reactionary nature meant that people who in another context, in another country might’ve been reformers, could instead very easily be provoked into becoming revolutionaries. And Lenin is a perfect example of this. Because his older brother was executed as a result of being in a radical revolutionary movement, who was arrested and executed for association with terrorism.
Earlier generations of Russian radicals had founded populist groups that would aim to engage in terrorism and resistance against the Tsarist regime. And this included people who call themselves nihilists. And these nihilists were materialists who saw themselves ushering in a new age by absolute rejection of earlier religious traditions and aiming for material answers to the challenges of the day. Among them was Nikolai Chernyshevsky, who wrote what’s been called the worst book ever written. It was, in fact, one of Lenin’s favorite books, in Russian it’s [foreign language 01:10:12]. In English it gets translated What is to Be Done. And it’s a utopian novel about revolutionaries and how revolutionaries should act with one another in open ways, new ways, non-traditional ways in order to help usher in the coming revolution. Lenin loved the work and said it had the great merit of showing you how to be a revolutionary. So there’s the Marxist influence, and then there’s Russian populist nihilist influence, which is also a very live current in Lenin’s thinking.
When you add these things together, you get an explosive mix. Because Lenin, as a result, and part of this family trauma of his brother, becomes a absolutely irreconcilable enemy of the Tsarist regime and sets about turning himself into what you might call a guided missile for revolution. He turns himself into a machine to produce revolutionary change. And I mean that with little hyperbole. Lenin at one point shared with friends that he loved listening to music, but he tried not to listen to beautiful music like Beethoven because it made him feel gentle. What a revolution demanded was realism, hardness, absolute steely resolve. So Lenin worries even fellow revolutionaries by the intensity of his single-minded focus to revolution. He spends his days thinking about the revolution. He probably dreamt about the revolution. So 24/7 it’s an existence where he’s paired off other human elements, quite deliberately, in order to turn himself into an effective instigator of revolution. So, when the opportunity comes in 1917, he’s primed and ready for that role.
Lex Fridman
It’s interesting that Russian nihilism had an impact on Lenin. Traditionally nihilist philosophy rejects all sorts of traditional morality. There’s a kind of cynical dark view. Where’s the light?
It’s interesting that Russian nihilism had an impact on Lenin. Traditionally nihilist philosophy rejects all sorts of traditional morality. There’s a kind of cynical dark view. Where’s the light?
Vejas Liulevicius
The light is science. The light is science and materialism.
The light is science. The light is science and materialism.
Lex Fridman
Oh boy.
Oh boy.
Vejas Liulevicius
The nihilists, some of them did a very bad job of hiding their political beliefs because they were famous for wearing blue tinted spectacles, kind of the sunglasses of the late 19th century as a way of shielding their eyes from light. But also having a dispassionate and realistic view of reality outside. So nihilists, as the name would suggest, do reject all prior certainties, but they make an exception for science and see that as the possibility for founding an entirely new mode of existence.
The nihilists, some of them did a very bad job of hiding their political beliefs because they were famous for wearing blue tinted spectacles, kind of the sunglasses of the late 19th century as a way of shielding their eyes from light. But also having a dispassionate and realistic view of reality outside. So nihilists, as the name would suggest, do reject all prior certainties, but they make an exception for science and see that as the possibility for founding an entirely new mode of existence.
Lex Fridman
For most people, I think, nihilism is introduced in the brilliant philosophical work, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, by the name of The Big Lebowski. Nihilists appear there, and I think they summarize the nihilist tradition quite well. But it is indeed fascinating. And also it is fascinating that Lenin, and I’m sure this influenced Stalin as well, that hardness was a necessary human characteristic to take the revolution to its end.
For most people, I think, nihilism is introduced in the brilliant philosophical work, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, by the name of The Big Lebowski. Nihilists appear there, and I think they summarize the nihilist tradition quite well. But it is indeed fascinating. And also it is fascinating that Lenin, and I’m sure this influenced Stalin as well, that hardness was a necessary human characteristic to take the revolution to its end.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right. So prior generations of nihilists or populists had resembled Lenin’s single-mindedness by arguing that one needed total devotion for this. To play this role in society, it was not enough to be somewhat committed. Total commitment was necessary. And the other theme that’s at work here obviously is, if we consider Lenin affected by Marxist ideas and the homegrown Russian revolutionary tradition that predates the arrival of Marxist socialism in Russia. It’s the theme of needing to adapt to local conditions. So Marxism or communism in Vietnam, or in Cuba, or in Cambodia, or in Russia will be very different in its local adaptations and local themes and resonance than it was in Germany where Marx would’ve expected all of this to unfold.
That’s right. So prior generations of nihilists or populists had resembled Lenin’s single-mindedness by arguing that one needed total devotion for this. To play this role in society, it was not enough to be somewhat committed. Total commitment was necessary. And the other theme that’s at work here obviously is, if we consider Lenin affected by Marxist ideas and the homegrown Russian revolutionary tradition that predates the arrival of Marxist socialism in Russia. It’s the theme of needing to adapt to local conditions. So Marxism or communism in Vietnam, or in Cuba, or in Cambodia, or in Russia will be very different in its local adaptations and local themes and resonance than it was in Germany where Marx would’ve expected all of this to unfold.
Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin
Lex Fridman
Let’s talk about Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, this little interplay that eventually led to Stalin accumulating, grabbing, and taking a hold of power. What was that process like?
Let’s talk about Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, this little interplay that eventually led to Stalin accumulating, grabbing, and taking a hold of power. What was that process like?
Vejas Liulevicius
Lenin’s supreme confidence leads the party through some really difficult steps that involves things like signing the humiliating treaty with the Germans, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Where critics of the Bolsheviks said that no one who loved their country would’ve agreed to a so Draconian, so harsh a settlement that saw the peeling off of large territories that had belonged to the Russian Empire. Lenin is willing to undertake this because the larger prize. He even says that he’s not going to bother to read the treaty because shortly that treaty is going to be a dead letter. His expectation is revolution’s going to break out everywhere, especially after we’ve raised the standard, first of all, in the wreckage of the Russian Empire.
Lenin’s supreme confidence leads the party through some really difficult steps that involves things like signing the humiliating treaty with the Germans, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Where critics of the Bolsheviks said that no one who loved their country would’ve agreed to a so Draconian, so harsh a settlement that saw the peeling off of large territories that had belonged to the Russian Empire. Lenin is willing to undertake this because the larger prize. He even says that he’s not going to bother to read the treaty because shortly that treaty is going to be a dead letter. His expectation is revolution’s going to break out everywhere, especially after we’ve raised the standard, first of all, in the wreckage of the Russian Empire.
Lex Fridman
We should probably say that that treaty, to some small degree, maybe you can elaborate now or later, lays the groundwork for World War II, because there is… Resentment is a thing that with time can lead to just extreme levels of destruction.
We should probably say that that treaty, to some small degree, maybe you can elaborate now or later, lays the groundwork for World War II, because there is… Resentment is a thing that with time can lead to just extreme levels of destruction.
Vejas Liulevicius
Right. For German sensibilities, for German nationalists, that treaty meant that Germany had essentially won World War I. And only a turn of events that many of them couldn’t even follow or conceive of, the arrival of American troops, the tipping of the balance in the West, led to that reversal. One of the many scholars and contemporaries pointed out that Germany, between the wars, was full of people who were convinced that Germany had actually not lost the war, however that victory of theirs was defined. So most definitely that groundwork is laid. And incidentally, this is something we can talk about later, World War I and World War II have a lot of linkages like that. And as time goes by, I think historians are going to focus on those linkages even more. But Lenin also in his leadership against the odds, leads the Bolsheviks to power in the Russian Civil War where most betting people would’ve given them very slight odds of even surviving, given how many enemies they faced off against.
Right. For German sensibilities, for German nationalists, that treaty meant that Germany had essentially won World War I. And only a turn of events that many of them couldn’t even follow or conceive of, the arrival of American troops, the tipping of the balance in the West, led to that reversal. One of the many scholars and contemporaries pointed out that Germany, between the wars, was full of people who were convinced that Germany had actually not lost the war, however that victory of theirs was defined. So most definitely that groundwork is laid. And incidentally, this is something we can talk about later, World War I and World War II have a lot of linkages like that. And as time goes by, I think historians are going to focus on those linkages even more. But Lenin also in his leadership against the odds, leads the Bolsheviks to power in the Russian Civil War where most betting people would’ve given them very slight odds of even surviving, given how many enemies they faced off against.
Lenin’s insistence upon discipline and upon good organization allowed the Bolsheviks to emerge as the winners. And yet a great disappointment follows. Lenin, as we said, had expected that revolution will break out soon everywhere and all it’ll be necessary for the Bolsheviks to do, having given the lead, is to link up with others. So he considered that what would be established would be a red bridge between a communist Russia, and once Germany inevitably plunged ahead into its revolutionary transformation, a communist Germany. That doesn’t end up happening. On the contrary, what happens in Germany is a out-and-out shooting war between different kinds of socialists. When Germany establishes a democracy that later goes by the name of the Weimar Republic, the government is a government of Social Democrats, moderate Social Democrats who are fearful of what they see as Russian conditions of disorder and who are not necessarily in sympathy with the Leninist vision of tightly-organized authoritarian rule. So communists who revolt in Germany are brutally suppressed by mercenaries, hardened front fighters and nationalist radicals hired by the German socialist government. And the result is a wound that just won’t heal in the German socialist movement as a result of this fratricide. It frustrates Lenin’s ambitions. So too does the fact that Poland, rather than going Bolshevik, resists attempts by the Bolsheviks to move forward and to connect up with Germany. The Poles, yet again, play a tremendously important historical role in changing the expected course of historical events. It’s in the aftermath of these unexpected turns that Lenin and his colleagues realize that they’re in this for the long haul. It’s necessary to wait longer. They don’t lose hope or confidence, you might say, in the eventual coming of international workers revolution.
But it’s been deferred, it’s been put off. So the question then arises, what do you build within a state that’s established called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the Soviet Union? Lenin, as a result of an assassination attempt, is deeply affected in his health and would’ve loved to continue for years longer to steer the regime. But he’s sidelined because of his declining health. And there emerges a contest. A contest between a very charismatic leader, Leo Trotsky on the one hand, who is an amazing orator, who is an intellectual, who has traveled widely in the world, who has seen much of the world, and who is a brilliant writer. A far-ranging intellect, and is seen as extremely radical because of his demand for permanent revolution, the acceleration of revolutionary processes to drive history forward, to strike while the iron is hot. And on the other hand is an extremely unlikely contender for power.
That’s a man who’s probably the antithesis of charisma if you were to meet him in person. A guy with a squeaky, somewhat high-pitched voice, not well-suited to revolutionary oratory. His face pockmarked with the scars of youthful illness and whom, moreover, doesn’t speak a fine sophisticated Russian. But speaks a Russian heavily inflected with a Georgian accent from that part of the Russian Empire from which he came. And that was Stalin. I know that you already have a marvelous interview with Stephen Kotkin, the brilliant biographer of Stalin who has so many insights on that subject. The one thing that, even after reading about Stalin, that never ceases to surprise me, even in retrospect, is that Stalin gains a reputation not as a fiery radical, but as a moderate. A man who’s a conciliator. Someone who’s calm when others are excited. Someone who is able because of his organizational skills to resolve merely theoretical disputes with practical solutions.
Now, to fully take this aboard, we have to unknow what we know from our vantage point about Stalin’s leadership, Stalin’s brutality and eliminating his opposition. The cult of personality that, against all odds, got built up around Stalin so successfully and the absolute dominant role that led him later to be described as Genghis Khan with a telephone. A brutal dictator with ancient barbarism allied to the use of modern technology. While Trotsky is delivering stirring speeches and theorizing, Stalin works behind the scenes to control personnel decisions in the Bolshevik movement and in the state. It’s a cliche because it’s true, that personnel is policy. Trotsky is increasingly sidelined and then demonized and eventually expelled from the Soviet Union and later murdered in Mexico City. For Stalin, eliminating his enemies turned out to be the solution that he was most comfortable with.
Lex Fridman
From that perspective, there’s a lot of fascinating things here. So one, is that you can have a wolf, a brutal dictator in moderate clothing. Just because somebody presents as moderate-
From that perspective, there’s a lot of fascinating things here. So one, is that you can have a wolf, a brutal dictator in moderate clothing. Just because somebody presents as moderate-
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right.
That’s right.
Lex Fridman
… doesn’t mean they can’t be one of the most destructive, not the most destructive, humans in history. The other aspect is, using propaganda you can construct an image of a person. Even though they’re uncharismatic not attractive, their voice is no good. All of those aspects, you can still have… There’s still, to this day, a very large number of people that see him as a religious type of god-like figure. So the power of propaganda there.
… doesn’t mean they can’t be one of the most destructive, not the most destructive, humans in history. The other aspect is, using propaganda you can construct an image of a person. Even though they’re uncharismatic not attractive, their voice is no good. All of those aspects, you can still have… There’s still, to this day, a very large number of people that see him as a religious type of god-like figure. So the power of propaganda there.
Vejas Liulevicius
Today, we would call that curating the image, right?
Today, we would call that curating the image, right?
Stalin
Lex Fridman
Curating the image. But to the extent to which you can do that effectively is quite incredible. So in that way also Stalin is a study of the power of propaganda. Can we just talk about the ways that the power vacuum is filled by Stalin, how that manifests itself? Perhaps one angle we can take is how was the secret police used? How did power manifest itself under Stalin?
Curating the image. But to the extent to which you can do that effectively is quite incredible. So in that way also Stalin is a study of the power of propaganda. Can we just talk about the ways that the power vacuum is filled by Stalin, how that manifests itself? Perhaps one angle we can take is how was the secret police used? How did power manifest itself under Stalin?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, before getting to the secret police, I would just want to add the other crucial element, which is Lenin’s patronage. Stalin doesn’t brawl his way into the Bolshevik party and dominate. He’s co-opted and promoted to positions of importance by Lenin who sees him as a somewhat rough around the edges, not very sophisticated, much less cosmopolitan than other Bolsheviks. But dependable, reliable, and committed revolutionary. One of the things that’s emerged, especially after archives opened up with the fall of the Soviet Union and we were able to read more and more the communications of Lenin, is that it’s not the case that we’re talking here about an unconnected series of careers. Rather there are connections to be made. It’s true that towards the end of his life, Lenin came to be worried by complaints about Stalin’s rudeness towards fellow Bolsheviks. And in his testament, he warned against Stalin’s testimonies.
Well, before getting to the secret police, I would just want to add the other crucial element, which is Lenin’s patronage. Stalin doesn’t brawl his way into the Bolshevik party and dominate. He’s co-opted and promoted to positions of importance by Lenin who sees him as a somewhat rough around the edges, not very sophisticated, much less cosmopolitan than other Bolsheviks. But dependable, reliable, and committed revolutionary. One of the things that’s emerged, especially after archives opened up with the fall of the Soviet Union and we were able to read more and more the communications of Lenin, is that it’s not the case that we’re talking here about an unconnected series of careers. Rather there are connections to be made. It’s true that towards the end of his life, Lenin came to be worried by complaints about Stalin’s rudeness towards fellow Bolsheviks. And in his testament, he warned against Stalin’s testimonies.
Lenin fundamentally saw himself as irreplaceable, so that doesn’t really help in a succession struggle. Stalin is able to rely on a secret police apparatus that had been built up under Lenin already. It’s very early in the foundation of the Soviet state that the Cheka or the Extraordinary Commission is established as a secret police to terrify the enemies, beat down the opponents of the regime, and to keep an eye on society more generally. The person who’s chosen for that task also is an anomaly among Bolsheviks. That is a man of Polish aristocratic background, Feliks Dzierzynski, who comes to be known by the nickname Iron Felix. Here’s a man about whom a cult of personality also is created. Dzierzynski is celebrated in the Soviet period as the model of someone who’s harsh but fair, an executioner but with a heart of gold. Somebody who loves children. Somebody who has a tender heart, but forces himself to be steely willed against the opponents of the ideological project of the Bolsheviks.
Dzierzynski is succeeded by figures who will be absolutely instrumental to Stalin’s exercise of power, and they’re not immune either. Stalin, in his purges, takes care also to purge the secret police as a way of finding others upon whom to deflect blame for earlier atrocities and to produce a situation where even committed Bolsheviks are uncertain of what’s going to happen next and feel their own position to be precarious. Incidentally, there are other influences that probably wrought to bear here as well. It gets said about Stalin that he used to spend a lot of time flipping through Machiavelli’s The Prince. It seems that Stalin’s personal copy of The Prince, nobody knows where that is, if it still exists. But historians have found annotations in works by Lenin that Stalin, who was a voracious reader, as it turns out, made in the back of one of the books. Which sounds almost like a commentary on Machiavelli’s, almost but not quite, suggestion that the ends justify the means.
Stalin’s own writing says that if someone is strong, active, and intelligent, even if they do things that other people condemn, they’re still a good person. So Stalin’s self-conception of himself is someone who along these lines and in line with Lenin’s emphasis on practical results and discipline, somebody who gets things done. That’s the crucial ethical standard. And ultimately in criticisms by later dissidents of Bolshevik morality, this question of, what is the ethical standard? What is the ethical law? We’ll bring this question into focus because by the… And this goes back to Marx as well, incidentally. The notion that any ethical system, any notion of right or wrong is purely a product of class identity. Because every class produces its distinctive ideas, its distinctive religion, its distinctive art forms, it’s distinctive styles. Means that with no one transcendent or absolute morality, it’s all up for grabs. And then it’s a question of power and the exercise of power with no limits, untrammeled by any laws whatsoever. Dictatorship in its purest form. Something that Lenin had avowed, and then Stalin comes to practice even more fully.
Lex Fridman
Not that it’s possible to look deep into a person’s heart, but if you look at Trotsky, you could say that he probably believed deeply in Marxism and communism. Probably the same with Lenin. What do you think Stalin believed? Was he a believer? Was he a pragmatist that used communism as a way to gain power and ideology as part of propaganda? Or did he, in his own private moments, deeply believe in the utopia?
Not that it’s possible to look deep into a person’s heart, but if you look at Trotsky, you could say that he probably believed deeply in Marxism and communism. Probably the same with Lenin. What do you think Stalin believed? Was he a believer? Was he a pragmatist that used communism as a way to gain power and ideology as part of propaganda? Or did he, in his own private moments, deeply believe in the utopia?
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s an excellent question. And you’re quite right, we cannot peer into the inmost recesses of somebody’s being and know for sure. My intuition, though, is that this may be a false alternative, a false dichotomy. It’s natural enough to see somebody who does monstrous things to say, “Well, this ideology is being used as a cover for it.” My suspicion is that these were actually perfectly compatible in his historical role. The notion that there’s an ideology, it gives you a master plan for how history is going to develop and your own power, the increase of that power to unprecedented proportions. Your ability to torment even your own faithful followers in order just to see them squirm, which Stalin was famous for, to keep people unsettled. To me, it seems that, for some people, those might not actually be opposed, but might even be mutually reinforcing, which is a very scary thought.
That’s an excellent question. And you’re quite right, we cannot peer into the inmost recesses of somebody’s being and know for sure. My intuition, though, is that this may be a false alternative, a false dichotomy. It’s natural enough to see somebody who does monstrous things to say, “Well, this ideology is being used as a cover for it.” My suspicion is that these were actually perfectly compatible in his historical role. The notion that there’s an ideology, it gives you a master plan for how history is going to develop and your own power, the increase of that power to unprecedented proportions. Your ability to torment even your own faithful followers in order just to see them squirm, which Stalin was famous for, to keep people unsettled. To me, it seems that, for some people, those might not actually be opposed, but might even be mutually reinforcing, which is a very scary thought.
Holodomor
Lex Fridman
It’s terrifying, but it’s really important to understand. If we look at when Stalin takes power at some of the policies. The collectivization of agriculture. Why do you think that failed so catastrophically, especially in the 1930s with Ukraine and Poland and more?
It’s terrifying, but it’s really important to understand. If we look at when Stalin takes power at some of the policies. The collectivization of agriculture. Why do you think that failed so catastrophically, especially in the 1930s with Ukraine and Poland and more?
Vejas Liulevicius
I think the short answer is that the Bolsheviks in particular, but also communists more generally have had a very conflicted relationship with agriculture. Agriculture, as a very vital, obviously, but also very traditional and old form of human activity has about it all of the smell of tradition and other problematic factors as well. In a place like Russia or the Russian Empire peasants, throughout history, for centuries, had wanted one thing, and that was to be left alone to farm their own land. That’s their utopia. And that, for someone like Marx who had a vision of historical development and transcendence-
I think the short answer is that the Bolsheviks in particular, but also communists more generally have had a very conflicted relationship with agriculture. Agriculture, as a very vital, obviously, but also very traditional and old form of human activity has about it all of the smell of tradition and other problematic factors as well. In a place like Russia or the Russian Empire peasants, throughout history, for centuries, had wanted one thing, and that was to be left alone to farm their own land. That’s their utopia. And that, for someone like Marx who had a vision of historical development and transcendence-
Vejas Liulevicius
… who had a vision of historical development and transcendence and progress as being absolutely key does not mesh at all with that vision. For that reason, when Marx comes up with this tableau, this tremendous display of historical transformation taking place over centuries and headed towards the final utopia, the role of farmers there is negligible. Peasants get called conservative and dull as sacks of potatoes in Marx’s historical vision because they’re limited in their horizon. They farm their land, their plot, and don’t have greater revolutionary goals beyond working the land and having it free and clear.
… who had a vision of historical development and transcendence and progress as being absolutely key does not mesh at all with that vision. For that reason, when Marx comes up with this tableau, this tremendous display of historical transformation taking place over centuries and headed towards the final utopia, the role of farmers there is negligible. Peasants get called conservative and dull as sacks of potatoes in Marx’s historical vision because they’re limited in their horizon. They farm their land, their plot, and don’t have greater revolutionary goals beyond working the land and having it free and clear.
By contrast, industrialization, that’s progress. I mean, images that today would be deeply disturbing to an environmentalist’s sensibility. Smokestacks, belching smoke, the byproducts of industry, a landscape transformed by the factory model. That’s what Marx, and then later the Bolsheviks, have in mind. Similarly, the goal even as articulated in Marx’s writings, is to put agriculture and farming on a factory model so that you won’t need to deal with this traditional role of the independent farmer or the peasant. Instead, you’ll have people who benefit from progress, benefit from rationalization by working factory farms.
So, in approaching the question of collectivization, we have to keep in mind that for Stalin and his comrades who are bound and determined to drag Russia kicking and screaming into the modern age and not to allow it be beaten because of its backwardness, as Stalin puts it, traditional forms of agriculture are not what they have in mind. And in their rank of desired outcomes, industrialization, especially massive heavy industry is the sine qua non, that’s their envisioned future. Agriculture rates below.
So in that case, the crucial significance of collectivization is to get a handle on the food situation in order to make it predictable and not to find oneself in another crisis like during the Civil War, when the cities are starving, industry is robbed of labor and the factories are at a standstill. So, this is really the core approach to collectivization, to put the productive capacities of the farmers in a regimented way, in a state-controlled way under the control of the state.
This produces vast human suffering because for the farmers, their plot of land that they thought they had gained as a result of the revolution is now taken away. They no longer have the same incentives they had before to be successful farmers. In fact, if you’re a successful farmer and maybe have a cow as opposed to your neighbors who have no cow, you’re defamed and denounced as a kulak, a tight-fisted, exploiter, even though you might be helping to develop agriculture in the region that you’re from.
So, the result is human tragedy on a vast scale. And allied to that incidentally is Stalin’s sense that this is a chance to also target people who are opposed to the Bolshevik regime for other reasons, whether it’s because of their Ukrainian identity, whether it’s because of a desire for a different nationalist project. For Stalin, there are many motives that roll into collectivization. And the final thing to be said is you are quite right that collectivization proves to be a failure because the Soviet Union never finally gets a grasp on the problems of agricultural production.
By the end of the Soviet Union, they’re importing grain from the West in spite of having some tremendously rich farmland to be found worldwide. And the reason for that had to do in part, I think with the incentives that had been taken away. Prosperous individual farmers have a motive for working their land and maximizing production. By contrast, if you are an employee of a factory style agricultural enterprise, the incentives run in very different directions. And the joke that was common for decades in the Soviet Union and other communist countries with similar systems was, “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”
Even labor, which is rhetorically respected and valorized in practice is rewarded with very slim rewards. And the last point, immobility. The collectivization reduces the mobility of the peasants who are not allowed because of internal passports to move to the cities unless they have permission. They’re locked in place. And I got to say, at the time and afterwards, that looked a lot like feudalism or neo-feudalism in terms of the restrictions on workers in the countryside.
Lex Fridman
It is a terrifying, horrific and fascinating study of how the ideal, when meeting reality, fails. The idea here is to make agriculture more efficient, so be more productive, so the industrialized model. But the implementation through collectivization had all the elements that you’ve mentioned that contended with human nature. First with the kulaks, so the successful farmers were punished. And so then the incentive is not just to be a successful farmer, but to hide.
It is a terrifying, horrific and fascinating study of how the ideal, when meeting reality, fails. The idea here is to make agriculture more efficient, so be more productive, so the industrialized model. But the implementation through collectivization had all the elements that you’ve mentioned that contended with human nature. First with the kulaks, so the successful farmers were punished. And so then the incentive is not just to be a successful farmer, but to hide.
Added to that, there’s a growing quota that everybody’s supposed to deliver on that nobody can deliver on. And so now, because you can’t deliver on that quota, you’re basically exporting all your food and you can’t even feed yourself. And then you suffer more and more and more and there’s a vicious downward spiral of you can’t possibly produce that. Now there’s another human incentive where you’re going to lie. Everybody lies on the data.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right.
That’s right.
Lex Fridman
And so even Stalin himself probably, as evil or incompetent as he may be, was not even getting good data about what’s even happening. Even if he wanted to stop the vicious downward cycle, which he certainly didn’t, but he wouldn’t be even able to. So, there’s all these dark consequences of what on paper seems like a good ideal. And it’s a fascinating study of things on paper-
And so even Stalin himself probably, as evil or incompetent as he may be, was not even getting good data about what’s even happening. Even if he wanted to stop the vicious downward cycle, which he certainly didn’t, but he wouldn’t be even able to. So, there’s all these dark consequences of what on paper seems like a good ideal. And it’s a fascinating study of things on paper-
Vejas Liulevicius
Yes. That’s right.
Yes. That’s right.
Lex Fridman
… when implemented, can go really, really bad.
… when implemented, can go really, really bad.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right. And the outcome here is a horrific manmade famine. Not a natural disaster, not bad harvest, but a manmade famine as a result of then the compulsion that gets used by the Soviet state to extract those resources, cordoning off the area, not allowing starving people to escape. You put very well some of the implications of this case study and how things look in the abstract versus in practice. And those phenomena were going to haunt the rest of the experience of the Soviet Union.
That’s right. And the outcome here is a horrific manmade famine. Not a natural disaster, not bad harvest, but a manmade famine as a result of then the compulsion that gets used by the Soviet state to extract those resources, cordoning off the area, not allowing starving people to escape. You put very well some of the implications of this case study and how things look in the abstract versus in practice. And those phenomena were going to haunt the rest of the experience of the Soviet Union.
The whole notion that up and down the chain of command, everybody is falsifying or tinkering with or prettifying the statistics or their reports in order not to look bad and not to have vengeance visited upon them reaches the point where nobody, in spite of the pretense of comprehensive knowledge, there’s a state planning agency that creates five-year plans for the economy as a whole, and which is supposed to have accurate statistics. All of this is founded upon a foundation of sand. That’s inadvertent. That’s not an intended side effect.
But what you described in terms of the internal dynamics of fostering conflict in a rural society was absolutely not inadvertent. That was deliberate. The doctrine was you bring civil war. Now had there been social tensions before? Of course there had. Had there been envies, had there been differentiations in wealth or status? Of course there had been, but a deliberate plan to bring class conflict and bring civil war and then heighten it in the countryside does damage, and not least of that is this phenomenon of a negative selection.
Those who have most enterprise, those who are most entrepreneurial, those who have most self-discipline, those who are best organized will be winnowed again and again and again, sending the message that mediocrity is comparatively much safer than talent. And this pattern incidentally gets transposed and in tremendously harrowing ways also to the entire group of Russian intelligentsia and intellectuals of other peoples who are in the Soviet Union. They discover similarly that to be independent, to have a voice which is not compliant, carries with it tremendous penalties, especially in Stalin’s reigns of terror.
Lex Fridman
Again, a difficult question about a psychology of one human being, but to what degree do you think Stalin was deliberately punishing the farmers and the Ukrainian farmers? And to what degree was he looking the other way and allowing the large-scale incompetence, the horrific incompetence of the collectivization of agriculture to happen?
Again, a difficult question about a psychology of one human being, but to what degree do you think Stalin was deliberately punishing the farmers and the Ukrainian farmers? And to what degree was he looking the other way and allowing the large-scale incompetence, the horrific incompetence of the collectivization of agriculture to happen?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, I think it was both things, right? I mean, there were not only sins of omission, but also sins of commission. Incidentally, one should add, I don’t think for Stalin it was personal. These are people who are very remote from him. He, never coming into contact with the people who are suffering in this way. Attributed to him is the quote that, “One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.” I think he in action certainly acted in a way that would vindicate that. But the process of collectivization was not just a bureaucratic snafu following on bureaucratic snafu. There was the mobilization of communist youth, of military, of party activists to go into the regions and to search for hidden food, to extract the food where it could be found.
Well, I think it was both things, right? I mean, there were not only sins of omission, but also sins of commission. Incidentally, one should add, I don’t think for Stalin it was personal. These are people who are very remote from him. He, never coming into contact with the people who are suffering in this way. Attributed to him is the quote that, “One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.” I think he in action certainly acted in a way that would vindicate that. But the process of collectivization was not just a bureaucratic snafu following on bureaucratic snafu. There was the mobilization of communist youth, of military, of party activists to go into the regions and to search for hidden food, to extract the food where it could be found.
And we have testimony to this in the case of people who later became dissidents, like Lev Kopelev, who wrote in his memoirs about how he was among those who were sent in to enact these policies, and he saw families with the last food being taken away even as signs of starvation were visible already in the present. And yet he did not go mad. He didn’t kill himself. He didn’t fall into despair because he believed, because he had been taught and believed at least then that this was justified. This was a larger historical process and a greater good would result even from these enormities. So, I think that this was quite deliberate.
The Great Terror
Lex Fridman
Following this, as you’ve mentioned, there was the process of the Great Terror, where the intellectuals, where the Communist Party officials, the military officers, the bureaucrats, everybody. 750,000 people were executed, and over a million people were sent to the Gulag. What can you say by way of wisdom from this process of the Great Terror that Stalin implemented from ’36 to ’38?
Following this, as you’ve mentioned, there was the process of the Great Terror, where the intellectuals, where the Communist Party officials, the military officers, the bureaucrats, everybody. 750,000 people were executed, and over a million people were sent to the Gulag. What can you say by way of wisdom from this process of the Great Terror that Stalin implemented from ’36 to ’38?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, the terror had a variety of victims. There were people who were true believers and who were Bolsheviks, who were especially targeted by Stalin because he aimed to revenge himself for all the sort of condescension that he’d experienced in that movement before. And also to eliminate rivals or potential rival power centers and members of their families. And then there were people who simply got caught up in a process whereby the repressive organs in the provinces were sent quotas. You have to achieve your quota and maybe even better yet, overachieve your quota, over perform. That would be the key to success and rising in the bureaucracies in the age of the terror.
Well, the terror had a variety of victims. There were people who were true believers and who were Bolsheviks, who were especially targeted by Stalin because he aimed to revenge himself for all the sort of condescension that he’d experienced in that movement before. And also to eliminate rivals or potential rival power centers and members of their families. And then there were people who simply got caught up in a process whereby the repressive organs in the provinces were sent quotas. You have to achieve your quota and maybe even better yet, overachieve your quota, over perform. That would be the key to success and rising in the bureaucracies in the age of the terror.
What’s so horrifying is the way in which a whole society stood paralyzed in this process and how neighbors would be taken away in the middle of the night and people would be wary of talking about it. Resistance, at least in these urban centers, was entirely paralyzed by fear when, if one had somehow find a way to mobilize ,somehow a way to resist the process, the results might’ve been different. There’s an astonishing book… I mean, there are so many great books that have come out quite recently even on these topics.
Orlando Figes has a amazing book called The Whisperers that traces several families’ history in the Stalin period, and it’s a testimony to how a whole society and some of its most intelligent people got winnowed again and again and again in that process of negative selection that we talked about. The lasting dislocation and scars that this left and the way in which how people were not able to talk about these things in public because that would put you next on the list, suspected of having less than total devotion to the state.
I think one of the things that also is so terrifying about the entire process is even total devotion wasn’t enough. The process took on a life of its own, and I think that it might even have surprised Stalin in some ways. Not enough to short-circuit the process, but the notion where people were invited to denounce neighbors, coworkers, maybe even family members, meant that ever larger groups of people would be brought into the orbit of the secret police, tortured in order to produce confessions. Those confessions then would lead to more lists of suspects of people who had to be investigated and either executed or sent to the gulags. The uncertainty that this produced was enormous.
Even loyalty was not enough to save people. The stories, Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago is full of stories of dedicated communists who find themselves in the Gulag and are sure that some mistake has been made. And if only comrade Stalin would hear about this terrible thing that has happened to them, surely it would be corrected and nothing like this would… Everyone else, by contrast, accused of terrible crimes, there must be some truth behind that. So, talk about ways of disaggregating a society, ways of breaking down bonds of trust. This left lasting traces on an entire society that endured to this very day.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, there again, a fascinating study of human nature, that there essentially was an emergent quota of confessions of treason. So, even though the whole society was terrified and were through terror, loyal, there still needed to be a lot of confessions of people being disloyal, so you’re just making up now. At a mass scale, stuff is being made up. And it’s also the machine of the secret police starts eating itself because you want to be confessing on your boss. It is just this weird, dark, dynamic system where human nature just it at its worst.
Yeah, there again, a fascinating study of human nature, that there essentially was an emergent quota of confessions of treason. So, even though the whole society was terrified and were through terror, loyal, there still needed to be a lot of confessions of people being disloyal, so you’re just making up now. At a mass scale, stuff is being made up. And it’s also the machine of the secret police starts eating itself because you want to be confessing on your boss. It is just this weird, dark, dynamic system where human nature just it at its worst.
Vejas Liulevicius
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Lex Fridman
Why, if we look at this deep discussion we had about Marxism, to what degree can we understand from that lens why the implementation of communism in the Soviet Union failed in such a dark way? Both in the economic system with agriculture and industrialization, and on the human way with just violation of every possible human right and the torture and the suffering and gulags and all of this?
Why, if we look at this deep discussion we had about Marxism, to what degree can we understand from that lens why the implementation of communism in the Soviet Union failed in such a dark way? Both in the economic system with agriculture and industrialization, and on the human way with just violation of every possible human right and the torture and the suffering and gulags and all of this?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, I think some of it comes back to the ethical grounding that we mentioned earlier. The notion that ethics are entirely situational and that any ethical system is an outgrowth of a particular class reality, a particular material reality, and that leaves the door wide open. So, I think that that aspect was present from the very beginning. I think that the expectations of Marx, that the revolution would take hold and be successful in a developed country, played a role here as well.
Well, I think some of it comes back to the ethical grounding that we mentioned earlier. The notion that ethics are entirely situational and that any ethical system is an outgrowth of a particular class reality, a particular material reality, and that leaves the door wide open. So, I think that that aspect was present from the very beginning. I think that the expectations of Marx, that the revolution would take hold and be successful in a developed country, played a role here as well.
Russia, which compared to the rest of Europe, was less developed even before the First World War is in a dire state after all of the ravage and the millions of deaths that continue even after the war has ended in the West. That leaves precious little in the way of structural restraints or a functioning society that would say, “Let’s not do things this way.” I think that in retrospect, that special role carved out for special individuals who can move this process forward and accelerate historical development allowed for people to step into those roles and appoint themselves executors of this ideological vision. So, I think those things played a role as well.
Lex Fridman
Now, it’s hard to do counterfactual history, but to what degree is this basically that the communist ideals create a power vacuum and a dictator type figure steps in, and then it’s a roll of the dice of what that dictator is like? So can you imagine a world where the dictator was Trotsky. Would we see very similar type of things? Or is the hardness and the brutality of somebody like Stalin manifested itself in being able to look the other way as some of these dark things were happening more so than somebody like Trotsky who would presumably see the realizations of these policies and be shocked?
Now, it’s hard to do counterfactual history, but to what degree is this basically that the communist ideals create a power vacuum and a dictator type figure steps in, and then it’s a roll of the dice of what that dictator is like? So can you imagine a world where the dictator was Trotsky. Would we see very similar type of things? Or is the hardness and the brutality of somebody like Stalin manifested itself in being able to look the other way as some of these dark things were happening more so than somebody like Trotsky who would presumably see the realizations of these policies and be shocked?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, counterfactuals are hard, like you said. And one very quickly gets off into really deep waters in speculation. There were contemporaries and there have been scholars since who suggest that Trotsky, by all indications might’ve been even more radical than Stalin in the tempo that he wanted to achieve. Think of the slogan of permanent revolution. Trotsky also, who dabbled in so many things in his intellectual life, also spoke in almost utopian terms that are just astonishing to read.
Well, counterfactuals are hard, like you said. And one very quickly gets off into really deep waters in speculation. There were contemporaries and there have been scholars since who suggest that Trotsky, by all indications might’ve been even more radical than Stalin in the tempo that he wanted to achieve. Think of the slogan of permanent revolution. Trotsky also, who dabbled in so many things in his intellectual life, also spoke in almost utopian terms that are just astonishing to read.
In utopian terms about the construction of the new man and the new woman, and that out of the raw material of humanity, once you really get going, and once you’ve established a system that matches your hopes for the future, it’ll be possible to reconfigure people. And talk about ambition, to create essentially the next stage in human evolution, a new species growing out of humanity. Those don’t sound like very modest or limited approaches, and I guess we just really won’t know.
Lex Fridman
Do some of the destructive characteristics of communism have to go hand in hand? So, the central planning that we talked about, the censorship with the secret police, the concentration of power in one dictatorial figure. And let’s say again with the secret police, the violent oppression.
Do some of the destructive characteristics of communism have to go hand in hand? So, the central planning that we talked about, the censorship with the secret police, the concentration of power in one dictatorial figure. And let’s say again with the secret police, the violent oppression.
Vejas Liulevicius
One should add to those factors that have a kind of interrelated logic of their own, the sheer fact that communism comes to power in most of these instances as a result of war. As a result of the destruction of what came before and a power vacuum. So, think of the Russian revolutions in the wake of the fall of Tsarism. Think of the expansion of Stalin’s puppet regimes into Eastern Europe in the wake of World War II and the Red Army moving into occupied areas in Eastern Europe, although they announced that they’re coming as liberators. Consider the foundation of communist China on the heels of World War II, and yet more Chinese civil war. Consider cases like Korea, Vietnam. It’s likely that this already is a key element in setting things up for further crisis because upon seizure of power, if your expectation is, “Well, it ought to be relatively easy to get this system rolling and put it on a basis that’s after all, we have the roadmap to the future,” there will follow frustrations and impediments and resistance. And there’s a ratchet effect then there because it’ll produce more repression, producing even more problems that follow.
One should add to those factors that have a kind of interrelated logic of their own, the sheer fact that communism comes to power in most of these instances as a result of war. As a result of the destruction of what came before and a power vacuum. So, think of the Russian revolutions in the wake of the fall of Tsarism. Think of the expansion of Stalin’s puppet regimes into Eastern Europe in the wake of World War II and the Red Army moving into occupied areas in Eastern Europe, although they announced that they’re coming as liberators. Consider the foundation of communist China on the heels of World War II, and yet more Chinese civil war. Consider cases like Korea, Vietnam. It’s likely that this already is a key element in setting things up for further crisis because upon seizure of power, if your expectation is, “Well, it ought to be relatively easy to get this system rolling and put it on a basis that’s after all, we have the roadmap to the future,” there will follow frustrations and impediments and resistance. And there’s a ratchet effect then there because it’ll produce more repression, producing even more problems that follow.
What drives the whole thing forward, though, especially in its Leninist version, but already visible with Marx and Engels is the insistence on confidence. If you have the key to the future, all of these things are possible and necessary. This leads to an ethos. I think that that’s very hard for historians to quantify or to study in a methodical way, but it’s the insistence that you hear with Lenin and then especially with Stalin, that to be a Bolshevik means to be hard, to be realistic, to be consequential, meaning you don’t shy away from doing what needs to be done. Even if your primordial ethical remainders from whatever earlier experience you have, rebel against it.
Under Stalin, there’s a constant slogan of the Bolshevik tempo. The Bolsheviks, there’s no fortresses that they can’t storm. They can do everything. And in a way, this is the assertion that its will over everything. History can be moved forward and accelerated and probably your own actions justified as a result, no matter what they were, if you are sufficiently hard and determined and have the confidence to follow through. And then that obviously raises the ultimate question, what happens when that confidence ebbs or erodes or when it’s lost?
Totalitarianism
Lex Fridman
If we go to the 1920s to the home of Karl Marx. Fascism, as implemented by the Nazi party in Germany, was called the National Socialist German Workers Party. So, what were the similarities and differences of fascism, socialism, how it was conceived of in fascism and communism? And maybe you could speak to the broader battle of ideas that was happening at the time and battle of political control that was happening at the time.
If we go to the 1920s to the home of Karl Marx. Fascism, as implemented by the Nazi party in Germany, was called the National Socialist German Workers Party. So, what were the similarities and differences of fascism, socialism, how it was conceived of in fascism and communism? And maybe you could speak to the broader battle of ideas that was happening at the time and battle of political control that was happening at the time.
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, I mean, there’s a whole bunch of terms that are in play here, right? And when we speak of fascism, fascism in its original sense is a radical movement founded in Italy, which though it had been allegedly on the winning side of World War I is disappointed with the lack of rise in national prestige and territory that commences after the end of the. So bizarrely enough, it’s a socialist by the name of Benito Mussolini, who crafts an ideological message of glorification of the state. The people at large united in a militaristic way, on the march, ready to attack, ready to expand. A complete overthrow of liberal ideas of the rights of the individual or of representative democracy, and instead, vesting power in one leader, in his case, the Duce, Mussolini, in order to replicate in peacetime the ideal of total military mobilization in wartime. Although the Nazis in Germany are inspired and borrow heavily from fascist ideology, there also are different emphases that they include, and that includes their virulent racism from the outset, which in addition to a glorification of the state, glorification of the leader and preparation for national greatness, race is absolutely core. And it’s that racial radicalism that the Nazis espouse as a central idea, along with anti-Semitism, the demonizing in particular of the Jews and this insane racialist cosmology that the Nazis avow.
Well, I mean, there’s a whole bunch of terms that are in play here, right? And when we speak of fascism, fascism in its original sense is a radical movement founded in Italy, which though it had been allegedly on the winning side of World War I is disappointed with the lack of rise in national prestige and territory that commences after the end of the. So bizarrely enough, it’s a socialist by the name of Benito Mussolini, who crafts an ideological message of glorification of the state. The people at large united in a militaristic way, on the march, ready to attack, ready to expand. A complete overthrow of liberal ideas of the rights of the individual or of representative democracy, and instead, vesting power in one leader, in his case, the Duce, Mussolini, in order to replicate in peacetime the ideal of total military mobilization in wartime. Although the Nazis in Germany are inspired and borrow heavily from fascist ideology, there also are different emphases that they include, and that includes their virulent racism from the outset, which in addition to a glorification of the state, glorification of the leader and preparation for national greatness, race is absolutely core. And it’s that racial radicalism that the Nazis espouse as a central idea, along with anti-Semitism, the demonizing in particular of the Jews and this insane racialist cosmology that the Nazis avow.
It is the assertion that the Nazis will uniquely bring to pass unity in the people, unity in the society that leads them to give themselves this odd name of national socialist. Some leaders like Goebbels among the Nazis, accent the socialist part to begin with. Others put the accent firmly on the nationalist part. In part, the term they chose for their movement was meant to be confusing. It was meant to take slogans or words from different parts of the political spectrum, to fuse them into something unfamiliar and new, and claim that they’d overcome all earlier political divisions. The Nazis claimed that they were a movement, not a party, even though their party was called a party.
So, what did Nazism and Bolshevism and Communism share, or how were they opposed to one another? What we need to start with, by making clear, they were ideological arch enemies. In both worldviews, the opposite side represented the ultimate expression of the evil that needed to be exercised from history in order for their desired utopia to be brought about. And this leads to strange and perverted beliefs about reality. From the perspective of the Nazis. The Nazis claimed that because they saw the Jews as a demonic element in human history, the Bolsheviks didn’t really believe all of this economic dialectical materialism. They were in fact a racial conspiracy, it was alleged.
And so the Nazis used a term of Judeo-Bolshevism to argue that communism is essentially a conspiracy steered by the Jews, which was complete nonsense. For their part, the communists, and from the perspective of the Soviet Union, the Nazis were in essence a super capitalist conspiracy. If the cosmological enemy are the capitalists and the owners, the exploiters, then all of the rigamarole about race and nationalism are distractions. They’re meant to fool the poor saps who enlist in that movement. It’s essentially steered by capitalist owners who, it is claimed, are reduced to this desperate expedient of coming up with this thuggish-
Vejas Liulevicius
… To this desperate expedient of coming up with this thuggish party that represents the last gasp of capitalism. So, bizarrely enough, from the Communist perspective, the rise of the Nazis can be interpreted as a good sign because it means that capitalism is almost done because this is the last undisguised, naked face of capitalism nearing its end. Beyond this ideological total opposition, in terms of their hoped-for futures, the reality is that there were aspects that were shared on either side. That included the conviction that they could agree that the age of democracy was done and that the 19th century had had its day with experiments with representative democracy, the claims of human rights, classical liberal ideas, and all of this had been revealed as bankrupt.
… To this desperate expedient of coming up with this thuggish party that represents the last gasp of capitalism. So, bizarrely enough, from the Communist perspective, the rise of the Nazis can be interpreted as a good sign because it means that capitalism is almost done because this is the last undisguised, naked face of capitalism nearing its end. Beyond this ideological total opposition, in terms of their hoped-for futures, the reality is that there were aspects that were shared on either side. That included the conviction that they could agree that the age of democracy was done and that the 19th century had had its day with experiments with representative democracy, the claims of human rights, classical liberal ideas, and all of this had been revealed as bankrupt.
It had gotten you what? It got you, first, the First World War as a total conflict leaving tens of millions dead. And then, economically, The Great Depression, showing that the end was not far away. This produced, at one in the same time, both ideological opposition and instances, a vastly cynical cooperation. In terms of the Weimar Republic, it’s obvious, with the benefit of hindsight, that German democracy had ceased to function even before Hitler comes to power. But in the process of making democracy unworkable in Germany, the extremes, the Nazi Stormtrooper Army with their brown shirts and the Communist street fighters, had cooperated in heightening an atmosphere of civil war that left people searching for desperate expedience in the last days of the Weimar Republic.
The most compelling case of their cooperation was the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact on August 23rd, 1939, which enables Hitler to start World War II. A Non-Aggression Pact, in official terms, it contained secret clauses whereby the Nazis and the Soviets meeting in Moscow under Stalin’s wary eye, had agreed on territorial division of Eastern Europe and making common cause as each claiming to be the winner of the future. So, in spite of their oppositions, these were regimes that were able, very cynically, to work together to dire effect. In the course of the 1950s, in particular, there arose political scientists who also crafted an explanation for ways in which these regimes, although they were opposed to one another, actually bore morphological resemblances.
They operated in ways that, in spite of ideological differences, bore similarities. And such political scientists, Hannah Arendt, chief among them, crafted a model called Totalitarianism, borrowing a term that the Fascists had liked about themselves, to define regimes, like the Nazis, like Stalin’s Soviet Union, for a new kind of dictatorship that was not a backwards-cast revival of ancient barbarism but was something new, a new form of dictatorship that laid total claims on hearts and minds, that didn’t want just passive obedience but wanted fanatical loyalty. That combined fear with compulsion in order to generate belief in a system, or at the very least, atomize the masses to the point where they would go along with the plans of the regime.
This model has often met with very strong criticism on the grounds that no regime in human history has yet achieved total control of the population under its grip. That’s true, but that’s not what Hannah Arendt was saying. Hannah Arendt was saying, “There will always be inefficiencies, there will be resistance, there will be divergences.” What was new was not the alleged achievement of total control, it was the ambition, the articulation of the ambition that it might be possible to exercise such fundamental and thoroughgoing control of entire populations. And the final frightening thought that Arendt kept before her was, “What if this is not a model that comes to us from benighted uncivilized ages? What if this is what the future is going to look like?” That’s a horrifying intuition.
Response to Darryl Cooper
Lex Fridman
So let me ask you about Darrell Cooper, who is a historian and podcaster, did a podcast with Tucker Carlson, and he made some claims there and elsewhere about World War II. There are two claims that I would love to get your perspective on. First, he stated that Churchill was “The chief villain of the Second World War.” I think Darrell argues that Churchill forced Hitler to expand the war beyond Poland into a global war. Second, the mass murder of Jews, Poles, Slavs, Gypsies, in death camps was an accident, a by product of global war. And in fact, the most humane extermination of prisoners of war possible, given the alternative, was death by starvation. So I was wondering if you can respond to each of those claims.
So let me ask you about Darrell Cooper, who is a historian and podcaster, did a podcast with Tucker Carlson, and he made some claims there and elsewhere about World War II. There are two claims that I would love to get your perspective on. First, he stated that Churchill was “The chief villain of the Second World War.” I think Darrell argues that Churchill forced Hitler to expand the war beyond Poland into a global war. Second, the mass murder of Jews, Poles, Slavs, Gypsies, in death camps was an accident, a by product of global war. And in fact, the most humane extermination of prisoners of war possible, given the alternative, was death by starvation. So I was wondering if you can respond to each of those claims.
Lex Fridman
Well, I think that this is a bunch of absurdity and it would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious in its implications. To address the points in turn, Churchill was not the chief villain of the Second World War. The notion that Churchill allegedly forced Hitler to escalate and expand a conflict that could have been limited to Poland, that assertion is based on a complete neglect of what Nazi ideology was. The Nazi worldview and racism was not a ideology that was limited in its application, it looked toward world domination. In the years since the Nazis had come to power, they sponsored programs of education called geopolitics, which urged Germans to think incontinence, think incontinence, to see themselves as one of the superpowers that would battle for the future of the world. Now in retrospect, we of course can see that Germany was not in a position to legitimate a claim like that but the Nazis aims were anything but limited.
Well, I think that this is a bunch of absurdity and it would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious in its implications. To address the points in turn, Churchill was not the chief villain of the Second World War. The notion that Churchill allegedly forced Hitler to escalate and expand a conflict that could have been limited to Poland, that assertion is based on a complete neglect of what Nazi ideology was. The Nazi worldview and racism was not a ideology that was limited in its application, it looked toward world domination. In the years since the Nazis had come to power, they sponsored programs of education called geopolitics, which urged Germans to think incontinence, think incontinence, to see themselves as one of the superpowers that would battle for the future of the world. Now in retrospect, we of course can see that Germany was not in a position to legitimate a claim like that but the Nazis aims were anything but limited.
In particular, this sort of argument has been tried out in different ways before. In previous decades, there had been attempts by historians who were actually well-read and well-published to argue that World War II had been, in part, a contingent event that had been brought about by accidents or miscalculations. And such explanations argued that, if you put Hitler’s ideology aside you actually could interpret him as a pretty traditional German politician in the stripe of Bismarck. Now, when I say it like that I think you can spot the problem immediately, when you put the ideology aside. To try to analyze Hitler’s acts or alleged motives, in the absence of the ideology that he himself subscribed to and described in hateful detail in Mein Kampf and other manifestos and speeches, is an enterprise that’s doomed to failure justifiably.
The notion that the mass murder of Jews, Poles, Slavs, and Gypsies was an event that simply happened as a result of unforeseen events, and that it was understood as somehow being humane, also runs contrary to the historical fact. When Poland was invaded, the Nazis unleashed a killing wave in their so-called Operation Tannenberg, which sent in specially trained and ideologically pre-prepared killers who were given the name of the units of the Einsatzgruppen in order to wipe out the Polish leadership and also to kill Jews.
This predates any of the Operation Barbarossa and the Nazi’s invasion of the Soviet Union. The Nazis, moreover, in many different expressions of their ideology, had made clear that their plans, you can read this in Mein Kampf, for Eastern Europe, were subjugation and ethnic cleansing on a vast scale, so I consider both of these claims absolutely untenable, given the facts and documents.
Lex Fridman
So do you think it was always the case that Nazi Germany was going to invade the Soviet Union?
So do you think it was always the case that Nazi Germany was going to invade the Soviet Union?
Vejas Liulevicius
I think, as you can read in Mein Kampf, this is what’s necessary in order to bring that racial utopia to pass. And so, while the timetable might be flexible, while obviously geopolitical constellations would play a role in determining when such a thing might be possible, it was most definitely on his list. And I would want to add, that in my own scholarship I’ve worked to explore some of these themes a little bit further. My second book, which is entitled The German Myth of the East, which appeared with Oxford University Press, examines centuries in the German encounter with Eastern Europe and how Germans have thought about Eastern Europe, whether in positive ways or in negative ways.
I think, as you can read in Mein Kampf, this is what’s necessary in order to bring that racial utopia to pass. And so, while the timetable might be flexible, while obviously geopolitical constellations would play a role in determining when such a thing might be possible, it was most definitely on his list. And I would want to add, that in my own scholarship I’ve worked to explore some of these themes a little bit further. My second book, which is entitled The German Myth of the East, which appeared with Oxford University Press, examines centuries in the German encounter with Eastern Europe and how Germans have thought about Eastern Europe, whether in positive ways or in negative ways.
And one thing that emerges from this investigation is that even before the Nazis come to power in Germany there are certainly negative and dehumanizing stereotypes about Eastern Europeans, some of them activated by the experiences of German occupation in some of these regions during the First World War. But the Nazis take the very most destructive and most negative of all those stereotypes and make them the dominant ones, making no secret of their expected future of domination and annihilation in the East.
Lex Fridman
The idea of Lebensraum, is it possible to implement that idea without Ukraine?
The idea of Lebensraum, is it possible to implement that idea without Ukraine?
Vejas Liulevicius
Hitler has Ukraine in his horizon as one of the chief prizes. And the Nazis then craft extensive plans, a master plan that they work on in draft, after draft, after draft, even as the balance of the war is turning against them on the Eastern front. This master plan is called the Generalplan Ost, meaning the general plan for the East. And it foresees things like mega highways on which the Germanic master race will travel to vacation in Crimea, or how their settlements will be scientifically distributed in the wide open spaces of Ukraine for agriculture that will feed an expanded and purified Germanic master race. So this was not peripheral to the Nazi ambitions, but central.
Hitler has Ukraine in his horizon as one of the chief prizes. And the Nazis then craft extensive plans, a master plan that they work on in draft, after draft, after draft, even as the balance of the war is turning against them on the Eastern front. This master plan is called the Generalplan Ost, meaning the general plan for the East. And it foresees things like mega highways on which the Germanic master race will travel to vacation in Crimea, or how their settlements will be scientifically distributed in the wide open spaces of Ukraine for agriculture that will feed an expanded and purified Germanic master race. So this was not peripheral to the Nazi ambitions, but central.
Lex Fridman
As I best understand, there is extensive and definitive evidence that the Nazis always wanted to invade the Soviet Union and there was always a racial component, and not just about the Jews. They wanted to enslave and exterminate the Jews, yes, but the Slavic people, the Slavs. And if he was successful at conquering the Soviet Union, I think the things that would be done to the Slavic people would make the Holocaust seem insignificant. In my understanding in terms of the numbers and the brutality and the viciousness in which he characterized the Slavic people.
As I best understand, there is extensive and definitive evidence that the Nazis always wanted to invade the Soviet Union and there was always a racial component, and not just about the Jews. They wanted to enslave and exterminate the Jews, yes, but the Slavic people, the Slavs. And if he was successful at conquering the Soviet Union, I think the things that would be done to the Slavic people would make the Holocaust seem insignificant. In my understanding in terms of the numbers and the brutality and the viciousness in which he characterized the Slavic people.
Vejas Liulevicius
In their worldview, the Jews were especially demonized. And so, the project of the domination of Eastern Europe involves this horrific program of mechanized, systematized, bureaucratically organized, and horrifyingly efficient mass murder of the Jewish populations. What the Nazis expected for the Slavs had a longer timeline. Himmler expected, the head of the SS. The SS is given a special mission to be part of the transformation of these regions ethnically, and Himmler, in his role of envisioning this German future in Eastern Europe, gives such a chilling phrase. He says that while certain Slavs will fall victim immediately, some proportion of Slavs will not be shipped out or deported or annihilated but instead they will remain as slaves for our culture. And in that one phrase, Himmler managed to defile and deface everything that the word culture had meant to generations of the best German thinkers and artists in the centuries before the Nazis.
In their worldview, the Jews were especially demonized. And so, the project of the domination of Eastern Europe involves this horrific program of mechanized, systematized, bureaucratically organized, and horrifyingly efficient mass murder of the Jewish populations. What the Nazis expected for the Slavs had a longer timeline. Himmler expected, the head of the SS. The SS is given a special mission to be part of the transformation of these regions ethnically, and Himmler, in his role of envisioning this German future in Eastern Europe, gives such a chilling phrase. He says that while certain Slavs will fall victim immediately, some proportion of Slavs will not be shipped out or deported or annihilated but instead they will remain as slaves for our culture. And in that one phrase, Himmler managed to defile and deface everything that the word culture had meant to generations of the best German thinkers and artists in the centuries before the Nazis.
The notion of slaves for our culture was part of his longer term expectation. And then, there’s finally a fact that speaks volumes about what the Nazis planned for the east. Hitler and Himmler envisioned permanent war on the Eastern Front, not a peace treaty, not a settlement, not a border, but a constant moving of the border, every generation, hundreds of miles east in order to keep winning more and more living space. And with analogy to other frontiers, to always give more fighting experience and more training and aggression to generation after generation of German soldiers. In terms of nightmarish visions, this one’s right up there.
Lex Fridman
And always repopulating the land conquered with the German, the Aryan race, so in terms of race, repopulating with race. Enslaving the Slavic people and exterminating them. Because there’s so many of them, it takes a long time to exterminate.
And always repopulating the land conquered with the German, the Aryan race, so in terms of race, repopulating with race. Enslaving the Slavic people and exterminating them. Because there’s so many of them, it takes a long time to exterminate.
Vejas Liulevicius
And even in the case of the Germans themselves, the hidden message behind even Nazi propaganda about unity and about German national identity was, the Nazis envisioned relentless purges of the German genetic stock as well. So among their victims are people with disabilities, people who are defined as not racially pure enough for the future, even though they are clearly Germans by identity. The full scale and the comprehensive ambitions of the Nazis are as breathtaking as they are horrifying.
And even in the case of the Germans themselves, the hidden message behind even Nazi propaganda about unity and about German national identity was, the Nazis envisioned relentless purges of the German genetic stock as well. So among their victims are people with disabilities, people who are defined as not racially pure enough for the future, even though they are clearly Germans by identity. The full scale and the comprehensive ambitions of the Nazis are as breathtaking as they are horrifying.
Lex Fridman
One of the other things I saw Daryl tweet was that what ended up happening in the Second World War was the worst possible thing that could have happened, and I just also wanted to comment on that. Which I can imagine a very large number of possible scenarios that could have happened that are much, much worse, including the successful conquering of the Soviet Union. As we said, the kind of things that would be done, and the total war ever ongoing for generations, which would result in hundreds of millions of deaths and torture and enslavement, not to mention the other possible trajectory of the nuclear bomb.
One of the other things I saw Daryl tweet was that what ended up happening in the Second World War was the worst possible thing that could have happened, and I just also wanted to comment on that. Which I can imagine a very large number of possible scenarios that could have happened that are much, much worse, including the successful conquering of the Soviet Union. As we said, the kind of things that would be done, and the total war ever ongoing for generations, which would result in hundreds of millions of deaths and torture and enslavement, not to mention the other possible trajectory of the nuclear bomb.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right, that’s right. I would think that the Nazis with atomic weapons, with no compunctions about deploying them, would rank up there as even worse than the horrors that we saw.
That’s right, that’s right. I would think that the Nazis with atomic weapons, with no compunctions about deploying them, would rank up there as even worse than the horrors that we saw.
Lex Fridman
Now, let me steel man a point that was also made as part of this, that the oversimplified narrative of sort of, to put it crudely, Hitler bad, Churchill good, has been used and abused by neocons and warmongers and the military industrial complex, in the years since, to basically say this particular leader is just like Hitler or maybe Hitler of the 1930s and we must invade now before he becomes the Hitler of the 1940s. That has been applied in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe, and God forbid, that can be also applied in the war with China in the 21st century. So yes, warmongers do sure love to use Hitler and apply that template to wage war. We should be wary of that and be careful of that, both the over application of this historical template onto the modern world and of warmongers in general.
Now, let me steel man a point that was also made as part of this, that the oversimplified narrative of sort of, to put it crudely, Hitler bad, Churchill good, has been used and abused by neocons and warmongers and the military industrial complex, in the years since, to basically say this particular leader is just like Hitler or maybe Hitler of the 1930s and we must invade now before he becomes the Hitler of the 1940s. That has been applied in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe, and God forbid, that can be also applied in the war with China in the 21st century. So yes, warmongers do sure love to use Hitler and apply that template to wage war. We should be wary of that and be careful of that, both the over application of this historical template onto the modern world and of warmongers in general.
Vejas Liulevicius
Yeah, and I think that nobody should like oversimplified narratives. We need subtle and accurate narratives.
Yeah, and I think that nobody should like oversimplified narratives. We need subtle and accurate narratives.
Lex Fridman
And also, I just would like to say that probably, as we’ve been talking about Stalin and Hitler, are singular figures. And just as we’ve been talking about the implementation of these totalitarian regimes, they are singular in human history, that we never saw anything like it and I hope, from everything it looks like, we’ll never see anything like it again.
And also, I just would like to say that probably, as we’ve been talking about Stalin and Hitler, are singular figures. And just as we’ve been talking about the implementation of these totalitarian regimes, they are singular in human history, that we never saw anything like it and I hope, from everything it looks like, we’ll never see anything like it again.
Vejas Liulevicius
I mean, there’s certainly striking and unique historical characters in the record. One of the things that’s so disturbing about Hannah Arendt’s model of totalitarianism is, the leader can be changed. The system itself demands that there be a leader who allegedly is all-powerful and all-knowing and prophetic and the like, but whether particular figures are interchangeable in that role is a key question.
I mean, there’s certainly striking and unique historical characters in the record. One of the things that’s so disturbing about Hannah Arendt’s model of totalitarianism is, the leader can be changed. The system itself demands that there be a leader who allegedly is all-powerful and all-knowing and prophetic and the like, but whether particular figures are interchangeable in that role is a key question.
Nazis vs Communists in Germany
Lex Fridman
Let me go back to the 1920s and sort of ask another counterfactual question. Given the battle between the Marxists and the Communists and National Socialists, was it possible and what would that world look like if the Communists indeed won in Germany as Karl Marx envisioned, and it made total sense given the industrialized expanse that Germany represented. Was that possible and what would it look like if it happened?
Let me go back to the 1920s and sort of ask another counterfactual question. Given the battle between the Marxists and the Communists and National Socialists, was it possible and what would that world look like if the Communists indeed won in Germany as Karl Marx envisioned, and it made total sense given the industrialized expanse that Germany represented. Was that possible and what would it look like if it happened?
Vejas Liulevicius
I would think that the reality was probably very remote, but that was certainly their ambition. German Communists get quoted as saying, “After Hitler, it’s our turn.” Their sentiment was that the arrival of Nazism on the scene was a sign of how decrepit and incompetent and doomed capitalism was. In hindsight, that’s almost impossible to believe because what happens is, the Nazis with their characteristic brutal ruthlessness, simply decapitate the party and arrest the activists who are supposed to be waiting to take over. So that’s forestalled. A further hypothetical that gets raised a lot is, couldn’t the social Democrats and the Communists have worked together to keep Hitler out of power?
I would think that the reality was probably very remote, but that was certainly their ambition. German Communists get quoted as saying, “After Hitler, it’s our turn.” Their sentiment was that the arrival of Nazism on the scene was a sign of how decrepit and incompetent and doomed capitalism was. In hindsight, that’s almost impossible to believe because what happens is, the Nazis with their characteristic brutal ruthlessness, simply decapitate the party and arrest the activists who are supposed to be waiting to take over. So that’s forestalled. A further hypothetical that gets raised a lot is, couldn’t the social Democrats and the Communists have worked together to keep Hitler out of power?
That’s where the prior history comes into play. The very fact that the German revolution in 1919 sees Socialists killing Socialists produces a dynamic that’s so negative that it’s nearly impossible to settle on cooperation, added to the fact that the Communists see the Social Democrats as rivals for the loyalty of the working class. In terms of just statistical likelihood, a lot of experts at the time felt surely the German army is going to step in, and the most likely outcome would have been a German general shutting down the democracy and producing a military dictatorship. It says a lot about how dreadful and bloody the record of the Nazis was, that some people in retrospect would have felt that that military dictatorship would’ve been preferable, if it had obviated the need for the ordeal under the Nazis.
Lex Fridman
What do you think Marx would say about the 20th century? Let’s take it before we get to Mao and China, just looking at the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
What do you think Marx would say about the 20th century? Let’s take it before we get to Mao and China, just looking at the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s a really good question. I think that Marx was flexible in his expectations about tactics and strategies, even as he was sure that he had actually cracked a big intellectual problem of what the future’s going to look like. So how it would play out, he was a man who had to deal with a lot of disappointments because in revolutionary uprising after revolutionary uprising, whether it was in the revolutions of 1848 across Europe, whether it was in Poland, whether it was in the Paris Commune, this is it. This is the outbreak of the real thing, and then it doesn’t end up happening. So I think that he’d probably have tried to be patient about the turn of events.
That’s a really good question. I think that Marx was flexible in his expectations about tactics and strategies, even as he was sure that he had actually cracked a big intellectual problem of what the future’s going to look like. So how it would play out, he was a man who had to deal with a lot of disappointments because in revolutionary uprising after revolutionary uprising, whether it was in the revolutions of 1848 across Europe, whether it was in Poland, whether it was in the Paris Commune, this is it. This is the outbreak of the real thing, and then it doesn’t end up happening. So I think that he’d probably have tried to be patient about the turn of events.
We mentioned at the outset that Marx felt it was unlikely that a workers’ revolution would break out in the Russian Empire because for that you needed lots of industrial workers and they didn’t have a lot of industry. There’s a footnote to add there, and it proves his flexibility. A Russian socialist wrote to Marx asking, “Might it not be possible for Russia to escape some stages of capitalist development? I mean, do you have to rigidly follow that scheme?” And Marx’s answer was convoluted, but it wasn’t a no, and that suggests that Marx was willing to entertain all sorts of possible scenarios. I think he would certainly have been very surprised at the course of events as it unfolded because it didn’t match his expectations at the outset.
Lex Fridman
Not to put this on him, but would he be okay with the price of [inaudible 02:30:02] for the utopian destination of communism? Meaning, is it okay to crack a few eggs to make an omelet?
Not to put this on him, but would he be okay with the price of [inaudible 02:30:02] for the utopian destination of communism? Meaning, is it okay to crack a few eggs to make an omelet?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, we don’t know what Marx would say if he were posed that question deliberately, but we do know in the case of a Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm, who was a prolific and celebrated British historian of the 19th and 20th centuries. And he was put this question in the ’90s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he stated forthrightly that because the Soviet Union failed such sacrifices were inordinate. But if the experiment had succeeded and a glorious future had been open for mankind as a result of the Soviet Union’s success, that would lead to a different reply. And that is one person’s perspective.
Well, we don’t know what Marx would say if he were posed that question deliberately, but we do know in the case of a Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm, who was a prolific and celebrated British historian of the 19th and 20th centuries. And he was put this question in the ’90s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he stated forthrightly that because the Soviet Union failed such sacrifices were inordinate. But if the experiment had succeeded and a glorious future had been open for mankind as a result of the Soviet Union’s success, that would lead to a different reply. And that is one person’s perspective.
Mao
Lex Fridman
So that takes us to the other side of the world. The side that’s often in the West, not considered very much when we talk about human history, Chinese dynasties, empires, are fascinating, complex, and there’s just a history that’s not as deeply explored as it should be. And the same applies to the 20th century. So Chinese radicals founded the Chinese Communist Party, CCP, in July 1921. Among them, as you talk about, was Mao. What was the story of Mao’s rise to power?
So that takes us to the other side of the world. The side that’s often in the West, not considered very much when we talk about human history, Chinese dynasties, empires, are fascinating, complex, and there’s just a history that’s not as deeply explored as it should be. And the same applies to the 20th century. So Chinese radicals founded the Chinese Communist Party, CCP, in July 1921. Among them, as you talk about, was Mao. What was the story of Mao’s rise to power?
Vejas Liulevicius
So Mao takes a page from the book of Lenin by adapting or seeking to adapt Marx’s ideology to a context that would have surprised Marx significantly. And that is, not only to set the revolution in, an as yet, not industrialized country, but moreover to make the peasants, rather than being conservative sacks of potatoes, to make them into the prime movers of the success of this political venture. That’s a case of the phenomenon that we talked about earlier. When is an adaptation of an ideology or a change to an ideology a valid adjustment that you’ve made or adaptation? And when is it already so different that it’s something entirely distinct? Maoism was very clearly intended to answer this question for the Chinese context and, by implication, other non-Western parts of the world. This was, in part, Mao’s way, whose ambition was great, to put himself at the head of a successful international movement and to be the successor to Stalin, whose role he both admired and resented, from having to be the junior partner. To take an example of a masterwork and a major milestone in the history of Communism, the Polish philosopher, Leszek Kolakowski, who was at first a committed Communist and then later became disillusioned and wrote a three-volume study of Marxist thought, called Currents of Marxism. In that book, when he reaches Maoism, Kołakowski essentially throws up his hands and says, “It’s hardly you’d even know what to do with this,” because putting the peasantry in the vanguard role is something that is already at variance with the original design.
So Mao takes a page from the book of Lenin by adapting or seeking to adapt Marx’s ideology to a context that would have surprised Marx significantly. And that is, not only to set the revolution in, an as yet, not industrialized country, but moreover to make the peasants, rather than being conservative sacks of potatoes, to make them into the prime movers of the success of this political venture. That’s a case of the phenomenon that we talked about earlier. When is an adaptation of an ideology or a change to an ideology a valid adjustment that you’ve made or adaptation? And when is it already so different that it’s something entirely distinct? Maoism was very clearly intended to answer this question for the Chinese context and, by implication, other non-Western parts of the world. This was, in part, Mao’s way, whose ambition was great, to put himself at the head of a successful international movement and to be the successor to Stalin, whose role he both admired and resented, from having to be the junior partner. To take an example of a masterwork and a major milestone in the history of Communism, the Polish philosopher, Leszek Kolakowski, who was at first a committed Communist and then later became disillusioned and wrote a three-volume study of Marxist thought, called Currents of Marxism. In that book, when he reaches Maoism, Kołakowski essentially throws up his hands and says, “It’s hardly you’d even know what to do with this,” because putting the peasantry in the vanguard role is something that is already at variance with the original design.
But Marx says this is an improved version. This is an adapted and truer version of Marxism for the Chinese context. In case after case in Mao’s rise to power, we see a really complicated relationship with Stalin. He works hard to gain Stalin’s support because The Common Turn, the international organization headquartered in Moscow working to encourage and help revolutionaries worldwide, is skeptical about the Chinese Communists to begin with, and believes that China still has a long way to go before it’s reached the stage where it’s ripe for Communist revolution, and in a way that’s more orthodox Marxism than what Mao is championing.
Vejas Liulevicius
Hey, that’s more orthodox Marxism than what Mao is championing. Mao Chafes under Stalin’s acknowledged leadership of international communism as a movement. And in 1950, when Mao goes to visit Stalin in Moscow, in order to sign a treaty of cooperation, he’s left waiting for days and days and days in a snub that is meant to show him that you’re just not as important as you might think you are. And then when Stalin dies in 1953, Mao feels the moment is ready for him to step into the leadership position surpassing the Soviet Union. So many of Mao’s actions like the Great Leap Forward and the agricultural disasters that follow from that are literally attempts to outdo Stalin, to outperform Stalin, to show that what Stalin was not able to do, the Chinese Communist regime will be able to bring off. And the toll for that hubris is vast.
Hey, that’s more orthodox Marxism than what Mao is championing. Mao Chafes under Stalin’s acknowledged leadership of international communism as a movement. And in 1950, when Mao goes to visit Stalin in Moscow, in order to sign a treaty of cooperation, he’s left waiting for days and days and days in a snub that is meant to show him that you’re just not as important as you might think you are. And then when Stalin dies in 1953, Mao feels the moment is ready for him to step into the leadership position surpassing the Soviet Union. So many of Mao’s actions like the Great Leap Forward and the agricultural disasters that follow from that are literally attempts to outdo Stalin, to outperform Stalin, to show that what Stalin was not able to do, the Chinese Communist regime will be able to bring off. And the toll for that hubris is vast.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. In the darkest of ways, he did outdo Stalin.
Yeah. In the darkest of ways, he did outdo Stalin.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right. In the statistics.
That’s right. In the statistics.
Great Leap Forward
Lex Fridman
The Great Leap Forward ended up killing approximately 40 million people from starvation or murder. Can you describe the Great Leap Forward?
The Great Leap Forward ended up killing approximately 40 million people from starvation or murder. Can you describe the Great Leap Forward?
Vejas Liulevicius
It was modeled on the crash industrialization that Stalin had wanted to undertake in the Soviet Union and to outdo it. The notion of the Great Leap Forward was that it would be possible for the peasant masses out of their conviction in the rightness of the Chinese Communist cause to industrialize China overnight. That involved things like creating small smelting furnaces in individual farm communes. It involved folding together farming territories into vast communes of very large size that were, just because of their sheer gigantism, supposed to be by definition more efficient than small-scale farming. It ended up producing environmental disasters and campaigns to eliminate birds or insects.
It was modeled on the crash industrialization that Stalin had wanted to undertake in the Soviet Union and to outdo it. The notion of the Great Leap Forward was that it would be possible for the peasant masses out of their conviction in the rightness of the Chinese Communist cause to industrialize China overnight. That involved things like creating small smelting furnaces in individual farm communes. It involved folding together farming territories into vast communes of very large size that were, just because of their sheer gigantism, supposed to be by definition more efficient than small-scale farming. It ended up producing environmental disasters and campaigns to eliminate birds or insects.
Were supposed to demonstrate mastery over nature by sheer acts of will. These included things like adopting Soviet agricultural techniques that were pioneered by a crackpot biologist by the name of Trofim Lysenko that produced more agricultural disaster that involved things like plowing to depths that were not practical for the seeds to germinate and grow but were supposed to produce super plants that would produce bumper harvests and outpace the capitalist countries and the Soviet Union. So, the context for all of this is a race to get first to the achievement of full-scale communism.
One of the themes that I think it’s so valuable to pursue and to take seriously in the history of communism is what concrete promises were made. In the case of China, Mao made promises and projections for the future that were worrying even to some of his own assistants. He exclaimed that perhaps by 1961, perhaps by 1973, China would be the winner in this competition and it would’ve achieved full communism so that which Marx had sketched as the endpoint of humanity would be achieved first by the Chinese. Later, his own comrades, when he passed from the scene, felt the need to tamper that a little bit and promised that they would achieve full communism by the year 2000. Such promises are helpful to a regime to create enthusiasm and to hold out to people, the prospect of real successes just around the corner. But what happens when the date arrives and you haven’t actually achieved that goal? That’s one ticking time bomb that played a role in the increasing erosion of confidence in the Soviet Union and the case of China must have been something similar.
Lex Fridman
So there’s a lot of other elements that are similar to the Soviet Union. Maybe you could speak to the Hundred Flowers Campaign.
So there’s a lot of other elements that are similar to the Soviet Union. Maybe you could speak to the Hundred Flowers Campaign.
Vejas Liulevicius
The Hundred Flowers Campaign is a chance for Mao who has felt that he has lost prestige and lost standing in the party because of the disasters of the Great Leap Forward to regain some of that momentum. And the whole Hundred Flowers Campaign officially titled The Rectification Campaign to set things right is still shrouded in mystery. Historians disagree about how to interpret what Mao was actually up to. The most cynical variant is that Mao encouraged Chinese thinkers and intellectuals to share ideas and to engage in constructive criticism, to propose alternatives, and to let a full discussion happen.
The Hundred Flowers Campaign is a chance for Mao who has felt that he has lost prestige and lost standing in the party because of the disasters of the Great Leap Forward to regain some of that momentum. And the whole Hundred Flowers Campaign officially titled The Rectification Campaign to set things right is still shrouded in mystery. Historians disagree about how to interpret what Mao was actually up to. The most cynical variant is that Mao encouraged Chinese thinkers and intellectuals to share ideas and to engage in constructive criticism, to propose alternatives, and to let a full discussion happen.
And then after some of them had ventured that to come in and purge them, to punish them ruthlessly for having done what he had invited them to do. That is the most cynical variant. Some historians argue that Mao himself was not prepared for the ideas that he himself had invited into the public square and that he grew anxious and worried and angry at this without having thought this through in a cynical way to begin with. The end result is the same. The end result is once again negative selection. The decimation of those who are most venturesome, those who are most talented and intelligent are punished relentlessly for that.
Lex Fridman
And just a general culture of censorship and fear and all the same stuff we saw in the Soviet Union.
And just a general culture of censorship and fear and all the same stuff we saw in the Soviet Union.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right. I mean, think of the impact on officials who are loyal servants of the regime and just want to get along. The message goes out loud and clear. “Don’t be venturesome, do not propose reforms. Stick with the tried and true and that’ll be the safe route even if it ends in ultimately stagnation.”
That’s right. I mean, think of the impact on officials who are loyal servants of the regime and just want to get along. The message goes out loud and clear. “Don’t be venturesome, do not propose reforms. Stick with the tried and true and that’ll be the safe route even if it ends in ultimately stagnation.”
Lex Fridman
So, as the same question I asked about the Soviet Union, why do you think there was so much failure of policies that Mao implemented in China during his rule?
So, as the same question I asked about the Soviet Union, why do you think there was so much failure of policies that Mao implemented in China during his rule?
Vejas Liulevicius
Mao himself had a view of human beings as being, as he put it, beautiful blank pieces of paper upon which one can write new characters. And that is clearly at variance with what you and I know about the complex nature of human beings as we actually encounter them in the world. I think that in the process of hatching schemes that were one-size-fits-all for a country as big and as varied in its communities as China, inevitably, such an imposition of one model was going to lead to serious malfunctions. And so much of what other episodes in Chinese history had showed the entrepreneurial capacity, the productive capacity economically of the Chinese people was suppressed by being fitted into these rigid schemes. What we’ve seen since, after Mao passes from the scene and with the forms of Deng Xiaoping one sees just how much of those energies had been forcibly suppressed for so long and now we’re allowed to re-emerge.
Mao himself had a view of human beings as being, as he put it, beautiful blank pieces of paper upon which one can write new characters. And that is clearly at variance with what you and I know about the complex nature of human beings as we actually encounter them in the world. I think that in the process of hatching schemes that were one-size-fits-all for a country as big and as varied in its communities as China, inevitably, such an imposition of one model was going to lead to serious malfunctions. And so much of what other episodes in Chinese history had showed the entrepreneurial capacity, the productive capacity economically of the Chinese people was suppressed by being fitted into these rigid schemes. What we’ve seen since, after Mao passes from the scene and with the forms of Deng Xiaoping one sees just how much of those energies had been forcibly suppressed for so long and now we’re allowed to re-emerge.
China after Mao
Lex Fridman
Mao died in 1976. You wrote that the CCP in ’81, looking back through the lens of historical analysis, said that he was 70% correct. Seven zero, exactly, 70% correct.
Mao died in 1976. You wrote that the CCP in ’81, looking back through the lens of historical analysis, said that he was 70% correct. Seven zero, exactly, 70% correct.
Vejas Liulevicius
Yeah. Not 69, not 71.
Yeah. Not 69, not 71.
Lex Fridman
Not 71. The scientific precision, I mean we should say that again and again. The co-opting of the authority of science by the Soviet Union, by Mao, by Nazi Germany, Nazi Science is terrifying and should serve as a reminder that science is the thing that is one of the most beautiful creations of humanity but is also a thing that could be used by politicians and dictators to do horrific things. And-
Not 71. The scientific precision, I mean we should say that again and again. The co-opting of the authority of science by the Soviet Union, by Mao, by Nazi Germany, Nazi Science is terrifying and should serve as a reminder that science is the thing that is one of the most beautiful creations of humanity but is also a thing that could be used by politicians and dictators to do horrific things. And-
Vejas Liulevicius
His essence is questing, not certainty.
His essence is questing, not certainty.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Vejas Liulevicius
Constant questing.
Constant questing.
Lex Fridman
Exactly. Humility, intellectual humility. So how did China evolve after Mao’s death to today?
Exactly. Humility, intellectual humility. So how did China evolve after Mao’s death to today?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, I think that there is… Without denouncing Mao, without repudiating Mao’s 70% correctness, the regime actually undertook a new venture. And that venture was to open up economically to gain access to world markets and to play a global role always with the proviso that the party retained political supremacy. It’s been pointed out that while Khrushchev tries in the Soviet Union in 1956, especially with a secret speech in which he denounces Stalin’s crimes, he tries to go back to the founders’ intentions of Lenin. Nothing like that, it’s argued, is possible in the Chinese case because Mao was not the equivalent of Stalin for communist China. Mao was the equivalent of Lenin. Mao was the founder. So there’s no repudiating of him. They’re stuck with that formula of 70% and acknowledging that there were some problems, but by and large, arguing that it was the correct stance of the party and its leader that was paramount.
Well, I think that there is… Without denouncing Mao, without repudiating Mao’s 70% correctness, the regime actually undertook a new venture. And that venture was to open up economically to gain access to world markets and to play a global role always with the proviso that the party retained political supremacy. It’s been pointed out that while Khrushchev tries in the Soviet Union in 1956, especially with a secret speech in which he denounces Stalin’s crimes, he tries to go back to the founders’ intentions of Lenin. Nothing like that, it’s argued, is possible in the Chinese case because Mao was not the equivalent of Stalin for communist China. Mao was the equivalent of Lenin. Mao was the founder. So there’s no repudiating of him. They’re stuck with that formula of 70% and acknowledging that there were some problems, but by and large, arguing that it was the correct stance of the party and its leader that was paramount.
And the results of this wager are where we are today. China has been transformed out of all recognition in terms of not all of the living standards of the country, but many places. Its economic growth has been dramatic and the new dispensation is such that people will ask, “Is this a communist country anymore?” And that’s probably a question that haunts China’s current leadership as well. With Chairman Xi, we’ve seen a return to earlier patterns, Xi insisting that Mao’s achievement has to be held as equal to that of the reform period. Sometimes imitations or nostalgia for the Mao period or even the sufferings of the Cultural Revolution are part of this volatile mix. But all of this is outward appearance. Statistics can also be misleading, and I think that very much in question is China’s further revolution in our own times.
Lex Fridman
In the West, China is often demonized and we’ve talked extensively today about the atrocities that results from… Atrocities both internal and external that result from communist nations.
In the West, China is often demonized and we’ve talked extensively today about the atrocities that results from… Atrocities both internal and external that result from communist nations.
But what can we say by way of hope to resist the demonization? How can we avoid cold or hot war with China, we being the West or the United States in the 21st century?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, you mentioned in the context of the claims of science, humility as a crucial attribute. I think that humility, sobriety, realism are tremendously valuable in trying to understand another society, another form of government. And so, I think one needs to be very self-aware that projection onto others of what we think they’re about is no substitute for actual study of the sources that a society like that produces. It’s declarations of what matters most to them, the leadership’s own pronouncements about what the future holds. I think that matters a lot more than pious hopes or versions of being convinced that inevitably everyone will come to resemble us in a better future.
Well, you mentioned in the context of the claims of science, humility as a crucial attribute. I think that humility, sobriety, realism are tremendously valuable in trying to understand another society, another form of government. And so, I think one needs to be very self-aware that projection onto others of what we think they’re about is no substitute for actual study of the sources that a society like that produces. It’s declarations of what matters most to them, the leadership’s own pronouncements about what the future holds. I think that matters a lot more than pious hopes or versions of being convinced that inevitably everyone will come to resemble us in a better future.
North Korea
Lex Fridman
You mentioned this earlier, but just to take a small detour, what are we supposed to think about North Korea and their declaration they’re supposedly a communist nation? What can we say about the economic, the political system of North Korea? Or is it just a hopelessly simple answer, “This is a complete disaster of a totalitarian state?”
You mentioned this earlier, but just to take a small detour, what are we supposed to think about North Korea and their declaration they’re supposedly a communist nation? What can we say about the economic, the political system of North Korea? Or is it just a hopelessly simple answer, “This is a complete disaster of a totalitarian state?”
Vejas Liulevicius
I think the answer that our historian can give is a historical answer that we have to inquire into what has to happen in order to arrive at the past we are today. Where you have a regime that’s claiming to be communist or has an even better version of Marx’s original ideas in the form of a Korean adaptation called Juche. How does that mesh with the reality that we’re talking about a dynastic government and a monarchy in all but name, but a communist monarchy if that’s what it is? I think that examining as much as we can learn about a closed society that goes about its every day in ways that are inscrutable to us is very, very challenging. But the only answer when an example like this escapes your analytic categories, probably there’s a problem with your analytical categories rather than the example being the problem in all its messiness.
I think the answer that our historian can give is a historical answer that we have to inquire into what has to happen in order to arrive at the past we are today. Where you have a regime that’s claiming to be communist or has an even better version of Marx’s original ideas in the form of a Korean adaptation called Juche. How does that mesh with the reality that we’re talking about a dynastic government and a monarchy in all but name, but a communist monarchy if that’s what it is? I think that examining as much as we can learn about a closed society that goes about its every day in ways that are inscrutable to us is very, very challenging. But the only answer when an example like this escapes your analytic categories, probably there’s a problem with your analytical categories rather than the example being the problem in all its messiness.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So there’s a component here and it relates to China as well to bring somebody like John Mearsheimer into the picture. There’s a military component here too, and that is ultimately how these nations interact, especially totalitarian nations interact with the rest of the world. Nations interact economically, culturally, and militarily. And the concern with countries like North Korea is the way for them to be present on the world stage in the game of geopolitics is by flexing their military might and they invest a huge amount of their GDP into the military. So I guess the question there to discuss in terms of analysis is how do we deal with this kind of system that claims to be a communist system and what lessons can we take from history and apply it to that? Or should we simply just ignore and look the other way as we’ve been hoping it doesn’t get out of hand?
Yeah. So there’s a component here and it relates to China as well to bring somebody like John Mearsheimer into the picture. There’s a military component here too, and that is ultimately how these nations interact, especially totalitarian nations interact with the rest of the world. Nations interact economically, culturally, and militarily. And the concern with countries like North Korea is the way for them to be present on the world stage in the game of geopolitics is by flexing their military might and they invest a huge amount of their GDP into the military. So I guess the question there to discuss in terms of analysis is how do we deal with this kind of system that claims to be a communist system and what lessons can we take from history and apply it to that? Or should we simply just ignore and look the other way as we’ve been hoping it doesn’t get out of hand?
Vejas Liulevicius
Yeah. There’s a realist’s see states following their own interests and prioritizing their own security, and there’s probably not much that could be done to change that. But conflict arising as a result of misunderstanding or mixed messages or misinterpretation, those are things that policymakers probably do have some control over. I think that there’s internal processes that’ll work their way out in even as opaque place as North Korea. It’s also the reality, just as we saw with the divided Germanys, that it’s a precarious kind of twinned existence when you have countries that are across the border from one another that are derived from what used to be a single unit that now are a real life social science experiment in, “What kind of regime do you get with one kind of system, what sort of regime you get with another kind of system?” And that’s a very unstable setup as it turns out.
Yeah. There’s a realist’s see states following their own interests and prioritizing their own security, and there’s probably not much that could be done to change that. But conflict arising as a result of misunderstanding or mixed messages or misinterpretation, those are things that policymakers probably do have some control over. I think that there’s internal processes that’ll work their way out in even as opaque place as North Korea. It’s also the reality, just as we saw with the divided Germanys, that it’s a precarious kind of twinned existence when you have countries that are across the border from one another that are derived from what used to be a single unit that now are a real life social science experiment in, “What kind of regime do you get with one kind of system, what sort of regime you get with another kind of system?” And that’s a very unstable setup as it turns out.
Communism in US
Lex Fridman
Now let us jump continents and in the 20th century look to North America. So you also have lectured about communism in America, the different communist movements in America. It was also founded in 1919 and evolved throughout through a couple of red scares. So what was the evolution of the Communist Party and just in general communist in America?
Now let us jump continents and in the 20th century look to North America. So you also have lectured about communism in America, the different communist movements in America. It was also founded in 1919 and evolved throughout through a couple of red scares. So what was the evolution of the Communist Party and just in general communist in America?
Vejas Liulevicius
It’s fascinating to observe this story because one longstanding commonplace had been that socialism has less purchase or radical socialism in the United States than in European countries. So, to the extent that that was true, it was an uphill battle for the communists to get established in the United States, but it makes it all the more interesting to follow the development of the movement. And there were two challenges in particular that played a role in shaping the American Communist experience. One was the fact that, to begin with, the party was often identified with immigrants. The communities that had come over across the Atlantic from Europe often had strong socialist contingents. And when this break happens within the socialist movement between radical socialists and more moderate socialists, there were fiery individuals who saw the opportunity to help shape the American Communist movement. But the result was that, for many American workers, they saw the sheer ethnic variety and difference of this movement as something that was unfamiliar.
It’s fascinating to observe this story because one longstanding commonplace had been that socialism has less purchase or radical socialism in the United States than in European countries. So, to the extent that that was true, it was an uphill battle for the communists to get established in the United States, but it makes it all the more interesting to follow the development of the movement. And there were two challenges in particular that played a role in shaping the American Communist experience. One was the fact that, to begin with, the party was often identified with immigrants. The communities that had come over across the Atlantic from Europe often had strong socialist contingents. And when this break happens within the socialist movement between radical socialists and more moderate socialists, there were fiery individuals who saw the opportunity to help shape the American Communist movement. But the result was that, for many American workers, they saw the sheer ethnic variety and difference of this movement as something that was unfamiliar.
It would only be with the rise to the leadership of the Communist Party of Earl Browder, a American-born political leader with vast ambitions for creating an American communist movement that that image would start to be modified. Earl Browder had a meteoric rise and then fall over the promise he made that went by the slogan Communism is 20th Century Americanism. The notion was that communism could find roots in American political discourse and experience. Where Earl Browder fell a foul of other communists was in his expectations during World War II, that it might be possible for the Soviet Union and the United States to make their current cooperation permanent and to come to some sort of accommodation that would moderate their rivalry. As it turns out, with the dawning already of Cold War tensions that would later flower more fully, that was unacceptable. And the movement divested itself of Earl Browder.
Another point that shaped American perceptions of the communist movement in the United States involved issues of espionage. During the 1930s and the 1940s, American communists, not all of them obviously, but select members of the movement were called upon by Soviet intelligence to play a historical role by gathering information, winning sympathies… One of the most amazing books of the 20th century is the book written by Whitaker Chambers, who had served as a Soviet spy, first a committed communist, then a Soviet spy, and then later a renegade from those allegiances. His book is entitled Witness, published in 1952, and it’s one of the most compelling books you could ever read because it’s so full of both the unique character of the author in all of his idiosyncrasies and a sense of huge issues being at stake ones upon which the future of humanity turns. So, talk about the ethical element being of importance there. Through the apparatus of the state, the Soviets managed to infiltrate spies into America’s military as well as government institutions. One great irony is that when Senator McCarthy in the ’50s made vast claims about communist infiltration of the government apparatus, claims that he was unable to substantiate with details, that reality had actually been closer to the reality of the 1930s and the 1940s, than his own time. But the Association of American Communists with the foreign power of the Soviet Union and ultimately an adherence to its interests did a lot to undermine any kind of hearing for American communists. An example, of course, was the notorious Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939.
The American Communist Movement found itself forced to turn on a dime in its propaganda. Before the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939, they had denounced Nazi Germany as the greatest threat to world peace. Just after the signing of the pact, they had to proclaim that this was a great win for peace and for human harmony and to completely change their earlier relationship of being mortal enemies with Nazi Germany. There were many American communists who couldn’t stomach this and who in disillusionment simply quit their party memberships or drifted away. But it’s a fascinating story of the ups and downs of a political movement with radical ambitions in American political history.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, the Cold War and the extensive levels of espionage, combined with Hollywood created basically firmly solidified communism as the enemy of the American ideal sort of embodied. And not even the economic policies of the political policies of communism, but like the word and the color red with the hammer and sickle, Rocky IV, one of my favorite movies-
Yeah, the Cold War and the extensive levels of espionage, combined with Hollywood created basically firmly solidified communism as the enemy of the American ideal sort of embodied. And not even the economic policies of the political policies of communism, but like the word and the color red with the hammer and sickle, Rocky IV, one of my favorite movies-
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, that’s canonical, right?
Well, that’s canonical, right?
Russia after Soviet Union
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I mean, it is a bit of a meme, but meme becomes reality and then enters politics and is used by politicians to do all kinds of name-calling. You have spoken eloquently about modern Russia and modern Ukraine and modern Eastern Europe. How did Russia evolve after Stalin and after the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Yeah. I mean, it is a bit of a meme, but meme becomes reality and then enters politics and is used by politicians to do all kinds of name-calling. You have spoken eloquently about modern Russia and modern Ukraine and modern Eastern Europe. How did Russia evolve after Stalin and after the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Vejas Liulevicius
Well, I think the short answer is without a full historical reckoning that would’ve been healthy about the recent past in ways that’s not very surprising because given the economic misery of dislocations and the cumulative damage of all of those previous decades of this experiment, it left precious little patience or leisure or surplus for introspection. But after an initial period of great interest in understanding the full measure of what Russia and other parts of the Soviet Union had undergone in this first initial explosion of journalism and of reporting and investigations, historical investigations with new sources, after an initial period marked by such interest, people instead retreated into the here and now and the today. And the result is that there’s been less than would be healthy of a taking stock, a reckoning. Even in assigning of responsibility for those things that were experienced in the past, no Nuremberg trial took place in order to hold responsible those who had repressed others in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Well, I think the short answer is without a full historical reckoning that would’ve been healthy about the recent past in ways that’s not very surprising because given the economic misery of dislocations and the cumulative damage of all of those previous decades of this experiment, it left precious little patience or leisure or surplus for introspection. But after an initial period of great interest in understanding the full measure of what Russia and other parts of the Soviet Union had undergone in this first initial explosion of journalism and of reporting and investigations, historical investigations with new sources, after an initial period marked by such interest, people instead retreated into the here and now and the today. And the result is that there’s been less than would be healthy of a taking stock, a reckoning. Even in assigning of responsibility for those things that were experienced in the past, no Nuremberg trial took place in order to hold responsible those who had repressed others in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In other ex-communist countries, there was also precious little in the way of legal proceedings that would’ve established responsibility. And keep in mind, the Nuremberg trials had as one of their goals a very important one, as it turns out, not even individual verdicts for individual people found guilty, but to collect and publicize information, to create knowledge and transparency about what the reality had been in the past. In the case of the former Soviet Union, in the case of Russia today, instead of a clear-eyed recognition of the vast nature of what it all cost, Putin upon replacing Yeltsin was in a position to instead traffic in the most varied, eclectic, and often mutually contradictory historical memories or packages of memories.
So on the one hand, in Putin’s Russia, the Tsars are rehabilitated as heroes of Russian statehood. Putin sees Lenin in a negative light because Lenin by producing federalism as a model for the Soviet Union, laid a time bomb at the base of that state that eventually smashed it into many constituent parts as nations regained their independence. While Stalin, it’s acknowledged exacted a dreadful toll, but also was effective as a representative of Russian statehood.
This produced where we are today. It’s a commonplace echoed by many that Russia without Ukraine is a nation-state or could be a nation-state. Russia with Ukraine has to be an empire. Putin, who is not really seeking a revival of Stalin’s rule, but still is nostalgic about earlier forms of greatness and of the strength of Russian statehood to the exclusion of other values has undertaken a course of aggression that has produced results quite different from what he likely expected.
And I think that timing is crucial here. It’s fascinating to try to imagine, “What if this attempt to re-digest Ukraine into an expanded Russian imperial territory had taken place earlier?” I think that the arrival on the scene of a new generation of Ukrainians has produced a very different dynamic and a disinclination for any kind of nostalgia for the past, packaged however it might be, and however nostalgic it might be made to appear. And there, I think that Putin’s expectations in the invasion of 2022 were entirely overturned. His expectation was that Ukraine would be divided on this score and that some significant portion of Ukrainians would welcome-
Vejas Liulevicius
Some significant portion of Ukrainians would welcome the advance of Russian forces, and instead, there has been the most amazing and surprising heroic resistance that continues to this day.
Some significant portion of Ukrainians would welcome the advance of Russian forces, and instead, there has been the most amazing and surprising heroic resistance that continues to this day.
Lex Fridman
It’s interesting to consider timing and also individual leaders, Zelensky, you can imagine all kinds of other figures that would’ve folded much easier, and Zelensky, I think, surprised a lot of the world, this comedian, somehow becoming essentially an effective war president. So put that in the bin of singular figures that define history.
It’s interesting to consider timing and also individual leaders, Zelensky, you can imagine all kinds of other figures that would’ve folded much easier, and Zelensky, I think, surprised a lot of the world, this comedian, somehow becoming essentially an effective war president. So put that in the bin of singular figures that define history.
Vejas Liulevicius
That surprises.
That surprises.
Lex Fridman
How do you hope the war in Ukraine ends?
How do you hope the war in Ukraine ends?
Vejas Liulevicius
I’m very pessimistic on this score actually, and for the reasons we just talked about how these things escape human management or even rationality. I think that war takes on a life of its own as accumulated suffering actually eliminates possible compromises or settlements that one might talk about in the abstract. I think that it’s one thing for people far away to propose trades of territory or complicated guarantees or arrangements that sound very good in the abstract and that will just be refused by people who have actually experienced what the war has been like in person and what it has meant to them and their families and everyone they know in terms of lives destroyed. I think that peacemaking is going to face a very daunting task here, given all that’s accumulated, and I think in particular, just from the last days of the launching of missile attacks against indiscriminate or civilian targets, that’s not easy to turn the corner on.
I’m very pessimistic on this score actually, and for the reasons we just talked about how these things escape human management or even rationality. I think that war takes on a life of its own as accumulated suffering actually eliminates possible compromises or settlements that one might talk about in the abstract. I think that it’s one thing for people far away to propose trades of territory or complicated guarantees or arrangements that sound very good in the abstract and that will just be refused by people who have actually experienced what the war has been like in person and what it has meant to them and their families and everyone they know in terms of lives destroyed. I think that peacemaking is going to face a very daunting task here, given all that’s accumulated, and I think in particular, just from the last days of the launching of missile attacks against indiscriminate or civilian targets, that’s not easy to turn the corner on.
Lex Fridman
Let me ask a political question. I recently talked to Donald Trump and he said if he’s elected before he has sworn into office, he’ll have a peace deal. What would a peace deal like that look like, and is it even possible, do you think? So we should mention that Russia has captured four regions of Ukraine now. Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson. Also, Ukraine captured part of the Kursk region within Russia. So just like you mentioned, territory is on the table. NATO, European Union is on the table. Also funding and military help from the United States directly to Ukraine is on the table. Do you think it’s possible to have a fair deal that from people, like you said, far away where both people walk away, Zelensky and Putin, unhappy, but equally unhappy and peace is negotiated?
Let me ask a political question. I recently talked to Donald Trump and he said if he’s elected before he has sworn into office, he’ll have a peace deal. What would a peace deal like that look like, and is it even possible, do you think? So we should mention that Russia has captured four regions of Ukraine now. Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson. Also, Ukraine captured part of the Kursk region within Russia. So just like you mentioned, territory is on the table. NATO, European Union is on the table. Also funding and military help from the United States directly to Ukraine is on the table. Do you think it’s possible to have a fair deal that from people, like you said, far away where both people walk away, Zelensky and Putin, unhappy, but equally unhappy and peace is negotiated?
Vejas Liulevicius
Equally unhappy is a very hard balance to strike probably. I think my concern is about the part of the equation that involves people just being desperately unhappy, laying the foundations for more trouble to come. I couldn’t imagine what that looks like, but that’s, once again, these are things that escape human control in the details.
Equally unhappy is a very hard balance to strike probably. I think my concern is about the part of the equation that involves people just being desperately unhappy, laying the foundations for more trouble to come. I couldn’t imagine what that looks like, but that’s, once again, these are things that escape human control in the details.
Lex Fridman
Laying the foundation for worse things to come. So it’s possible you have a ceasefire that lays the foundation for a worse warrant and suffering in a year, in five years, in 10 years.
Laying the foundation for worse things to come. So it’s possible you have a ceasefire that lays the foundation for a worse warrant and suffering in a year, in five years, in 10 years.
Vejas Liulevicius
In a way, we may already be there because ratifying the use of force to change borders in Europe was a taboo since 1945 and now look where we are. If that is validated, then it sets up incentives for more of the same.
In a way, we may already be there because ratifying the use of force to change borders in Europe was a taboo since 1945 and now look where we are. If that is validated, then it sets up incentives for more of the same.
Lex Fridman
If you look at the 20th century is what we’ve been talking about with horrendous global wars that happened then, and you look at now, and it feels like just living in the moment, with the war in Ukraine breaking the contract of, you’re not supposed to do territorial conquest anymore in the 21st century that then the just intensity of hatred and military tension in the Middle East with the Israel, Iran, Palestine, just building and then China calmly, but with a big stick, talking about Taiwan. Do you think a big conflict may be on the way? Do you think it’s possible that another global war happens in the 21st century?
If you look at the 20th century is what we’ve been talking about with horrendous global wars that happened then, and you look at now, and it feels like just living in the moment, with the war in Ukraine breaking the contract of, you’re not supposed to do territorial conquest anymore in the 21st century that then the just intensity of hatred and military tension in the Middle East with the Israel, Iran, Palestine, just building and then China calmly, but with a big stick, talking about Taiwan. Do you think a big conflict may be on the way? Do you think it’s possible that another global war happens in the 21st century?
Vejas Liulevicius
I hope not, but I think so many predictions reach their expiration dates and get invalidated. Obviously, we’re confronting a dire situation in the present.
I hope not, but I think so many predictions reach their expiration dates and get invalidated. Obviously, we’re confronting a dire situation in the present.
Advice for Lex
Lex Fridman
As a historian, let me ask you for advice. What advice would you give on interviewing world leaders, whether it’s people who are no longer here, some of the people we’ve been talking about, Hitler, Stalin, Mao or people that are still here, Putin, Zelensky, Trump, Kamala Harris, Netanyahu, Xi Jinping. As a historian, is it possible to have an interesting conversation, maybe as a thought experiment? What kind of conversation would you like to have with Hitler in the 1930s or Stalin in the 1920s?
As a historian, let me ask you for advice. What advice would you give on interviewing world leaders, whether it’s people who are no longer here, some of the people we’ve been talking about, Hitler, Stalin, Mao or people that are still here, Putin, Zelensky, Trump, Kamala Harris, Netanyahu, Xi Jinping. As a historian, is it possible to have an interesting conversation, maybe as a thought experiment? What kind of conversation would you like to have with Hitler in the 1930s or Stalin in the 1920s?
Vejas Liulevicius
First of all, I mean the answer’s very clear. I would never presume to advise you about interviewing world leaders and prominent people because the roster that you’ve accumulated is just astonishing. But I know what I might aim for and that is, I think, in historical analysis, in trying to understand the role of a particular leader, the more one understands about their prior background and formative influences, the better a fix, I think, one gets on the question of what are their expectations? In German, there’s a beautiful word for this. Germans managed to mash together several words into one even better word, and in German, it’s Erwartungshorizont, the horizon of expectation. So in the case of figures like Churchill or Hitler, their experience of World War I shaped their actions in World War II. Their values were shaped in their childhood. Is there a way of engaging with someone you’re interviewing even obliquely that gives a view in on their sense of what the future might hold?
First of all, I mean the answer’s very clear. I would never presume to advise you about interviewing world leaders and prominent people because the roster that you’ve accumulated is just astonishing. But I know what I might aim for and that is, I think, in historical analysis, in trying to understand the role of a particular leader, the more one understands about their prior background and formative influences, the better a fix, I think, one gets on the question of what are their expectations? In German, there’s a beautiful word for this. Germans managed to mash together several words into one even better word, and in German, it’s Erwartungshorizont, the horizon of expectation. So in the case of figures like Churchill or Hitler, their experience of World War I shaped their actions in World War II. Their values were shaped in their childhood. Is there a way of engaging with someone you’re interviewing even obliquely that gives a view in on their sense of what the future might hold?
Obviously such people are expert at being guarded and not being pinned down, but the categories in which they’re thinking a sense of what their own ethical grounding might be or their ethical code that gives hints to their behavior. It gets said, and again, it’s a cliche because it’s true, that one of the best measures of a person, especially a leader, is how they treat people from whom they don’t expect anything. Are they condescending? Are they, on the contrary, fundamentally interested in another person, even if that person can’t help them or be used in some way? Speaking of prominent world leaders to interview, there’s Napoleon.
Napoleon, psychologically, must have been a quite amazing person to make a bid for mastery of Europe and then already thinking about the mastery of the world. But contemporaries who met Napoleon said that it was very disturbing to talk with him because meeting with him one-on-one revealed that he could talk to you but look like he was looking right through you as if you were not fully real. You were more in the nature of a character on a chessboard, and for that reason, some of them called Napoleon, the master of the sightless stare. So if you’re talking with a world leader and he or she has a sightless stare, that’s probably a bad sign. But there might be other inadvertent clues or hints about the moral compass or the future expectations of a leader that emerge in one of your wonderful conversations.
Lex Fridman
You put it brilliantly in several ways, but the moral compass getting sneaking up to the full nuance and complexity of the moral compass, and one of the ways of doing that is looking at the various horizons in time about their vision of the future. I imagine it’s possible to get Hitler to talk about the future of the Third Reich and to see in ways what he actually visions that as, and similar with Stalin. But of course, funny enough, I believe those leaders would be easier to talk to because there’s nothing to be afraid of in terms of political competition. Modern leaders are a little bit more guarded because they have opposition often to contend with, and constituencies. You did a lot of amazing courses including for the great courses on the topic of communism. You just finished the third, so you did a series of lectures on the rise of communism, then communism and power, and then decline and fall…
You put it brilliantly in several ways, but the moral compass getting sneaking up to the full nuance and complexity of the moral compass, and one of the ways of doing that is looking at the various horizons in time about their vision of the future. I imagine it’s possible to get Hitler to talk about the future of the Third Reich and to see in ways what he actually visions that as, and similar with Stalin. But of course, funny enough, I believe those leaders would be easier to talk to because there’s nothing to be afraid of in terms of political competition. Modern leaders are a little bit more guarded because they have opposition often to contend with, and constituencies. You did a lot of amazing courses including for the great courses on the topic of communism. You just finished the third, so you did a series of lectures on the rise of communism, then communism and power, and then decline and fall…
Vejas Liulevicius
Decline of communism.
Decline of communism.
Lex Fridman
When I was listening to these lectures, can’t possibly imagine the amount of work that went into it. Can you just speak wisely? What was that journey like of taking everything your expertise on Eastern Europe, but just bringing your lens, your wisdom, your focus onto this topic and what it takes to actually bring it to life?
When I was listening to these lectures, can’t possibly imagine the amount of work that went into it. Can you just speak wisely? What was that journey like of taking everything your expertise on Eastern Europe, but just bringing your lens, your wisdom, your focus onto this topic and what it takes to actually bring it to life?
Vejas Liulevicius
Journey is probably just the right word because it’s this week that the third of that trilogy, Decline of Communism, is being released. It felt like something that I very much wanted to do because the history that’s narrated there is one that is so compelling and often so tragic that it needs to be shared. The vast amount of material that one can include is probably dwarfed by the amount that actually ends up on the cutting room floor. One could probably do an entire lecture course on every single one of those lecture topics that got broached. One of the great satisfactions of putting together a course like this is also being able to give further suggestions for study to the listeners and in some cases, to introduce them to neglected classics or books that make you want to grab somebody by the lapels and say, “You’ve got to read this.”
Journey is probably just the right word because it’s this week that the third of that trilogy, Decline of Communism, is being released. It felt like something that I very much wanted to do because the history that’s narrated there is one that is so compelling and often so tragic that it needs to be shared. The vast amount of material that one can include is probably dwarfed by the amount that actually ends up on the cutting room floor. One could probably do an entire lecture course on every single one of those lecture topics that got broached. One of the great satisfactions of putting together a course like this is also being able to give further suggestions for study to the listeners and in some cases, to introduce them to neglected classics or books that make you want to grab somebody by the lapels and say, “You’ve got to read this.”
There’s probably few things that are as exciting as a really keen and targeted reading recommendation. In addition, I’ve also done other courses on the history of World War I, on the diplomatic history of Europe from 1500 to the present, a course on the history of Eastern Europe, and also a course on dictatorships called Utopia and Terror, and then also a course on Explorers and a course on turning points in modern history. Every single one of those is so rewarding because you learn so much in the process and it’s really fantastic.
Book recommendations
Lex Fridman
I should highly recommend that people sign up. First of all, this is the great courses where you can buy the courses individually, but I recommend people sign up for great courses plus, which I think is like a monthly membership where you get access to all these courses and they’re just incredible. I recommend people watch all of yours. Since you mentioned books, this is an impossible question and I apologize ahead of time, but is there books you can recommend just in your own life that you’ve enjoyed, whether really small or some obvious recommendations that you recommend people read? It is a bit like asking what’s your favorite band kind of thing.
I should highly recommend that people sign up. First of all, this is the great courses where you can buy the courses individually, but I recommend people sign up for great courses plus, which I think is like a monthly membership where you get access to all these courses and they’re just incredible. I recommend people watch all of yours. Since you mentioned books, this is an impossible question and I apologize ahead of time, but is there books you can recommend just in your own life that you’ve enjoyed, whether really small or some obvious recommendations that you recommend people read? It is a bit like asking what’s your favorite band kind of thing.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right. Would a book that got turned into a movie be acceptable as well?
That’s right. Would a book that got turned into a movie be acceptable as well?
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Vejas Liulevicius
In that case, all of us reflect on our own childhoods and that magical moment of a reading a book or seeing a movie that really got you launched on some particular set of things that you’re going to find fascinating for the rest of your life. There’s a direct line to the topics we were talking about today from myself in the Chicagoland area as a kid, seeing the film of Dr. Zhivago and then later reading the novel on which it was based by Pasternak. Even though the film had to be filmed on location in Spain pretending to be revolutionary Russia, it was magical for the sheer sweep and tragedy and human resilience that it showed the very way in which a work of literature or a cinematography could capture so much.
In that case, all of us reflect on our own childhoods and that magical moment of a reading a book or seeing a movie that really got you launched on some particular set of things that you’re going to find fascinating for the rest of your life. There’s a direct line to the topics we were talking about today from myself in the Chicagoland area as a kid, seeing the film of Dr. Zhivago and then later reading the novel on which it was based by Pasternak. Even though the film had to be filmed on location in Spain pretending to be revolutionary Russia, it was magical for the sheer sweep and tragedy and human resilience that it showed the very way in which a work of literature or a cinematography could capture so much.
I’m still amazed by that. There’s also, in the spirit of recommending neglected classics, my favorite author, is now a late Canadian author by the name of Robertson Davies, who wrote novel after novel in a mode that probably would get called magical realism but is so much more. Robertson Davies was heavily influenced by Carl Jung and Jungian philosophy, but in literary form, he managed to create stories that blend the mythical, the mystical, and the brutally real to paint a picture of Canada as he knew it, Europe as he knew it, and the world as he knew it. He’s most famous probably for the Deptford Trilogy, three novels in a series that are linked and they’re just masterful if only there were more books like that.
Lex Fridman
The Deptford Trilogy, Fifth Business, the Manticore, World of Wonders, and you got a really nice beard.
The Deptford Trilogy, Fifth Business, the Manticore, World of Wonders, and you got a really nice beard.
Vejas Liulevicius
Yes, it was an amazing beard, very 19th century.
Yes, it was an amazing beard, very 19th century.
Advice for young people
Lex Fridman
Beautiful. What advice would you give to young people today that have just listened to us talk about the 20th century and the terrifying prospects of ideals implemented into reality? By the way, many of the revolutions are carried out by young people, and so the good and the bad and the ugly is thanks to the young people. So the young people listening today, what advice would you give them?
Beautiful. What advice would you give to young people today that have just listened to us talk about the 20th century and the terrifying prospects of ideals implemented into reality? By the way, many of the revolutions are carried out by young people, and so the good and the bad and the ugly is thanks to the young people. So the young people listening today, what advice would you give them?
Vejas Liulevicius
It comes down to one word, and that one word is read. As a college teacher, I’m concerned about what I’m seeing unfolding before us, not my classes, but classes in which students are asked to read very little or maybe in some cases not at all, or snippets that they are provided digitally. Those have their place and can be valuable, but the task of sitting down with a book and absorbing its message, not agreeing with it necessarily, but taking in the implications, learning how to think within the categories and the values of the author is going to be irreplaceable, and my anxiety is that with college bookstores now moving entirely to the paperless format, it changes how people interact with texts.
It comes down to one word, and that one word is read. As a college teacher, I’m concerned about what I’m seeing unfolding before us, not my classes, but classes in which students are asked to read very little or maybe in some cases not at all, or snippets that they are provided digitally. Those have their place and can be valuable, but the task of sitting down with a book and absorbing its message, not agreeing with it necessarily, but taking in the implications, learning how to think within the categories and the values of the author is going to be irreplaceable, and my anxiety is that with college bookstores now moving entirely to the paperless format, it changes how people interact with texts.
If the result is not a renaissance and a resurgence of reading, but less reading, that will be dreadful because the experience of thinking your way into other people’s minds that sustained reading offers is so crucial to human empathy, a broadening of your own sensibilities of what’s possible, what’s in the full range of being human, and then what are the best models for what has been thought and felt and how people have acted, otherwise, we fall prey to manipulators and the ability of artificial intelligence to give us versions of realities that never existed and never will, and like.
Lex Fridman
It’s a really interesting idea. So let me give a shout-out to Perplexity that I’m using here to summarize and take quick notes and get little snippets of stuff, which is extremely useful. But books are not just about information transfer, just as you said, it’s a journey together with a set of ideas and it’s a conversation, and getting a summary of the book is the cliche thing is it’s really getting to the destination without the journey. The journey is the thing that’s important, thinking through stuff.
It’s a really interesting idea. So let me give a shout-out to Perplexity that I’m using here to summarize and take quick notes and get little snippets of stuff, which is extremely useful. But books are not just about information transfer, just as you said, it’s a journey together with a set of ideas and it’s a conversation, and getting a summary of the book is the cliche thing is it’s really getting to the destination without the journey. The journey is the thing that’s important, thinking through stuff.
I’ve been surprised, I’ve learned, I’ve trained my brain to be able to get the same thing from audiobooks. Also, it’s a little bit more difficult because you don’t control the pacing. Sometimes pausing is nice, but you could still get it from audiobooks. So it’s an audio version of books and that allows you to also go on a journey together and sometimes more convenient. You could take it to more places with you, but there is a magical thing. I also trying to train myself mostly to use Kindle, the digital version of books, but there is, unfortunately, still a magical thing about being there with the page.
Vejas Liulevicius
Audiobooks are definitely not to be scorned because as people have pointed out, the original traditions of literature were oral. So that’s actually the 1.0 version, and combining these things is probably the key. I think one of the things I find so wonderful about the best lectures that I’ve heard is it’s a chance to hear someone thinking out loud, not laying down the law, but taking you through a series of logical moves, imaginative leaps, alternative suggestions, and that’s much more than data transfer.
Audiobooks are definitely not to be scorned because as people have pointed out, the original traditions of literature were oral. So that’s actually the 1.0 version, and combining these things is probably the key. I think one of the things I find so wonderful about the best lectures that I’ve heard is it’s a chance to hear someone thinking out loud, not laying down the law, but taking you through a series of logical moves, imaginative leaps, alternative suggestions, and that’s much more than data transfer.
Lex Fridman
The use case of AI as a companion as you read is really exciting to me. I’ve been using it recently to basically, as you read, you can have a conversation with a system that has access to a lot of things about a particular paragraph. I’ve been really surprised how my brain, when given some extra ideas, other recommendations of books, but also just a summary of other ideas from elsewhere in the universe that relates to this paragraph. It sparks your imagination and thought, and you see the actual richness in the thing you’re reading.
The use case of AI as a companion as you read is really exciting to me. I’ve been using it recently to basically, as you read, you can have a conversation with a system that has access to a lot of things about a particular paragraph. I’ve been really surprised how my brain, when given some extra ideas, other recommendations of books, but also just a summary of other ideas from elsewhere in the universe that relates to this paragraph. It sparks your imagination and thought, and you see the actual richness in the thing you’re reading.
Now, nobody, to my knowledge, has implemented a really intuitive interaction between AI and the text, unfortunately, partially because the books are protected under DRM, and so there’s a wall where the AI can’t access the thing. So if you want to play with that kind of thing, you have to break the law a little bit, which is not a good thing. But just like with music, Napster came up, people started illegally sharing music, and the answer to that was Spotify, which made the sharing of music revolutionized everything and made the sharing of music much easier. So there is some technological things that can enrich the experience of reading, but the actual painful, long process of reading is really useful. Just like boredom is useful.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right.
That’s right.
Lex Fridman
It’s also called just sitting there.
It’s also called just sitting there.
Vejas Liulevicius
Underrated Virtue.
Underrated Virtue.
Lex Fridman
Of course, you have to see the smartphone as an enemy, I would say, of that special time. You have to think because social media companies are maximized to get your engagement. They want to grab your attention, and they grab that attention by making you as braindead as possible and getting you to look at more and more and more things. So it’s nice and fun and it’s great. Recommend it highly. It’s good for dopamine rush, but see it as a counter force to the process of sitting with an idea for a prolonged period of time, taking a journey through an expert eloquently conveying that idea and growing by having a conversation with that idea and a book is really, really powerful. So I agree with you totally. What gives you hope about the future of humanity? We’ve talked about the dark past, what gives you hope for the light at the end of the tunnel?
Of course, you have to see the smartphone as an enemy, I would say, of that special time. You have to think because social media companies are maximized to get your engagement. They want to grab your attention, and they grab that attention by making you as braindead as possible and getting you to look at more and more and more things. So it’s nice and fun and it’s great. Recommend it highly. It’s good for dopamine rush, but see it as a counter force to the process of sitting with an idea for a prolonged period of time, taking a journey through an expert eloquently conveying that idea and growing by having a conversation with that idea and a book is really, really powerful. So I agree with you totally. What gives you hope about the future of humanity? We’ve talked about the dark past, what gives you hope for the light at the end of the tunnel?
Hope
Vejas Liulevicius
We talked indeed about a lot of latent, really damaging and negative energies that are part of human nature. But I find hope in another aspect of human nature, and that is the sheer variety of human reactions to situations. The very fact that history is full of so many stories of amazing endurance, amazing resilience, the will to build up even after the horrors have passed, this, to me, is an inexhaustible source of optimism. There are some people who condemn cultural appropriation and say that borrowing from one culture to another is to be condemned or the problem is a synonym for cultural appropriation is world history. Trade, transfer of ideas, influences. Valuing that which is unlike your own culture is also a form of appropriation, quite literally, and so that multitude of human reactions and the fact that our experiences so unlimited as history testifies, gives me great hope for the future.
We talked indeed about a lot of latent, really damaging and negative energies that are part of human nature. But I find hope in another aspect of human nature, and that is the sheer variety of human reactions to situations. The very fact that history is full of so many stories of amazing endurance, amazing resilience, the will to build up even after the horrors have passed, this, to me, is an inexhaustible source of optimism. There are some people who condemn cultural appropriation and say that borrowing from one culture to another is to be condemned or the problem is a synonym for cultural appropriation is world history. Trade, transfer of ideas, influences. Valuing that which is unlike your own culture is also a form of appropriation, quite literally, and so that multitude of human reactions and the fact that our experiences so unlimited as history testifies, gives me great hope for the future.
Lex Fridman
The willingness of humans to explore all of that with curiosity. Even when the empires fall and the dreams are broken, we rise again.
The willingness of humans to explore all of that with curiosity. Even when the empires fall and the dreams are broken, we rise again.
Vejas Liulevicius
That’s right. Unceasingly.
That’s right. Unceasingly.
Lex Fridman
Vejas, thank you so much for your incredible work, your incredible lectures, your books, and thank you for talking today.
Vejas, thank you so much for your incredible work, your incredible lectures, your books, and thank you for talking today.
Vejas Liulevicius
Thank you for this such a fun chat.
Thank you for this such a fun chat.
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Vejas Liulevicius. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. Now let me leave you with some words from Karl Marx. “History repeats itself; first as a tragedy, second as a farce.” Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Vejas Liulevicius. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. Now let me leave you with some words from Karl Marx. “History repeats itself; first as a tragedy, second as a farce.” Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time.
Transcript for Gregory Aldrete: The Roman Empire – Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome | Lex Fridman Podcast #443
This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #443 with Gregory Aldrete.
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Hannibal famously crosses the Alps with elephants. Dramatic stuff. Nobody expects him to do this. Nobody thinks you can do this. Shows up in Northern Italy. Romans send an army. Hannibal massacres them. He is a military genius. Rome takes a year, raises a second army. We know this story, sends it against Hannibal. Hannibal wipes them out.
Rome gets clever this time. They say, “Okay, Hannibal’s different. We’re going to take two years, raise two armies and send them both out at the same time against Hannibal.” They do this, and this is the Battle of Cannae, which is one of the most famous battles in history. Hannibal is facing this army of 80, 000 Romans about, and he comes up with strategy called double envelopment. I mean, we can go into it later if you want, but it’s this famous strategy where he basically sucks the Romans in, surrounds them on all sides. And in one afternoon at the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal kills about 60,000 Romans. Now, just to put that in perspective, that’s more Romans hacked to death in one afternoon with swords than Americans died in 20 years in Vietnam.
I mean, put yourself in the place of average inhabitant of the ancient world. If you were an ancient person, three or four of your kids probably would’ve died. You would’ve buried your children. And nowadays, we think of that as an unusual thing, and just psychologically, that’s a huge thing. You would’ve seen multiple of your siblings die. If you were a woman, for example, if you were lucky enough to make it to let’s say age 13, you probably would have to give birth four or five times in order just to keep the population from dying out. Those kind of grim mortality statistics, I think, are a huge difference psychologically between the ancient world and the modern.
I think, as a historian, the way you begin to understand an alien, a foreign culture, which is what these cultures are, is to look for those little moments of sympathy. But on the other hand, there’s ways in which ancient cultures are wildly different from us. You also look for those moments where you just think, “How the hell could these people have done that? I just don’t understand how they could have thought or acted in this way.” It’s lining up those moments of sympathy and kind of disconnection that I think is when you begin to start to understand a foreign culture or an ancient culture.
I was just writing a lecture for my next Great Courses course, and I was writing about farming in the ancient world. I was really thinking if we were to write a realistic textbook of let’s say the Roman Empire, nine out of 10 chapters should be details of what it was like to be a small-time family farmer, because that’s what 90% of the people in the ancient world did. They weren’t soldiers, they weren’t priests, they weren’t kings, they weren’t authors, they weren’t artists. They were small-town family farmers, and they lived in a little village. They never traveled 20 miles from that village. They were born there. They married somebody from there. They raised kids. They mucked around in the dirt for a couple decades and they died. They never saw a battle. They never saw a work of art. They never saw a philosopher. They never took part in any of the things we define as being history. So that’s what life should be, and that’s representative.
But Rome is a little schizophrenic in that it’s both the empire when it was ruled by emperors, which is one kind of model, and it’s the Roman Republic when it was a pseudo-democracy, which is a different model. It’s interesting how some later civilizations tend to either focus on one or the other of those. The United States, Revolutionary France, they were very obsessed with the Roman Republic as a model. But other people, Mussolini, Hitler, Napoleon, they were very obsessed with the Empire. Victorian Britain as a model.
Rome itself has different aspects. But what I think is actually another big difference between the modern world and the ancient is our relationship with the past. One of the keys to understanding all of Roman history is to understand that this was a people who were obsessed with the past and for whom the past had power, not just as something inspirational, but it actually dictated what you would do in your daily life. Today, especially in the United States, we don’t have much of a relationship with the past. We see ourselves as free agents just floating along, not tethered to what came before.
The classical story that I sometimes tell in my classes to illustrate this is Rome started out as a monarchy. They had kings. They were kind of unhappy with their kings. Around 500 BC, they held a revolution and they kicked out the kings, and one of the guys who played a key role in this was a man named Lucius Junius Brutus. 500 years later, 500 years down the road, a guy comes along, Julius Caesar, who starts to act like a king. If you have trouble with kings in Roman society, who are you going to call? Somebody named Brutus. Now as it happens, there is a guy named Brutus in Roman society at this time, who is one of Julius Caesar’s best friends, Marcus Junius Brutus. Now, before I go further with the story, and I think you probably know where it ends, I talk about how important your ancestors are in Roman culture. I mean, if you went to an aristocratic Roman’s house and opened the front door and walked in, the first thing you would see would be a big wooden cabinet. If you open that up, what you would see would be row after row of wax death masks. When a Roman aristocrat died, they literally put hot wax on his face and made an impression of his face at that moment. They hung these in a big cabinet right inside the front door. Every time you entered your house, you were literally staring at the faces of your ancestors.
Every child in that family would have obsessively memorized every accomplishment of every one of those ancestors. He would’ve known their career, what offices they held, what battles they fought in, what they did. When somebody new in the family died, there would be a big funeral and they would talk about all the things their ancestors had did. The kids in the family would literally take out those masks, tie them onto their own faces, and wear them in the funeral procession. You were wearing the face of your ancestors. So you as an individual weren’t important, you were just the latest iteration of that family, and there was enormous weight, huge weight to live up to the deeds of your ancestors. The Romans were absolutely obsessed with the past, especially with your own family. Every Roman kid who is let’s say an aristocratic family could tell you every one of his ancestors back centuries. I can’t go beyond my grandparents, I don’t even know, but that’s maybe 100 years. It’s a completely different attitude towards the past.
In the late Republic, which we’ll probably talk about later, Rome desperately needed to change certain things, but it was a society that did things the way the ancestors did it, and they didn’t make some obvious changes, which might have saved their Republic. That’s the downside is that it locks you into something and you can’t change.
But to get us back to the Brutus’s, 500 years after that first Brutus got rid of kings, Julius Caesar starts to act like a king, one of his best friends is Marcus Junius Brutus. And literally, in the middle of the night, people go to Brutus’s house and write graffiti on it that says, “Remember your ancestor?” And another one is, I think, “You’re no real Brutus.” And at that point, he really has no choice. He forms a conspiracy. On the Ides of March 44 BC, he and 23 other senators take daggers, stick them in Julius Caesar, and kill him for acting like a king. The way I always pose this to my students is, “How many of you would stick a knife in your best friend because of what your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather did?”
A lot of societies have this power of the past. Today, not so much, but some still do. About a decade ago, I was in Serbia and I was talking to some of the people there about the breakup of Yugoslavia and some of the wars that had taken place where people turned against their neighbors, basically murdered people they had lived next to for decades. When I was talking to them, some of them actually brought up things like, “Oh, well, it was justified because in this battle in 12 whatever, they did this.” And I was thinking, “Wow, you’re citing something from 800 years ago to justify your actions today.” That’s a modern person who still understands the power of the past, or maybe is crippled by it, is another way to view it.
Then there’s this revolution, they kick out the kings, they become a Republic. That lasts from 500 BC roughly to about either 31 or 27 BC, depending what date you pick as most important, but about 500 years. The Republic is when they have a Republican form of government. Some people idealize this as Rome’s greatest period, and the big thing in that period is Rome first expands to conquer all of Italy in the first 250 years of that 500 year stretch. And then, the second 250 years, they conquer all the Mediterranean basin roughly. This is this time of enormous successful Roman conquest and expansion.
And then, you have another switch up and they become ruled by emperors. Back to the idea of one guy in charge, though the Romans try to pretend it’s not like a king, it’s something else. Anyway, we can get into that. But they’re very touchy about kings, so they have emperors. Roman Empire, the first emperor is Augustus. Starts off as Octavian, switches his name to Augustus when he becomes emperor. He kind of sets the model for what happens.
And then, how long does the Roman Empire last? That’s one of those great questions. The conventional answer is usually sometime in the fifth century, so the 400s AD, so about another 500 years, let’s say. So nice kind of even division, 500 years of Republic, 500 years of empire. But you can make very good cases for lots of other dates for the end of the Roman Empire. I actually think it goes all the way through the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, so another 1500 years, but that’s a whole other discussion. But so that’s your three phases of Roman history,
When they conquer Greece, Greek culture just becomes one more arena of competition. Romans will start to learn Greek. They’ll start to memorize Homer. They’ll start to see who can quote more passages of Homer in Greek in their letters to one another because that increases their status. Rome absorbs Greek civilization, and then the two get fused together.
The other thing I should mention in terms of influences that’s really huge on Rome is the Etruscans, and this is one that comes along before the Greeks. The Etruscans were this kind of mysterious culture that flourished in northern Italy before the Romans, so way back 800 BC. They were much more powerful than the Romans. They were a loose confederation of states. For awhile, the Romans even seemed to have been under Etruscan control. The last of the Roman kings was really an Etruscan guy pretty clearly. But the Etruscans end up giving to Rome, or you could say Rome ends up stealing perhaps, a lot of elements of Etruscan culture. Many of the things that we today think of as distinctively Roman, our cliches of what a Roman is, actually aren’t truly Roman, they’re stuff they stole from the Etruscans. Just a couple examples, the toga. What do you think of a Roman? It’s a guy wearing a toga, and the toga is the mark of a Roman citizen. Well, that’s what Etruscan kings wore, probably.
Gladiator games. We associate those very intensely with the Romans. Well, they probably stole that from the Etruscans. A lot of Roman religion. Jupiter is a thunder God, all sorts of divination. The Romans love to chop open animals and look at their livers and predict the future, that comes from the Etruscans. Watching the flight of birds to predict the future, that comes from the Etruscans. There’s a lot of central elements of what we think of as Roman civilization, which actually are borrowings, let’s say, from these older, slightly mysterious Etruscans.
Not every empire does that. There’s a lot of nations and empires that when they conquer, they annihilate versus integrate. And so, it’s an interesting thing to be able to culturally… The form that the competitiveness takes is that you want to compete in the realm of ideas in culture versus compete strictly in the realm of military conquest.
One of the things that’s absolutely crucial early in Roman history, when they’re just one of these tiny little mud hut villages fighting dozens of other mud hut villages in Italy, why does Rome emerge as the dominant one? Well, one of the things they do is when they do finally succeed in conquering somebody else, let’s say another Italianate people, they do something very unusual because the normal procedure in the ancient world is let’s say you conquer another city, you often kill most of the men, enslave the women and children, steal all the stuff, right? The Romans, at least with the Italians, conquer the other city, and sometimes they’ll do that, but sometimes they’ll also then say, “All right, we’re going to now leave you alone and we’re going to share with you a degree of Roman citizenship.” Sometimes they’d make them full citizens, more often they’d make them something we call half citizens, which is kind of what sounds like you get some of the privileges of citizenship, but not all of them. Sometimes they would just make them allies, but they would sort of incorporate them into the Roman project.
They wouldn’t necessarily ask for money or taxes, which is weird too. But instead, the one thing they would always, always demand from the conquered cities in Italy is that they provide troops to the Roman army. The army becomes this mechanism of Romanization where you pull in foreigners, you make them like you, and then they end up fighting for you. Early on, the secret to Rome’s military success is not that they have better generals. It’s not that they have better equipment. It’s not that they have better strategy or tactics. It’s that they have limitless manpower, relatively speaking. They lose a war and they just come back and fight again, and they lose again, and they come back and they fight again, and eventually they just wear down their enemies because their key thing of their policy is we incorporate the conquered people.
The great moment that just exemplifies this is pretty late in this process. They’ve been doing this for 250 years just about, and they’ve gotten down to the toe of Italy, they’re conquering the very last cities down there. One of the last cities is actually a Greek city. It’s a Greek colony. It’s a wealthy city, and so when the Romans show up on the doorstep and are about to attack them, they do what any rich Greek colony or city does, they go out and hire the best mercenaries they can. They hire this guy who thinks of himself as the new Alexander the Great, a man named Pyrrhus of Epirus. He’s a mercenary. He is actually related to Alexander distantly. He has a terrific army, top-notch army. He’s got elephants. He’s got all the latest military technology. The Romans come and fight a battle against him, and Pyrrhus knows what he’s doing. He wipes out the Romans.
He thinks, “Okay, now we’ll have a peace treaty. We’ll negotiate something. I can go home.” But the Romans won’t even talk. They go to their Italian allies and half-citizens, they raise a second army, they send it against Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus says, ‘Okay, these guys are slow learners. Fine.” He fights them again, wipes them out, thinks, “Now we’ll have a peace treaty.” But the Romans go back to the allies, raise a third army and send it after Pyrrhus. When he sees that third army coming, he says, “I can’t afford to win another battle. I win these battles, but each time I lose some of my troops and I can’t replace them, and the Romans just keep sprouting new armies.” So he gives up and goes home.
Rome kind of loses every battle, but wins the war. Pyrrhus one of, actually, his officers has a great line as they’re going back to Greece. He says, “Fighting the Romans is like fighting a hydra,” and a hydra is this mythological monster that when you cut off one head, two more grow in its place, so you can just never win.
As early as the second century AD of the Roman Empire, so the first set of emperors, the first 100 years were all Italians, but right away at the beginning of the second century AD you have Trajan, who’s from Spain. The next guy, Hadrian’s from Spain, and then a century later, you have Septimius Severus, who’s from North Africa. You would later get guys from Syria. I mean, the actual leaders of the Roman Empire are coming from the provinces.
Again, you’re taking the most warlike and potentially dangerous of your enemies, kind of absorbing them, putting through this thing for 25 years where they learn Latin, they learn Roman customs, they maybe marry someone who’s already a Roman or a Latin woman. They have kids within the system, their kids become Roman Legionaries, and you’ve thoroughly integrated what could have been your biggest enemies, right? Your greatest threat.
Then in the second half of that period, from about 250 to let’s say 30 BC, Rome goes outside of Italy, and this is a new world because now they’re encountering people who are really fundamentally different. So, true others. They do not have the same gods. They don’t speak the same language. They have fundamentally different systems of economy, everything.
Rome first expands in the Western Mediterranean, and there their big rival is the city state of Carthage, which is another city founded almost the same time as Rome that has also been a young, vigorously expanding aggressive empire. In the Western Empire at this time, you have two sort of rival groups, and they’re very different because the Romans are these citizen soldier farmers…
Carthage is an oligarchy of merchants, so it’s a very small citizen body. They make their money through maritime trade, so they have ships that go all over the Mediterranean. They don’t have a large army of Carthaginians. Instead, they hire mercenaries mostly to fight for them, so it’s almost these two rival systems. It’s different philosophies, different economies, everything.
Rome is strong on land. Carthage is strong at sea. So there’s this dichotomy, but they’re both looking to expand and they repeatedly come into conflict as they expand. So Carthage is on the coast of North Africa, Rome’s in Central Italy. What’s right between them? The island of Sicily. So the first big war is fought purely dictated by geography. Who gets Sicily, Rome or Carthage? And Rome wins in the end, they get it, but Carthage is still strong. They’re not weakened. So Carthage is now looking to expand.
The next place to go is Spain. So they go and take Spain. Rome, meanwhile, is moving along the coast of what today’s France. Where are they going to meet up? On the border of Spain and France. And there’s a city, at this point in time called Saguntum. The second big war between Rome and Carthage is over. Who gets Saguntum?
So, I mean, you can just look at a map and see this stuff coming. Sometimes geography is inevitability, and I think in the course of the wars between Rome and Carthage called the Punic Wars, there is this geographic inevitability to them.
This guy, Hannibal Barca, he was actually the son of the Carthaginian general who fought Rome for Sicily. Hamilcar was his father, but Hannibal is this just genius, just absolute military genius. He goes to Spain. He’s the one who kind of organizes stuff there, and now he knows the second war with Rome is inevitable. And so, the question is how do you take down Rome? He’s smart. He’s seen Rome’s strength. He knows it’s the Italian allies.
So Rome always wins because even if they lose battles, they go to the Italian allies and half citizens and raise new armies. So how do you beat them? He can never raise that many troops himself. And Hannibal, I think correctly figures out the one way to maybe defeat Rome is to cut them away from their allies. Well, how do you do this?
Hannibal’s plan is, I’m not going to wait and fight the Romans in Spain or North Africa. I’m going to invade Italy. So I’m going to strike at the heart of this growing Roman Empire, and my hope is that if I can win a couple big battles against Rome in Italy, the Italians will want their freedom back and they’ll rebel from Rome and maybe even join me, because most people who have been conquered want their freedom back, so this is a reasonable plan.
So Hannibal famously crosses the Alps with elephants, dramatic stuff. Nobody expects him to do this. Nobody thinks you can do this. Shows up in Northern Italy. Romans send an army. Hannibal massacres them. He is a military genius. Rome takes a year, raises a second army. We know this story, sends it against Hannibal. Hannibal wipes them out.
Rome gets clever this time. They say, okay, Hannibal’s different. We’re going to take two years, raise two armies and send them both out at the same time against Hannibal. So they do this, and this is the Battle of Cannae, which is one of the most famous battles in history, Hannibal’s facing this army of 80,000 Romans about, and he comes up with a strategy called double envelopment. I mean, we can go into it later if you want, but it’s this famous strategy where he basically sucks the Romans in, surrounds them on all sides, and in one afternoon at the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal kills about 60,000 Romans.
Now, just to put that in perspective, that’s more Romans hacked to death in one afternoon with swords than Americans died in 20 years in Vietnam. I mean, the Battle of Gettysburg, which lasted three days and was one of the bloodiest battles of civil war, I think the actual deaths at that were maybe like 15,000. So this is a bloodshed of an almost unimaginable scale.
Rome’s going to survive, and from this point on, they’re going to be unbeatable, but this is the crisis. This is the crucible. This is the furnace that Rome passes through, that is the dividing point between when they’re one more up and coming empire and when they’re clearly the dominant power in the Mediterranean.
So what do they do about Hannibal? Well, they’re smart. We’re not going to fight Hannibal. We’re not going to give Hannibal the chance to kill more Romans. So they adopt a strategy that they’ll follow Hannibal, when they raise a couple more armies, follow Hannibal round, but whenever Hannibal turns and tries to attack them, the Romans just back off. No, thank you. We’re not going to let you give you a chance.
Meanwhile though, they’re not scared of other Carthaginians, so they raise a couple more armies and they send these to Spain, for example, and start attacking the Carthaginian holdings there. And by luck or necessity, Rome comes up with its own brilliant commander at this point, a guy named Scipio, and he wins victories in Spain, conquers Spain. Then, he crosses into North Africa and starts to conquer that and ends up threatening Carthage directly.
And poor Hannibal, undefeated in Italy, has now been walking up and down Italy or marching up and down Italy for 12 years looking for another fight, and the Romans won’t give it to them. They’ve been attacking all these other areas and chipping away at Carthaginian power.
So finally, after more than a decade in Italy, Hannibal is called back to defend the homeland, defend Carthage from Scipio. The two meet in a big battle. This should be one of the great battles of all times the Battle of Zama, but Hannibal’s guys are kind of old by this point. Scipio has all the advantages. He wins. Carthage is defeated. So that’s pretty much the end of Carthage.
The city survives, and then 50 years later, the Romans wipe it out, but that’s not much of a war. But from this moment on, from the second Punic War, which ends in 201 BC, Rome is undisputably the most powerful force nation in the Mediterranean world, and having conquered the West, they’re now going to turn to the East, which is the Greek world, and the Greek world is older. It’s richer, it’s the rich part, half of the Mediterranean, it’s culturally more sophisticated. It’s the world left by Alexander the Great, that’s ruled by the descendants of his generals.
And the Greeks kind of view themselves as superior to the Romans. I mean, to the Greeks, the Romans are these uncouth sort of savage barbarians, but they’re going to get a real shock because the Roman army now has gotten really good to beat Hannibal. And when they go East, they’re going to just defeat the Greeks relatively easily, one after the other.
And there’s a famous historian named Polybius who is a Greek whose city was captured by the Romans. He later becomes a friend to the Scipio family. He actually teaches some of the Scipio children about Greek culture. And he writes a history of Rome and his motivation for writing this is he says, at the beginning of this book, he says, “Surely there can be no one so incurious as to not want to understand how the Romans could have conquered the entire Greek world in 53 years,” because that seems unimaginable to him.
So he’s writing this entire history as a way to try and understand how did the Romans do it? We were these wonderful superior people, and they came around in 50 years, bang, that’s the end of us. So that’s his motivation.
They’re not kind of in combat formation, but they’re strung out along the edge of this lake. It’s misty. There’s not good visibility, and he ambushes them along this lakeside, so Lake Trasimene, and it’s just using the terrain, understanding this. Again, Hannibal is very much outnumbered, but he’s able to use the terrain and to take the enemy by surprise.
At Cannae, he’s working against the expectations. So the traditional thing you do in the ancient world is the two armies would line up on opposite sides of a field, you’d put your best troops in the middle, you’d put your cavalry on the sides, you’d put your lightly armed skirmishers beyond those, and then the two sides kind of smack together, and the good troops fight the good, and you see who wins.
Now, Hannibal is hugely outnumbered by this giant phalanx of heavy infantry, which is what the Romans specialized in. They’re very good at sort of heavily armed foot soldiers. So he knows I don’t want to go up against that. I don’t have that many of that troop type. My guys aren’t as good as the Romans anyway.
So he lines up some of his less good troops in the center against the big menacing Roman phalanx, and he tells them, “Okay, when the Romans come, you’re not really trying to win, just hold them up. Just delay them,” and even tells them you can give ground, so you can retreat and sort of let the line form a big kind of C-shaped crescents, let the Romans sort of advance into you, but just hold that line.
And meanwhile, he puts his cavalry and his good troops on the side, and so on the sides, those good troops defeat the Romans, and then they kind of circle in behind the Romans and attack that big menacing Roman phalanx from the rear where it’s very vulnerable. And so, Hannibal catches the Romans in this sort of giant cauldron just with people closing in from both sides, and they get pressed together. They can’t fight properly, they panic, and they’re all slaughtered.
And that strategy of double envelopment, of sort of going around both sides becomes the model for all kinds of military strategies throughout the rest of history. I mean, the Germans use this in their Blitzkrieg in World War II, a lot of it was kind of that go around the sides and envelop the enemy. On the eastern front, they had a bunch of these cauldron battles where they would go around and try to encircle huge chunks of the Soviet, the Russian army, and do the same thing.
Supposedly even in the Gulf War, it was part of the US strategy for the invasion of Iraq to do this kind double envelopment maneuver. So it’s something that for the rest of military history, has been an inspiration to other armies.
Whereas the Greeks specialized in what are called hop lights, which is a kind of infantrymen with very heavy body armor, a helmet, a spear, and a really big heavy shield. And they would get in that formation where you kind of make the shields overlap and just form this solid mass bristling with spear points and just slowly kind of march forward and grind up your enemy in front of you. And so, that’s that sort of block of heavy infantry.
The advantage is head on against other things, they tend to win. The disadvantage is it’s slow moving. It’s vulnerable from the sides and the rear, so you got to protect those, but if you can keep frontally faced, it’s pretty much invincible. And that’s taken even further by Alexander the Great who comes up with the idea, well, what if we even give them a longer spear? So Greek spears were six to eight feet long. Alexander the Great, arms his armies with the sarissa, which is this 15 foot, almost a pike, this extra long spear.
And so, when the spear is that long, you don’t even hardly need the shields anymore. So it’s just this incredibly powerful thing in frontal attack, and that’s what he uses to make himself ruler of the known world. He goes and conquers the Persian Empire and makes himself the Persian king of kings with this phalanx of troops armed with the sarissa. So that’s very powerful.
The Romans go a little bit different route. They have heavy infantry, but they focus more on fighting with short swords, so it’s get up close and kind of stab. And the other thing the Romans do is they focus on flexibility and subdividing their army. So Alexander’s phalanx was a mass of let’s say, 5,000 guys and it was one unit.
The Roman army is organized in an ever decreasing number of subunits. So you have a group of eight guys who are a contubernia, the men who share a tent, you take 10 of those and they form a century of 80 men. You take a bunch of those and you form a cohort. If you forget a bunch of those, you form a legion.
So the Romans are able to subdivide their army, and the big sticking point comes at 197 BC at the Battle of Cynoscephalae, when the Roman Legion goes up against one of the descendants of Alexander the Great, who’s using his military system. So this is the new Roman system with flexibility versus the old invincible Alexander system with the heavily armed sarissa with those long 15-foot poles.
And the key moment in the battle is where they lock together And in a head-on clash, the Macedonians are going to win, but the Romans have the flexibility to break off a little section of their army, run around to the side, and attack that formation from the side, and they win the battle. So they prove tactically superior because of their flexibility. So it’s always development and counter development in military history.
Armor develops over time to fit the tactics. So the Greek hoplites, are very heavy armor. The Roman infantrymen early in the public is lighter. Eventually they get this typical sort of chain mail shirt, helmet shield, the classic sort of Roman legionary, I would say, is the one of the first and second centuries AD, so the early Roman Empire, and this is the guy who wore bands of steel arranged in sort of bands around their body. So it looks almost like a lobster’s shell, right? And this is a thing called the lorica segmentata.
So it’s solid steel, which is very good protection, but it’s flexible because it has these individual bands that provide a lot of movement. And then, you have a helmet, you have a square shield that’s kind of curved, and you have the short sword, the Roman gladius and that’s the classic Roman legionary. Later, more things develop.
My personal relationship with armor is I got, really by accident, involved in this project to try to reconstruct this mysterious type of armor that was used, especially by the Greeks and Alexander the Great called the linothorax, which apparently was made only out of linen and glue. So this seems a little odd that that’s not the sort of material once you want metal or something, but we had clear literary references that people, including Alexander, and the most famous image of Alexander is this Alexander mosaic found at Pompeii that shows him wearing one of these funny types of armor.
The catch is none survived. It’s organic materials. So we don’t have any of them and archaeologists like to study things that survive. So we have nice typologies of Greek armor made of bronze, Roman armor made of steel or sort of proto steel, but this thing, this linothorax was a mystery. And one of my undergraduate students, a guy named Scott Bartel, had a real, well, an Alexander obsession. He really loved Alexander.
So it started with this undergraduate turned into this huge thing, but it’s what we did. We first said, “All right, what are all the sources for this armor?” And in the end, we found 65 accounts of it in ancient literature by 40 different authors. So we have literary descriptions, and then we looked at ancient art, and we were able to identify about a thousand images in ancient art, in vase paintings, pottery, bronze sculpture, tomb paintings, all these different things showing this armor.
And then, using those two things, we tried to backwards engineer a pattern to say, “Well, if this is what the end product look like, what does it have to look like when you make it?” And then we tried to reconstruct one of these things using only the glue and materials. So we had to use animal glues, rabbit glue. We had to end up sort of making our own linen, which comes from the flax plant. So we had to grow flax, harvest it, using only techniques in the ancient world, so modern flax goes through chemical processes. No, we had to do this the old-fashioned way, spin it into thread, so the thread into fabric, glue it all together.
And then, the fun part was once we made these things, we subjected them to ballistics testing. So we shot them with arrows, which again were wooden reconstruction arrows, using bronze arrowheads that were based on arrowheads found on ancient battlefields to determine how good protection would this thing have been. And of course, the kind of fun one that everyone always likes and that the documentaries always want is at one point they’re like, “Well, can you put Scott in one of these and shoot him?” And we’re like, “Okay.” I mean, at that point, we’ve done about a thousand test shots. I grew up shooting bows and arrows. I knew exactly how far that was going to go. So it’s one of these, don’t do this at home kids.
In fact, probably, this is interesting, any woman in the ancient world could have made one of these because they were the ones who spun thread and sewed it into fabric. So I can easily see in a household a mother making this for her son, a wife making it for her husband. So it’s a form of armor you could have made domestically that would’ve been maybe not the greatest armor, but pretty good, pretty comparable to bronze armor.
But in the ancient world, they did have basically the equivalent of super glues. I mean, we found, for example, a helmets that were fished out river in Germany that had metal parts glued together that after 2,000 years of immersion and water were still glued together. So they had some great glues. We just don’t know what the recipes for them were. So we went the opposite tack and said, “Well, we’re just going to make something that we know they could have made.” So it was at least this good, you know what I’m saying?
So I think if you had some spare leather, you put that in. If you wanted to make one that was just sewn together, or even quilted stuffed with stuff you do that, maybe you were good at gluing stuff, you use that. So I think there’s no one answer. We investigated one possibility because we just had limited time and money and resources, but I think all these other things existed at the same time and we’re variants of it.
I also have a sciency background, so I think I’ve used a lot of that. Even though I’m a humanist and a historian, I’ve used a lot of hard science in my work. I did a book on floods where I had to get really heavy into vectors of disease and hydraulics and engineering and all that stuff, and I think, again, having that sort of hard science combined with a humanist background, helps with those sorts of projects.
So as soon as you start to get something more like a razor edge, it’s going to go through it more easily. Also, there’s changes in the bows that are being used. You start to get eastern horse archers showing up with composite bows, which are much more powerful. And so, it just becomes outdated as frontline military equipment. What’s interesting is by the Roman period, people are still wearing it, but it’s now things like when I go hunting, if I’m hunting lions, I wear this. There’s an actual source that says, “It’s really good for hunting dangerous big cats because it catches their teeth and stops them from penetrating. One emperor wears one of these under his toga. It’s kind of like a, not bulletproof vest, but stab proof vest. So again…
But Alexander is a combination of two things, one is he really just was a skilled individual, and he was one of those guys who had it all. He was smart, he was athletic, and he was supremely charismatic. I mean, it’s obviously one of these people that would walk into a room and everyone just kind of gravitates to him. He had that magic that made him an effective leader.
And secondly, he was lucky because it wasn’t all him. He inherited a system created by his father, Philip II. So he was in the right time at the right place and had this instrument placed in his hands, and then he had the intelligence and the charisma to go use it. So it’s one of these coming together of different things, but often his father’s contribution, I think, is not recognized as much as it is.
It’s his father who reformed the Macedonian army, who came up with that system of equipping them with the sarissa, this extra long spear that made them really effective, created the mixed army. So one of the keys to Alexander’s successes, in a tactical sense, is that his army was composed of different elements: heavy cavalry, light cavalry, heavy infantry, light infantry, missile troops, and he understand that he can use these in different and flexible ways on the battlefield; whereas a lot of warfare before then had just been, you line up, two sides smashed together.
So he did clever things with this army that was a better tool than others did. And then, he was just supremely ambitious. I mean, he cared about his fame, which I guess his ego, but he clearly cared about that more than he did about things like money. He was indifferent to that, and he did have a grand vision. So he did have this vision of trying to unite the world, both politically under his control, but also culturally, and this is an interesting thing.
So he was very open, in fact, insistent of trying to meld together the best elements of all the different cultures. So he, himself, was a Macedonian, but he admired Greek culture. So he pretty much adopted Greek culture as his own. When he conquers Persia, he starts adapting elements of Persian culture. He dresses in Persian clothing. He marries a Persian woman. He sort of forces thousands of his troops to marry local women. He appoints Persians to positions of power. He integrates Persian units into his military. He really wanted to fuse all these things together. And some people see this as a very enlightened vision that, “Oh, he’s not just, I want to conquer people and now they’re my slaves,” that he was really trying to create this one culture that was sort of the best of everything. Others see it, of course, as a form of cultural imperialism. You’re destroying other cultures and trying to warp or twist them into something, but what I think is interesting is that this vision he had of uniting cultures creates very problematic tensions among his own followers because the-
So Alexander is one of these interesting personalities because every generation sees him in a new light and focuses on different things. So for some, he’s this enlightened visionary who was taught by Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, and they say, “Well, this influenced him.” Others see him as an egomaniacal warmonger, just I’m out to kill and gain glory. There was a book a couple of decades ago, it says, “Oh, he’s just an alcoholic,” which he probably was. Yeah. So you get all these competing images, and the great thing is, we don’t really know what the true Alexander was or what his motivations were. It’s a mixed message.
So his was a flash in the pan. It was, he had this spectacular conquest in 10 years. He conquered what was then most of the known world, but he had no permanent structure in place. He didn’t really deal with the issue of succession. It fell apart instantly. The Romans are much more about building a structure. I mean, as we talked about a little, they were very good about incorporating the people they conquered into the Roman project. I mean, they’re oppressive, they’re imperialistic as well. Let’s not whitewash them. I mean, they had moments when they would just wipe out entire cities. But on the whole, they were much more about trying to bring people into the Roman world. And I think that was one of their strengths, is that they were open to integration and bringing in different people to keep rejuvenating themselves.
But law codes are hugely important because you need a law code to enable people to live in groups. So they’re the transitional thing that lets human beings live together without just resorting to anarchy. And most of the early law codes are agricultural, like Hammurabi’s Code in Mesopotamia. Most of them are retaliatory, meaning eye for an eye type justice. So you do something to me, it gets done to you. But they’re this necessary precondition for civilization, I would say, and the Twelve Tables is that. It’s a crude law code. It has a lot of goofy stuff in it. It has things about if you use magic, this is the punishment, but it’s that basic agrarian society law code. Now, that’s typical in many societies. Where the Romans are different is, they keep going. They keep developing their law code. And by the late republic, the Romans just get really into legal stuff.
I don’t know why, but the Romans are very methodical organized people. So maybe this has something to do with it. But their law code just keeps getting more and more complicated and keeps expanding to different areas. And they start to get jurists who write sort of theoretical things about Roman law. And eventually, it becomes this huge body both of cases and comments on those cases and of actual laws. And in the 6th century AD, so the 500s, the Roman Emperor, Justinian, who is an emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire by this point, the Byzantine Empire, compiles all this together into something that today, we just loosely called Justinian’s Code of Roman law, and that survives. And so that becomes the basis for almost all the legal systems around the world and it’s very complicated. And Roman law, I think is really fun. Because on the one hand, it’s really dry, but it also preserves these wonderful little vignettes of daily life. So you get these great, just entertaining law cases.
One of my favorite, and this may not even be a real case, this might be a hypothetical that they would use to train Romans or law students, is one day, a man sends a slave to the barber to get a shave. And the barber shop is adjacent to an athletic field and two guys are on the athletic field throwing a ball back and forth. And one of them throws the ball badly, the other guy fails to catch it. The ball flies into the barber shop, hits the hand of the barber, cuts the slave’s throat, he dies. Who’s liable under Roman law? Is it the athlete one who threw the ball badly? Is it athlete two who failed to catch it? Is it the barber who actually cut the slave’s throat? Is it the owner of the slave for being stupid enough to send his slave to get a shave in a place adjacent to a playing field? Or is it the Roman state rezoning a barber shop next to an athletic field? What do you think?
So it’s just great. It’s fun to mess around in this, but it always contains these little nuggets about what happens. I mentioned I wrote a book on floods. And there were all these law cases about if a flood strikes the city and picks up my piece of furniture in my apartment building and carries it out the door and deposits it in another apartment building, does that guy now own my furniture because it’s now legally within his apartment? Or can I go in there and repossess it because the flood took it out of my apartment? This is the stuff law is handled and that’s how sophisticated Roman law got.
Well, adult free men who are not slaves, who are not resident foreigners, they have this great stuff. And that’s always a tiny minority of all the human beings who existed in this society. But still, the notion, the notion of citizenship is huge. And citizens, for example, early on, you had to be tried at Rome if you were accused of something. And there’s this very famous moment in Sicily where an abusive governor who’s corrupt is punishing a citizen arbitrarily. And this person cries out, “Civis Romanus Sum,” meaning, “I am a Roman citizen.” And it really was this hugely loaded statement that that gives me protections. It is wrong for you to do this to me. It’s wrong for you to beat me because I am a citizen and that gives me certain protections. So that notion of citizenship is something that I think, the Romans really emphasize and becomes a legacy to a lot of civilizations today, where citizenship means something. It’s a special status.
So Roman slavery is odd in that it doesn’t have this racial component. It’s horrible in the way all slavery is horrible, but the other thing about is it’s not a hard line. It’s a permeable membrane, and many people move back and forth across it. So you have many people in the Roman world who were born a slave who gained their freedom through one means or another. And you have many others who were born free and become slaves. And you have some who go back and forth. There’s a great Roman tombstone of this guy who says, “I was born a free man in Parthia. I was enslaved. Then I gained my freedom and I became a teacher or something, and I had a life, and now I’m a Roman citizen.” So it’s this whole back and forth across all these boundaries multiple times.
Once you were a slave though, the experience of slavery varied a lot because a lot of the slaves were agricultural slaves. So they would work like in the American South, big plantations. They might be chained. They were probably abused. That’s very similar to slavers as we think of it in let’s say, the Caribbean, South America or the United States prior to the Civil War, that kind of slavery. But a lot of Roman slaves were also some of the more skilled people. And this seems a little weird. So if you’re a rich person, you have slaves, it’s actually a good investment for you to train your slaves in a profession. So a lot of Roman doctors, scribes, accountants, sort of, all this sort of thing, barbers, were slaves. Because if you train this person, and then they produce a lot of money for you, you get that money.
And those slaves would sometimes be given an incentive to work hard where they could… And this is just sort of an agreement between the master and the slave. If they earned a certain amount of money, X amount of money, they could then buy their own freedom from the master. So this was your incentive to work harder if you were trained let’s say, as a doctor. “I work really hard, I can buy myself out of slavery.” Or a lot of masters would free their slaves in their wills.
So when they died, they would say, “I manumit this slave and that slave.” So it was a weird institution in that elements were just as horrible as what we think of as slavery and just as exploitative. And like I say, the overall notion of slavery is intensely dehumanizing, but yet, there was this wide range of types of slaves. And the odd thing is, in the city of Rome, many of the worst jobs, so if you’re just a laborer hauling crap around at the docks or things like that, you might well be a free person and a slave would hold a skilled job. And that seems a little strange or counterintuitive to us, but you see how in the Roman economy it sort of works.
So it’s a dog tag, except this is a human being. And you can see these in museums. I mean, you can go to a museum today and see this little bronze collar with a tag on it that’s talking about a human being as if they’re this kind of animal that’s run away. And this is very telling too. We’re talking about Roman law. Under Roman law, technically, when a slave runs away, the crime that he’s committing is theft because he’s stolen himself from his master. So again, it’s this very dehumanizing view of it.
So you have a lot of veterans who are now unemployed or underemployed. Many of them have sold their small family farms when they went off to join the army, and now they don’t have them. So that group’s unhappy, the veterans. You have the aristocrats who on the surface, the ones who are doing well, they’re the politicians and the generals. But as time goes on, the ones who get the plum appointments, who get the good general ships, starts coming from a smaller and smaller subset of the aristocrats. The Scipios and their friends start to dominate. So you end up where most of the aristocratic class is feeling, “Hey, I’m left out. I didn’t get what I deserved.” What about the half citizens and the allies? The Italians who have fought for Rome, who stayed loyal when Hannibal invaded, they didn’t go over to his side. Well, they feel rightfully, “We stayed loyal to Rome. We fought for them. We deserve our reward. We should be full citizens.” But the Romans are traditional. They’re conservative. They don’t like change. They don’t give them that.
What about all the slaves? Well, they’ve conquered all these foreigners. They’ve sold them. Now, many of them are working these plantations, big plantations owned by rich people that used to be little family farms. The slaves are obviously unhappy. So you end up with a society where it’s incredibly successful by about 100 BC, but almost every group that composes it feels like, “I haven’t shared in the benefits of what’s happened or I’ve been exploited by it.” So they all end up intensely unhappy. And the next 100-year period from 133 to 31 BC is called the Late Roman Republic. And it’s a time of nearly constant internal strife, ultimately culminating in multiple rounds of civil war.
So Roman society literally breaks apart, turns on itself, and goes to war with itself over not equitably sharing the benefits of conquest and of empire. So it’s a lesson about not sharing the benefits of something in a society, but concentrating it in one little group. And the other thing that happens is among the aristocrats, they start to get more and more ambitious. So in the past, there was a lot of ideology of, the state is more important than the person. If you were a little Roman kid, you would’ve been told these stories of Roman heroes. And they’re all about self-sacrifice, putting the state before you, about modesty, about these values. Well, by the late republic, you have a succession of strong men. And it is a chain. So it goes, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Julius Caesar, where each one pushes the boundaries of the Roman Republic a little bit, pushes at the structures of the institutions of the Republic, and they’re motivated by personal gain. They’re putting themselves above the state.
So at the same time, you have lots of groups unhappy in society, and you get these strong men who are now undermining the institutions, chipping away at the things that have been shared, things holding the state together. And in the end, they just become so ambitious, they’re like, “I don’t care about the state. I’m going to try and make myself ruler of Rome.” So I mean, this is going to culminate obviously in Julius Caesar who does succeed in making himself dictator for life of the Roman Republic, which is tantamount to king, and he gets assassinated for it. But he’s the end point of this progression of people who really undermine the institutions, the republic, through their own personal greed.
Then Pompey comes along, and Pompey just breaks all kinds of things. He starts holding offices when he’s too young to do so. He raises personal armies from his own wealth. He disobeys commands. He manipulates commands. He does all kinds of stuff. But in the end, he sides with the Senate when sort of forced. And finally, Caesar comes along and Caesar’s just shamelessly, “No, it’s about me. I’m going to push it.” And he is the one who wins a civil war against the state and Pompey, takes over Rome and says, “Now, I’m going to be dictator.” And dictator is a traditional office in the Roman state, but dictators were limited to no more than six months in power. And Caesar says, “Well, I’ll be dictator for life,” which of course, is king. He gets killed for it.
So Caesar succeeded in taking over the state as one man, but he couldn’t solve the problem. How do you rule Rome as one person and not get killed for looking like a king? That’s the dilemma, the riddle that Caesar leaves behind him. He did it. He seize power as one guy, but how do you stay alive? How do you come up with something that the people will accept? And Caesar did some other things which are bad. He was arrogant. He didn’t even pretend that the Senate were his equals. He just railroaded them around. He didn’t respect them. He named a month after himself, July, Julius. He did egotistical things. So that pissed people off. They didn’t like it. And when Caesar dies, it’s this interesting moment. The Republic is sort of dead by then. You’re going to have a hard time reviving it. You’ve broken too many precedents, but there’s a power vacuum now. Caesar’s gone, what’s going to happen next?
And you have a whole group of people who want to be the next Caesar. So the most obvious is Mark Antony, who is Caesar’s right-hand man, his lieutenant. He’s a very good general. He’s very charismatic. Everybody expects Mark Antony to just become the next Caesar. But there’s also another of Caesar’s lieutenants, a guy named Lepidus, sort of like Antony, but not quite as great as him. There’s the Senate itself, which wants to reassert its power, kind of become the dominant force in Rome again. There’s the assassins who killed Caesar, led by Brutus, and another guy, Cassius, they now want to seize control. And finally, there’s a really weird dark horse candidate to fill this power vacuum. And that’s Julius Caesar’s grandnephew, who at the time, is a 17-year-old kid named Octavian. Who cares? He’s nobody. Absolutely nobody. But when Caesar’s will is opened after his death, so posthumously read in his will, Caesar posthumously… And this is a little weird, posthumously adopts Octavian as his son. Now again, who cares? Antony gets the troops. Antony gets the money. The other people get everything.
What does Octavian get? He gets to now rename himself, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. Who cares? Well, around the Mediterranean, there’s about 12 legions full of hardened soldiers who are just used to following a guy named Gaius Julius Caesar. And even though it’s not quite logical, this 18-year-old, he’s now an 18-year-old kid, inherits an army overnight. So he becomes a player in this game for power. And the next 30, 40 years is going to be those groups all vying with one another. There’s another candidate too, Pompey’s son. Pompey was Caesar’s great rival. He has a couple of sons. And one of them, a guy named Sextus Pompey, basically becomes a warlord who seizes control of Sicily, one of the richest provinces, has a whole Navy. He’s vying to be one of the successors too. So for the next 40 years, it’s as you said, another civil war to see which guy emerges. Is it going to be the Senate? Is it going to be the assassins? Is it going to be Antony? Is it going to be Lepidus? Is it going to be Sextus Pompey? Is it going to be Octavian?
So, the first thing is just how he lives his life. He’s very modest. He lives in an ordinary house like other aristocrats. He wears just a plain toga, nothing fancy. He’s respectful to the Senate.
He treats them with respect. He eats simple foods. I mean, he’s someone who cared about the reality of power, not the external trappings. Clearly there’s some rulers who love, “I want to dress in fancy clothes. I want to be surrounded by gold.
Everything. This is what makes me feel good.” Octavian is the opposite. He doesn’t care about any of that. He wants real power. And then, the other thing is, how is he going to rule Rome without looking like a king?
And his solution to this is brilliant. He basically pretends to resign from all his public offices and not pretends he does. So, he holds no official office. But what he does is he manipulates so that the Roman Senate votes him the powers of the key Roman offices, but not the office itself. So, the highest office in the Roman state is the consul.
Consuls have the power to command armies, do all sorts of things, run meetings of the Senate. Octavian gets voted the powers of a consul so he can command armies control meetings of the Senate, do all this. But he’s not one of the two consuls elected for every year. So, he’s just floating or drifting off to the side of the Roman government. He gets the power of a Tribune, which has all sorts of powers.
He can veto anything he wants, but he’s not one of the Tribunes elected for anyone. So, the state, the Republic appears to continue as it always has. Each year they hold the same elections, they elect the same number of people, notionally, those people are in charge. But floating off to the side, you have this guy Octavian, who has equivalent power, not just to any one magistrate official, but to all of them. So, any moment he can just pop up and say, “No, let’s not do this.
Let’s do something else.” And he also keeps the army under his personal control.
No, he can’t do that. Dictator for life. No way. Maybe I’ll call myself Romulus. That was the founder of Rome. No, no.
Romulus was a king.” And finally, a solution is he takes a bunch of titles, which are all ambiguous, and no one of them sounds that impressive, but collectively they are. So, for example, one of the titles he gets is Augustus, which is something tied to Roman religion. Something that is Augustus in Latin has two possible meanings. One is someone who is Augustus is very pious. They respect the Gods deeply. Well, that sounds nice, doesn’t it? Well, on the other hand, an alternative meaning for Augustus is something that is itself divine. So, is he just a deeply religious, pious person, or is he himself sacred? There’s that ambiguity.
He calls himself Princeps, which means first citizen. “Okay, what the hell does that mean? Am I a citizen just like everybody else? Or am I the first citizen, which means I’m superior to all the others?” So, every title he takes has this weird ambiguity.
He calls himself Imperator, which is traditionally something that soldiers shout at, a victorious general who’s won a battle. And now he takes this as a permanent title. So, it implies he’s a good general. And by the way, it’s from Imperator that we get the word emperor, an empire. So, originally it’s a military title, a spontaneous military acclamation.
So, you’re like, “Okay, fine, I don’t care. Maybe he’s killed the Republic, but at least we’re not dying in the streets anymore.” So, that’s a big thing he does.
And secondly, even though Augustus always seemed sickly his constitution, he lives forever. He rules for like 50 years, and by the time he dies, there’s no one literally almost left alive who can remember the Republic. So, at that point, by the time he dies, this is the only system we know.
And often they literally were ruled by the same dynasty because they had a habit of marrying brothers to sisters. And Cleopatra was in fact originally married to her younger brother. But despite that, she seems to have intensely identified with Egypt. In fact, she seems to have been the first one of all these Ptolemy kings who actually bothered to learn to speak Egyptian. So, she seems to really have cared about Egypt as well.
And she was clearly very smart, very clever. And so, she’s living at a time during the late Republic when Rome is having all these civil wars. And Egypt is really the last big independent kingdom left around the shores, the Mediterranean, everything else has been conquered by Rome. So, she is in this very precarious position where clearly she wants to maintain Egyptian independence, but Rome is this juggernaut that’s rolling over everything. She ends up meeting Julius Caesar when Caesar comes to Egypt chasing Pompey, his great rival, after he defeats Pompey, Pompey runs to Egypt thinking he’ll find sanctuary there, and the Egyptians kill him and chop off his head.
And when Caesar lands, they hand it to him and say, “Here have a present.” And she, of course, famously ends up having a love affair with Caesar. Was that a genuine love or was she just using this as a way to try and keep Egypt independent to give it some status? We don’t know. After she does have several kids with Caesar.
After Caesar’s assassinated, and the Roman world is having another civil war between Octavian and Mark Antony. Mark Antony is basing himself in the east. He meets Cleopatra and he has a big love affair with her. And this one seems pretty genuine. I mean, Antony and Cleopatra, there’s a lot of stories about them partying together.
They liked to cosplay and dress up as different gods. So, Cleopatra would dress up as the goddess Isis and Antony would dress up as the god Dionysus in a leopard skin, and they’d have these big parties and stuff, and they end up together fighting against Octavian. And in the end, they’re defeated by Octavian and Antony commits suicide. Cleopatra there’s differing accounts of her death. She may have also killed herself, or she may actually have been killed by Octavian to just get her out of the way.
But she’s an interesting figure because she was clearly a very smart woman who managed to keep Egypt alive as an independent state. She seemed to have actually cared about Egypt and identified with it and succeeded at a time with all these famous people in being a real mover and shaker and a force in events.
But what I’m constantly struck by is when you start, again, delving into the sources, you always hear, “Okay, well, there was this one woman who was a philosopher, and she’s an exception to the rule. And yeah, okay, she’s fine.” And then, you start looking into, “Oh, and there’s also 60 other female philosophers. Well, it’s not so much an exception anymore. Or Cleopatra is the one queen.
She’s this strong queen.” And then, you look, “Well, there was this other queen here. There was this queen here. There was this queen here who led armies, and here’s another one who led armies.” And again, it’s like, well, are they exceptions to the rule or is just the history that was written, which is written by men a little bit selective in how it portrays them, because the sources are all these male elites who have very definite ideas about women.
The conventional notion has always been that business in the Roman Empire was a male field. Well, but then there’s this woman, Eumachia in Pompeii who actually had the largest building in Pompeii, right on the forum named after her with a giant statue of her. And she was a patron to a bunch of the most important guilds in Pompeii. Okay. She’s the exception to the rule.
Oh, but then there’s these other four women we have from Pompeii who also were patrons of guilds. And then, there’s this woman, Plancia Magna in this other place, and she was the most important patron in the town and put up all these statues. So, at some point, when do you start to say, “Well, maybe women did play more of a role, but they just haven’t been recorded in the sources in the way that maybe they deserve to be.”
And this is the most humiliating thing that can happen to a Roman legion to have its eagles captured. And Augustus desperately wanted to negotiate with the Parthians to get these eagles returned. Okay? This was his big diplomatic thing. So, he was constantly sending these embassies to Parthia. On one of these embassies, he sent along as a gift to the Parthian King, a slave woman named Musa.
Musa seems to have pleased the king of Parthia because she becomes one of his concubines, and then she gives birth to a son by the king, and eventually she becomes upgraded to the level of wife. And Musa eventually murders the Parthian king, arranges it so that her son becomes the king of Parthia, and she’s really ruling the whole empire behind the scenes as his mother. So, this is a literal rags to riches story of a slave, someone who starts out a slave and becomes the queen of an empire, almost as large and powerful as Rome. Okay. But yet, how often do we hear about Musa?
And when you look in traditional histories of Roman, Parthian relations, and I went and looked at this because I was just writing this lecture, most of those histories didn’t even mention her. They just talked about her son, like he had just come out of nowhere and become the new heir to the Parthian throne when it was all her doing clearly. Now, that’s selective editing of history by historians to downplay the role that this woman played. And there’s a lot of examples like that.
So, this is what Augustus thought of as his greatest achievement. And that embassy that arranged that was the one that sent Musa to Parthia.
He was the founder of the Roman Empire, and we still live today in the world that he created. So, what on the political side of things and maybe beyond, what is the political system that he created?
And so, he’s hugely influential for Western civilization, all this. But beyond just that literal thing, which is already 500 years, 1500 years, he becomes the paradigm of the good ruler, so of an absolute ruler who is nevertheless just does good things, builds public works as popular. So, if we jump ahead, let’s say to the Middle Ages, the most significant ruler of the early Middle Ages is Charlemagne. He’s the guy who unites most of Europe. He becomes the paradigm for all medieval kings after him.
Well, what is the title that the Pope gives to Charlemagne? Because there’s this famous moment when the Pope acknowledges Charlemagne as the preeminent European king and crowns him on Christmas day of the year 800. And the title that the Pope gives to Charlemagne is Charles, that’s Charlemagne Augustus, Emperor of the Romans. He’s giving him the title of Augustus because that’s the nicest thing he can think of to say to Charlemagne is to say, “You’re the new Augustus. You’re emperor of the Romans.”
So, that image is hugely powerful, and that persists on and on. I mean, even the literal names of most rulers afterwards come from this. In Russia, the Czars are Caesars. That’s where Czar comes from. Prince comes from Princeps, first citizen, one of the titles.
Emperor comes from Imperator, one of the titles of Augustus. When Napoleon becomes Emperor, what does he call himself? First consul, which is like Princeps, and then he calls himself emperor. I mean, everybody wants to be this kind of ruler. So, he’s the paradigm of this for the rest of history.
And you can see that as both a positive and a negative legacy. It’s like Alexander. I mean, everybody wants to be the next Alexander. Now, nobody does become the next Alexander. Nobody’s as successful as him.
But a lot of people try and you can see that either as, oh, inspirational or awful, because lots of people killed lots of other people and started lots of wars trying to be the next Alexander. At least Augustus has this notion of good rulership that you’re not just a great powerful person, but you’re a good ruler somehow.
But as I mentioned off to the side, you now have this figure of Augustus who controls everything behind the scenes, and that continues. So, this political system he establishes continues. And in reality, I would say Augustus at that point is again a king. It really is one man controlling the state. Even if notionally, it’s still continuing as a republic.
They are electing magistrates, but the magistrates only do what the emperor tells them. But it’s this formal versus informal power, the formal structure as a republic, the way things really work informally is it’s a monarchy. Now, if you asked Augustus, what did he do? Did you become a king? He said, and he says this explicitly, “No, no, no.
What I did is I refounded the Roman Republic.” That’s how he phrases it.
It’d be something like, “How I conquered the world,” right? Augustus calls his, derace quae feci, which the best literal translation is stuff I did. I mean, it’s the most modest title for someone who could have given the most grandiose title. And the first line of it is at the age of 18, when the liberty of the Republic was oppressed by a faction, I defended it. Now, the way I might phrase that sense is at the age of 18, I fought a civil war against another Roman and conquered the Roman state.
But no, he defended the liberty of the republic when it was oppressed by the tyranny of a faction. That’s propaganda, and it works.
And I don’t know what the answer to that is. I will tell you that it takes 200 years before we have the first Roman source that bluntly calls Augustus a king. So, 200 years, it takes the Romans 200 years to admit to themselves. And that’s a guy who comes along 200 years later and says, “Hey, Augustus, he looks like a king. He acts like a king. Let’s just call him a king, because he had every aspect of a king except the patriae Title.”
One slave once gets him angry, and he has him tortured in particularly cruel manner. So, I mean, on the one hand, he had this clemency. On the other hand, he could be really hard-nosed and hard edged, and I think he was a very calculating person.
So, he’s seeing himself as an actor that his whole life was acting this role, which is again, all that manipulation and public image. He was brilliant at that. But who’s the real guy? What was behind that image?
Hundreds of thousands of people killed, hundreds of thousands of people enslaved to further one guy’s career. I mean, if you wanted, could call Caesar a war criminal, and I think that wouldn’t be unfair. But on the other hand, some people see him as a great hero. I mean, to talk about history and its reception, it’s quite interesting to see how Caesar has been viewed by different generations. So, at different points in time, the received wisdom on Caesar was very different.
So, back in the, let’s say the 1920s or ’30s, there were a number of scholarly things written which looked at Caesar as an admirable figure. He’s a strong man who knows what Rome needed and was going to give it to them. And of course, that’s the era when fascism was trendy and was seen as a positive thing. And then, you get Hitler and World War II and all of sudden fascism is not so favored anymore. And then, in that post-war generation, all of a sudden Caesar’s terrible.
He’s a dictator. He is destroying the Republic. So, often histories that are written tell you a lot more about the time they’re written than they do about the subject they’re written about.
Mussolini had them. Napoleon had eagle standards for his military. So, a lot of people like that imagery.
I think we have almost more words from Cicero than any other author that survived, and it’s all kinds of stuff. It’s philosophical treatises, it’s books about how to be a good public speaker. He published volume after volume of his personal letters to his friends. He published these things. So, there’s tons of stuff from him.
And secondly, he’s interesting because he lived at this incredibly important time in the late Republic when things were falling apart. But he seems to have been born with none of the natural advantages that all these other people had. So, he was a lousy general. He didn’t come from a wealthy family. He didn’t come from a famous aristocratic family.
He didn’t have a lot of these advantages, but yet he ended up being right at the center of things, rose to the highest elected office in the Roman state on the basis of one skill. And that was his ability with words, his ability to get up in front of a crowd and persuade them of what he wanted them to believe. And oratory, public speaking was absolutely central to life at Rome. There were just all these events where people had to get up and give speeches. So, in courtrooms, at funerals, in the Senate to the people of Rome, at games, I mean just constantly, there were these opportunities for giving speeches.
So, if you are good at this, that was a huge advantage in your political career. And Cicero was the best. He was arguably the best public speaker of all time.
Some people claim. And he lived right in this era, and he parlayed that skill with words into this very successful political career. He was one of the guys involved with all this stuff with Caesar and Pompey and all the other things going on, Octavian, Mark Antony.
So, many of the rhetorical tricks you wrote, such as mudslinging, exaggeration, guilt by association, ad hominem attacks, name-calling, fearmongering, us versus them, rhyme, and so on and so forth. So, I’m guessing it worked given that we still have those today.
And the key to Cicero’s whole enterprise about persuading an audience, let’s say either it is speech to the people or in the courtroom is Cicero believed that people are fundamentally ruled by emotion. So, if you can touch their emotions, all sorts of other things become less important. If you can get a jury emotionally worked up and fear, anger, or particularly powerful there, then the facts might not matter, the truth might not matter, evidence might not matter, reason might not matter. Emotion is the key to everything. So, Cicero used what I would arguably call a lot of tricks to get his audiences emotionally riled up.
And you can just go through these and they’re all the stuff you were saying, name-calling, mudslinging, us versus them arguments, ad hominem attacks, incredibly sophisticated. All this stuff that we think of today is, oh, very sophisticated techniques for propaganda and persuasion. It’s not new. People aren’t coming up with that much that’s new outside the realm of technology, human nature is the same. Cicero understood human psychology.
He knew how to play on people. He knew how to play on their emotions, and he would do just… I mean, I want to say hilarious, but they’re depressingly hilarious things. He thought it’s important to use props. So, he said, “People are visual. They will respond emotionally to visual things in a way that just words alone won’t work.”
So, he says, “An order is just like an actor and like an actor he has to prepare his stage and use props and things as visual cues to stir up the audience. So, for example, once he was defending a man in a court case who had just had a new baby born to him, and Cicero literally delivered the defense oration for this guy while cradling his newborn son in his arms, you can imagine, “Oh, cute little baby. Jury, how could you find him guilty and leave this cute baby without a father to take care of him?” Another time, he was defending a guy who had a photogenic son, a young boy, and Cicero literally propped up the kid behind him while he was giving the speech, and again said-
Another time someone didn’t have a photogenic kid, so he propped up his old parents in the courtroom and said, “Look at this nice old couple. You won’t want to take their son away.” That kind of stuff; I mean, it’s manipulative.
Cicero, by the way, I should say also had philosophical beliefs about defending the republic and such. But he wasn’t above using these things. Even though he may have had altruistic or high notions of what he was doing, he also wasn’t above using these kind of rhetorical tricks.
And the thought occurred to me, “Well, in ancient Rome, you don’t have microphones. You don’t have loudspeakers. So how does someone give a speech outdoors in a windy place, not acoustically sound, to 20,000 people?” They just can’t hear you. Part of the answer, it turns out, well, part of it’s oratorical training. You learn how project your voice. But some of it too is that the Romans actually had this system of gestures that orators like Cicero would use to accompany their speeches. And what I ended up doing is combining two types of evidence again.
So I looked at the rhetorical handbooks like Cicero’s. And also there’s this guy, Quintilian, who lived about 100 years after Cicero, who wrote this long thing called the Institutio Oratoria, which has a description of all types of oratorical stuff, including about 40 pages on gestures.
So he actually says, “When you put your fingers like this, it means such and such.” It turns out Roman orators had a system of sign language that they would use to augment their speeches. But here’s the fun part. It wasn’t like modern American Sign Language, where a gesture means the same thing as a word.
Instead; and this goes back to Cicero; a certain gesture would indicate a certain emotion that you were meant to feel when you heard the words. It’s like your body is adding an emotional gloss to your speech. You’re saying words, and then you’re indicating how you think those words should make you feel.
And even more fun, the Romans believed that, “If I make certain hand gestures, you will almost involuntarily feel certain emotion.” So if you’re skilled, you can manipulate your audience by playing on their emotions.
This might sound weird or improbable, but the metaphor that Cicero himself uses is he says, “Think about music. Everybody knows that certain musical tones will make you feel a certain way.”
Think of movies today: in a horror movie, they’re going to play strident, tense music. In a romantic scene, you’re going to have strings, and it’ll make you feel a certain way. When you hear the Jaws theme, you feel tense.
Cicero said, “The orator’s body is like a lyre.” A lyre is a musical instrument. “And you have to learn to play on your own body as a musical instrument to affect the emotions of your audience.”
For example, there’s one where you hold up your hands to the side and push like this. This is the gesture, and what that means is mild aversion. I don’t like something.
Now if I couple this with turning my face to the side, that; pushing off to one side, turning my face away, it’s a strong aversion. That’s like fear or something.
If I clench my fist and press it to my chest, that’s anger or grief. If I slap my thigh, again, that’s indication of anger. So a lot of these make sense. I mean, they’re natural gestures.
Now, some are really weird and artificial. I mean, one of my favorite of these is if you hold your hand up open, then curl the fingers in one by one, and then flip it out; this sort of thing; that, to the Romans meant “wonder,” which you sort of see.
But again, if you’ve been raised in a societal context where you’re used to the notion that this gesture means this emotion, when someone does it, you’re probably going to feel that emotion.
In fact, in the ancient world, the most famous Greek orator was a guy named Demosthenes. And once a guy came up to Demosthenes and said, “Demosthenes, tell me: what are the three most important things in giving a speech?”
And Demosthenes said, “Well, they are delivery, delivery, and delivery.” That even the most brilliant speech, if accompanied by a boring delivery, is going to be less effective than a terrible speech given in an engaging and exciting or funny way.
I want to say they’re not natural in that they’re not illustrating what he’s saying. It’s more just punctuation points. I think of his as more kind of these punctuation points for just going along with what he’s saying.
There are speakers who truly can use their hands and arms and faces creatively. You watch them and it’s really enhancing the speech. I mean, just historically, Martin Luther King: he’s famous for a lot of good speeches, content. He was a good gesticulator, too. He knew how to use his body.
On the other hand, Adolf Hitler was a phenomenal gesticulator. If you watch some of his speeches; even just turn off the sound and watch them; he’s doing all kinds of stuff. And he’s really emphasizing his points in a very creative way.
This is what’s fascinating about oratory and public speaking, is it’s this two-edged sword. You can use these techniques for good, or you can absolutely use them for evil. You know?
The question I always end up asking my students, after studying Cicero and all these techniques, I say, “Okay, this is great oratory. But do you like this? Is this good that this works on human beings?”
And he said, “Well, I want the truth of my statement, the content of my statements to speak; that I don’t want you to get deluded by me because I’m such a charismatic and eloquent speaker. The more monotone I speak, the more you’ll listen to the content of the words.”
I’ll tell you also with Cicero: one of the things that he and other people who write about Roman oratory do is to say, “And you can do this stuff badly,” in which case it backfires horribly.
So you can have people who attempt to gesticulate. Again, modern politicians, you’ll see this sometime where they feel like, “I’m supposed to be making hand gestures,” and they’re terrible at it. And it undercuts it.
Cicero and Quintilian give some very amusing examples from ancient Rome. He says, there was this one guy who when he spoke, looked like he was trying to swat away flies because there were just these awkward gestures. Or another who looked like he was trying balancing a boat in choppy seas.
And my favorite is there was one orator who supposedly was prone to making, I guess, languid supple motions. They actually named a dance after this guy, and his name was Titius. And so Romans could do the Titius, which is this dance that was imitating this orator who had these comically bad gesticulation.
So not enough gesticulation is a problem. Too much gesticulation is a problem. You have to hit the sweet spot. It has to seem natural. It has to seem varied. It has to conform to the meaning of the words, not distract from it.
I did that by comparing the literary accounts of the handbooks with, again, Roman art: looking at statues of Romans and things, and just trying to say, “Okay, what were some of the gestures they actually used here?”
I mean, it’s very, very different where you say, “There’s one God, and it’s my God,” versus, “Okay, I believe in this god, but there’s an infinite number of legitimate gods.” And nowadays, particularly in the West, we tend to view the monotheistic perspective as the norm. But for more than half of human history, it was not.
It used to be the notion in a lot of Roman history, up until about 300 AD, the idea was, “Well, there’s just a ton of gods floating around. Maybe you worship that one, and I worship these two that I like. And the guy across the street worships the oak tree in his backyard, and it’s all good.”
They’re all legitimate things, versus, “Oh, no, no, no. Now there is one God, and only one God that’s the correct answer.” And as soon as you do that, religion becomes foregrounded in your decision making much more. I mean, the Romans had religion, but it wasn’t really driving anything, if you know what I mean. It was auxiliary to things, rather than a central force. For a lot of Roman history, you had standard, I guess, pagan polytheism where there’s a bunch of gods. There’s certain gods who are associated with the Roman state. There would be prayer said to those gods on behalf of the Roman state. But you weren’t trying to execute the will of Zeus or something, or Jupiter or Mars or anybody else.
And in your private life, it was the same thing. You might ask certain gods for help, but it wasn’t as much of a dominant thing in your own existence. So I think that’s a real transition point where religion started to become so foregrounded.
And as soon as you get the monotheistic religions; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in particular; it really shifts how people start to think about themselves in relationship to the world around them.
But of course, to Christians, this is worshiping another God. And I think there’s almost a failure of communication here, that the Romans just at least initially didn’t quite understand.
This is really problematic for these people, because they’re coming from a polytheistic perspective where, “Yeah, everybody has different gods. So what? This isn’t a religious problem. This is a political one. Then why won’t you send good wishes to the emperor? If you’re a loyal Roman, this is something you should want to do.”
And many of the early Christians, I think would’ve been fine with that. But it took the form of what they were asked to do was to basically worship another God. And that was the sticking point.
And this is where I think movies have warped some of our images of Roman history: that Hollywood loves to depict very early Christians. I’m talking, like, first 200 years here after the ministry of Christ as a group, that all the Romans were obsessed with, that they were constantly trying to persecute and all this. Honestly, I think the Romans at that point were more just indifferent or didn’t know what was going on.
And if you look at some of the primary sources of that time, I mean, there’s this very famous letter by a guy named Pliny who was a Roman governor of a province in the East. He had the habit of writing letters to the Roman emperor at the time, who was Trajan, every time he had a problem with being governor.
This is great. This is the two highest governmental officials in the Roman world hammering out policy between them, the emperor and one of his governors. This is about 100 years, 100 AD about.
And Pliny says, “Hey, Emperor, I had this issue. I had these people come before me called Christians. I don’t quite know what to do with them. What should my policy be? Here’s what I know about them.” And what he knows is almost nothing. I mean, it’s this almost comic-like garbling.
” They have this weird thing where they get together on some day of the week and they swear oaths to one another not to do bad stuff,” which is of course his garbled understanding of the 10 Commandments. “And then they have breakfast together and they eat food,” and this is communion. But he doesn’t get that that’s what’s going on. And so he’s really ignorant.
But I think that the broader point is, okay, this is one of the best-educated, best-traveled Romans who has the most experience in the empire, has been all over the empire, and what does he know about Christianity? Basically nothing.
So if one of the best-educated, most widely traveled guys really doesn’t know much about them, that suggests that not many people did at this point in time.
Now, stepping back from this in a broad way, I think you can say that Christianity really was different in some ways, and had some things that maybe the Romans should rightfully have viewed as a threat. I mean, the Romans are a people very focused on this world: citizenship, what you do.
Christianity, in essence, has a focus on the next world. So this world isn’t as important as what you’re setting yourself up for.
And even worse, from a Roman perspective, I’m kind of saying, “Okay, if I were a Roman,” Romans are all about making distinctions between people. Citizen, non-citizen, man, woman, free, slave.
Christianity comes along and says, “In God’s eyes, you’re all equal.” Now, that’s a pretty problematic idea if you’re deeply invested in Roman hierarchy. And I think it is no surprise that among the earliest converts to Christianity are women and slaves, and in particular, female slaves.
Now, who are they? They’re the people at the rock bottom of the Roman hierarchy of status, which the Romans are obsessed with status. But here’s a religion that says, “That doesn’t matter.”
And in that same letter to Pliny, Pliny says, “Okay, in this group of Christians I’ve heard about, their leaders are two female slaves they call ‘deaconesses.'” Now, this is really early. This is before the church exists, right? There’s no church structure yet. And who is leading the local congregation of Christians? Two slave women.
So that’s an interesting moment, and that’s not necessarily the image we get of early Christianity. But you can see how for people in this social structure, that would be very appealing to them. And in some ways, yeah, it is sort of a threat to the Roman system because they’re challenging it.
Now, the irony is, of course, 300 years after the life of Christ, the emperor converts to Christianity. And another 100 years later under Theodosius, it becomes the official religion of the Roman Empire. So all of a sudden you have this flip-flop, where now the state itself is not just converted to Christianity, but actively promoting it and now persecuting pagans.
And the reason the emperors do that is one of the biggest problems for emperors at that point in time is legitimacy. That there’s tons of civil wars where you have lots of different people saying, “I’m emperor.” So lots of generals declaring themselves emperor.
Now under a polytheistic religion, you’re all just fighting. It doesn’t matter. But if you say there is only one God, then if that God picks someone to be His emperor, they’re the only legitimate emperor. Right?
So there is a real advantage to emperors now becoming Christian. Because they can say, “We’re now a Christian empire and there’s only one God, and I’m the guy that God picked to be emperor, that means all these other people claiming to be emperors are illegitimate.”
So putting aside religious feeling and saying, “Okay, if I’m doing an analysis of this as a social phenomenon, what would be appealing to people?” And there is that very compelling reason for emperors to want to go to Christianity because it helps them with their biggest problem, which is legitimacy.
Now, if you’re an ordinary person, what is the appeal of Christianity? Well, we already looked at a couple of them. One of them is that it promises you a reward in the afterlife.
I mean, the Roman and Greek notions of the afterlife aren’t that appealing. Either you just turn into dust, or at best you turn into this kind of ghost thing that floats around something that looks like a Greek gymnasium, which is like a bunch of grassy fields. It’s not so hot.
So here you’re offered the idea of, “Oh, you go to paradise forever. That sounds really good.” And secondly, for a lot of people in Roman society, that notion of, “Here’s something that says I’m valuable as a human being. It doesn’t matter whether I’m free or slave. It doesn’t matter whether I’m Roman or non-Roman. It doesn’t matter if I’m man or woman. Here’s something that says I have equal value.” That’s enormously appealing.
And finally, early Christians, I mean, they honestly, a lot of them do good works. They take care of the sick, they feed the poor. I mean, if you look at Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, that’s the stuff He really hammers. If we look at the words of Jesus when He says, “What do you do to be a Christian?”
A lot of it is take care of the unfortunate, take care of people who are sick, take care of people who are starving. And a lot of the early Christians really take that seriously. They are helping people out. So that’s appealing.
Let me ask you about gladiators.
But also I think it’s that apparent contradiction. That in so many ways, Roman society seems familiar to us. In so many ways, it seems sophisticated and appealing. Law is wonderful, all this. But yet, for fun, they watched people fight to the death. So how do you reconcile these things?
Gladiators, I find very interesting because they’re an example of what historians call status dissonance. It’s someone who in society has high status in some ways, and very low or despised status in another.
So gladiators, most of them were slaves, the lowest of the low in Roman society, right? Also, they’re fighting for other people’s pleasure, and dying sometimes for other people’s pleasure.
And the Romans had a real thing about this: your body being used for others’ pleasure. Even a humble working person who hired themselves out for labor, the Romans thought that was innately demeaning, because you’re using your body for someone else’s benefit or pleasure.
They didn’t have this notion of the dignity of hard labor or something. They thought the only noble profession was farming, okay, because there you generate something and you’re producing it for yourself. But if you work for someone else, you’re demeaning yourself. And gladiator’s the worst of the worst, right? You’re performing for someone else’s pleasure. So on the one hand, they’re very low status. But on the other hand, successful gladiators get famous. People admire them, women find them attractive, they’re celebrities. This is the status dissonance. You have these people who, on the one hand, formally are very low status in society, but yet are very popular on the other hand.
Another kind of myth about gladiators is that they were just dying all the time. I mean, you watch movies, and again, they’ll always throw a bunch of gladiators and they all die. I think some scholars did a study of, like, 100 fights we know of where we know some details. And I think 10% of those ended in the death of one of the people.
So gladiators are a lot more like boxing matches, where you’re watching a display of skill between two people who are more or less evenly matched in terms of their abilities. And probably they’ll survive, though there’s a chance that one of them might get injured. In fact, one might die.
Having said all that, in the end, you really are having people fight and potentially die for the pleasure of an audience. And anthropologists and Roman historians like to speculate, “Why did the Romans do this?”
The Romans address it. I mean, there’s a famous thing where a Roman says, “We Romans, we’re a violent people. We’re a warlike people. And so it’s fitting that we should be accustomed to the sight of death and violence.” Kind of works.
There’s a more symbolic interpretation that says, “The amphitheater is an expression of Roman dominance,” a symbolic expression. Because what you have are all segments of Roman society gathered together to control the fate of others.
You have foreigners, you have wild animals, you have criminals, you have other people. And we are symbolically asserting our dominance over those groups by determining, “Do you live or do you die?” And that kind of works, too.
And the cynical one is, humans like violence. I mean, when people watch a hockey game, what gets them most excited? The fight. When people watch car racing, there’s a crash. What’s going to be shown on the news? It’s the crash. There’s something dark in human nature sometimes that likes violence. And maybe the Romans are just being more honest about it than we are.
On the other hand, to be fair, I mean there were Romans at the time who morally objected to them and said, “This is morally degenerate to take pleasure in this, and that’s wrong.” So I think in all eras, you have a diversity of opinions. There’s no unanimous take on what this is or what this means.
And the other thing about gladiators is they were highly trained professionals. The gladiator schools who trained them were spending a lot of money to train these people. And it wasn’t just, “We take some guy and throw them into the arena,” like you see in movies all the time. These were people that you’d invested a lot of money, and that’s why you don’t really want to see them killed.
But yeah, mostly they’re prisoners of war. I mean, in very rare instances you might have a free person volunteering, or even selling themselves to fight as gladiators. But much more common was that.
And what’s interesting is some people wouldn’t do it. I mean, there’s a lot of instances of gladiators refusing to fight and committing suicide, which you don’t hear. There was one German who was supposed to fight as a gladiator. Instead, he stuck his head between the spokes of a wagon that was spinning and snapped his own neck.
There were a group of 29 Germans who all said, “We’re not going to fight for the Romans’ pleasure.” And they strangled one another the night before they were supposed to fight. So I mean, you have people sort of objecting to being complicit in this kind of performance as well,
I mean, there was an enormous industry collecting wild beasts, transporting them to Rome: which is no easy matter to transport elephants and giraffes and rhinos, particularly in this era of technology. But they were draining Africa and bringing lions and all these things and sacrificing them.
Before him had been Nero, who was seen as a crazy or bad emperor. One of Nero’s indulgences is he had built this enormous palace for himself called the Golden House. It was kind of this pleasure palace with 50 dining rooms and all this stuff, and it was basically wasting a ton of money on him.
So right on the site where Nero had his Golden House, Vespasian says, “I’m going to erect a new building on top of it that’s going to be for the pleasure of the people.” So it was very much a political statement, that “My dynasty is going to be about serving Romans, not serving ourselves.” That’s why he builds the Flavian Amphitheater.
The funds he uses from it is basically from looting Jerusalem. Because the other thing he had done just before this is he had sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple there, in fact, he and his son Titus. And so this is what he now builds in Rome is his gift to the people of Rome.
It was amazingly sophisticated building. I mean, it had retractable awnings and elevators and ramps that things could just pop up into the arena from below. And it-
The Romans, because of their use of concrete, could build wooden frames, they could have curves, they could have domes, they could have all kinds of stuff. And it just explodes the architectural possibilities. They also made a lot of use of the vault. So if you cut rocks and arrange them so that they form a curve, you could have big vaulted spaces. And they were just brilliant with their mix of things. I mean, the Pantheon is the best preserved Roman building, and it’s another brilliant building, incredibly influential. I mean, every capitol building in the world or museum is an imitation of the Pantheon. The capitol in Washington, D.C., the Capitol in Madison, where I’m from, Wisconsin, Austin, where we are now, they’re all Pantheons. It’s a big dome with a triangular pediment and some columns on the front.
So it’s just an amazingly influential building. But it’s brilliant because the way it’s constructed is the concrete at the bottom of the dome is both thicker and has a denser formulation, so it’s heavier where it needs to bear the weight. And then as you get further up the dome, it gets narrower and narrower, and they mix in different types of rock. So at the top, you’re using pumice, that very light volcanic stone. So where you want it to be light, it’s light, and it’s here 2,000 years later. I mean, look around you. How many buildings that we’re building` now do you think are going to be here in 2,000 years? I suspect not many.
And then the next family, the Flavians, the first guy is kind of an Augustus, it’s Vespasian, the one who builds the Flavian Amphitheater, and then one of his sons takes over, Titus, who’s okay, and then the next son takes over, Domitian, who’s nuts again. So heredity just isn’t working, And Rome fights a couple civil wars, and in 98 AD, we’re 100 years now into the Empire, and they look back at this track record and say, “Okay, we’ve been picking our emperors by heredity and we’ve gotten some real duds here, some real problematic people. Is there a way to fix this?”
And this is one of the few instances where the Romans, who I keep saying are very traditional and resist change, I think actually make a change and realize we got to do something different. And so the next guy looks around and says, “Okay, forget who’s my nearest male relative, who’s the best qualified to be emperor after me? I’ll pick that person and then I’ll adopt him as my son.” So they kind of stick with heredity. Now, it’s this fake adoption, and you end up with a lot of old guys adopting middle-aged adults as their son, which is a little strange, but it works.
And so for the next 80 years, you have only five emperors, and they’re often called the Five Good Emperors, they’re not related necessarily by blood, they sort of picked the best qualified guy, and they’re all sound, competent, good emperors. And the 2nd century AD, from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius, is often regarded as the high point of the Roman Empire. And a lot of that comes from you have political stability, you have a succession of decent guys being emperor who rule relatively wisely, promote good policies. There’s other things working to Rome’s advantage, but that’s good. And then where it falls apart is where the last guy, Marcus Aurelius, looks around and says, “Who’s the best qualified guy to succeed me? What a coincidence, it’s my own dear son.”, who turns out to be a psycho. And then it all goes downhill.
I think he likes power, he wants real power, but he realizes I don’t have that kind of clever politician’s ability to be the front guy, so I’ll just serve my friend, Augustus, loyally. They were childhood friends. I’ll win the battles for Augustus and I’ll let him take all the credit, but I’ll be his number two guy, and that’s what I’m good at. And he realizes his limitations. I mean, so many people don’t. So many people are like, “Oh, I just want to keep grabbing for more and more and more when it’s not something they’re good at.” And I think Agrippa says, “I’m good to this point and I’ll play that role and no more, and that’ll give me a lot of power, but I’m not going to press it.” And yeah, he’s just very hardworking, he’s modest, he’s self-effacing, he’s highly competent.
I mean, I guess an emperor can start a war, he can maybe raise taxes, but that would be the ways that he’s affecting the whole empire. And here, we get into technology does matter. We’re dealing with a world where, let’s say you’re in Rome and you’re the emperor and you want to send a message to a province far away, let’s say Judea, that message might take one or two months to get there and one or two months to get a reply. So how much influence as emperor are you really having over that province? I mean, those people pretty much have to make their own decisions and then just say to you, “This is what we did. I hope that’s okay.” Because otherwise, nothing gets done if they’re waiting four months for a decision.
So the private businesses would bid and say, “All right, if you give us the contract to collect taxes in Sicily, we’ll give you X number of money up front and then we go out and try to collect enough to make back that money and make ourselves a profit.” And this is a terrible system, because obviously, they’re going to go and try and squeeze as much as they can out of Sicily. And these companies were called publicans, publicani. And in the Bible, there’s a phrase, publicans and sinners, and that should give you an idea how they’re viewed. So everybody hated these tax collectors, and it was a really kind of dumb system because the publicans were going out and squeezing way more than they should in an unhealthy way from the provinces. And the Roman state was doing this kind of weird thing that they should have been doing themselves.
And over time, that shifts a bit and it becomes more like your standard taxation. And a lot of the taxation ends up being in kind too. So it’s like, okay, we’re taxing you, you pay it in wheat if you’re a farmer or something, not necessarily in cash. So in many ways, the Roman economy is underdeveloped. They didn’t have a lot of the sophisticated systems that we have today, and it probably held them back in some ways. And again, they have that resistance to change. The Romans also had weird notions about just business and profit making, that at least originally, there was this notion that’s shameful, again, the only thing that’s a worthwhile profession is farming.
So rich Romans would get involved in what we would call business manufacturing, particularly long distance trade with ships, but they would often do it through sort of front companies or employees who did it on their behalf, officially, and then they funneled the profits to the guy funding it because they don’t want to be soiled with business, which is beneath them. So the Romans had a lot of weird attitudes about the economy that I think in some ways didn’t help.
And a lot of it becomes that the secret is out that what makes an emperor is who commands the most swords. And so you start to get rebellions by various Roman generals, each declaring himself emperor. So you’d always had this to a certain degree, but they had kept it in check during the 2nd century AD. But in the 3rd century, you sometimes get three or four generals in different parts of the empire, all declaring themselves emperor, and then they all rush off to Rome to fight a multi-way civil war.
And of course, while they’re doing this, the borders are undefended, so barbarians start to see opportunity and come across and start raiding, they start burning and pillaging farms, the civil wars are destroying cities and farms. So the economy is kind of tanking. Then there’s less money coming in as taxes. So when one guy finally wins, he jacks up the tax rate to try and make up for it, but now, there’s fewer people able to pay, and it’s all just a vicious cycle. The Romans start to debase the coinage, which means you take in a gold coin, you melt it down, mix it in with 10% something less valuable, and then stamp it and say it’s worth the same. Well, people aren’t stupid. They’re going to know that’s only 90% of that gold coin.
One of the things he does is he issues a new solid gold coin that he guarantees is solid gold. And he calls it a Solidus, a solid coin. He famously issues a price edict where he says, “This is the maximum it’s legal to charge for any good or service.” So it’s attempt to curb inflation. And that’s not going to work, but it helps. Kind of amusingly on Diocletian’s price edict, can you guess what the most expensive sort of item is? Hiring a lawyer. So some things never change, right?
And then as we go into the 4th century, you have the really dramatic thing where Constantine comes along and converts to Christianity. And at the time he converts, the percentage of Christians in the Empire is small, 10% at most, something like that. Who knows? But it’s quite small. And all of a sudden, you have this weird thing where now, the emperor belongs to this new religion. What does this mean? You can debate a lot how sincere Constantine’s conversion was. It’s a little bit of a weird thing where he clearly is using it as a way to fire up the troops before a crucial battle to say, “Hey, I just had this dream and this god promised us victory if we put his magic symbol on our shields.”
And this would be okay, except that he had done this a couple times before. So one time, it was Helios the Sun god, one time, it was another god. Even after he converts, he continues to mint coins and stuff with other gods on them. He continues to worship other gods. But he also kind of seems sincere in his conversion. It’s just, I think the question is how much does he understand his new religion maybe more than, is it sincere. But that’s a real turning point.
So now, as we go into the 4th century, we have this thing with Constantine, the new religion. And the other thing that happens is the empire is really just too big to govern effectively. It’s that thing we’re talking about. It’s too large, the communication is too slow and it starts to naturally fragment. And at times, they try systems where they split it into four. So under Diocletian, he tries the tetrarchy, where he splits the empire into four, and you actually have sort of four emperors working together as a team. More commonly, it just splits east, west. So from that point on, you really start to have the history of the Western Empire going in one direction, the Eastern Empire in the other. You tend to have two emperors, though there are moments occasionally where they reunite. So that’s a big development as well. And that’s a turning point.
And I mean, the Eastern Empire is legitimately the Roman Empire. If you were to go and ask them, “Who are you?” They wouldn’t say, “We’re the Byzantines, we’re the Eastern Roman Empire.” They would just say, “We’re the Romans.” And they have a completely legitimate claim to do that. So this whole game of when does the empire fall is problematic. And the other thing is all those dates about invasions that cluster around the 400s, so 410, 455, 476, you have to ask yourself, who counts as a real Roman by that point? Because for a while now, the Romans themselves are often coming from barbarians, are crossing that boundary, Roman generals. They might get raised as a Hun, then serve with the Roman army for a while, then not, or a Visigoths or not. That’s been going on for a long time. So what makes someone a real Roman? How do you tell that the guy kicked out in 476, was a, quote, “real Roman”, and the barbarian king who took his place wasn’t? That’s a very arbitrary decision.
I mean, if you look back at someone like Virgil, at the time of Augustus, he said, well, the Gods granted Rome empire without end. So it’s that open-ended thing. But even under Augustus, he seems to be pulling back and saying, “Well, I’m going to kind of stop at the Rhine. I’m going to kind of stop at the Danube. We don’t need to keep expanding forever in the way we’ve been doing.” So I mean, that’s an interesting concept of how do the Romans see their empire? Does it have a boundary? What are those boundaries? What does that mean?
And at the end of the lunch, Attila goes back and says, “Eh, I changed my mind. We’re going to go back up to France, hang around for another year. We’ll finish off the Romans later.” And Christian sources say, “Saints appeared in the sky with flaming swords and scared away Attila.” Some other sources say, “Well, the Pope gave Attila a huge bribe to go away for a while,” believe whichever you like, but then Attila ends up dying on his wedding night before he comes back under mysterious circumstances and so that never materializes. And the Huns kind of fragment after his death.
The emperors had moved to Ravenna, a little bit north, because it was surrounded by swamps, so it was more defensible. But there is something important about that old symbolic capital now just collapsing in terms of population, numbers, really no longer having importance because literally its food supply is cut off by losing those areas of the empire. And of course, the capital… Constantine had founded a new second capital at what used to be Byzantium, a Greek city on the Bosporus, which becomes Constantinople. He names it not very modestly after himself, and that now is really the dominant city for any of the Roman Empire’s eastern or western.
Some say it was a climate that the Roman Empire flourished during this moment of luck when just the climate was good, and then you get this sort of late Roman little ice age and everything goes downhill and that’s what caused it. There’s some that say things like disease. There were a whole series of waves of plague that started to hit under Marcus Aurelius and continued after him, which seemed to have caused real serious death and economic disruption. I mean, that’s a decent explanation. Another popular one is moral decline, which I don’t think really works well. You even get the people saying lead poisoning, but that’s not true because they were drinking out of the same pipes when the empire was expanding, right?
Other types of decisive battles are ones that might have more unforeseen long-term effects. You may not realize this is decisive at the time, but from a longer perspective it is. And often, those are ones that either allow some new people or idea or institution to either grow or have its growth curbed. So at various points, we have empires that were expanding and basically were stopped at some battle. And so you say, “Well, if they been stopped there, they might have gone on to dominate this whole area.” Or conversely, you could say, “Rome wasn’t…” They were one place before the second Punic War. After the second Punic War, they were its dominant force. So you could pick one of those battles and say that was decisive in setting them on this new path.
And Mesopotamia the same thing, the way their religion develops is a reaction to the particular geographic environment that those people grew up in. So that’s a very profound influence on civilization. One of my professors once said to me, “The best map of the Roman Empire isn’t any of these maps with political borders. It would be a map that shows the zone in which it’s possible to cultivate olives.” So if you simply get a map and map onto it where you could grow olives during this time, let’s say, 1st century AD, it corresponds exactly, I mean really closely, to the areas that are most heavily Romanized. Now, I’m not going to say that, but there is something to that where Roman culture spread successfully is where people grow the same crops. And that’s just one of those fundamental things.
So there’s this letter from a Greek, who was serving as an administrator in the Roman government, and he gets posted to Germany, to the far north. And he writes these pathetic letters back home to his family saying, “The inhabitants here lead the most wretched existence of all mankind for they cultivate no olives, and they grow no grapes.” So to him, that was hell, being posted to an area where they eat these terrible foreign foods.
And of course, the cliche for the Romans of what barbarians eat is red meat. They’re herders, so they’re not farmers, but they follow herds of cow around, which a totally different lifestyle. They eat dairy products, and they drink beer. And I tell my students sometimes that if you were to stick a Roman in a time machine and send them to where we live, which I teach in Wisconsin, Green Bay, Wisconsin, that Roman would step out, look around, see all the beer, the brats, and the cheese, say, “I know who you guys are. You’re barbarians.
I mean, that’s very similar in a way to our modern world wars where this was a global conflict, at least as they envisioned the world they knew of. And if we sort of, I don’t know, somehow factor for transportation time, I mean, I think you can argue that that was a bigger war than World War II. In World War II, if you hopped on a plane, you could get from the US to China in a week or something, right? In little hops. I mean, in the ancient world, if you wanted to go from Spain to Egypt, it would take you a month. So they were fighting across a larger space- time zone in terms of their technology to move, then World War II took place across.
And that goes all the way back to Alexander the Great tried to conquer that area. The Mongols tried to do it. The Huns tried to do it. The Mughals tried to do it. Victorian Britain tried to do it. The Russians tried to do it. The Americans tried to do it. And they made the very same mistakes over and over and over again. And the two mistakes are not understanding the terrain, that it’s a rocky mountainous area that people can always hide in caves. And it’s not understanding the fundamentally tribal nature of that area that that’s where the real allegiance is in these tribes. It’s not in a centralized government. And that’s the same era Alexander made, as the British made in the 19th century, as the Russians, as the Americans. And it’s so depressing as a historian who studies history to see these things being repeated over and over again and you know exactly what’s going to happen.
Well, every ancient text we have has gone through that process. So this is a real problem, and that’s just with the sources. And this is the historic era. When you move back just a little earlier to the prehistoric era or to civilizations that don’t have written sources surviving. And some of these are ancient Mediterranean ones. I mean, anything goes. I mean, one of the jokes is that museums, archaeological museums, are full of objects which are labeled cult object. It’s some religious object. And I think the honest label that should be on that thing is we have no idea what the hell this is, but I want to believe it’s something important. So I’m going to say it’s a religious object, but in reality, it’s an ancient toilet paper roll holder or something. And it’s a huge problem when you try to interpret a civilization without written texts.
And my favorite little story that kind of illustrates this is, in the 19th century, this German who had gone to school in England, one of the best educated guys of his time, goes to North Africa and is poking around in the desert. And he finds this site with these huge stone monoliths, 10 feet tall in pairs, and there’s a lintel stone across the top, so sort of two posts with a stone across the top, and there’s a big stone in front of them too. And so he looks at this stuff and he says, “Well, what does this remind me of?” It reminds me of Stonehenge, right? And there’s even a site where there’s multiple of these kind of in a square. So he goes back and talks about this and an Englishman goes and studies them, and he finds a ton of these sites and he finds some of them where there’s 17 of these pairs.
And so he goes back, and he writes a whole book about how clearly the Celtic peoples who once lived in Britain came originally from North Africa because he’s found this site and he reconstructs the religion where obviously they practice religious rituals here, and they had rites of passage. They squeezed between the things and the altar stones have this basin. So they had blood sacrifice and all this, and it seemed reasonable. And then you ask some locals, “Well, what’s that stuff out in the desert there?” And they mean, “Oh, the old Roman olive oil factory.” And those are the remains of an olive press, and we’re back to olives. I keep dwelling on olives. Olives don’t grow in England or Germany. So this is cultural bias. If all you have is physical evidence, you’re going to interpret that evidence through your own cultural biases.
So if you’re an Englishman and you see big stone uprights like this, you’re going to think Stonehenge. If you’re from the Mediterranean, you’re going to think olive press. So that’s a salutary example I think of the dangers of interpreting physical evidence when you don’t have written evidence to go along with it. And think today, if our civilization were to blow up in a nuclear war and archaeologists were to dig this up, how might they misinterpret things? I mean, if they were to dig up a college dorm like where I work, and that’s what you had for the civilization. You’d probably go in the dorm rooms, you’d find all these little rooms, and maybe in every room you’d find this mysterious plastic disc. And so everybody has these, so it must be a cult object. And it’s round. So obviously, they’re sun worshipers. And if you can decipher the inscription, you’ll see that obviously they all worship the great sun god Wham-O. It’s like, what do you find in every dorm room? A Frisbee. So that’s the level of interpretation you have to beware of. And there’s examples, where we’ve done exactly this.
I mean, it’s a mystery. It’s you’re being a detective and trying to reconstruct and to understand a society. It’s even more fun where it’s, yeah, you have to try to empathize. Empathy is a great human thing, to empathize with people who are not yourself, and we should do this all the time with just the people we encounter. But this is what we’re doing with ancient civilizations. And as I talked about earlier, sometimes you’ll feel great sympathy there. Sometimes you’ll feel incomprehension. But by being aware of both of those, you can maybe begin to get some grasp, however tentative, on the truth as you might perceive it,
Click link to jump approximately to that part in the transcript:
- 0:00 – Ancient vs modern world
- 6:28 – Romans’ relationship to the past
- 15:40 – Three phases of Roman history
- 18:30 – Rome’s expansion
- 30:10 – Punic wars
- 38:55 – Conquering Greece
- 40:34 – Scipio vs Hannibal
- 43:40 – Heavy infantry vs Cavalry
- 47:17 – Armor
- 1:00:10 – Alexander the Great
- 1:06:11 – Roman law
- 1:15:51 – Slavery
- 1:24:11 – Fall of the Roman Empire
- 1:27:56 – Julius Caesar
- 1:32:35 – Octavian’s rise
- 1:42:28 – Cleopatra
- 1:47:57 – Musa of Parthia
- 1:50:50 – Augustus’ political system
- 2:03:19 – Cicero
- 2:09:21 – Gestures
- 2:19:32 – Religion in Rome
- 2:45:08 – Emperors
- 2:49:24 – The greatest Roman
- 2:52:18 – Marcus Aurelius
- 2:59:33 – Taxes
- 3:02:41 – Division of the Roman Empire
- 3:22:37 – Decisive battles
- 3:47:08 – Hope
Ancient vs modern world
Gregory Aldrete
Rome always wins because even if they lose battles, they go to the Italian allies and half citizens and raise new armies. So how do you beat them? He can never raise that many troops himself. And Hannibal, I think correctly, figures out the one way to maybe defeat Rome is to cut them away from their allies. Well, how do you do this? Hannibal’s plan is, “I’m not going to wait and fight the Romans in Spain or North Africa. I’m going to invade Italy. I’m going to strike at the heart of this growing Roman Empire. And my hope is that if I can win a couple big battles against Rome in Italy, the Italians will want their freedom back and they’ll rebel from Rome and maybe even join me because most people who have been conquered want their freedom back, so this is a reasonable plan.”
Rome always wins because even if they lose battles, they go to the Italian allies and half citizens and raise new armies. So how do you beat them? He can never raise that many troops himself. And Hannibal, I think correctly, figures out the one way to maybe defeat Rome is to cut them away from their allies. Well, how do you do this? Hannibal’s plan is, “I’m not going to wait and fight the Romans in Spain or North Africa. I’m going to invade Italy. I’m going to strike at the heart of this growing Roman Empire. And my hope is that if I can win a couple big battles against Rome in Italy, the Italians will want their freedom back and they’ll rebel from Rome and maybe even join me because most people who have been conquered want their freedom back, so this is a reasonable plan.”
Hannibal famously crosses the Alps with elephants. Dramatic stuff. Nobody expects him to do this. Nobody thinks you can do this. Shows up in Northern Italy. Romans send an army. Hannibal massacres them. He is a military genius. Rome takes a year, raises a second army. We know this story, sends it against Hannibal. Hannibal wipes them out.
Rome gets clever this time. They say, “Okay, Hannibal’s different. We’re going to take two years, raise two armies and send them both out at the same time against Hannibal.” They do this, and this is the Battle of Cannae, which is one of the most famous battles in history. Hannibal is facing this army of 80, 000 Romans about, and he comes up with strategy called double envelopment. I mean, we can go into it later if you want, but it’s this famous strategy where he basically sucks the Romans in, surrounds them on all sides. And in one afternoon at the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal kills about 60,000 Romans. Now, just to put that in perspective, that’s more Romans hacked to death in one afternoon with swords than Americans died in 20 years in Vietnam.
Lex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Gregory Aldrete, a historian specializing in ancient Rome and military history. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Gregory Aldrete.
The following is a conversation with Gregory Aldrete, a historian specializing in ancient Rome and military history. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Gregory Aldrete.
Lex Fridman
What do you think is the big difference between the ancient world and the modern world?
What do you think is the big difference between the ancient world and the modern world?
Gregory Aldrete
Well, the easy answer, the one you often get is technology, and obviously, there’s huge differences in technology between the ancient world and today. But I think some of the more interesting stuff is a little bit more amorphous things, more structural things. I would say, first of all, childhood mortality. In the ancient world, and this is true, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, really anybody up until about the industrial Revolution, about 30 to 40% of kids died before they hit puberty.
Well, the easy answer, the one you often get is technology, and obviously, there’s huge differences in technology between the ancient world and today. But I think some of the more interesting stuff is a little bit more amorphous things, more structural things. I would say, first of all, childhood mortality. In the ancient world, and this is true, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, really anybody up until about the industrial Revolution, about 30 to 40% of kids died before they hit puberty.
I mean, put yourself in the place of average inhabitant of the ancient world. If you were an ancient person, three or four of your kids probably would’ve died. You would’ve buried your children. And nowadays, we think of that as an unusual thing, and just psychologically, that’s a huge thing. You would’ve seen multiple of your siblings die. If you were a woman, for example, if you were lucky enough to make it to let’s say age 13, you probably would have to give birth four or five times in order just to keep the population from dying out. Those kind of grim mortality statistics, I think, are a huge difference psychologically between the ancient world and the modern.
Lex Fridman
But fundamentally, do you think human nature changed much? Do you think the same elements of what we see today, fear, greed, love, hope, optimism and the cynicism, the underlying forces that result in war, all of that, permeates human history?
But fundamentally, do you think human nature changed much? Do you think the same elements of what we see today, fear, greed, love, hope, optimism and the cynicism, the underlying forces that result in war, all of that, permeates human history?
Gregory Aldrete
Crude answer, yes. I think human nature is roughly constant. And for me, as an ancient historian, the kind of documents that I really like dealing with are not the traditional literary sources, but they’re the things that give us those little glimpse into everyday life. Stuff like tombstones or graffiti or just something that survives on a scrap of parchment that records a financial transaction. Whenever I read some of those, I’ll have this moment of feeling, ” Oh, I know exactly how that person felt.” Here across 2000 years of time, completely different cultures, I have this spark of sympathy with someone from antiquity.
Crude answer, yes. I think human nature is roughly constant. And for me, as an ancient historian, the kind of documents that I really like dealing with are not the traditional literary sources, but they’re the things that give us those little glimpse into everyday life. Stuff like tombstones or graffiti or just something that survives on a scrap of parchment that records a financial transaction. Whenever I read some of those, I’ll have this moment of feeling, ” Oh, I know exactly how that person felt.” Here across 2000 years of time, completely different cultures, I have this spark of sympathy with someone from antiquity.
I think, as a historian, the way you begin to understand an alien, a foreign culture, which is what these cultures are, is to look for those little moments of sympathy. But on the other hand, there’s ways in which ancient cultures are wildly different from us. You also look for those moments where you just think, “How the hell could these people have done that? I just don’t understand how they could have thought or acted in this way.” It’s lining up those moments of sympathy and kind of disconnection that I think is when you begin to start to understand a foreign culture or an ancient culture.
Lex Fridman
I love the idea of assembling the big picture from the details and the little pieces, because that is the thing that makes up life. The big picture is nothing without the details.
I love the idea of assembling the big picture from the details and the little pieces, because that is the thing that makes up life. The big picture is nothing without the details.
Gregory Aldrete
Yep, yep, and those details would bring it to life. I mean, it’s not the grand sweep of things. It’s seeing those little hopes and fears. Another thing that I think is a huge difference between the modern world and the ancient is just basically everybody’s a farmer. Everybody’s a small family farmer, and we forget this.
Yep, yep, and those details would bring it to life. I mean, it’s not the grand sweep of things. It’s seeing those little hopes and fears. Another thing that I think is a huge difference between the modern world and the ancient is just basically everybody’s a farmer. Everybody’s a small family farmer, and we forget this.
I was just writing a lecture for my next Great Courses course, and I was writing about farming in the ancient world. I was really thinking if we were to write a realistic textbook of let’s say the Roman Empire, nine out of 10 chapters should be details of what it was like to be a small-time family farmer, because that’s what 90% of the people in the ancient world did. They weren’t soldiers, they weren’t priests, they weren’t kings, they weren’t authors, they weren’t artists. They were small-town family farmers, and they lived in a little village. They never traveled 20 miles from that village. They were born there. They married somebody from there. They raised kids. They mucked around in the dirt for a couple decades and they died. They never saw a battle. They never saw a work of art. They never saw a philosopher. They never took part in any of the things we define as being history. So that’s what life should be, and that’s representative.
Romans’ relationship to the past
Lex Fridman
Nevertheless, it is the emperors and the philosophers and the artists and the warriors who carve history.
Nevertheless, it is the emperors and the philosophers and the artists and the warriors who carve history.
Gregory Aldrete
And it is the important stuff. I mean, that’s true. There’s a reason we focus on that.
And it is the important stuff. I mean, that’s true. There’s a reason we focus on that.
Lex Fridman
That’s a good reminder though. If we want to truly empathize and understand what life was like, we have to represent it fully.
That’s a good reminder though. If we want to truly empathize and understand what life was like, we have to represent it fully.
Gregory Aldrete
And I would say let’s not forget them. Let’s not forget what life was like for 80, 90% of the people in the ancient world, the ones we don’t talk about, because that’s important too.
And I would say let’s not forget them. Let’s not forget what life was like for 80, 90% of the people in the ancient world, the ones we don’t talk about, because that’s important too.
Lex Fridman
The Roman Empire is widely considered to be the most powerful, influential, and impactful empire in human history. What are some reasons for that?
The Roman Empire is widely considered to be the most powerful, influential, and impactful empire in human history. What are some reasons for that?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. I mean, Rome has been hugely influential, I think, just because of the image. I mean, there’s all these practical ways. I mean, the words I’m using to speak with you today, 30% are direct from Latin. Another 30% are from Latin descended languages. Our law codes, I mean, our habits, our holidays, everything comes fairly directly from the ancient world. But the image of Rome, at least again in Western civilization, has really been the dominant image of a successful empire. I think that’s what gives it a lot of its fascination, this idea that, “Oh, it was this great, powerful, culturally influential empire,” and there’s a lot of other empires. I mean, we could talk about ancient China, which arguably was just as big as Rome, just as culturally sophisticated, lasted about the same amount of time. But at least in Western civilization, Rome is the paradigm.
Yeah. I mean, Rome has been hugely influential, I think, just because of the image. I mean, there’s all these practical ways. I mean, the words I’m using to speak with you today, 30% are direct from Latin. Another 30% are from Latin descended languages. Our law codes, I mean, our habits, our holidays, everything comes fairly directly from the ancient world. But the image of Rome, at least again in Western civilization, has really been the dominant image of a successful empire. I think that’s what gives it a lot of its fascination, this idea that, “Oh, it was this great, powerful, culturally influential empire,” and there’s a lot of other empires. I mean, we could talk about ancient China, which arguably was just as big as Rome, just as culturally sophisticated, lasted about the same amount of time. But at least in Western civilization, Rome is the paradigm.
But Rome is a little schizophrenic in that it’s both the empire when it was ruled by emperors, which is one kind of model, and it’s the Roman Republic when it was a pseudo-democracy, which is a different model. It’s interesting how some later civilizations tend to either focus on one or the other of those. The United States, Revolutionary France, they were very obsessed with the Roman Republic as a model. But other people, Mussolini, Hitler, Napoleon, they were very obsessed with the Empire. Victorian Britain as a model.
Rome itself has different aspects. But what I think is actually another big difference between the modern world and the ancient is our relationship with the past. One of the keys to understanding all of Roman history is to understand that this was a people who were obsessed with the past and for whom the past had power, not just as something inspirational, but it actually dictated what you would do in your daily life. Today, especially in the United States, we don’t have much of a relationship with the past. We see ourselves as free agents just floating along, not tethered to what came before.
The classical story that I sometimes tell in my classes to illustrate this is Rome started out as a monarchy. They had kings. They were kind of unhappy with their kings. Around 500 BC, they held a revolution and they kicked out the kings, and one of the guys who played a key role in this was a man named Lucius Junius Brutus. 500 years later, 500 years down the road, a guy comes along, Julius Caesar, who starts to act like a king. If you have trouble with kings in Roman society, who are you going to call? Somebody named Brutus. Now as it happens, there is a guy named Brutus in Roman society at this time, who is one of Julius Caesar’s best friends, Marcus Junius Brutus. Now, before I go further with the story, and I think you probably know where it ends, I talk about how important your ancestors are in Roman culture. I mean, if you went to an aristocratic Roman’s house and opened the front door and walked in, the first thing you would see would be a big wooden cabinet. If you open that up, what you would see would be row after row of wax death masks. When a Roman aristocrat died, they literally put hot wax on his face and made an impression of his face at that moment. They hung these in a big cabinet right inside the front door. Every time you entered your house, you were literally staring at the faces of your ancestors.
Every child in that family would have obsessively memorized every accomplishment of every one of those ancestors. He would’ve known their career, what offices they held, what battles they fought in, what they did. When somebody new in the family died, there would be a big funeral and they would talk about all the things their ancestors had did. The kids in the family would literally take out those masks, tie them onto their own faces, and wear them in the funeral procession. You were wearing the face of your ancestors. So you as an individual weren’t important, you were just the latest iteration of that family, and there was enormous weight, huge weight to live up to the deeds of your ancestors. The Romans were absolutely obsessed with the past, especially with your own family. Every Roman kid who is let’s say an aristocratic family could tell you every one of his ancestors back centuries. I can’t go beyond my grandparents, I don’t even know, but that’s maybe 100 years. It’s a completely different attitude towards the past.
Lex Fridman
And the level of celebration that we have now of the ancestors, even the ones we can name, is not as intense as it was in Roman times.
And the level of celebration that we have now of the ancestors, even the ones we can name, is not as intense as it was in Roman times.
Gregory Aldrete
No, no. I mean, it was obsessive and oppressive. It determined what you did.
No, no. I mean, it was obsessive and oppressive. It determined what you did.
Lex Fridman
Oppressive, oh.
Oppressive, oh.
Gregory Aldrete
Yes. Because there’s that weight for you to act like your ancestors did.
Yes. Because there’s that weight for you to act like your ancestors did.
Lex Fridman
Not to speak sort of philosophically, but do you think it was limiting to the way that society develops to be deeply constrained by the-
Not to speak sort of philosophically, but do you think it was limiting to the way that society develops to be deeply constrained by the-
Gregory Aldrete
Yes. Absolutely.
Yes. Absolutely.
Lex Fridman
Limiting in a good way or a bad way, you think?
Limiting in a good way or a bad way, you think?
Gregory Aldrete
Well, like everything, it’s a little of both. But the bad, on the one hand, it gives them enormous strength and it gives them this enormous connection. It gives them guidance. But the negative is what’s interesting, is it makes the Romans extremely traditional minded and extremely conservative, and I mean conservative in the sense of resistant to change.
Well, like everything, it’s a little of both. But the bad, on the one hand, it gives them enormous strength and it gives them this enormous connection. It gives them guidance. But the negative is what’s interesting, is it makes the Romans extremely traditional minded and extremely conservative, and I mean conservative in the sense of resistant to change.
In the late Republic, which we’ll probably talk about later, Rome desperately needed to change certain things, but it was a society that did things the way the ancestors did it, and they didn’t make some obvious changes, which might have saved their Republic. That’s the downside is that it locks you into something and you can’t change.
But to get us back to the Brutus’s, 500 years after that first Brutus got rid of kings, Julius Caesar starts to act like a king, one of his best friends is Marcus Junius Brutus. And literally, in the middle of the night, people go to Brutus’s house and write graffiti on it that says, “Remember your ancestor?” And another one is, I think, “You’re no real Brutus.” And at that point, he really has no choice. He forms a conspiracy. On the Ides of March 44 BC, he and 23 other senators take daggers, stick them in Julius Caesar, and kill him for acting like a king. The way I always pose this to my students is, “How many of you would stick a knife in your best friend because of what your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather did?”
Lex Fridman
That’s commitment.
That’s commitment.
Gregory Aldrete
That’s the power of the past. That’s a society where the past isn’t just influential, but it dictates what you do. And that concept, I think, is very alien to us today. We can’t imagine murdering our best friend because of what some incredibly distant ancestor did 500 years ago. But to Brutus, there is no choice. You have to do that.
That’s the power of the past. That’s a society where the past isn’t just influential, but it dictates what you do. And that concept, I think, is very alien to us today. We can’t imagine murdering our best friend because of what some incredibly distant ancestor did 500 years ago. But to Brutus, there is no choice. You have to do that.
A lot of societies have this power of the past. Today, not so much, but some still do. About a decade ago, I was in Serbia and I was talking to some of the people there about the breakup of Yugoslavia and some of the wars that had taken place where people turned against their neighbors, basically murdered people they had lived next to for decades. When I was talking to them, some of them actually brought up things like, “Oh, well, it was justified because in this battle in 12 whatever, they did this.” And I was thinking, “Wow, you’re citing something from 800 years ago to justify your actions today.” That’s a modern person who still understands the power of the past, or maybe is crippled by it, is another way to view it.
Lex Fridman
This is an interesting point and an interesting perspective to remember about the way the Romans thought, especially in the context of how power is transferred, whether it’s hereditary or not, which changes throughout Roman history. It’s interesting. It’s interesting to remember that, the value of the ancestors
This is an interesting point and an interesting perspective to remember about the way the Romans thought, especially in the context of how power is transferred, whether it’s hereditary or not, which changes throughout Roman history. It’s interesting. It’s interesting to remember that, the value of the ancestors
Gregory Aldrete
Yep, and just the weight of tradition.
Yep, and just the weight of tradition.
Lex Fridman
The weight of tradition.
The weight of tradition.
Gregory Aldrete
For the Romans, the mos maiorum is this Latin term, which means the way the ancestors did it, and it’s kind of their word for tradition. For them, tradition is what your forefathers and mothers did, and you have to follow that example, and you have to live up to that.
For the Romans, the mos maiorum is this Latin term, which means the way the ancestors did it, and it’s kind of their word for tradition. For them, tradition is what your forefathers and mothers did, and you have to follow that example, and you have to live up to that.
Lex Fridman
Does that mean that class mobility was difficult? If your ancestors were farmers, there was a major constraint on remaining a farmer, essentially.
Does that mean that class mobility was difficult? If your ancestors were farmers, there was a major constraint on remaining a farmer, essentially.
Three phases of Roman history
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, the Romans all like to think of themselves as farmers, even filthy rich Romans. It was just their national identity is the citizen soldier farmer thing. But it did, among the aristocrats, the people who kind of ran things, yeah, it was hard to break into that if you didn’t have famous ancestors. It was such a big deal that there was a specific term called a novus homo, a new man, for someone who was the first person in their family to get elected to a major office in the Roman government because that was a weird and different and new thing. You actually designated them by this special term. Yeah, you’re absolutely right.
I mean, the Romans all like to think of themselves as farmers, even filthy rich Romans. It was just their national identity is the citizen soldier farmer thing. But it did, among the aristocrats, the people who kind of ran things, yeah, it was hard to break into that if you didn’t have famous ancestors. It was such a big deal that there was a specific term called a novus homo, a new man, for someone who was the first person in their family to get elected to a major office in the Roman government because that was a weird and different and new thing. You actually designated them by this special term. Yeah, you’re absolutely right.
Lex Fridman
If we may, let us zoom out, it would help me, maybe it’ll help the audience to look at the different periods that we’ve been talking about. You mentioned the Republic. You mentioned maybe when it took a form of empire and maybe there was the age of kings. What are the different periods of this Roman, let’s call it, what? The big-
If we may, let us zoom out, it would help me, maybe it’ll help the audience to look at the different periods that we’ve been talking about. You mentioned the Republic. You mentioned maybe when it took a form of empire and maybe there was the age of kings. What are the different periods of this Roman, let’s call it, what? The big-
Gregory Aldrete
Roman history.
Roman history.
Lex Fridman
Roman history. And a lot of people just call that whole period Roman Empire loosely, right?
Roman history. And a lot of people just call that whole period Roman Empire loosely, right?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Maybe can you speak to the different periods?
Maybe can you speak to the different periods?
Gregory Aldrete
Yes, absolutely. Conventionally, Roman history is divided into three chronological periods. The first of those is from 773 BC to 509 BC, which is called the monarchy. All the periods get their names from the form of government. This is the earliest phase of Roman history. It’s when Rome is mostly just a fairly undistinguished little collection of mud huts, honestly, just like dozens of other cities of little mud huts in Italy. That early phase, about 750 to around 500 BC is the monarchy. They’re ruled by kings.
Yes, absolutely. Conventionally, Roman history is divided into three chronological periods. The first of those is from 773 BC to 509 BC, which is called the monarchy. All the periods get their names from the form of government. This is the earliest phase of Roman history. It’s when Rome is mostly just a fairly undistinguished little collection of mud huts, honestly, just like dozens of other cities of little mud huts in Italy. That early phase, about 750 to around 500 BC is the monarchy. They’re ruled by kings.
Then there’s this revolution, they kick out the kings, they become a Republic. That lasts from 500 BC roughly to about either 31 or 27 BC, depending what date you pick as most important, but about 500 years. The Republic is when they have a Republican form of government. Some people idealize this as Rome’s greatest period, and the big thing in that period is Rome first expands to conquer all of Italy in the first 250 years of that 500 year stretch. And then, the second 250 years, they conquer all the Mediterranean basin roughly. This is this time of enormous successful Roman conquest and expansion.
And then, you have another switch up and they become ruled by emperors. Back to the idea of one guy in charge, though the Romans try to pretend it’s not like a king, it’s something else. Anyway, we can get into that. But they’re very touchy about kings, so they have emperors. Roman Empire, the first emperor is Augustus. Starts off as Octavian, switches his name to Augustus when he becomes emperor. He kind of sets the model for what happens.
Rome’s expansion
And then, how long does the Roman Empire last? That’s one of those great questions. The conventional answer is usually sometime in the fifth century, so the 400s AD, so about another 500 years, let’s say. So nice kind of even division, 500 years of Republic, 500 years of empire. But you can make very good cases for lots of other dates for the end of the Roman Empire. I actually think it goes all the way through the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, so another 1500 years, but that’s a whole other discussion. But so that’s your three phases of Roman history,
Lex Fridman
And in some fundamental way, it still persists today, given how much of its ideas define our modern life, especially in the western world.
And in some fundamental way, it still persists today, given how much of its ideas define our modern life, especially in the western world.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Can you speak to the relationship between ancient Greece and Roman Empire, both in the chronological sense and in the influence sense?
Can you speak to the relationship between ancient Greece and Roman Empire, both in the chronological sense and in the influence sense?
Gregory Aldrete
Well, I mean, ancient Greece comes… The classical era of Greek civilization is around the 500s BC. That’s when you have the great achievements of Athens. It becomes the first sort of true democracy. They defeat the Persian invasions. A lot of famous stuff happens in the 400s, let’s say. So that is contemporaneous with Rome, but the Greek civilization, in a sense, is peaking earlier. And one of the things that happens is that Greece ends up being conquered by Rome in that second half of the Roman Republic between 250 and about 30 BC. And so, Greece falls under the control of Rome and Rome is very heavily influenced by Greek culture. They themselves see the Greeks as a superior civilization, culturally more sophisticated, great art, great philosophy, all this. Another thing about the Romans is they’re super competitive. One of the engines that drives Romans is this public competitiveness, especially among the upper classes. They care more about their status and standing among their peers than they do about money or even their own life, so there’s this intense competition.
Well, I mean, ancient Greece comes… The classical era of Greek civilization is around the 500s BC. That’s when you have the great achievements of Athens. It becomes the first sort of true democracy. They defeat the Persian invasions. A lot of famous stuff happens in the 400s, let’s say. So that is contemporaneous with Rome, but the Greek civilization, in a sense, is peaking earlier. And one of the things that happens is that Greece ends up being conquered by Rome in that second half of the Roman Republic between 250 and about 30 BC. And so, Greece falls under the control of Rome and Rome is very heavily influenced by Greek culture. They themselves see the Greeks as a superior civilization, culturally more sophisticated, great art, great philosophy, all this. Another thing about the Romans is they’re super competitive. One of the engines that drives Romans is this public competitiveness, especially among the upper classes. They care more about their status and standing among their peers than they do about money or even their own life, so there’s this intense competition.
When they conquer Greece, Greek culture just becomes one more arena of competition. Romans will start to learn Greek. They’ll start to memorize Homer. They’ll start to see who can quote more passages of Homer in Greek in their letters to one another because that increases their status. Rome absorbs Greek civilization, and then the two get fused together.
The other thing I should mention in terms of influences that’s really huge on Rome is the Etruscans, and this is one that comes along before the Greeks. The Etruscans were this kind of mysterious culture that flourished in northern Italy before the Romans, so way back 800 BC. They were much more powerful than the Romans. They were a loose confederation of states. For awhile, the Romans even seemed to have been under Etruscan control. The last of the Roman kings was really an Etruscan guy pretty clearly. But the Etruscans end up giving to Rome, or you could say Rome ends up stealing perhaps, a lot of elements of Etruscan culture. Many of the things that we today think of as distinctively Roman, our cliches of what a Roman is, actually aren’t truly Roman, they’re stuff they stole from the Etruscans. Just a couple examples, the toga. What do you think of a Roman? It’s a guy wearing a toga, and the toga is the mark of a Roman citizen. Well, that’s what Etruscan kings wore, probably.
Gladiator games. We associate those very intensely with the Romans. Well, they probably stole that from the Etruscans. A lot of Roman religion. Jupiter is a thunder God, all sorts of divination. The Romans love to chop open animals and look at their livers and predict the future, that comes from the Etruscans. Watching the flight of birds to predict the future, that comes from the Etruscans. There’s a lot of central elements of what we think of as Roman civilization, which actually are borrowings, let’s say, from these older, slightly mysterious Etruscans.
Lex Fridman
I mean, that’s a really powerful thing. It’s a powerful aspect of a civilization to be able to, we can call it stealing which is a negative connotation, but you can also see its integration basically. Yes, steal the best stuff from the peoples you conquer or the peoples that you interact with.
I mean, that’s a really powerful thing. It’s a powerful aspect of a civilization to be able to, we can call it stealing which is a negative connotation, but you can also see its integration basically. Yes, steal the best stuff from the peoples you conquer or the peoples that you interact with.
Not every empire does that. There’s a lot of nations and empires that when they conquer, they annihilate versus integrate. And so, it’s an interesting thing to be able to culturally… The form that the competitiveness takes is that you want to compete in the realm of ideas in culture versus compete strictly in the realm of military conquest.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, and I think you’ve exactly put your finger on one of the, let’s say, secrets of Rome’s success, which is that they’re very good at integrating non-Romans or non-Roman ideas and kind of absorbing them.
Yeah, and I think you’ve exactly put your finger on one of the, let’s say, secrets of Rome’s success, which is that they’re very good at integrating non-Romans or non-Roman ideas and kind of absorbing them.
One of the things that’s absolutely crucial early in Roman history, when they’re just one of these tiny little mud hut villages fighting dozens of other mud hut villages in Italy, why does Rome emerge as the dominant one? Well, one of the things they do is when they do finally succeed in conquering somebody else, let’s say another Italianate people, they do something very unusual because the normal procedure in the ancient world is let’s say you conquer another city, you often kill most of the men, enslave the women and children, steal all the stuff, right? The Romans, at least with the Italians, conquer the other city, and sometimes they’ll do that, but sometimes they’ll also then say, “All right, we’re going to now leave you alone and we’re going to share with you a degree of Roman citizenship.” Sometimes they’d make them full citizens, more often they’d make them something we call half citizens, which is kind of what sounds like you get some of the privileges of citizenship, but not all of them. Sometimes they would just make them allies, but they would sort of incorporate them into the Roman project.
They wouldn’t necessarily ask for money or taxes, which is weird too. But instead, the one thing they would always, always demand from the conquered cities in Italy is that they provide troops to the Roman army. The army becomes this mechanism of Romanization where you pull in foreigners, you make them like you, and then they end up fighting for you. Early on, the secret to Rome’s military success is not that they have better generals. It’s not that they have better equipment. It’s not that they have better strategy or tactics. It’s that they have limitless manpower, relatively speaking. They lose a war and they just come back and fight again, and they lose again, and they come back and they fight again, and eventually they just wear down their enemies because their key thing of their policy is we incorporate the conquered people.
The great moment that just exemplifies this is pretty late in this process. They’ve been doing this for 250 years just about, and they’ve gotten down to the toe of Italy, they’re conquering the very last cities down there. One of the last cities is actually a Greek city. It’s a Greek colony. It’s a wealthy city, and so when the Romans show up on the doorstep and are about to attack them, they do what any rich Greek colony or city does, they go out and hire the best mercenaries they can. They hire this guy who thinks of himself as the new Alexander the Great, a man named Pyrrhus of Epirus. He’s a mercenary. He is actually related to Alexander distantly. He has a terrific army, top-notch army. He’s got elephants. He’s got all the latest military technology. The Romans come and fight a battle against him, and Pyrrhus knows what he’s doing. He wipes out the Romans.
He thinks, “Okay, now we’ll have a peace treaty. We’ll negotiate something. I can go home.” But the Romans won’t even talk. They go to their Italian allies and half-citizens, they raise a second army, they send it against Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus says, ‘Okay, these guys are slow learners. Fine.” He fights them again, wipes them out, thinks, “Now we’ll have a peace treaty.” But the Romans go back to the allies, raise a third army and send it after Pyrrhus. When he sees that third army coming, he says, “I can’t afford to win another battle. I win these battles, but each time I lose some of my troops and I can’t replace them, and the Romans just keep sprouting new armies.” So he gives up and goes home.
Rome kind of loses every battle, but wins the war. Pyrrhus one of, actually, his officers has a great line as they’re going back to Greece. He says, “Fighting the Romans is like fighting a hydra,” and a hydra is this mythological monster that when you cut off one head, two more grow in its place, so you can just never win.
Lex Fridman
That’s fascinating.
That’s fascinating.
Gregory Aldrete
So that’s the secret to Rome’s early success.
So that’s the secret to Rome’s early success.
Lex Fridman
It’s not the military strategy. It’s not some technological asymmetry of power. It’s literally just manpower.
It’s not the military strategy. It’s not some technological asymmetry of power. It’s literally just manpower.
Gregory Aldrete
Mm-hm. Early on.
Mm-hm. Early on.
Lex Fridman
Early on.
Early on.
Gregory Aldrete
And later, the Romans get very good… We’re into the empire phase now. Once they have emperors into the AD era of kind of doing the same thing by drawing in the best and the brightest and the most ambitious and the most talented local leaders of the people they conquer. When they go someplace, let’s say they conquer tribe of what to them as barbarians, they’ll often take the sons of the barbarian chiefs, bring them to Rome and raise them as Romans.
And later, the Romans get very good… We’re into the empire phase now. Once they have emperors into the AD era of kind of doing the same thing by drawing in the best and the brightest and the most ambitious and the most talented local leaders of the people they conquer. When they go someplace, let’s say they conquer tribe of what to them as barbarians, they’ll often take the sons of the barbarian chiefs, bring them to Rome and raise them as Romans.
Lex Fridman
Damn.
Damn.
Gregory Aldrete
And so, it’s that whole way of turning your enemies into your own strength. The Romans start giving citizenship to areas they conquer. Once they move out of Italy, they aren’t as free with the citizenship, but eventually they do. They make Spain, lots of cities in Spain, they make all citizens and other places. And soon enough, the Roman emperors and the Roman senators are not Italians, they’re coming from Spain or North Africa or Germany or wherever.
And so, it’s that whole way of turning your enemies into your own strength. The Romans start giving citizenship to areas they conquer. Once they move out of Italy, they aren’t as free with the citizenship, but eventually they do. They make Spain, lots of cities in Spain, they make all citizens and other places. And soon enough, the Roman emperors and the Roman senators are not Italians, they’re coming from Spain or North Africa or Germany or wherever.
As early as the second century AD of the Roman Empire, so the first set of emperors, the first 100 years were all Italians, but right away at the beginning of the second century AD you have Trajan, who’s from Spain. The next guy, Hadrian’s from Spain, and then a century later, you have Septimius Severus, who’s from North Africa. You would later get guys from Syria. I mean, the actual leaders of the Roman Empire are coming from the provinces.
Lex Fridman
That’s brilliant.
That’s brilliant.
Gregory Aldrete
And it’s that openness to incorporating foreigners, making them work for you, making them want to be part of your empire, that I think is one of Rome’s strengths.
And it’s that openness to incorporating foreigners, making them work for you, making them want to be part of your empire, that I think is one of Rome’s strengths.
Lex Fridman
Taking the sons is a brilliant idea and bringing them to Rome, because a kind of generational integration.
Taking the sons is a brilliant idea and bringing them to Rome, because a kind of generational integration.
Gregory Aldrete
The Roman military, later in the empire, is this giant machine of half a million people that takes in foreigners and churns out Romans. The army is composed of two groups. You have the Roman Legionaries who are all citizens, but then you have another group that’s just as large, about 250,000 of each, 250,000 Legionaries, 250,000 of the second group called Auxiliaries. Auxiliaries tend to be newly conquered warlike people that the Romans enlist as Auxiliaries to fight with them. They serve side by side with the Roman legions for 25 years. At the end of that time, when they’re discharged, what do they get? They get Roman citizenship, and their kids then tend to become Roman Legionaries.
The Roman military, later in the empire, is this giant machine of half a million people that takes in foreigners and churns out Romans. The army is composed of two groups. You have the Roman Legionaries who are all citizens, but then you have another group that’s just as large, about 250,000 of each, 250,000 Legionaries, 250,000 of the second group called Auxiliaries. Auxiliaries tend to be newly conquered warlike people that the Romans enlist as Auxiliaries to fight with them. They serve side by side with the Roman legions for 25 years. At the end of that time, when they’re discharged, what do they get? They get Roman citizenship, and their kids then tend to become Roman Legionaries.
Punic wars
Again, you’re taking the most warlike and potentially dangerous of your enemies, kind of absorbing them, putting through this thing for 25 years where they learn Latin, they learn Roman customs, they maybe marry someone who’s already a Roman or a Latin woman. They have kids within the system, their kids become Roman Legionaries, and you’ve thoroughly integrated what could have been your biggest enemies, right? Your greatest threat.
Lex Fridman
That’s just brilliant, brilliant process of integration. Is that what explains the rapid expansion during the late Republic?
That’s just brilliant, brilliant process of integration. Is that what explains the rapid expansion during the late Republic?
Gregory Aldrete
No. There it’s more the indigenous Italians who are in the army at that point. They haven’t really expanded the Auxiliaries yet. That’s more something that happens in the Empire. Yeah, so back it up. We have that first 250 years of the Roman Republic, from about 500 to let’s say 250 BC. And in that period, they gradually expand throughout Italy, conquer the other Italian cities, who are pretty much like them. They’re people who already speak similar languages or the same language, have the same gods. It’s easy to integrate them. That’s the ones they make the half citizens and allies.
No. There it’s more the indigenous Italians who are in the army at that point. They haven’t really expanded the Auxiliaries yet. That’s more something that happens in the Empire. Yeah, so back it up. We have that first 250 years of the Roman Republic, from about 500 to let’s say 250 BC. And in that period, they gradually expand throughout Italy, conquer the other Italian cities, who are pretty much like them. They’re people who already speak similar languages or the same language, have the same gods. It’s easy to integrate them. That’s the ones they make the half citizens and allies.
Then in the second half of that period, from about 250 to let’s say 30 BC, Rome goes outside of Italy, and this is a new world because now they’re encountering people who are really fundamentally different. So, true others. They do not have the same gods. They don’t speak the same language. They have fundamentally different systems of economy, everything.
Rome first expands in the Western Mediterranean, and there their big rival is the city state of Carthage, which is another city founded almost the same time as Rome that has also been a young, vigorously expanding aggressive empire. In the Western Empire at this time, you have two sort of rival groups, and they’re very different because the Romans are these citizen soldier farmers…
Gregory Aldrete
Because the Romans are these citizen soldier farmers, so the Romans are all these small farmers, that’s the basis of their economy, and it’s the Romans who serve in the army. So the person who is a citizen, is also really by main profession, a farmer, and then in times of war, becomes a soldier.
Because the Romans are these citizen soldier farmers, so the Romans are all these small farmers, that’s the basis of their economy, and it’s the Romans who serve in the army. So the person who is a citizen, is also really by main profession, a farmer, and then in times of war, becomes a soldier.
Carthage is an oligarchy of merchants, so it’s a very small citizen body. They make their money through maritime trade, so they have ships that go all over the Mediterranean. They don’t have a large army of Carthaginians. Instead, they hire mercenaries mostly to fight for them, so it’s almost these two rival systems. It’s different philosophies, different economies, everything.
Rome is strong on land. Carthage is strong at sea. So there’s this dichotomy, but they’re both looking to expand and they repeatedly come into conflict as they expand. So Carthage is on the coast of North Africa, Rome’s in Central Italy. What’s right between them? The island of Sicily. So the first big war is fought purely dictated by geography. Who gets Sicily, Rome or Carthage? And Rome wins in the end, they get it, but Carthage is still strong. They’re not weakened. So Carthage is now looking to expand.
The next place to go is Spain. So they go and take Spain. Rome, meanwhile, is moving along the coast of what today’s France. Where are they going to meet up? On the border of Spain and France. And there’s a city, at this point in time called Saguntum. The second big war between Rome and Carthage is over. Who gets Saguntum?
So, I mean, you can just look at a map and see this stuff coming. Sometimes geography is inevitability, and I think in the course of the wars between Rome and Carthage called the Punic Wars, there is this geographic inevitability to them.
Lex Fridman
Can you speak to the Punic Wars? There’s so many levels on which we can talk about this, but why was Rome victorious?
Can you speak to the Punic Wars? There’s so many levels on which we can talk about this, but why was Rome victorious?
Gregory Aldrete
Well, the Punic Wars really almost always comes down to the second Punic War. There’s three. There’s three Punic Wars. The first is over Sicily, Rome wins. The second is the big one, and it’s the big one because Carthage at this point in time, just by sheer luck, coughs up one of the greatest military geniuses in all of history.
Well, the Punic Wars really almost always comes down to the second Punic War. There’s three. There’s three Punic Wars. The first is over Sicily, Rome wins. The second is the big one, and it’s the big one because Carthage at this point in time, just by sheer luck, coughs up one of the greatest military geniuses in all of history.
This guy, Hannibal Barca, he was actually the son of the Carthaginian general who fought Rome for Sicily. Hamilcar was his father, but Hannibal is this just genius, just absolute military genius. He goes to Spain. He’s the one who kind of organizes stuff there, and now he knows the second war with Rome is inevitable. And so, the question is how do you take down Rome? He’s smart. He’s seen Rome’s strength. He knows it’s the Italian allies.
So Rome always wins because even if they lose battles, they go to the Italian allies and half citizens and raise new armies. So how do you beat them? He can never raise that many troops himself. And Hannibal, I think correctly figures out the one way to maybe defeat Rome is to cut them away from their allies. Well, how do you do this?
Hannibal’s plan is, I’m not going to wait and fight the Romans in Spain or North Africa. I’m going to invade Italy. So I’m going to strike at the heart of this growing Roman Empire, and my hope is that if I can win a couple big battles against Rome in Italy, the Italians will want their freedom back and they’ll rebel from Rome and maybe even join me, because most people who have been conquered want their freedom back, so this is a reasonable plan.
So Hannibal famously crosses the Alps with elephants, dramatic stuff. Nobody expects him to do this. Nobody thinks you can do this. Shows up in Northern Italy. Romans send an army. Hannibal massacres them. He is a military genius. Rome takes a year, raises a second army. We know this story, sends it against Hannibal. Hannibal wipes them out.
Rome gets clever this time. They say, okay, Hannibal’s different. We’re going to take two years, raise two armies and send them both out at the same time against Hannibal. So they do this, and this is the Battle of Cannae, which is one of the most famous battles in history, Hannibal’s facing this army of 80,000 Romans about, and he comes up with a strategy called double envelopment. I mean, we can go into it later if you want, but it’s this famous strategy where he basically sucks the Romans in, surrounds them on all sides, and in one afternoon at the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal kills about 60,000 Romans.
Now, just to put that in perspective, that’s more Romans hacked to death in one afternoon with swords than Americans died in 20 years in Vietnam. I mean, the Battle of Gettysburg, which lasted three days and was one of the bloodiest battles of civil war, I think the actual deaths at that were maybe like 15,000. So this is a bloodshed of an almost unimaginable scale.
Lex Fridman
It’s also brutal…
It’s also brutal…
Gregory Aldrete
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
… just to slaughter.
… just to slaughter.
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, it’s just mind boggling to think of that. So now, this is Rome’s darkest hour. This is why the second Punic War is important, because there’s that Nietzsche phrase, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” this is the closest Rome comes to death in the history of the Republic. Hannibal almost kills Rome, but no, it’s not much of a spoiler.
I mean, it’s just mind boggling to think of that. So now, this is Rome’s darkest hour. This is why the second Punic War is important, because there’s that Nietzsche phrase, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” this is the closest Rome comes to death in the history of the Republic. Hannibal almost kills Rome, but no, it’s not much of a spoiler.
Rome’s going to survive, and from this point on, they’re going to be unbeatable, but this is the crisis. This is the crucible. This is the furnace that Rome passes through, that is the dividing point between when they’re one more up and coming empire and when they’re clearly the dominant power in the Mediterranean.
So what do they do about Hannibal? Well, they’re smart. We’re not going to fight Hannibal. We’re not going to give Hannibal the chance to kill more Romans. So they adopt a strategy that they’ll follow Hannibal, when they raise a couple more armies, follow Hannibal round, but whenever Hannibal turns and tries to attack them, the Romans just back off. No, thank you. We’re not going to let you give you a chance.
Meanwhile though, they’re not scared of other Carthaginians, so they raise a couple more armies and they send these to Spain, for example, and start attacking the Carthaginian holdings there. And by luck or necessity, Rome comes up with its own brilliant commander at this point, a guy named Scipio, and he wins victories in Spain, conquers Spain. Then, he crosses into North Africa and starts to conquer that and ends up threatening Carthage directly.
And poor Hannibal, undefeated in Italy, has now been walking up and down Italy or marching up and down Italy for 12 years looking for another fight, and the Romans won’t give it to them. They’ve been attacking all these other areas and chipping away at Carthaginian power.
Conquering Greece
So finally, after more than a decade in Italy, Hannibal is called back to defend the homeland, defend Carthage from Scipio. The two meet in a big battle. This should be one of the great battles of all times the Battle of Zama, but Hannibal’s guys are kind of old by this point. Scipio has all the advantages. He wins. Carthage is defeated. So that’s pretty much the end of Carthage.
The city survives, and then 50 years later, the Romans wipe it out, but that’s not much of a war. But from this moment on, from the second Punic War, which ends in 201 BC, Rome is undisputably the most powerful force nation in the Mediterranean world, and having conquered the West, they’re now going to turn to the East, which is the Greek world, and the Greek world is older. It’s richer, it’s the rich part, half of the Mediterranean, it’s culturally more sophisticated. It’s the world left by Alexander the Great, that’s ruled by the descendants of his generals.
And the Greeks kind of view themselves as superior to the Romans. I mean, to the Greeks, the Romans are these uncouth sort of savage barbarians, but they’re going to get a real shock because the Roman army now has gotten really good to beat Hannibal. And when they go East, they’re going to just defeat the Greeks relatively easily, one after the other.
And there’s a famous historian named Polybius who is a Greek whose city was captured by the Romans. He later becomes a friend to the Scipio family. He actually teaches some of the Scipio children about Greek culture. And he writes a history of Rome and his motivation for writing this is he says, at the beginning of this book, he says, “Surely there can be no one so incurious as to not want to understand how the Romans could have conquered the entire Greek world in 53 years,” because that seems unimaginable to him.
Scipio vs Hannibal
So he’s writing this entire history as a way to try and understand how did the Romans do it? We were these wonderful superior people, and they came around in 50 years, bang, that’s the end of us. So that’s his motivation.
Lex Fridman
Could you maybe speak to any interesting details of the military genius of Hannibal or Scipio? At that time, what are some interesting aspects this double envelopment idea?
Could you maybe speak to any interesting details of the military genius of Hannibal or Scipio? At that time, what are some interesting aspects this double envelopment idea?
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, Hannibal is good because he understood how to use different troop types and to play to their strengths and how to use terrain. So I mean, this is basic military stuff, but he did it really well. So one is his victories against the Romans, for example, is when the Romans are marching along the edge of a lake and their army is strung out in marching formations.
I mean, Hannibal is good because he understood how to use different troop types and to play to their strengths and how to use terrain. So I mean, this is basic military stuff, but he did it really well. So one is his victories against the Romans, for example, is when the Romans are marching along the edge of a lake and their army is strung out in marching formations.
They’re not kind of in combat formation, but they’re strung out along the edge of this lake. It’s misty. There’s not good visibility, and he ambushes them along this lakeside, so Lake Trasimene, and it’s just using the terrain, understanding this. Again, Hannibal is very much outnumbered, but he’s able to use the terrain and to take the enemy by surprise.
At Cannae, he’s working against the expectations. So the traditional thing you do in the ancient world is the two armies would line up on opposite sides of a field, you’d put your best troops in the middle, you’d put your cavalry on the sides, you’d put your lightly armed skirmishers beyond those, and then the two sides kind of smack together, and the good troops fight the good, and you see who wins.
Now, Hannibal is hugely outnumbered by this giant phalanx of heavy infantry, which is what the Romans specialized in. They’re very good at sort of heavily armed foot soldiers. So he knows I don’t want to go up against that. I don’t have that many of that troop type. My guys aren’t as good as the Romans anyway.
So he lines up some of his less good troops in the center against the big menacing Roman phalanx, and he tells them, “Okay, when the Romans come, you’re not really trying to win, just hold them up. Just delay them,” and even tells them you can give ground, so you can retreat and sort of let the line form a big kind of C-shaped crescents, let the Romans sort of advance into you, but just hold that line.
And meanwhile, he puts his cavalry and his good troops on the side, and so on the sides, those good troops defeat the Romans, and then they kind of circle in behind the Romans and attack that big menacing Roman phalanx from the rear where it’s very vulnerable. And so, Hannibal catches the Romans in this sort of giant cauldron just with people closing in from both sides, and they get pressed together. They can’t fight properly, they panic, and they’re all slaughtered.
Heavy infantry vs Cavalry
And that strategy of double envelopment, of sort of going around both sides becomes the model for all kinds of military strategies throughout the rest of history. I mean, the Germans use this in their Blitzkrieg in World War II, a lot of it was kind of that go around the sides and envelop the enemy. On the eastern front, they had a bunch of these cauldron battles where they would go around and try to encircle huge chunks of the Soviet, the Russian army, and do the same thing.
Supposedly even in the Gulf War, it was part of the US strategy for the invasion of Iraq to do this kind double envelopment maneuver. So it’s something that for the rest of military history, has been an inspiration to other armies.
Lex Fridman
Can you speak to maybe, the difference between heavy infantry and cavalry, the usefulness of it in the ancient world?
Can you speak to maybe, the difference between heavy infantry and cavalry, the usefulness of it in the ancient world?
Gregory Aldrete
The ancient world, sort of from the Greeks through the Romans, there’s this consistent line of focusing on heavy infantry. So going back to Greece when they’re fighting, let’s say Persia, which at the time, was the superpower of the ancient world and vastly richer, vastly larger than Ancient Greece, tons more men, but the Persians tended to be archers, tended to be light horsemen tended to be light infantry.
The ancient world, sort of from the Greeks through the Romans, there’s this consistent line of focusing on heavy infantry. So going back to Greece when they’re fighting, let’s say Persia, which at the time, was the superpower of the ancient world and vastly richer, vastly larger than Ancient Greece, tons more men, but the Persians tended to be archers, tended to be light horsemen tended to be light infantry.
Whereas the Greeks specialized in what are called hop lights, which is a kind of infantrymen with very heavy body armor, a helmet, a spear, and a really big heavy shield. And they would get in that formation where you kind of make the shields overlap and just form this solid mass bristling with spear points and just slowly kind of march forward and grind up your enemy in front of you. And so, that’s that sort of block of heavy infantry.
The advantage is head on against other things, they tend to win. The disadvantage is it’s slow moving. It’s vulnerable from the sides and the rear, so you got to protect those, but if you can keep frontally faced, it’s pretty much invincible. And that’s taken even further by Alexander the Great who comes up with the idea, well, what if we even give them a longer spear? So Greek spears were six to eight feet long. Alexander the Great, arms his armies with the sarissa, which is this 15 foot, almost a pike, this extra long spear.
And so, when the spear is that long, you don’t even hardly need the shields anymore. So it’s just this incredibly powerful thing in frontal attack, and that’s what he uses to make himself ruler of the known world. He goes and conquers the Persian Empire and makes himself the Persian king of kings with this phalanx of troops armed with the sarissa. So that’s very powerful.
The Romans go a little bit different route. They have heavy infantry, but they focus more on fighting with short swords, so it’s get up close and kind of stab. And the other thing the Romans do is they focus on flexibility and subdividing their army. So Alexander’s phalanx was a mass of let’s say, 5,000 guys and it was one unit.
The Roman army is organized in an ever decreasing number of subunits. So you have a group of eight guys who are a contubernia, the men who share a tent, you take 10 of those and they form a century of 80 men. You take a bunch of those and you form a cohort. If you forget a bunch of those, you form a legion.
So the Romans are able to subdivide their army, and the big sticking point comes at 197 BC at the Battle of Cynoscephalae, when the Roman Legion goes up against one of the descendants of Alexander the Great, who’s using his military system. So this is the new Roman system with flexibility versus the old invincible Alexander system with the heavily armed sarissa with those long 15-foot poles.
Armor
And the key moment in the battle is where they lock together And in a head-on clash, the Macedonians are going to win, but the Romans have the flexibility to break off a little section of their army, run around to the side, and attack that formation from the side, and they win the battle. So they prove tactically superior because of their flexibility. So it’s always development and counter development in military history.
Lex Fridman
A fascinating, brutal testing, ground of tactics and technology
A fascinating, brutal testing, ground of tactics and technology
Gregory Aldrete
Adaptation, you have to keep adapting.
Adaptation, you have to keep adapting.
Lex Fridman
That’s, I think, the key thing. One of the fascinating things about your work, you study Roman life life in the ancient world, but also the details, like we mentioned, you are an expert in armor. So what kind of, maybe you could speak to weapons and most importantly, armor that were used by the Romans or by people in the ancient world.
That’s, I think, the key thing. One of the fascinating things about your work, you study Roman life life in the ancient world, but also the details, like we mentioned, you are an expert in armor. So what kind of, maybe you could speak to weapons and most importantly, armor that were used by the Romans or by people in the ancient world.
Gregory Aldrete
I do military history. So I mean, the Romans specialized in, I mean, early on they have pretty random armor, and it’s not standardized. I mean, remember, there’s no factories in the ancient world, so nobody’s cranking out 10,000 units of exactly the same armor. Each one is handmade. Now, there can be a degree of standardization, even as early as Alexander, there was a certain amount of standardization, but each one is still handmade, and that’s important to keep in mind, each weapon, each piece of armor.
I do military history. So I mean, the Romans specialized in, I mean, early on they have pretty random armor, and it’s not standardized. I mean, remember, there’s no factories in the ancient world, so nobody’s cranking out 10,000 units of exactly the same armor. Each one is handmade. Now, there can be a degree of standardization, even as early as Alexander, there was a certain amount of standardization, but each one is still handmade, and that’s important to keep in mind, each weapon, each piece of armor.
Armor develops over time to fit the tactics. So the Greek hoplites, are very heavy armor. The Roman infantrymen early in the public is lighter. Eventually they get this typical sort of chain mail shirt, helmet shield, the classic sort of Roman legionary, I would say, is the one of the first and second centuries AD, so the early Roman Empire, and this is the guy who wore bands of steel arranged in sort of bands around their body. So it looks almost like a lobster’s shell, right? And this is a thing called the lorica segmentata.
So it’s solid steel, which is very good protection, but it’s flexible because it has these individual bands that provide a lot of movement. And then, you have a helmet, you have a square shield that’s kind of curved, and you have the short sword, the Roman gladius and that’s the classic Roman legionary. Later, more things develop.
My personal relationship with armor is I got, really by accident, involved in this project to try to reconstruct this mysterious type of armor that was used, especially by the Greeks and Alexander the Great called the linothorax, which apparently was made only out of linen and glue. So this seems a little odd that that’s not the sort of material once you want metal or something, but we had clear literary references that people, including Alexander, and the most famous image of Alexander is this Alexander mosaic found at Pompeii that shows him wearing one of these funny types of armor.
The catch is none survived. It’s organic materials. So we don’t have any of them and archaeologists like to study things that survive. So we have nice typologies of Greek armor made of bronze, Roman armor made of steel or sort of proto steel, but this thing, this linothorax was a mystery. And one of my undergraduate students, a guy named Scott Bartel, had a real, well, an Alexander obsession. He really loved Alexander.
Lex Fridman
As one should.
As one should.
Gregory Aldrete
He had Alexandros tattooed on his arm in Greek, and he was a smart student. He was really smart. And so, he, one summer, made himself an imitation of this thing of Alexander just for fun. And he said, “Can you give me some articles so I could do a better job?” So he used some scholarly articles about this armor, and with typical academic arrogance, I said, “Why, Scott, of course I will. I’ll give you some references,” and I went and looked and there weren’t any. So at that point, I was like, “Huh, tell you what, why don’t you and I look into this and try to do a reconstruction using only the materials they would’ve had in the ancient world?” And little did I know at the time, I thought, maybe I’ll get an article out of this, I mean, it ended up being a tenure project involving 150 students, a couple dozen other faculty members, and having three documentaries made out of it. And Scott and I ended up writing a scholarly book on this. So this is how, you never know where your next project’s going to come from.
He had Alexandros tattooed on his arm in Greek, and he was a smart student. He was really smart. And so, he, one summer, made himself an imitation of this thing of Alexander just for fun. And he said, “Can you give me some articles so I could do a better job?” So he used some scholarly articles about this armor, and with typical academic arrogance, I said, “Why, Scott, of course I will. I’ll give you some references,” and I went and looked and there weren’t any. So at that point, I was like, “Huh, tell you what, why don’t you and I look into this and try to do a reconstruction using only the materials they would’ve had in the ancient world?” And little did I know at the time, I thought, maybe I’ll get an article out of this, I mean, it ended up being a tenure project involving 150 students, a couple dozen other faculty members, and having three documentaries made out of it. And Scott and I ended up writing a scholarly book on this. So this is how, you never know where your next project’s going to come from.
So it started with this undergraduate turned into this huge thing, but it’s what we did. We first said, “All right, what are all the sources for this armor?” And in the end, we found 65 accounts of it in ancient literature by 40 different authors. So we have literary descriptions, and then we looked at ancient art, and we were able to identify about a thousand images in ancient art, in vase paintings, pottery, bronze sculpture, tomb paintings, all these different things showing this armor.
And then, using those two things, we tried to backwards engineer a pattern to say, “Well, if this is what the end product look like, what does it have to look like when you make it?” And then we tried to reconstruct one of these things using only the glue and materials. So we had to use animal glues, rabbit glue. We had to end up sort of making our own linen, which comes from the flax plant. So we had to grow flax, harvest it, using only techniques in the ancient world, so modern flax goes through chemical processes. No, we had to do this the old-fashioned way, spin it into thread, so the thread into fabric, glue it all together.
And then, the fun part was once we made these things, we subjected them to ballistics testing. So we shot them with arrows, which again were wooden reconstruction arrows, using bronze arrowheads that were based on arrowheads found on ancient battlefields to determine how good protection would this thing have been. And of course, the kind of fun one that everyone always likes and that the documentaries always want is at one point they’re like, “Well, can you put Scott in one of these and shoot him?” And we’re like, “Okay.” I mean, at that point, we’ve done about a thousand test shots. I grew up shooting bows and arrows. I knew exactly how far that was going to go. So it’s one of these, don’t do this at home kids.
Lex Fridman
So there’s a million questions to ask here, but in general, how well, in terms of ballistics, does it work? Can it withstand arrows or direct strikes from swords and axes and stuff like that?
So there’s a million questions to ask here, but in general, how well, in terms of ballistics, does it work? Can it withstand arrows or direct strikes from swords and axes and stuff like that?
Gregory Aldrete
Bottom line is a one centimeter thick linothorax, laminated, or even sewn. It doesn’t have to be laminated. Layer of linen is about as good protection as two millimeters of bronze, which was the thickest, comparable, body armor of bronze at the time. And we’re talking fourth century, fifth century BC here, so classical and Hellenistic Greece, and that would’ve protected you from, let’s say, random arrow strikes on the battlefield. So you could have gotten hit by arrows and they simply wouldn’t have gone through.
Bottom line is a one centimeter thick linothorax, laminated, or even sewn. It doesn’t have to be laminated. Layer of linen is about as good protection as two millimeters of bronze, which was the thickest, comparable, body armor of bronze at the time. And we’re talking fourth century, fifth century BC here, so classical and Hellenistic Greece, and that would’ve protected you from, let’s say, random arrow strikes on the battlefield. So you could have gotten hit by arrows and they simply wouldn’t have gone through.
Lex Fridman
What are the benefits? Is there a major weight difference?
What are the benefits? Is there a major weight difference?
Gregory Aldrete
Yes. So the benefits of this are, it’s much lighter than metal armor. So the linothorax is about 11 pounds. A bronze cuirass of comparable protection would’ve been about 24 to 6 pounds. The chain mail shirt would be about 28, 27 pounds. It’s cooler. I mean, the Mediterranean is a hot place with the hot sun. Even today, a linen shirt is something you wear when you want to be cool. So it’s much lighter, that gives your troops greater endurance on the battlefield. They can run farther, fight longer. It’s cheaper. You don’t need a blacksmith who’s a specialist to make it.
Yes. So the benefits of this are, it’s much lighter than metal armor. So the linothorax is about 11 pounds. A bronze cuirass of comparable protection would’ve been about 24 to 6 pounds. The chain mail shirt would be about 28, 27 pounds. It’s cooler. I mean, the Mediterranean is a hot place with the hot sun. Even today, a linen shirt is something you wear when you want to be cool. So it’s much lighter, that gives your troops greater endurance on the battlefield. They can run farther, fight longer. It’s cheaper. You don’t need a blacksmith who’s a specialist to make it.
In fact, probably, this is interesting, any woman in the ancient world could have made one of these because they were the ones who spun thread and sewed it into fabric. So I can easily see in a household a mother making this for her son, a wife making it for her husband. So it’s a form of armor you could have made domestically that would’ve been maybe not the greatest armor, but pretty good, pretty comparable to bronze armor.
Lex Fridman
And it’s amazing that you used all the materials they had at the time and none of the modern techniques, but I should probably say, maybe you can speak to that, they were probably much better at doing that than you are, right? Because again, generational, it’s a skill. It’s a skill that probably has practiced across decades, across centuries [inaudible 00:55:32].
And it’s amazing that you used all the materials they had at the time and none of the modern techniques, but I should probably say, maybe you can speak to that, they were probably much better at doing that than you are, right? Because again, generational, it’s a skill. It’s a skill that probably has practiced across decades, across centuries [inaudible 00:55:32].
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, in terms of producing the fabric, I’m sure they could do it 10 times faster than we could just, that’s a speed thing, but it’s still incredibly labor-intensive where I think there’s a big difference between our reconstruction and ancient ones is in the glue. So we ended up using a kind of least common denominator glue. We used rabbit glue because it would’ve been available anywhere and it’s cheap.
I mean, in terms of producing the fabric, I’m sure they could do it 10 times faster than we could just, that’s a speed thing, but it’s still incredibly labor-intensive where I think there’s a big difference between our reconstruction and ancient ones is in the glue. So we ended up using a kind of least common denominator glue. We used rabbit glue because it would’ve been available anywhere and it’s cheap.
But in the ancient world, they did have basically the equivalent of super glues. I mean, we found, for example, a helmets that were fished out river in Germany that had metal parts glued together that after 2,000 years of immersion and water were still glued together. So they had some great glues. We just don’t know what the recipes for them were. So we went the opposite tack and said, “Well, we’re just going to make something that we know they could have made.” So it was at least this good, you know what I’m saying?
Lex Fridman
But actually, this is a materials thing, but I think glue, aside from helping glue things together, it can also be a thing that serves as armor. So if you glue things correctly, the way it permeates the material that is gluing, can strengthen the material…
But actually, this is a materials thing, but I think glue, aside from helping glue things together, it can also be a thing that serves as armor. So if you glue things correctly, the way it permeates the material that is gluing, can strengthen the material…
Gregory Aldrete
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
… the integrity of the material. That’s an art and the size probably that they understood deeply.
… the integrity of the material. That’s an art and the size probably that they understood deeply.
Gregory Aldrete
The process of lamination did add something. So there’s actually a huge debate among scholars and actually a sort of amateur archeologist that was this linothorax thing glued together or was it simply sewn together? Was it composite, partially linen, partially leather, or other materials? And my honest answer is I think it’s all of the above, because again, every piece of armor in the ancient world was an individual creation.
The process of lamination did add something. So there’s actually a huge debate among scholars and actually a sort of amateur archeologist that was this linothorax thing glued together or was it simply sewn together? Was it composite, partially linen, partially leather, or other materials? And my honest answer is I think it’s all of the above, because again, every piece of armor in the ancient world was an individual creation.
So I think if you had some spare leather, you put that in. If you wanted to make one that was just sewn together, or even quilted stuffed with stuff you do that, maybe you were good at gluing stuff, you use that. So I think there’s no one answer. We investigated one possibility because we just had limited time and money and resources, but I think all these other things existed at the same time and we’re variants of it.
Lex Fridman
Just as a small aside, I just think this is a fascinating journey you went on. I love it. Sort of answering really important questions about, in this case, armor about military equipment and technology that archeologists can’t answer by using all the literary, so all the sources you can to understand what it looked like, what were the materials, using the materials at the time, and actually doing ballistic testing. It’s really cool. It’s really cool that you see that there’s a hole in the literature and nobody studied it, and going hard and doing it the right way to sort of uncover this. I don’t know, I think it’s an amazing mystery about the ancient world.
Just as a small aside, I just think this is a fascinating journey you went on. I love it. Sort of answering really important questions about, in this case, armor about military equipment and technology that archeologists can’t answer by using all the literary, so all the sources you can to understand what it looked like, what were the materials, using the materials at the time, and actually doing ballistic testing. It’s really cool. It’s really cool that you see that there’s a hole in the literature and nobody studied it, and going hard and doing it the right way to sort of uncover this. I don’t know, I think it’s an amazing mystery about the ancient world.
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, shifting from just sort of Roman history in general to my research that I’ve done as a scholar, the theme that runs throughout my scholarship is practical stuff. I’m interested, how did this actually work in the ancient world? So there’s people who are much more theoretical, who look at the symbolic meaning of something. I’m simpler. I just want to know how did this work? So almost all of my books that I’ve written, have started with some just how did something work, and I’m trying to just figure out that aspect of it, and that’s just, maybe it’s a personality thing.
I mean, shifting from just sort of Roman history in general to my research that I’ve done as a scholar, the theme that runs throughout my scholarship is practical stuff. I’m interested, how did this actually work in the ancient world? So there’s people who are much more theoretical, who look at the symbolic meaning of something. I’m simpler. I just want to know how did this work? So almost all of my books that I’ve written, have started with some just how did something work, and I’m trying to just figure out that aspect of it, and that’s just, maybe it’s a personality thing.
I also have a sciency background, so I think I’ve used a lot of that. Even though I’m a humanist and a historian, I’ve used a lot of hard science in my work. I did a book on floods where I had to get really heavy into vectors of disease and hydraulics and engineering and all that stuff, and I think, again, having that sort of hard science combined with a humanist background, helps with those sorts of projects.
Lex Fridman
Well, like you said, I think the details help you understand deeply the big picture of history. And I mean, Alexander the Great wore this thing.
Well, like you said, I think the details help you understand deeply the big picture of history. And I mean, Alexander the Great wore this thing.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
This is-
This is-
Gregory Aldrete
And I should say by the way, it does drop out of use around Roman times. And I think what’s going on there is technology that with bronze, it’s hard to keep a sharp edge on things, but once you get into metals, which approximate steel, you can get sharper, and a key factor to penetrating fabric is the edge on the arrowhead.
And I should say by the way, it does drop out of use around Roman times. And I think what’s going on there is technology that with bronze, it’s hard to keep a sharp edge on things, but once you get into metals, which approximate steel, you can get sharper, and a key factor to penetrating fabric is the edge on the arrowhead.
So as soon as you start to get something more like a razor edge, it’s going to go through it more easily. Also, there’s changes in the bows that are being used. You start to get eastern horse archers showing up with composite bows, which are much more powerful. And so, it just becomes outdated as frontline military equipment. What’s interesting is by the Roman period, people are still wearing it, but it’s now things like when I go hunting, if I’m hunting lions, I wear this. There’s an actual source that says, “It’s really good for hunting dangerous big cats because it catches their teeth and stops them from penetrating. One emperor wears one of these under his toga. It’s kind of like a, not bulletproof vest, but stab proof vest. So again…
Alexander the Great
Lex Fridman
Awesome.
Awesome.
Gregory Aldrete
… it’s not to fight in the frontline of legions, but it’ll protect him from somebody trying to assassinate him. So it still has those uses where you’re not up against top line military equipment
… it’s not to fight in the frontline of legions, but it’ll protect him from somebody trying to assassinate him. So it still has those uses where you’re not up against top line military equipment
Lex Fridman
To honor aforementioned undergraduate student who loves Alexander the Great, we must absolutely talk about Alexander the Great for a little bit. Why was he successful, do you think, as a conqueror, probably one of the greatest conquerors in the history of humanity?
To honor aforementioned undergraduate student who loves Alexander the Great, we must absolutely talk about Alexander the Great for a little bit. Why was he successful, do you think, as a conqueror, probably one of the greatest conquerors in the history of humanity?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, and I mean, that is then he one of the greatest heroes or one of the greatest villains in humanity, too. It’s like Julius Caesar. He’s famous for conquering Gaul. Well, about a million people were killed and a million enslaved in that. So does it make him a horrible person or one of our heroes?
Yeah, and I mean, that is then he one of the greatest heroes or one of the greatest villains in humanity, too. It’s like Julius Caesar. He’s famous for conquering Gaul. Well, about a million people were killed and a million enslaved in that. So does it make him a horrible person or one of our heroes?
But Alexander is a combination of two things, one is he really just was a skilled individual, and he was one of those guys who had it all. He was smart, he was athletic, and he was supremely charismatic. I mean, it’s obviously one of these people that would walk into a room and everyone just kind of gravitates to him. He had that magic that made him an effective leader.
And secondly, he was lucky because it wasn’t all him. He inherited a system created by his father, Philip II. So he was in the right time at the right place and had this instrument placed in his hands, and then he had the intelligence and the charisma to go use it. So it’s one of these coming together of different things, but often his father’s contribution, I think, is not recognized as much as it is.
It’s his father who reformed the Macedonian army, who came up with that system of equipping them with the sarissa, this extra long spear that made them really effective, created the mixed army. So one of the keys to Alexander’s successes, in a tactical sense, is that his army was composed of different elements: heavy cavalry, light cavalry, heavy infantry, light infantry, missile troops, and he understand that he can use these in different and flexible ways on the battlefield; whereas a lot of warfare before then had just been, you line up, two sides smashed together.
So he did clever things with this army that was a better tool than others did. And then, he was just supremely ambitious. I mean, he cared about his fame, which I guess his ego, but he clearly cared about that more than he did about things like money. He was indifferent to that, and he did have a grand vision. So he did have this vision of trying to unite the world, both politically under his control, but also culturally, and this is an interesting thing.
So he was very open, in fact, insistent of trying to meld together the best elements of all the different cultures. So he, himself, was a Macedonian, but he admired Greek culture. So he pretty much adopted Greek culture as his own. When he conquers Persia, he starts adapting elements of Persian culture. He dresses in Persian clothing. He marries a Persian woman. He sort of forces thousands of his troops to marry local women. He appoints Persians to positions of power. He integrates Persian units into his military. He really wanted to fuse all these things together. And some people see this as a very enlightened vision that, “Oh, he’s not just, I want to conquer people and now they’re my slaves,” that he was really trying to create this one culture that was sort of the best of everything. Others see it, of course, as a form of cultural imperialism. You’re destroying other cultures and trying to warp or twist them into something, but what I think is interesting is that this vision he had of uniting cultures creates very problematic tensions among his own followers because the-
Gregory Aldrete
Tensions among his own followers, because the Macedonians, his original troops, did not like this on the whole. They wanted the old model where we conquer you, you’re our slaves. We don’t want to share stuff with you. We don’t want you joining us in the army. We don’t want you appointed to positions of power. We are your conquerors and that’s it. And so, Alexander had to deal with a lot of friction from his own oldest, most loyal elements at the way he was being in their eyes, too generous to the conquered.
Tensions among his own followers, because the Macedonians, his original troops, did not like this on the whole. They wanted the old model where we conquer you, you’re our slaves. We don’t want to share stuff with you. We don’t want you joining us in the army. We don’t want you appointed to positions of power. We are your conquerors and that’s it. And so, Alexander had to deal with a lot of friction from his own oldest, most loyal elements at the way he was being in their eyes, too generous to the conquered.
So Alexander is one of these interesting personalities because every generation sees him in a new light and focuses on different things. So for some, he’s this enlightened visionary who was taught by Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, and they say, “Well, this influenced him.” Others see him as an egomaniacal warmonger, just I’m out to kill and gain glory. There was a book a couple of decades ago, it says, “Oh, he’s just an alcoholic,” which he probably was. Yeah. So you get all these competing images, and the great thing is, we don’t really know what the true Alexander was or what his motivations were. It’s a mixed message.
Lex Fridman
Why do you think the Roman Empire lasted while the Greek Empire as the Alexander expanded, did not?
Why do you think the Roman Empire lasted while the Greek Empire as the Alexander expanded, did not?
Gregory Aldrete
That’s a clear answer. So Alexander’s Empire fragmented the moment he died. And so his empire was all about personal loyalty. It was his charisma holding it together, his personality. And he completely failed to create a structure so that it would continue after his death. And of course, he died young. He didn’t think he would die when he did, but still, you should put something in place.
That’s a clear answer. So Alexander’s Empire fragmented the moment he died. And so his empire was all about personal loyalty. It was his charisma holding it together, his personality. And he completely failed to create a structure so that it would continue after his death. And of course, he died young. He didn’t think he would die when he did, but still, you should put something in place.
So his was a flash in the pan. It was, he had this spectacular conquest in 10 years. He conquered what was then most of the known world, but he had no permanent structure in place. He didn’t really deal with the issue of succession. It fell apart instantly. The Romans are much more about building a structure. I mean, as we talked about a little, they were very good about incorporating the people they conquered into the Roman project. I mean, they’re oppressive, they’re imperialistic as well. Let’s not whitewash them. I mean, they had moments when they would just wipe out entire cities. But on the whole, they were much more about trying to bring people into the Roman world. And I think that was one of their strengths, is that they were open to integration and bringing in different people to keep rejuvenating themselves.
Roman law
Lex Fridman
One of the most influential developments from the Roman Republic was their legal system. And as you mentioned, it’s one of the things that still lasted to this day in many of its elements. So it started with the Twelve Tables in 451 BC. Can you just speak to this legal system and the Twelve Tables?
One of the most influential developments from the Roman Republic was their legal system. And as you mentioned, it’s one of the things that still lasted to this day in many of its elements. So it started with the Twelve Tables in 451 BC. Can you just speak to this legal system and the Twelve Tables?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. I mean, Roman law is one of their most significant, maybe the most significant legacy they have on the modern world. So I mean, just to start at that end of it, something like 90% of the world uses a legal system, which is either directly or indirectly derived from the Roman one. So even countries that you wouldn’t think are really using Roman law, kind of are, because all the terminology, all that comes from Roman law. And the Romans, their first law code was this thing, the Twelve Tables. So this is way back in the middle republic and it was a typical early law code. So most of the stuff it concerns are agricultural concerns. So if I have a tree and its fruit drops onto your property, who owns the fruit? If my cow wanders into your field and eats your grain, am I responsible? I mean, I love these early law codes that are all about this farmer problems.
Yeah. I mean, Roman law is one of their most significant, maybe the most significant legacy they have on the modern world. So I mean, just to start at that end of it, something like 90% of the world uses a legal system, which is either directly or indirectly derived from the Roman one. So even countries that you wouldn’t think are really using Roman law, kind of are, because all the terminology, all that comes from Roman law. And the Romans, their first law code was this thing, the Twelve Tables. So this is way back in the middle republic and it was a typical early law code. So most of the stuff it concerns are agricultural concerns. So if I have a tree and its fruit drops onto your property, who owns the fruit? If my cow wanders into your field and eats your grain, am I responsible? I mean, I love these early law codes that are all about this farmer problems.
But law codes are hugely important because you need a law code to enable people to live in groups. So they’re the transitional thing that lets human beings live together without just resorting to anarchy. And most of the early law codes are agricultural, like Hammurabi’s Code in Mesopotamia. Most of them are retaliatory, meaning eye for an eye type justice. So you do something to me, it gets done to you. But they’re this necessary precondition for civilization, I would say, and the Twelve Tables is that. It’s a crude law code. It has a lot of goofy stuff in it. It has things about if you use magic, this is the punishment, but it’s that basic agrarian society law code. Now, that’s typical in many societies. Where the Romans are different is, they keep going. They keep developing their law code. And by the late republic, the Romans just get really into legal stuff.
I don’t know why, but the Romans are very methodical organized people. So maybe this has something to do with it. But their law code just keeps getting more and more complicated and keeps expanding to different areas. And they start to get jurists who write sort of theoretical things about Roman law. And eventually, it becomes this huge body both of cases and comments on those cases and of actual laws. And in the 6th century AD, so the 500s, the Roman Emperor, Justinian, who is an emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire by this point, the Byzantine Empire, compiles all this together into something that today, we just loosely called Justinian’s Code of Roman law, and that survives. And so that becomes the basis for almost all the legal systems around the world and it’s very complicated. And Roman law, I think is really fun. Because on the one hand, it’s really dry, but it also preserves these wonderful little vignettes of daily life. So you get these great, just entertaining law cases.
One of my favorite, and this may not even be a real case, this might be a hypothetical that they would use to train Romans or law students, is one day, a man sends a slave to the barber to get a shave. And the barber shop is adjacent to an athletic field and two guys are on the athletic field throwing a ball back and forth. And one of them throws the ball badly, the other guy fails to catch it. The ball flies into the barber shop, hits the hand of the barber, cuts the slave’s throat, he dies. Who’s liable under Roman law? Is it the athlete one who threw the ball badly? Is it athlete two who failed to catch it? Is it the barber who actually cut the slave’s throat? Is it the owner of the slave for being stupid enough to send his slave to get a shave in a place adjacent to a playing field? Or is it the Roman state rezoning a barber shop next to an athletic field? What do you think?
Lex Fridman
Well, do they resolve the complexity of that with the right answer?
Well, do they resolve the complexity of that with the right answer?
Gregory Aldrete
We don’t have the answer.
We don’t have the answer.
Lex Fridman
We don’t have the answer.
We don’t have the answer.
Gregory Aldrete
It’s a case without the answer. We have various jurists commenting on this one, but we don’t have what was actually ruled. But it’s just a great little sort of vignette. And that’s how complicated Roman law got, that it was dealing with these weird, esoteric questions. There’s another one where a cow gets loose and runs into an apartment building, goes up onto the roof and crashes down three stories into a bar on the ground floor, and kicks open the taps to the wine jug and all the wine flows out. Who’s at fault? I mean, this seems to have happened, as crazy as it sounds. And Roman testamentary law is great. I mean, something like 20% of Roman law has to do with wills and what you do with the will and what makes a will valid. You have to have seven witnesses and you have to have a guy named, the liber [inaudible 01:11:31] to witness it, and the witnesses have to be adult men who can’t be blind and all this other stuff.
It’s a case without the answer. We have various jurists commenting on this one, but we don’t have what was actually ruled. But it’s just a great little sort of vignette. And that’s how complicated Roman law got, that it was dealing with these weird, esoteric questions. There’s another one where a cow gets loose and runs into an apartment building, goes up onto the roof and crashes down three stories into a bar on the ground floor, and kicks open the taps to the wine jug and all the wine flows out. Who’s at fault? I mean, this seems to have happened, as crazy as it sounds. And Roman testamentary law is great. I mean, something like 20% of Roman law has to do with wills and what you do with the will and what makes a will valid. You have to have seven witnesses and you have to have a guy named, the liber [inaudible 01:11:31] to witness it, and the witnesses have to be adult men who can’t be blind and all this other stuff.
So it’s just great. It’s fun to mess around in this, but it always contains these little nuggets about what happens. I mentioned I wrote a book on floods. And there were all these law cases about if a flood strikes the city and picks up my piece of furniture in my apartment building and carries it out the door and deposits it in another apartment building, does that guy now own my furniture because it’s now legally within his apartment? Or can I go in there and repossess it because the flood took it out of my apartment? This is the stuff law is handled and that’s how sophisticated Roman law got.
Lex Fridman
Did corrupt, unfair things seep into the law?
Did corrupt, unfair things seep into the law?
Gregory Aldrete
Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s biased in favor of the wealthy, obviously. And I mean, Roman law cases are interesting because they became linked to politics. So one of the way that politicians, up and coming politicians, aspiring politicians could sort of make their name or become famous was by either prosecuting or defending people in Roman law courts. And especially during the late Roman Republic, you get a lot of really sensational, what today we’d call celebrity law cases. So this is where some of the biggest politicians were accused of very melodramatic kinds of things. And I mean, the most famous Roman order of all time, Cicero, is a guy who made his entire career in the law courts. And that’s how he made his reputation, was able to parlay that into political power and eventually was elected to the highest office in the Roman government. But it’s purely because of his skill, his facility, using words at giving speeches in public.
Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s biased in favor of the wealthy, obviously. And I mean, Roman law cases are interesting because they became linked to politics. So one of the way that politicians, up and coming politicians, aspiring politicians could sort of make their name or become famous was by either prosecuting or defending people in Roman law courts. And especially during the late Roman Republic, you get a lot of really sensational, what today we’d call celebrity law cases. So this is where some of the biggest politicians were accused of very melodramatic kinds of things. And I mean, the most famous Roman order of all time, Cicero, is a guy who made his entire career in the law courts. And that’s how he made his reputation, was able to parlay that into political power and eventually was elected to the highest office in the Roman government. But it’s purely because of his skill, his facility, using words at giving speeches in public.
Lex Fridman
So they loved the puzzle and the game of law, the sort of untangling really complicated legal situations and coming up with new laws that help you tangle and untangle the situations.
So they loved the puzzle and the game of law, the sort of untangling really complicated legal situations and coming up with new laws that help you tangle and untangle the situations.
Gregory Aldrete
Yes. And law cases, again, especially in the late republic, also became a form of public spectacle.
Yes. And law cases, again, especially in the late republic, also became a form of public spectacle.
Lex Fridman
Right.
Right.
Gregory Aldrete
So Rome did not have law courts in a building locked away. A lot of these cases were held in the Roman Forum in the open, and audiences would just come to be entertained. And the people presenting the speeches, they were playing as much to this audience as they were to let’s say, the jury or a judge. And that became a big part of the cases. So that’s all tied up in the Roman orator too.
So Rome did not have law courts in a building locked away. A lot of these cases were held in the Roman Forum in the open, and audiences would just come to be entertained. And the people presenting the speeches, they were playing as much to this audience as they were to let’s say, the jury or a judge. And that became a big part of the cases. So that’s all tied up in the Roman orator too.
Lex Fridman
So we’re talking a bit about the details of the laws. Is there some big picture laws that are new innovations or profound things like all Roman citizens are equal before the law, founding fathers type in the United States, in the western world, these big legal ideas?
So we’re talking a bit about the details of the laws. Is there some big picture laws that are new innovations or profound things like all Roman citizens are equal before the law, founding fathers type in the United States, in the western world, these big legal ideas?
Gregory Aldrete
I think maybe one of the things that was really stressed in Roman law early on, even as early as the Twelve Tables, is the notion of Roman citizenship. So if you were a Roman citizen, it came with a set of both privileges and obligations. So the obligations where you’re supposed to fight in the Army, you were supposed to vote in elections. The privileges were, you had the protection of Roman law. And at least in theory, if not in practice, everybody was equal under that law. Now of course, keep in mind, we’re talking about men here. And even at the height of the Roman Empire, so let’s say second century AD, there were about 50 million human beings living within the boundaries of the Roman Empire, maybe 6 million were actual citizens. So we tend to go, “Oh, it’s so great. If you’re a citizen, you have all these things.”
I think maybe one of the things that was really stressed in Roman law early on, even as early as the Twelve Tables, is the notion of Roman citizenship. So if you were a Roman citizen, it came with a set of both privileges and obligations. So the obligations where you’re supposed to fight in the Army, you were supposed to vote in elections. The privileges were, you had the protection of Roman law. And at least in theory, if not in practice, everybody was equal under that law. Now of course, keep in mind, we’re talking about men here. And even at the height of the Roman Empire, so let’s say second century AD, there were about 50 million human beings living within the boundaries of the Roman Empire, maybe 6 million were actual citizens. So we tend to go, “Oh, it’s so great. If you’re a citizen, you have all these things.”
Well, adult free men who are not slaves, who are not resident foreigners, they have this great stuff. And that’s always a tiny minority of all the human beings who existed in this society. But still, the notion, the notion of citizenship is huge. And citizens, for example, early on, you had to be tried at Rome if you were accused of something. And there’s this very famous moment in Sicily where an abusive governor who’s corrupt is punishing a citizen arbitrarily. And this person cries out, “Civis Romanus Sum,” meaning, “I am a Roman citizen.” And it really was this hugely loaded statement that that gives me protections. It is wrong for you to do this to me. It’s wrong for you to beat me because I am a citizen and that gives me certain protections. So that notion of citizenship is something that I think, the Romans really emphasize and becomes a legacy to a lot of civilizations today, where citizenship means something. It’s a special status.
Slavery
Lex Fridman
So you mentioned slaves, slavery, that’s something that is common throughout human history. What do we know about their relationship with slavery?
So you mentioned slaves, slavery, that’s something that is common throughout human history. What do we know about their relationship with slavery?
Gregory Aldrete
Well, Roman slavery, a couple of just reminders at the beginning, first of all, it’s not racial slavery. So for people in the United States, you tend to think of slavery through this racial lens. So slaves in ancient Roman society could be any color, ethnicity, gender, origin, whatever. It’s an economic status. Now, having said that, slavery is fundamentally horrific to human dignity because it is defining a human being as an object. And very famously, a Roman agricultural writer who’s writing about farms, just as a kind of side says, “On your farm, you have three types of tools. You have dumb tools.” And by dummy, means can’t speak. So that’s like shovels, picks, things like this, wagons. “You have articulate tools which are animals, and you have articulate tools which are human beings, slaves.” And for him, these are all just categories of tools. It’s so intensely dehumanizing to view people in that way.
Well, Roman slavery, a couple of just reminders at the beginning, first of all, it’s not racial slavery. So for people in the United States, you tend to think of slavery through this racial lens. So slaves in ancient Roman society could be any color, ethnicity, gender, origin, whatever. It’s an economic status. Now, having said that, slavery is fundamentally horrific to human dignity because it is defining a human being as an object. And very famously, a Roman agricultural writer who’s writing about farms, just as a kind of side says, “On your farm, you have three types of tools. You have dumb tools.” And by dummy, means can’t speak. So that’s like shovels, picks, things like this, wagons. “You have articulate tools which are animals, and you have articulate tools which are human beings, slaves.” And for him, these are all just categories of tools. It’s so intensely dehumanizing to view people in that way.
So Roman slavery is odd in that it doesn’t have this racial component. It’s horrible in the way all slavery is horrible, but the other thing about is it’s not a hard line. It’s a permeable membrane, and many people move back and forth across it. So you have many people in the Roman world who were born a slave who gained their freedom through one means or another. And you have many others who were born free and become slaves. And you have some who go back and forth. There’s a great Roman tombstone of this guy who says, “I was born a free man in Parthia. I was enslaved. Then I gained my freedom and I became a teacher or something, and I had a life, and now I’m a Roman citizen.” So it’s this whole back and forth across all these boundaries multiple times.
Lex Fridman
Oh, so there’s probably a process like an economic transaction.
Oh, so there’s probably a process like an economic transaction.
Gregory Aldrete
The most common source of slaves in the Roman world was war. So wherever the Roman army went, in its wake would be literally a train of slave traders. So you’re in war, you capture an enemy city, you whack the people over the head, and you turn around if you’re a soldier and you sell them to one of these slave traders that’s following the army around, literally. So that’s probably the biggest source of slaves. Another big source is just children of slaves or slaves. And some people could literally sell either themselves or their children into slavery due to economic necessity, or privation or something. So as terrible as that sounds, a father could sell a child if he needed money.
The most common source of slaves in the Roman world was war. So wherever the Roman army went, in its wake would be literally a train of slave traders. So you’re in war, you capture an enemy city, you whack the people over the head, and you turn around if you’re a soldier and you sell them to one of these slave traders that’s following the army around, literally. So that’s probably the biggest source of slaves. Another big source is just children of slaves or slaves. And some people could literally sell either themselves or their children into slavery due to economic necessity, or privation or something. So as terrible as that sounds, a father could sell a child if he needed money.
Once you were a slave though, the experience of slavery varied a lot because a lot of the slaves were agricultural slaves. So they would work like in the American South, big plantations. They might be chained. They were probably abused. That’s very similar to slavers as we think of it in let’s say, the Caribbean, South America or the United States prior to the Civil War, that kind of slavery. But a lot of Roman slaves were also some of the more skilled people. And this seems a little weird. So if you’re a rich person, you have slaves, it’s actually a good investment for you to train your slaves in a profession. So a lot of Roman doctors, scribes, accountants, sort of, all this sort of thing, barbers, were slaves. Because if you train this person, and then they produce a lot of money for you, you get that money.
And those slaves would sometimes be given an incentive to work hard where they could… And this is just sort of an agreement between the master and the slave. If they earned a certain amount of money, X amount of money, they could then buy their own freedom from the master. So this was your incentive to work harder if you were trained let’s say, as a doctor. “I work really hard, I can buy myself out of slavery.” Or a lot of masters would free their slaves in their wills.
So when they died, they would say, “I manumit this slave and that slave.” So it was a weird institution in that elements were just as horrible as what we think of as slavery and just as exploitative. And like I say, the overall notion of slavery is intensely dehumanizing, but yet, there was this wide range of types of slaves. And the odd thing is, in the city of Rome, many of the worst jobs, so if you’re just a laborer hauling crap around at the docks or things like that, you might well be a free person and a slave would hold a skilled job. And that seems a little strange or counterintuitive to us, but you see how in the Roman economy it sort of works.
Lex Fridman
And that could be one of the things that would be surprising to us coming from the modern day to the ancient world, is just the number of slaves. So you mentioned one of the things we don’t think about is that most of the people are farmers. And then the other thing is just the number of slaves.
And that could be one of the things that would be surprising to us coming from the modern day to the ancient world, is just the number of slaves. So you mentioned one of the things we don’t think about is that most of the people are farmers. And then the other thing is just the number of slaves.
Gregory Aldrete
And there’s a big debate. How many slaves were there? What percentage of the populace, let’s say in the city of Rome, were slaves? And this is something historians like to argue about a lot. And we keep coming back to this theme of sometimes it’s the little things that illustrate stuff well. And for slaves, the one that always gets me is some slaves, and these would be sort of the more abused slaves, they would literally put little bronze collars on them with a tag that said, “Hi, my name is Felix. I’m the slave of so-and-so. I’ve run away. If you catch me, return me to the temple of so-and-so, and you’ll get a reward.”
And there’s a big debate. How many slaves were there? What percentage of the populace, let’s say in the city of Rome, were slaves? And this is something historians like to argue about a lot. And we keep coming back to this theme of sometimes it’s the little things that illustrate stuff well. And for slaves, the one that always gets me is some slaves, and these would be sort of the more abused slaves, they would literally put little bronze collars on them with a tag that said, “Hi, my name is Felix. I’m the slave of so-and-so. I’ve run away. If you catch me, return me to the temple of so-and-so, and you’ll get a reward.”
So it’s a dog tag, except this is a human being. And you can see these in museums. I mean, you can go to a museum today and see this little bronze collar with a tag on it that’s talking about a human being as if they’re this kind of animal that’s run away. And this is very telling too. We’re talking about Roman law. Under Roman law, technically, when a slave runs away, the crime that he’s committing is theft because he’s stolen himself from his master. So again, it’s this very dehumanizing view of it.
Lex Fridman
And just a reminder to people in America thinking about this, we have a certain view and picture to what slavery is, a reminder that all of human history, most of human history has had slaves of all colors, of all religions. That’s within us, to select a group of people, call them the other, use them as objects, abuse them. And I would say, as a person who believes the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man, all of us, every person listening to this is capable of being owner of a slave if they’re put in the position, of capable of hating the other, of forming the other, of othering other people. And we should be very careful not to look ourselves in the mirror and remind ourselves that we’re human. It’s easy to think, “Okay, well, there’s these slaves and slave owners through history. And I would’ve never been one of those.” But just like as we would be farmers, we could be both. If we went back into history, we could be both slaves and slave owners, and all of those are humans.
And just a reminder to people in America thinking about this, we have a certain view and picture to what slavery is, a reminder that all of human history, most of human history has had slaves of all colors, of all religions. That’s within us, to select a group of people, call them the other, use them as objects, abuse them. And I would say, as a person who believes the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man, all of us, every person listening to this is capable of being owner of a slave if they’re put in the position, of capable of hating the other, of forming the other, of othering other people. And we should be very careful not to look ourselves in the mirror and remind ourselves that we’re human. It’s easy to think, “Okay, well, there’s these slaves and slave owners through history. And I would’ve never been one of those.” But just like as we would be farmers, we could be both. If we went back into history, we could be both slaves and slave owners, and all of those are humans.
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, just to build on that, I’d say the othering of others is a morally corrosive thing to do.
I mean, just to build on that, I’d say the othering of others is a morally corrosive thing to do.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So this fascinating transition between the republic to the empire, can we talk about that? How does the republic fall?
Yeah. So this fascinating transition between the republic to the empire, can we talk about that? How does the republic fall?
Fall of the Roman Empire
Gregory Aldrete
Oh, boy. Okay. So the Roman Republic on the one hand is incredibly successful. Right? In a short period of time, it’s expanded wildly. It’s conquered the Mediterranean world. It’s gained tons of wealth. The contradiction here is that Rome’s very success has made almost every group within Roman society deeply unhappy and boiling with resentment. So this is the contradiction. Enormous success on the surface, you end up with this boiling pot of resentment and unhappiness. So let’s break this down. Who’s unhappy? Well, the people fighting Rome’s wars, the common farmers who went off to fight. They joined the army. They went and fought. They’ve come back. They’ve seen Rome get wealthy. They’ve seen their generals get wealthy. They’ve conquered all these areas. All this money and stuff is flowing back to Rome. But when they’re discharged from the army, they don’t get that much. So they feel like, “I spent the best years of my life fighting for my country, I deserve a reward. I haven’t gotten it.”
Oh, boy. Okay. So the Roman Republic on the one hand is incredibly successful. Right? In a short period of time, it’s expanded wildly. It’s conquered the Mediterranean world. It’s gained tons of wealth. The contradiction here is that Rome’s very success has made almost every group within Roman society deeply unhappy and boiling with resentment. So this is the contradiction. Enormous success on the surface, you end up with this boiling pot of resentment and unhappiness. So let’s break this down. Who’s unhappy? Well, the people fighting Rome’s wars, the common farmers who went off to fight. They joined the army. They went and fought. They’ve come back. They’ve seen Rome get wealthy. They’ve seen their generals get wealthy. They’ve conquered all these areas. All this money and stuff is flowing back to Rome. But when they’re discharged from the army, they don’t get that much. So they feel like, “I spent the best years of my life fighting for my country, I deserve a reward. I haven’t gotten it.”
So you have a lot of veterans who are now unemployed or underemployed. Many of them have sold their small family farms when they went off to join the army, and now they don’t have them. So that group’s unhappy, the veterans. You have the aristocrats who on the surface, the ones who are doing well, they’re the politicians and the generals. But as time goes on, the ones who get the plum appointments, who get the good general ships, starts coming from a smaller and smaller subset of the aristocrats. The Scipios and their friends start to dominate. So you end up where most of the aristocratic class is feeling, “Hey, I’m left out. I didn’t get what I deserved.” What about the half citizens and the allies? The Italians who have fought for Rome, who stayed loyal when Hannibal invaded, they didn’t go over to his side. Well, they feel rightfully, “We stayed loyal to Rome. We fought for them. We deserve our reward. We should be full citizens.” But the Romans are traditional. They’re conservative. They don’t like change. They don’t give them that.
What about all the slaves? Well, they’ve conquered all these foreigners. They’ve sold them. Now, many of them are working these plantations, big plantations owned by rich people that used to be little family farms. The slaves are obviously unhappy. So you end up with a society where it’s incredibly successful by about 100 BC, but almost every group that composes it feels like, “I haven’t shared in the benefits of what’s happened or I’ve been exploited by it.” So they all end up intensely unhappy. And the next 100-year period from 133 to 31 BC is called the Late Roman Republic. And it’s a time of nearly constant internal strife, ultimately culminating in multiple rounds of civil war.
So Roman society literally breaks apart, turns on itself, and goes to war with itself over not equitably sharing the benefits of conquest and of empire. So it’s a lesson about not sharing the benefits of something in a society, but concentrating it in one little group. And the other thing that happens is among the aristocrats, they start to get more and more ambitious. So in the past, there was a lot of ideology of, the state is more important than the person. If you were a little Roman kid, you would’ve been told these stories of Roman heroes. And they’re all about self-sacrifice, putting the state before you, about modesty, about these values. Well, by the late republic, you have a succession of strong men. And it is a chain. So it goes, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Julius Caesar, where each one pushes the boundaries of the Roman Republic a little bit, pushes at the structures of the institutions of the Republic, and they’re motivated by personal gain. They’re putting themselves above the state.
Julius Caesar
So at the same time, you have lots of groups unhappy in society, and you get these strong men who are now undermining the institutions, chipping away at the things that have been shared, things holding the state together. And in the end, they just become so ambitious, they’re like, “I don’t care about the state. I’m going to try and make myself ruler of Rome.” So I mean, this is going to culminate obviously in Julius Caesar who does succeed in making himself dictator for life of the Roman Republic, which is tantamount to king, and he gets assassinated for it. But he’s the end point of this progression of people who really undermine the institutions, the republic, through their own personal greed.
Lex Fridman
So the resentment boils and boils and boils, and there’s this person that puts themselves above-
So the resentment boils and boils and boils, and there’s this person that puts themselves above-
Gregory Aldrete
And they exploit it. They’re demagogues.
And they exploit it. They’re demagogues.
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Gregory Aldrete
They exploit it.
They exploit it.
Lex Fridman
But Caesar puts himself above the state. And that I guess, the Roman people also hate.
But Caesar puts himself above the state. And that I guess, the Roman people also hate.
Gregory Aldrete
Well, I mean, it’s a love-hate because Caesar is very successful at playing to the Roman people. So he becomes their hero where he says, “I’ll be your champion against the state who doesn’t care about you.” So Caesar will do things where he’ll put on big shows for the people, and it’s cynical. I mean, he’s doing this to further his own political power, but he’s presenting himself as a populist in essence, even though he aspires to be a dictator. Right? But it’s a way of winning the people’s support because that’s a tool for him and his struggle with other aristocrats.
Well, I mean, it’s a love-hate because Caesar is very successful at playing to the Roman people. So he becomes their hero where he says, “I’ll be your champion against the state who doesn’t care about you.” So Caesar will do things where he’ll put on big shows for the people, and it’s cynical. I mean, he’s doing this to further his own political power, but he’s presenting himself as a populist in essence, even though he aspires to be a dictator. Right? But it’s a way of winning the people’s support because that’s a tool for him and his struggle with other aristocrats.
Lex Fridman
So a dictator in populist clothing.
So a dictator in populist clothing.
Gregory Aldrete
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
But he gets-
But he gets-
Gregory Aldrete
When convenient. Other times, he’ll play to the aristocracy.
When convenient. Other times, he’ll play to the aristocracy.
Lex Fridman
And when he gets assassinated, another civil war explodes?
And when he gets assassinated, another civil war explodes?
Gregory Aldrete
That’s an interesting moment, because all these things have been leading up to Caesar and it really is a chain of men. So it starts with this guy, Marius, who was one of the first to start making armies loyal to him, rather than to the state. That’s a step in the wrong direction. Right? The army should be loyal to the state, not to an individual general. They shouldn’t look for him to rewards. Marius breaks that, makes a precedent. One of his protegees is a guy named Sulla. Sulla comes along and he ends up marching on Rome with his army and taking it over. And he says, “Well, I’m just doing it for the good of the state.” But that’s another precedent. Now you’ve had someone attacking their own capital city, even if they say they’re doing it for the right reasons.
That’s an interesting moment, because all these things have been leading up to Caesar and it really is a chain of men. So it starts with this guy, Marius, who was one of the first to start making armies loyal to him, rather than to the state. That’s a step in the wrong direction. Right? The army should be loyal to the state, not to an individual general. They shouldn’t look for him to rewards. Marius breaks that, makes a precedent. One of his protegees is a guy named Sulla. Sulla comes along and he ends up marching on Rome with his army and taking it over. And he says, “Well, I’m just doing it for the good of the state.” But that’s another precedent. Now you’ve had someone attacking their own capital city, even if they say they’re doing it for the right reasons.
Then Pompey comes along, and Pompey just breaks all kinds of things. He starts holding offices when he’s too young to do so. He raises personal armies from his own wealth. He disobeys commands. He manipulates commands. He does all kinds of stuff. But in the end, he sides with the Senate when sort of forced. And finally, Caesar comes along and Caesar’s just shamelessly, “No, it’s about me. I’m going to push it.” And he is the one who wins a civil war against the state and Pompey, takes over Rome and says, “Now, I’m going to be dictator.” And dictator is a traditional office in the Roman state, but dictators were limited to no more than six months in power. And Caesar says, “Well, I’ll be dictator for life,” which of course, is king. He gets killed for it.
So Caesar succeeded in taking over the state as one man, but he couldn’t solve the problem. How do you rule Rome as one person and not get killed for looking like a king? That’s the dilemma, the riddle that Caesar leaves behind him. He did it. He seize power as one guy, but how do you stay alive? How do you come up with something that the people will accept? And Caesar did some other things which are bad. He was arrogant. He didn’t even pretend that the Senate were his equals. He just railroaded them around. He didn’t respect them. He named a month after himself, July, Julius. He did egotistical things. So that pissed people off. They didn’t like it. And when Caesar dies, it’s this interesting moment. The Republic is sort of dead by then. You’re going to have a hard time reviving it. You’ve broken too many precedents, but there’s a power vacuum now. Caesar’s gone, what’s going to happen next?
Octavian’s rise
And you have a whole group of people who want to be the next Caesar. So the most obvious is Mark Antony, who is Caesar’s right-hand man, his lieutenant. He’s a very good general. He’s very charismatic. Everybody expects Mark Antony to just become the next Caesar. But there’s also another of Caesar’s lieutenants, a guy named Lepidus, sort of like Antony, but not quite as great as him. There’s the Senate itself, which wants to reassert its power, kind of become the dominant force in Rome again. There’s the assassins who killed Caesar, led by Brutus, and another guy, Cassius, they now want to seize control. And finally, there’s a really weird dark horse candidate to fill this power vacuum. And that’s Julius Caesar’s grandnephew, who at the time, is a 17-year-old kid named Octavian. Who cares? He’s nobody. Absolutely nobody. But when Caesar’s will is opened after his death, so posthumously read in his will, Caesar posthumously… And this is a little weird, posthumously adopts Octavian as his son. Now again, who cares? Antony gets the troops. Antony gets the money. The other people get everything.
What does Octavian get? He gets to now rename himself, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. Who cares? Well, around the Mediterranean, there’s about 12 legions full of hardened soldiers who are just used to following a guy named Gaius Julius Caesar. And even though it’s not quite logical, this 18-year-old, he’s now an 18-year-old kid, inherits an army overnight. So he becomes a player in this game for power. And the next 30, 40 years is going to be those groups all vying with one another. There’s another candidate too, Pompey’s son. Pompey was Caesar’s great rival. He has a couple of sons. And one of them, a guy named Sextus Pompey, basically becomes a warlord who seizes control of Sicily, one of the richest provinces, has a whole Navy. He’s vying to be one of the successors too. So for the next 40 years, it’s as you said, another civil war to see which guy emerges. Is it going to be the Senate? Is it going to be the assassins? Is it going to be Antony? Is it going to be Lepidus? Is it going to be Sextus Pompey? Is it going to be Octavian?
Lex Fridman
So now, looking back at all that history, it just feels like history turns on so many interesting accidents. Because Octavian later renamed Augustus, turned out to be actually… It depends on how you define good, but a good king/emperor, different than Caesar in terms of humility, at least being able to play, not to piss off everybody. But it could have been so many other people. That could have been the fall of Rome. So it’s a fascinating little turn of history. Maybe Caesar saw something in this individual. It’s not an accident that he was in the will.
So now, looking back at all that history, it just feels like history turns on so many interesting accidents. Because Octavian later renamed Augustus, turned out to be actually… It depends on how you define good, but a good king/emperor, different than Caesar in terms of humility, at least being able to play, not to piss off everybody. But it could have been so many other people. That could have been the fall of Rome. So it’s a fascinating little turn of history. Maybe Caesar saw something in this individual. It’s not an accident that he was in the will.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. I mean, Caesar clearly did see something in him. And Octavian, I mean, to cut to the end, is the one who emerges from all that as the victor. We can talk about how he does it, but he’s the one who ends up in the same position as Caesar. It takes him 30 years, but he defeats all the foes. He’s the sole guy. He now faces Caesar’s riddle. How do you rule Rome as one guy and not get killed? And Octavian, what makes him stand out, what makes him fascinating to me, is he wasn’t a good general. In fact, he was a terrible general. He lost almost every battle he commanded. But what he is, is he’s politically savvy and he’s very good at what today we would call, manipulation of your public image and propaganda. So he basically defeats Mark Antony partially by waging a propaganda war against him.
Yeah. I mean, Caesar clearly did see something in him. And Octavian, I mean, to cut to the end, is the one who emerges from all that as the victor. We can talk about how he does it, but he’s the one who ends up in the same position as Caesar. It takes him 30 years, but he defeats all the foes. He’s the sole guy. He now faces Caesar’s riddle. How do you rule Rome as one guy and not get killed? And Octavian, what makes him stand out, what makes him fascinating to me, is he wasn’t a good general. In fact, he was a terrible general. He lost almost every battle he commanded. But what he is, is he’s politically savvy and he’s very good at what today we would call, manipulation of your public image and propaganda. So he basically defeats Mark Antony partially by waging a propaganda war against him.
Gregory Aldrete
Antony partially by waging a propaganda war against him. Antony starts out as a legitimate rival, and there are two Romans vying for power. At the end of this war, propaganda war, Octavian has managed to portray Antony as a foreign aggressor, allied with an enemy, king or queen, in this case, Cleopatra, and who is an official enemy of the Roman state, and that’s all propaganda. So, he takes what’s a civil war and makes it look like a war against a foreign enemy. And when Octavian becomes the sole ruler, he looks at what Caesar did wrong, and he very carefully avoids the same mistakes.
Antony partially by waging a propaganda war against him. Antony starts out as a legitimate rival, and there are two Romans vying for power. At the end of this war, propaganda war, Octavian has managed to portray Antony as a foreign aggressor, allied with an enemy, king or queen, in this case, Cleopatra, and who is an official enemy of the Roman state, and that’s all propaganda. So, he takes what’s a civil war and makes it look like a war against a foreign enemy. And when Octavian becomes the sole ruler, he looks at what Caesar did wrong, and he very carefully avoids the same mistakes.
So, the first thing is just how he lives his life. He’s very modest. He lives in an ordinary house like other aristocrats. He wears just a plain toga, nothing fancy. He’s respectful to the Senate.
He treats them with respect. He eats simple foods. I mean, he’s someone who cared about the reality of power, not the external trappings. Clearly there’s some rulers who love, “I want to dress in fancy clothes. I want to be surrounded by gold.
Everything. This is what makes me feel good.” Octavian is the opposite. He doesn’t care about any of that. He wants real power. And then, the other thing is, how is he going to rule Rome without looking like a king?
And his solution to this is brilliant. He basically pretends to resign from all his public offices and not pretends he does. So, he holds no official office. But what he does is he manipulates so that the Roman Senate votes him the powers of the key Roman offices, but not the office itself. So, the highest office in the Roman state is the consul.
Consuls have the power to command armies, do all sorts of things, run meetings of the Senate. Octavian gets voted the powers of a consul so he can command armies control meetings of the Senate, do all this. But he’s not one of the two consuls elected for every year. So, he’s just floating or drifting off to the side of the Roman government. He gets the power of a Tribune, which has all sorts of powers.
He can veto anything he wants, but he’s not one of the Tribunes elected for anyone. So, the state, the Republic appears to continue as it always has. Each year they hold the same elections, they elect the same number of people, notionally, those people are in charge. But floating off to the side, you have this guy Octavian, who has equivalent power, not just to any one magistrate official, but to all of them. So, any moment he can just pop up and say, “No, let’s not do this.
Let’s do something else.” And he also keeps the army under his personal control.
Lex Fridman
Isn’t this a fascinating story? What do you think is the psychology of Augustus, of Octavian?
Isn’t this a fascinating story? What do you think is the psychology of Augustus, of Octavian?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. And he later changed his name to Augustus when he becomes the first emperor. The other thing he does is he hides his power behind all these different names.
Yeah. And he later changed his name to Augustus when he becomes the first emperor. The other thing he does is he hides his power behind all these different names.
Lex Fridman
The greatest strategy.
The greatest strategy.
Gregory Aldrete
Caesar called himself dictator for life, right? So, everybody knew what he was. Octavian. We even have a source that talks about it. He says he wondered what to call himself. “Do I call myself king?
Caesar called himself dictator for life, right? So, everybody knew what he was. Octavian. We even have a source that talks about it. He says he wondered what to call himself. “Do I call myself king?
No, he can’t do that. Dictator for life. No way. Maybe I’ll call myself Romulus. That was the founder of Rome. No, no.
Romulus was a king.” And finally, a solution is he takes a bunch of titles, which are all ambiguous, and no one of them sounds that impressive, but collectively they are. So, for example, one of the titles he gets is Augustus, which is something tied to Roman religion. Something that is Augustus in Latin has two possible meanings. One is someone who is Augustus is very pious. They respect the Gods deeply. Well, that sounds nice, doesn’t it? Well, on the other hand, an alternative meaning for Augustus is something that is itself divine. So, is he just a deeply religious, pious person, or is he himself sacred? There’s that ambiguity.
He calls himself Princeps, which means first citizen. “Okay, what the hell does that mean? Am I a citizen just like everybody else? Or am I the first citizen, which means I’m superior to all the others?” So, every title he takes has this weird ambiguity.
He calls himself Imperator, which is traditionally something that soldiers shout at, a victorious general who’s won a battle. And now he takes this as a permanent title. So, it implies he’s a good general. And by the way, it’s from Imperator that we get the word emperor, an empire. So, originally it’s a military title, a spontaneous military acclamation.
Lex Fridman
It’s just fascinating that he figured out a way through public image, through branding to gain power, maintain power, and still pacify the boiling turmoil that led to the civil wars.
It’s just fascinating that he figured out a way through public image, through branding to gain power, maintain power, and still pacify the boiling turmoil that led to the civil wars.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. Well, two things I think work in his favor as well. One is he brings peace and stability. So, by this point, the Romans have experienced a hundred years almost of civil war and chaos. So, at that point, your family, maybe you’ve had family members die in these wars or been prescribed, your property has been confiscated, who knows what. And here’s a guy who brings peace and stability and doesn’t seem oppressive or cruel or whatever.
Yeah. Well, two things I think work in his favor as well. One is he brings peace and stability. So, by this point, the Romans have experienced a hundred years almost of civil war and chaos. So, at that point, your family, maybe you’ve had family members die in these wars or been prescribed, your property has been confiscated, who knows what. And here’s a guy who brings peace and stability and doesn’t seem oppressive or cruel or whatever.
So, you’re like, “Okay, fine, I don’t care. Maybe he’s killed the Republic, but at least we’re not dying in the streets anymore.” So, that’s a big thing he does.
And secondly, even though Augustus always seemed sickly his constitution, he lives forever. He rules for like 50 years, and by the time he dies, there’s no one literally almost left alive who can remember the Republic. So, at that point, by the time he dies, this is the only system we know.
Lex Fridman
That’s another just fascinating accident of history, because as we talked about with Alexander the Great, who knows if he lived for another 40 years, if over time the people that hate the new thing die off and then their sons and come into power, that could be a very different story. Maybe we’ll be talking about the [inaudible 01:42:07].
That’s another just fascinating accident of history, because as we talked about with Alexander the Great, who knows if he lived for another 40 years, if over time the people that hate the new thing die off and then their sons and come into power, that could be a very different story. Maybe we’ll be talking about the [inaudible 01:42:07].
Gregory Aldrete
That’s a fluke of fate, but it’s hugely influential on history.
That’s a fluke of fate, but it’s hugely influential on history.
Lex Fridman
You mentioned Cleopatra. If we go back to that, what role did she play? Another fascinating human being.
You mentioned Cleopatra. If we go back to that, what role did she play? Another fascinating human being.
Cleopatra
Gregory Aldrete
Cleopatra is interesting. I mean, she was a direct descendant of one of Alexander the Great’s generals Ptolemy. When Alexander’s empire had broken up Ptolemy, this general had seized control of Egypt, made it his kingdom. And she 10 generations later, is a descendant of this Macedonian general. So, Egypt had been ruled by, in essence, foreigners, these Macedonian dynasty of kings.
Cleopatra is interesting. I mean, she was a direct descendant of one of Alexander the Great’s generals Ptolemy. When Alexander’s empire had broken up Ptolemy, this general had seized control of Egypt, made it his kingdom. And she 10 generations later, is a descendant of this Macedonian general. So, Egypt had been ruled by, in essence, foreigners, these Macedonian dynasty of kings.
And often they literally were ruled by the same dynasty because they had a habit of marrying brothers to sisters. And Cleopatra was in fact originally married to her younger brother. But despite that, she seems to have intensely identified with Egypt. In fact, she seems to have been the first one of all these Ptolemy kings who actually bothered to learn to speak Egyptian. So, she seems to really have cared about Egypt as well.
And she was clearly very smart, very clever. And so, she’s living at a time during the late Republic when Rome is having all these civil wars. And Egypt is really the last big independent kingdom left around the shores, the Mediterranean, everything else has been conquered by Rome. So, she is in this very precarious position where clearly she wants to maintain Egyptian independence, but Rome is this juggernaut that’s rolling over everything. She ends up meeting Julius Caesar when Caesar comes to Egypt chasing Pompey, his great rival, after he defeats Pompey, Pompey runs to Egypt thinking he’ll find sanctuary there, and the Egyptians kill him and chop off his head.
And when Caesar lands, they hand it to him and say, “Here have a present.” And she, of course, famously ends up having a love affair with Caesar. Was that a genuine love or was she just using this as a way to try and keep Egypt independent to give it some status? We don’t know. After she does have several kids with Caesar.
After Caesar’s assassinated, and the Roman world is having another civil war between Octavian and Mark Antony. Mark Antony is basing himself in the east. He meets Cleopatra and he has a big love affair with her. And this one seems pretty genuine. I mean, Antony and Cleopatra, there’s a lot of stories about them partying together.
They liked to cosplay and dress up as different gods. So, Cleopatra would dress up as the goddess Isis and Antony would dress up as the god Dionysus in a leopard skin, and they’d have these big parties and stuff, and they end up together fighting against Octavian. And in the end, they’re defeated by Octavian and Antony commits suicide. Cleopatra there’s differing accounts of her death. She may have also killed herself, or she may actually have been killed by Octavian to just get her out of the way.
But she’s an interesting figure because she was clearly a very smart woman who managed to keep Egypt alive as an independent state. She seemed to have actually cared about Egypt and identified with it and succeeded at a time with all these famous people in being a real mover and shaker and a force in events.
Lex Fridman
I mean, she’s probably one of the most influential women in human history.
I mean, she’s probably one of the most influential women in human history.
Gregory Aldrete
She certainly… Again, she’s someone that her image is incredibly important. And I mean, one of the interesting things, the whole question of gender in the Roman world, I mean, this gets into Roman sources, but of course it’s a heavily male dominated history. And I mean, men and women did not have equality in ancient Rome. It’s a male dominated society. It’s misogynist in many ways.
She certainly… Again, she’s someone that her image is incredibly important. And I mean, one of the interesting things, the whole question of gender in the Roman world, I mean, this gets into Roman sources, but of course it’s a heavily male dominated history. And I mean, men and women did not have equality in ancient Rome. It’s a male dominated society. It’s misogynist in many ways.
But what I’m constantly struck by is when you start, again, delving into the sources, you always hear, “Okay, well, there was this one woman who was a philosopher, and she’s an exception to the rule. And yeah, okay, she’s fine.” And then, you start looking into, “Oh, and there’s also 60 other female philosophers. Well, it’s not so much an exception anymore. Or Cleopatra is the one queen.
She’s this strong queen.” And then, you look, “Well, there was this other queen here. There was this queen here. There was this queen here who led armies, and here’s another one who led armies.” And again, it’s like, well, are they exceptions to the rule or is just the history that was written, which is written by men a little bit selective in how it portrays them, because the sources are all these male elites who have very definite ideas about women.
The conventional notion has always been that business in the Roman Empire was a male field. Well, but then there’s this woman, Eumachia in Pompeii who actually had the largest building in Pompeii, right on the forum named after her with a giant statue of her. And she was a patron to a bunch of the most important guilds in Pompeii. Okay. She’s the exception to the rule.
Oh, but then there’s these other four women we have from Pompeii who also were patrons of guilds. And then, there’s this woman, Plancia Magna in this other place, and she was the most important patron in the town and put up all these statues. So, at some point, when do you start to say, “Well, maybe women did play more of a role, but they just haven’t been recorded in the sources in the way that maybe they deserve to be.”
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that’s a fascinating question. Is it the bias of society, or is it the bias of the historian?
Yeah, that’s a fascinating question. Is it the bias of society, or is it the bias of the historian?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
The bias of the society that the historian is writing about, or the bias of the actual history.
The bias of the society that the historian is writing about, or the bias of the actual history.
Gregory Aldrete
And the bias of the historians who have written history up to this point. I was just writing a lecture, which was about this woman Musa who has a crazy story, and she ties into Augustus, actually. Augustus, his biggest diplomatic triumph that he boasted about constantly was that about 50 years before him, the Romans had sent an expedition into Parthia, this neighboring kingdom led by Crassus, and they’d gotten wiped out. So, it was this big disaster, military disaster. And the standards of the Roman legions, the eagles, that each Roman legion carried, had been captured by the Parthians.
And the bias of the historians who have written history up to this point. I was just writing a lecture, which was about this woman Musa who has a crazy story, and she ties into Augustus, actually. Augustus, his biggest diplomatic triumph that he boasted about constantly was that about 50 years before him, the Romans had sent an expedition into Parthia, this neighboring kingdom led by Crassus, and they’d gotten wiped out. So, it was this big disaster, military disaster. And the standards of the Roman legions, the eagles, that each Roman legion carried, had been captured by the Parthians.
Musa of Parthia
And this is the most humiliating thing that can happen to a Roman legion to have its eagles captured. And Augustus desperately wanted to negotiate with the Parthians to get these eagles returned. Okay? This was his big diplomatic thing. So, he was constantly sending these embassies to Parthia. On one of these embassies, he sent along as a gift to the Parthian King, a slave woman named Musa.
Musa seems to have pleased the king of Parthia because she becomes one of his concubines, and then she gives birth to a son by the king, and eventually she becomes upgraded to the level of wife. And Musa eventually murders the Parthian king, arranges it so that her son becomes the king of Parthia, and she’s really ruling the whole empire behind the scenes as his mother. So, this is a literal rags to riches story of a slave, someone who starts out a slave and becomes the queen of an empire, almost as large and powerful as Rome. Okay. But yet, how often do we hear about Musa?
And when you look in traditional histories of Roman, Parthian relations, and I went and looked at this because I was just writing this lecture, most of those histories didn’t even mention her. They just talked about her son, like he had just come out of nowhere and become the new heir to the Parthian throne when it was all her doing clearly. Now, that’s selective editing of history by historians to downplay the role that this woman played. And there’s a lot of examples like that.
Lex Fridman
That’s fascinating.
That’s fascinating.
Gregory Aldrete
She got overthrown after a few years. There was a revolution against her, and we don’t know what happened to her then, but she’s a really interesting figure. And by the way, Augustus didn’t negotiate the return of the Parthian standards and got them back, and he was so proud of this that this is what he constantly boasted about. And the most famous statue of Augustus, the Augustus from Prima Porta, which is in the Vatican today, he’s wearing a breastplate. And on the breastplate right in the middle of the stomach is a Parthian handing over a golden eagle legionary standard to a Roman.
She got overthrown after a few years. There was a revolution against her, and we don’t know what happened to her then, but she’s a really interesting figure. And by the way, Augustus didn’t negotiate the return of the Parthian standards and got them back, and he was so proud of this that this is what he constantly boasted about. And the most famous statue of Augustus, the Augustus from Prima Porta, which is in the Vatican today, he’s wearing a breastplate. And on the breastplate right in the middle of the stomach is a Parthian handing over a golden eagle legionary standard to a Roman.
So, this is what Augustus thought of as his greatest achievement. And that embassy that arranged that was the one that sent Musa to Parthia.
Lex Fridman
So, Augustus marks the start of the Roman Empire.
So, Augustus marks the start of the Roman Empire.
Augustus’ political system
Gregory Aldrete
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
You’ve written that Octavian Augustus would become Rome’s first emperor, and the political system that he created would endure for the next half a millennium. This system would become the template for countless later empires up through the present day, and he would become the model emperor against whom all subsequent ones would be measured. The culture and history of the Mediterranean Basin, the western world, and even global history itself, were all profoundly shaped and influenced by the actions and legacy of Octavian.
You’ve written that Octavian Augustus would become Rome’s first emperor, and the political system that he created would endure for the next half a millennium. This system would become the template for countless later empires up through the present day, and he would become the model emperor against whom all subsequent ones would be measured. The culture and history of the Mediterranean Basin, the western world, and even global history itself, were all profoundly shaped and influenced by the actions and legacy of Octavian.
He was the founder of the Roman Empire, and we still live today in the world that he created. So, what on the political side of things and maybe beyond, what is the political system that he created?
Gregory Aldrete
Well, I mean, I think Octavian/Augustus is the same guy, is one of the most influential people in the history because he did found the Roman Empire. So, he’s the one who oversaw this transition from Republic to Empire, and he sets the template which every future emperor follows. So, just in the most obvious way for the next either 500 or 1500 years, depending how long you think the Roman Empire lasted for, everyone is trying to be Augustus. They all take on the same titles. Every Roman emperor after him is Caesar, Augustus, Imperator, Pater patriae, all these titles he has, they take too.
Well, I mean, I think Octavian/Augustus is the same guy, is one of the most influential people in the history because he did found the Roman Empire. So, he’s the one who oversaw this transition from Republic to Empire, and he sets the template which every future emperor follows. So, just in the most obvious way for the next either 500 or 1500 years, depending how long you think the Roman Empire lasted for, everyone is trying to be Augustus. They all take on the same titles. Every Roman emperor after him is Caesar, Augustus, Imperator, Pater patriae, all these titles he has, they take too.
And so, he’s hugely influential for Western civilization, all this. But beyond just that literal thing, which is already 500 years, 1500 years, he becomes the paradigm of the good ruler, so of an absolute ruler who is nevertheless just does good things, builds public works as popular. So, if we jump ahead, let’s say to the Middle Ages, the most significant ruler of the early Middle Ages is Charlemagne. He’s the guy who unites most of Europe. He becomes the paradigm for all medieval kings after him.
Well, what is the title that the Pope gives to Charlemagne? Because there’s this famous moment when the Pope acknowledges Charlemagne as the preeminent European king and crowns him on Christmas day of the year 800. And the title that the Pope gives to Charlemagne is Charles, that’s Charlemagne Augustus, Emperor of the Romans. He’s giving him the title of Augustus because that’s the nicest thing he can think of to say to Charlemagne is to say, “You’re the new Augustus. You’re emperor of the Romans.”
So, that image is hugely powerful, and that persists on and on. I mean, even the literal names of most rulers afterwards come from this. In Russia, the Czars are Caesars. That’s where Czar comes from. Prince comes from Princeps, first citizen, one of the titles.
Emperor comes from Imperator, one of the titles of Augustus. When Napoleon becomes Emperor, what does he call himself? First consul, which is like Princeps, and then he calls himself emperor. I mean, everybody wants to be this kind of ruler. So, he’s the paradigm of this for the rest of history.
And you can see that as both a positive and a negative legacy. It’s like Alexander. I mean, everybody wants to be the next Alexander. Now, nobody does become the next Alexander. Nobody’s as successful as him.
But a lot of people try and you can see that either as, oh, inspirational or awful, because lots of people killed lots of other people and started lots of wars trying to be the next Alexander. At least Augustus has this notion of good rulership that you’re not just a great powerful person, but you’re a good ruler somehow.
Lex Fridman
Can you speak to the kind of political system he created? So, how did he consolidate power as you spoke to a bit already, and what role did the Senate now play? How were the laws? Who was the executive? How is power allocated and so on?
Can you speak to the kind of political system he created? So, how did he consolidate power as you spoke to a bit already, and what role did the Senate now play? How were the laws? Who was the executive? How is power allocated and so on?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, so once the empire begins, let’s say 27 BC, so in 31 BC, Octavian defeats Antony at the Battle of Actium. So, that’s the moment he becomes the sole ruler. And then, in 27 BC, a couple years later, he settles the Roman Republic is how it’s referred to, which is basically sets up his system. And in this system, on the surface, it all looks the same. You still have a Senate, each year there’s elections, all the Roman citizens vote, they elect magistrates who notionally are in charge of Rome.
Yeah, so once the empire begins, let’s say 27 BC, so in 31 BC, Octavian defeats Antony at the Battle of Actium. So, that’s the moment he becomes the sole ruler. And then, in 27 BC, a couple years later, he settles the Roman Republic is how it’s referred to, which is basically sets up his system. And in this system, on the surface, it all looks the same. You still have a Senate, each year there’s elections, all the Roman citizens vote, they elect magistrates who notionally are in charge of Rome.
But as I mentioned off to the side, you now have this figure of Augustus who controls everything behind the scenes, and that continues. So, this political system he establishes continues. And in reality, I would say Augustus at that point is again a king. It really is one man controlling the state. Even if notionally, it’s still continuing as a republic.
They are electing magistrates, but the magistrates only do what the emperor tells them. But it’s this formal versus informal power, the formal structure as a republic, the way things really work informally is it’s a monarchy. Now, if you asked Augustus, what did he do? Did you become a king? He said, and he says this explicitly, “No, no, no.
What I did is I refounded the Roman Republic.” That’s how he phrases it.
Lex Fridman
This guy is good at framing.
This guy is good at framing.
Gregory Aldrete
He’s so good at propaganda. I’ll give you one more example that I love. Augustus actually writes his own autobiography, which is very rare and survives. So, here we have the autobiography of one of the pivotal figures in history. And if you had conquered the world, let’s say starting at the age of 18, what would you call your autobiography?
He’s so good at propaganda. I’ll give you one more example that I love. Augustus actually writes his own autobiography, which is very rare and survives. So, here we have the autobiography of one of the pivotal figures in history. And if you had conquered the world, let’s say starting at the age of 18, what would you call your autobiography?
It’d be something like, “How I conquered the world,” right? Augustus calls his, derace quae feci, which the best literal translation is stuff I did. I mean, it’s the most modest title for someone who could have given the most grandiose title. And the first line of it is at the age of 18, when the liberty of the Republic was oppressed by a faction, I defended it. Now, the way I might phrase that sense is at the age of 18, I fought a civil war against another Roman and conquered the Roman state.
But no, he defended the liberty of the republic when it was oppressed by the tyranny of a faction. That’s propaganda, and it works.
Lex Fridman
It is propaganda, but is there a degree to which he also lived it? That kind of humility, establishing that humility is a standard of the way government operates. So, it’s not a literal direct balance of power, but it’s a cultural balance of power where the emperor is not supposed to be a bully and a dictator.
It is propaganda, but is there a degree to which he also lived it? That kind of humility, establishing that humility is a standard of the way government operates. So, it’s not a literal direct balance of power, but it’s a cultural balance of power where the emperor is not supposed to be a bully and a dictator.
Gregory Aldrete
I would really like to know what Romans of his time thought. If you were alive at that moment, would you honestly believe, “Oh, okay, we’ve got this guy Augustus, but he’s brought peace. He’s just keeping in charge for a while until things settle down. We’ve just had a hundred years of civil war. I think we still have a republic,” or would you say, “Nah, we have a king now.”
I would really like to know what Romans of his time thought. If you were alive at that moment, would you honestly believe, “Oh, okay, we’ve got this guy Augustus, but he’s brought peace. He’s just keeping in charge for a while until things settle down. We’ve just had a hundred years of civil war. I think we still have a republic,” or would you say, “Nah, we have a king now.”
And I don’t know what the answer to that is. I will tell you that it takes 200 years before we have the first Roman source that bluntly calls Augustus a king. So, 200 years, it takes the Romans 200 years to admit to themselves. And that’s a guy who comes along 200 years later and says, “Hey, Augustus, he looks like a king. He acts like a king. Let’s just call him a king, because he had every aspect of a king except the patriae Title.”
Lex Fridman
Maybe I’m buying his propaganda, and maybe I’m a sucker for humility, but I suspect that the Romans bought it, and I also suspect he himself believed it. I mean, there is such thing as good kings. There’s kings that understand the downside, the dark side of absolute power and can wield that power properly.
Maybe I’m buying his propaganda, and maybe I’m a sucker for humility, but I suspect that the Romans bought it, and I also suspect he himself believed it. I mean, there is such thing as good kings. There’s kings that understand the downside, the dark side of absolute power and can wield that power properly.
Gregory Aldrete
And to give both sides here, Augustus wasn’t all nice. I mean, there were moments where he was extremely cruel. So, early in his career when he’s still fighting, when he’s… for power, he goes all in on prescriptions, which is where he and Anty and other people basically post lists of their enemies and say, “It’s legal for anyone to kill these people.” And so, hundreds are massacred there, including Cicero, the Great Order is prescribed and killed. There’s moments when he’s really cruel.
And to give both sides here, Augustus wasn’t all nice. I mean, there were moments where he was extremely cruel. So, early in his career when he’s still fighting, when he’s… for power, he goes all in on prescriptions, which is where he and Anty and other people basically post lists of their enemies and say, “It’s legal for anyone to kill these people.” And so, hundreds are massacred there, including Cicero, the Great Order is prescribed and killed. There’s moments when he’s really cruel.
One slave once gets him angry, and he has him tortured in particularly cruel manner. So, I mean, on the one hand, he had this clemency. On the other hand, he could be really hard-nosed and hard edged, and I think he was a very calculating person.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. So, the thing I would love to know is what he was actually behind the mask.
Yeah. So, the thing I would love to know is what he was actually behind the mask.
Gregory Aldrete
Yes. I mean, that to me is one of those, if you could invite a historical person to dinner or whatever, I want to know what the real Augustus was, what he really thought he was doing, because he’s an enigma and he has this great moment when he dies. What’s his dying lines on his deathbed? He says, “If I’ve played my part, well dismiss me from the stage with applause.”
Yes. I mean, that to me is one of those, if you could invite a historical person to dinner or whatever, I want to know what the real Augustus was, what he really thought he was doing, because he’s an enigma and he has this great moment when he dies. What’s his dying lines on his deathbed? He says, “If I’ve played my part, well dismiss me from the stage with applause.”
So, he’s seeing himself as an actor that his whole life was acting this role, which is again, all that manipulation and public image. He was brilliant at that. But who’s the real guy? What was behind that image?
Lex Fridman
And by the way, as long as we’re talking about brutality, I think you’ve mentioned in a few places that there’s a lot of brutality going on. At the time, Caesar just killing very large numbers of people brutally.
And by the way, as long as we’re talking about brutality, I think you’ve mentioned in a few places that there’s a lot of brutality going on. At the time, Caesar just killing very large numbers of people brutally.
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, Caesar, his campaigns in Gaul are interesting because for a long time they were held up as, oh, genius general. Look at the amazing things he did. But another way to view it is he provoked and he truly provoked a war with people who were not that interested in fighting Rome and just repeatedly attacked different tribes for the sole purpose of building up his career, his prestige, his status, gaining territory, making himself wealthier. And he basically conquers all of modern France and Belgium and some of Switzerland. So, this is a big chunk of Europe gets conquered.
I mean, Caesar, his campaigns in Gaul are interesting because for a long time they were held up as, oh, genius general. Look at the amazing things he did. But another way to view it is he provoked and he truly provoked a war with people who were not that interested in fighting Rome and just repeatedly attacked different tribes for the sole purpose of building up his career, his prestige, his status, gaining territory, making himself wealthier. And he basically conquers all of modern France and Belgium and some of Switzerland. So, this is a big chunk of Europe gets conquered.
Hundreds of thousands of people killed, hundreds of thousands of people enslaved to further one guy’s career. I mean, if you wanted, could call Caesar a war criminal, and I think that wouldn’t be unfair. But on the other hand, some people see him as a great hero. I mean, to talk about history and its reception, it’s quite interesting to see how Caesar has been viewed by different generations. So, at different points in time, the received wisdom on Caesar was very different.
So, back in the, let’s say the 1920s or ’30s, there were a number of scholarly things written which looked at Caesar as an admirable figure. He’s a strong man who knows what Rome needed and was going to give it to them. And of course, that’s the era when fascism was trendy and was seen as a positive thing. And then, you get Hitler and World War II and all of sudden fascism is not so favored anymore. And then, in that post-war generation, all of a sudden Caesar’s terrible.
He’s a dictator. He is destroying the Republic. So, often histories that are written tell you a lot more about the time they’re written than they do about the subject they’re written about.
Lex Fridman
Do we know what did Hitler or Stalin think about the Roman Empire?
Do we know what did Hitler or Stalin think about the Roman Empire?
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, certainly they borrow a lot of the trappings. I mean, Nazi, Germany borrows a lot of iconography from ancient Rome. I mean, they carry it around little military standards with eagles on them, just like the Romans. But then everybody does that. I mean, the US has eagles as their standards.
I mean, certainly they borrow a lot of the trappings. I mean, Nazi, Germany borrows a lot of iconography from ancient Rome. I mean, they carry it around little military standards with eagles on them, just like the Romans. But then everybody does that. I mean, the US has eagles as their standards.
Mussolini had them. Napoleon had eagle standards for his military. So, a lot of people like that imagery.
Lex Fridman
You mentioned Cicero. He’s a fascinating figure. On the topic of Roman oratory, who was Cicero?
You mentioned Cicero. He’s a fascinating figure. On the topic of Roman oratory, who was Cicero?
Gregory Aldrete
Cicero was a new man. So, he’s someone who didn’t have famous ancestors. So, he was at a disadvantage. And I think Cicero is really interesting for a couple of reasons. One is he wrote an incredible amount.
Cicero was a new man. So, he’s someone who didn’t have famous ancestors. So, he was at a disadvantage. And I think Cicero is really interesting for a couple of reasons. One is he wrote an incredible amount.
I think we have almost more words from Cicero than any other author that survived, and it’s all kinds of stuff. It’s philosophical treatises, it’s books about how to be a good public speaker. He published volume after volume of his personal letters to his friends. He published these things. So, there’s tons of stuff from him.
Cicero
And secondly, he’s interesting because he lived at this incredibly important time in the late Republic when things were falling apart. But he seems to have been born with none of the natural advantages that all these other people had. So, he was a lousy general. He didn’t come from a wealthy family. He didn’t come from a famous aristocratic family.
He didn’t have a lot of these advantages, but yet he ended up being right at the center of things, rose to the highest elected office in the Roman state on the basis of one skill. And that was his ability with words, his ability to get up in front of a crowd and persuade them of what he wanted them to believe. And oratory, public speaking was absolutely central to life at Rome. There were just all these events where people had to get up and give speeches. So, in courtrooms, at funerals, in the Senate to the people of Rome, at games, I mean just constantly, there were these opportunities for giving speeches.
So, if you are good at this, that was a huge advantage in your political career. And Cicero was the best. He was arguably the best public speaker of all time.
Some people claim. And he lived right in this era, and he parlayed that skill with words into this very successful political career. He was one of the guys involved with all this stuff with Caesar and Pompey and all the other things going on, Octavian, Mark Antony.
Lex Fridman
And you’ve written, which is fascinating. It’s fascinating when the echoes of people from a distant past are seen today. The same stuff is seen today, not just like some of the beautiful legal stuff that we’ve been talking about, but the tricks, let’s say the shitty stuff we see in politics.
And you’ve written, which is fascinating. It’s fascinating when the echoes of people from a distant past are seen today. The same stuff is seen today, not just like some of the beautiful legal stuff that we’ve been talking about, but the tricks, let’s say the shitty stuff we see in politics.
So, many of the rhetorical tricks you wrote, such as mudslinging, exaggeration, guilt by association, ad hominem attacks, name-calling, fearmongering, us versus them, rhyme, and so on and so forth. So, I’m guessing it worked given that we still have those today.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, I mean, one of the things Cicero did is he wrote at least three of these handbooks about how to be a good public speaker. So, we know a lot about that. We have his own speeches that survive. And then, we have later people after Cicero who wrote about what Cicero did too. So, we know a lot about what he did.
Yeah, I mean, one of the things Cicero did is he wrote at least three of these handbooks about how to be a good public speaker. So, we know a lot about that. We have his own speeches that survive. And then, we have later people after Cicero who wrote about what Cicero did too. So, we know a lot about what he did.
And the key to Cicero’s whole enterprise about persuading an audience, let’s say either it is speech to the people or in the courtroom is Cicero believed that people are fundamentally ruled by emotion. So, if you can touch their emotions, all sorts of other things become less important. If you can get a jury emotionally worked up and fear, anger, or particularly powerful there, then the facts might not matter, the truth might not matter, evidence might not matter, reason might not matter. Emotion is the key to everything. So, Cicero used what I would arguably call a lot of tricks to get his audiences emotionally riled up.
And you can just go through these and they’re all the stuff you were saying, name-calling, mudslinging, us versus them arguments, ad hominem attacks, incredibly sophisticated. All this stuff that we think of today is, oh, very sophisticated techniques for propaganda and persuasion. It’s not new. People aren’t coming up with that much that’s new outside the realm of technology, human nature is the same. Cicero understood human psychology.
He knew how to play on people. He knew how to play on their emotions, and he would do just… I mean, I want to say hilarious, but they’re depressingly hilarious things. He thought it’s important to use props. So, he said, “People are visual. They will respond emotionally to visual things in a way that just words alone won’t work.”
So, he says, “An order is just like an actor and like an actor he has to prepare his stage and use props and things as visual cues to stir up the audience. So, for example, once he was defending a man in a court case who had just had a new baby born to him, and Cicero literally delivered the defense oration for this guy while cradling his newborn son in his arms, you can imagine, “Oh, cute little baby. Jury, how could you find him guilty and leave this cute baby without a father to take care of him?” Another time, he was defending a guy who had a photogenic son, a young boy, and Cicero literally propped up the kid behind him while he was giving the speech, and again said-
Gregory Aldrete
Literally propped up the kid behind him while he was giving the speech, and again said, “Look at his eyes brimming with tears, thinking about his father being punished. How could you leave this wonderful boy without a father to care for him?”
Literally propped up the kid behind him while he was giving the speech, and again said, “Look at his eyes brimming with tears, thinking about his father being punished. How could you leave this wonderful boy without a father to care for him?”
Another time someone didn’t have a photogenic kid, so he propped up his old parents in the courtroom and said, “Look at this nice old couple. You won’t want to take their son away.” That kind of stuff; I mean, it’s manipulative.
Cicero, by the way, I should say also had philosophical beliefs about defending the republic and such. But he wasn’t above using these things. Even though he may have had altruistic or high notions of what he was doing, he also wasn’t above using these kind of rhetorical tricks.
Lex Fridman
Also you mentioned to me that you studied the gestures they used.
Also you mentioned to me that you studied the gestures they used.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
This is one of those on the theme of extremely interesting details of life.
This is one of those on the theme of extremely interesting details of life.
Gregory Aldrete
This was actually my dissertation, and it was my first book as well.
This was actually my dissertation, and it was my first book as well.
Lex Fridman
That’s amazing. That’s amazing.
That’s amazing. That’s amazing.
Gregory Aldrete
Again, I told you I like practical stuff. This all started with I kept reading about people like Cicero giving speeches in ancient Rome, lots of speeches. They would give a speech in the Forum with 10,000, 20,000 people.
Again, I told you I like practical stuff. This all started with I kept reading about people like Cicero giving speeches in ancient Rome, lots of speeches. They would give a speech in the Forum with 10,000, 20,000 people.
Gestures
And the thought occurred to me, “Well, in ancient Rome, you don’t have microphones. You don’t have loudspeakers. So how does someone give a speech outdoors in a windy place, not acoustically sound, to 20,000 people?” They just can’t hear you. Part of the answer, it turns out, well, part of it’s oratorical training. You learn how project your voice. But some of it too is that the Romans actually had this system of gestures that orators like Cicero would use to accompany their speeches. And what I ended up doing is combining two types of evidence again.
So I looked at the rhetorical handbooks like Cicero’s. And also there’s this guy, Quintilian, who lived about 100 years after Cicero, who wrote this long thing called the Institutio Oratoria, which has a description of all types of oratorical stuff, including about 40 pages on gestures.
So he actually says, “When you put your fingers like this, it means such and such.” It turns out Roman orators had a system of sign language that they would use to augment their speeches. But here’s the fun part. It wasn’t like modern American Sign Language, where a gesture means the same thing as a word.
Instead; and this goes back to Cicero; a certain gesture would indicate a certain emotion that you were meant to feel when you heard the words. It’s like your body is adding an emotional gloss to your speech. You’re saying words, and then you’re indicating how you think those words should make you feel.
And even more fun, the Romans believed that, “If I make certain hand gestures, you will almost involuntarily feel certain emotion.” So if you’re skilled, you can manipulate your audience by playing on their emotions.
This might sound weird or improbable, but the metaphor that Cicero himself uses is he says, “Think about music. Everybody knows that certain musical tones will make you feel a certain way.”
Think of movies today: in a horror movie, they’re going to play strident, tense music. In a romantic scene, you’re going to have strings, and it’ll make you feel a certain way. When you hear the Jaws theme, you feel tense.
Cicero said, “The orator’s body is like a lyre.” A lyre is a musical instrument. “And you have to learn to play on your own body as a musical instrument to affect the emotions of your audience.”
Lex Fridman
I think he might be onto something, especially given how central public speaking was in Roman culture.
I think he might be onto something, especially given how central public speaking was in Roman culture.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. And a lot of the Roman oratorical gestures: I could probably do some, and you could probably guess what emotion they’re meant to be.
Yeah. And a lot of the Roman oratorical gestures: I could probably do some, and you could probably guess what emotion they’re meant to be.
For example, there’s one where you hold up your hands to the side and push like this. This is the gesture, and what that means is mild aversion. I don’t like something.
Now if I couple this with turning my face to the side, that; pushing off to one side, turning my face away, it’s a strong aversion. That’s like fear or something.
If I clench my fist and press it to my chest, that’s anger or grief. If I slap my thigh, again, that’s indication of anger. So a lot of these make sense. I mean, they’re natural gestures.
Now, some are really weird and artificial. I mean, one of my favorite of these is if you hold your hand up open, then curl the fingers in one by one, and then flip it out; this sort of thing; that, to the Romans meant “wonder,” which you sort of see.
But again, if you’ve been raised in a societal context where you’re used to the notion that this gesture means this emotion, when someone does it, you’re probably going to feel that emotion.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. It’s like memes today: if it goes viral, [inaudible 02:12:49]
Yeah. It’s like memes today: if it goes viral, [inaudible 02:12:49]
Gregory Aldrete
You know what it’s supposed to mean.
You know what it’s supposed to mean.
Lex Fridman
It percolates through the culture.
It percolates through the culture.
Gregory Aldrete
It has that affect.
It has that affect.
Lex Fridman
It has power. I mean, and it’s actually interesting that we don’t use gestures as much in modern day.
It has power. I mean, and it’s actually interesting that we don’t use gestures as much in modern day.
Gregory Aldrete
Well, I mean for me, I just love analyzing modern political figures in terms of their body language.
Well, I mean for me, I just love analyzing modern political figures in terms of their body language.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Gregory Aldrete
Because how you deliver a speech is often more important than what you say.
Because how you deliver a speech is often more important than what you say.
In fact, in the ancient world, the most famous Greek orator was a guy named Demosthenes. And once a guy came up to Demosthenes and said, “Demosthenes, tell me: what are the three most important things in giving a speech?”
And Demosthenes said, “Well, they are delivery, delivery, and delivery.” That even the most brilliant speech, if accompanied by a boring delivery, is going to be less effective than a terrible speech given in an engaging and exciting or funny way.
Lex Fridman
Speaking of modern day and gestures, what do you think of Donald Trump, who has these very unique kind of gestures? I don’t know the degree to it’s true, but he uses these handshakes when he pulls people in, that kind of stuff. What do you make of that?
Speaking of modern day and gestures, what do you think of Donald Trump, who has these very unique kind of gestures? I don’t know the degree to it’s true, but he uses these handshakes when he pulls people in, that kind of stuff. What do you make of that?
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, Trump gesticulates a lot, but it’s a fairly narrow set of gestures. I mean, if you watch him for a bit, he kind of has the same small set of gestures.
I mean, Trump gesticulates a lot, but it’s a fairly narrow set of gestures. I mean, if you watch him for a bit, he kind of has the same small set of gestures.
I want to say they’re not natural in that they’re not illustrating what he’s saying. It’s more just punctuation points. I think of his as more kind of these punctuation points for just going along with what he’s saying.
There are speakers who truly can use their hands and arms and faces creatively. You watch them and it’s really enhancing the speech. I mean, just historically, Martin Luther King: he’s famous for a lot of good speeches, content. He was a good gesticulator, too. He knew how to use his body.
On the other hand, Adolf Hitler was a phenomenal gesticulator. If you watch some of his speeches; even just turn off the sound and watch them; he’s doing all kinds of stuff. And he’s really emphasizing his points in a very creative way.
This is what’s fascinating about oratory and public speaking, is it’s this two-edged sword. You can use these techniques for good, or you can absolutely use them for evil. You know?
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
Yeah.
Gregory Aldrete
The very same techniques in the hands of MLK, you say, “This is wonderful, this is fantastic.” In the hands of Hitler, you say, “This is awful. Look, he’s persuading a nation to commit atrocities.”
The very same techniques in the hands of MLK, you say, “This is wonderful, this is fantastic.” In the hands of Hitler, you say, “This is awful. Look, he’s persuading a nation to commit atrocities.”
Lex Fridman
I encourage people to watch the speeches of Hitler. The oratory skill there, to be able to channel the resentment and the frustration of a people, and control it and direct it to any direction he wants through speaking alone.
I encourage people to watch the speeches of Hitler. The oratory skill there, to be able to channel the resentment and the frustration of a people, and control it and direct it to any direction he wants through speaking alone.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, it’s the visual embodiment of the words, where he’s talking about Weimar Germany being taken advantage of, supposedly, and all this stuff. You’re right, he’s channeling the resentment of the people and using that to his personal advantage and for cynical, evil really, purposes. But oratory is like that.
Yeah, it’s the visual embodiment of the words, where he’s talking about Weimar Germany being taken advantage of, supposedly, and all this stuff. You’re right, he’s channeling the resentment of the people and using that to his personal advantage and for cynical, evil really, purposes. But oratory is like that.
The question I always end up asking my students, after studying Cicero and all these techniques, I say, “Okay, this is great oratory. But do you like this? Is this good that this works on human beings?”
Lex Fridman
I remember Noam Chomsky once was asked, “Why do you speak in such a monotone way?”
I remember Noam Chomsky once was asked, “Why do you speak in such a monotone way?”
And he said, “Well, I want the truth of my statement, the content of my statements to speak; that I don’t want you to get deluded by me because I’m such a charismatic and eloquent speaker. The more monotone I speak, the more you’ll listen to the content of the words.”
Gregory Aldrete
Right. I want you just focusing on the content and not being distracted.
Right. I want you just focusing on the content and not being distracted.
I’ll tell you also with Cicero: one of the things that he and other people who write about Roman oratory do is to say, “And you can do this stuff badly,” in which case it backfires horribly.
So you can have people who attempt to gesticulate. Again, modern politicians, you’ll see this sometime where they feel like, “I’m supposed to be making hand gestures,” and they’re terrible at it. And it undercuts it.
Cicero and Quintilian give some very amusing examples from ancient Rome. He says, there was this one guy who when he spoke, looked like he was trying to swat away flies because there were just these awkward gestures. Or another who looked like he was trying balancing a boat in choppy seas.
And my favorite is there was one orator who supposedly was prone to making, I guess, languid supple motions. They actually named a dance after this guy, and his name was Titius. And so Romans could do the Titius, which is this dance that was imitating this orator who had these comically bad gesticulation.
So not enough gesticulation is a problem. Too much gesticulation is a problem. You have to hit the sweet spot. It has to seem natural. It has to seem varied. It has to conform to the meaning of the words, not distract from it.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, natural, authentic to who you are.
Yeah, natural, authentic to who you are.
Gregory Aldrete
Authentic.
Authentic.
Lex Fridman
Which is when people try to copy the gestures of another person, it usually doesn’t go well.
Which is when people try to copy the gestures of another person, it usually doesn’t go well.
Gregory Aldrete
Right.
Right.
Lex Fridman
You have to interpret, integrate into your own personality and so on.
You have to interpret, integrate into your own personality and so on.
Gregory Aldrete
But gestures is really fun.
But gestures is really fun.
Lex Fridman
It’s fascinating.
It’s fascinating.
Gregory Aldrete
I enjoyed my dissertation a lot doing that. Because what I was trying to do there was to literally reconstruct them, so to say, “What were the actual gestures?”
I enjoyed my dissertation a lot doing that. Because what I was trying to do there was to literally reconstruct them, so to say, “What were the actual gestures?”
I did that by comparing the literary accounts of the handbooks with, again, Roman art: looking at statues of Romans and things, and just trying to say, “Okay, what were some of the gestures they actually used here?”
Lex Fridman
And in that way, the people from that time come to life, in your mind, in your work, which is fascinating.
And in that way, the people from that time come to life, in your mind, in your work, which is fascinating.
Gregory Aldrete
Well again, it’s this pragmatic thing. I want to know, “Okay, how does this work?”
Well again, it’s this pragmatic thing. I want to know, “Okay, how does this work?”
Lex Fridman
Could we talk about the role of religion in the Roman Empire? What’s the story there?
Could we talk about the role of religion in the Roman Empire? What’s the story there?
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, religion’s interesting. Because in my mind, the rise to dominance in a lot of the world of monotheistic religions is one of the huge turning points, because it’s just such a different mentality.
I mean, religion’s interesting. Because in my mind, the rise to dominance in a lot of the world of monotheistic religions is one of the huge turning points, because it’s just such a different mentality.
I mean, it’s very, very different where you say, “There’s one God, and it’s my God,” versus, “Okay, I believe in this god, but there’s an infinite number of legitimate gods.” And nowadays, particularly in the West, we tend to view the monotheistic perspective as the norm. But for more than half of human history, it was not.
Religion in Rome
It used to be the notion in a lot of Roman history, up until about 300 AD, the idea was, “Well, there’s just a ton of gods floating around. Maybe you worship that one, and I worship these two that I like. And the guy across the street worships the oak tree in his backyard, and it’s all good.”
They’re all legitimate things, versus, “Oh, no, no, no. Now there is one God, and only one God that’s the correct answer.” And as soon as you do that, religion becomes foregrounded in your decision making much more. I mean, the Romans had religion, but it wasn’t really driving anything, if you know what I mean. It was auxiliary to things, rather than a central force. For a lot of Roman history, you had standard, I guess, pagan polytheism where there’s a bunch of gods. There’s certain gods who are associated with the Roman state. There would be prayer said to those gods on behalf of the Roman state. But you weren’t trying to execute the will of Zeus or something, or Jupiter or Mars or anybody else.
And in your private life, it was the same thing. You might ask certain gods for help, but it wasn’t as much of a dominant thing in your own existence. So I think that’s a real transition point where religion started to become so foregrounded.
And as soon as you get the monotheistic religions; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in particular; it really shifts how people start to think about themselves in relationship to the world around them.
Lex Fridman
So Jesus was born during the rule of Emperor Augustus.
So Jesus was born during the rule of Emperor Augustus.
Gregory Aldrete
Yep. Which is kind of neat, that really influential people in the realm of political events and religious events co-existed. What are the odds?
Yep. Which is kind of neat, that really influential people in the realm of political events and religious events co-existed. What are the odds?
Lex Fridman
I mean, yeah, there’s certain moments in history where just a lot of interesting, powerful people come together and make history. And he was crucified under Emperor Tiberius’ rule.
I mean, yeah, there’s certain moments in history where just a lot of interesting, powerful people come together and make history. And he was crucified under Emperor Tiberius’ rule.
Gregory Aldrete
Yep.
Yep.
Lex Fridman
Why were the ideas of Jesus seen as a threat by the emperor?
Why were the ideas of Jesus seen as a threat by the emperor?
Gregory Aldrete
The thing that causes conflicts between the Romans and Christians is a little bit strange. It’s all with this where the Romans had a tradition of on the emperor’s birthday, saying a prayer basically wishing him good luck. But technically it’s in the form of sacrificing to that part of the emperor that might become divine after his death. To the Romans, this is the equivalent of a patriotism act: saying The Pledge of Allegiance or something to the country.
The thing that causes conflicts between the Romans and Christians is a little bit strange. It’s all with this where the Romans had a tradition of on the emperor’s birthday, saying a prayer basically wishing him good luck. But technically it’s in the form of sacrificing to that part of the emperor that might become divine after his death. To the Romans, this is the equivalent of a patriotism act: saying The Pledge of Allegiance or something to the country.
But of course, to Christians, this is worshiping another God. And I think there’s almost a failure of communication here, that the Romans just at least initially didn’t quite understand.
This is really problematic for these people, because they’re coming from a polytheistic perspective where, “Yeah, everybody has different gods. So what? This isn’t a religious problem. This is a political one. Then why won’t you send good wishes to the emperor? If you’re a loyal Roman, this is something you should want to do.”
And many of the early Christians, I think would’ve been fine with that. But it took the form of what they were asked to do was to basically worship another God. And that was the sticking point.
And this is where I think movies have warped some of our images of Roman history: that Hollywood loves to depict very early Christians. I’m talking, like, first 200 years here after the ministry of Christ as a group, that all the Romans were obsessed with, that they were constantly trying to persecute and all this. Honestly, I think the Romans at that point were more just indifferent or didn’t know what was going on.
And if you look at some of the primary sources of that time, I mean, there’s this very famous letter by a guy named Pliny who was a Roman governor of a province in the East. He had the habit of writing letters to the Roman emperor at the time, who was Trajan, every time he had a problem with being governor.
This is great. This is the two highest governmental officials in the Roman world hammering out policy between them, the emperor and one of his governors. This is about 100 years, 100 AD about.
And Pliny says, “Hey, Emperor, I had this issue. I had these people come before me called Christians. I don’t quite know what to do with them. What should my policy be? Here’s what I know about them.” And what he knows is almost nothing. I mean, it’s this almost comic-like garbling.
” They have this weird thing where they get together on some day of the week and they swear oaths to one another not to do bad stuff,” which is of course his garbled understanding of the 10 Commandments. “And then they have breakfast together and they eat food,” and this is communion. But he doesn’t get that that’s what’s going on. And so he’s really ignorant.
But I think that the broader point is, okay, this is one of the best-educated, best-traveled Romans who has the most experience in the empire, has been all over the empire, and what does he know about Christianity? Basically nothing.
So if one of the best-educated, most widely traveled guys really doesn’t know much about them, that suggests that not many people did at this point in time.
Lex Fridman
At this time, was a fringe movement that really did-
At this time, was a fringe movement that really did-
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, very fringe. I mean, it was one of hundreds of little mystery religions, the Romans thought of it as. These are religions that have some sort of revealed knowledge and that make more personal appeals to people.
Yeah, very fringe. I mean, it was one of hundreds of little mystery religions, the Romans thought of it as. These are religions that have some sort of revealed knowledge and that make more personal appeals to people.
Now, stepping back from this in a broad way, I think you can say that Christianity really was different in some ways, and had some things that maybe the Romans should rightfully have viewed as a threat. I mean, the Romans are a people very focused on this world: citizenship, what you do.
Christianity, in essence, has a focus on the next world. So this world isn’t as important as what you’re setting yourself up for.
And even worse, from a Roman perspective, I’m kind of saying, “Okay, if I were a Roman,” Romans are all about making distinctions between people. Citizen, non-citizen, man, woman, free, slave.
Christianity comes along and says, “In God’s eyes, you’re all equal.” Now, that’s a pretty problematic idea if you’re deeply invested in Roman hierarchy. And I think it is no surprise that among the earliest converts to Christianity are women and slaves, and in particular, female slaves.
Now, who are they? They’re the people at the rock bottom of the Roman hierarchy of status, which the Romans are obsessed with status. But here’s a religion that says, “That doesn’t matter.”
And in that same letter to Pliny, Pliny says, “Okay, in this group of Christians I’ve heard about, their leaders are two female slaves they call ‘deaconesses.'” Now, this is really early. This is before the church exists, right? There’s no church structure yet. And who is leading the local congregation of Christians? Two slave women.
So that’s an interesting moment, and that’s not necessarily the image we get of early Christianity. But you can see how for people in this social structure, that would be very appealing to them. And in some ways, yeah, it is sort of a threat to the Roman system because they’re challenging it.
Now, the irony is, of course, 300 years after the life of Christ, the emperor converts to Christianity. And another 100 years later under Theodosius, it becomes the official religion of the Roman Empire. So all of a sudden you have this flip-flop, where now the state itself is not just converted to Christianity, but actively promoting it and now persecuting pagans.
And the reason the emperors do that is one of the biggest problems for emperors at that point in time is legitimacy. That there’s tons of civil wars where you have lots of different people saying, “I’m emperor.” So lots of generals declaring themselves emperor.
Now under a polytheistic religion, you’re all just fighting. It doesn’t matter. But if you say there is only one God, then if that God picks someone to be His emperor, they’re the only legitimate emperor. Right?
So there is a real advantage to emperors now becoming Christian. Because they can say, “We’re now a Christian empire and there’s only one God, and I’m the guy that God picked to be emperor, that means all these other people claiming to be emperors are illegitimate.”
Lex Fridman
Do you think that? Or is there other factors that explain why Christianity was able to spread?
Do you think that? Or is there other factors that explain why Christianity was able to spread?
Gregory Aldrete
Well, that’s why it’s appealing to the emperors. And we’re talking here, I mean, the religious answer is people see the light, right? It’s a faith-based thing. I’m looking at this as a historian.
Well, that’s why it’s appealing to the emperors. And we’re talking here, I mean, the religious answer is people see the light, right? It’s a faith-based thing. I’m looking at this as a historian.
So putting aside religious feeling and saying, “Okay, if I’m doing an analysis of this as a social phenomenon, what would be appealing to people?” And there is that very compelling reason for emperors to want to go to Christianity because it helps them with their biggest problem, which is legitimacy.
Now, if you’re an ordinary person, what is the appeal of Christianity? Well, we already looked at a couple of them. One of them is that it promises you a reward in the afterlife.
I mean, the Roman and Greek notions of the afterlife aren’t that appealing. Either you just turn into dust, or at best you turn into this kind of ghost thing that floats around something that looks like a Greek gymnasium, which is like a bunch of grassy fields. It’s not so hot.
So here you’re offered the idea of, “Oh, you go to paradise forever. That sounds really good.” And secondly, for a lot of people in Roman society, that notion of, “Here’s something that says I’m valuable as a human being. It doesn’t matter whether I’m free or slave. It doesn’t matter whether I’m Roman or non-Roman. It doesn’t matter if I’m man or woman. Here’s something that says I have equal value.” That’s enormously appealing.
And finally, early Christians, I mean, they honestly, a lot of them do good works. They take care of the sick, they feed the poor. I mean, if you look at Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, that’s the stuff He really hammers. If we look at the words of Jesus when He says, “What do you do to be a Christian?”
A lot of it is take care of the unfortunate, take care of people who are sick, take care of people who are starving. And a lot of the early Christians really take that seriously. They are helping people out. So that’s appealing.
Lex Fridman
They’re the good kind of populist, and populist messages spread.
They’re the good kind of populist, and populist messages spread.
Let me ask you about gladiators.
Gregory Aldrete
Switch our pace here.
Switch our pace here.
Lex Fridman
What role did they play in Roman society?
What role did they play in Roman society?
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, okay, gladiator games obviously become a popular form of entertainment. And they’re one of the ones that’s captured people’s imaginations for all sorts of reasons. I mean, it’s dramatic.
I mean, okay, gladiator games obviously become a popular form of entertainment. And they’re one of the ones that’s captured people’s imaginations for all sorts of reasons. I mean, it’s dramatic.
But also I think it’s that apparent contradiction. That in so many ways, Roman society seems familiar to us. In so many ways, it seems sophisticated and appealing. Law is wonderful, all this. But yet, for fun, they watched people fight to the death. So how do you reconcile these things?
Gladiators, I find very interesting because they’re an example of what historians call status dissonance. It’s someone who in society has high status in some ways, and very low or despised status in another.
So gladiators, most of them were slaves, the lowest of the low in Roman society, right? Also, they’re fighting for other people’s pleasure, and dying sometimes for other people’s pleasure.
And the Romans had a real thing about this: your body being used for others’ pleasure. Even a humble working person who hired themselves out for labor, the Romans thought that was innately demeaning, because you’re using your body for someone else’s benefit or pleasure.
They didn’t have this notion of the dignity of hard labor or something. They thought the only noble profession was farming, okay, because there you generate something and you’re producing it for yourself. But if you work for someone else, you’re demeaning yourself. And gladiator’s the worst of the worst, right? You’re performing for someone else’s pleasure. So on the one hand, they’re very low status. But on the other hand, successful gladiators get famous. People admire them, women find them attractive, they’re celebrities. This is the status dissonance. You have these people who, on the one hand, formally are very low status in society, but yet are very popular on the other hand.
Another kind of myth about gladiators is that they were just dying all the time. I mean, you watch movies, and again, they’ll always throw a bunch of gladiators and they all die. I think some scholars did a study of, like, 100 fights we know of where we know some details. And I think 10% of those ended in the death of one of the people.
So gladiators are a lot more like boxing matches, where you’re watching a display of skill between two people who are more or less evenly matched in terms of their abilities. And probably they’ll survive, though there’s a chance that one of them might get injured. In fact, one might die.
Having said all that, in the end, you really are having people fight and potentially die for the pleasure of an audience. And anthropologists and Roman historians like to speculate, “Why did the Romans do this?”
The Romans address it. I mean, there’s a famous thing where a Roman says, “We Romans, we’re a violent people. We’re a warlike people. And so it’s fitting that we should be accustomed to the sight of death and violence.” Kind of works.
There’s a more symbolic interpretation that says, “The amphitheater is an expression of Roman dominance,” a symbolic expression. Because what you have are all segments of Roman society gathered together to control the fate of others.
You have foreigners, you have wild animals, you have criminals, you have other people. And we are symbolically asserting our dominance over those groups by determining, “Do you live or do you die?” And that kind of works, too.
And the cynical one is, humans like violence. I mean, when people watch a hockey game, what gets them most excited? The fight. When people watch car racing, there’s a crash. What’s going to be shown on the news? It’s the crash. There’s something dark in human nature sometimes that likes violence. And maybe the Romans are just being more honest about it than we are.
Lex Fridman
I think Dan Carlin has a really great episode called Painfotainment. I think in that episode, he suggests the hypothetical: that if we did something like a gladiator games today to the death, that the whole world would tune in.
I think Dan Carlin has a really great episode called Painfotainment. I think in that episode, he suggests the hypothetical: that if we did something like a gladiator games today to the death, that the whole world would tune in.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
Especially if it was anonymous. We have a thin veil of civility, underneath which would probably still be something deep within us would be attracted to that violence.
Especially if it was anonymous. We have a thin veil of civility, underneath which would probably still be something deep within us would be attracted to that violence.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, I mean, yeah, is it human nature? Why do people slow down when there’s a car wreck and try and see what’s happening?
Yeah, I mean, yeah, is it human nature? Why do people slow down when there’s a car wreck and try and see what’s happening?
On the other hand, to be fair, I mean there were Romans at the time who morally objected to them and said, “This is morally degenerate to take pleasure in this, and that’s wrong.” So I think in all eras, you have a diversity of opinions. There’s no unanimous take on what this is or what this means.
Lex Fridman
Who usually were the gladiators? Was it slaves? Was it-
Who usually were the gladiators? Was it slaves? Was it-
Gregory Aldrete
Well, the most common source, again, is prisoners of war. If you conquer some people and they seem to be warlike, you might well consign some of them to fight in the arena.
Well, the most common source, again, is prisoners of war. If you conquer some people and they seem to be warlike, you might well consign some of them to fight in the arena.
And the other thing about gladiators is they were highly trained professionals. The gladiator schools who trained them were spending a lot of money to train these people. And it wasn’t just, “We take some guy and throw them into the arena,” like you see in movies all the time. These were people that you’d invested a lot of money, and that’s why you don’t really want to see them killed.
But yeah, mostly they’re prisoners of war. I mean, in very rare instances you might have a free person volunteering, or even selling themselves to fight as gladiators. But much more common was that.
And what’s interesting is some people wouldn’t do it. I mean, there’s a lot of instances of gladiators refusing to fight and committing suicide, which you don’t hear. There was one German who was supposed to fight as a gladiator. Instead, he stuck his head between the spokes of a wagon that was spinning and snapped his own neck.
There were a group of 29 Germans who all said, “We’re not going to fight for the Romans’ pleasure.” And they strangled one another the night before they were supposed to fight. So I mean, you have people sort of objecting to being complicit in this kind of performance as well,
Lex Fridman
And they also had interest in animals.
And they also had interest in animals.
Gregory Aldrete
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
Humans fought animals, exotic animals.
Humans fought animals, exotic animals.
Gregory Aldrete
And animals fought animals.
And animals fought animals.
Lex Fridman
Animals fought animals.
Animals fought animals.
Gregory Aldrete
The Romans were a little weird with their animal thing. They loved exotic animals, but mostly they liked to see exotic animals die.
The Romans were a little weird with their animal thing. They loved exotic animals, but mostly they liked to see exotic animals die.
I mean, there was an enormous industry collecting wild beasts, transporting them to Rome: which is no easy matter to transport elephants and giraffes and rhinos, particularly in this era of technology. But they were draining Africa and bringing lions and all these things and sacrificing them.
Lex Fridman
And what about the different venues? I mean, there’s the legendary Colosseum. What is the importance of this place?
And what about the different venues? I mean, there’s the legendary Colosseum. What is the importance of this place?
Gregory Aldrete
Well, the Colosseum’s real name is the Flavian Amphitheater. It’s interesting because for a long time, Rome always had a chariot racing arena, the Circus Maximus. But it didn’t have a permanent gladiatorial venue until relatively late, till about 80 AD, during the reign of the Emperor Vespasian. He built this thing. He built the Flavian Amphitheater; he was from the Flavian family of emperors. And he did it as a deliberate act of propaganda.
Well, the Colosseum’s real name is the Flavian Amphitheater. It’s interesting because for a long time, Rome always had a chariot racing arena, the Circus Maximus. But it didn’t have a permanent gladiatorial venue until relatively late, till about 80 AD, during the reign of the Emperor Vespasian. He built this thing. He built the Flavian Amphitheater; he was from the Flavian family of emperors. And he did it as a deliberate act of propaganda.
Before him had been Nero, who was seen as a crazy or bad emperor. One of Nero’s indulgences is he had built this enormous palace for himself called the Golden House. It was kind of this pleasure palace with 50 dining rooms and all this stuff, and it was basically wasting a ton of money on him.
So right on the site where Nero had his Golden House, Vespasian says, “I’m going to erect a new building on top of it that’s going to be for the pleasure of the people.” So it was very much a political statement, that “My dynasty is going to be about serving Romans, not serving ourselves.” That’s why he builds the Flavian Amphitheater.
The funds he uses from it is basically from looting Jerusalem. Because the other thing he had done just before this is he had sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple there, in fact, he and his son Titus. And so this is what he now builds in Rome is his gift to the people of Rome.
Lex Fridman
But it’s interesting to think about that place, to think about that relationship with violence across centuries for spectacle, watching people fight. And like you said, only 10% of the time it led to the death. But I read that still a lot of people died. A lot of gladiators were killed.
But it’s interesting to think about that place, to think about that relationship with violence across centuries for spectacle, watching people fight. And like you said, only 10% of the time it led to the death. But I read that still a lot of people died. A lot of gladiators were killed.
Gregory Aldrete
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Lex Fridman
There’s numbers there that’s crazy. I read a full 100,000 dead. This includes gladiators, slaves, convicts, prisoners, and so on. That’s a lot of people.
There’s numbers there that’s crazy. I read a full 100,000 dead. This includes gladiators, slaves, convicts, prisoners, and so on. That’s a lot of people.
Gregory Aldrete
The Flavian Amphitheater is really interesting too, just as a piece of technology, and as influence on later world. I mean, almost every sporting arena today owes something to the Flavian Amphitheater, the Colosseum, in terms of construction.
The Flavian Amphitheater is really interesting too, just as a piece of technology, and as influence on later world. I mean, almost every sporting arena today owes something to the Flavian Amphitheater, the Colosseum, in terms of construction.
It was amazingly sophisticated building. I mean, it had retractable awnings and elevators and ramps that things could just pop up into the arena from below. And it-
Gregory Aldrete
… just pop up into the arena from below. And it had very well-designed passages where everybody could file in and file out very efficiently, and they were all numbered. So I mean, it’s one of, I think, the most influential buildings in history, just because of the way that all these buildings we go to today, they’re all kind of variants on it and using some of the ideas from it.
… just pop up into the arena from below. And it had very well-designed passages where everybody could file in and file out very efficiently, and they were all numbered. So I mean, it’s one of, I think, the most influential buildings in history, just because of the way that all these buildings we go to today, they’re all kind of variants on it and using some of the ideas from it.
Lex Fridman
And the Romans took their construction seriously.
And the Romans took their construction seriously.
Gregory Aldrete
Oh, yeah. They were good at that. So they were excellent engineers. And the Romans were excellent engineers, especially when it came to what you might think of as humble stuff. I mean, today, we tend to think of, oh, a Roman building as shining white marble, right? Well, the core of that building was probably concrete, and the marble is just a superficial facade. And if you think about the Colosseum in Rome today, all the marble has been stripped off that building. And what you see is the concrete core, the structural core that’s left, and the Romans, I mean, they didn’t invent concrete, but they just used it more creatively than anyone had before. And if you look at buildings like the Greeks built, they’re all rectilinear, they’re all rectangles or squares, and they always have a lot of columns because you need to hold the roof up.
Oh, yeah. They were good at that. So they were excellent engineers. And the Romans were excellent engineers, especially when it came to what you might think of as humble stuff. I mean, today, we tend to think of, oh, a Roman building as shining white marble, right? Well, the core of that building was probably concrete, and the marble is just a superficial facade. And if you think about the Colosseum in Rome today, all the marble has been stripped off that building. And what you see is the concrete core, the structural core that’s left, and the Romans, I mean, they didn’t invent concrete, but they just used it more creatively than anyone had before. And if you look at buildings like the Greeks built, they’re all rectilinear, they’re all rectangles or squares, and they always have a lot of columns because you need to hold the roof up.
The Romans, because of their use of concrete, could build wooden frames, they could have curves, they could have domes, they could have all kinds of stuff. And it just explodes the architectural possibilities. They also made a lot of use of the vault. So if you cut rocks and arrange them so that they form a curve, you could have big vaulted spaces. And they were just brilliant with their mix of things. I mean, the Pantheon is the best preserved Roman building, and it’s another brilliant building, incredibly influential. I mean, every capitol building in the world or museum is an imitation of the Pantheon. The capitol in Washington, D.C., the Capitol in Madison, where I’m from, Wisconsin, Austin, where we are now, they’re all Pantheons. It’s a big dome with a triangular pediment and some columns on the front.
So it’s just an amazingly influential building. But it’s brilliant because the way it’s constructed is the concrete at the bottom of the dome is both thicker and has a denser formulation, so it’s heavier where it needs to bear the weight. And then as you get further up the dome, it gets narrower and narrower, and they mix in different types of rock. So at the top, you’re using pumice, that very light volcanic stone. So where you want it to be light, it’s light, and it’s here 2,000 years later. I mean, look around you. How many buildings that we’re building` now do you think are going to be here in 2,000 years? I suspect not many.
Lex Fridman
And it’s not only that they lasted, but they were beautiful, or at least in our current conception of beauty.
And it’s not only that they lasted, but they were beautiful, or at least in our current conception of beauty.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, I mean, Vitruvius, his principles are things should be functional and they should be aesthetically pleasing. So that’s a winning combination, I think.
Yeah, I mean, Vitruvius, his principles are things should be functional and they should be aesthetically pleasing. So that’s a winning combination, I think.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, they pulled that off pretty well. If you could talk about the long line of emperors that made up the Roman Empire, how were they selected?
Yeah, they pulled that off pretty well. If you could talk about the long line of emperors that made up the Roman Empire, how were they selected?
Gregory Aldrete
Oh, boy. We’ve been talking about Augustus’ great achievements and how clever he was with propaganda and all, this is his great failure. So his great failure is that he did not solve was the problem of succession. How do you ensure that the next person who follows you is not just the best person but is qualified? And he fails to do it. So the principle he settles on is heredity. So the nearest blood relative. And he goes through all these people, all these young kids in his family die that he keeps trying to make the heir, and he ends up making his heir Tiberius, who he never liked, it was his stepson, he didn’t like him, but he ends up inheriting it. And the next set of emperors, the Julio-Claudians, which is the family that Augustus starts, they all basically are who is the nearest male relative to the previous emperor. And that’s how we get a lot of crazy emperors like Caligula or Nero.
Oh, boy. We’ve been talking about Augustus’ great achievements and how clever he was with propaganda and all, this is his great failure. So his great failure is that he did not solve was the problem of succession. How do you ensure that the next person who follows you is not just the best person but is qualified? And he fails to do it. So the principle he settles on is heredity. So the nearest blood relative. And he goes through all these people, all these young kids in his family die that he keeps trying to make the heir, and he ends up making his heir Tiberius, who he never liked, it was his stepson, he didn’t like him, but he ends up inheriting it. And the next set of emperors, the Julio-Claudians, which is the family that Augustus starts, they all basically are who is the nearest male relative to the previous emperor. And that’s how we get a lot of crazy emperors like Caligula or Nero.
And then the next family, the Flavians, the first guy is kind of an Augustus, it’s Vespasian, the one who builds the Flavian Amphitheater, and then one of his sons takes over, Titus, who’s okay, and then the next son takes over, Domitian, who’s nuts again. So heredity just isn’t working, And Rome fights a couple civil wars, and in 98 AD, we’re 100 years now into the Empire, and they look back at this track record and say, “Okay, we’ve been picking our emperors by heredity and we’ve gotten some real duds here, some real problematic people. Is there a way to fix this?”
And this is one of the few instances where the Romans, who I keep saying are very traditional and resist change, I think actually make a change and realize we got to do something different. And so the next guy looks around and says, “Okay, forget who’s my nearest male relative, who’s the best qualified to be emperor after me? I’ll pick that person and then I’ll adopt him as my son.” So they kind of stick with heredity. Now, it’s this fake adoption, and you end up with a lot of old guys adopting middle-aged adults as their son, which is a little strange, but it works.
Emperors
And so for the next 80 years, you have only five emperors, and they’re often called the Five Good Emperors, they’re not related necessarily by blood, they sort of picked the best qualified guy, and they’re all sound, competent, good emperors. And the 2nd century AD, from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius, is often regarded as the high point of the Roman Empire. And a lot of that comes from you have political stability, you have a succession of decent guys being emperor who rule relatively wisely, promote good policies. There’s other things working to Rome’s advantage, but that’s good. And then where it falls apart is where the last guy, Marcus Aurelius, looks around and says, “Who’s the best qualified guy to succeed me? What a coincidence, it’s my own dear son.”, who turns out to be a psycho. And then it all goes downhill.
Lex Fridman
And some people place the sort of the collapse of the Roman Empire there at the end of Marcus Aurelius’ rule.
And some people place the sort of the collapse of the Roman Empire there at the end of Marcus Aurelius’ rule.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, so 180 AD is one common date for an early date for the end of the Roman Empire when you… Because from then on, it’s a mixed bag of good and bad emperors.
Yeah, so 180 AD is one common date for an early date for the end of the Roman Empire when you… Because from then on, it’s a mixed bag of good and bad emperors.
Lex Fridman
At the very least, this period is when the Roman Empire is at its height on all different kinds of perspectives.
At the very least, this period is when the Roman Empire is at its height on all different kinds of perspectives.
Gregory Aldrete
Certainly geographically. I mean, at this point, stretches from Britain to Mesopotamia, from Egypt up to Germany. Like I said, probably about 50 million people within its boundaries. Within those boundaries, there’s relative peace. So I mean, sometimes people talk about the Pax Romana. I mean, the Romans are fighting lots of people, but within the boundaries, you have relative peace. There’s relative economic prosperity. I mean, nothing in the ancient world is that prosperous. It’s just a different sort of economy, but it’s pretty stable. There’s no huge disasters happening yet. Some plagues start in Marcus Aurelius’ reign. But yeah, this is pretty much seen as the high point of the Roman Empire, and I think it is. I think that there’s truth to that.
Certainly geographically. I mean, at this point, stretches from Britain to Mesopotamia, from Egypt up to Germany. Like I said, probably about 50 million people within its boundaries. Within those boundaries, there’s relative peace. So I mean, sometimes people talk about the Pax Romana. I mean, the Romans are fighting lots of people, but within the boundaries, you have relative peace. There’s relative economic prosperity. I mean, nothing in the ancient world is that prosperous. It’s just a different sort of economy, but it’s pretty stable. There’s no huge disasters happening yet. Some plagues start in Marcus Aurelius’ reign. But yeah, this is pretty much seen as the high point of the Roman Empire, and I think it is. I think that there’s truth to that.
Lex Fridman
Let me ask the ridiculously oversimplified question, but who do you think is the greatest Roman emperor or maybe your top three?
Let me ask the ridiculously oversimplified question, but who do you think is the greatest Roman emperor or maybe your top three?
Gregory Aldrete
Greatest emperor? I tell you what, I’ll tell you my favorite Roman who wasn’t an emperor, and that’s Marcus Agrippa, who was Augustus’ right-hand man. So Agrippa’s this interesting guy who is extremely talented. He’s a terrific general. He’s a terrific admiral. He’s a great builder. He is kind of like the troubleshooter for Augustus. He’s the guy who wins the Battle of Actium for Augustus. So literally, Augustus would not have become the first emperor without Agrippa. When Augustus rebuilds the city of Rome, it’s Agrippa that he gives the job to. Agrippa rebuilds the campus marshes. He builds the first version of the Pantheon. He personally goes through the sewers to clean them out. And he just has this great set of qualities that he’s very self- effacing.
Greatest emperor? I tell you what, I’ll tell you my favorite Roman who wasn’t an emperor, and that’s Marcus Agrippa, who was Augustus’ right-hand man. So Agrippa’s this interesting guy who is extremely talented. He’s a terrific general. He’s a terrific admiral. He’s a great builder. He is kind of like the troubleshooter for Augustus. He’s the guy who wins the Battle of Actium for Augustus. So literally, Augustus would not have become the first emperor without Agrippa. When Augustus rebuilds the city of Rome, it’s Agrippa that he gives the job to. Agrippa rebuilds the campus marshes. He builds the first version of the Pantheon. He personally goes through the sewers to clean them out. And he just has this great set of qualities that he’s very self- effacing.
I think he likes power, he wants real power, but he realizes I don’t have that kind of clever politician’s ability to be the front guy, so I’ll just serve my friend, Augustus, loyally. They were childhood friends. I’ll win the battles for Augustus and I’ll let him take all the credit, but I’ll be his number two guy, and that’s what I’m good at. And he realizes his limitations. I mean, so many people don’t. So many people are like, “Oh, I just want to keep grabbing for more and more and more when it’s not something they’re good at.” And I think Agrippa says, “I’m good to this point and I’ll play that role and no more, and that’ll give me a lot of power, but I’m not going to press it.” And yeah, he’s just very hardworking, he’s modest, he’s self-effacing, he’s highly competent.
Lex Fridman
I wonder how many people in history that are like the drivers, the COO of the whole operation that we don’t really think about or don’t talk about enough to where they’re really the mastermind?
I wonder how many people in history that are like the drivers, the COO of the whole operation that we don’t really think about or don’t talk about enough to where they’re really the mastermind?
Gregory Aldrete
Or the ones who make something possible. I mean, even in this conversation today, you would not have Alexander the Great without his father Philip II having built that army and handed it to him on a silver platter. Octavian would never have become emperor without Agrippa. So they play central roles sometimes. But if I had to pick an emperor, I’d probably pick Augustus just because of his influence and because I admire the thing Agrippa didn’t have, his political savvy, his manipulation of image and propaganda. All that, I find very fascinating. Though I’m not sure he’s a great human being, but he’s a really interesting figure.
Or the ones who make something possible. I mean, even in this conversation today, you would not have Alexander the Great without his father Philip II having built that army and handed it to him on a silver platter. Octavian would never have become emperor without Agrippa. So they play central roles sometimes. But if I had to pick an emperor, I’d probably pick Augustus just because of his influence and because I admire the thing Agrippa didn’t have, his political savvy, his manipulation of image and propaganda. All that, I find very fascinating. Though I’m not sure he’s a great human being, but he’s a really interesting figure.
The greatest Roman
Lex Fridman
Whether he’s good or bad, he was extremely influential on defining just the entirety of human history that followed. Probably one of the most influential humans ever. Nevertheless, if you ask in public who the most famous Roman emperor is, would that be Marcus Aurelius potentially?
Whether he’s good or bad, he was extremely influential on defining just the entirety of human history that followed. Probably one of the most influential humans ever. Nevertheless, if you ask in public who the most famous Roman emperor is, would that be Marcus Aurelius potentially?
Gregory Aldrete
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
Lex Fridman
He’s up there.
He’s up there.
Gregory Aldrete
That’s a good question.
That’s a good question.
Lex Fridman
Right?
Right?
Gregory Aldrete
He’s real famous because he was a stoic philosopher and he wrote this book, the Meditations.
He’s real famous because he was a stoic philosopher and he wrote this book, the Meditations.
Lex Fridman
I mean, it’s interesting. Stoicism as a philosophical ideology had a role to play during that time. I mean, the tragic fact that… Did Nero murder Seneca?
I mean, it’s interesting. Stoicism as a philosophical ideology had a role to play during that time. I mean, the tragic fact that… Did Nero murder Seneca?
Gregory Aldrete
Yes.
Yes.
Lex Fridman
Well, he drove him to suicide, let’s say. There’s a lot of interesting questions there, but one is the role, especially when it’s hereditary, the role of the mentor, who advises who with the Aristotle and Alexander the Great, that dance of who influences and guides the person as they become and gain power is really interesting.
Well, he drove him to suicide, let’s say. There’s a lot of interesting questions there, but one is the role, especially when it’s hereditary, the role of the mentor, who advises who with the Aristotle and Alexander the Great, that dance of who influences and guides the person as they become and gain power is really interesting.
Gregory Aldrete
Well, I mean, one of the big questions with the Roman emperors, and we’ve been talking about some of them, is why did so many seem to be either crazy or just sadists? I don’t know that there’s a good answer to that. I mean, people have theories. Oh, Caligula got a brain fever and changed after that or something. But I think there’s a lot of maybe truth in the notion that the ones who seem to go craziest quite often are the ones who become emperor at a young age. And there is something about that old cliche that absolute power corrupts absolutely, especially if your own personality isn’t really fully formed yet. You know what I’m saying? I think take anybody when they’re a teenager, if you all of a sudden said, you have unlimited power, what would that do to you? How would that warp your personality? I mean, look at all the… [inaudible 02:51:40] like the Disney stars who sort of go wrong or something because they get rich and famous at this very young age.
Well, I mean, one of the big questions with the Roman emperors, and we’ve been talking about some of them, is why did so many seem to be either crazy or just sadists? I don’t know that there’s a good answer to that. I mean, people have theories. Oh, Caligula got a brain fever and changed after that or something. But I think there’s a lot of maybe truth in the notion that the ones who seem to go craziest quite often are the ones who become emperor at a young age. And there is something about that old cliche that absolute power corrupts absolutely, especially if your own personality isn’t really fully formed yet. You know what I’m saying? I think take anybody when they’re a teenager, if you all of a sudden said, you have unlimited power, what would that do to you? How would that warp your personality? I mean, look at all the… [inaudible 02:51:40] like the Disney stars who sort of go wrong or something because they get rich and famous at this very young age.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Fame, power, and even money, if you get way too much of it at a young age, I think we’re egotistical, narcissistic, all that kind of stuff as babies. And then when we clash with the world and we figure out the morality of the world, how to interact with others, that other people suffer in all kinds of ways, understand the cruelty, the beauty of the world, the fact that other people suffer in different ways, the fact that other people are also human and have different perspectives, all of that, in order to develop that, you shouldn’t be blocked off from the world, which power and money And fame can do.
Yeah. Fame, power, and even money, if you get way too much of it at a young age, I think we’re egotistical, narcissistic, all that kind of stuff as babies. And then when we clash with the world and we figure out the morality of the world, how to interact with others, that other people suffer in all kinds of ways, understand the cruelty, the beauty of the world, the fact that other people suffer in different ways, the fact that other people are also human and have different perspectives, all of that, in order to develop that, you shouldn’t be blocked off from the world, which power and money And fame can do.
Marcus Aurelius
Gregory Aldrete
And conversely, a lot of the emperors we regard as, quote, “good emperors”, are the ones who become emperor at a middle-aged or something, where their personalities are fully formed, where they’re not going to really become different people. And so that works in that theory too. I mean, I don’t think it’s absolute. And of course, the greatest exception is Octavian Augustus, who starts as rise to power as a teenager. Somehow doesn’t seem to go nuts.
And conversely, a lot of the emperors we regard as, quote, “good emperors”, are the ones who become emperor at a middle-aged or something, where their personalities are fully formed, where they’re not going to really become different people. And so that works in that theory too. I mean, I don’t think it’s absolute. And of course, the greatest exception is Octavian Augustus, who starts as rise to power as a teenager. Somehow doesn’t seem to go nuts.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, history has a lot of-
Yeah, history has a lot of-
Gregory Aldrete
It’s not an absolute, but it doesn’t help to get that much power at a young age, I think.
It’s not an absolute, but it doesn’t help to get that much power at a young age, I think.
Lex Fridman
What does it take to be a successful emperor, would you say?
What does it take to be a successful emperor, would you say?
Gregory Aldrete
So you say, what does it take to be a good Roman emperor? If you were going to draw up a job description, seeking Roman emperor, what are the qualities and qualifications you would put on it? Obviously, you would put responsible, good understanding of military, economics, whatever, ability to delegate. But just to be fun, let’s consider how much does it matter whether the emperor is good or bad? Because in the ancient world, what does it affect really if you’re say a peasant in Spain, if the emperor is crazy Nero or good Vespasian? I mean, how does that affect your day-to-day life? How does it affect you if you’re a peasant in Italy? Which is the average inhabitant. I mean, the crazy emperors mostly affect the people within the sound of their voice. So yeah, they go crazy. They murder senators, they murder members of their own family. They do wacky stuff. But a lot of that is constrained to the immediate surroundings around them. And meanwhile, the mechanism of the Roman Empire is just grinding along as it would anyway, I mean, the governors are running their provinces, stuff’s happening.
So you say, what does it take to be a good Roman emperor? If you were going to draw up a job description, seeking Roman emperor, what are the qualities and qualifications you would put on it? Obviously, you would put responsible, good understanding of military, economics, whatever, ability to delegate. But just to be fun, let’s consider how much does it matter whether the emperor is good or bad? Because in the ancient world, what does it affect really if you’re say a peasant in Spain, if the emperor is crazy Nero or good Vespasian? I mean, how does that affect your day-to-day life? How does it affect you if you’re a peasant in Italy? Which is the average inhabitant. I mean, the crazy emperors mostly affect the people within the sound of their voice. So yeah, they go crazy. They murder senators, they murder members of their own family. They do wacky stuff. But a lot of that is constrained to the immediate surroundings around them. And meanwhile, the mechanism of the Roman Empire is just grinding along as it would anyway, I mean, the governors are running their provinces, stuff’s happening.
I mean, I guess an emperor can start a war, he can maybe raise taxes, but that would be the ways that he’s affecting the whole empire. And here, we get into technology does matter. We’re dealing with a world where, let’s say you’re in Rome and you’re the emperor and you want to send a message to a province far away, let’s say Judea, that message might take one or two months to get there and one or two months to get a reply. So how much influence as emperor are you really having over that province? I mean, those people pretty much have to make their own decisions and then just say to you, “This is what we did. I hope that’s okay.” Because otherwise, nothing gets done if they’re waiting four months for a decision.
Lex Fridman
Even in the realm of ideas, they can’t get on TV and on the radio and-
Even in the realm of ideas, they can’t get on TV and on the radio and-
Gregory Aldrete
Communication-
Communication-
Lex Fridman
… broadcasts.
… broadcasts.
Gregory Aldrete
… is so slow and so uncertain in ways that today, with the ability to instantaneously talk to people across the world, we can’t even imagine. And the Roman Empire is huge. I mean, it is months to send a message and get an answer. So here, you have the emperor in Rome, yeah, he affects who’s around him, and he can affect even common people. I mean, there’s crazy emperors who are at the games and they’re bored and they say, “We’ll take that whole section of the crowd and throw them to the lions or something.” There, you’re being affected by the emperor, but if you’re outside the range of his sight and voice, do you care who the emperor is-
… is so slow and so uncertain in ways that today, with the ability to instantaneously talk to people across the world, we can’t even imagine. And the Roman Empire is huge. I mean, it is months to send a message and get an answer. So here, you have the emperor in Rome, yeah, he affects who’s around him, and he can affect even common people. I mean, there’s crazy emperors who are at the games and they’re bored and they say, “We’ll take that whole section of the crowd and throw them to the lions or something.” There, you’re being affected by the emperor, but if you’re outside the range of his sight and voice, do you care who the emperor is-
Lex Fridman
So the big one-
So the big one-
Gregory Aldrete
… most of the time?
… most of the time?
Lex Fridman
That’s a really important idea to remember. Same with the US president, frankly, in terms of the grand arc of history, what is the actual impact? But I would say the big one is probably starting wars, major global wars or ending them in both directions. And then taxation too, as you said. What was the taxation? What was the economic system? What was the role of taxation in the Roman Empire?
That’s a really important idea to remember. Same with the US president, frankly, in terms of the grand arc of history, what is the actual impact? But I would say the big one is probably starting wars, major global wars or ending them in both directions. And then taxation too, as you said. What was the taxation? What was the economic system? What was the role of taxation in the Roman Empire?
Gregory Aldrete
Romans are really weird with this. So in the Republic, once they started to acquire overseas provinces, they had to decide, well, what are we going to do with these provinces? And they, in the end, settled on this notion of, we’ll put a Roman governor in charge. We’ll collect some sort of taxes. But they often didn’t collect the taxes directly. Instead, they would sell contracts to private businesses to collect taxes.
Romans are really weird with this. So in the Republic, once they started to acquire overseas provinces, they had to decide, well, what are we going to do with these provinces? And they, in the end, settled on this notion of, we’ll put a Roman governor in charge. We’ll collect some sort of taxes. But they often didn’t collect the taxes directly. Instead, they would sell contracts to private businesses to collect taxes.
So the private businesses would bid and say, “All right, if you give us the contract to collect taxes in Sicily, we’ll give you X number of money up front and then we go out and try to collect enough to make back that money and make ourselves a profit.” And this is a terrible system, because obviously, they’re going to go and try and squeeze as much as they can out of Sicily. And these companies were called publicans, publicani. And in the Bible, there’s a phrase, publicans and sinners, and that should give you an idea how they’re viewed. So everybody hated these tax collectors, and it was a really kind of dumb system because the publicans were going out and squeezing way more than they should in an unhealthy way from the provinces. And the Roman state was doing this kind of weird thing that they should have been doing themselves.
And over time, that shifts a bit and it becomes more like your standard taxation. And a lot of the taxation ends up being in kind too. So it’s like, okay, we’re taxing you, you pay it in wheat if you’re a farmer or something, not necessarily in cash. So in many ways, the Roman economy is underdeveloped. They didn’t have a lot of the sophisticated systems that we have today, and it probably held them back in some ways. And again, they have that resistance to change. The Romans also had weird notions about just business and profit making, that at least originally, there was this notion that’s shameful, again, the only thing that’s a worthwhile profession is farming.
So rich Romans would get involved in what we would call business manufacturing, particularly long distance trade with ships, but they would often do it through sort of front companies or employees who did it on their behalf, officially, and then they funneled the profits to the guy funding it because they don’t want to be soiled with business, which is beneath them. So the Romans had a lot of weird attitudes about the economy that I think in some ways didn’t help.
Lex Fridman
But nevertheless, they had many of the elements of the modern economic system with taxation, the record keeping.
But nevertheless, they had many of the elements of the modern economic system with taxation, the record keeping.
Gregory Aldrete
They were good at record keeping. So the Romans… I mean, the census is a Roman word. They’re the ones that came up with that.
They were good at record keeping. So the Romans… I mean, the census is a Roman word. They’re the ones that came up with that.
Lex Fridman
And obviously, the laws around everything.
And obviously, the laws around everything.
Gregory Aldrete
Yes. So in certain ways, yes, they were extremely sophisticated. And of course, the biggest thing about people in the ancient world and today is that they weren’t stupider than us. I mean, sometimes you get this assumption, oh, well, in the ancient world, they just weren’t as smart or something. No, no, no. They were fully as intelligent as we were. They didn’t have access to the same technology as we do, but that doesn’t mean they were any less smart.
Yes. So in certain ways, yes, they were extremely sophisticated. And of course, the biggest thing about people in the ancient world and today is that they weren’t stupider than us. I mean, sometimes you get this assumption, oh, well, in the ancient world, they just weren’t as smart or something. No, no, no. They were fully as intelligent as we were. They didn’t have access to the same technology as we do, but that doesn’t mean they were any less smart.
Lex Fridman
Can we talk about the Crisis of the Third century and the aforementioned Western and Eastern Roman Empires, how it’s split?
Can we talk about the Crisis of the Third century and the aforementioned Western and Eastern Roman Empires, how it’s split?
Taxes
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. So I mean, after Rome starts to go downhill as you enter the 3rd century, so the 200s, so we’re moving out of the golden era now, I mean, a famous Roman historian, Cassius Dio, who lived right at that moment, very famously wrote of the transition of Marcus Aurelius to what follows, “Our kingdom now descends from one of gold, to one of rust and iron.” So even people who were alive at the time had a distinct sense something is going downhill here. And that’s interesting, because usually, great historical moments are retroactive. And I mean, here’s a guy who said, “Oh, something’s going wrong. Something’s really going badly now.”
Yeah. So I mean, after Rome starts to go downhill as you enter the 3rd century, so the 200s, so we’re moving out of the golden era now, I mean, a famous Roman historian, Cassius Dio, who lived right at that moment, very famously wrote of the transition of Marcus Aurelius to what follows, “Our kingdom now descends from one of gold, to one of rust and iron.” So even people who were alive at the time had a distinct sense something is going downhill here. And that’s interesting, because usually, great historical moments are retroactive. And I mean, here’s a guy who said, “Oh, something’s going wrong. Something’s really going badly now.”
And a lot of it becomes that the secret is out that what makes an emperor is who commands the most swords. And so you start to get rebellions by various Roman generals, each declaring himself emperor. So you’d always had this to a certain degree, but they had kept it in check during the 2nd century AD. But in the 3rd century, you sometimes get three or four generals in different parts of the empire, all declaring themselves emperor, and then they all rush off to Rome to fight a multi-way civil war.
And of course, while they’re doing this, the borders are undefended, so barbarians start to see opportunity and come across and start raiding, they start burning and pillaging farms, the civil wars are destroying cities and farms. So the economy is kind of tanking. Then there’s less money coming in as taxes. So when one guy finally wins, he jacks up the tax rate to try and make up for it, but now, there’s fewer people able to pay, and it’s all just a vicious cycle. The Romans start to debase the coinage, which means you take in a gold coin, you melt it down, mix it in with 10% something less valuable, and then stamp it and say it’s worth the same. Well, people aren’t stupid. They’re going to know that’s only 90% of that gold coin.
Lex Fridman
They’ve invented inflation.
They’ve invented inflation.
Gregory Aldrete
Inflation. And you get horrific inflation uncontrolled. So the economy goes downhill, barbarians are raiding, you have internal instability. In one year, you have something like eight or nine different guys go through as emperor in 238. So it’s a mess. And it looks like the Roman Empire is going to fall in around the mid-3rd century. So this is the crisis. And then the kind of shocking development is late in that 3rd century, they actually stabilize the empire. So you have a series of these kind of army emperors who are just good generals who managed to push the barbarians out, reestablish the borders. It’s actually a whole group of them, but often, they get clumped under the most successful, the last guy, who’s Diocletian, who comes in, and he tries to stabilize the economy.
Inflation. And you get horrific inflation uncontrolled. So the economy goes downhill, barbarians are raiding, you have internal instability. In one year, you have something like eight or nine different guys go through as emperor in 238. So it’s a mess. And it looks like the Roman Empire is going to fall in around the mid-3rd century. So this is the crisis. And then the kind of shocking development is late in that 3rd century, they actually stabilize the empire. So you have a series of these kind of army emperors who are just good generals who managed to push the barbarians out, reestablish the borders. It’s actually a whole group of them, but often, they get clumped under the most successful, the last guy, who’s Diocletian, who comes in, and he tries to stabilize the economy.
One of the things he does is he issues a new solid gold coin that he guarantees is solid gold. And he calls it a Solidus, a solid coin. He famously issues a price edict where he says, “This is the maximum it’s legal to charge for any good or service.” So it’s attempt to curb inflation. And that’s not going to work, but it helps. Kind of amusingly on Diocletian’s price edict, can you guess what the most expensive sort of item is? Hiring a lawyer. So some things never change, right?
Division of the Roman Empire
Lex Fridman
Oh, that’s interesting. I mean, in that system, there’s probably a huge amount of lawyers.
Oh, that’s interesting. I mean, in that system, there’s probably a huge amount of lawyers.
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, even lawyer isn’t quite the right word. Romans didn’t have true lawyers, but they had people you would hire to do legal stuff or give you legal advice. But anyway, no, the price edict is actually is really fascinating, because it’s this long list of stuff. And you can see a good pair of shoes, a bad pair of shoes, how much each costs, and you can see the relative value of things. So what was food versus clothing, what was going to the barber versus hiring a doctor, all that kind of stuff. So it’s a really fun document to just mess around with. But anyway, so Diocletian stabilizes, basically, the empire and these other guys as well and gives it a new lease on life. So it seems by the end of the 3rd century, that Rome is going to continue.
I mean, even lawyer isn’t quite the right word. Romans didn’t have true lawyers, but they had people you would hire to do legal stuff or give you legal advice. But anyway, no, the price edict is actually is really fascinating, because it’s this long list of stuff. And you can see a good pair of shoes, a bad pair of shoes, how much each costs, and you can see the relative value of things. So what was food versus clothing, what was going to the barber versus hiring a doctor, all that kind of stuff. So it’s a really fun document to just mess around with. But anyway, so Diocletian stabilizes, basically, the empire and these other guys as well and gives it a new lease on life. So it seems by the end of the 3rd century, that Rome is going to continue.
And then as we go into the 4th century, you have the really dramatic thing where Constantine comes along and converts to Christianity. And at the time he converts, the percentage of Christians in the Empire is small, 10% at most, something like that. Who knows? But it’s quite small. And all of a sudden, you have this weird thing where now, the emperor belongs to this new religion. What does this mean? You can debate a lot how sincere Constantine’s conversion was. It’s a little bit of a weird thing where he clearly is using it as a way to fire up the troops before a crucial battle to say, “Hey, I just had this dream and this god promised us victory if we put his magic symbol on our shields.”
And this would be okay, except that he had done this a couple times before. So one time, it was Helios the Sun god, one time, it was another god. Even after he converts, he continues to mint coins and stuff with other gods on them. He continues to worship other gods. But he also kind of seems sincere in his conversion. It’s just, I think the question is how much does he understand his new religion maybe more than, is it sincere. But that’s a real turning point.
So now, as we go into the 4th century, we have this thing with Constantine, the new religion. And the other thing that happens is the empire is really just too big to govern effectively. It’s that thing we’re talking about. It’s too large, the communication is too slow and it starts to naturally fragment. And at times, they try systems where they split it into four. So under Diocletian, he tries the tetrarchy, where he splits the empire into four, and you actually have sort of four emperors working together as a team. More commonly, it just splits east, west. So from that point on, you really start to have the history of the Western Empire going in one direction, the Eastern Empire in the other. You tend to have two emperors, though there are moments occasionally where they reunite. So that’s a big development as well. And that’s a turning point.
Lex Fridman
So the most common date that people say, maybe you can correct me on this, that the Roman Empire fell was 476 AD. They’re referring to the “fall”, quote, unquote, of the Western Roman Empire. So why did the Roman Empire fall?
So the most common date that people say, maybe you can correct me on this, that the Roman Empire fell was 476 AD. They’re referring to the “fall”, quote, unquote, of the Western Roman Empire. So why did the Roman Empire fall?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, this is a real game. Pick your favorite date for the fall of the Roman Empire. 476 is a very common one. And what happens in that year is a barbarian king comes down into Italy and deposes a guy named Romulus Augustulus, which is an amazing name. It’s combining the names of the founder of Rome, Romulus, with Augustus, the second founder of Rome. And so some people say that’s the end of the Roman Empire. Sure. But others say it’s 410, when Alaric sacks Rome for the first time. Others say it’s 455, when the Vandals come and sack Rome and do a much more thorough job of it this time. Some say it’s 180, when Marcus Aurelius picks poorly in succession. Some say it’s 31, when Octavian wins the Battle of Actium and kills the Roman Republic. Or you can go past that date and say it’s 1453 when the Eastern Roman Empire finally falls.
Yeah, this is a real game. Pick your favorite date for the fall of the Roman Empire. 476 is a very common one. And what happens in that year is a barbarian king comes down into Italy and deposes a guy named Romulus Augustulus, which is an amazing name. It’s combining the names of the founder of Rome, Romulus, with Augustus, the second founder of Rome. And so some people say that’s the end of the Roman Empire. Sure. But others say it’s 410, when Alaric sacks Rome for the first time. Others say it’s 455, when the Vandals come and sack Rome and do a much more thorough job of it this time. Some say it’s 180, when Marcus Aurelius picks poorly in succession. Some say it’s 31, when Octavian wins the Battle of Actium and kills the Roman Republic. Or you can go past that date and say it’s 1453 when the Eastern Roman Empire finally falls.
And I mean, the Eastern Empire is legitimately the Roman Empire. If you were to go and ask them, “Who are you?” They wouldn’t say, “We’re the Byzantines, we’re the Eastern Roman Empire.” They would just say, “We’re the Romans.” And they have a completely legitimate claim to do that. So this whole game of when does the empire fall is problematic. And the other thing is all those dates about invasions that cluster around the 400s, so 410, 455, 476, you have to ask yourself, who counts as a real Roman by that point? Because for a while now, the Romans themselves are often coming from barbarians, are crossing that boundary, Roman generals. They might get raised as a Hun, then serve with the Roman army for a while, then not, or a Visigoths or not. That’s been going on for a long time. So what makes someone a real Roman? How do you tell that the guy kicked out in 476, was a, quote, “real Roman”, and the barbarian king who took his place wasn’t? That’s a very arbitrary decision.
Lex Fridman
There’s so many interesting things there. So of course, you described really eloquently the decline that started after Marcus Aurelius, and there’s a lot of competing ideas there. And the tensions-
There’s so many interesting things there. So of course, you described really eloquently the decline that started after Marcus Aurelius, and there’s a lot of competing ideas there. And the tensions-
Gregory Aldrete
Just to interrupt you, I hate wishy-washy answers, which is what I kind of said. So I will give you this, I think by the end of the 5th century AD, the Western Roman Empire has transformed into something different. So I don’t know what date I can pick for that, but I can say by around 500, I don’t know that we can call whatever exists there the Roman Empire anymore.
Just to interrupt you, I hate wishy-washy answers, which is what I kind of said. So I will give you this, I think by the end of the 5th century AD, the Western Roman Empire has transformed into something different. So I don’t know what date I can pick for that, but I can say by around 500, I don’t know that we can call whatever exists there the Roman Empire anymore.
Lex Fridman
And of course, the barbarians make everything complicated because they seem to be willing to fight on every side, and they’re like fluid, which they integrate fast, and it just makes the whole thing really tricky to say, yeah, who’s a Roman, who is not? And at which point did it-
And of course, the barbarians make everything complicated because they seem to be willing to fight on every side, and they’re like fluid, which they integrate fast, and it just makes the whole thing really tricky to say, yeah, who’s a Roman, who is not? And at which point did it-
Gregory Aldrete
And barbarians have been forming large parts of the Roman army for centuries. Yeah, it’s extremely fluid and not at all just clear sides here. So it’s a mess.
And barbarians have been forming large parts of the Roman army for centuries. Yeah, it’s extremely fluid and not at all just clear sides here. So it’s a mess.
Lex Fridman
From a military perspective, perhaps, what are some things that stand out to you on the pressure from the barbarians, the conflicts, whether it’s the Hans or the Visigoths?
From a military perspective, perhaps, what are some things that stand out to you on the pressure from the barbarians, the conflicts, whether it’s the Hans or the Visigoths?
Gregory Aldrete
There was a military strategist, guy named Edward Luttwak, who wrote this book, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, which was basically about frontiers and how did the Romans define their frontier? And everybody’s jumped on this and argued about it and says it’s wrong and all, but started this debate among Roman historians about, yeah, what does frontier mean to the Romans? Did they conceive of their empires having a border or was it always expanding or what? And did they have a grand strategy? I mean, today, militaries have a strategy where we want to achieve this, we want to exert force here. We want to protect these areas. Did the Romans even visualize their empire in that sort of grand strategic way? And it’s a real debate. I mean, there’s some things that suggest, “Oh, here, they tried to rationalize the border and short it by taking or shorten it by taking this territory.” Other people see as just kind of random. So that’s an interesting take, is how do the Romans conceive of empire?
There was a military strategist, guy named Edward Luttwak, who wrote this book, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, which was basically about frontiers and how did the Romans define their frontier? And everybody’s jumped on this and argued about it and says it’s wrong and all, but started this debate among Roman historians about, yeah, what does frontier mean to the Romans? Did they conceive of their empires having a border or was it always expanding or what? And did they have a grand strategy? I mean, today, militaries have a strategy where we want to achieve this, we want to exert force here. We want to protect these areas. Did the Romans even visualize their empire in that sort of grand strategic way? And it’s a real debate. I mean, there’s some things that suggest, “Oh, here, they tried to rationalize the border and short it by taking or shorten it by taking this territory.” Other people see as just kind of random. So that’s an interesting take, is how do the Romans conceive of empire?
I mean, if you look back at someone like Virgil, at the time of Augustus, he said, well, the Gods granted Rome empire without end. So it’s that open-ended thing. But even under Augustus, he seems to be pulling back and saying, “Well, I’m going to kind of stop at the Rhine. I’m going to kind of stop at the Danube. We don’t need to keep expanding forever in the way we’ve been doing.” So I mean, that’s an interesting concept of how do the Romans see their empire? Does it have a boundary? What are those boundaries? What does that mean?
Lex Fridman
And then barbarians were very much making that boundary even more difficult to kind of define it even if you wanted to.
And then barbarians were very much making that boundary even more difficult to kind of define it even if you wanted to.
Gregory Aldrete
Right. And again, the other fun debate is were these invasions, when the Visigoths crossed the Danube come into the Roman Empire, is this an invasion as it was originally described, or is it a migration as some scholars have started calling it? Because the Visigoths were fleeing pressure from another Gothic group, and they were fleeing pressure from the Huns. And I mean, a lot of the early Gothic peoples who come into the Roman Empire are basically seeking asylum. They’re saying, “Will you give us a piece of territory to live on within the boundaries of the empire? And in return, we will fight for you against external enemies.” And the Romans make these deals with some of the Goths. In fact, they made a pretty good deal with the Goths, one group of Goths to do exactly that. You can settle within the boundaries. We’ll feed you, we’ll give you a certain amount of stuff, and you fight for us. And then the Romans treated them really badly. They kind of didn’t supply what they had promised, and so they turned against the Romans with good reason. So the Romans blundered in these things too.
Right. And again, the other fun debate is were these invasions, when the Visigoths crossed the Danube come into the Roman Empire, is this an invasion as it was originally described, or is it a migration as some scholars have started calling it? Because the Visigoths were fleeing pressure from another Gothic group, and they were fleeing pressure from the Huns. And I mean, a lot of the early Gothic peoples who come into the Roman Empire are basically seeking asylum. They’re saying, “Will you give us a piece of territory to live on within the boundaries of the empire? And in return, we will fight for you against external enemies.” And the Romans make these deals with some of the Goths. In fact, they made a pretty good deal with the Goths, one group of Goths to do exactly that. You can settle within the boundaries. We’ll feed you, we’ll give you a certain amount of stuff, and you fight for us. And then the Romans treated them really badly. They kind of didn’t supply what they had promised, and so they turned against the Romans with good reason. So the Romans blundered in these things too.
Lex Fridman
So is it correct that the Visigoths fought on the side of the Romans against Attila the Hun?
So is it correct that the Visigoths fought on the side of the Romans against Attila the Hun?
Gregory Aldrete
Some of them did. So again, there were various groups on both sides of those battles. So Attila is the famous Hun, and he comes into the Roman Empire and seems to be heading right for…
Some of them did. So again, there were various groups on both sides of those battles. So Attila is the famous Hun, and he comes into the Roman Empire and seems to be heading right for…
Gregory Aldrete
He comes into the Roman Empire and seems to be heading right for Rome to knock it off, and everybody is so scared of the Huns that this weird coalition comes together of the Romans plus various barbarian groups against Attila and league with some other barbarian groups, and they fight a huge battle and it’s more or less a stalemate. So Attila gets stopped and he says, “All right, we’re going to just rest up for a year. Next year, we’ll go finish off the Romans.” Next year comes, he heads down into Italy, he’s heading straight for Rome, and the Pope goes and meets Attila, and they have lunch together at this river.
He comes into the Roman Empire and seems to be heading right for Rome to knock it off, and everybody is so scared of the Huns that this weird coalition comes together of the Romans plus various barbarian groups against Attila and league with some other barbarian groups, and they fight a huge battle and it’s more or less a stalemate. So Attila gets stopped and he says, “All right, we’re going to just rest up for a year. Next year, we’ll go finish off the Romans.” Next year comes, he heads down into Italy, he’s heading straight for Rome, and the Pope goes and meets Attila, and they have lunch together at this river.
And at the end of the lunch, Attila goes back and says, “Eh, I changed my mind. We’re going to go back up to France, hang around for another year. We’ll finish off the Romans later.” And Christian sources say, “Saints appeared in the sky with flaming swords and scared away Attila.” Some other sources say, “Well, the Pope gave Attila a huge bribe to go away for a while,” believe whichever you like, but then Attila ends up dying on his wedding night before he comes back under mysterious circumstances and so that never materializes. And the Huns kind of fragment after his death.
Lex Fridman
So what was the definitive blow by the barbarians, by the Visigoths?
So what was the definitive blow by the barbarians, by the Visigoths?
Gregory Aldrete
The barbarians are so many different groups,. And weirdly, I think an important one that sometimes people tend to focus on the Huns and the Goths, the Vandals end up going to Spain, conquering Spain, and then crossing over into North Africa and kind of conquering North Africa as well. And Spain and North Africa were some of the main areas that food surpluses were collected from and sent to Rome to feed the City of Rome. And it’s after those Vandal invasions of the takeover of those areas that the population of Rome plummets. So I think that’s an interesting moment, where the City of Rome had always been this symbol, and already it was no longer the capital.
The barbarians are so many different groups,. And weirdly, I think an important one that sometimes people tend to focus on the Huns and the Goths, the Vandals end up going to Spain, conquering Spain, and then crossing over into North Africa and kind of conquering North Africa as well. And Spain and North Africa were some of the main areas that food surpluses were collected from and sent to Rome to feed the City of Rome. And it’s after those Vandal invasions of the takeover of those areas that the population of Rome plummets. So I think that’s an interesting moment, where the City of Rome had always been this symbol, and already it was no longer the capital.
The emperors had moved to Ravenna, a little bit north, because it was surrounded by swamps, so it was more defensible. But there is something important about that old symbolic capital now just collapsing in terms of population, numbers, really no longer having importance because literally its food supply is cut off by losing those areas of the empire. And of course, the capital… Constantine had founded a new second capital at what used to be Byzantium, a Greek city on the Bosporus, which becomes Constantinople. He names it not very modestly after himself, and that now is really the dominant city for any of the Roman Empire’s eastern or western.
Lex Fridman
So if you’re actually living in that century, the 5th century, it’s kind of like the Western Roman Empire dies with a whimper. It’s not like-
So if you’re actually living in that century, the 5th century, it’s kind of like the Western Roman Empire dies with a whimper. It’s not like-
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lex Fridman
It’s a bunch of strife.
It’s a bunch of strife.
Gregory Aldrete
There’s a lot of moments you can pick. There’s an earlier one in the 300s when the Romans lose a big battle to some barbarians that symbolically is important. But yeah, I don’t think there’s one clear cut moment. And again, I don’t know that it is the barbarians that cause, quote, “the fall of the Roman Empire.” I mean, this is the other game as people like to say, “When did the Roman Empire fall?” The other big question is why. Why did the Roman Empire fall? If you define it as falling. And I mean, barbarian invasions was the traditional answer. So there’s a French historian famously said, “The Roman Empire didn’t fall. It was murdered.” It was killed by barbarians, but I mean there’s other explanations. I mean, some people say it was Christianity.
There’s a lot of moments you can pick. There’s an earlier one in the 300s when the Romans lose a big battle to some barbarians that symbolically is important. But yeah, I don’t think there’s one clear cut moment. And again, I don’t know that it is the barbarians that cause, quote, “the fall of the Roman Empire.” I mean, this is the other game as people like to say, “When did the Roman Empire fall?” The other big question is why. Why did the Roman Empire fall? If you define it as falling. And I mean, barbarian invasions was the traditional answer. So there’s a French historian famously said, “The Roman Empire didn’t fall. It was murdered.” It was killed by barbarians, but I mean there’s other explanations. I mean, some people say it was Christianity.
Some say it was a climate that the Roman Empire flourished during this moment of luck when just the climate was good, and then you get this sort of late Roman little ice age and everything goes downhill and that’s what caused it. There’s some that say things like disease. There were a whole series of waves of plague that started to hit under Marcus Aurelius and continued after him, which seemed to have caused real serious death and economic disruption. I mean, that’s a decent explanation. Another popular one is moral decline, which I don’t think really works well. You even get the people saying lead poisoning, but that’s not true because they were drinking out of the same pipes when the empire was expanding, right?
Lex Fridman
Yeah, that’s fascinating. That’s fascinating. But often, we kind of agree that’s something that you’ve talked about quite a bit is the military perspective is the one that defines the rise and fall of empires. You have a really great lecture series called The Decisive Battles of World History, which is another fascinating perspective to look at world history. What makes a battle decisive?
Yeah, that’s fascinating. That’s fascinating. But often, we kind of agree that’s something that you’ve talked about quite a bit is the military perspective is the one that defines the rise and fall of empires. You have a really great lecture series called The Decisive Battles of World History, which is another fascinating perspective to look at world history. What makes a battle decisive?
Gregory Aldrete
The easiest definition is it causes an immediate change in political structure. So who’s in charge? So the classic decisive political battle is Alexander beats King Darius III at the Battle of Gaugamela. And in that moment, we switch from the ruler of the entire huge Persian empire being Darius to now being Alexander, from it being Persian to being controlled by the Macedonians. So there is a one afternoon has this dramatic switch over a enormous geographic area, so that’s a decisive battle and that you see that immediate change.
The easiest definition is it causes an immediate change in political structure. So who’s in charge? So the classic decisive political battle is Alexander beats King Darius III at the Battle of Gaugamela. And in that moment, we switch from the ruler of the entire huge Persian empire being Darius to now being Alexander, from it being Persian to being controlled by the Macedonians. So there is a one afternoon has this dramatic switch over a enormous geographic area, so that’s a decisive battle and that you see that immediate change.
Other types of decisive battles are ones that might have more unforeseen long-term effects. You may not realize this is decisive at the time, but from a longer perspective it is. And often, those are ones that either allow some new people or idea or institution to either grow or have its growth curbed. So at various points, we have empires that were expanding and basically were stopped at some battle. And so you say, “Well, if they been stopped there, they might have gone on to dominate this whole area.” Or conversely, you could say, “Rome wasn’t…” They were one place before the second Punic War. After the second Punic War, they were its dominant force. So you could pick one of those battles and say that was decisive in setting them on this new path.
Lex Fridman
It’s also an opportunity to demonstrate a new technology. And if that technology is effective, it changes history because that was either tactical or literally the technology used. So how important is technology, that technological advantage in war?
It’s also an opportunity to demonstrate a new technology. And if that technology is effective, it changes history because that was either tactical or literally the technology used. So how important is technology, that technological advantage in war?
Gregory Aldrete
Huge. I mean, the history of warfare is basically the history of technological change often. So I mean, there’s all the great moments of transition. For a long time, we fought with hand-to-hand, with metal weapons, then you start to have the gunpowder revolution, which causes all sorts of shifts there. There’s big changes. Planes, when they become a huge force. I mean, World War II is this crazy time where planes go from literally biplanes, string and wood, to jets four years later, so that’s this moment of incredibly fast technological change. Going into World War II, everybody thinks it’s all about battleships. Who’s got the biggest battleships? Four years later, battleships are just junk. Let’s just scrap them. It’s all about aircraft carriers and that’s everything war at sea. So you have these moments of, particularly in warfare, almost accelerated technological change where things happen very rapidly and the civilization or the nation or the army that adapts more quickly to the new technology will often be the one that wins, and we’ve seen that story over and over and over again in
Huge. I mean, the history of warfare is basically the history of technological change often. So I mean, there’s all the great moments of transition. For a long time, we fought with hand-to-hand, with metal weapons, then you start to have the gunpowder revolution, which causes all sorts of shifts there. There’s big changes. Planes, when they become a huge force. I mean, World War II is this crazy time where planes go from literally biplanes, string and wood, to jets four years later, so that’s this moment of incredibly fast technological change. Going into World War II, everybody thinks it’s all about battleships. Who’s got the biggest battleships? Four years later, battleships are just junk. Let’s just scrap them. It’s all about aircraft carriers and that’s everything war at sea. So you have these moments of, particularly in warfare, almost accelerated technological change where things happen very rapidly and the civilization or the nation or the army that adapts more quickly to the new technology will often be the one that wins, and we’ve seen that story over and over and over again in
Lex Fridman
It’s also interesting how much geography that you mentioned a few times affects wars, the result of wars, the rise and fall of empires, all of it. As silly as it is, it’s not the people or the technology, it’s like sometimes literally that there’s rivers.
It’s also interesting how much geography that you mentioned a few times affects wars, the result of wars, the rise and fall of empires, all of it. As silly as it is, it’s not the people or the technology, it’s like sometimes literally that there’s rivers.
Gregory Aldrete
I think there’s a real geographic determinism to civilization itself. I mean, if you look at where civilization arose, it’s in Mesopotamia and sort of a swampy land between two rivers. It’s in the Nile River Delta where the same situation, it’s in the Indus River where you have the same thing, and it’s along the Yellow Rivers and the Yangtze Rivers where it’s the same thing. So I mean, that is geographically determined where those great civilizations of Asia or Europe are going to arise. It’s very much determined by that. And often, the course of history has that strong geographical determination. I mean, you can argue that all of Ancient Egyptian society is based around the cycle of the Nile flood because it was so predictable and everything depended on it, and their whole religion actually develops around that.
I think there’s a real geographic determinism to civilization itself. I mean, if you look at where civilization arose, it’s in Mesopotamia and sort of a swampy land between two rivers. It’s in the Nile River Delta where the same situation, it’s in the Indus River where you have the same thing, and it’s along the Yellow Rivers and the Yangtze Rivers where it’s the same thing. So I mean, that is geographically determined where those great civilizations of Asia or Europe are going to arise. It’s very much determined by that. And often, the course of history has that strong geographical determination. I mean, you can argue that all of Ancient Egyptian society is based around the cycle of the Nile flood because it was so predictable and everything depended on it, and their whole religion actually develops around that.
And Mesopotamia the same thing, the way their religion develops is a reaction to the particular geographic environment that those people grew up in. So that’s a very profound influence on civilization. One of my professors once said to me, “The best map of the Roman Empire isn’t any of these maps with political borders. It would be a map that shows the zone in which it’s possible to cultivate olives.” So if you simply get a map and map onto it where you could grow olives during this time, let’s say, 1st century AD, it corresponds exactly, I mean really closely, to the areas that are most heavily Romanized. Now, I’m not going to say that, but there is something to that where Roman culture spread successfully is where people grow the same crops. And that’s just one of those fundamental things.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I mean, you so beautifully put that the perspective can change dramatically how you see history, I mean, you could probably tell world history through what? Through olives, cinnamon and gold.
Yeah. I mean, you so beautifully put that the perspective can change dramatically how you see history, I mean, you could probably tell world history through what? Through olives, cinnamon and gold.
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah, that’s become really trendy is to look at history through objects. And I mean, for the Romans, diet is huge. I mean, probably 80% of the people in the Roman world ate basically a diet of olive oil, wine, and wheat, right? That those three crops are the basic crops that they subsisted on. And just the way you have to grow those crops, where you grow them, that dictates so much about culture, and the Romans saw it that way. One of my favorite documents from the ancient world… And they define civilization that way. So the Romans civilized people ate those crops and non-civilized people ate different food.
Yeah, that’s become really trendy is to look at history through objects. And I mean, for the Romans, diet is huge. I mean, probably 80% of the people in the Roman world ate basically a diet of olive oil, wine, and wheat, right? That those three crops are the basic crops that they subsisted on. And just the way you have to grow those crops, where you grow them, that dictates so much about culture, and the Romans saw it that way. One of my favorite documents from the ancient world… And they define civilization that way. So the Romans civilized people ate those crops and non-civilized people ate different food.
Decisive battles
So there’s this letter from a Greek, who was serving as an administrator in the Roman government, and he gets posted to Germany, to the far north. And he writes these pathetic letters back home to his family saying, “The inhabitants here lead the most wretched existence of all mankind for they cultivate no olives, and they grow no grapes.” So to him, that was hell, being posted to an area where they eat these terrible foreign foods.
And of course, the cliche for the Romans of what barbarians eat is red meat. They’re herders, so they’re not farmers, but they follow herds of cow around, which a totally different lifestyle. They eat dairy products, and they drink beer. And I tell my students sometimes that if you were to stick a Roman in a time machine and send them to where we live, which I teach in Wisconsin, Green Bay, Wisconsin, that Roman would step out, look around, see all the beer, the brats, and the cheese, say, “I know who you guys are. You’re barbarians.
Lex Fridman
Barbarians. That’s another way to draw the boundary between olive oil, wine, wheat, and meat, dairy, and beer.
Barbarians. That’s another way to draw the boundary between olive oil, wine, wheat, and meat, dairy, and beer.
Gregory Aldrete
But it’s more fundamental because it’s different forms of life because if you’re a farmer, you grow certain crops. And if you’re a farmer, you tend to stay in one place. You tend to build cities. If you’re following herds of cows around, you don’t build cities, you have a totally different lifestyle. So it’s diet, but it’s more fundamental underlying things about your entire culture.
But it’s more fundamental because it’s different forms of life because if you’re a farmer, you grow certain crops. And if you’re a farmer, you tend to stay in one place. You tend to build cities. If you’re following herds of cows around, you don’t build cities, you have a totally different lifestyle. So it’s diet, but it’s more fundamental underlying things about your entire culture.
Lex Fridman
And many of the barbarians were nomadic tribes.
And many of the barbarians were nomadic tribes.
Gregory Aldrete
Some of them are, yeah, definitely.
Some of them are, yeah, definitely.
Lex Fridman
Fascinating. I mean, this is just yet another fascinating way to-
Fascinating. I mean, this is just yet another fascinating way to-
Gregory Aldrete
It’s dietary determinism, geographic determinism. Yeah, these things are big.
It’s dietary determinism, geographic determinism. Yeah, these things are big.
Lex Fridman
On the topic of war, it may be a ridiculous span of time and scale, but how do you think the world wars of the 20th century compare to the wars that we’ve been talking about of the Roman Empire, of Greece, and so on?
On the topic of war, it may be a ridiculous span of time and scale, but how do you think the world wars of the 20th century compare to the wars that we’ve been talking about of the Roman Empire, of Greece, and so on?
Gregory Aldrete
I mean, what’s interesting about some of the Roman civil wars, particularly, is that they are world wars at the time. So let’s take the war after the assassination of Julius Caesar. We’ve talked about that one a lot. That was fought. There were battles there fought in Spain, in North Africa, in Greece, in Egypt, in Italy. I mean, truly across the entire breadth of the Mediterranean involving at least seven or eight different factions of Romans, and that was the world to them.
I mean, what’s interesting about some of the Roman civil wars, particularly, is that they are world wars at the time. So let’s take the war after the assassination of Julius Caesar. We’ve talked about that one a lot. That was fought. There were battles there fought in Spain, in North Africa, in Greece, in Egypt, in Italy. I mean, truly across the entire breadth of the Mediterranean involving at least seven or eight different factions of Romans, and that was the world to them.
I mean, that’s very similar in a way to our modern world wars where this was a global conflict, at least as they envisioned the world they knew of. And if we sort of, I don’t know, somehow factor for transportation time, I mean, I think you can argue that that was a bigger war than World War II. In World War II, if you hopped on a plane, you could get from the US to China in a week or something, right? In little hops. I mean, in the ancient world, if you wanted to go from Spain to Egypt, it would take you a month. So they were fighting across a larger space- time zone in terms of their technology to move, then World War II took place across.
Lex Fridman
So in a sense, World War II was quite contained.
So in a sense, World War II was quite contained.
Gregory Aldrete
Smaller. Yeah. I mean, if we adjust for that sort of factor, so that was a global war, I think that would be very familiar.
Smaller. Yeah. I mean, if we adjust for that sort of factor, so that was a global war, I think that would be very familiar.
Lex Fridman
How do you think the atomic bomb, nuclear weapons changed war?
How do you think the atomic bomb, nuclear weapons changed war?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. I mean, that’s the now we can destroy the world and truly kind of destroy civilizations wholesale, and that does seem to be a new thing. I mean, no matter what the Romans did, they didn’t have that choice, that ability to think, “I can do something that will end life as we know it at least, on the planet,” and that’s a very different perspective. And I think weird and interesting moment right now, I mean, I’m getting way beyond ancient history here, but for a long time, we had this sort of stasis with the nuclear standoff, with mutually assured destruction between the US sort of block of nations and the Soviet ones, and it worked. Now, we’re entering this kind of time when a lot more countries are going to start becoming nuclear capable. We might have a resurgence of just building new weapons, platforms with China, seems very eager to expand their nuclear arsenal in all sorts of ways. So it’s unnerving time, let’s say, right now.
Yeah. I mean, that’s the now we can destroy the world and truly kind of destroy civilizations wholesale, and that does seem to be a new thing. I mean, no matter what the Romans did, they didn’t have that choice, that ability to think, “I can do something that will end life as we know it at least, on the planet,” and that’s a very different perspective. And I think weird and interesting moment right now, I mean, I’m getting way beyond ancient history here, but for a long time, we had this sort of stasis with the nuclear standoff, with mutually assured destruction between the US sort of block of nations and the Soviet ones, and it worked. Now, we’re entering this kind of time when a lot more countries are going to start becoming nuclear capable. We might have a resurgence of just building new weapons, platforms with China, seems very eager to expand their nuclear arsenal in all sorts of ways. So it’s unnerving time, let’s say, right now.
Lex Fridman
And it’s a terrifying experiment to find out if nuclear weapons… When a lot of nations have nuclear weapons, is that going to enforce civility and peace, or is it actually going to be a destabilizing and ultimately civilization destroying?
And it’s a terrifying experiment to find out if nuclear weapons… When a lot of nations have nuclear weapons, is that going to enforce civility and peace, or is it actually going to be a destabilizing and ultimately civilization destroying?
Gregory Aldrete
Right. I mean, it was weirdly stable when it was a bipolar world where you had just sort of those two blocks. Now with a multipolar world with access to these weapons, I don’t know. I mean, we’re kind of jumping out of the ancient world, but I’ll tell you one thing that’s always fascinated me in this sort of comparison of ancient/ modern is how people don’t learn the lessons of the past in military history. And the very specific example, that in my lifetime I’ve seen play out twice, is just certain places people make the same mistakes over and over again. So a nice example is Afghanistan or roughly that sort of northern Pakistan-slash-into-what-is-Afghanistan. I mean, that is a geographic region that over and over again, the best most sophisticated armies in the world have invaded and have met horrible failure.
Right. I mean, it was weirdly stable when it was a bipolar world where you had just sort of those two blocks. Now with a multipolar world with access to these weapons, I don’t know. I mean, we’re kind of jumping out of the ancient world, but I’ll tell you one thing that’s always fascinated me in this sort of comparison of ancient/ modern is how people don’t learn the lessons of the past in military history. And the very specific example, that in my lifetime I’ve seen play out twice, is just certain places people make the same mistakes over and over again. So a nice example is Afghanistan or roughly that sort of northern Pakistan-slash-into-what-is-Afghanistan. I mean, that is a geographic region that over and over again, the best most sophisticated armies in the world have invaded and have met horrible failure.
And that goes all the way back to Alexander the Great tried to conquer that area. The Mongols tried to do it. The Huns tried to do it. The Mughals tried to do it. Victorian Britain tried to do it. The Russians tried to do it. The Americans tried to do it. And they made the very same mistakes over and over and over again. And the two mistakes are not understanding the terrain, that it’s a rocky mountainous area that people can always hide in caves. And it’s not understanding the fundamentally tribal nature of that area that that’s where the real allegiance is in these tribes. It’s not in a centralized government. And that’s the same era Alexander made, as the British made in the 19th century, as the Russians, as the Americans. And it’s so depressing as a historian who studies history to see these things being repeated over and over again and you know exactly what’s going to happen.
Lex Fridman
For leaders not to be learning lessons of history. You co-wrote a book precisely on this topic, The Long Shadow of Antiquity: What have the Greeks and Romans Done For Us? What are the some key elements of antiquity that are reflected in the modern world?
For leaders not to be learning lessons of history. You co-wrote a book precisely on this topic, The Long Shadow of Antiquity: What have the Greeks and Romans Done For Us? What are the some key elements of antiquity that are reflected in the modern world?
Gregory Aldrete
Yeah. It’s a book that my wife and I wrote together, and it is trying to make people understand how deeply rooted are current actions in almost every way. Even things that we think are just truly unique parts of our culture or things that we think are just innate to human nature or actually rooted in the past. So this is another power of the past thing, and this is just a long specific list of examples really. So I mean, we go through government and education and intellectual stuff and art and architecture and a lot of the things we’ve been talking about today, language, culture, medicine. But even things like habits, the way we celebrate things, the way we get married. Our married rituals have all sorts of things in common with Roman weddings.
Yeah. It’s a book that my wife and I wrote together, and it is trying to make people understand how deeply rooted are current actions in almost every way. Even things that we think are just truly unique parts of our culture or things that we think are just innate to human nature or actually rooted in the past. So this is another power of the past thing, and this is just a long specific list of examples really. So I mean, we go through government and education and intellectual stuff and art and architecture and a lot of the things we’ve been talking about today, language, culture, medicine. But even things like habits, the way we celebrate things, the way we get married. Our married rituals have all sorts of things in common with Roman weddings.
Lex Fridman
The calendar.
The calendar.
Gregory Aldrete
The calendar, the words, we’re using Julius Caesar’s calendar. I mean, Pope Gregory did one tiny little twist, but Caesar’s the one who basically came up with our current calendar with 365 days, 12 months, leap years, all that. So we’re living law. There’s just no way to escape the power of the past. And what I believe very ardently is that you can’t make good decisions in the present, and you can’t make good decisions about the future without understanding the past. And that’s not just true with your own life, but it’s in understanding others. So it’s not only your own past you have to understand, but you have to understand other people, what’s influencing them. So you can’t interact with others unless you understand where they’re coming from. And the answer to where they’re coming from is where they came from and what shaped them and what forces affect them. So I think it’s absolutely vital to have some understanding of the past in order to make competent decisions in the present.
The calendar, the words, we’re using Julius Caesar’s calendar. I mean, Pope Gregory did one tiny little twist, but Caesar’s the one who basically came up with our current calendar with 365 days, 12 months, leap years, all that. So we’re living law. There’s just no way to escape the power of the past. And what I believe very ardently is that you can’t make good decisions in the present, and you can’t make good decisions about the future without understanding the past. And that’s not just true with your own life, but it’s in understanding others. So it’s not only your own past you have to understand, but you have to understand other people, what’s influencing them. So you can’t interact with others unless you understand where they’re coming from. And the answer to where they’re coming from is where they came from and what shaped them and what forces affect them. So I think it’s absolutely vital to have some understanding of the past in order to make competent decisions in the present.
Lex Fridman
What are some of the problems when we try to gain lessons from history and look back? We’ve spoken about them a bit, the bias of the historian, maybe what are the problems in studying history and how do we avoid them?
What are some of the problems when we try to gain lessons from history and look back? We’ve spoken about them a bit, the bias of the historian, maybe what are the problems in studying history and how do we avoid them?
Gregory Aldrete
Probably the biggest problems are the sources themselves, the incompleteness of them, and this gets more intense the farther back we go in time.
Probably the biggest problems are the sources themselves, the incompleteness of them, and this gets more intense the farther back we go in time.
Lex Fridman
Yes.
Yes.
Gregory Aldrete
So if you say, “I want to write a book about the 19th century,” there is more material available for almost any topic you want to pick than you could possibly go through in your lifetime. If you say, “I want to write a book about the Roman world,” this is a very different thing. In my office, I have a bookshelf that’s, I don’t know, eight feet high, 10 feet wide, and it contains pretty much all the main surviving Greek and Roman literary texts, okay?
So if you say, “I want to write a book about the 19th century,” there is more material available for almost any topic you want to pick than you could possibly go through in your lifetime. If you say, “I want to write a book about the Roman world,” this is a very different thing. In my office, I have a bookshelf that’s, I don’t know, eight feet high, 10 feet wide, and it contains pretty much all the main surviving Greek and Roman literary texts, okay?
Lex Fridman
Wow.
Wow.
Gregory Aldrete
One bookshelf, it’s a big bookshelf, but that’s what we use to interpret this world. Now, there’s a lot of other types of texts. There’s papyri. There’s all sorts of things. There’re inscriptions. There’s archaeological evidence, so there’s other stuff, but honestly, 99% of things about the world I study are lost. So then you get into all the issues is what we have surviving a representative example. We know it’s not. For example, all the literary texts are written by one tiny group, elite males. So that’s a problem there. There’s the problem of bias. We know that they’re not necessarily telling us the truth. They have an agenda. They’re representing history in a certain way to achieve certain things, then there’s the problem of transmission. I mean, all those texts are copies of copies of copies of copies, and everybody knows that game, where you whisper sentence to someone and then go around the room, are you going to get that same sentence back?
One bookshelf, it’s a big bookshelf, but that’s what we use to interpret this world. Now, there’s a lot of other types of texts. There’s papyri. There’s all sorts of things. There’re inscriptions. There’s archaeological evidence, so there’s other stuff, but honestly, 99% of things about the world I study are lost. So then you get into all the issues is what we have surviving a representative example. We know it’s not. For example, all the literary texts are written by one tiny group, elite males. So that’s a problem there. There’s the problem of bias. We know that they’re not necessarily telling us the truth. They have an agenda. They’re representing history in a certain way to achieve certain things, then there’s the problem of transmission. I mean, all those texts are copies of copies of copies of copies, and everybody knows that game, where you whisper sentence to someone and then go around the room, are you going to get that same sentence back?
Well, every ancient text we have has gone through that process. So this is a real problem, and that’s just with the sources. And this is the historic era. When you move back just a little earlier to the prehistoric era or to civilizations that don’t have written sources surviving. And some of these are ancient Mediterranean ones. I mean, anything goes. I mean, one of the jokes is that museums, archaeological museums, are full of objects which are labeled cult object. It’s some religious object. And I think the honest label that should be on that thing is we have no idea what the hell this is, but I want to believe it’s something important. So I’m going to say it’s a religious object, but in reality, it’s an ancient toilet paper roll holder or something. And it’s a huge problem when you try to interpret a civilization without written texts.
And my favorite little story that kind of illustrates this is, in the 19th century, this German who had gone to school in England, one of the best educated guys of his time, goes to North Africa and is poking around in the desert. And he finds this site with these huge stone monoliths, 10 feet tall in pairs, and there’s a lintel stone across the top, so sort of two posts with a stone across the top, and there’s a big stone in front of them too. And so he looks at this stuff and he says, “Well, what does this remind me of?” It reminds me of Stonehenge, right? And there’s even a site where there’s multiple of these kind of in a square. So he goes back and talks about this and an Englishman goes and studies them, and he finds a ton of these sites and he finds some of them where there’s 17 of these pairs.
And so he goes back, and he writes a whole book about how clearly the Celtic peoples who once lived in Britain came originally from North Africa because he’s found this site and he reconstructs the religion where obviously they practice religious rituals here, and they had rites of passage. They squeezed between the things and the altar stones have this basin. So they had blood sacrifice and all this, and it seemed reasonable. And then you ask some locals, “Well, what’s that stuff out in the desert there?” And they mean, “Oh, the old Roman olive oil factory.” And those are the remains of an olive press, and we’re back to olives. I keep dwelling on olives. Olives don’t grow in England or Germany. So this is cultural bias. If all you have is physical evidence, you’re going to interpret that evidence through your own cultural biases.
So if you’re an Englishman and you see big stone uprights like this, you’re going to think Stonehenge. If you’re from the Mediterranean, you’re going to think olive press. So that’s a salutary example I think of the dangers of interpreting physical evidence when you don’t have written evidence to go along with it. And think today, if our civilization were to blow up in a nuclear war and archaeologists were to dig this up, how might they misinterpret things? I mean, if they were to dig up a college dorm like where I work, and that’s what you had for the civilization. You’d probably go in the dorm rooms, you’d find all these little rooms, and maybe in every room you’d find this mysterious plastic disc. And so everybody has these, so it must be a cult object. And it’s round. So obviously, they’re sun worshipers. And if you can decipher the inscription, you’ll see that obviously they all worship the great sun god Wham-O. It’s like, what do you find in every dorm room? A Frisbee. So that’s the level of interpretation you have to beware of. And there’s examples, where we’ve done exactly this.
Lex Fridman
So we have to have intellectual humility when we look back into the past. But hopefully, if you have that without coming up with really strong narratives, if you look at a large variety of evidence, you can start to construct a picture that somewhat rhymes with the truth.
So we have to have intellectual humility when we look back into the past. But hopefully, if you have that without coming up with really strong narratives, if you look at a large variety of evidence, you can start to construct a picture that somewhat rhymes with the truth.
Gregory Aldrete
Yes. I mean, as a professional historian, that’s what you do. You attempt to reconstruct an image of the past that is faithful to the evidence you have as filtered through what you can perceive of both the biases and the problems of the source material and your own biases. And it’s a interpretation, it’s a reconstruction, but it’s a lot like science, where you’re in a process of constantly reevaluating it, and saying, “Okay, here’s some new evidence. How do I work this into the picture? How do I now adjust it?” And that’s what’s fun.
Yes. I mean, as a professional historian, that’s what you do. You attempt to reconstruct an image of the past that is faithful to the evidence you have as filtered through what you can perceive of both the biases and the problems of the source material and your own biases. And it’s a interpretation, it’s a reconstruction, but it’s a lot like science, where you’re in a process of constantly reevaluating it, and saying, “Okay, here’s some new evidence. How do I work this into the picture? How do I now adjust it?” And that’s what’s fun.
I mean, it’s a mystery. It’s you’re being a detective and trying to reconstruct and to understand a society. It’s even more fun where it’s, yeah, you have to try to empathize. Empathy is a great human thing, to empathize with people who are not yourself, and we should do this all the time with just the people we encounter. But this is what we’re doing with ancient civilizations. And as I talked about earlier, sometimes you’ll feel great sympathy there. Sometimes you’ll feel incomprehension. But by being aware of both of those, you can maybe begin to get some grasp, however tentative, on the truth as you might perceive it,
Lex Fridman
To ask a ridiculous question. When our time, you and I, we together become ancient history, when historians, let’s say, 2, 3, 4,000 years from now, look back at our time, and you try to look at the details and reconstruct from that the big picture, what was going on, what do you think they’ll say?
To ask a ridiculous question. When our time, you and I, we together become ancient history, when historians, let’s say, 2, 3, 4,000 years from now, look back at our time, and you try to look at the details and reconstruct from that the big picture, what was going on, what do you think they’ll say?
Gregory Aldrete
I would guess it’ll be something that’s actually more of a commentary on whatever’s going on at that point than on the reality of us because that’s what we tend to do. I’ll tell you what I’d like to have them say, is to say, “In this civilization, I can detect progress,” that they have advanced in some way, whether kind of in moral terms or in self-awareness, or have learned from what’s come before. I mean, that’s all you can try and do is do a little bit better than whatever came before you to look back at what happened and try to do something. Livy, I mean, one of the great Roman historians, the beginning of his work, A History of Rome, which is this massive thing, he says, “The utility and the purpose of history is this. It provides you an infinite variety of experiences and models, noble things to imitate and shameful things to avoid.” And I think he’s right.
I would guess it’ll be something that’s actually more of a commentary on whatever’s going on at that point than on the reality of us because that’s what we tend to do. I’ll tell you what I’d like to have them say, is to say, “In this civilization, I can detect progress,” that they have advanced in some way, whether kind of in moral terms or in self-awareness, or have learned from what’s come before. I mean, that’s all you can try and do is do a little bit better than whatever came before you to look back at what happened and try to do something. Livy, I mean, one of the great Roman historians, the beginning of his work, A History of Rome, which is this massive thing, he says, “The utility and the purpose of history is this. It provides you an infinite variety of experiences and models, noble things to imitate and shameful things to avoid.” And I think he’s right.
Lex Fridman
And they would perhaps be better at highlighting which shameful things we started avoiding and which noble things we started imitating. With the perspective of history, they’ll be able to identify or maybe with the bias of the historians of the time. Well, in that grand perspective, what gives you hope about our future as a humanity, as a civilization?
And they would perhaps be better at highlighting which shameful things we started avoiding and which noble things we started imitating. With the perspective of history, they’ll be able to identify or maybe with the bias of the historians of the time. Well, in that grand perspective, what gives you hope about our future as a humanity, as a civilization?
Gregory Aldrete
We have curiosity. I think curiosity is a great thing that you want to learn something new. I think the human impulse to want to learn new stuff is one of our best characteristics. And at least up to this point, what makes us special is the ability to store up an accumulation of knowledge and to pass that knowledge on to the next generation. I mean, that’s really all we are. We’re the accumulation of the knowledge of infinite generations that’ve come before us. And everything we do is based on that. Otherwise, we’d all just be starting ground zero kind of just from the beginning. So our ability to store up knowledge and pass it on, I think is our special power as human beings. And I think our curiosity is what keeps us going forward.
We have curiosity. I think curiosity is a great thing that you want to learn something new. I think the human impulse to want to learn new stuff is one of our best characteristics. And at least up to this point, what makes us special is the ability to store up an accumulation of knowledge and to pass that knowledge on to the next generation. I mean, that’s really all we are. We’re the accumulation of the knowledge of infinite generations that’ve come before us. And everything we do is based on that. Otherwise, we’d all just be starting ground zero kind of just from the beginning. So our ability to store up knowledge and pass it on, I think is our special power as human beings. And I think our curiosity is what keeps us going forward.
Lex Fridman
I agree. And for that, I thank you for being one of the most wonderful examples of that, of you, yourself, being a curious being and emanating that throughout, and inspiring a lot of other people to be curious by being out there in the world and teaching. So thank you for that and thank you for talking today.
I agree. And for that, I thank you for being one of the most wonderful examples of that, of you, yourself, being a curious being and emanating that throughout, and inspiring a lot of other people to be curious by being out there in the world and teaching. So thank you for that and thank you for talking today.
Gregory Aldrete
No, I enjoyed it. It’s fun. I obviously like talking about this stuff.
No, I enjoyed it. It’s fun. I obviously like talking about this stuff.
Hope
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Gregory Aldrete. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Julius Caesar, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Gregory Aldrete. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Julius Caesar, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.