YouSaid · the spoken record

Yuval Noah Harari

lines on the record: 186
first: 2023-07-17
most recent: 2023-07-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“The two most important things to realize about AI know so many things are being said now about AI, but I think there are two things that every person should know about AI. First is that AI is the first tool in history that can make decisions by itself. All previous tools in history couldn't make decisions. This is why they empowered us. You invent a knife, you invent an atom bomb, the atom bomb cannot decide to start a war, cannot decide which city to bomb. AI can make decisions by itself. An autonomous weapon systems can decide by themselves who to kill, who to bomb.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, you know, I talk a lot about it, about the dangers of AI. I sometimes get into trouble because the pick these scenarios of how AI becoming very dangerous and then people say that I'm encouraging these scenarios. But I'm talking about it as a warning. I'm not so terrified of the simplistic idea. Again, the Terminator scenario of robots running in the street shooting everybody. I'm more worried about AI accumulating more and more power and basically taking over.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With some of the key ideas there, which I share, it's becoming more and more difficult to understand what is happening in the world. There are huge dangers in the world that we are existential dangers to the human species, but they don't come from a small cabal of Jews or gay people or feminists or whatever. They come from much more diffused forces which are not under the control of any single individual. We don't have to look for the evil people. We need to look for human allies in order to work together, the dangers of bioengineering, the dangers of climate change. And when you wake up in the morning, the question is, do you want to spend your day spreading hatred or do you want to spend your day trying to make allies and work together?”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So this fantasy, if I only say this, if I only show them that, if I only have this data, they will see I'm okay. It doesn't work like that. I think to keep your sanity in this situation, first of all, it's important to understand that most of these people are not evil. They are not doing it on purpose. Many of them really believe that there is some very nefarious, powerful conspiracy which is causing a lot of harm in the world and they are doing a good thing by exposing it and making people aware of it and trying to stop it. If you think that you are surrounded by evil, you're falling into the same rabbit hole. You're falling into the same paranoid state of mind. Oh, the world is full of these evil people that, no, most of them are good people. And also I think we can empathize.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think ultimately you can't. We can't. I mean, it's like proving consciousness. You can't. That's just the situation. Whatever you say can and will be used against you by some people.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it is within the power of every individual to make the world a little bit better. You know, you can't do everything, don't try to do everything. Find one thing in your areas of activity, a place where you have some agency and try to do that and hope that other people do their bit. And if everybody do their bit, we'll manage. And if we don't, we don't. But at least we try.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't see certain humans as evil and hateful. The problem isn't humans. The problem is something outside humanity. Yes, humans are contributed to the problem, but ultimately the enemy is external to humanity. Whereas conspiracy theories usually claim that a certain part of humanity is the source of all evil which leads them to eventually think in terms of exterminating this part of humanity which leads sometimes to historical disasters like Nazis.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The problem with many of these conspiracy theories is that yes, we have a problem with new AI technology. But if you now direct the fire against certain people, so instead of all humans cooperating against real common threats, whether it's the rise of AI, whether it's global warming, you're only causing us to fight each other. And I think that the key question that people who spread these ideas, I mean, many of them they honestly believe. It's not malicious. They honestly believe in these theories is do you want to spread, to spend your life spreading hate? Towards people, or do you want to work on more constructive projects? I think one of the big differences between those who believe in conspiracy theories and people warn about the dangers of AI, the dangers of climate change.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything's religion. You can always find explanation for everything. And, you know, in the end, it's intellectual integrity. If you insist on whenever people confront you with evidence, with finding some very, very complicated explanation for that too, you can explain everything. We know that. It's a question of And I will also say another thing, the conspiracy theories they do get one thing right, certainly in today's world. I think they represent an authentic and justified fear of a lot of people that they are losing control of their lives they don't understand what is happening. And this, I think, is not just a legitimate fear. This is an important fear. They are right. We are losing control of our lives. We are facing really big dangers, but not from a small cabal of fellow humans.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they put the gun to Putin's head and told him Vladimir, if you don't invade, we shoot you. How did they cause Putin to invade”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You see, I mean, as a historian, you get to know how many blunders these people do. And they're capable, but they are so incompetent in so many ways. Again, look at the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Before the war, people thought, oh, Putin was such a genius. And the Russian army was one of the strongest armies in the world. This is what Putin thought. And it completely backfired.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If Hitler remained unknown working behind the scenes, he would not gain power. So the way to gain power is usually through publicity, so secret cabals don't gain power. And even if you gain a lot of power, nobody has the kind of power necessary to predict and control everything that happens in the world. All the time shit happens that you did not predict and you did not plan and you did not control”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the idea that a small group of, I don't know, the Jewish cabal, the Freemasons, whoever, they can really control and predict all the wars, this is nonsense. The second thing that is nonsense is to think they can do that and still remain secret. It sometimes happens in history that a small group of people accumulates a lot of power. If I now tell you that Xi Jinping and the heads of the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, they have a lot of power. They control the military, the media, the economy, the universities of China. This is not a conspiracy theory. Obviously, everybody knows it. Everybody knows it. Because to gain so much power, you usually need publicity. Hitler gained a lot of power in Nazi Germany because he had a lot of publicity.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything they hope to achieve, they achieve the opposite. America, United States is humiliated. They cause the rise of ISIS. They wanted to take out terrorism. They created more terrorism. Worst of all, the big winner of the war was Iran. You know, the United States goes to war with all its power and gives Iran a victory on a silver plate. The Iranians don't need to do anything. The Americans are doing everything for them. Now this is real history. Real history is when you have not a small group of people, a lot of people with a lot of power carefully planning something and it goes completely out of against their plan. And this we know from a personal experience every time we try to plan something, a birthday party, a surprise birthday party, a trip somewhere, things go wrong. This is reality.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With the biggest military, with the biggest intelligence services, with the most sophisticated, you know, the FBI and the CIA and all the agents, they invade third-rate country, third-rate power Iraq. With this idea, we'll take over Iraq and we'll control it, we'll make a new order in the Middle East, and everything falls apart. Their plan completely backfires.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the Jews are fooling everybody. But actually, the communists and the capitalists are part of the same global cabal. Again, this is very attractive because ah, now I understand everything and now I also know what to do. I just give Paul to Hitler. He gets rid of the Jews. I solved all the problems of the world. Now, as a historian, the most important thing I can say about these theories, they are never right because the global Kabal theory says two things. First, everything is controlled by a very small number of people. Secondly, these people hide themselves. They do it in secret. Now both things are nonsense. It's impossible for people to control a small group of people, to control and predict everything because the world is too complicated. You know, you look at a real world conspiracy. Conspiracy is basically just a plan. Think about the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. You had the most powerful superpower in the world.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, it's not new. Nazism was exactly this. Nazism began as a conspiracy theory. We don't call Nazism a conspiracy theory because, oh, it's a big thing, it's an ideology. But if you look at it, it's a conspiracy theory. The basic Nazi idea was that Jews controlled the world, get rid of the Jews, you solved all the world's problems. Now, the interesting thing about these kind of theories, again, they tell you that even things that look to be the opposite of each other actually they are part of the conspiracy so in the case of Nazism the Nazis told people you know you have capitalism and communism you think that they are opposite right ah this is what the Jews want you to think actually the Jews control both communism Trotsky Marx were Jews blah blah blah and capitalism the Rothschild Wall Street it's all controlled by the”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You don't have to understand everything that happens in the world, you just need to understand one thing the war in Ukraine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 5G technology, COVID-19. It's simple. There is this global cabal. They do all of it. And also it enables you to shift all the responsibility to all the bad things that are happening in the world to this small cabal. It's the Jews. It's the Freemasons. It's not us. And also it creates this fantasy utopian fantasy. If we only get rid of the small cabal, we solve all the problems of the world, salvation. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Ukraine, the epidemics, poverty, everything is solved just by knocking out this small cabal. And it's simple, it's attractive, and this is why so many people believe it.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the global cabal theory, it has many variations, but basically there is a small group of people, a small cabal, that secretly controls everything that is happening in the world, all the wars, all the revolutions, all the epidemics, everything that is happening. And this is a very well known story that it's not new. It's been there for thousands of years. It's very attractive because first of all it's simple.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We are better than anything that we can intentionally design at present. Like any intentionally designed humans at the present moment is going to be much, much worse than us. Because basically we don't understand ourselves. I mean, as long as we don't understand our brain, our body, our mind, it's a very, very bad idea to start manipulating a system that you don't understand deeply. And we don't understand ourselves.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When people talk about the new technologies and they have this scenario of the terminator, robots running in the street shooting people, this is not what worries me. I think we can avoid that. What really worries me is using the corporations, armies, politicians will use the new technologies to change us in a way which will destroy our humanity or the best parts of our humanity.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While neglecting what are potentially more important human qualities like compassion, like autistic sensitivity, like spirituality, if you give Putin, for instance, bioengineering and AI and brain computer interfaces, he is likely to want to create a race of super soldiers who are much more intelligent and much stronger and also much more disciplined and never rebel and march on Moscow against him, but he has no interest in making them more compassionate or more spiritual. So the end result could be a new type of humans, a downgraded humans, who are highly intelligent and disciplined, but have no compassion and no Spiritual depth. And this is one for me, this is the dystopia, the apocalypse.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's an extremely dangerous development, and the chances that this will go wrong, that this people will use the new technologies trying to upgrade humans, but actually downgrading them. This is a very, very big danger. If you let corporations and armies and ruthless politicians change humans using tools like AI and bioengineering, it's very likely that they will try to enhance a few human qualities that they need like intelligence and discipline.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Could be. I think our species, Homo sapiens, I don't think we'll be around in a century or two. We could destroy ourselves in a nuclear war through ecological collapse by giving too much power to AI that goes out of our control. But if we survive, we'll probably have so much power that we will change ourselves using various technologies so that our descendants will no longer be homo sapiens like us. They will be more different from us than we are different from Neanderthals. So maybe they'll have historians, but it will no longer be human historians or sapiens historians like me.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Still accelerating. I mean, history is just accelerating for centuries. And the 20th century, you know, we squeezed into it things that previously took thousands of years. And now, I mean, we are squeezing it into decades.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Both verbal but also physical, and they didn't reply by waging violence, and they succeeded in changing this deep structure of oppression in a way which benefited not just women, but also men So, this gives me hope that it's not easy. In many cases we fail, but it is possible sometimes in history to make a very, very big change, positive change, mainly by talking and demonstrating and changing the story in people's minds and not by using violence.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then feminism came along. And you had leaders like Lenin, like Mao saying that if you want to make a big social change, you must use violence. Power comes from the bowel of the gun, of a gun. If you want to make an omelette, you need to break eggs. And all these things. And the feminists said no, we won't use the power of the gun. We will make an omelette without breaking any eggs. And they made a much better omelette than Lenin or Mao or any of these violent revolutionaries. I don't think that they certainly didn't start any wars or built any gulags. I don't think they even murdered a single politician. I don't think there was any political assassination anywhere by feminists. There was a lot of violence against them.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is why I also think I admire what you're doing that you're going to talk with some of the most difficult characters around in the world today. And with this basic belief that by talking maybe we can move them an inch, which is a lot when it comes to people with so much power. Like I think one of the biggest success stories in modern history, I would say, is feminism. Because feminism believed in the power of stories not so much in the power of violence, of armed conflict. By many measures, feminism has been maybe the most successful social movement of the 20th century and maybe of the modern age. You know, systems of oppression which were in place throughout the world for thousands of years. And they seem to be just natural, eternal.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But if to some extent it's the stories in people's minds, if you can enable one person to see the story in the mind of another person. And more importantly, if you can have some kind of critical distance from the story in your own mind, then maybe you can change it a little. And then you don't need to fight. You can actually find a better story that you can both agree to. It sometimes happens in history. You know, again, French and Germans fought for generations and generations. Now they live in peace, not because, I don't know, they found a new planet. They can share between France and Germany. So now everybody has enough territory. No, they actually have less territory than previously because they lost all their overseas empires. But they managed to find a story, the European story, that both Germans and French people are”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is good news because unlike power that can only be changed through fighting, stories can sometimes, it's not easy, but sometimes stories can be changed through talking And that's the hope. I think, you know, in everything from coupled, Nation therapy. If you think it's power therapy, it's all about power, there is no place for a conversation.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is possible. I would say more generally about conversations. It goes back a little to what I said earlier about the Marxist view of history. One of the problematic things I see today in many academic circles is that people focus too much on power. They think that the whole of history or the whole of politics is just a power structure. It's just struggle about power. Now, if you think that the whole of history and the whole of politics is only power Then there is no room for conversation because if what you have is a struggle between different powerful interests, there is no point talking. The only thing that changes it is fighting. My view is that no, it's not all about power structures, it's not all about power dynamics. Underneath the power structure there are stories. Stories in human minds. And this is great news if it's true.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And when it comes again to Ukrainian Russia, I don't think that if you get, if you somehow manage to get Putin and Zelensky to the same room, when everybody knows that they are there and they'll have a moment of empathy, of human connection and I don't think it can happen like that. I do hope that there are other spaces. Were somebody like Putin can still have a real human conversation? I don't know if this is the case. I hope so.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A key question to ask about the Chinese system is behind closed doors, let's say in a Politburo meeting, do people have a real conversation if Xi Jinping says one thing and some other big shot thinks differently, will they have the courage, the ability, the backbone to say with all due respect, I think differently, and there is a real conversation or not? I don't know the answer. But this is a key question. This is the difference between an authoritarian regime can still have different voices within it. At a certain point, you have a personality cult. Nobody dares say anything against the leader.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this is no longer a place where real conversations take place. The big question about American democracy is, is there a place where real conversations which actually change people's minds still take place? If not, then this democracy is dying also. Democracy without conversation cannot exist for long. And it's the same question you should ask also about dictatorial regimes. Like you think about Russia or China. So China has the great all over the people. Will the representatives, the supposed representatives of the people, meet every now and then, but no real conversation takes place there.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Factions holding different ideas about foreign policy or economic policy. And I met in Congress and somebody would come and give a speech and the people on all know on the other side would say, hey, that's interesting. I haven't thought about it. Yes, maybe we... This is no longer happening in Congress. I don't think there is any speech in Congress that causes anybody on the other side to change their opinion about anything.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's true. I believe in the power of conversation. The big question to ask is where? Where do conversations, real conversations take place? And this is tricky. One of the interesting things to ask about any conflict, about any political system, is where do the real conversations take place? And very often they don't take place in the places you think they are. But think about American politics. When the country was founded, in the late 18th century, people understood holding conversation between leaders is very important for the functioning of democracy will create a place for that. That's called Congress. This is where leaders are supposed to meet and talk about the main issues of the day. Maybe there was a time, sometime in the past, when this actually happened, when you had two...”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This can be achieved at any moment. It's motivation. In this case, it's just one person. You just Putin just need to say that's it. You know, the Ukrainians, they don't demand anything from Russia. Just go home. That's the only thing they want. They don't want to conquer any bit of Russian territory. They don't want to change the regime in Moscow. Nothing. They just tell the Russians go home. That's it. And of course, again, motivation. How do you get somebody like Putin to admit that he made a colossal mistake, a human mistake, an ethical mistake, a political mistake in stouting this war? This is very, very difficult. But in terms of what would the solution look like, very simple. The Russians go home. End of story.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Country. You saw the same thing. I don't know, in Britain, English and Scots for centuries hated and fought each other ferociously, eventually coming together, maybe they'll break up again, I don't know. But the power of the kind of forces of merger in history, you are very often influenced by the people you fight, by the people you even hate, more than by almost anybody else.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Never say never in history. It's not coming anytime soon from either side. When you look at the long term of history, One of the curious things you see, and that's what makes us different human groups from animal species. You know, gorillas and chimpanzees, they are separate species, they can never merge. Cats and dogs will never merge. But different national and religious groups in history, even when they hate each other, surprisingly, they sometimes end by merging. If you look at Germany, for instance, So for centuries you had Prussians and Bavarians and Saxons who fought each other ferociously and hated each other and they are sometimes also of different religions Catholics, Protestants, you know the worst war in European history according to some measures was not the Second World War or the First World War it was the 30 years war waged largely on German soil between Germans Protestants and Catholics but eventually they united to form a single”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They demand some of them to destroy it and replace it with the Palestinian state. Some of them demand a separate state. But if the Palestinians would adopt the same policy as the Black South Africans, if you have the Palestinians coming and saying, okay, forget about it. We don't want to destroy Israel. We don't know a Palestinian country. We have a very simple request, very simple demand. Give us our full rights. We also want to vote to the Knesset. We also want to get the full protection of the law. That's it. That's our only demand. Israel will be in deep, deep trouble at that moment. But we are not there.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you agree with this? I would take issue with the term apartheid. Generally speaking, as a historian, I don't really like historical analogies because there are always differences, key differences. The biggest difference between the situation here and the situation in South Africa in the time of the apartheid is that black South Africans did not deny the existence of South Africa and did not call for the destruction of South Africa. They had a very simple goal. They had a very simple demand. We want to be equal citizens of this country. That's it. And the apartheid regime was, no, you can't be equal citizens. Now, in Israel, Palestine, it's different. The Palestinians, many of them don't recognize the existence of Israel, are not willing to recognize it, and they don't demand to be citizens of Israel.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who are Israeli citizens and have some rights? And then you have the other Arabs, the third class, who have basically no civil rights and limited human rights. And that's, again, nobody would openly speak about it, but effectively this is the reality on the ground already.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, two states between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean will have two states Israel as a predominantly Jewish state and Palestine as a predominantly Palestinian state. Again, there are lots of discussions where the border passes, what happens with security arrangement and whatever, but this was the big solution. Israel has basically abandoned the two-state solution. Maybe they don't say so officially, the people in power, but in terms of how they actually what they do on the ground, they abandoned it. Now they are effectively promoting the three class solution, which means there is just one country and one government and one power between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, but you have three classes of people living there. You have Jews who enjoy full rights, all the rights. You have some Arabs.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there are several reasons why it changed, but one of them was new technology. Israel developed very sophisticated surveillance technology that has made it much easier for Israeli security forces to control 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank against their will with a lot less effort, less boots on the ground, also less blood. And Israel is also now exporting this technology to many other regimes around the world. Again, I heard Netanyahu speaking about all the wonderful things that Israel is exporting to the world, and it's true we are exporting some nice things. Water systems and to make new kinds of tomatoes. We are also exporting a lot of weapons and especially surveillance systems sometimes to unsavory regimes in order to control their populations.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is a lot of hate. One of the things that happened in Israel over the last 10 years or so, Israel became much stronger than it was before, largely thanks to technological developments. And it feels that it no longer needs to compromise. This is the many reasons for it, but some of them are technological. Being one of the leading powers in cyber, in AI, in high tech. We have developed very sophisticated ways to more easily control the Palestinian population. In the early 2000s, it seemed that it is becoming impossible to control millions of people against the will. It took too much power. It spilled too much blood on both sides. So there was an impression, oh, this is becoming untenable.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Motivation. I think it's easy to achieve peace if you have the motivation on both sides. Unfortunately, the present juncture, there is not enough motivation on either side. Either the Palestinian or Israeli side. Peace. In mathematics, you have problems without solutions. You can prove mathematically that mathematical problem has no solution. In politics, there is no such thing. All problems have solutions if you have the motivation. But motivation is the big problem. And again, we can go into the reasons why, but the fact is that on neither side is there enough motivation. If there was motivation, the solution would have been easy.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is already becoming a religious war. I mean, the war, the conflict with the Palestinians was for many years a national conflict in essence. Over the last few years, maybe a decade or two, it is morphing into a religious conflict, which is again a very worrying development. When nations are in conflict, you can reach some compromise. Okay, you have this bit of land, we have this bit of land. But when it becomes a religious conflict between fundamentalists, between messianic people, compromise becomes much more difficult because you don't compromise on eternity. You don't compromise on God. And this is where we are heading right now.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We will go on strike. You know, there are private businesses. Hide the companies. I think it's almost unprecedented for a private business to go on strike. Because what will economic success benefit us if we live under a messianic dictatorship? And again, the fuel for this whole thing is to a large extent coming from messianic religious groups. Which just the thought what happens if these people have unlimited control of Israel's nuclear arsenal and Israel's military capabilities and cyber capabilities, this is very, very scary, not just for the citizens of Israel. It should be scary for people everywhere.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our legislation trying to gain unlimited power. So any doubt we had before, okay, maybe they choose their purposes. No. It's now very clear they are 100% focused on gaining absolute power. They are not trying a different tactic. Previously, they had all these dozens of laws that they wanted to pass very quickly within a month or two. They realized, no, this is There is too much opposition so now they're doing what is known as salami tactics. Slice by slice. Now they're trying to one law. If they succeeds, then they'll pass the next one and the next one and the next one. This is why we are now at a very crucial moment. And when you see again hundreds of thousands of people in the streets almost every day, when you seem resistance within the armed forces, within the security forces, you see high-tech companies.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nobody tries to gain unlimited power just for nothing. You have so many problems in Israel. Again, Netanyahu talks so much about Iran and the Palestinians and Hezbollah. We have an economic crisis. Why is it so urgent at this moment in the face of such opposition? Why is it so crucial for them to neutralize the Supreme Court? They are just doing it for the fun of it? No. They know what they are doing. They are adamant. We are not sure of it before. There was a couple of months ago, they came out with this plan to take over the Supreme Court, to have all these laws, and there were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. Again, soldiers saying they will stop serving, a general strike in the economy, and they stopped. And they started a process of negotiations to try and enrich a settlement. And then they broke down, they stopped the negotiations, and they restarted this process.”
2023-07-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source