20:35 THIS IS IMPORTANT: Yuval has just described perfectly, what has already happened...a nightmare scenario, in which members of our own society here in the United States are living inside our own informational cocoons, whereby when we try to communicate with each other about a subject (let's say politics) our realities experienced in each of those informational cocoons is so diametrically opposite each other that even though we both "speak" English, that we share separate, often antagonistic, interpretations of the same objective reality. And Elon Musk has joy in his heart at the thought of this.
Which is why X will likely be 'future news' which could prove dangerous... Hence, X verification. It's actually better in theory, let's hope the practice works because journalists are trained in their deliveries, the public are not.
Why single out Elon Musk? The Left has been adamantly vocal in opposition to him for a decade or more. For no reason what so ever. Naturally, this changes someone like that into a right winger. Where else can he turn after the Left lampoons him for making Electric cars popular, solar roofs, high tech batteries, and digital payment systems? It makes no sense.
Unleash the boundaries that keep the truth hidden and shunned, by big tech. Anything should be allowed to be said: information wants to be free. Censorship is the dictators tool. Truth will always win over false. Sometimes you need to take off the gloves and speak from the heart, but the big tech companies say no.
@@SolidSiren They hide behind their TOS and throws out anyone that they so chose. It should be illegal for the platforms to throw people out. Their strongest control should be to give a warning and in worst case a limited period where the person can't post. Like 3 days up to a month. Nothing further. Free speech, or are we going to be like Saudi Arabia, Russia or radical Muslim countries?
"Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil." ~ Eric Hoffer, The True Believer 🙌
"Information isn't the truth" very powerful words.
21 день назад
Truth is a never achievable academic construct because the objectivists are completely wrong. We have facts and arguments, and fallible human memory that can lead to the construction of an individual reality that varies from person-to-person, and from moment-to-moment.
For those watching, it’s worth noting that Yuval Harari often tells this story about ChatGPT ‘hiring’ a TaskRabbit worker and ‘lying’ to solve a CAPTCHA, but the full details show it wasn’t autonomous. 1) ChatGPT didn’t independently choose TaskRabbit; researchers directed it. 2) It couldn’t interact with the web itself-researchers simulated each click and response. 3) Even the ‘lie’ was based on human hints, not ChatGPT’s own intent. The media rarely covered these nuances, but they’re crucial for understanding what AI can really do.
@@luke27456 except he didn't say anything false, he just left out those details. He was telling the truth, are you not listening? It's not black and white...
I think Noah clearly defined what AI can do and that we haven't actually unleashed anything truly autonomous yet. I don't understand why you are attacking this? Does Harari scare you?
@@worshadar150 I don't think he is attacking anything, he is simply providing more detail and nuance on an aspect of the talk. It's not suggesting anything even remotely negative about Harari. Does detail scare you?
Yuval Noah Harari convinced me. Algorithms are in reality editors. Editors were responsible for the selection of the content. Algorithms are responsible the exact same way.
We have the same brains, emotions, and reactions _today_ that we have had for the last 300,000 years or more. We are vulnerable to everyone who profits from deliberately addicting us with overfeeding, with excessive calories and excessive information. We do need an information diet. If only all incoming media-published information was required to have an "Informational Facts" label, like the Nutritional Facts labels.
However, when we do try to set some standards. They call it an attack on their freedom of thought and speech. No the problem is with us. The weak link. The rise of the ideologically self-righteous. The bubble dwellers who's delusional and isolationist theologies have cut them off from the real world. And of course the conmen who benifit from their fragile egos and shear gullibility. Religion was the first form of mind control. And it's use has spread from the church and government to media.
And if only we applied the same standard to government information. Information isn't "failing us" because of the internet, or China, or because people aren't able to parse fact from fiction. A significant portion of the blame lies with institutions we used to trust, but who have failed us - the mainstream media, and the government, who have been shown repeatedly to avidly distribute misinformation. I wouldn't trust these people to be the arbiters of "truth" for a second. As such, people have to look elsewhere, and yes, that's not easy. But blaming the populace for the problem is exactly what the dominant paradigm want you to believe.
Such a label wouldn’t work, since the addiction companies (tech, food, gambling) know how easily ppl fall to over consumption, vegas was built on it. We need to detach the profit that’s generated by them and the protection the government is apparently supposed to uphold, while they are tangled together we will always be sold for clicks.. and blamed for weakness to resist
@@Fab666. We have to learn, as consumers, what we ingest into our body and brains. If there isn't a market for misinformation, the companies will fail. Ultimately, we are responsible for our own lives, decisions and weaknesses. Own them.
I m whole food plant eater And I would not allow anyone to convince me to eat what can kill me!!we have a brain and reasoning As humans!! Plus the best tool to check whether we are eating healthy it's the blood pressure and blood sugars
In so many of the talks and interviews and conversations that Yuval has, from the interviewer to the audience, there is always a pushback to Yuval to tell us things that make us feel good, that make us happy. This is why humans are still susceptible to mass delusion because we just want to feel good all the time…never feel sad, never feel heartbroken, never feel lonely so we become addicted to opioids cannibis alcohol TikTok selfies sex gambling gaming . . . anything to never feel sad or heartbroken or lonely EVER. This is how AI will be able to rule over humans, I think, because modern humans are obsessed with feeling good. AI will eventually understand that and lead billions of human into voluntarily living in alternate reality cocoons permanently and never want to experience objective reality ever again.
There was a good sci-fi story about robots taking care of humans just a little too much, called With Folded Hands. Is a radio show from 1950s. Check it out. As art (paintings and music) describes the scientific view of its age, so sci-fi describes the future of society.
I don't know who you are but this profound understanding is commendable.. I wonder why this idea is not mainstream? I mean it's not only true but it's hidden in plain sight
If you fo one step further, to see why everyone wants to just feel good, be happy, what will you see? We are overflown with negativity. Everyone is suffering, all the time. We don't want to and cant bear all the negative emotions.
03:37 We can split the atom but can’t solve the problem of bad information... This is the most haunting question. How can we be so brilliant yet so blind?
@@youarelegend-bio because most people are dumb. The average intelligence is actually pretty low. Only the smartest among us can split the atom. The rest of us mostly just meander through life.
We need to start teaching Critical Thinking. Epistemology, skepticism, logical analysis, logical syllogism, logical fallacies, etc. It needs to be done in its own separate dedicated class. It should be all through EL-HI, and how we teach math. Start with simple basic principles which increase in complexity as we advance. Once upon a time, we realized that for humanity to progress we all needed to at least learn to read and write and at least basic math, and so just about the entire world formed classes. Due to technology, we have reached another turning point. It's long past the time for this necessity.
In the biography of Robert Oppenheimer titled American Prometheus (by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin) a friend of Oppenheimer is quoted as saying about the physicist: "On no one did there ever rest with greater cruelty the dilemmas evoked by the recent conquest by human beings of a power over nature out of all proportion to their moral strength."
It is true If only we prefer imagination over perception. Obviously clear perception is more powerful than any sort of unbridled imagination because imagination takes his power from delusion which is sort of intellectual incapability or bluntness. On the other hand clear perception is sort of sharpness of the mind...
Thank you for a stimulating discussion on a highly relevant topic. I am yet to read the book but having heard this discussion several questions come to mind. Psychoanalyst Dr. W. R. Bion had said: “Intellect, at its very best, is but a handmaid of emotions.” So, perhaps we are given wrong information but then, the question is: even when we know that the information is wrong, we continue to act on wrong information and are causing or reaching devastating consequences, why we fail to change course? What is the nature of hysteresis in human nature that make us, the humans, individually and collectively stick to deceit and cruelty so easily and repeatedly? Given that we believe in stories, we choose the stories we want to or end up believing in, and the ones that we reject, even when we know that alternate stories are more true or relevant. We have believed in stories of Buddha and Jesus but also in stories that perpetrated holocausts and genocides and nuclear explosions. Under what rules do we choose the stories that we believe in, and why do we disregard stories that we know are more sensible, even more truthful? Across history we have done that time and again. We had walked into WWI; we opted for simpler technology to reach moon because we also wanted to be ahead of Russians to do so. one stage rockets to reach moon whereas exploded nuclear bombs because the President had We have actively perpetrated holocausts, genocides, caused nuclear explosions, and what not. Arthur Koestler in his monumental work “The Sleepwalkers” had labelled humankind as sleepwalkers. In the middle of the night when we are deep in sleep, we rise, in our slumber, walk, even to the precipice of the roof, in the darkness of night and return to our sleep without being aware of anything that we did then. Are we sleepwalking to some precipice now? History is marked with long stretches of time where people preferred stability over progress, and then there are few centuries when advances in science and philosophy take off. The only such event in recorded history is that of The Greeks were followed by the Dark Ages, followed by The Age of Enlightenment. Are we witnessing dying throes of The Age of Enlightenment? In his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, Ray Kurzweil succinctly expressed his deep insight when he said: “Technology is evolution by other means”, mimicking famous saying that marriage is war by other means. Just as evolution changes life forms, their functionalities, their sensibilities and sensitivities, so does the technology. Question is: Are we presently witnessing such an evolutionary change? One of the aspects of the present-day problems, even crisis is that distribution of power in the society has changed substantially. Truth and power have always been difficult concepts to grapple with. Certain truth is necessary to sustain life. For example, we need to eat edible food of some kind to sustain and even survive. We cannot survive on fantasy of food, no matter how delicious and nutritious the food in the fantasy is, and how animate the fantasy is. On the other end, Power has always been a difficult and slippery concept. It has been eminently observed that `Truth is the centre of power, and power is the centre of truth.' In one of his recent talks Mr. Harari had said that earlier (before AI) people switched from one low-skilled job to another. Farmers became factory workers and workers became cashiers or clerks. With advancing technology, only some people can contribute to sustenance of life. Such people do and will continue to wield tremendous power, whereas most of the humanity has become or will soon become useless and redundant to life on earth. It is difficult to imagine how in absence of any use, majority of the people can aim or even hope to have some power, economically, politically or socially, let alone find realistic basis for their narcissism?
interesting points. we are definitely in the Age of Narcissism … just like the Roman Empire was 1500 years of Terror. we may also be in ww3 (i think we are…) which i think is the end of Western Civilization. Western Civilization is racist. Judaism and Christianity have driven conquest, genocides etc but with 8billion people of which only 15.6million are Jewish - can they still be “The Chosen” ? ie. God endorses and practices favouritism ie nepotism ie racism? can’t see it lasting more than 5 years … although with the Anglo-saxon support led by old people, there will be blood 🩸 there already is !
The idea that AI might become our primary storyteller feels both fascinating and unsettling. On one hand, it could enhance human understanding by processing vast data sets, but on the other, it risks distorting reality if unchecked. The comparison between editors shaping early religious texts and algorithms curating today’s content is especially striking-AI’s influence might already rival those historical decisions. This raises the question: will we control AI’s narrative power, or will it control us?
Right the point here is not "IF unchecked," it will be unchecked, because humans don't have the capacity to process all this data to check it. See Y.N.H.'s example of the KGB. Min. 43:47
Enhanced human understanding has skyrocketed in the last 20 years How’s that working out? It only makes us robots. Wishing for the simplicity of a non overpopulated mind.
Truth is a super debated concept, despite of what Harari would like you to believe, and can mean different things depending on context-whether it’s philosophical, scientific, or personal. Some people say there’s an objective truth-like facts that exist no matter what we think (e.g., water boils at 100°C at sea level). Others believe truth is subjective, tied to personal or cultural perspectives, so what’s “true” for one group may not be for another (common in beliefs or social norms). There’s also correspondence theory, which says truth is what matches reality, while coherence theory argues truth is about how consistent beliefs are within a system. Tbh, Harari oversimplifies this in his work, even though his points are valid. The whole idea of “absolute truth” depends on how we define it and the context.
Ai being the main storyteller... it reminded me of priest classes in every society who were able to form and change the beliefs of mases and even create new gods for us humans... they had answer for everything good and evil however the answers were not really the truth but just plain answers to the questions or events which we were not able to understand.
WISDOM, humanity apparently has forgotten what WISDOM is. We learn this and that, but it’s all senseless and stupid without the WISDOM to discern and choose what is right.
wisdom: understanding the more we know, the more we realize how little we know, and how much more we need to know. To be able to be wrong is to be able to learn
Using Yuval's own explanation that those who can create stories are the actual powerful who lead us into certain beliefs that may not be the truth, but isn't he one of those story tellers himself?
Of course this is true. Which is why it’s important that you have both the ability and desire to discern the truth. He gives many historical examples, research them. He makes many statements, verify them. And once you have done that you can then determine in a logical way whether his conclusions ring true. Your question suggests a type of helplessness and sadly it likely indicates that you rarely to never verify or research what you see.
@@b1r2y3n He does it for a living and I don't. And yes, the digital age has rendered the majority of people, ordinary people, a sense of helplessness when it comes to seeing what is "truth".
@@ngvkhtnw22 If you really care about this, you would make the effort to combat the helplessness and utilize/nurture your critical thinking abilities. You can do this! You do not have to play the victim.
“We live in a world where there is more and more information and less and less meaning.” - French sociologist, philosopher and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard in his book Simulacra and Simulation.
When I as a human want to be understood and interact on line I am doing this mainly to connect with others as humans.. even when the site is manipulated by an algorithm. Humans only precipitate towards humans.
Information is power! " verifying it's accuracy is our accountability. " I love how you said, " Information can be created,but, the people are not held accountable. " Therefore, someone who is responsible ought to be held accountable in creating accurate information. Thank you Yuval Harari for your books, " Sapiens, Homo deus, lessons for the 21st century" , Having way to a better future Hopefully.
One of the biggest problems in this way of thinking is that the use of 'We' to describe acts of achievement done by relatively small population of the 'human race.' The same person who is sharing random drops of misinformation on Facebook and Twitter is not the same person who split the atom. And the problem is that these collective presumptions of what 'Humans' do never references all of the things human do, but focuses on the spectacular things 'some' humans did.
That’s not true - every American split the atom. This is because they elected the administration which approved the project and then paid the taxes which funded the program.
"Information isn't the truth" very powerful words. "Make the social media companies responsible for their algorithms, not for their users' behaviour" - YNH
A brief summary In this conversation, Andrew Ross Sorkin and Yuval Noah Harari talk about how people seek happiness and truth, suggesting that while power is often seen as a main goal, it’s really just a way to achieve deeper desires. They express concern about our increasing reliance on AI for understanding emotions and building relationships, noting that AIs, which don’t have feelings of their own, might actually understand human emotions better than people do. This could change how we connect with each other compared to AIs, possibly leading to AIs being given legal rights in the future. Harari highlights the positive potential of AI, like better healthcare and improved understanding of emotions, but warns against developing AI too quickly without proper rules. Both emphasize the need for regulations to ensure AI is used ethically. They compare managing information to healthy eating, suggesting that we need to be more mindful about the information we consume, much like we should be careful about our diets. Overall, the conversation balances hope for AI’s benefits with warnings about its risks, stressing the importance of careful planning for our future with technology.
I could listen to Harari for dozens of hours. I've listened to all of his major books. He is probably the most important writer of our time. I hope he continues to pump out more of his usef perspective on the world. "Information diet" might be a cool next thing for him to write on: perhaps he can form a theory and critique of our current information diet, and then help us understand how to better feed ourselves information.
@@ceeemm1901 'You should tell him that. You're a genius.' You dont have to be a genius to know your butt from a hole in the ground. He's a mouthpiece for the establishment. Nothing more or less. An establishment that will do anything to maintain an unsustainable status quo, that will pay people not to work, rather than progress, that equates leisure with 'uselessness'. His solution? (to the loss of half the few jobs that remain): "Drugs and video games". -- Compare that to: "If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be towards the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality." Stephen Hawking during his final AMA when asked abt technological unemployment.
Sam Harris and Douglas Murray need to listen to what Yuval said here about the Israel Palestine conflict. They are both the people that he identified as fixated on the “other sides’s” desire to annihilate “us” and they should follow. Yuval’s advice to start with the problem in their own heads instead of relentlessly demonizing the other side
Yuval Noah Harari overestimates Israelis' thirst to destroy Palestinians, he hates the current government so badly he cannot say a bad thing about Hamas without talking out the other side of his mouth. I also lived in Israel, the average secular Israeli was (before oct 7) in favour of a 2 state solution, the same cannot be said about the West Bank or Gaza or Syria or Iraq or Iran or Yemin or.. you get the idea. whatever he thinks about the Israeli state, they do have a history of working towards 2 states, the problem is the other side has never acted in good faith, and Israel letting its guard down has always ended in needless death.
Being able to access information is a good thing eventually. Because video like this is part of it and making us more critical about the information we receive in general.
@@Turtledove2009it wouldn’t matter. They’d either call him a “Democrap” or simply have a negligible amount of care or understanding. I wish he spoke on how narcissistic most people are. They aren’t interested in leaving their cocoons. Social media driven technology has helped many reinforce those cocoons. AI will continue the trend at warp speed.
I find it fascinating that Dr. Harari can in one breath say that information is not truth, and that human nature is not at fault, the algorithms and (power hungry) people providing the information to each cocoon are the problem. In the next breath he is able to interpret the points of views and doubts and lies of each side in an intractable struggle in the middle east. Two possibilities: A) the truth is available to someone who is educated in how to sift the wheat from the chaff. or B) Yuval is just helping further spin the cocoons. Let's assume it's A so we don't have to discredit him. It seems like placing the blame squarely on those that provide (mis)information and exonerating the masses is wrong. The masses can and must sift all of the information and synthesize their truth belief about reality. Even if Society also has a burden of providing tools and education to facilitate the ability to discern truth, this part is clearly the responsibility of the receiver of candidate information. Without this basic responsibility and assuming full democratization of information societies may collapse upon themselves with no aid from AI.
The networks may be built in such a way that predisposes them to use power unwisely, but the core problem is still not an information problem. Fixing the information problem will reduce the symptoms, but the root problem is still human nature. It is human nature that drives people to use power unwisely and exploit problems within our networks of cooperation.
Also, in answer to the question of why humans are simultaneously so smart and so dumb, it is only the smartest of our species who can split atoms and reach the moon. Most people are pretty dumb, myself included.
I see your point. While I agree with the dilemma you pose as being the "core" problem, I see it more like a pendulum, or a seesaw: there are 2 problems, instead of only 1 core. Yes, most humans have a tendency to act in their own self interest, rather than the collective. But the amplification and reach of AI are a power source on their own.
When your first question is how can we establish truth, your conception of reality is warped. Seek not truth. Truth is a flawed concept. Instead, seek useful information. Truth can be useful in many situations, but you run into paradoxes when truths come at each other with the full weight of them being, well, true. Truth is binary and might not fit in situations where it is not a binary system. There's also subjective truth, which is a whole different animal from objective truth. Now, why I say seek useful information is because that's a step above seeking truth. When you seek truth, you're actually seeking information BECAUSE it's useful to you. Provided the information was accurate. This is where information can be truer or less true. Accuracy is not binary. Accuracy is more useful for this reason. Do you see? Do not ask for truth. Ask for useful information. Align yourself with quality information and you will become powerful.
Yuval likes using the example of GPT4 using TaskRabbit to hire a worker to solve the captcha problem. However, he's a bit disingenuous in how he tells it. He makes it seem like GPT4 did all of the steps by itself so he can use the term "agent". However, in reality, the openai team heavily guided it and prompted it to make the decisions that it did with the exception of lying to the worker about the reason it needed help with the captcha problem. The lying part is the interesting bit, but the way Yuval tells the story it really seems like GPT4 did much more than just persuade someone with dialogue.
If the AI did come up with the lie, that is still pretty intriguing. It's not conclusive, but does suggest thinking ahead, if the lie was not told after numerous failures attempting to be truthful or with a nudge from the team.
We, the people, receive the information through our senses alike. Then all the information is run through the algorithm of self interest or selfishness. That's where we start seeing things differently while sharing the common perspective of self interest.
Maybe because you and Yuval, think of humanity as a collective, but humanity is simply the sum of individual humans. Individuals who know how to split the atom-who understand physics-almost certainly can distinguish truth from fiction. While those who can't separate truth from fiction can't split the atom, do not understand physics at a sufficent level. Majority of individual humans were always primitive and irrational, while progress was always driven by a minority lucky enough-or unlucky-to be intelligent. The truth, harsh as it may be, is a truth: humans are puppets of human nature. Whatever degrees of freedom an individual may claim, the overall trajectory of humanity-an aggregation of countless "small" choices-is inexorably governed by the largely immutable framework of human nature. That is, it may be impossible to predict the behavior of an individual human, but the collective behavior of humanity, when viewed at scale, follows patterns as fixed and predictable as the flow of a river shaped by its banks.
58:20 - The interviewer exposes his bubble, his fantasy ... "I think that people in Israel would say, that people in Palestine have a right to exist". Yuval rightly corrects him and gives him a dose of reality. Over the last year, the interviewer - a popular American Newsman has been operating with the assumption that one side - Israelis - have nothing but benign intentions. What an absurd example of the entire reason for this video.
03:37 We can unlock the secrets of the atom, yet we struggle to tackle the rampant spread of misinformation. This poses a deeply unsettling dilemma. How can we be so advanced in our understanding and capabilities, yet remain so oblivious to the dangers of falsehoods? It’s puzzling that our scientific breakthroughs don’t translate into a greater ability to sift through the complexities of information in today’s world.
Attention is all you need. What do you know? Its not about good or bad information, but what our experience includes and does not. Do we have teachers asking the right questions? Do we have mentor that inspire us to? There is too much information for any person to know even an infinitesimal fraction of it, but the fraction we know shapes our entire view of the world, and every bit of information we'll have the opportunity to encounter. Everything we value, including what important information is, is based solely on the information we've encountered. We dont need a computer that knows what we dont - we already ignore the experts that know more than we dont. Why would we listen to a collection of them? We're just as likely to discount experts who are parroted by AI, simply because the AI did before we trusted them.
The problem is not information. The problem, known in Buddhism is Citta, the mental state of the mind that creates the information and the state of the mind that comes into contact with that information. As the Buddha said in the Dhammapada - “the mind precedes all, mind is their chief”. Unconscious people, unconscious to their true nature and reality, are easily affected by many things due to their Citta. Human behavior, for thousands of years, has been dysfunctional and in general operating in the same fashion.
Why do we want to do what we want to do? If you keep asking this question repeatedly and delve deeper through with it, you will get clarity in life. You can get every answer you want with it but human nature will limit you at some point and pull you back to where you were before asking the long chain of follow-up questions and direct you to live a human life like everyone else does.
Always intriguing to follow Yuval Noah Harari, thought process...! Finally it is, if the "unpredictable" future as it appears now can be predictable or shaped by Artificial ("Alien") Intelligence??? Human beings have always played with their "stories" of influence because of the gullibility of the audience. A I can do it in a very professional way like how Faith, Power, Finance are/was used. Probably the only way is to develop the curiosity aspect of the human species of questioning.....but we could reach a Catch 22 situation of an A I controlled environment. The only answer could be to develop H I, Human Intelligence of questioning & debate as a parallel.....tough but no other choice....🤗.
It's appalling to see that this old generation just doesn't seem to understand what's happening. Young people can't afford to buy homes, jobs are precarious and scarce, creating instability. And having children has become so expensive, it's no wonder birth rates are plummeting. Yet, none of this seems to be addressed in any of these reports or videos.
That’s the point. Through easy social media manipulation and curated content creation marketing (Joe Rogan, UFC, etc…). The party who will make all these things worse for their own benefit just convinced Americans they were the best choice. Reality will like a cold shower in a just-above-freezing tundra.
Not exactly. People have prisms through which they observe a set of facts. You may give the same set of facts to several different people, who live in different countries, with different cultures, different social circumstances, different social status, etc., and they may come up with different conclusions.
Truth and facts are the same. Take a second look at your post. You are correct, a blind deaf human can "see" the truth when given facts. Maybe you think Truth is some philosophical ideal or something. Truth is just a more general, catch-all kind of word that encompasses facts.
@@stevesmith4901 The issue is facts and truth are 2 different concepts. It might help for you look up the definitions in the dictionary. After you do, you may want to ask AI to compare and contrast both concepts and list methods for observing the Truth. Think 20 years back, before we were so politically polarized in the US. You could give a cultured Republican and a cultured Democrat the same set of facts, and they'd produce equally valid analysis from each of their perspectives, that were both true. Part of the problem is on one end, people's lack of exactitude in terms of language. But mostly, I think it might be 24hr "news" outlets that cater to one specific party. Firstly, there aren't enough news to fill a 24hr news cycle. So, these "news" outlets are rather in the business of broadcasting opinions titled as "news." Secondly, since we have freedom of expression, it is perfectly legal for people to publicly voice their opinion in a mass communication outlet, even if their opinion is erroneous, or misinformed, or attempts to mislead. So, we end up with a 1 hour news cast, and 23 hours of Republican or Democrat dribble, directed a people who not only have found a nice, comfortable echo chamber fir themselves, they also are not trained to discern between a statement of fact and a statement of opinion. Thirdly, there are very few news outlets who just list the facts anymore. I can only think of AP and Reuters. I propose we go back to that 1 hr news format that makes its most earnest attempt at neutrality. One hour where EVERYONE goes to be informed and the viewer is trusted to reach their own conclusions. Unfortunately, that won't happen. The market for echo chambers is huge. The industry is massive. The people have spoken and the market is giving them what they want. All candy, no nutrition. .
Here is the problem. Moderator here misquotes Elon Musk stating that he believes if all information is free we will be able to find the truth. Elon never claimed such ridiculous statement. The problem with newspaper and middlemen is exactly that. They can distort, deliberately or not, valuable information. Just like here.
Information alone is worth noting if it can't be used for benefiting. To benefit from information, processing is required. There are different levels of information processing efficiency. Achieving high efficiency in this sense doesn't come without cognitive efforts and skills. Not everyone has a chance to develop this skills throughout their life and benefit from consuming information relevant to their contexts and reality. Even worse, not everyone can distinguish information based in real facts from lies. However, anyone is capable of disseminating any type of information. Therefore, information alone is not only useless, but most likely dangerous.
This starts with a big glaring false premise. He says the problem is not in our nature but in our information. The information originates with the person, and the person's nature dictates what type of information they will both create and be inclined to receive as truth. Therefore, the problem truly is our nature. I'm not saying I disagree with everything he has to say.
Yes - it starts with the responsibility and intelligence of the individual - but he's specifically talking about the power of dissemination of mistruths, here.
Ah, but "receiving truth" is mediated by social institutions (school, church) and technology (books, internet). To his point, the mediating factors can warp and distort the information, and have a ripple effect on what you know and how you reason. The individual doesn't necessarily intend to distort it.
Lol jews have contributed more to science than any other culture and their extremism is in response to extremism by abrahamic religions which denies them the right to exist.
@@stevesmith4901 my point is that the same 'we' that can split atoms are NOT the same group of 'we' that can't distinguish truth - so the attempted grouping - is wrong.
@@witness1013 chill out, and use common sense. obviously he does not think that all human beings know how to split an atom. the point is that, if you really wanted to, you probably could.
The world is a big closed loop, we kept destroying ourselves or our advanced world ended thousands of years ago under our Hubris multiple times. We tried, but this is a stage we struggle to get over, we struggle to get over ourselves in massive tribes. Today we fight more ideological wars than resource wars.
No one person has the truth, I believe. While Yuval may not have the truth by himself, he shared his perception of his connection to it. I believe it’s up to all of us to listen to one and another, and learn from one and another. You too, in fact, have your own perception of the truth to share.
@@Rizzatooga Because he's basically an evangelist of a global technocratic authoritarian regime. When he speaks with plebes as the audience, it seems like a humanitarian warning. When he's speaking to his peers, it's far more glorious-sounding.
Thank you - I found this very interesting. My take is humanity is doomed, because the truth hurts and it is simply easier to accept misinformation which suits our personal narratives. My one conceptual divergence is that in my opinion Yuval attributes too much sophistry to the Facebook, Google, X "algorithms" and as such the premise of "targeting them" is flawed. I agree entirely the aim is to keep one engaged but am of the opinion that because they must cater for every human interest they can only be generic, and are thus premised on the simple philosophy "You are watching A, and others who watched A also watched B, C and D" - and so you are then presented with options of B, C and D ...and so on ad infinitum. The more people that then follow a particular path, the more "weight" that path gets and the more it will be presented, thus introducing the polarisation and "cocooning" and the very real parallel universes of Democrat and Republican in the US today. I firmly agree with the cocooning concept and there is no question to me that it is real however it is a function simply of playing to peoples' preferences rather than any "cleverness" on behalf of the algorithms. Following from this I do not believe the algorithms have any concept of the "hate button" for example. That aside, a great interview covering frightening subject matter - the interviewer is also excellent.
Well, you demonstrated the problem. You have no evidence for Jesus, and so I see that as you lying. If I say God does not exist and the bible is a made up story, you say I am lying. If you agree that a lie is a statement or act that coerces or manipulates us away from objective validated demonstrable fact, you then get into some interesting debates. You enter into philosophy and word play.
@@andrewlarking7492 I met Jesus let's see who's lying after we die. Just because you haven't seen him doesn't mean he is fake. Truth is not subjective. Jesus love you but do you try to recognize it?
You're confusing the concept of truth with the concept of faith. Jesus, or any religion for that matter, is a BELIEF that requires faith. Once you have PROOF, it stops being religion.
Yuval Noah Harari has been incredibly enlightening. I just watched Elon Musk give a speech to a summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It had something to do about the future of investments. Google, Blackstone, etc.were there as well. Of of Musk's main theories for their support in Riyadh, was based on his mission is to save humanity because our birth rate decline, which apparently it's becoming a huge problem. Especially here in the US. He said that's why he directly endorsed Donald Trump so he can enact policies to help AI move forward to increase the birth rate. Musk claimed if the birthrate keeps declining this rate, the population could decrease in size by 2/3 by only a few decades. Birthrate is directly tied to the life expectancy of seniors. Almost every cause was existential in nature. Such were their claims as to why their companies needed those investments.
Humans should accept that the Truth is a Truce. Part of a network of communication, Inter subjective (which is a story created by people listening with the intent of understanding eachothers needs) and temporary.
Yuval, like many of our times most prominently regarded public intellectuals, makes quick bridges and keeps it moving with more words than you can keep up with. He was groomed and here he still is
Fantastic conversation. Yow. Uval Noah Harari always helps me take unexpected mental journeys. Guess what, Andrew Ross Sorkin, on Nov. 5 2024 over half of U.S. voters gave us an example of how a modern society can cocoon itself into totalitarianism 😒
It's not only information it's affect. People are persuaded by affect and not by information. Yuval has some psychology lectures to go through. To discern information is not enough you need to understand what has a strong imprint on peoples sensorial and emotional gestalt
This is actually what he is addressing. He says many times it’s not the information itself that is the problem. It’s the packaging and delivery which are shaped by purpose, which he states is the pursuit of power.
20:35 THIS IS IMPORTANT: Yuval has just described perfectly, what has already happened...a nightmare scenario, in which members of our own society here in the United States are living inside our own informational cocoons, whereby when we try to communicate with each other about a subject (let's say politics) our realities experienced in each of those informational cocoons is so diametrically opposite each other that even though we both "speak" English, that we share separate, often antagonistic, interpretations of the same objective reality. And Elon Musk has joy in his heart at the thought of this.
Which is why X will likely be 'future news' which could prove dangerous... Hence, X verification. It's actually better in theory, let's hope the practice works because journalists are trained in their deliveries, the public are not.
you nailed it!
Why single out Elon Musk?
The Left has been adamantly vocal in opposition to him for a decade or more. For no reason what so ever. Naturally, this changes someone like that into a right winger. Where else can he turn after the Left lampoons him for making Electric cars popular, solar roofs, high tech batteries, and digital payment systems? It makes no sense.
Absolutely Bang On 😂
That’s it. That’s the ballgame.
"Make the social media companies responsible for their algorithms, not for their users' behaviour" - YNH
42:39
Unleash the boundaries that keep the truth hidden and shunned, by big tech. Anything should be allowed to be said: information wants to be free. Censorship is the dictators tool. Truth will always win over false. Sometimes you need to take off the gloves and speak from the heart, but the big tech companies say no.
That is a terrible plan. Controlling them is not enough unlike the algorithms controlling us.
@@SolidSiren They hide behind their TOS and throws out anyone that they so chose. It should be illegal for the platforms to throw people out. Their strongest control should be to give a warning and in worst case a limited period where the person can't post. Like 3 days up to a month. Nothing further. Free speech, or are we going to be like Saudi Arabia, Russia or radical Muslim countries?
soooo right!
"Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil." ~ Eric Hoffer, The True Believer 🙌
The devil doesn't spread hatred, he's a carnie who sells tickets to a game you can't win. That game is called the world.
Well that does explain the MAGA cult
It's the information we receive from 5 senses and processed thru Mind to be part of us and unfortunately be disillusions - Buddha
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Hoffer - great guy. Read him when I was young 55 years ago.
"The Devil has little trouble with those who do not believe in him, they are already on his side" Fulton J Sheen
"Information isn't the truth" very powerful words.
Truth is a never achievable academic construct because the objectivists are completely wrong. We have facts and arguments, and fallible human memory that can lead to the construction of an individual reality that varies from person-to-person, and from moment-to-moment.
No... but information is power, that is for sure
why powerful?
You didn’t know😂
Kind of obvious, though. Seems pretty weak.
For those watching, it’s worth noting that Yuval Harari often tells this story about ChatGPT ‘hiring’ a TaskRabbit worker and ‘lying’ to solve a CAPTCHA, but the full details show it wasn’t autonomous. 1) ChatGPT didn’t independently choose TaskRabbit; researchers directed it. 2) It couldn’t interact with the web itself-researchers simulated each click and response. 3) Even the ‘lie’ was based on human hints, not ChatGPT’s own intent. The media rarely covered these nuances, but they’re crucial for understanding what AI can really do.
the irony of Yuval's anecdote being false while he's discussing what's fact vs fiction...
Your source?
@@luke27456 except he didn't say anything false, he just left out those details. He was telling the truth, are you not listening? It's not black and white...
I think Noah clearly defined what AI can do and that we haven't actually unleashed anything truly autonomous yet. I don't understand why you are attacking this? Does Harari scare you?
@@worshadar150 I don't think he is attacking anything, he is simply providing more detail and nuance on an aspect of the talk. It's not suggesting anything even remotely negative about Harari. Does detail scare you?
I was taught a healthy skepticism in 8th grade, and really appreciate how Yuval reinforces it.
Healthy scepticism of someone who refers to humans as 'useless eaters' Now that's healthy scepticism.
@@helenreade6015 No he doesn't. He was only talking about vacuous blobs of protoplasm such as yourself.
Yuval Noah Harari convinced me. Algorithms are in reality editors. Editors were responsible for the selection of the content. Algorithms are responsible the exact same way.
That’s censorship. People need education to be able to determine what information makes sense themselves. Editorial censorship is a dictatorship.
We have the same brains, emotions, and reactions _today_ that we have had for the last 300,000 years or more. We are vulnerable to everyone who profits from deliberately addicting us with overfeeding, with excessive calories and excessive information. We do need an information diet. If only all incoming media-published information was required to have an "Informational Facts" label, like the Nutritional Facts labels.
However, when we do try to set some standards. They call it an attack on their freedom of thought and speech.
No the problem is with us. The weak link.
The rise of the ideologically self-righteous. The bubble dwellers who's delusional and isolationist theologies have cut them off from the real world. And of course the conmen who benifit from their fragile egos and shear gullibility.
Religion was the first form of mind control. And it's use has spread from the church and government to media.
And if only we applied the same standard to government information. Information isn't "failing us" because of the internet, or China, or because people aren't able to parse fact from fiction. A significant portion of the blame lies with institutions we used to trust, but who have failed us - the mainstream media, and the government, who have been shown repeatedly to avidly distribute misinformation. I wouldn't trust these people to be the arbiters of "truth" for a second. As such, people have to look elsewhere, and yes, that's not easy. But blaming the populace for the problem is exactly what the dominant paradigm want you to believe.
Such a label wouldn’t work, since the addiction companies (tech, food, gambling) know how easily ppl fall to over consumption, vegas was built on it. We need to detach the profit that’s generated by them and the protection the government is apparently supposed to uphold, while they are tangled together we will always be sold for clicks.. and blamed for weakness to resist
@@Fab666. We have to learn, as consumers, what we ingest into our body and brains. If there isn't a market for misinformation, the companies will fail. Ultimately, we are responsible for our own lives, decisions and weaknesses. Own them.
I m whole food plant eater
And I would not allow anyone to convince me to eat what can kill me!!we have a brain and reasoning
As humans!!
Plus the best tool to check whether we are eating healthy it's the blood pressure and blood sugars
In so many of the talks and interviews and conversations that Yuval has, from the interviewer to the audience, there is always a pushback to Yuval to tell us things that make us feel good, that make us happy. This is why humans are still susceptible to mass delusion because we just want to feel good all the time…never feel sad, never feel heartbroken, never feel lonely so we become addicted to opioids cannibis alcohol TikTok selfies sex gambling gaming . . . anything to never feel sad or heartbroken or lonely EVER. This is how AI will be able to rule over humans, I think, because modern humans are obsessed with feeling good. AI will eventually understand that and lead billions of human into voluntarily living in alternate reality cocoons permanently and never want to experience objective reality ever again.
Then "the matrix" will welcome us.
There was a good sci-fi story about robots taking care of humans just a little too much, called With Folded Hands. Is a radio show from 1950s. Check it out. As art (paintings and music) describes the scientific view of its age, so sci-fi describes the future of society.
I don't know who you are but this profound understanding is commendable.. I wonder why this idea is not mainstream? I mean it's not only true but it's hidden in plain sight
If you fo one step further, to see why everyone wants to just feel good, be happy, what will you see?
We are overflown with negativity. Everyone is suffering, all the time. We don't want to and cant bear all the negative emotions.
It's not that we don't want to feel bad ever, we just want to feel good for tiny amounts of time. Don't blame the one who suffers, look for the cause.
03:37 We can split the atom but can’t solve the problem of bad information... This is the most haunting question. How can we be so brilliant yet so blind?
@@youarelegend-bio because most people are dumb. The average intelligence is actually pretty low. Only the smartest among us can split the atom. The rest of us mostly just meander through life.
Watch Michael Shermer’s TED Talk “The pattern behind self-deception”. In summation: evolved bad code.
avoid M.U.D.
M isinformation
U ntruths
D isinformation
What something is doesn't tell us what we should do with it.
Because we've tied our civilizations to religion which requires suspension of critical thought!
He can link topics so clearly and explain everything. Opened my mind to many current topics. Must listen
We need to start teaching Critical Thinking. Epistemology, skepticism, logical analysis, logical syllogism, logical fallacies, etc.
It needs to be done in its own separate dedicated class. It should be all through EL-HI, and how we teach math. Start with simple basic principles which increase in complexity as we advance.
Once upon a time, we realized that for humanity to progress we all needed to at least learn to read and write and at least basic math, and so just about the entire world formed classes. Due to technology, we have reached another turning point. It's long past the time for this necessity.
What we, aka y'all, need is to realise it's all about retiring to comfort to watch the impending shit show...because it's likely incoming
Agreed. And system theory. Understanding ecosystemic complexity and interdependence, to be able to take a broader perspective.
Definitely!
agreed
That will never be allowed, though.
In the biography of Robert Oppenheimer titled American Prometheus (by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin) a friend of Oppenheimer is quoted as saying about the physicist:
"On no one did there ever rest with greater cruelty the dilemmas evoked by the recent conquest by human beings of a power over nature out of all proportion to their moral strength."
“The people who invent the fictions are far more powerful than the people who know the facts of physics “. Wow
everything's coming up krrr!
It is true If only we prefer imagination over perception. Obviously clear perception is more powerful than any sort of unbridled imagination because imagination takes his power from delusion which is sort of intellectual incapability or bluntness. On the other hand clear perception is sort of sharpness of the mind...
Editors have way more power than the creators. Love that
who employs the editors ?
8:28 "But if you build a story and ignore the facts; the story still explodes and with a much bigger backpack" holds true in my country
Thank you for a stimulating discussion on a highly relevant topic. I am yet to read the book but having heard this discussion several questions come to mind. Psychoanalyst Dr. W. R. Bion had said: “Intellect, at its very best, is but a handmaid of emotions.” So, perhaps we are given wrong information but then, the question is: even when we know that the information is wrong, we continue to act on wrong information and are causing or reaching devastating consequences, why we fail to change course? What is the nature of hysteresis in human nature that make us, the humans, individually and collectively stick to deceit and cruelty so easily and repeatedly?
Given that we believe in stories, we choose the stories we want to or end up believing in, and the ones that we reject, even when we know that alternate stories are more true or relevant. We have believed in stories of Buddha and Jesus but also in stories that perpetrated holocausts and genocides and nuclear explosions. Under what rules do we choose the stories that we believe in, and why do we disregard stories that we know are more sensible, even more truthful? Across history we have done that time and again. We had walked into WWI; we opted for simpler technology to reach moon because we also wanted to be ahead of Russians to do so. one stage rockets to reach moon whereas exploded nuclear bombs because the President had We have actively perpetrated holocausts, genocides, caused nuclear explosions, and what not.
Arthur Koestler in his monumental work “The Sleepwalkers” had labelled humankind as sleepwalkers. In the middle of the night when we are deep in sleep, we rise, in our slumber, walk, even to the precipice of the roof, in the darkness of night and return to our sleep without being aware of anything that we did then. Are we sleepwalking to some precipice now?
History is marked with long stretches of time where people preferred stability over progress, and then there are few centuries when advances in science and philosophy take off. The only such event in recorded history is that of The Greeks were followed by the Dark Ages, followed by The Age of Enlightenment. Are we witnessing dying throes of The Age of Enlightenment?
In his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, Ray Kurzweil succinctly expressed his deep insight when he said: “Technology is evolution by other means”, mimicking famous saying that marriage is war by other means. Just as evolution changes life forms, their functionalities, their sensibilities and sensitivities, so does the technology. Question is: Are we presently witnessing such an evolutionary change?
One of the aspects of the present-day problems, even crisis is that distribution of power in the society has changed substantially. Truth and power have always been difficult concepts to grapple with. Certain truth is necessary to sustain life. For example, we need to eat edible food of some kind to sustain and even survive. We cannot survive on fantasy of food, no matter how delicious and nutritious the food in the fantasy is, and how animate the fantasy is. On the other end, Power has always been a difficult and slippery concept. It has been eminently observed that `Truth is the centre of power, and power is the centre of truth.' In one of his recent talks Mr. Harari had said that earlier (before AI) people switched from one low-skilled job to another. Farmers became factory workers and workers became cashiers or clerks. With advancing technology, only some people can contribute to sustenance of life. Such people do and will continue to wield tremendous power, whereas most of the humanity has become or will soon become useless and redundant to life on earth. It is difficult to imagine how in absence of any use, majority of the people can aim or even hope to have some power, economically, politically or socially, let alone find realistic basis for their narcissism?
interesting points. we are definitely in the Age of Narcissism … just like the Roman Empire was 1500 years of Terror.
we may also be in ww3 (i think we are…) which i think is the end of Western Civilization.
Western Civilization is racist. Judaism and Christianity have driven conquest, genocides etc but with 8billion people of which only 15.6million are Jewish - can they still be “The Chosen” ? ie. God endorses and practices favouritism ie nepotism ie racism? can’t see it lasting more than 5 years … although with the Anglo-saxon support led by old people, there will be blood 🩸 there already is !
The HBO Show "Chernobyl" touchest on themes of truths and the risks of lies on a people. Def a watch!
Completely agree. That mini series was absolutely phenomenal.. I'd *_highly_* recommend it to anyone reading this.
My words! @@Tar-Von
The idea that AI might become our primary storyteller feels both fascinating and unsettling. On one hand, it could enhance human understanding by processing vast data sets, but on the other, it risks distorting reality if unchecked. The comparison between editors shaping early religious texts and algorithms curating today’s content is especially striking-AI’s influence might already rival those historical decisions. This raises the question: will we control AI’s narrative power, or will it control us?
Right the point here is not "IF unchecked," it will be unchecked, because humans don't have the capacity to process all this data to check it.
See Y.N.H.'s example of the KGB. Min. 43:47
AI will standardize the narrative to level sentiment into an equal global perception.
Just look around.
We’ve never been more divided.
We’ve built the “5G Tower of Babel “.
Enhanced human understanding has skyrocketed in the last 20 years
How’s that working out?
It only makes us robots.
Wishing for the simplicity of a non overpopulated mind.
Truth is a super debated concept, despite of what Harari would like you to believe, and can mean different things depending on context-whether it’s philosophical, scientific, or personal. Some people say there’s an objective truth-like facts that exist no matter what we think (e.g., water boils at 100°C at sea level). Others believe truth is subjective, tied to personal or cultural perspectives, so what’s “true” for one group may not be for another (common in beliefs or social norms).
There’s also correspondence theory, which says truth is what matches reality, while coherence theory argues truth is about how consistent beliefs are within a system. Tbh, Harari oversimplifies this in his work, even though his points are valid. The whole idea of “absolute truth” depends on how we define it and the context.
Ai being the main storyteller... it reminded me of priest classes in every society who were able to form and change the beliefs of mases and even create new gods for us humans... they had answer for everything good and evil however the answers were not really the truth but just plain answers to the questions or events which we were not able to understand.
judgmentcallpodcast covers this. Our information quality has stagnated.
Excellent discussion on the single most important issue facing humanity. Cheers from Michael. Australia.
WISDOM, humanity apparently has forgotten what WISDOM is. We learn this and that, but it’s all senseless and stupid without the WISDOM to discern and choose what is right.
wisdom: understanding the more we know, the more we realize how little we know, and how much more we need to know. To be able to be wrong is to be able to learn
Bro I have never seen him before I love this guy he’s saying so many of my least validated opinions I’m so happy
Using Yuval's own explanation that those who can create stories are the actual powerful who lead us into certain beliefs that may not be the truth, but isn't he one of those story tellers himself?
It's up to you. Are you a critical thinker?
Of course this is true. Which is why it’s important that you have both the ability and desire to discern the truth. He gives many historical examples, research them. He makes many statements, verify them. And once you have done that you can then determine in a logical way whether his conclusions ring true. Your question suggests a type of helplessness and sadly it likely indicates that you rarely to never verify or research what you see.
@@b1r2y3n He does it for a living and I don't. And yes, the digital age has rendered the majority of people, ordinary people, a sense of helplessness when it comes to seeing what is "truth".
@@ngvkhtnw22 If you really care about this, you would make the effort to combat the helplessness and utilize/nurture your critical thinking abilities. You can do this! You do not have to play the victim.
We all are…
“We live in a world where there is more and more information and less and less meaning.” - French sociologist, philosopher and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard in his book Simulacra and Simulation.
When I as a human want to be understood and interact on line I am doing this mainly to connect with others as humans.. even when the site is manipulated by an algorithm. Humans only precipitate towards humans.
Information is power! " verifying it's accuracy is our accountability. " I love how you said, " Information can be created,but, the people are not held accountable. " Therefore, someone who is responsible ought to be held accountable in creating accurate information. Thank you Yuval Harari for your books, " Sapiens, Homo deus, lessons for the 21st century" , Having way to a better future Hopefully.
One of the biggest problems in this way of thinking is that the use of 'We' to describe acts of achievement done by relatively small population of the 'human race.' The same person who is sharing random drops of misinformation on Facebook and Twitter is not the same person who split the atom. And the problem is that these collective presumptions of what 'Humans' do never references all of the things human do, but focuses on the spectacular things 'some' humans did.
Great point.
You mean the bad things "we" do, right? Something like Fascism or Racism. "We" as a collective never take credit for it. It's always "they".
This was the first thought that came to my mind with the intro
That’s not true - every American split the atom. This is because they elected the administration which approved the project and then paid the taxes which funded the program.
@Shapar95 i can't even tell when people are trolling anymore, please put an "lol" or something so I don't have to be sad at your comment.
Fascinating interview. Congratulations to you both and thank you SO much.
"Information isn't the truth" very powerful words.
"Make the social media companies responsible for their algorithms, not for their users' behaviour" - YNH
A brief summary
In this conversation, Andrew Ross Sorkin and Yuval Noah Harari talk about how people seek happiness and truth, suggesting that while power is often seen as a main goal, it’s really just a way to achieve deeper desires. They express concern about our increasing reliance on AI for understanding emotions and building relationships, noting that AIs, which don’t have feelings of their own, might actually understand human emotions better than people do. This could change how we connect with each other compared to AIs, possibly leading to AIs being given legal rights in the future.
Harari highlights the positive potential of AI, like better healthcare and improved understanding of emotions, but warns against developing AI too quickly without proper rules. Both emphasize the need for regulations to ensure AI is used ethically. They compare managing information to healthy eating, suggesting that we need to be more mindful about the information we consume, much like we should be careful about our diets.
Overall, the conversation balances hope for AI’s benefits with warnings about its risks, stressing the importance of careful planning for our future with technology.
Thx for the summary
Easy to understand. Many thanks.
I could listen to Harari for dozens of hours. I've listened to all of his major books. He is probably the most important writer of our time. I hope he continues to pump out more of his usef perspective on the world. "Information diet" might be a cool next thing for him to write on: perhaps he can form a theory and critique of our current information diet, and then help us understand how to better feed ourselves information.
He's supposed to be a futurist of sorts yet cannot imagine a post scarcity world. He doesnt think outside the box. He is a mouthpiece for the box.
You should tell him that. You're a genius.
@@ceeemm1901 'You should tell him that. You're a genius.'
You dont have to be a genius to know your butt from a hole in the ground. He's a mouthpiece for the establishment. Nothing more or less. An establishment that will do anything to maintain an unsustainable status quo, that will pay people not to work, rather than progress, that equates leisure with 'uselessness'. His solution? (to the loss of half the few jobs that remain): "Drugs and video games". -- Compare that to: "If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be towards the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality." Stephen Hawking during his final AMA when asked abt technological unemployment.
This conversation is why Historians are SO CRITICAL in a society.
Sam Harris and Douglas Murray need to listen to what Yuval said here about the Israel Palestine conflict. They are both the people that he identified as fixated on the “other sides’s” desire to annihilate “us” and they should follow. Yuval’s advice to start with the problem in their own heads instead of relentlessly demonizing the other side
Actually Harris and Murray have a life, they just have a twisted view of it.
Yuval Noah Harari overestimates Israelis' thirst to destroy Palestinians, he hates the current government so badly he cannot say a bad thing about Hamas without talking out the other side of his mouth. I also lived in Israel, the average secular Israeli was (before oct 7) in favour of a 2 state solution, the same cannot be said about the West Bank or Gaza or Syria or Iraq or Iran or Yemin or.. you get the idea. whatever he thinks about the Israeli state, they do have a history of working towards 2 states, the problem is the other side has never acted in good faith, and Israel letting its guard down has always ended in needless death.
He is a genius and the most courageous person in the world right now.
He's clever... but I'd say all academics are behind 'Alice & Bob' ... and don't have the mental resources to understand why
I'm actually glad that at least one person understood that, let alone liked it... thanks 👍
Being able to access information is a good thing eventually. Because video like this is part of it and making us more critical about the information we receive in general.
If only this video reached more people, or that people were more interested in critical thinking.
@@Turtledove2009it wouldn’t matter. They’d either call him a “Democrap” or simply have a negligible amount of care or understanding. I wish he spoke on how narcissistic most people are. They aren’t interested in leaving their cocoons. Social media driven technology has helped many reinforce those cocoons. AI will continue the trend at warp speed.
I find it fascinating that Dr. Harari can in one breath say that information is not truth, and that human nature is not at fault, the algorithms and (power hungry) people providing the information to each cocoon are the problem. In the next breath he is able to interpret the points of views and doubts and lies of each side in an intractable struggle in the middle east. Two possibilities: A) the truth is available to someone who is educated in how to sift the wheat from the chaff. or B) Yuval is just helping further spin the cocoons. Let's assume it's A so we don't have to discredit him. It seems like placing the blame squarely on those that provide (mis)information and exonerating the masses is wrong. The masses can and must sift all of the information and synthesize their truth belief about reality. Even if Society also has a burden of providing tools and education to facilitate the ability to discern truth, this part is clearly the responsibility of the receiver of candidate information.
Without this basic responsibility and assuming full democratization of information societies may collapse upon themselves with no aid from AI.
Would love to ask about Palestine. Bad data?
The networks may be built in such a way that predisposes them to use power unwisely, but the core problem is still not an information problem. Fixing the information problem will reduce the symptoms, but the root problem is still human nature. It is human nature that drives people to use power unwisely and exploit problems within our networks of cooperation.
Also, in answer to the question of why humans are simultaneously so smart and so dumb, it is only the smartest of our species who can split atoms and reach the moon. Most people are pretty dumb, myself included.
The world is not operating on conspiracy, I know you would love to think so.
@@Lithenius where did I mention conspiracy??? I just assume most people are more self-serving than selfless.
I see your point. While I agree with the dilemma you pose as being the "core" problem, I see it more like a pendulum, or a seesaw: there are 2 problems, instead of only 1 core.
Yes, most humans have a tendency to act in their own self interest, rather than the collective. But the amplification and reach of AI are a power source on their own.
It's not just an information problem. It's a problem of trust. Trusting the institutions we relied on to deliver the truth.
Thank you, Jimmy! Can't wait to share! You are a true mentor! 🙏🏼👏🏻
When your first question is how can we establish truth, your conception of reality is warped. Seek not truth. Truth is a flawed concept. Instead, seek useful information.
Truth can be useful in many situations, but you run into paradoxes when truths come at each other with the full weight of them being, well, true. Truth is binary and might not fit in situations where it is not a binary system. There's also subjective truth, which is a whole different animal from objective truth.
Now, why I say seek useful information is because that's a step above seeking truth. When you seek truth, you're actually seeking information BECAUSE it's useful to you. Provided the information was accurate. This is where information can be truer or less true. Accuracy is not binary. Accuracy is more useful for this reason. Do you see?
Do not ask for truth. Ask for useful information. Align yourself with quality information and you will become powerful.
18:22 this is gold
Mr NOAH
Truth is Crucified daily by every one of us..
Yuval likes using the example of GPT4 using TaskRabbit to hire a worker to solve the captcha problem. However, he's a bit disingenuous in how he tells it. He makes it seem like GPT4 did all of the steps by itself so he can use the term "agent". However, in reality, the openai team heavily guided it and prompted it to make the decisions that it did with the exception of lying to the worker about the reason it needed help with the captcha problem. The lying part is the interesting bit, but the way Yuval tells the story it really seems like GPT4 did much more than just persuade someone with dialogue.
If the AI did come up with the lie, that is still pretty intriguing. It's not conclusive, but does suggest thinking ahead, if the lie was not told after numerous failures attempting to be truthful or with a nudge from the team.
The nuance of the story doesn't matter, the fact is the ai lied without giving instructions to do so.
We, the people, receive the information through our senses alike. Then all the information is run through the algorithm of self interest or selfishness. That's where we start seeing things differently while sharing the common perspective of self interest.
TRUTH IS THE ABILITY TO TELL RIGHT FROM WRONG !!!
I would love to hear commentary by Dr. Harari on A Course In Miracles. He has such a brilliant mind. His perspective would be a real treat for me.
He would chalk it up to wishful thinking
@MrTrda Oh, I would hope not. That would seem so out of his character.
@@rmigalla I can assure you, he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing doing his part to usher in the dawn of transhumanism.
Before you can contemplate "truth", you must contemplate "lack of knowledge".
" We can split the atom but not distinguish truth "
Yuval Noah Harari
İt's a wonderful preverb.
Maybe because you and Yuval, think of humanity as a collective, but humanity is simply the sum of individual humans. Individuals who know how to split the atom-who understand physics-almost certainly can distinguish truth from fiction. While those who can't separate truth from fiction can't split the atom, do not understand physics at a sufficent level.
Majority of individual humans were always primitive and irrational, while progress was always driven by a minority lucky enough-or unlucky-to be intelligent.
The truth, harsh as it may be, is a truth: humans are puppets of human nature. Whatever degrees of freedom an individual may claim, the overall trajectory of humanity-an aggregation of countless "small" choices-is inexorably governed by the largely immutable framework of human nature.
That is, it may be impossible to predict the behavior of an individual human, but the collective behavior of humanity, when viewed at scale, follows patterns as fixed and predictable as the flow of a river shaped by its banks.
Information isn't knowledge. That takes context. Knowledge isn't understanding, that takes embodiment. Understanding isn't wisdom, that takes G-d.
Not everyone can split the atom and not everyone can't distinguish truth. Even though I agree with Harari on most of what he is saying.
It's the information we receive from 5 senses and processed thru Mind to be part of us and unfortunately be disillusions - Buddha
Luv from Kerala, India Yuval. Your are a great human being 😍
58:20 - The interviewer exposes his bubble, his fantasy ... "I think that people in Israel would say, that people in Palestine have a right to exist". Yuval rightly corrects him and gives him a dose of reality. Over the last year, the interviewer - a popular American Newsman has been operating with the assumption that one side - Israelis - have nothing but benign intentions. What an absurd example of the entire reason for this video.
He is just a WEF puppet shill paid by the globalists
A MUST watch!! I need an information diet... but it is soooo hard.
03:37 We can unlock the secrets of the atom, yet we struggle to tackle the rampant spread of misinformation. This poses a deeply unsettling dilemma. How can we be so advanced in our understanding and capabilities, yet remain so oblivious to the dangers of falsehoods? It’s puzzling that our scientific breakthroughs don’t translate into a greater ability to sift through the complexities of information in today’s world.
the uncertainty principle is being disobeyed;
by anyone certain of the truth;
I think people are too lazy.
@@Turtledove2009 are you too lazy to find out otherwise?;:
These are entirely two different set of people.
@@BhupendraYadav-p3l so it all digital to you?;: no bell curves of creative hybridization?;:
Attention is all you need. What do you know? Its not about good or bad information, but what our experience includes and does not. Do we have teachers asking the right questions? Do we have mentor that inspire us to? There is too much information for any person to know even an infinitesimal fraction of it, but the fraction we know shapes our entire view of the world, and every bit of information we'll have the opportunity to encounter. Everything we value, including what important information is, is based solely on the information we've encountered. We dont need a computer that knows what we dont - we already ignore the experts that know more than we dont. Why would we listen to a collection of them? We're just as likely to discount experts who are parroted by AI, simply because the AI did before we trusted them.
The problem is not information. The problem, known in Buddhism is Citta, the mental state of the mind that creates the information and the state of the mind that comes into contact with that information. As the Buddha said in the Dhammapada - “the mind precedes all, mind is their chief”. Unconscious people, unconscious to their true nature and reality, are easily affected by many things due to their Citta. Human behavior, for thousands of years, has been dysfunctional and in general operating in the same fashion.
Why do we want to do what we want to do? If you keep asking this question repeatedly and delve deeper through with it, you will get clarity in life.
You can get every answer you want with it but human nature will limit you at some point and pull you back to where you were before asking the long chain of follow-up questions and direct you to live a human life like everyone else does.
Wow, will certainly look at this!
Always intriguing to follow Yuval Noah Harari, thought process...! Finally it is, if the "unpredictable" future as it appears now can be predictable or shaped by Artificial ("Alien") Intelligence??? Human beings have always played with their "stories" of influence because of the gullibility of the audience. A I can do it in a very professional way like how Faith, Power, Finance are/was used. Probably the only way is to develop the curiosity aspect of the human species of questioning.....but we could reach a Catch 22 situation of an A I controlled environment. The only answer could be to develop H I, Human Intelligence of questioning & debate as a parallel.....tough but no other choice....🤗.
It's appalling to see that this old generation just doesn't seem to understand what's happening. Young people can't afford to buy homes, jobs are precarious and scarce, creating instability. And having children has become so expensive, it's no wonder birth rates are plummeting. Yet, none of this seems to be addressed in any of these reports or videos.
That’s the point. Through easy social media manipulation and curated content creation marketing (Joe Rogan, UFC, etc…). The party who will make all these things worse for their own benefit just convinced Americans they were the best choice. Reality will like a cold shower in a just-above-freezing tundra.
Rare to see such a civilized comment section , well done 👌
Everyone commenting as if they studied with this man and could never come to the same conclusions. 😶
Truth is power. If the truth gets out, they lose their power. Simple as that
Truth is a very different thing from fact. A blind deaf human can see the truth when given facts.
Not exactly. People have prisms through which they observe a set of facts.
You may give the same set of facts to several different people, who live in different countries, with different cultures, different social circumstances, different social status, etc., and they may come up with different conclusions.
How are facts not true? Or do you mean Truth is some other sense?
Truth and facts are the same. Take a second look at your post. You are correct, a blind deaf human can "see" the truth when given facts. Maybe you think Truth is some philosophical ideal or something. Truth is just a more general, catch-all kind of word that encompasses facts.
Truth is subjective, viewed thru perception. Facts r irrefutable, undeniable. The truth may change, but the facts never do.
@@stevesmith4901 The issue is facts and truth are 2 different concepts. It might help for you look up the definitions in the dictionary. After you do, you may want to ask AI to compare and contrast both concepts and list methods for observing the Truth.
Think 20 years back, before we were so politically polarized in the US. You could give a cultured Republican and a cultured Democrat the same set of facts, and they'd produce equally valid analysis from each of their perspectives, that were both true.
Part of the problem is on one end, people's lack of exactitude in terms of language. But mostly, I think it might be 24hr "news" outlets that cater to one specific party.
Firstly, there aren't enough news to fill a 24hr news cycle. So, these "news" outlets are rather in the business of broadcasting opinions titled as "news."
Secondly, since we have freedom of expression, it is perfectly legal for people to publicly voice their opinion in a mass communication outlet, even if their opinion is erroneous, or misinformed, or attempts to mislead.
So, we end up with a 1 hour news cast, and 23 hours of Republican or Democrat dribble, directed a people who not only have found a nice, comfortable echo chamber fir themselves, they also are not trained to discern between a statement of fact and a statement of opinion.
Thirdly, there are very few news outlets who just list the facts anymore. I can only think of AP and Reuters.
I propose we go back to that 1 hr news format that makes its most earnest attempt at neutrality. One hour where EVERYONE goes to be informed and the viewer is trusted to reach their own conclusions.
Unfortunately, that won't happen. The market for echo chambers is huge. The industry is massive. The people have spoken and the market is giving them what they want. All candy, no nutrition.
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I have added this book to my audible library. Can’t wait to read it!
Here is the problem. Moderator here misquotes Elon Musk stating that he believes if all information is free we will be able to find the truth. Elon never claimed such ridiculous statement. The problem with newspaper and middlemen is exactly that. They can distort, deliberately or not, valuable information. Just like here.
Elon musk living rent free in his head 😂
@Fideo389 how does Elmos dck taste?
Musk makes plenty of other ridiculous statements and pure distortions, a mild interpretation barely warrants comment even from a cult member.
Information alone is worth noting if it can't be used for benefiting. To benefit from information, processing is required. There are different levels of information processing efficiency. Achieving high efficiency in this sense doesn't come without cognitive efforts and skills. Not everyone has a chance to develop this skills throughout their life and benefit from consuming information relevant to their contexts and reality. Even worse, not everyone can distinguish information based in real facts from lies. However, anyone is capable of disseminating any type of information. Therefore, information alone is not only useless, but most likely dangerous.
Oh this guy....
The people who can split the atom and the people who can't distinguish truth are not usually the same people
It all so their word WILL BE HEADED AS TRUTH. This is the guy who talks population reduction.
You give good people good information and they still smoke.
This starts with a big glaring false premise. He says the problem is not in our nature but in our information. The information originates with the person, and the person's nature dictates what type of information they will both create and be inclined to receive as truth. Therefore, the problem truly is our nature.
I'm not saying I disagree with everything he has to say.
Yes - it starts with the responsibility and intelligence of the individual - but he's specifically talking about the power of dissemination of mistruths, here.
Ah, but "receiving truth" is mediated by social institutions (school, church) and technology (books, internet). To his point, the mediating factors can warp and distort the information, and have a ripple effect on what you know and how you reason. The individual doesn't necessarily intend to distort it.
Mr NOAH
Please Remember
EVERY PROBLEM HAS SOLUTION.
Is it an information flaw if it’s deliberate?
People should also read the book "Forbidden Knowledge"... very enlightening
He left out Zionism
What in the world does that have to do with anything?
Lol jews have contributed more to science than any other culture and their extremism is in response to extremism by abrahamic religions which denies them the right to exist.
It has a lot to do with this subject...there extremely interested in what your mind receives.
It is a troubling fact that in humanity sales is more critical to success than production.
What do you mean 'we' ? Do you think these are the same groups of people. What a disingenuous title and concept.
How would you have phrased it, if not "we"?
We means humanity here. Humanity knows now how to split atoms and we all belong to that group, unless you are not human.
@@stevesmith4901 my point is that the same 'we' that can split atoms are NOT the same group of 'we' that can't distinguish truth - so the attempted grouping - is wrong.
@@witness1013 chill out, and use common sense. obviously he does not think that all human beings know how to split an atom. the point is that, if you really wanted to, you probably could.
The world is a big closed loop, we kept destroying ourselves or our advanced world ended thousands of years ago under our Hubris multiple times. We tried, but this is a stage we struggle to get over, we struggle to get over ourselves in massive tribes. Today we fight more ideological wars than resource wars.
Whoever has this truth, it is definitely not Yuval Harari.
No one person has the truth, I believe. While Yuval may not have the truth by himself, he shared his perception of his connection to it. I believe it’s up to all of us to listen to one and another, and learn from one and another. You too, in fact, have your own perception of the truth to share.
@@blakeblakeify Yuval speaks a lot of nonsense. His own supervisor said so. Google it
Why do y'all hate this man so much?😂
@@Rizzatooga I think Yuval is very insightful and has many valid points. Just trying to point out it’s nuanced and not black and white. 😁
@@Rizzatooga Because he's basically an evangelist of a global technocratic authoritarian regime. When he speaks with plebes as the audience, it seems like a humanitarian warning. When he's speaking to his peers, it's far more glorious-sounding.
Thank you - I found this very interesting. My take is humanity is doomed, because the truth hurts and it is simply easier to accept misinformation which suits our personal narratives.
My one conceptual divergence is that in my opinion Yuval attributes too much sophistry to the Facebook, Google, X "algorithms" and as such the premise of "targeting them" is flawed. I agree entirely the aim is to keep one engaged but am of the opinion that because they must cater for every human interest they can only be generic, and are thus premised on the simple philosophy "You are watching A, and others who watched A also watched B, C and D" - and so you are then presented with options of B, C and D ...and so on ad infinitum. The more people that then follow a particular path, the more "weight" that path gets and the more it will be presented, thus introducing the polarisation and "cocooning" and the very real parallel universes of Democrat and Republican in the US today. I firmly agree with the cocooning concept and there is no question to me that it is real however it is a function simply of playing to peoples' preferences rather than any "cleverness" on behalf of the algorithms. Following from this I do not believe the algorithms have any concept of the "hate button" for example.
That aside, a great interview covering frightening subject matter - the interviewer is also excellent.
Why is lying not against the law? Why do cooperations get away with selling lies? 1+1=2 just the same as Jesus is Lord and will make all right soon
Lying is against the law in most countries, Advertising standards, For example, Just the US is going backwards.
Well, you demonstrated the problem. You have no evidence for Jesus, and so I see that as you lying. If I say God does not exist and the bible is a made up story, you say I am lying.
If you agree that a lie is a statement or act that coerces or manipulates us away from objective validated demonstrable fact, you then get into some interesting debates. You enter into philosophy and word play.
@@andrewlarking7492 I met Jesus let's see who's lying after we die. Just because you haven't seen him doesn't mean he is fake. Truth is not subjective. Jesus love you but do you try to recognize it?
You're confusing the concept of truth with the concept of faith.
Jesus, or any religion for that matter, is a BELIEF that requires faith.
Once you have PROOF, it stops being religion.
@@sandels366 Well as there is no evidence for biblical jesus, And as he promised to return soon 2000 years ago where is he?
"You can't really be happy if you don't know the truth about yourself." Jean-Jacques Socrates Nietzsche
The first part of the dialog was most impressive as fiction writers draw the most interest and largest following.
Yuval Noah Harari has been incredibly enlightening. I just watched Elon Musk give a speech to a summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
It had something to do about the future of investments. Google, Blackstone, etc.were there as well.
Of of Musk's main theories for their support in Riyadh, was based on his mission is to save humanity because our birth rate decline, which apparently it's becoming a huge problem. Especially here in the US. He said that's why he directly endorsed Donald Trump so he can enact policies to help AI move forward to increase the birth rate.
Musk claimed if the birthrate keeps declining this rate, the population could decrease in size by 2/3 by only a few decades. Birthrate is directly tied to the life expectancy of seniors. Almost every cause was existential in nature. Such were their claims as to why their companies needed those investments.
He is absolutely right guys I have been interacting with it everyday since it came out and i am seeing it in real time....believe it
What an insightful talk.
Humans should accept that the Truth is a Truce. Part of a network of communication, Inter subjective (which is a story created by people listening with the intent of understanding eachothers needs) and temporary.
"Acceptance", first. of the power of truth. Puts things in place.
Fascinating. Spot on. The ending summary "we need an information diet" is so perfect.
Yuval, like many of our times most prominently regarded public intellectuals, makes quick bridges and keeps it moving with more words than you can keep up with. He was groomed and here he still is
Fantastic conversation. Yow. Uval Noah Harari always helps me take unexpected mental journeys. Guess what, Andrew Ross Sorkin, on Nov. 5 2024 over half of U.S. voters gave us an example of how a modern society can cocoon itself into totalitarianism 😒
We're playing a game called "Werewolf." It's a Russian psychology experiment. The goal is to see how people respond to being lied to.
Amazing conversation.
It's not only information it's affect. People are persuaded by affect and not by information. Yuval has some psychology lectures to go through. To discern information is not enough you need to understand what has a strong imprint on peoples sensorial and emotional gestalt
This is actually what he is addressing. He says many times it’s not the information itself that is the problem. It’s the packaging and delivery which are shaped by purpose, which he states is the pursuit of power.