WEBVTT

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So imagine that you had
your smartphone minituarized

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and hooked up directly to your brain.

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If you had this sort of brain chip,

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you'd be able to upload and download
to the Internet at the speed of thought.

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Accessing social media or Wikipedia
would be a lot like --

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well, from the inside at least --

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like consulting your own memory.

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It would be as easy
and as intimate as thinking.

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But would it make it easier
for you to know what's true?

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Just because a way
of accessing information is faster

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doesn't mean it's
more reliable of course,

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and it doesn't mean that we would all
interpret it the same way.

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It doesn't mean that you would be
any better at evaluating it,

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in fact you might even we worse

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because, you know, more data,
less time for evaluation.

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Something like this is already
happening to us right now.

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We already carry a world of information
around in our pockets,

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but it seems as if the more information
that we share and access online,

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the more difficult it can be

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for us to tell the difference between
what's real and what's fake.

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It's as if we know more
but understand less.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, it's a feature of modern life,

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I suppose,

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that large swaths of the public 
live in isolated information bubbles.

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We're polarized not just over values
but over the facts,

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and one reason for that


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is that the data analytics
that drive the Internet

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get us not just more information
but more of the information that we want.

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Our online life is personalized;

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everything from the ads we read

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to the news that comes down
our Facebook feed

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is tailored to satisfy our preferences.

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And so while we get more information,

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a lot of that information ends up
reflecting ourselves

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as much as it does reality.

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It ends up,

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I suppose,

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inflating our bubbles
rather than bursting them.

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And so maybe it's no surprise

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that we're in a situation --

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a paradoxical situation of thinking
that we know so much more

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and yet not agreeing
on what it is we know.

NOTE Paragraph

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So how are we going to solve
this problem of knowledge polarization?

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One obvious tactic is to try
to fix our technology --

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to redesign our digital platform

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so as to make them less
susceptible to polarization.

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And I'm happy to report that many
smart people at Google and Facebook

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are working on just that.

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These projects are vital.

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I think that fixing technology
is obviously really important,

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but I don't think
that technology alone --

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fixing it is going to solve the problem
of knowledge polarization.

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I don't think that because I don't think,

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at the end of the day,

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it is a technological problem.

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I think it's a human problem,

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having to do with how we think
a what we value.

NOTE Paragraph

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In order to solve it,

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I think we're going to need help.

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We're going to need help from psychology
and political science,

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but we're also going to need help,
I think, from philosophy.

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Because to solve the problem
of knowledge polarization,

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we're going to need to reconnect

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with one fundamental,
philosophical idea ...

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that we live in a common reality.

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The idea of a common reality is like,

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I suppose,

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a lot of philosophical concepts:

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easy to state,

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but mysteriously difficult
to put into practice.

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To really accept it,

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I think we need to do three things,

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each of which is a challenge right now.

NOTE Paragraph

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First, we need to believe in truth.

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You might have noticed

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that our culture is having
something of a troubled relationship

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with that concept right now.

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It seems as if we disagree so much that,

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as one political commentator
put it not long ago,

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it's as if there are no facts anymore.

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But that thought is actually an expression

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of a sort of seductive line
of argument that's in the air.

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It goes like this:

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we just can't step outside of our
own perspectives,

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we can't step outside of our biases.

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Every time we try,

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we just get more information
from our perpesctive.

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So, this line of thought goes,

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we might as well admit
that objective truth is an illusion,

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or it doesn't matter,

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because either we'll never know what it is

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or it doesn't exist in the first place.

NOTE Paragraph

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That's not a new philosophical thought --

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skepticism about truth.

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During the end of the last century,

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as some of you know,

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it was very popular in certain
academic circles.

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But it really goes back all the way
to the Greek philosopher Protagoras,

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if not farther back.

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Protagoras said that objective
truth was an illusion

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because "man is the measure
of all things."

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Man is the measure of all things.

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That can seem like a bracing bit
of real politic to people,

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or liberating because it allows each of us
to discover or make our own truth.

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But actually,

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I think it's a bit of self-serving
rationalization disguised as philosophy.

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It confuses the difficulty of being
certain with the impossibility of truth.

NOTE Paragraph

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Look,

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of course it's difficult
to be certain about anything;

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we might all be living in "The Matrix,"

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you might have a brain chip in your head
feeding you all the wrong information.

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But in practice, we do agree
on all sorts of facts.

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We agree that bullets can kill people.

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We agree that you can't flap
your arms and fly.

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We agree --

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or we should --

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that there is an external reality,

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and ignoring it can get you hurt.

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Nonetheless, skepticism
about truth can be tempting

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because it allows us to rationalize
away our own biases.

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When we do that,

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we're sort of like the guy in the movie
who knew he was living in "The Matrix,"

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but decided he liked it there anyway.

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After all, getting what you
want feels good.

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Being right all the time feels good.

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So often it's easier for us

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to wrap ourselves in our
cozy information bubbles,

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live in bad faith,

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and take those bubbles
as the measure of reality.

NOTE Paragraph

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An example I think of how
this bad faith gets into our action

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is our reaction to the
phenomenon of fake news.

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The fake news that spread on the Internet

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during the American
presidential election of 2016

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was designed to feed into our biases,

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designed to inflate our bubbles.

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But what was really striking about it

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was not just that it
fooled so many people.

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What was really striking to me
about fake news,

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the phenomenon,

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is how quickly it itself became
the subject of knowledge polarization.

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So much so that the very term --

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the very term, "fake news,"

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now just means "news story I don't like."

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That's an example of the bad faith
towards the truth that I'm talking about.

NOTE Paragraph

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But the really, I think, dangerous thing

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about skepticism with regard to truth

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is that it leads to despotism.

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"Man is the measure of all things"


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inevitably becomes "the man
is the measure of all things."

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Just as "every man for himself"

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always seems to turn out to be
"only the strong survive."

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At the end of Orwell's "1984,"

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the thought policeman O'Brien
is torturing the protagonist,

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Winston Smith,

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into believing two plus two equals five.

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What O'Brien says is the point

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is that he wants to convince Smith
that whatever the party says is the truth,

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and the truth is whatever the party says.

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And what O'Brien knows is that
once this thought is accepted,

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critical descent is impossible.

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You can't speak truth to power

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if the power speaks truth by definition.

NOTE Paragraph

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OK, so I said that in order to accept
that we really live in a common reality

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we have to do three things.

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The first thing is to believe in truth.

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The second thing can be summed up

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by the Latin phrase that Kant took
as the motto for the enlightenment.

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Sapere aude,

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or "dare to know,"

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or as Kant [...] it,

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"Dare to know for yourself."

NOTE Paragraph

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I think in the early days of the Internet,

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a lot of us thought

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that information technology
was always going to make it easier

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for us to know for ourselves,

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and of course in many ways, it has.

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But as the Internet has become
more and more a part of our lives,

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our reliance on it,

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our use of it has become
often more passive.

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Much of what we know today
we Google-know.

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We download prepackaged sets of facts

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and sort of shuffle them along
the assembly line of social media.

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Google-knowing is useful

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precisely because it involves
a sort of intellectual outsourcing.

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We offload our effort onto a network
of others and algorithms.

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And that allows us of course
to not clutter our minds

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with all sorts of facts.

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We can just download them
when we need them,

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and that's awesome.

NOTE Paragraph

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But there's a difference between
downloading a set of facts

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and really understanding how
or why those facts are as they are.

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Understanding why
a particular disease spreads,

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or how a mathematical proof works,

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or why your friend is depressed

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involves more than just downloading.

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It's going to require,

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most likely,

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doing some work for yourself.

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Having a little creative insight.

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Using your imagination,

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getting out into the field,

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doing the experiment,

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working through the proof,

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talking to someone.

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I'm not saying of course that we
should stop Google-knowing.

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I'm just saying we shouldn't
overvalue it either.

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We need to find ways of encouraging
forms of knowing that are more active

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and don't always involve passing off
our effort into our bubble.

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Because the thing about Google-knowing

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is that too often it ends up
being bubble-knowing.

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And bubble-knowing means
always being right.

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But daring to know,

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daring to understand,

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means risking the possibility
that you could be wrong.

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It means risking the possibility

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that what you want and what's true
are different things.

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Which brings me to the third thing
that I think we need to do

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if we want to accept that we live
in a common reality.

NOTE Paragraph

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That third thing is
have a little humility.

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By humility here, I mean
epistemic humility,

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which means, in a sense,

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knowing that you don't know it all.

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But it also means something
more than that.

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It means seeing your worldview
as open to improvement

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by the evidence and experience of others.

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Seeing your worldview
as open to improvement

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by the evidence and experience of others.

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That's more than just being
open to change.

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It's more than just being open
to self-improvement.

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It means seeing your knowledge
as capable of enhancing

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or being enriched by
what others contribute.

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That's part of what is involved

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in recognizing that there's
a common reality

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that you too are responsible [for.]

NOTE Paragraph

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I don't think it's much of a stretch

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to say that our society is not
particularly great

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at enhancing or encouraging
that sort of humility.

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That's partly because,

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well, we tend to confuse
arrogance and confidence.

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And it's partly because,

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well, you know, arrogance is just easier.

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It's just easier to think
of yourself as knowing it all.

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It's just easier to think of yourself
as having it all figured out.

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But that's another example

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of the bad faith towards the truth
that I've been talking about.

NOTE Paragraph

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So the concept of a common reality,

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like a lot of philosophical concepts,

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can seem so obvious

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that we can look right past it

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and forget why it's important.

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Democracies can't function
if their citizens don't strive,

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at least some of the time,

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to inhabit a common space.

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A space where they can pass
ideas back and forth when --

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and especially when --

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they disagree.

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But you can't strive to inhabit that space

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if you don't already accept
that you live in the same reality.

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To accept that we've
got to believe in truth,

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we've got to encourage
more active ways of knowing.

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And we've got to have the humility

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to realize that we're not
the measure of all things.

NOTE Paragraph

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We may yet one day realize the vision

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of having the Internet in our brains,

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but if we want that to be liberating
and not terrifying,

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if we want it to expand our understanding

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and not just our passive knowing,

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we need to remember
that our perspectives,

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as wondrous, as beautiful as they are,

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are just that --

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perspectives on one reality.

NOTE Paragraph

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Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Applause)