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Nationalism vs. globalism: the new political divide

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    Chris Anderson: Hello. So welcome
    to this TED dialogue.
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    It's the first of a series that's
    really going to be done
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    in response to the current
    political upheaval.
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    I don't know about you.
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    I've become quite concerned about
    the growing divisiveness in this country
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    and in the world.
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    No one's listening to each other. Right?
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    They aren't.
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    And it feels like we need
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    a different kind of conversation,
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    one that's based on, I don't know,
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    reason, listening, on understanding,
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    on a broader context.
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    That's at least what we're going to try
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    in these TED Dialogues starting today,
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    and we couldn't have anyone with us
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    who I'd be more excited to kick this off.
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    This is a mind right here that thinks
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    pretty much like no one else on the planet
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    I would say, because I'm serious.
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    I'm serious.
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    He synthesizes history
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    with underlying ideas in a way
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    that kind of takes your breath away.
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    So some of you will know this book,
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    "Sapiens."
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    Has anyone here read "Sapiens?"
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    (Applause)
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    I mean, I could not put it down.
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    The way that he tells
    the story of mankind
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    through big ideas that really make you
    think differently, though,
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    it's kind of amazing.
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    And here's the follow-up, which I think
    is being published in the U.S. next week.
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    Yuval Noah Harari: Yeah, next week.
    CA: "Homo Deus."
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    Now this is the history
    of the next hundred years.
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    I've had a chance to read it.
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    It's extremely dramatic,
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    and I daresay for some people
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    quite alarming.
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    It's a must-read,
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    and honestly, we couldn't have
    someone better to help
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    make sense of what on Earth
    is happening in the world right now.
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    So a warm welcome, please,
    to Yuval Noah Harari.
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    (Applause)
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    It's great to be joined by our friends
    on Facebook and around the web.
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    Hello, Facebook.
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    And all of you, as I start
    asking questions of Yuval,
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    come up with your own questions,
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    and not necessarily about
    the political scandal du jour
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    but about the broader understanding
    of where are we heading?
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    You ready? Okay, we're going to go.
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    So here we are, Yuval, New York City,
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    2017, there's a new president in power,
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    and shockwaves rippling around the world.
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    What on Earth is happening?
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    YNH: I think the basic thing that happens
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    is that we have lost our story.
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    Humans think in stories,
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    and we try to make sense of the world
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    by telling stories,
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    and for the last few decades,
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    we had a very simple
    and very attractive story
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    about what's happening in the world,
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    and the story said that, oh,
    what's happening is
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    that the economy is being globalized,
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    politics is being liberalized,
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    and the combination of the two
    will create paradise on Earth,
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    and we just need to keep on
    globalizing the economy
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    and liberalizing the political system,
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    and everything will be wonderful.
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    And 2016 is the moment
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    when a very large segment,
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    even of the Western world,
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    stopped believing in this story.
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    For good or bad reasons doesn't matter.
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    People stopped believing in the story,
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    and when you don't have a story,
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    you don't understand what's happening.
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    CA: Part of you believes that that story
    was actually a very effective story.
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    It worked.
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    YNH: To some extent, yes.
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    According to some measurements,
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    we are now in the best time ever
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    for humankind.
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    Today, for the first time in history,
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    more people die from eating too much
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    than from eating too little,
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    which is an amazing achievement.
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    (Laughter)
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    Also for the first time in history,
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    more people die from old age
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    than from infectious diseases,
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    and violence is also down.
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    For the first time in history,
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    more people commit suicide
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    than are killed by crime and terrorism
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    and war put together.
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    Statistically, you are
    your own worst enemy.
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    At least, of all the people in the world,
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    you are most likely
    to be killed by yourself,
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    which is very good news
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    compared to the level of violence
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    that we saw in previous eras.
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    CA: But this process
    of connecting the world
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    ended up with a large group of people
    kind of feeling left out,
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    and they've reacted, and so we have
    this bombshell that's sort of ripping
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    through the whole system.
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    I mean, what do you make
    of what's happened?
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    It feels like the old way
    that people thought of politics,
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    the left-right divide,
    has been blown up and replaced.
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    How should we think of this?
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    YNH: Yeah, the old 20th century
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    political model of left versus right
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    is now largely irrelevant,
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    and the real divide today
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    is in global and national,
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    global or local.
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    And you see it again all over the world
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    that this is now the main struggle.
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    We probably need completely
    new political models
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    and completely new ways of thinking
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    about politics.
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    In essence what you can say
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    is that we now have global ecology,
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    we have a global economy,
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    but we have national politics,
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    and this doesn't work together.
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    This makes the political
    system ineffective
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    because it has no control
    over the forces that shape our life.
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    And you have basically two solutions
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    to this imbalance.
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    Either deglobalize the economy
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    and turn it back into a national economy,
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    or globalize the political system.
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    CA: So some, I guess
    many liberals out there
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    view Trump and his government
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    as kind of irredeemably bad,
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    just awful in every way.
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    Do you see any underlying
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    narrative or political philosophy in there
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    that is at least worth understanding.
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    How would you articulate that philosophy?
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    Is it just the philosophy of nationalism?
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    YNH: I think the underlying
    feeling or idea
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    is that the political system,
    something is broken there.
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    It doesn't empower
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    the ordinary person anymore.
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    It doesn't care so much
    about the ordinary person anymore,
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    and I think this diagnosis
    of the political disease is correct.
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    With regard to the answers,
    I am far less certain.
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    I think what we are seeing
    is the immediate human reaction:
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    if something doesn't work, let's go back.
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    And you see it all over the world,
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    that people, almost nobody
    in the political system today
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    has any future-oriented vision
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    of where humankind is going.
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    Almost everywhere, you see
    retrograde vision.
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    Let's make America great again,
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    like it was great, I don't know,
    in the '50s, in the '80s, sometime,
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    let's go back there.
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    And you go to Russia.
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    So a hundred years after Lenin,
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    Putin's vision for the future
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    is basically, ah, let's go back
    to the Tsarist empire.
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    And in Israel, where I come from,
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    the hottest political vision
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    of the present
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    is "let's build the temple again."
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    So let's go back 2,000 years backward.
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    So people are thinking
    sometime in the past we've lost it,
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    and sometimes in the past, it's like
    you've lost your way in the city,
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    and you say okay, let's go back
    to the point where I felt secure
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    and start again.
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    I don't think this can work,
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    but a lot of people,
    this is their gut instinct.
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    CA: But why couldn't it work?
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    America first is a very
    appealing slogan in many ways.
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    Patriotism is in many ways
    a very noble thing.
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    It's played a role in promoting
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    cooperation among large numbers of people.
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    Why couldn't you have a world
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    organized in country
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    all of which put themselves first?
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    YNH: For many centuries,
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    even thousands of years,
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    patriotism worked quite well.
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    Of course it led to wars an so forth,
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    but we shouldn't focus
    too much on the bad.
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    There are also many,
    many positive things about patriotism,
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    and the ability to have
    a large number of people
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    care about each other,
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    sympathize with one another,
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    and come together for collective action.
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    If you go back to the first nations,
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    so thousands of years ago,
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    the people who lived along
    the Yellow River in China,
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    it was many, many different tribes
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    and they all depended on the river
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    for survival and for prosperity,
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    but all of them also suffered
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    from periodical floods
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    and periodical droughts,
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    and no tribe could do anything about it
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    because each of them controlled
    just a tiny section of the river.
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    And then in a long
    and complicated process,
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    the tribes coalesced together
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    to form the Chinese nation,
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    which controlled the entire Yellow River
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    and had the ability
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    to bring hundreds of thousands
    of people together
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    to build dams and canals
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    and regulate the river
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    and prevent the worst floods and droughts
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    and raise the level
    of prosperity for everybody.
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    And this worked in many places
    around the world.
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    But in the 21st century,
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    technology is changing all that
    in a fundamental way.
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    We are now living, all people
    in the world are living
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    alongside the same cyber river,
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    and no single nation
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    can regulate this river by itself.
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    We are all living together
    in a single planet
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    which is threatened by our own actions,
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    and if you don't have some kind
    of global cooperation,
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    nationalism is just not on the right level
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    to tackle the problems
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    of whether it's climate change
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    or whether it's technological disruption.
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    CA: So it was a beautiful idea
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    in a world where most of the action,
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    most of the issues,
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    took place on national scale,
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    but your argument is that the issues
    that matter most today
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    no longer take place on a national scale
    but on a global scale.
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    YNH: Exactly. All of the major problems
    of the world today
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    are global in essence,
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    and they cannot be solved
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    unless through some kind
    of global cooperation.
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    It's not just climate change,
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    which is, like, the most obvious
    example people give.
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    I think more in terms
    of technological disruption.
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    If you think about, for example,
    artificial intelligence,
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    over the next 20, 30 years
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    pushing hundreds of millions of people
    out of the job market,
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    this is a problem on a global level.
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    It will disrupt the economy
    of all the countries,
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    and similarly if you think
    about, say, bioengineering
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    and people being afraid
    of conducting genetic engineering
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    research in humans,
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    it won't help if just a single country,
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    let's say the U.S.,
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    outlaws all genetic experiments in humans
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    but China or North Korea
    continues to do it.
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    So the U.S. cannot solve it by itself,
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    and very quickly, the pressure on the U.S.
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    to do the same will be immense
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    because we are talking about
    high-risk, high-gain technologies.
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    If somebody else is doing it,
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    I can't allow myself to remain behind.
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    The only way to have regulations,
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    effective regulations,
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    on things like genetic engineering,
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    is to have global regulations.
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    If you just have national regulations,
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    nobody would like to stay behind.
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    CA: So this is really interesting.
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    It seems that this might be one key
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    to provoking at least
    a constructive conversation
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    between the different sides here,
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    because I think everyone can agree
    that the start point
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    of a lot of the anger that's
    propelled us to where we are
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    is because of the legitimate
    concerns about job loss.
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    Work is gone, a traditional way of life
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    has gone, and it's no wonder
    that people are furious about that.
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    And in general, they have blamed
    globalism, global elites
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    for doing this to them
    without asking their permission,
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    and that seems like
    a legitimate complaint.
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    But what I hear you saying
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    is that, so a key question is,
    what is the real cause of job loss,
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    both now and going forward?
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    To the extent that it's about globalism,
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    then the right response, yes,
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    is to shut down borders
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    and keep people out
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    and change trade agreements and so forth.
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    But you're saying, I think,
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    that actually the bigger cause of job loss
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    is not going to be that at all.
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    It's going to originate
    in technological questions,
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    and we have no chance of solving that
    unless we operate as a connected world.
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    YNH: Yeah, I think that,
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    I don't know about the present,
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    but looking to the future,
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    it's not the Mexicans or Chinese
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    who will take the jobs from
    the people in Pennsylvania,
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    it's the robots and algorithms,
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    so unless you plan to build a big wall
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    on the border of California --
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    (Laughter) --
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    the wall on the border with Mexico
    is going to be very ineffective.
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    And I was struck when I watched
    the debates before the elections,
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    I was struck that certainly Trump
    did not even attempt
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    to frighten people by saying
    the robots will take your jobs.
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    Now even if it's not true,
    it doesn't matter.
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    It could have been an extremely
    effective way of frightening people
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    and galvanizing people.
    "The robots will take your jobs."
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    And nobody used that line.
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    And it made me afraid,
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    because it meant
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    that no matter what happens
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    in universities and laboratories,
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    and there there is already
    an intense debate about it,
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    but in the mainstream political system
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    and among the general public,
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    people are just unaware
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    that there could be an immense
    technological disruption,
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    not in 200 years,
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    but in 10, 20, 30 years,
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    and we have to do something about it now,
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    partly because most of what we teach
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    children today in school
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    or in college
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    is going to be completely irrelevant
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    to the job market of 2040, 2050.
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    So it's not something we'll need
    to think about in 2040.
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    We need to think today
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    what to teach the young people.
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    CA: Yeah, no, absolutely.
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    You've often written about
    moments in history
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    where humankind has
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    entered a new era kind of unintentionally.
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    Decisions have been made,
    technologies have been developed,
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    and suddenly the world has changed,
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    possibly in a way that's
    worse for everyone.
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    So one of the example
    you give in "Sapiens"
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    is just the whole agricultural revolution,
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    which for an actual person
    tilling the fields,
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    they just picked up a 12-hour
    backbreaking workday
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    instead of six hours in the jungle
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    and a much more interesting lifestyle.
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    So are we at another possible
    phase change here
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    where we kind of sleepwalk into
    a future that none of us actually wants?
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    YNH: Yes, very much so.
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    During the agricultural revolution,
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    what happened is that immense
    technological and economic revolution
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    empowered the human collective,
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    but when you look at actual
    individual lives,
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    the life of a tiny elite
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    became much better,
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    and the life of the majority of people
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    became considerably worse.
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    And this can happen again
    in the 21st century.
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    No doubt the new technologies
    will empower the human collective,
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    but we may end up again
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    with a tiny elite
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    ripping all the benefits,
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    taking all the fruits,
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    and the masses of the population
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    finding themselves worse
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    than they were before,
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    certainly much worse than this tiny elite.
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    CA: And those elites might not
    even be human elites.
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    They might be cyborgs or --
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    YNH: Yeah, they could be
    enhanced superhumans.
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    They could be cyborgs.
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    They could be completely
    nonorganic elites.
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    They could even be
    non-conscious algorithms.
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    What we see now in the world
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    is authority shifting away
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    from humans to algorithms.
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    More and more decisions
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    about personal lives,
    about economic matters,
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    about political matters,
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    is actually being taken by algorithms.
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    If you ask the bank for a loan,
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    chances are your fate is decided
    by an algorithm, not by a human being,
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    and the general impression is that
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    maybe homo sapiens just lost it.
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    The world is so complicated,
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    there is so much data,
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    things are changing so fast,
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    that this thing that evolved
    on the African savannah
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    tens of thousands of years ago
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    to cope with a particular environment,
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    a particular volume
    of information and data,
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    it just can't handle the realities
    of the 21st century,
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    and the only thing that may
    be able to handle it
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    is big data algorithms.
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    So no wonder that more and more
    authority is shifting from us
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    to the algorithms.
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    CA: So we're in New York City
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    for the first of a series of TED Dialogues
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    with Yuval Harari,
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    and there's a Facebook live
    audience out there.
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    We're excited to have you with us.
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    We're going to start coming
    to some of your questions
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    and questions of people in the room
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    in just a few minutes,
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    so have those coming.
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    Yuval, if you're going
    to make the argument
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    that we need to get past nationalism
    because of the coming
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    technological danger, in a way,
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    presented by so much of what's happening
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    so we've got to have
    a global conversation about this.
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    Trouble is, it's really hard to get people
    really believing that, I don't know,
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    AI really is an imminent
    threat, and so forth.
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    The things that people,
    some people at least,
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    care about much more immediately perhaps
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    is perhaps climate change,
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    perhaps other issues like refugees,
    nuclear weapons, and so forth.
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    Would you argue that
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    where we are right now
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    that somehow those issues
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    need to be dialed up?
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    You've talked about climate change,
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    but Trump has said
    he doesn't believe in that.
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    So in a way your most powerful argument,
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    you can't actually use to make this case.
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    YNH: Yeah, I think with climate change,
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    at first sight, it's quite surprising
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    that there is a very close correlation
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    between nationalism and climate change.
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    I mean, almost always the people
    who deny climate change are nationalists.
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    And at first sight, you think why?
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    What's the connection?
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    Why don't you have socialists
    denying climate change?
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    But then, when you think about it,
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    it's obvious.
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    Because nationalism has
    no solution to climate change,
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    if you want to be a nationalist
    in the 21st century,
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    you have to deny the problem.
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    If you accept the reality of the problem,
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    then you must accept that yes,
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    there is still room in the world
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    for patriotism,
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    there is still room in the world
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    for having special loyalties
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    and obligations towards your own people,
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    towards your own country.
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    I don't think anybody is really
    thinking of abolishing that.
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    But in order to confront climate change,
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    we need additional loyalties
    and commitments
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    to a level beyond the nation.
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    And that should not be impossible,
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    because people can have
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    several layers of loyalty.
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    You can be loyal to your family
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    and to your community
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    and to your nation,
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    so why can't you be also loyal
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    to humankind as a whole?
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    Of course, there are occasions
    where it becomes difficult,
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    what to put first,
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    but life is difficult. Handle it.
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    (Laughter)
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    CA: Okay, so I would love to get
    some questions from the audience here.
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    We've got a microphone here.
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    Speak into it, and Facebook,
    get them coming too.
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    Question: So one of the things
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    that has clearly made a huge difference
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    in this country and other countries
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    is the income distribution inequality,
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    the dramatic change in income distribution
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    in the U.S. from what it was 50 years ago
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    and around the world.
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    Is there anything that we can do
    to affect that,
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    because that gets at a lot
    of the underlying causes?
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    YNH: So far I haven't heard
    a very good idea
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    about what to do about it,
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    again partly because most ideas
    remain on the national level,
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    and the problem is global.
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    I mean, one idea that we hear
    quite a lot about now
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    is universal basic income,
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    but this is a problem.
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    I mean, I think it's a good part,
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    but it's a problematic idea because
    it's not clear what universal is
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    and it's not clear what basic is.
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    Most people when they speak
    about universal basic income,
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    they actually mean national basic income,
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    but the problem is global.
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    Let's say that you have an AI
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    and the 3D printers
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    taking away millions of jobs in Bangladesh
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    of all the people who make my shirts
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    and my shoes?
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    So what's going to happen?
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    The U.S. government will levy taxes
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    in Google and Apple in California
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    and use that to pay basic income
    to unemployed Bangladeshis?
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    If you believe that,
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    you can just as well
    believe that Santa Claus
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    will come and solve the problem.
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    So unless we have really universal
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    and not national basic income,
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    the deep problems
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    are not going to go away,
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    and also it's not clear what basic is,
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    because what are basic human needs?
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    A thousand years ago,
    just food and shelter is enough,
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    but today people will say education
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    is a basic human need.
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    It should be part of the package.
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    But how much?
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    Six years? Twelve years? PhD?
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    Similarly with health care,
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    let's say that in 20, 30, 40 years,
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    you'll have expensive treatments
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    that can extend human life
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    to 120, I don't know.
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    Will this be part
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    of the basket of basic income or not?
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    It's a very difficult problem,
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    because in a world
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    where people lose their ability
    to be employed,
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    the only thing they are going to get
    is this basic income.
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    So what's part of it
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    is a very, very difficult
    ethical question.
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    CA: And there's a bunch of questions
    on how the world affords it as well,
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    who pays.
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    There's a question here
    from Facebook from Lisa Larson.
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    How does nationalism in the U.S. now
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    compare to that between
    World War I and World War II
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    in the last century?
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    YNH: Well the good news,
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    with regard to the dangers of nationalism,
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    we are in a much better position
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    than a century ago.
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    A century ago, 1917,
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    Europeans were killing each other
    by the millions.
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    In 2016, with Brexit,
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    as far as I can remember,
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    a single person lost their life,
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    an MP who was murdered
    by some extremist,
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    just a single person.
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    I mean, if Brexit was about
    British independence,
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    this is the most peaceful
    war of independence in human history.
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    And let's say that Scotland
    will now choose to leave the U.K.,
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    after Brexit.
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    So in the 18th century,
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    if Scotland wanted,
    and the Scots wanted several times,
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    to break out of the control of London,
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    the reaction of the government
    in London was to send an army up north
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    to burn down Edinburgh
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    and massacre the highland tribes.
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    My guess is that if in 2018,
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    the Scots vote for independence,
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    the London government
    will not send an army up north
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    to burn down Edinburgh.
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    Very few people are now willing
    to kill or be killed
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    for Scottish or for British independence.
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    So for all the talk
    of the rise of nationalism
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    and going back to the 1930s,
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    to the 19th century,
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    in the West at least,
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    the power of national sentiments today
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    is far, far smaller
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    than it was a century ago.
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    CA: Although some people now,
    you hear publicly worrying
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    about whether that might be shifting,
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    that there could actually be
    outbreaks of violence in the U.S.
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    depending on how things turn out.
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    Should we be worried about that, or
    do you really think things have shifted?
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    YNH: No, we should be worried.
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    We should be aware of two things.
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    First of all, don't be hysterical.
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    We are not back
    in the First World War yet.
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    But on the other hand,
    don't be complacent.
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    We reached from 1917 to 2017
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    not by some divine miracle
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    but simply by human decisions,
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    and if we now start making
    the wrong decisions,
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    we could be back
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    in an analogous situation
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    to 1917 in a few years.
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    One of the things I know as a historian
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    is that you should never
    underestimate human stupidity.
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    (Laughter)
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    It's one of the most powerful
    forces in history
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    is human stupidity and human violence.
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    Humans do such crazy things
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    for no obvious reasons,
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    but again, at the same time,
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    another very powerful force
    in human history is human wisdom.
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    We have both.
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    CA: We have with us here
    moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt,
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    who I think has a question.
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    Jonathan Haidt: Thanks, Yuval.
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    So you seem to be a fan
    of global governance,
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    but when you look at the map of the world
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    from Transparency International,
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    which rates the level of corruption
    of political institutions,
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    it's a vast sea of red
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    with little bits of yellow here and there
    for those with good institutions.
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    So if we were to have
    some kind of global governance,
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    what makes you think that it would end up
    being more like Denmark
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    rather than more like Russia or Honduras,
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    and aren't there alternatives
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    such as we did with CFCs?
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    I mean, there are ways to solve
    global problems with national governments.
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    What would world government
    actually look like,
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    and why do you think it would work?
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    YNH: Well, I don't know
    how it would look like.
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    Nobody still has a model for that.
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    The main reason we need it
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    is because many of these issues
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    are lose-lose situations.
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    When you have a win-win situation
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    like trade, both sides can benefit
    from a trade agreement,
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    then this is something you can work out.
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    Without some kind of global government,
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    national governments each
    has an interest in doing it.
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    But when you have a lose-lose situation,
    like with climate change,
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    it's much more difficult
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    without some overarching
    authority, real authority.
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    Now, how to get there
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    and how would it look like,
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    I don't know.
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    And certainly there is no obvious reason
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    to think that it would look like Denmark,
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    or that it would be a democracy.
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    Most likely it wouldn't.
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    We don't have workable
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    democratic models
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    for a global government.
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    So maybe it would look more
    like ancient China
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    than like modern Denmark,
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    but still, given the dangers
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    that we are facing,
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    I think the imperative
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    of having some kind of real ability
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    to force through difficult decisions
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    on the global level
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    is more important
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    than almost anything else.
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Title:
Nationalism vs. globalism: the new political divide
Speaker:
Yuval Noah Harari
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
01:00:08

English subtitles

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