"of radical um political movement of which there will always be a lot in the country has managed to do something that a radical movement is not supposed to be able to do in the U.S which is they've man..."

"you wrote an incredible book called what's our problem a self-help book for societies in the beginning you uh present this view of uh human history as a thousand page book where each page is 250 years..."

"have emotions like us that have physical Sensations like us um for for so so long and who who are they all and what was their life like and it's you know I think we have no idea what it was like to be..."

"like what is the thing they've noticed the most I mean the sewage system like it doesn't smell in cities so what does the sewer system do I mean it gets rid of waste efficiently Etc we don't have to c..."

"we would survive if we had to go back um you know we'd have to learn some skills and but but we would buck up and you know people have gone to war before that were in the you know shopkeepers the year..."

"possessions towards or do we just Aspire that to do that towards other human beings that we love because in the East and the Soviet Union growing up poor is having food is the gratitude having transpo..."

"in in everyone's had you know uh that I think on on a at a 10 you are you're experiencing just immense gratitude right which is a euphoric feeling it's a great feeling um and it's um it makes you happ..."

"think it's hard to be a ten I think you'd be very happy if you could be but I think trying to be above a five and looking down at the things you have more often than you are looking up at the things y..."

"talk about maybe loving the tradition that this country stands for or you could talk about loving the people the uh that ultimately push progress and those are from an intellectual perspective a good ..."

"that stand out and then Define the course of human history and it's like the create the craziest thing to me is that like Buddha was a dude he was a guy with like arms and legs and fingernails that he..."

"continually blows my mind like you know and here's the reason you and I are related probably yeah no I mean we're it's it's also that's the other thing is that some of these dudes by becoming King by ..."

"humanity you know what defines the trajectory of humanity in the 21st century for example might be the influence of AI might be the influence of nuclear war negative or positive not in the case of a n..."

"full other direction and say actually this was probably not gonna happen um and you know I think World War II is an example right I kind of think World War II really was kind of the the work of it of ..."

"intelligence it does feel in one way like individuals have an especially big impact right now in that a small number of people are pulling some big levers um and you know there can be a little meeting..."

"in a virtual world to many people it seems ridiculous now that that was a poor investment we talked about getting you know 10 you know I think it was something like a billion people with um a VR heads..."

"I'm surprised because I'm I'm with you my first and still instinct is this feels like it changes everything VR feels like it changes everything but it's not changing anything like and a dumb part of m..."

"I don't yeah Windows 95 was good it was crazy yeah I forget what the big leaps was because those Windows 2000 it sucked and then Windows XP was good I moved to Mac around 2004 so I stopped I sold your..."

"level of bad it's all over for us can you elaborate on this why why is there why does the bad have uh that property that if it's all exponentially getting more powerful then the bat is going to win in..."

"gets so good you know have you ever read the culture series The Ian Banks books not yet but I get criticized on a daily basis but some of the mutual folks we know for not having done so lots and I fee..."

"be part of our future that's part of what excites me is like there is like today would seem like a utopian to Thomas Jefferson right Thomas Jefferson's world would seem like a Utopia to a caveman ther..."

"takes a tiny tiny number of these people with enough power to do bad so that to me I'm like the stakes are going up because the the what we have to lose is this incredible Utopia but also like dystopi..."

"know I mean it all like you know one of the things we can do is look at history and on one hand there's a lot of stories actually listening to a great podcast right now called the fall of civilization..."

"I'm thinking you know the 80s and 90s America the 90s was popular if people forget that now like Clinton was a superstar around the world Michael Jordan was exported internationally then basketball wa..."

"maybe we are in the in the you know it feels a little like maybe we're in the beginning of the downfall or not because because these things don't just go it's not a perfect smooth Hill it goes up and ..."

"seems to be happening in the in the United States although culturally and politically it this is not it's not it's not good well maybe that could shift at any moment when all the technological develop..."

"and and also giant Paradigm shifts happen quickly nowadays the internet you know came out of nowhere and suddenly was like you know change everything so there could be a changed everything thing on th..."

"even know about that uh versus you know again the Roman Empire actually collapsed and so the the question is just like is yeah you know will in 50 years will this be like or like McCarthyism oh they h..."

"being naive and uh trusting everybody maybe that well then you get lucky then then you you know then maybe you get to a good a good future by stumbling upon it um but ideally you you can get there lik..."

"intermixing of metaphors that works okay uh you also write that quote as the authors of the story of us which is this thousand page book we have no mentors no editors no one to make sure it all turns ..."

"that that's a different question you know so the the unimaginably good future I'm PR I'm picturing I think a lot of people would picture and I think most people would agree now not everyone there's a ..."

"it together and see what it is we can all say oh we want to go to that side of the ruler sure not this side um and so it gives us a direction to go and so what are the parts of the ladder so I have th..."

"is a huge company actually just a little real quick see you said primitive mind and higher mind so those are the two things that make up this bigger mind that it that is the modern human being yeah it..."

"force in us which is confirmation bias that's where that comes from it's it's this this desire to keep believing what we believe and this desire to also fit in with our beliefs to believe what the peo..."

"different dimensions we need we need a vertical axis we have all these horizontal axes Left Right Center or you know you know this opinion all the way to this opinion but it's like what's much more im..."

"places where everyone can agree which is why it's a really nice comic because then you start to talk about map this onto ideas that people take personally it starts becoming a lot more difficult to um..."

"in a night in a you know a high rung culture uh it's sport that's I mean look at every one of your podcasts your your agree whether you're agreeing or disagreeing the tone is the same it's not like oh..."

"um and um so the question is how do you create a system that is good at you put the conspiracy theory in and it either goes e or it says this is interesting let's keep exploring it like how do you put..."

"real conspiracy well isn't there a lot of gray area and there's a lot of mystery isn't that where the conspiracy theories seep in so uh it's great to hear that you've really looked into the the the Tr..."

"just so you have a political bias when your side says something you you will find yourself moving towards the gullible side of the spectrum you read an article written that's that supports your views ..."

"lot of um social pressure actually yeah to immediately laugh off any conspiracy theory if it's done by the the bad guys right you will quickly get mocked and laughed at and not taken seriously if you ..."

"and more and more extreme I mean this what what do you see that the pandemic did that kova did to our civilization in that regard in the forces why was it so divisive do you understand that yeah so co..."

"ethnicity and and what it didn't do that at all the whirlpool was too powerful so it pulled coveted in and suddenly masks if you're on the left you like them if you're on the right you hate them and s..."

"the long run but there's also an individual psychological impact it's like a vicious negative feedback cycle where they were deeply affected on an emotional level and people just were not their best c..."

"pathogen that might harm us right feces vomit whatever but they did this interesting study where people who in in two two groups the control group you know was shown images of um in my beginning two s..."

"you describe an idea lab as uh being opposite of echo Chambers so we know what Echo Chambers are and you said like there's basically no good term for the opposite of an echo chamber so what's an ideal..."

"if you don't really know what you're talking about but you're acting like you do I really like this diagram of where on the x-axis agreement on the y-axis is decency that's in an idea lab in an echo c..."

"um and uh and I think it's boring but the thing is they also have emergent properties so the emergent property of an ID lab is like super intelligence just you and me alone just the two of us if we're..."

"because look at the thing on the right agreement and decency are the same yeah so if you're in that mindset the bigger the asshole the better if you're agreeing with me you're my man I love what you'r..."

"exactly you know and so they see it as some kind of hypocrisy because again they only see the thing on the right and they're not understanding that there's two axes or that I see it as two axes and so..."

"but the thing is they do seem to drive away high quality disagreement because like because it takes so much effort to uh disagree in a high quality way I've noticed this on my blog like my one of the ..."

"blocked you're not being thin-skinned you're not being petty doing it you're actually protecting an idea lab because what people would really aggressive people like that do is they'll turn it into the..."

"with technology because I think in our private lives none of us want that I wonder if it's making me think that I want to like because a much easier way for me to do it just for my my world would be t..."

"high effort uh High rung disagreement I guess everyone thinking about that other access too you're not just looking at where do you stand horizontally you're saying well how did you get there and how ..."

"with friends in Meet space is like you're they disagree with you they could be even yelling at you honestly they could even have some shit talk where it's like personal attacks it still feels good bec..."

"to once you know someone like that you can realize okay apply that to everyone because a lot of these people are lovely people and it's just bring even just you know back in the before social media di..."

"person because in a person they're reminded that's a person remember I said the dumb part of my brain when I'm doing VR like won't step off the cliff but the smart part of my brain knows I'm just on t..."

"love it's forgiveness it's all these things they're the opposite of grievance and victimhood and resentment and pessimism right and there's I think a reason that a lot of people follow you because it ..."

"magnet that pulls our psyches downwards on the ladder and and why why does politics pull our psyches down on the ladder because it for for the tens of thousand years that we were evolving um you know ..."

"thinking that's Echo that's Echo chamber culture and I've been using kind of a shorthand uh of Centrist to describe this kind of a high wrong thinking but people tend to I mean it seems to be difficul..."

"the current geopolitics and economics and just always considering always questioning always evolving your views all of that not just not just about like oh I think we should be in the center on this b..."

"the argument and I disagree with it because I firmly believe that the hardcore tribes they think they're taking a stand and they're out in the streets and they're pushing for something I think what th..."

"want if they have the power to do so it's just a game of power so if the bunny gets away the bunny actually has more power than the Bear in that situation right and likewise the totalitarian dictators..."

"stuff like that so it's this much looser thing now the vulnerability there is that it so so the the benefits of it are obvious right freedom is great it seems like it's the most Fair they you know tha..."

"games to be enjoyed so it's just much more complicated much more nuanced than the power games it's kind of it's kind of a set of basic laws that then are coupled with a basic Spirit to create this ver..."

"you know um you can you can choose to kind of be friends with people who uh essentially make it make it so uncomfortable to speak your mind that it's no actual effective difference for you than if you..."

"so uh before chapter four in your book uh uh and the chapters that will surely result in you being burned at the stake you write quote we'll start our Pitchfork tour in this chapter by taking a brief ..."

"them and the intimidation and the bullying and eventually they ended up in the National Convention which was called like the right wing Woodstock it was like you know the Republican National Conventio..."

"looked at the Trump Revolution and a lot and not just Trump the last 20 years I see that same lower right that lower right monster kind of um making another charge for it but this time succeeding and ..."

"and it's another election year and Ginsburg dies and what did they say they say oh let's keep our president they said no oh actually we changed our mind we're going to nominate Amy Barrett so to me th..."

"a rise in power games and I talk about the Republicans because they did a lot of these things first they have been a little bit more Regis but both parties have been doing it over the last 20 30 years..."

"things you know that have redistricting but also it is social media it is you know I call it hypercharged tribalism you know in the 60s you had kind of distributed tribalism you had some people that a..."

"Whirlpool that subsumes everything and um and so yeah yeah it's I mean you people point to Newt Gingrich you know people like there's certain characters that enacted policies that stoked this kind of ..."

"chance and so what and why were we vulnerable to a demagogue is because you have these Mommy I think it's specifically on the right if you actually look at the stats it's pretty bad like the people wh..."

"circumstances and that is what Trump totally did it makes me wonder how easy it is for somebody who's a charismatic leader to uh capitalize on cultural resentment when when there's economic hardship t..."

"and and he knew that neither do is a subset of the country I was thinking about this just reading articles by journalists especially when you're not a a famous journalist in yourself but you're more l..."

"hits will be to New York Times the institution yeah and so for the individual journalists there's a huge incentive to make stuff up totally it's it's it it is and it's scary because it's almost you ca..."

"the they know Barry Weiss wrote there for a long time and then you've got um they wrote an article criticizing free speech on campus stuff you know recently um and they have you know they have a coupl..."

"libertarianism isn't all about you know it's just so there is an element but you know what it's it's something it's better than than being a total tribal I think you can you can see the New York Times..."

"one of them is uh is highlighting the interplay of different ideas over the past uh let's say 100 years so liberalism is on one side there's that thread there's Marxism on the other and then there's p..."

"liberalism right so people think is oh you know like what we call a wokeness is just you know a normal social justice activists activism but it's like more extreme right it's this no no it's the polar..."

"because they want to actually go down to the bottom level and overthrow they think science itself is a tool of Oppression they think it's a tool uh where oppression kind of flows through you know they..."

"framework of you know this Marxist framework kind of with a new skin on it which is American social justice and then made even more radical with the infusion of post-modernism where you know not just ..."

"here uh zero-sum struggle between the ruling class and the working class with power being exerted through politics and economics then you add critical theory Marxism 2.0 on top of that and you add to ..."

"I don't like the ideology I think it's a low-rung ideology I think it's morally inconsistent based on you know it flip-flops on on its morals depending on the the group I think it's Echo chambery I th..."

"they don't have the power but I'd be able to get anyone fired who they want and they're able to actually change the curriculum in all these schools in class to to suddenly not conflict with no more ev..."

"about wokeism so I've gotten I've had probably a thousand arguments about this that's one nice thing about spending six years procrastinating on getting a book done is you end up test battle testing y..."

"what so it's not that I think this thing is so bad it's a little like we said with Trump it's that what I'm what's the reason Trump scares me is not because Trump's so bad it's that because it shows i..."

"and being like technology is blowing up exponentially where our society's trust is devolving like we're kind of falling apart in some important ways we're losing our grip on some stability at the wors..."

"a long way but if you don't if you keep it to yourself it's almost useless because if it doesn't if you don't have without you know awareness without courage does very little so courage is when you ta..."

"so you have a really interesting description of censorship of self-censorship also as you've been talking about uh who's King mustache and uh this Gap I think I hope you write even more even more than..."

"it's being said either whispered in small groups or it's just not very many people are talking about it now a healthy when a when a free speech democracy is healthy on a certain topic you've got the s..."

"use this as an allegory now of course he has a hard cudgel because he can execute people but now when we look at the U.S what you're seeing right now is a lot of pressure which is very similar an elec..."

"these new people say instead of having the kind of marketplace of ideas you know that turns into a kind of a natural belt curve they say no no these ideas are okay to say not just okay you'll be socia..."

"siled into small private conversations it's really powerful what you said about institutions and so on it's not trivial to from a leadership position to be like no we we defend the employee or defend ..."

"the dead yeah yeah yeah and luckily in this case we're both uh you probably can smear each other in this conference this is wonderful I I smear you all given given the nature of your book um what do y..."

"phenomenon and it's just related but so this idea so for people just listening um there's a child's Hill pretty damn sure you know a whole lot and feeling great about it that's in the beginning and th..."

"thought why why am I why am I like giving away my own independent you know learning yeah abilities here and just adopting other views so anyway it was this humbling experience it wasn't just about pol..."

"should read this and this and this they don't say you don't know anything they don't say that right and so and not that I'm by the way this is not to say I'm now on grown-up mountain and you should al..."

"a complete conviction about them yeah how do we fix it is is it part of the administration is it part of the culture as a part of the uh is is a part like actually instilling in the individual like 18..."

"shown some strength um they actually don't get as much trouble it's the ones who Pander the ones who um uh in that you know in that moment of truth they they they shrink away then they get a lot more ..."

"just write a mini post and I open it up to Wordpress to write a one day little essay and things went on politics it was going to be on like this feeling I had that that like this feeling I had that um..."

"the book and you know you were expressing just like this you know the just the horror of the situation basically you're like look I just I'm so close but there's still this and then there's this and u..."

"different ways some people don't have this particular problem Adam Grant is that he calls himself a precrastinator where he gets an assignment he will go home and do it until it's done and handed it w..."

"looming in the background that's your friend group okay at the beginning of the conversation we talked about how all of human history can be presented as a thousand page book uh what are you excited a..."

"we'll we'll figure it out but you know I mean we are going into um create you know I have a friend who knows as much about the future as anyone I know I mean he's really he's a big investor and you kn..."