(highlight:: The Origin of Government is Violence
Key takeaways:
(* Thomas Hobbs floated the idea of governments providing incentives to people not to use violence back in the seventeenth century., * This has been the main driver of the rates of violent death going down., * Governments scare their people straight in order to reduce the amount of violence happening.)
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Seem to me, overwhelming, the big force driving down rates of violent death is the creation of ments, powerful governments that can provide incentives to people not to use violence. And this, this is not an original idea. Loto or listeners, i'm shon immediately recognize that thomas hobbs floated more or less this idea in the seventeenth century. And i think tobbs basically got it right. This has been the drive driving down, overwhelmingly driving down, the rates of violent death. And governments, youan opulit blunting say, governments scare their people straight. And why do governments do this? It's not because governments are all run by saints. Far from it. The people who create the governments are the masters of violence, the people of really, really good ate using force. What the government does is that, i want you to shut up and go out there and plough your fields and pay your taxes. I do not want you killing your family, burning down your neighbour's farm and stealing all his crops and not paying taxes. This is kine of the recurring theme. And so if you go and burn your neighbour's farm down, i'm gon come down there with we more force than you can muster. I'm going to murder you. Im going to sell your family into slavery. A am going to desolate your farm so that no one will ever live there again. That's the offer i am making you.)
- Time 0:33:21
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(highlight:: The Human Condition has Changed So Much in the Past Century
Key takeaways:
(* The human condition has already changed more in the last 100 years than it did in the previous hundred thousand years., * We have seen men with no legs run in the Olympic games., * We have godlike powers at our disposal.)
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The human condition has already changed more in the last 100 years than it did in the previous hundred thousand years. Andwhen we we have seen men with no legs runn in the olympic games. If you had said that to your great great grandparents, they would have said, this was magic. We can already intervene into the genetics of unborn children, turn them into something that nature has not made them. This is magic. We already have godlike powers at our disposal.)
- Time 0:44:31
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(highlight:: Studying History makes Human Extinction a less Radical Possibility
Key takeaways:
(* People are sceptical of the idea that everything could collapse or change drastically because they haven't studied deep history., * Things that have happened in the past might happen again in the future, and this is a possibility because things have happened this way before., * The industrial revolution has already changed the human experience so much, and a new revolution could do the same.)
Transcript:
Speaker 2
And i think for some people, the reason that they're so sceptical isn't so much that they haven't thought that much about the future. I think it's in part that they haven't spent a lot of time studying deep history. Because to me, saying that like, we could go extinct an everything could collapse, or everything could completely change and be very unrecognizable, isn't an outrageous claim, because all i'm saying is that things that have already happened in the past might happen again in future. Is like you look at the past, you say, well, you just see thi's like constant series of lics, amazing things happening the roman empire, and then at oldes, and then e odes falls apart, and syou like, well, at least like cola seems like its licke. It's a possible option, because is happened. It happened 70 times before. And your so thinking, well, couldn't, couldn't information technology, couldn't a i couldn't genetic engineering completely revolutionize the human experience? Because the industrial revolution already has revolutionized the human experience so much like this would just be a repeat of an event that is completely precedented. And so that the kind of base line that the prior scepticism isn't hit. I think the more you know about how our typical ages, or our age is like, in no way typical of the uman experience.)
- Time 0:48:16
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(highlight:: The Pace of Human Progress is Unimaginable to those Living in the Past
Key takeaways:
(* The way to think about the future is not to think outrageously., * The future is unseeable and there is a 99% chance that we will go extinct., * The conditions under which we will go extinct are unknown.)
Transcript:
Speaker 1
I think the outrageous way to think about the future is to not to think outrageously. That is what's outrageous. Everything that we've been living through for 200 years now suggests that one way or another, we're going to see changes that we cannot even begin to imagine. And again, like you say, i think the obvious way to think about this is to think back and look at how people in the eighteenth century look to the future. They had no idea that anything like what we are living through is going to happen. I went to this pace, i got got obsessed with reading classic science fiction, jules verne, h g wells s what did futurists of a hundred years ago see and get right? And what do they see and get wrong? And often they get an awful lot of stuff right. But what they don't see, there's really no way to see, was not like going to the moon and this kind of thing, cause that's just projection forward of current trends for further, faster travel that was already happening. What they don't see is that there can be something like the internet, or that we can get inside the jean and change these sosthing thoe so absolutely unseeable, and that the really bad outcome. There's nothing outrageous about suggesting we go extinct. 99 point nine nine % of all the species of animals and plants that have ever existed have gone extinct. So if you think we are not going to go extinct, i think you're living in a fantasy. Will we are going to go extinct. The question is, what are the conditions under which we go extinct?)
- Time 0:49:10
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(highlight:: Disintegrating Prejudice and the Abilition of Slavery was a Product of the Goal, not the Goal Itself?
Key takeaways:
(* Big theories come out when we try to make decisions without input from the hierarchy., * This can lead to the disintegration of old prejudices and the rise of new ones., * Centralized decision making is the best way to run high-energy, super efficient organizations.)
Transcript:
Speaker 1
When the industrial revolution happens, we get this explosion of energy, theres this like this debate gets going over, what is the best kind of society to generate and to use all that energy? And to big theories come out. One is the western democratic theory is t the more you push decision making down in the hierarchy, the more the freer you make people, basically, the better everything is going to go. Yo. You take away all these old prejudices about gender relations, women com ing to the work force. Hey, you just double the sizeof laborpool. And old prejudices about oyo jews should not be allowed to own property, something. What turns out in eighteenth century england, you start allowing to jews to own property. Well, that works out really well for all the other rich people too. And all these old prejudices just start disintegrating. Slavery goes on being absolutely natural and reasonable to being absolutely unthinkable in the course of two centuries. Magic. But then, yo, let this other idea, like the soviet idea, the notty idea, no, centralize everything. Run it from the top down. That is the best way to run these high energy, superefficient organizations. Tatnobody is telling us how to do this. We have to figure it out for ourselves. And yet our decisions are constrained by these vast material forces of geography, of energy and so besid. We're trying to figure out all the time what is going to be the most productive, most useful, most rewarding for us as individuals, way to run these societies.)
- Time 1:01:01
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(highlight:: Human Values are Heavily Dependent on Context
Key takeaways:
(* We are very maleable animals. We can transform ourselves because we are good at reconizing the costs and benefits of the context that we're in., * This is why evolutionary thinking leads you to it. Doesn't mean that you don't have to like it. I like my values. I enjoy them. I would hate to be a different person.)
Transcript:
Speaker 1
We are very maleable animals. We can transform ourselves because we are good at reconize the costs and benefits of the context that we're in. Which i know sounds very cynical, but it's were unromantic why evolutionary thinking leads you to it. Doesn't mean that you don't have to like it. I like my values. I enjoy them. I would hate to be a different person. And yet, as i see it, it's a matterf doi have a broad enough perspective on the world to understand that what i perceive is my own excellence is not entirely my own doing. It's because of the context i find myself in.)
- Time 2:08:59
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