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Home » TRANSCRIPT: We Can Split The Atom But Not Distinguish Truth: Yuval Noah Harari

TRANSCRIPT: We Can Split The Atom But Not Distinguish Truth: Yuval Noah Harari

Read the full transcript of Yuval Noah Harari’s interview with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin on “We Can Split The Atom But Not Distinguish Truth. Our Information Is Failing Us.”

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Good evening, everybody. Thank you for being here. It is a privilege for me to be here with Yuval. I’ve been a longtime fan of his back when Sapiens was first published. And there is so much to talk about between then and now and how we think about AI and how we think about this new reality, something that I think was actually a theme in your earliest books about reality and truth and information.

And in a world where it’s going to become all electronic and in a cloud and in the sky in a whole new way, what it ultimately means when you think about history. So thank you for being here. We’re going to talk about so many things, but I’m going to tell you where we want to start tonight, if I could, and I want to read you something.

The Problem with Human Networks

This is you. You said that humankind gains enormous power by building large networks of cooperation. But the way these networks are built predisposes them to use power unwisely. Our problem then is a network problem, you call it. But even more specifically, you say it’s an information problem. I want you to try to unpack that for the audience this evening, because I think that that, more than anything else in this book, explains or at least sets the table for what this discussion is all about.

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: So basically, the key question of the book and of much of human history is, if we are so smart, why are we so stupid? That’s the key question. I mean, we can reach the moon, we can split the atom, we can create AI, and yet we are on the verge of destroying ourselves. And not just through one way, like previously we just had nuclear war to destroy ourselves, now we’ve created an entire menu of ways to destroy ourselves.

So what is happening? And one basic answer in many mythologies is that there is something wrong with human nature, that we reach for powers that we don’t know how to use wisely, that there is really something deeply wrong with us. And the answer that I try to give in the book is that the problem is not in our nature, the problem is in our information.

That if you give good people bad information, they will make bad decisions, self-destructive decisions. And this has been happening again and again in history, because information isn’t truth, and information isn’t wisdom. The most basic function of information is connection.

The Power of Fiction and Fantasy

Information connects many people to a network, and unfortunately, the easiest way to connect large numbers of people together is not with the truth, but with fictions and fantasies and delusions.

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: What was I going to say? There’s a sense, though, that information was supposed to set us free. Information, access to information across the world was the thing that was supposed to make us a better planet. Why would it do that?

Well, there was a sense that people in places that didn’t have access to communication tools and other things, didn’t have access to information, and didn’t have access, and maybe to put a point on it, to good information. You make the argument, and now to go back to sapiens, frankly, you talk about different types of realities, and this is what I think is very interesting, because you talk about objective reality. You know, we can go outside, and we can see that it’s not raining, and the sky is blue, and you say that’s an objective reality, right? But then there’s these other kinds of realities that you talk about, which makes us, I think, susceptible to what you’re describing.

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: When I say susceptible, this idea that we as a group, as humanity, that we are storytellers, and that we are okay, oddly enough, with what you’ve described as a fictional reality. Yeah, I mean, to take an example, suppose we want to build an atom bomb. So, to do that, suppose, just suppose, somebody wants to build an atom bomb. You need to know some facts to build an atom bomb. You need some hold on objective physical reality.

If you don’t know that E equals mc squared, if you don’t know the facts of physics, you will not be able to build an atom bomb. But, to build an atom bomb, you need something else besides knowing the facts of physics. You need millions and millions of people to cooperate. Not just the physicists, but also the miners who mine uranium, and the engineers and builders who build the reactor, and the farmers that grow rice and wheat in order to feed all the physicists and engineers and miners and so forth.

And how do you get millions of people to cooperate on a project like building an atom bomb? If you just tell them the facts of physics, look, E equals mc squared, now get to it, nobody would do it, it’s not inspiring. It doesn’t mean anything in this sense of giving motivation. You always need to tell them some kind of fiction, or fantasy, and the people who invent the fictions are far more powerful than the people who know the facts of physics.

In Iran today, the nuclear physicists are getting their orders from people who are experts in Shiite theology. In Israel, increasingly, the physicists get their order from rabbis. In the Soviet Union, they got it from communist ideologues. In Nazi Germany, from Hitler and Himmler. It’s usually the people who know how to weave a story that give orders to the people who merely know the facts of nuclear physics.

And one last point, crucial point is, that when, if you build a bomb and ignore the facts of physics, the bomb will not explode.