Nationalism vs. globalism: the new political divide

Chris Anderson: Hello. So welcome
to this TED dialogue.

It's the first of a series that's
really going to be done

in response to the current
political upheaval.

I don't know about you.

I've become quite concerned about
the growing divisiveness in this country

and in the world.

No one's listening to each other. Right?

They aren't.

And it feels like we need

a different kind of conversation,

one that's based on, I don't know,

on reason, listening, on understanding,

on a broader context.

That's at least what we're going to try

in these TED Dialogues starting today,

and we couldn't have anyone with us

who I'd be more excited to kick this off.

This is a mind right here that thinks

pretty much like no one else on the planet

I would say, because I'm serious.

I'm serious.

He synthesizes history

with underlying ideas in a way

that kind of takes your breath away.

So some of you will know this book,

"Sapiens."

Has anyone here read "Sapiens?"

(Applause)

I mean, I could not put it down.

The way that he tells
the story of mankind

through big ideas that really make you
think differently, though,

it's kind of amazing.

And here's the follow-up, which I think
is being published in the U.S. next week.

Yuval Noah Harari: Yeah, next week.
CA: "Homo Deus."

Now this is the history
of the next hundred years.

I've had a chance to read it.

It's extremely dramatic,

and I daresay for some people

quite alarming.

It's a must-read,

and honestly, we couldn't have
someone better to help

make sense of what on Earth
is happening in the world right now.

So a warm welcome, please,
to Yuval Noah Harari.

(Applause)

It's great to be joined by our friends
on Facebook and around the web.

Hello, Facebook.

And all of you, as I start
asking questions of Yuval,

come up with your own questions,

and not necessarily about
the political scandal du jour

but about the broader understanding
of where are we heading?

You ready? Okay, we're going to go.

So here we are, Yuval, New York City,

2017, there's a new president in power,

and shockwaves rippling around the world.

What on Earth is happening?

YNH: I think the basic thing that happens

is that we have lost our story.

Humans think in stories,

and we try to make sense of the world

by telling stories,

and for the last few decades,

we had a very simple
and very attractive story

about what's happening in the world,

and the story said that, oh,
what's happening is

that the economy is being globalized,

politics is being liberalized,

and the combination of the two
will create paradise on Earth,

and we just need to keep on
globalizing the economy

and liberalizing the political system,

and everything will be wonderful.

And 2016 is the moment

when a very large segment,

even of the Western world,

stopped believing in this story.

For good or bad reasons doesn't matter.

People stopped believing in the story,

and when you don't have a story,

you don't understand what's happening.

CA: Part of you believes that that story
was actually a very effective story.

It worked.

YNH: To some extent, yes.

According to some measurements,

we are now in the best time ever

for humankind.

Today, for the first time in history,

more people die from eating too much

than from eating too little,

which is an amazing achievement.

(Laughter)

Also for the first time in history,

more people die from old age

than from infectious diseases,

and violence is also down.

For the first time in history,

more people commit suicide

than are killed by crime and terrorism

and war put together.

Statistically, you are
your own worst enemy.

At least, of all the people in the world,

you are most likely
to be killed by yourself,

which is again very good news

compared to the level of violence

that we saw in previous eras.

CA: But this process
of connecting the world

ended up with a large group of people
kind of feeling left out,

and they've reacted, and so we have
this bombshell that's sort of ripping

through the whole system.

I mean, what do you make
of what's happened?

It feels like the old way
that people thought of politics,

the left-right divide,
has been blown up and replaced.

How should we think of this?

YNH: Yeah, the old 20th century

political model of left versus right

is now largely irrelevant,

and the real divide today

is in global and national,

global or local.

And you see it again all over the world

that this is now the main struggle.

We probably need completely
new political models

and completely new ways of thinking

about politics.

In essence what you can say

is that we now have global ecology,

we have a global economy,

but we have national politics,

and this doesn't work together.

This makes the political
system ineffective

because it has no control
over the forces that shape our life.

And you have basically two solutions

to this imbalance.

Either deglobalize the economy

and turn it back into a national economy,

or globalize the political system.

CA: So some, I guess
many liberals out there

view Trump and his government

as kind of irredeemably bad,

just awful in every way.

Do you see any underlying

narrative or political philosophy in there

that is at least worth understanding?

How would you articulate that philosophy?

Is it just the philosophy of nationalism?

YNH: I think the underlying
feeling or idea

is that the political system,
something is broken there.

It doesn't empower

the ordinary person anymore.

It doesn't care so much
about the ordinary person anymore,

and I think this diagnosis
of the political disease is correct.

With regard to the answers,
I am far less certain.

I think what we are seeing
is the immediate human reaction:

if something doesn't work, let's go back.

And you see it all over the world,

that people, almost nobody
in the political system today

has any future-oriented vision

of where humankind is going.

Almost everywhere, you see
retrograde vision.

Let's make America great again,

like it was great, I don't know,
in the '50s, in the '80s, sometime,

let's go back there.

And you go to Russia.

So a hundred years after Lenin,

Putin's vision for the future

is basically, ah, let's go back
to the Tsarist empire.

And in Israel, where I come from,

the hottest political vision

of the present

is "let's build the temple again."

So let's go back 2,000 years backward.

So people are thinking
sometime in the past we've lost it,

and sometimes in the past, it's like
you've lost your way in the city,

and you say okay, let's go back
to the point where I felt secure

and start again.

I don't think this can work,

but a lot of people,
this is their gut instinct.

CA: But why couldn't it work?

America first is a very
appealing slogan in many ways.

Patriotism is in many ways
a very noble thing.

It's played a role in promoting

cooperation among large numbers of people.

Why couldn't you have a world

organized in countries

all of which put themselves first?

YNH: For many centuries,

even thousands of years,

patriotism worked quite well.

Of course it led to wars an so forth,

but we shouldn't focus
too much on the bad.

There are also many,
many positive things about patriotism,

and the ability to have
a large number of people

care about each other,

sympathize with one another,

and come together for collective action.

If you go back to the first nations,

so thousands of years ago,

the people who lived along
the Yellow River in China,

it was many, many different tribes

and they all depended on the river

for survival and for prosperity,

but all of them also suffered

from periodical floods

and periodical droughts,

and no tribe could do anything about it

because each of them controlled
just a tiny section of the river.

And then in a long
and complicated process,

the tribes coalesced together

to form the Chinese nation,

which controlled the entire Yellow River

and had the ability

to bring hundreds of thousands
of people together

to build dams and canals

and regulate the river

and prevent the worst floods and droughts

and raise the level
of prosperity for everybody.

And this worked in many places
around the world.

But in the 21st century,

technology is changing all that
in a fundamental way.

We are now living, all people
in the world are living

alongside the same cyber river,

and no single nation

can regulate this river by itself.

We are all living together
in a single planet

which is threatened by our own actions,

and if you don't have some kind
of global cooperation,

nationalism is just not on the right level

to tackle the problems

of whether it's climate change

or whether it's technological disruption.

CA: So it was a beautiful idea

in a world where most of the action,

most of the issues,

took place on national scale,

but your argument is that the issues
that matter most today

no longer take place on a national scale
but on a global scale.

YNH: Exactly. All of the major problems
of the world today

are global in essence,

and they cannot be solved

unless through some kind
of global cooperation.

It's not just climate change,

which is, like, the most obvious
example people give.

I think more in terms
of technological disruption.

If you think about, for example,
artificial intelligence,

over the next 20, 30 years

pushing hundreds of millions of people
out of the job market,

this is a problem on a global level.

It will disrupt the economy
of all the countries,

and similarly if you think
about, say, bioengineering

and people being afraid
of conducting genetic engineering

research in humans,

it won't help if just a single country,

let's say the U.S.,

outlaws all genetic experiments in humans

but China or North Korea
continues to do it.

So the U.S. cannot solve it by itself,

and very quickly, the pressure on the U.S.

to do the same will be immense

because we are talking about
high-risk, high-gain technologies.

If somebody else is doing it,

I can't allow myself to remain behind.

The only way to have regulations,

effective regulations,

on things like genetic engineering,

is to have global regulations.

If you just have national regulations,

nobody would like to stay behind.

CA: So this is really interesting.

It seems that this might be one key

to provoking at least
a constructive conversation

between the different sides here,

because I think everyone can agree
that the start point

of a lot of the anger that's
propelled us to where we are

is because of the legitimate
concerns about job loss.

Work is gone, a traditional way of life

has gone, and it's no wonder
that people are furious about that.

And in general, they have blamed
globalism, global elites

for doing this to them
without asking their permission,

and that seems like
a legitimate complaint.

But what I hear you saying

is that, so a key question is,
what is the real cause of job loss,

both now and going forward?

To the extent that it's about globalism,

then the right response, yes,

is to shut down borders

and keep people out

and change trade agreements and so forth.

But you're saying, I think,

that actually the bigger cause of job loss

is not going to be that at all.

It's going to originate
in technological questions,

and we have no chance of solving that
unless we operate as a connected world.

YNH: Yeah, I think that,

I don't know about the present,

but looking to the future,

it's not the Mexicans or Chinese

who will take the jobs from
the people in Pennsylvania,

it's the robots and algorithms,

so unless you plan to build a big wall

on the border of California --

(Laughter) --

the wall on the border with Mexico
is going to be very ineffective.

And I was struck when I watched
the debates before the elections,

I was struck that certainly Trump
did not even attempt

to frighten people by saying
the robots will take your jobs.

Now even if it's not true,
it doesn't matter.

It could have been an extremely
effective way of frightening people

and galvanizing people.
"The robots will take your jobs."

And nobody used that line.

And it made me afraid,

because it meant

that no matter what happens

in universities and laboratories,

and there there is already
an intense debate about it,

but in the mainstream political system

and among the general public,

people are just unaware

that there could be an immense
technological disruption,

not in 200 years,

but in 10, 20, 30 years,

and we have to do something about it now,

partly because most of what we teach

children today in school

or in college

is going to be completely irrelevant

to the job market of 2040, 2050.

So it's not something we'll need
to think about in 2040.

We need to think today

what to teach the young people.

CA: Yeah, no, absolutely.

You've often written about
moments in history

where humankind has

entered a new era kind of unintentionally.

Decisions have been made,
technologies have been developed,

and suddenly the world has changed,

possibly in a way that's
worse for everyone.

So one of the example
you give in "Sapiens"

is just the whole agricultural revolution,

which for an actual person
tilling the fields,

they just picked up a 12-hour
backbreaking workday

instead of six hours in the jungle

and a much more interesting lifestyle.

So are we at another possible
phase change here

where we kind of sleepwalk into
a future that none of us actually wants?

YNH: Yes, very much so.

During the agricultural revolution,

what happened is that immense
technological and economic revolution

empowered the human collective,

but when you look at actual
individual lives,

the life of a tiny elite

became much better,

and the life of the majority of people

became considerably worse.

And this can happen again
in the 21st century.

No doubt the new technologies
will empower the human collective,

but we may end up again

with a tiny elite

reaping all the benefits,

taking all the fruits,

and the masses of the population

finding themselves worse

than they were before,

certainly much worse than this tiny elite.

CA: And those elites might not
even be human elites.

They might be cyborgs or --

YNH: Yeah, they could be
enhanced superhumans.

They could be cyborgs.

They could be completely
nonorganic elites.

They could even be
non-conscious algorithms.

What we see now in the world

is authority shifting away

from humans to algorithms.

More and more decisions

about personal lives,
about economic matters,

about political matters,

is actually being taken by algorithms.

If you ask the bank for a loan,

chances are your fate is decided
by an algorithm, not by a human being,

and the general impression is that

maybe homo sapiens just lost it.

The world is so complicated,

there is so much data,

things are changing so fast,

that this thing that evolved
on the African savannah

tens of thousands of years ago

to cope with a particular environment,

a particular volume
of information and data,

it just can't handle the realities
of the 21st century,

and the only thing that may
be able to handle it

is big data algorithms.

So no wonder that more and more
authority is shifting from us

to the algorithms.

CA: So we're in New York City

for the first of a series of TED Dialogues

with Yuval Harari,

and there's a Facebook live
audience out there.

We're excited to have you with us.

We're going to start coming
to some of your questions

and questions of people in the room

in just a few minutes,

so have those coming.

Yuval, if you're going
to make the argument

that we need to get past nationalism
because of the coming

technological danger, in a way,

presented by so much of what's happening

so we've got to have
a global conversation about this.

Trouble is, it's really hard to get people
really believing that, I don't know,

AI really is an imminent
threat, and so forth.

The things that people,
some people at least,

care about much more immediately perhaps

is climate change,

perhaps other issues like refugees,
nuclear weapons, and so forth.

Would you argue that

where we are right now

that somehow those issues

need to be dialed up?

You've talked about climate change,

but Trump has said
he doesn't believe in that.

So in a way your most powerful argument,

you can't actually use to make this case.

YNH: Yeah, I think with climate change,

at first sight, it's quite surprising

that there is a very close correlation

between nationalism and climate change.

I mean, almost always the people
who deny climate change are nationalists.

And at first sight, you think why?

What's the connection?

Why don't you have socialists
denying climate change?

But then, when you think about it,

it's obvious.

Because nationalism has
no solution to climate change,

if you want to be a nationalist
in the 21st century,

you have to deny the problem.

If you accept the reality of the problem,

then you must accept that yes,

there is still room in the world

for patriotism,

there is still room in the world

for having special loyalties

and obligations towards your own people,

towards your own country.

I don't think anybody is really
thinking of abolishing that.

But in order to confront climate change,

we need additional loyalties
and commitments

to a level beyond the nation.

And that should not be impossible,

because people can have

several layers of loyalty.

You can be loyal to your family

and to your community

and to your nation,

so why can't you be also loyal

to humankind as a whole?

Of course, there are occasions
where it becomes difficult,

what to put first,

but life is difficult. Handle it.

(Laughter)

CA: Okay, so I would love to get
some questions from the audience here.

We've got a microphone here.

Speak into it, and Facebook,
get them coming too.

Question: So one of the things

that has clearly made a huge difference

in this country and other countries

is the income distribution inequality,

the dramatic change in income distribution

in the U.S. from what it was 50 years ago

and around the world.

Is there anything that we can do
to affect that,

because that gets at a lot
of the underlying causes?

YNH: So far I haven't heard
a very good idea

about what to do about it,

again partly because most ideas
remain on the national level,

and the problem is global.

I mean, one idea that we hear
quite a lot about now

is universal basic income,

but this is a problem.

I mean, I think it's a good start,

but it's a problematic idea because
it's not clear what universal is

and it's not clear what basic is.

Most people when they speak
about universal basic income,

they actually mean national basic income,

but the problem is global.

Let's say that you have an AI

and the 3D printers

taking away millions of jobs in Bangladesh

of all the people who make my shirts

and my shoes.

So what's going to happen?

The U.S. government will levy taxes

in Google and Apple in California

and use that to pay basic income
to unemployed Bangladeshis?

If you believe that,

you can just as well
believe that Santa Claus

will come and solve the problem.

So unless we have really universal

and not national basic income,

the deep problems

are not going to go away,

And also it's not clear what basic is,

because what are basic human needs?

A thousand years ago,
just food and shelter is enough,

but today people will say education

is a basic human need.

It should be part of the package.

But how much?

Six years? Twelve years? PhD?

Similarly with health care,

let's say that in 20, 30, 40 years,

you'll have expensive treatments

that can extend human life

to 120, I don't know.

Will this be part

of the basket of basic income or not?

It's a very difficult problem,

because in a world

where people lose their ability
to be employed,

the only thing they are going to get
is this basic income.

So what's part of it

is a very, very difficult
ethical question.

CA: And there's a bunch of questions
on how the world affords it as well,

who pays.

There's a question here
from Facebook from Lisa Larson.

How does nationalism in the U.S. now

compare to that between
World War I and World War II

in the last century?

YNH: Well the good news,

with regard to the dangers of nationalism,

we are in a much better position

than a century ago.

A century ago, 1917,

Europeans were killing each other
by the millions.

In 2016, with Brexit,

as far as I remember,

a single person lost their life,

an MP who was murdered
by some extremist,

just a single person.

I mean, if Brexit was about
British independence,

this is the most peaceful
war of independence in human history.

And let's say that Scotland
will now choose to leave the U.K.,

after Brexit.

So in the 18th century,

if Scotland wanted,
and the Scots wanted several times,

to break out of the control of London,

the reaction of the government
in London was to send an army up north

to burn down Edinburgh

and massacre the highland tribes.

My guess is that if in 2018,

the Scots vote for independence,

the London government
will not send an army up north

to burn down Edinburgh.

Very few people are now willing
to kill or be killed

for Scottish or for British independence.

So for all the talk
of the rise of nationalism

and going back to the 1930s,

to the 19th century,

in the West at least,

the power of national sentiments today

is far, far smaller

than it was a century ago.

CA: Although some people now,
you hear publicly worrying

about whether that might be shifting,

that there could actually be
outbreaks of violence in the U.S.

depending on how things turn out.

Should we be worried about that, or
do you really think things have shifted?

YNH: No, we should be worried.

We should be aware of two things.

First of all, don't be hysterical.

We are not back
in the First World War yet.

But on the other hand,
don't be complacent.

We reached from 1917 to 2017

not by some divine miracle

but simply by human decisions,

and if we now start making
the wrong decisions,

we could be back

in an analogous situation

to 1917 in a few years.

One of the things I know as a historian

is that you should never
underestimate human stupidity.

(Laughter)

It's one of the most powerful
forces in history

is human stupidity and human violence.

Humans do such crazy things

for no obvious reasons,

but again, at the same time,

another very powerful force
in human history is human wisdom.

We have both.

CA: We have with us here
moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt,

who I think has a question.

Jonathan Haidt: Thanks, Yuval.

So you seem to be a fan
of global governance,

but when you look at the map of the world

from Transparency International,

which rates the level of corruption
of political institutions,

it's a vast sea of red

with little bits of yellow here and there
for those with good institutions.

So if we were to have
some kind of global governance,

what makes you think that it would end up
being more like Denmark

rather than more like Russia or Honduras,

and aren't there alternatives

such as we did with CFCs?

I mean, there are ways to solve
global problems with national governments.

What would world government
actually look like,

and why do you think it would work?

YNH: Well, I don't know
how it would look like.

Nobody still has a model for that.

The main reason we need it

is because many of these issues

are lose-lose situations.

When you have a win-win situation

like trade, both sides can benefit
from a trade agreement,

then this is something you can work out.

Without some kind of global government,

national governments each
has an interest in doing it.

But when you have a lose-lose situation,
like with climate change,

it's much more difficult

without some overarching
authority, real authority.

Now, how to get there

and how would it look like,

I don't know.

And certainly there is no obvious reason

to think that it would look like Denmark,

or that it would be a democracy.

Most likely it wouldn't.

We don't have workable

democratic models

for a global government.

So maybe it would look more
like ancient China

than like modern Denmark,

but still, given the dangers

that we are facing,

I think the imperative

of having some kind of real ability

to force through difficult decisions

on the global level

is more important

than almost anything else.

CA: There's a question from Facebook here,

and then we'll get the mic to Andrew.

So Kat Hebron on Facebook,

calling in from Vale:

how would developed nations manage

the millions of climate migrants?

YNH: I don't know.

CA: That's your answer, Kat.
(Laughter)

YNH: And I don't think
that they know either.

I mean, they'll just
deny the problem, maybe.

CA: But immigration, generally,
is another example of a sort of problem

that's very hard to solve
on a nation-by-nation basis.

One nation can shut its doors,

but maybe that stores up
problems for the future.

YNH: Yes. I mean,
it's another very good case,

especially because it's so much easier

to migrate today

than it was in the Middle Ages
or in ancient times.

CA: Yuval, there's a belief

among many technologists, certainly,

that political concerns
are kind of overblown,

that actually political leaders
don't have that much

influence in the world,

that the real determination

of humanity at this point is by science,
by invention, by companies,

by many things other than
political leaders,

and it's actually very hard
for leaders to do much,

so we're actually worrying
about nothing here.

YNH: Well, first, it should be emphasized

that it's true that political leaders
ability to do good is very limited,

but their ability to do harm is unlimited.

There is a basic imbalance here.

You can still press the button
and blow everybody up.

You have that kind of ability,

but if you want, for example,
to reduce inequality,

that's very, very difficult.

But to start a war,

you can still do so very easily.

So there is a built-in imbalance
in the political system today

which is very frustrating

that you cannot do a lot of good

but you can still do a lot of harm.

And this makes the political system

still a very big concern.

CA: So as you look at what's
happening today,

and putting your historian's hat on,

do you look back in history

at moments when things
were going just fine

and an individual leader

really took the world
or their country backwards?

YNH: There are quite a few examples,

but I should emphasize, it's never
an individual leader.

I mean, somebody put him there,

and somebody allowed him
to continue to be there.

So it's never really just the fault
of a single individual.

There is a lot of people

behind every such individual.

CA: Can we have the microphone here please

to Andrew?

Andrew Solomon: You've talked a lot about
the global versus the national,

but increasingly

but increasingly it seems to me
that the world situation

is in the hands of identity groups.

We look at people within the United States

who have been recruited by ISIS.

We look at these other groups
which have formed

which go outside of national bounds

but still represent
significant authorities.

How are they to be integrated
into the system,

and how is a diverse set of identities

to be made coherent under
either national or global leadership?

YNH: well, the problem
of such diverse identities

is a problem for nationalism as well.

Nationalism believes
in a single, monolithic identity,

and exclusive or at least
more extreme versions of nationalism

believe in an exclusive loyalty
to a single identity,

and therefore nationalism has had
a lot of problems

with people wanting to divide
their identities

between various groups.

So it's not just a problem, say,
for a global vision.

And I think, again, history shows

that you shouldn't necessarily think

in such exclusive terms.

If you think that there is just
a single identity for a person,

I am just X, that's it,

I can't be several things,
I can be just that,

that's the start of the problem.

You have religions, you have nations

that sometimes demand exclusive loyalty,

but it's not the only option.

There are many religions and many nations

that enable you to have diverse identities

at the same time.

CA: But is one explanation of what's
happened in the last year

that a group of people have got
fed up with, if you like,

the liberal elites, for want
of a better term,

obsessing over many, many
different identities

and them feeling,
"But what about my identity?

I am being completely ignored here.

And by the way, I thought
I was the majority."

And that that's actually
sparked a lot of the anger.

YNH: Yeah. Identity is always problematic

because identity is always based

on fictional stories

that sooner or later collide with reality.

Almost all identities,

I mean, beyond the level

of the basic communities
of a few dozen people,

are based on a fictional story.

They are not the truth.

They are not the reality.

It's just a story that people invent
and tell one another and start believing.

And therefore all identities
are extremely unstable.

They are not a biological reality.

I mean, sometimes nationalists,
for example, think that the nation

is a biological entity.

It's made of the combination
of soil and blood,

creates the nation.

But this is just a fictional story.

CA: Soil and blood
kind of makes a gooey mess.

(Laughter)

YNH: It does,

and also it messes with your mind

when you think too much

that I am a combination of soil and blood.

If you look from a biological perspective,

obviously none of the nations
that exist today

existed 5,000 years ago.

Homo sapiens is a social animal,

that's for sure,

but for millions of years,

homo sapiens and our hominid ancestors

lived in small communities

of a few dozen individuals.

Everybody knew everybody else.

Whereas modern nations
are imagined communities,

in a sense that I don't
even know all these people.

I come from a relatively
small nation, Israel,

and eight million Israelis,

I never met most of them.

I will never meet most of them.

They basically exist here.

CA: But in terms of this identity,

this group who feel left out

and perhaps have work taken away,

I mean, in "Homo Deus"

you actually speak of this group
in one sense expanding,

that so many people

may have their jobs taken away

by technology in some way

that we could end up with a really large,

I think you call it a useless class,

a class where traditionally,

as viewed by the economy,
these people have no use.

YNH: Yes.

CA: How likely a possibility is that?

Is that something we should
be terrified about?

And can we address it in any way?

YNH: We should think about it
very carefully.

I mean, nobody really knows

what the job market would look like

in 2040, 2050.

There is a chance many
new jobs will appear,

but it's not certain,

and even if new jobs do appear,

it won't necessarily be easy

for a 50-year old
unemployed truck driver,

made unemployed by self-driving vehicles,

it won't be easy for
an unemployed truck driver

to reinvent himself or herself

as a designer of virtual worlds.

I mean, previously, if you look at the
trajectory of the industrial revolution,

when machines replaced humans
in one type of work,

the solution usually came
from low-skilled work

in new lines of business.

So you didn't need any more
agricultural workers,

so people moved to working
in low-skilled industrial jobs,

and when this was taken away
by more and more machines,

people moved to low-skill service jobs.

Now, when people say there will
be new jobs in the future

that humans can do better than AI,

that humans can do better than robots,

they usually think about high-skilled jobs

like software engineers

designing virtual worlds.

Now, I don't see

how an unemployed cashier from Wal-Mart

reinvents herself or himself at 50

as a designer of virtual worlds,

and certainly I don't see how
the millions of unemployed

Bangladeshi textile workers

will be able to do that.

I mean, if they are going to do it,

we need to start teaching
the Bangladeshis today

how to be software designers,

and we are not doing it.

So what will they do in 20 years?

CA: So it feels like you're really
highlighting a question

that's really been bugging me
the last few months more and more.

It's almost a hard question
to ask in public,

but if any mind has some wisdom
to offer in it, maybe it's yours,

so I'm going to ask you:

what are humans for?

YNH: As far as we know, for nothing.

(Laughter)

I mean, there is no great cosmic drama,

some great cosmic plan,

that we have a role to play in it,

and we just need to discover
what our role is

and then play it to the best
of our ability.

This has been the story

of all religions
and ideologies and so forth,

but as a scientist, the best I can say,

this is not true.

There is no universal drama
with a role in it for homo sapiens.

So --

CA: I'm going to push back on you
just for a minute,

just from your own book,

because in "Homo Deus,"

you give really one of the most
coherent and understandable accounts

about sentience, about consciousness,

and that unique sort of human skill.

You point out that it's
different from intelligence,

the intelligence that we're
building in machines,

and that there's actually a lot
of mystery around it.

How can you be sure

there's no purpose

when we don't even understand

what this sentience thing is?

I mean, in your own thinking,

isn't there a chance that what humans
are for is to be the universe's

sentient things,

to be the centers of joy and love
and happiness and hope?

And maybe we can build machines
that actually help amplify that,

even if they're not going
to become sentient themselves?

Is that crazy?

I kind of found myself hoping that
reading your book.

YNH: Well, I certainly think that the most
interesting question today in science

is the question of consciousness
and the mind.

We are getting better and better

in understanding the brain

and intelligence,

but we are not getting much better

in understanding the mind
and consciousness.

People often confuse intelligence
and consciousness,

especially in places like Silicon Valley,

which is understandable because,
in humans, they go together.

I mean, intelligence basically
is the ability to solve problems.

Consciousness is the ability
to feel things,

to feel joy and sadness
and boredom and pain and so forth.

In homo sapiens, and all
other mammals as well,

it's not unique to humans,

in all mammals and birds
and some other animals,

intelligence and consciousness
go together.

We often solve problems

by feeling things.

So we tend to confuse them.

But they are different things.

What's happening today
in places like Silicon Valley

is that we are creating

artificial intelligence

but not artificial consciousness.

There has been an amazing development
in computer intelligence

over the last 50 years,

and exactly zero development
in computer consciousness,

and there is no indications that computers
are going to become conscious

anytime soon.

So first of all, if there is
some cosmic role for consciousness,

it's not unique to homo sapiens.

Cows are conscious, pigs are conscious,

chimpanzees are conscious,
chickens are conscious,

so if we go that way,

first of all we need
to broaden our horizons

and remember very clearly

we are not the only
sentient beings on Earth,

and when it comes to sentience,

when it comes to intelligence,
there is good reason to think

we are the most intelligent
of the whole bunch.

But when it comes to sentience,

to say that humans are more
sentient than whales,

or more sentient than baboons
or more sentient than cats,

I see no evidence for that.

So first step is, you go
in that direction, expand.

And then the second question

of what is it for,

I would reverse it

and I would say that

I don't think sentience is for anything.

I think we don't need
to find our role in the universe.

The really important thing

is to liberate ourselves from suffering.

What characterizes sentient beings

in contrast to robots, to stones,

to whatever,

is that sentient beings
suffer, can suffer,

and what they should focus on

is not finding their place

in some mysterious cosmic drama.

They should focus on understanding
what suffering is,

what causes it, and how
to be liberated from it.

CA: I know this is a big issue for you,

and that was very eloquent.

We're going to have a blizzard
of questions from the audience here,

and maybe from Facebook as well,

and maybe some comments as well.

So let's go quick.

There's one right here.

Keep your hands held up
at the back if you want the mic,

and we'll get it back to you.

Question: So in your work, you talk a lot
about the fictional stories

that we accept as truth,

and we live our lives by it.

As an individual, knowing that,

how does it impact the stories
that you choose to live your life,

and do you confuse them with the truth

like all of us?

YNH: I try not to.

I mean, for me, maybe the most
important question,

both as a scientist and as a person,

is how to tell the difference
between fiction and reality,

because reality is there.

I'm not saying that everything is fiction.

It's just very difficult for human beings

to tell the difference

between fiction and reality,

and it has become more and more difficult

as history progressed,

because the fictions
that we have created --

nations and gods and money
and corporations --

they now control the world.

So just to even think that oh,
this is just all fictional entities

that we've created, is very difficult.

But reality is there.

For me the best --

There are several tests

to tell the difference
between fiction and reality.

The simplest one, the best one
that I can say in short

is the test of suffering.

If it can suffer, it's real.

If it can't suffer, it's not real.

A nation cannot suffer.

That's very, very clear.

Even if a nation loses a war,

we say, "Germany suffered a defeat
in the First World War."

It's a metaphor.

Germany cannot suffer.

Germany has no mind.

Germany has no consciousness.

Germans can suffer, yes,
but Germany cannot.

Similarly, when a bank goes bust,

so the bank cannot suffer.

When the dollar loses its value,
the dollar doesn't suffer.

People can suffer. Animals can suffer.

This is real.

So I would start, if you
really want to see reality,

I would go through the door of suffering.

If you can really understand
what suffering is,

this will give you also the key

to understand what reality is.

CA: There's a Facebook question
here that connects to this,

and it's from someone around the world
in a language that I cannot read --

YNH: Oh, it's Hebrew.
CA: It's Hebrew. There you go.

(Laughter)

Can you read the name?
YNH: [??]

CA: Well, thank you for writing in.
The question is, is the post-truth era

really a brand new era,

or just another climax or moment
in a never-ending trend?

YNH: Personally, I don't connect
with this idea of post-truth.

My basic reaction as a historian,

if this is the era of post-truth,

when the hell was the era of truth?
CA: Right.

(Laughter)

YNH: Was it the 1980s, the 1950s,

the Middle Ages?

I mean, we have always lived
in an era, in a way, of post-truth.

CA: But I'd push back on that,
because I think what people

are talking about is that there was
a world where you had

fewer journalistic outlets,

where there were traditions

that things were fact-checked,
it was incorporated into the charter

of those organizations that
the truth mattered.

So if you believe in a reality,

then what you write is information.

There was a belief that that information

should connect to reality in a real way,
and that if you wrote a headline,

it was a serious and earnest attempt

to reflect something
that had actually happened.

And people didn't always get it right,
but I think the concern now is you've got

a technological system
that's incredibly powerful

that for a while at least

massively amplified anything

with no attention paid to whether
it connected to reality,

only to whether it connected to clicks

and attention,

and that that was arguably toxic.

That's a reasonable concern, isn't it?

YNH: Yeah, it is. I mean,
the technology changes,

and it's now easier to disseminate
both truth and fiction and falsehood.

It goes both ways.

It's also much easier, though,

to spread the truth

than it was ever before.

But I don't think there is anything

essentially new

about this disseminating fictions

and errors.

There is nothing that, I don't know,
Goebbels, Joseph Goebbels, didn't know

about all this idea of fake news

and post-truth.

He famously said that if you repeat
a lie often enough,

people will think it's the truth,

and the bigger the lie, the better,

because people won't even think
that something so big can be a lie.

I think that fake news

has been with us for thousands of years.

Just think of the Bible.

(Laughter)

CA: But there is a concern
that the fake news

is associated with tyrannical regimes,

and when you see an uprise in fake news

that is a canary in the coal mine

that there may be dark times coming.

YNH: Yeah. I mean, the intentional use
of fake news is a disturbing sign,

but I'm not saying that it's not bad,
I'm just saying that it's not new.

CA: So there's a lot of interest
on Facebook on this question

about global governance
versus nationalism.

Question here from Phil Dennis:

how do we get people, governments,
to relinquish power?

Is that a necessity?

Is it going to take war to get there?

Sorry Phil, I mangled your question,
but I blame the text right here.

YNH: One option that some people
talk about is that only a catastrophe

can shake humankind

and open the path to a real system
of global governance,

and they say that we can't do it
before the catastrophe,

but we need to start
laying the foundations

so that when the disaster strikes,

we can react quickly.

But people will just not have
the motivation to do such a thing

before the disaster strikes.

Another thing that I would emphasize

is that anybody who is really
interested in global governance

should always make it very, very clear

that it doesn't replace or abolish

local identities and communities,

that it should come both as --

It should be part of a single package.

CA: I want to hear more on this,
because the very words "global governance"

are almost the epitome of evil
in the mindset of a lot of people

on the alt-right right now.

It just seems scary, remote, distant,
and it has let them down,

and so globalist,
global governance, no, go away!

And many view the election
as the ultimate poke in the eye

to anyone who believes in that.

So how do we change the narrative

so that it doesn't seem
so scary and remote?

Build more on this idea

of it being compatible
with local identity, local communities.

YNH: Well, I think again we should start

really with the biological realities

of homo sapiens,

and biology tells us two things

about homo sapiens which are
very relevant to this issue:

first of all, that we are
completely dependent

on the ecological system around us,

and that today we are talking about
a global system.

You cannot escape that.

And at the same time, biology tells us
about homo sapiens

that we are social animals

but that we are social
on a very, very local level.

It's just a simple fact of humanity

that we cannot have intimate familiarity

with more than about 150 individuals.

The size of the natural group,

the natural community, of homo sapiens,

is not more than 150 individuals,

and everything beyond that

is really based on all kinds
of imaginary stories

and large-scale institutions,

and I think that we can find a way,

again based on a biological
understanding of our species,

to weave the two together

and to understand that today
in the 21st century,

we need both the global level

and the local community,

and I would go even further than that

and say that it starts
with the body itself.

The feelings that people today have

of alienation and loneliness
and not finding their place in the world,

I would think that the chief problem

is not global capitalism.

The chief problem is that over
the last hundred years,

people have been

becoming disembodied,

have been distancing themselves
from their body.

As a hunter-gatherer or even as a peasant,

to survive you need to be
constantly in touch

with your body and with your senses,

every moment.

If you go to the forest
to look for mushrooms

and you don't pay attention
to what you hear,

to what you smell, to what you taste,

you're dead.

So you must be very connected.

In the last hundred years,
people are losing their ability

to be in touch with their body
and their senses,

to hear, to smell, to feel.

More and more attention goes to screens,

to what is happening elsewhere,

some other time.

This I think is the deep reason

for the feelings of alienation
and loneliness and so forth,

and therefore part of the solution

is not to bring back some mass nationalism

but also reconnect with our own bodies,

and if you are back
in touch with your body,

you will feel much more at home
in the world also.

CA: Well, depending on how things go,
we may all be back in the forest soon.

We'll see. We'll have one more question
in the room and one more on Facebook.

Question: Hello.
I'm from Ghana, West Africa,

and my question is:

I'm wondering how do you present
and justify the idea of global governance

to countries that have been
historically disenfranchised

by the effects of globalization,

and also if we're talking about
global governance,

it also sounds to me like it will
definitely come from a very

Westernized idea of what's
the global supposed to look like.

So how do we present and justify
that idea of global

versus wholly nationalist

to people in countries like Ghana
and Nigeria and Togo

and other countries like that?

YNH: I would start by saying
that history is extremely unfair,

and that we should realize that

many of the countries that suffered most

from the last 200 years of globalization

and imperialism and industrialization

are exactly the countries

which are also most likely to suffer most

from the next wave.

And we should be very,
very clear about that.

If we don't have a global governance,

and if we suffer from climate change,

from technological disruptions,

the worst suffering
will not be in the U.S.

The worst suffering will be in Ghana,
will be in Sudan, will be in Syria,

will be in Bangladesh,
will be in those places.

So I think those countries
have an even greater incentive

to do something

about the next wave of disruption,

whether it's ecological
or whether it's technological.

Again, if you think about
technological disruption,

so if AI and 3D printers and robots

will take the jobs

from billions of people,

I worry far less about the Swedes

than about the people in Ghana
or in Bangladesh.

And therefore, because
history is so unfair

and the results of a calamity

will not be shared equally
between everybody.

As usual, the rich will be able
to get away from

the worst consequences of climate change

in a way that the poor
will not be able to.

CA: And here's a great question
from Cameron Taylor on Facebook:

at the end of "Sapiens,"

you said we should be asking the question,

what do we want to want?

Well, what do you think
we should want to want?

YNH: I think we should want
to want to know the truth,

to understand reality.

Mostly what we want is to change reality,

to fit it to our own desires,

to our own wishes,

and I think we should first want

to understand it.

If you look at the long-term
trajectory of history,

what you see is that
for thousands of years

we humans have been gaining
control of the world outside us

and trying to shape it

to fit our own desires.

And we've gained control
of the other animals,

of the rivers, of the forests,

and reshaped them completely,

causing an ecological destruction

without making ourselves satisfied.

So the next step

is we turn our gaze inwards,

and we say okay, getting control
of the world outside us

did not really make us satisfied.

Let's now try to gain control
of the world inside us.

This is the really big project

of science and technology
and industry in the 21st century

will be to try and gain control
of the world inside us,

to learn how to engineer and produce

bodies and brains and minds.

These are likely to be the main products

of the 21st century economy.

When people think about the future,

very often they think in terms,

oh, I want to gain control
of my body and of my brain.

And I think that's very dangerous.

If we've learned anything
from our previous history,

it's that yes,

we gain the power to manipulate,

but because we didn't really
understand the complexity

of the ecological system,

we are now facing an ecological meltdown.

And if we now try to reengineer
the world inside us

without really understanding it,

especially without understanding
the complexity of our mental system,

we might cause a kind of
internal ecological disaster,

and we will face a kind of mental
meltdown inside us.

CA: Putting all the pieces together here,

the current politics,
the coming technology,

concerns like the one
you've just outlined,

I mean, it seems like you yourself

are in quite a bleak place

when you think about the future.

You're pretty worried about it.

Is that right?

And if there was one cause
for hope, how would you state that?

YNH: I focus on the most dangerous

possibilities partly because this is
like my job or responsibility

as an historian or social critic.

I mean, the industry focuses mainly
on the positive sides,

so it's the job of historians
and philosophers and sociologists

to highlight the more dangerous potential

of all these new technologies.

I don't think any of that is inevitable.

Technology is never deterministic.

You can use the same technology to
create very different kinds of societies.

If you look at the 20th century,

so the technologies
of the Industrial Revolution,

the trains and electricity and all that

could be used to create
a communist dictatorship

or a fascist regime
or a liberal democracy.

The trains did not tell you
what to do with them.

Similarly, now, artificial intelligence
and bioengineering and all of that,

they don't predetermine a single outcome.

Humanity can rise up to the challenge,

and the best example we have
of humanity rising up

to the challenge of a new technology

is nuclear weapons.

In the late 1940s, '50s,

many people were convinced

that sooner or later the Cold War will end

in a nuclear catastrophe,
destroying human civilization.

And this did not happen.

In fact, nuclear weapons

prompted humans all over the world

to change the way that they managed

international politics,

to reduce violence.

And many countries basically took out war

from their political toolkit.

They no longer tried
to pursue their interests with warfare.

Not all countries have done so,
but many countries have.

And this is maybe the most
important reason

why international violence
declined dramatically since 1945,

and today, as I said,

more people commit suicide

than are killed in war.

So this I think gives us a good example

that even the most frightening technology,

humans can rise up to the challenge

and actually some good can come out of it.

The problem is, we have very little
margins for error.

If we don't get it right,

we might not have a second option

to try again.

CA: That's a very powerful note
on which I think we should draw this

to a conclusion.

Before I wrap I just want to say
one thing to people here

and to the global TED community

watching online, anyone watching online.

Help us with these dialogues.

If you believe, like we do,

that we need to find
a different kind of conversation,

now more than ever, help us do it.

Reach out to other people,

try and have conversations
with people you disagree with,

understand them,

pull the pieces together,

and help us figure out how
to take these conversations forward

so we can make a real contribution

to what's happening
in the world right now.

I think everyone feels more alive,

more concerned, more engaged

with the politics of the moment.

The stakes do seem quite high,

so help us respond to it

in a wise, wise way.

Yuval Harari, thank you.

(Applause)