1 00:00:02,200 --> 00:00:04,900 Welcome to Keith's night, don't tread on anyone and the 2 00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:08,600 libertarian Institute. Today I am honored to have Matt 3 00:00:08,600 --> 00:00:10,500 Ridley. He is a British journalist, a 4 00:00:10,500 --> 00:00:14,400 member of the House of Lords in author of books that have sold 5 00:00:14,400 --> 00:00:18,400 over a million copies that have been translated into 31 6 00:00:19,400 --> 00:00:22,100 languages. What an accomplishment? 7 00:00:22,100 --> 00:00:26,300 I mean 31 languages, I'm still trying to nail down English, and 8 00:00:26,300 --> 00:00:29,500 he's at 31 languages, unbelievable find a mat 9 00:00:29,500 --> 00:00:32,500 mattress. Late .co.uk Links, of course, 10 00:00:32,500 --> 00:00:34,600 will be in the description below. 11 00:00:34,600 --> 00:00:37,400 We're going to go over three books today, the rational 12 00:00:37,400 --> 00:00:41,700 Optimist how Innovation Works and the evolution of everything 13 00:00:42,100 --> 00:00:43,600 mr. Ridley, thank you so much for 14 00:00:43,600 --> 00:00:47,200 your time today. Thank you, Keith for having me 15 00:00:47,400 --> 00:00:50,800 on the show. Now, before we get into these 16 00:00:50,800 --> 00:00:54,000 three, you have committed a number of thought crimes. 17 00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:58,600 With a new book, you have titled viral the search for the origin 18 00:00:58,800 --> 00:01:01,600 of covid-19. EU co-authored this with a 19 00:01:01,700 --> 00:01:05,500 scientist Alina Chun from Harvard and MIT s broad 20 00:01:05,600 --> 00:01:08,300 Institute. What is your thesis behind this 21 00:01:08,300 --> 00:01:11,600 book? These is behind that book is 22 00:01:11,600 --> 00:01:13,900 very simple that it's extremely important. 23 00:01:13,900 --> 00:01:16,600 That the world finds out how this pandemic began, so that we 24 00:01:16,600 --> 00:01:20,300 can prevent the next one that unlike the case of SARS and a 25 00:01:20,300 --> 00:01:25,100 lot of other recent outbreaks. We don't know, we haven't got a 26 00:01:25,107 --> 00:01:27,900 Smoking Gun to tell us the answer. 27 00:01:28,400 --> 00:01:30,900 It looks were not. Full cooperation and 28 00:01:30,900 --> 00:01:33,200 transparency from the Chinese government, that would enable us 29 00:01:33,200 --> 00:01:38,300 to solve this problem, but the evidence we have seen suggests 30 00:01:38,300 --> 00:01:42,300 that the favored explanation at the start that it was the result 31 00:01:42,300 --> 00:01:46,000 of someone buying an animal in the market that had somehow been 32 00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:48,200 in contact with a bat and picked up the virus. 33 00:01:48,200 --> 00:01:51,900 That way doesn't seem to make sense. 34 00:01:51,900 --> 00:01:54,900 We've not been able to find an infected animal, despite 80,000 35 00:01:54,900 --> 00:01:57,900 animals being tested by the Chinese etc etc. 36 00:01:58,400 --> 00:02:02,500 And it's looking more and more like likely that it is not a 37 00:02:02,500 --> 00:02:05,800 coincidence that Wuhan is the one city in the world. 38 00:02:05,800 --> 00:02:11,100 With the biggest collection of bat born size like coronavirus, 39 00:02:11,100 --> 00:02:15,900 he's in the world by some distance and has been 40 00:02:15,900 --> 00:02:19,300 manipulating as well as collecting those viruses on a 41 00:02:19,300 --> 00:02:22,000 huge scale but only in the last 10 or 15 years. 42 00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:28,000 So that does seem to indicate and the more we found out about 43 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:31,600 the experiments they were doing in Wuhan These viruses the more 44 00:02:31,600 --> 00:02:35,300 we think it's important to properly investigate the 45 00:02:35,300 --> 00:02:37,900 possibility that this came from a laboratory. 46 00:02:38,200 --> 00:02:39,900 So we think it's an open question. 47 00:02:40,200 --> 00:02:41,600 It could have come through the market. 48 00:02:41,600 --> 00:02:45,000 It could have come through the laboratory, it's pretty shocking 49 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:47,700 that we don't know that. The Chinese are not being 50 00:02:47,700 --> 00:02:50,200 particularly helpful in letting us find out. 51 00:02:50,300 --> 00:02:55,900 And the evidence is very intriguing and deserves a book. 52 00:02:56,000 --> 00:02:59,400 A detective story, a whodunit if you like in its own right 53 00:02:59,400 --> 00:03:02,600 already, Yeah. That's our thesis and it's been 54 00:03:02,600 --> 00:03:04,800 an extraordinary experience writing that book one of the 55 00:03:05,400 --> 00:03:10,400 most fascinating but also rather alarming things that I've done 56 00:03:10,400 --> 00:03:14,200 and I had the great privilege of collaborating with a brilliant 57 00:03:14,200 --> 00:03:17,600 young scientist Alina Chan at the broad Institute as you 58 00:03:17,600 --> 00:03:21,400 mentioned when it comes to the first cases. 59 00:03:21,700 --> 00:03:25,600 Where did the first cases occur where they, in this wet market 60 00:03:25,600 --> 00:03:29,400 area where the close to this Institute of virology, can you 61 00:03:29,408 --> 00:03:33,100 give us a Geographical area of where the started. 62 00:03:34,600 --> 00:03:39,700 Well, not entirely, no because we're dealing with partial bits 63 00:03:39,700 --> 00:03:43,400 of information, but what we do know is that it started in work 64 00:03:43,400 --> 00:03:45,600 on the evidence that it was anywhere else. 65 00:03:45,600 --> 00:03:50,200 But were hand before November or December of 2019 is very, very 66 00:03:50,200 --> 00:03:56,300 thin indeed. And the first cases were 67 00:03:56,400 --> 00:04:00,100 detected sometime around the middle of November. 68 00:04:00,100 --> 00:04:02,900 We think we've seen one leaked document from the Chinese 69 00:04:02,900 --> 00:04:05,800 authorities. Giving a case of the 17th of 70 00:04:05,800 --> 00:04:10,900 November is the earliest they then denied that and said that, 71 00:04:10,900 --> 00:04:13,800 the first case was the first of December that later they said, 72 00:04:13,800 --> 00:04:15,300 maybe it was the 8th of December. 73 00:04:15,500 --> 00:04:17,600 Nobody believes it bullet began that late. 74 00:04:17,600 --> 00:04:20,300 I mean everybody thinks if you look at the genetics if you look 75 00:04:20,300 --> 00:04:26,000 at the case numbers Etc it was probably the first human being 76 00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:29,600 was probably infected in either late October or mid-november 77 00:04:29,600 --> 00:04:35,100 2019 some time in that period and Where was it? 78 00:04:35,300 --> 00:04:38,500 Well, we don't know the wasn't outbreak in the market very 79 00:04:38,500 --> 00:04:44,200 early on about half the cases in December, were people connected 80 00:04:44,200 --> 00:04:48,500 directly to the market but the problem with that is that the 81 00:04:48,500 --> 00:04:51,400 Chinese authorities very early on. 82 00:04:51,500 --> 00:04:55,400 In the first part of January were saying if you have 83 00:04:55,400 --> 00:05:01,000 pneumonia in Wuhan and you had a connection to the market, then 84 00:05:01,000 --> 00:05:04,700 we will Isolate. You and investigate because he 85 00:05:04,700 --> 00:05:07,900 probably got this new disease if you didn't have a connection 86 00:05:07,900 --> 00:05:09,600 with the market. If you've not been there or you 87 00:05:09,608 --> 00:05:13,300 don't live near it, then we will assume you don't, we will assume 88 00:05:13,300 --> 00:05:15,500 you've got some other kind of pneumonia so there's what's 89 00:05:15,500 --> 00:05:19,500 called an ass attainment bias whereby the market cases were 90 00:05:19,500 --> 00:05:22,000 spotted earlier because you had to be a market case to be 91 00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:25,700 defined as a source Covey, to Case covid Case. 92 00:05:25,800 --> 00:05:32,400 So that's our problem. But we can't be sure but We 93 00:05:32,400 --> 00:05:37,900 think it was circulating in Wuhan in early, sorry, in late, 94 00:05:37,900 --> 00:05:44,000 2019, in November and we badly need more collaboration. 95 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:46,200 And cooperation for the Chinese to trace, the early cases. 96 00:05:46,500 --> 00:05:50,600 Us intelligence says there were three workers from that lab from 97 00:05:50,600 --> 00:05:53,600 the Wuhan Institute of archaeology, who went to 98 00:05:53,600 --> 00:05:57,100 hospital with pneumonia, like illness and symptoms vary like 99 00:05:57,100 --> 00:06:01,700 covid in November of 2019. Now, I don't have sufficient 100 00:06:01,700 --> 00:06:03,500 security. A clearance to be able to check 101 00:06:03,500 --> 00:06:07,900 that information, but we are told that with significant 102 00:06:07,900 --> 00:06:10,200 Assurance by the intelligence authorities. 103 00:06:10,200 --> 00:06:15,100 So that might be important information, but we can't check 104 00:06:15,100 --> 00:06:19,500 it. You wrote a blog post titled. 105 00:06:19,500 --> 00:06:22,600 Why did scientists suppress lab leak, Theory? 106 00:06:22,800 --> 00:06:26,600 Do you have a theory as to why this was suppressed as opposed 107 00:06:26,600 --> 00:06:32,400 to openly discussed? Yes, there was a coordinated 108 00:06:32,400 --> 00:06:35,500 attempt to shut down all discussion of the lab leak as a 109 00:06:35,500 --> 00:06:39,500 possibility in January, and February of 2020. 110 00:06:40,100 --> 00:06:42,800 We know this because we've seen the emails in which they discuss 111 00:06:43,100 --> 00:06:46,400 devising, an article that they can then publish. 112 00:06:46,500 --> 00:06:50,500 And point to saying, case closed, this is the market not 113 00:06:50,500 --> 00:06:54,400 the lab and we can assure everyone of that. 114 00:06:55,500 --> 00:06:58,600 At the same time, those very scientists who wrote that 115 00:06:58,600 --> 00:07:01,600 article, Was saying to each other in private, you know what, 116 00:07:01,600 --> 00:07:03,600 this looks awfully like, it might have come out the lab. 117 00:07:03,600 --> 00:07:06,300 We don't know some of the features of a genome look, like 118 00:07:06,300 --> 00:07:09,600 it's been manipulated in the lab, not just, not just kept in 119 00:07:09,600 --> 00:07:13,900 a lab. And so the extraordinary 120 00:07:14,100 --> 00:07:16,100 disconnect between what they were saying in private. 121 00:07:16,100 --> 00:07:19,000 And what they're saying in public, came to light, as a 122 00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:21,900 result of a number of emails, surrounding a key meeting on the 123 00:07:21,900 --> 00:07:25,700 first of February, 20, 2008 between some us and UK, 124 00:07:27,200 --> 00:07:32,800 virologists the motor Ation was clearly not to get science into 125 00:07:32,800 --> 00:07:40,400 trouble and not to endorse Donald Trump's ideas about what 126 00:07:40,400 --> 00:07:46,100 was going on and to support Chinese colleagues who were you 127 00:07:46,100 --> 00:07:50,400 know furious at the idea that they might be accused of 128 00:07:50,400 --> 00:07:54,000 starting this pandemic. So there's actually no one with 129 00:07:54,000 --> 00:07:57,300 a vested interest in saying actually this might have come 130 00:07:57,300 --> 00:08:00,000 from a lab. There's no one who has part of 131 00:08:00,008 --> 00:08:05,200 their paid day job thinks who I really wanted to be from a lab. 132 00:08:05,400 --> 00:08:08,000 You know, the the scientists didn't want that. 133 00:08:08,100 --> 00:08:10,100 Chinese authorities didn't want that. 134 00:08:10,100 --> 00:08:12,600 The politicians in the west particularly didn't want that. 135 00:08:12,600 --> 00:08:15,000 Because I didn't want to rock the boat in diplomatic relations 136 00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:16,700 with China. The environmentalist didn't want 137 00:08:16,700 --> 00:08:19,700 that because they wanted this to be a cautionary tale about 138 00:08:19,700 --> 00:08:21,400 destruction of the rainforests and so on. 139 00:08:21,700 --> 00:08:26,500 So so actually, you know, not vested interests and everything 140 00:08:26,500 --> 00:08:28,300 people can go against their best interest. 141 00:08:28,500 --> 00:08:32,900 And I is a big fan of Science and a huge supporter of 142 00:08:32,900 --> 00:08:36,400 biotechnology in particular, do not have a vested interest in 143 00:08:36,400 --> 00:08:40,900 this being a lab story, it will do damage to some of the science 144 00:08:40,900 --> 00:08:46,700 that I admire and value if that turns out to be the case but I 145 00:08:46,700 --> 00:08:51,300 have to follow the truth wherever it takes us and a 146 00:08:51,300 --> 00:08:54,600 leaner and I started are very open-minded lie and by the time 147 00:08:54,600 --> 00:08:57,800 we'd finished writing the book. We were convinced that it was 148 00:08:57,800 --> 00:09:00,900 probably oddly more likely that it came out of the laboratory 149 00:09:01,200 --> 00:09:04,900 and we've clearly laid out some of the information we would need 150 00:09:04,900 --> 00:09:08,000 to solve the problem. That's the information was still 151 00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:11,600 waiting for. You mentioned in another blog 152 00:09:11,600 --> 00:09:12,800 post. I think it was titled. 153 00:09:12,800 --> 00:09:18,300 I was duped by lab leak. Deniers where you would mention, 154 00:09:18,300 --> 00:09:20,700 there was a previous lab leak in. 155 00:09:20,900 --> 00:09:24,700 I think Britain during the foot and mouth and get, can you 156 00:09:24,700 --> 00:09:28,000 discuss previous lab leaks? I think it was 2007. 157 00:09:30,400 --> 00:09:31,800 Yes. Well there's a number of cases. 158 00:09:31,800 --> 00:09:36,600 I mean, lab labs have leaked smallpox in Britain in the 70s 159 00:09:36,900 --> 00:09:41,800 flew in China in the 70s brucellosis in China and 2019, 160 00:09:42,500 --> 00:09:47,100 Anthrax in the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, a leak that was 161 00:09:47,100 --> 00:09:49,900 denied for many years and then eventually when the Soviet Union 162 00:09:49,900 --> 00:09:51,900 collapsed was confirmed to have happened. 163 00:09:52,200 --> 00:09:57,000 So outbreaks that have killed people have happened frequently, 164 00:09:57,100 --> 00:10:00,300 SARS itself lie. Like six times from labs in 165 00:10:00,300 --> 00:10:03,500 Beijing, Singapore, and Taiwan the first starts. 166 00:10:03,500 --> 00:10:06,500 That was and actually killed people on one of those 167 00:10:06,500 --> 00:10:08,900 occasions. But the one you're referring to 168 00:10:08,900 --> 00:10:11,600 is a really interesting case and it's an animal disease. 169 00:10:11,600 --> 00:10:14,500 So didn't kill anybody, but it's called foot and mouth disease, 170 00:10:14,500 --> 00:10:19,100 it affects cattle. It broke out in 2007, on a farm 171 00:10:19,100 --> 00:10:24,400 in Surrey in England, which was 13 miles from the world's 172 00:10:24,400 --> 00:10:28,300 leading Reference Laboratory for foot and mouth. 173 00:10:28,500 --> 00:10:32,300 This virus now that turned out not to be a coincidence, you 174 00:10:32,300 --> 00:10:35,300 will not be surprised to hear it. 175 00:10:35,300 --> 00:10:40,200 Turned out there was a leaking pipe at the lab and a contractor 176 00:10:40,200 --> 00:10:43,500 had been called in to mend it and the contractor had then gone 177 00:10:43,500 --> 00:10:46,900 straight to a farm. Nobody realized that the leaking 178 00:10:46,900 --> 00:10:50,300 pipe was actually leaking live virus and he had infected cattle 179 00:10:50,300 --> 00:10:52,500 on the farm. So the problem was solved quite 180 00:10:52,500 --> 00:10:56,600 quickly and it was contained and not many animals had to be 181 00:10:56,600 --> 00:11:01,500 killed but The point is, it wasn't a geographical 182 00:11:01,500 --> 00:11:06,400 coincidence. Now, this outbreak began within 183 00:11:06,400 --> 00:11:10,700 eight miles of the world's leading laboratory Force as 184 00:11:10,700 --> 00:11:14,700 like, coronavirus is from bats. In an area where they aren't 185 00:11:14,700 --> 00:11:17,700 found, naturally in bats, thousands of miles from where 186 00:11:17,700 --> 00:11:21,000 they're normally collected in southern China and Southeast 187 00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:26,500 Asia. So it may be a coincidence but 188 00:11:26,500 --> 00:11:29,400 it doesn't look like it. It Like we should take very 189 00:11:29,400 --> 00:11:32,600 seriously the possibility that the geographical coincidence, 190 00:11:32,700 --> 00:11:36,900 maybe telling us something as Humphrey Bogart, put it in, as a 191 00:11:36,900 --> 00:11:40,600 blanket of all the Gin joints in all the towns in all the world, 192 00:11:40,600 --> 00:11:46,300 she should walk into mine. You wrote a book, The Evolution 193 00:11:46,300 --> 00:11:48,600 of everything. How new ideas emerge? 194 00:11:48,600 --> 00:11:51,200 Mr. Ridley. How do new ideas emerge? 195 00:11:54,100 --> 00:11:58,700 Well, my argument there was that we tend to think think of the 196 00:11:58,700 --> 00:12:03,300 world and top-down terms. We say somebody decides in 197 00:12:03,300 --> 00:12:08,800 government or inside a big company that we must invent X 198 00:12:08,800 --> 00:12:13,000 and we invent X or somebody decides that the that we're 199 00:12:13,000 --> 00:12:16,000 going to solve such and such a philosophical or political 200 00:12:16,000 --> 00:12:18,800 problem or something. And actually the world doesn't 201 00:12:18,800 --> 00:12:22,900 work that way, the world is a much more bottom-up place, much 202 00:12:22,900 --> 00:12:27,400 more emergent Place. Many of the new things that 203 00:12:27,400 --> 00:12:31,700 happen in the world. Arise without Direction without 204 00:12:31,700 --> 00:12:35,700 planning without authorship. An awful. 205 00:12:35,700 --> 00:12:38,800 Lot of them come from ordinary people. 206 00:12:38,800 --> 00:12:42,500 Interacting and developing new ideas among themselves. 207 00:12:42,800 --> 00:12:47,000 So for example if you think about language, the English 208 00:12:47,000 --> 00:12:51,100 language or any other language is a man-made thing, it is not a 209 00:12:51,100 --> 00:12:58,000 natural phenomenon but it is not the product of a committee. 210 00:12:58,400 --> 00:13:06,100 A few Geniuses or some kind of planning operation within a 211 00:13:06,108 --> 00:13:11,000 government or anything else, it devolves it changes from year to 212 00:13:11,000 --> 00:13:13,300 year. New words come in Old words, go 213 00:13:13,300 --> 00:13:16,600 out, new linguistic, habits new syntax new grammar. 214 00:13:16,800 --> 00:13:21,000 All this kind of thing happens. Not because anyone's in charge, 215 00:13:21,200 --> 00:13:26,200 but because Ordinary People Do a form of natural selection. 216 00:13:26,200 --> 00:13:31,900 Good old-fashioned Evolution they say, We know to just take a 217 00:13:31,900 --> 00:13:37,000 simple example when we use words frequently, they're nearly 218 00:13:37,000 --> 00:13:40,100 always short. So, if there's a new word 219 00:13:40,100 --> 00:13:43,200 floating around like covid-19, right? 220 00:13:43,500 --> 00:13:49,400 We shortened it within a few weeks were saying covid and even 221 00:13:49,400 --> 00:13:52,100 that's a shorter from the coronavirus, you know. 222 00:13:52,100 --> 00:13:55,500 So so who decides that? I mean, who do you know, where 223 00:13:55,500 --> 00:13:57,700 did that come from? Who's the person who said, let's 224 00:13:57,700 --> 00:14:01,000 shorten Words when we use them a lot because it makes life 225 00:14:01,000 --> 00:14:03,500 easier. Well, nobody did. 226 00:14:03,600 --> 00:14:07,400 And everybody did it's the same with the internet interestingly. 227 00:14:07,400 --> 00:14:08,900 You know who invented the Internet? 228 00:14:08,900 --> 00:14:12,900 Well it wasn't al Ghul but it wasn't event, Vince surf or one 229 00:14:12,900 --> 00:14:15,400 of these other brilliant people, either they made important 230 00:14:15,400 --> 00:14:18,800 contributions, but we all invented the internet and we're 231 00:14:18,800 --> 00:14:22,800 all Reinventing it all the time so that my purpose in that book 232 00:14:22,800 --> 00:14:27,200 was to get people to stop thinking in terms of solving the 233 00:14:27,200 --> 00:14:33,100 world's problems. In a top-down dirige East 234 00:14:33,100 --> 00:14:35,800 directive. Way and think about solving 235 00:14:35,800 --> 00:14:41,800 them, through Evolution, through allowing people to interact, and 236 00:14:41,800 --> 00:14:49,000 find Solutions in a sort of collective way, but not in a way 237 00:14:49,000 --> 00:14:51,200 in which the someone in charging them of the collective. 238 00:14:52,900 --> 00:14:57,200 You wrote a book, the rational Optimist, where you highly 239 00:14:57,200 --> 00:15:02,800 praised Adam Smith, a book written in 1776, I believe 240 00:15:02,800 --> 00:15:08,300 titled an inquiry into the causes of The Wealth of Nations. 241 00:15:08,400 --> 00:15:11,400 What is the most important thing you learned from The Works of 242 00:15:11,400 --> 00:15:16,500 Adam Smith? I think Adam Smith is a towering 243 00:15:16,500 --> 00:15:19,500 figure. I hadn't read him until I was an 244 00:15:19,500 --> 00:15:22,700 adult. I wasn't taught economics, I 245 00:15:22,700 --> 00:15:28,900 came to him later in life. I but the more I go through 246 00:15:28,900 --> 00:15:31,900 life, the more I keep coming back to some of the insights 247 00:15:31,900 --> 00:15:36,100 that he had into into the world. I mean, the first point, which 248 00:15:36,100 --> 00:15:38,700 actually is, in some ways emerges from his earlier book, 249 00:15:38,900 --> 00:15:43,800 the theory of moral sentiments in 1759 Is that the world is a 250 00:15:43,800 --> 00:15:47,300 bottom-up place that things emerged, that morality is 251 00:15:47,300 --> 00:15:51,000 something that emerges from the way we interact with each other 252 00:15:51,000 --> 00:15:54,800 rather than is taught by priests as it were particularly. 253 00:15:55,500 --> 00:15:58,800 And so, for example, that's one of the points he makes. 254 00:15:59,200 --> 00:16:04,100 But in The Wealth of Nations, he invents economics. 255 00:16:04,500 --> 00:16:09,600 And what he does is he points out the enormous significance of 256 00:16:09,600 --> 00:16:14,100 the division of labor and the importance of Of specialization 257 00:16:14,100 --> 00:16:19,700 and exchange but actually, if you and I are both living in the 258 00:16:19,700 --> 00:16:24,400 Stone Age and we need a spear and an Axe and you could make 259 00:16:24,400 --> 00:16:26,000 your own Spear and your own Acts. 260 00:16:26,000 --> 00:16:28,600 Or I and I could make my own Spear of my own acts. 261 00:16:28,900 --> 00:16:33,600 But if we say Keith, you make both Spears, I'll make both axes 262 00:16:33,900 --> 00:16:37,200 and then we'll swap then. Actually it's going to take us 263 00:16:37,200 --> 00:16:40,500 less time because you're going to get good at making Spears. 264 00:16:40,500 --> 00:16:42,000 I'm going to get good at making axes. 265 00:16:42,900 --> 00:16:46,200 We're both going to, you know, by specialization and then 266 00:16:46,200 --> 00:16:48,500 exchanging we're going to be better off. 267 00:16:49,000 --> 00:16:53,500 And that in the end is the great insight about human beings as 268 00:16:53,500 --> 00:16:56,600 opposed to other species about how we operate and why we 269 00:16:56,600 --> 00:17:01,900 operate the way we do, it's an enormously significant inside 270 00:17:01,900 --> 00:17:07,000 and you know, just just think about this for a moment as the 271 00:17:07,000 --> 00:17:12,700 world modernizes, as we move forward into the 21st century. 272 00:17:13,500 --> 00:17:17,400 What I think has been happening for several hundred years is 273 00:17:17,400 --> 00:17:20,400 that people become more and more specialized in what they 274 00:17:20,400 --> 00:17:24,200 produce, but more and more Diversified in what they 275 00:17:24,200 --> 00:17:27,000 consume. So, you know, if you are self 276 00:17:27,000 --> 00:17:30,200 sufficient, if you had to make your own clothing, make your own 277 00:17:30,200 --> 00:17:33,700 food, make your own lighting, make our own shelter, you 278 00:17:33,700 --> 00:17:36,600 wouldn't live a very high quality of life and you wouldn't 279 00:17:36,600 --> 00:17:40,100 have any Leisure Time to consume movies or anything like that. 280 00:17:40,100 --> 00:17:42,200 You'd spend your whole day trying to make a candle or 281 00:17:42,200 --> 00:17:45,100 makeup. Catch an animal to eat or 282 00:17:45,100 --> 00:17:47,900 something like that. So self-sufficiency is really 283 00:17:47,900 --> 00:17:52,800 another word for poverty. And yet what we've done is we've 284 00:17:52,800 --> 00:17:56,000 said I'm going to do something called a job which is added and 285 00:17:56,000 --> 00:17:57,900 making podcasts or something like that. 286 00:17:58,200 --> 00:18:02,100 And I'm going to supply the product of my job to everyone 287 00:18:02,100 --> 00:18:06,700 else in the world in exchange for all the things they can 288 00:18:06,700 --> 00:18:10,900 produce. And so actually we shouldn't be 289 00:18:10,900 --> 00:18:15,700 afraid of specialization. Because it specialization, you 290 00:18:15,700 --> 00:18:18,500 know, people often lamento jobs are very boring. 291 00:18:18,500 --> 00:18:21,800 You know, you get stuck in your job and it's very tedious 292 00:18:21,800 --> 00:18:23,500 etcetera, etcetera. Yeah. 293 00:18:23,500 --> 00:18:26,900 But the point of the job is so that you can spend the other 294 00:18:26,900 --> 00:18:31,200 eight hours of the day consuming movies and going to restaurants 295 00:18:31,400 --> 00:18:34,500 consuming the product of other people's work. 296 00:18:35,200 --> 00:18:39,500 And so the great inside of Adam Smith, I think is how we all 297 00:18:39,500 --> 00:18:41,900 worked out how to work for each other. 298 00:18:42,900 --> 00:18:47,500 That by increase living standard. 299 00:18:48,300 --> 00:18:52,800 Mmm, I love that answer. It's almost like he's taken the 300 00:18:53,100 --> 00:18:56,500 individual self-interest and harmonized it with the 301 00:18:56,700 --> 00:19:00,800 collective self interest through the concept of fish, through the 302 00:19:00,800 --> 00:19:04,700 concept of specialization because what appears to be a 303 00:19:04,700 --> 00:19:07,800 contradiction. It's like so John Maynard Keynes 304 00:19:07,800 --> 00:19:10,700 was like, okay, so everyone selfish yet. 305 00:19:10,700 --> 00:19:13,900 Everyone is helping each other. This Makes no sense at all. 306 00:19:14,200 --> 00:19:17,700 That this is a total contradiction, but he didn't 307 00:19:17,700 --> 00:19:21,000 read the book published 200 years before his terrible book, 308 00:19:21,500 --> 00:19:26,600 which actually explains it as you do in the rational Optimist. 309 00:19:28,400 --> 00:19:30,400 That's a cane. She probably did read Adam Smith 310 00:19:30,700 --> 00:19:34,400 I would do to you if not ready but you read it but I guess he 311 00:19:34,408 --> 00:19:36,800 didn't appreciate it to the extent. 312 00:19:37,800 --> 00:19:42,000 I guess anyone else did when it comes to the modern day. 313 00:19:42,300 --> 00:19:47,000 If you Talk to say a millennial did just uh things are horrible, 314 00:19:47,000 --> 00:19:51,000 the environments bad. We have inflation, we have all 315 00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:54,000 of these bubbles, we have this inequality, there's poverty in 316 00:19:54,000 --> 00:19:56,500 the world. What are some of the bullet 317 00:19:56,500 --> 00:20:00,300 points that you list to the average person who says things 318 00:20:00,300 --> 00:20:02,400 are. So horrible today, how dare you 319 00:20:02,400 --> 00:20:04,800 write a book titled? The rational Optimist? 320 00:20:05,500 --> 00:20:08,800 Yeah, well, part of my motivation, and part of that 321 00:20:08,800 --> 00:20:11,700 with the, where I came from to write this book, was I remember 322 00:20:11,700 --> 00:20:13,600 people saying exactly, Actly the same thing. 323 00:20:13,600 --> 00:20:16,500 When I was young, I mean, I was young in the 1970s. 324 00:20:16,800 --> 00:20:20,600 I was told that the population explosion was Unstoppable. 325 00:20:20,600 --> 00:20:23,300 Famine was inevitable. Pollution pollution was going to 326 00:20:23,308 --> 00:20:25,600 shorten the lifespan through, through cancer. 327 00:20:26,900 --> 00:20:29,400 The rainforest was disappearing. The deserts were advancing the 328 00:20:29,400 --> 00:20:34,000 oil was running out. There was a Litany of gloom and 329 00:20:34,000 --> 00:20:37,300 doom, which I believed I fell for it. 330 00:20:37,400 --> 00:20:41,500 I was a genuinely pessimistic young person in the 1970s. 331 00:20:41,900 --> 00:20:45,100 Oh my God. There's no future for my 332 00:20:45,100 --> 00:20:51,000 country, my species. The world's going to be Grim in 333 00:20:51,000 --> 00:20:52,300 the future. No. 334 00:20:52,300 --> 00:20:55,300 But getting a decent job or trying to be ambitious. 335 00:20:55,300 --> 00:20:57,100 You were just going to see whether we can survive this 336 00:20:57,100 --> 00:21:00,000 horrible thing because the grown-ups told me that the 337 00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:03,800 future was Dreadful, and they never said anything about how, 338 00:21:03,800 --> 00:21:07,900 it might not be Dreadful. Now, 40 years later the world is 339 00:21:08,200 --> 00:21:10,200 wonderful. Compared with when I was a 340 00:21:10,200 --> 00:21:14,400 teenager poverty in the World has collapsed. 341 00:21:14,700 --> 00:21:17,700 It disappeared. That's not quite true. 342 00:21:17,700 --> 00:21:19,500 Of course, there is still poverty. 343 00:21:19,500 --> 00:21:23,800 But you know, when I was born about half the world lived on 344 00:21:23,800 --> 00:21:28,600 less less than two dollars a day in today's money, that's the 345 00:21:28,600 --> 00:21:33,200 sort of definition of extreme, absolute poverty, today, weigh 346 00:21:33,200 --> 00:21:36,700 less than 10%, does that that's incredible. 347 00:21:36,800 --> 00:21:39,700 Nobody has ever lived through a transformation as great as that 348 00:21:39,700 --> 00:21:42,600 child mortality is down. Lifespan is up by five hours. 349 00:21:42,800 --> 00:21:47,900 Day of my life. Life span, most infectious 350 00:21:47,900 --> 00:21:51,400 diseases of disappeared. That cancer rates are falling. 351 00:21:51,400 --> 00:21:56,100 If you adjust for age where healthier wealthier clever, a 352 00:21:56,100 --> 00:22:00,400 Keener kind of Freer more, peaceful more equal. 353 00:22:00,700 --> 00:22:03,700 Equality is improved globally dramatically. 354 00:22:04,500 --> 00:22:06,700 People in poor countries, have been getting rich much faster 355 00:22:06,700 --> 00:22:10,400 than people in rich countries. So the catalog of improvements 356 00:22:10,600 --> 00:22:14,400 During the period when we were Supposed to be having a really 357 00:22:14,400 --> 00:22:17,700 miserable time. Is something that I just, I feel 358 00:22:17,700 --> 00:22:19,800 Evangelical but telling young people. 359 00:22:20,000 --> 00:22:24,300 So when the adults tell you today, you're doomed, climate 360 00:22:24,300 --> 00:22:27,900 change, etc, etc. Take it with a pinch of salt, 361 00:22:28,200 --> 00:22:34,400 look at the data, make your own mind up and consider the 362 00:22:34,400 --> 00:22:37,800 possibility that they might be wrong because they have a huge 363 00:22:37,800 --> 00:22:41,400 vested interest in selling Gloom and do it sells newspapers. 364 00:22:41,400 --> 00:22:44,600 It sells books. I would have sold far more 365 00:22:44,600 --> 00:22:47,500 copies, you were kind enough to mention that I've sold a lot of 366 00:22:47,500 --> 00:22:50,000 copies of my books but over so far more copies have had written 367 00:22:50,000 --> 00:22:52,600 a pessimistic but then an optimistic book I know that for 368 00:22:52,600 --> 00:22:57,100 sure just to give you a little thought experiment to realize 369 00:22:58,100 --> 00:23:03,600 what's how adrift people are from the realities of the world? 370 00:23:04,000 --> 00:23:08,600 If you say to people as Hans rosling, did then a brilliant 371 00:23:08,600 --> 00:23:11,200 experiment to a thousand people in a pole. 372 00:23:11,400 --> 00:23:15,800 He said has the the percentage of the world that lives in 373 00:23:15,800 --> 00:23:20,600 extreme poverty doubled have door stayed the same in the last 374 00:23:20,600 --> 00:23:25,400 20 years. Mmm, but 65% of people in 375 00:23:25,400 --> 00:23:28,700 America, similar percentage in Britain said it's doubled. 376 00:23:29,400 --> 00:23:31,900 The percentage of people in the world who live in extreme 377 00:23:31,900 --> 00:23:36,700 poverty as has doubled. In 20 years about 30% said, it 378 00:23:36,700 --> 00:23:41,100 had stayed the same and only five percent said it had haft. 379 00:23:41,500 --> 00:23:46,100 The 5% were Right? The 65% of the 30% were wrong, 380 00:23:46,200 --> 00:23:49,700 okay? So any 5% of us, know that but 381 00:23:49,700 --> 00:23:53,400 hang on said rosling. If I had asked that question of 382 00:23:53,500 --> 00:23:57,800 a chimpanzee by writing those three answers on three, 383 00:23:57,800 --> 00:24:02,200 different bananas and throwing them into a cage and seeing 384 00:24:02,200 --> 00:24:06,200 which banana it picked up first, it would answer that question, 385 00:24:06,200 --> 00:24:10,200 right? 33% of the time not 5% of the 386 00:24:10,200 --> 00:24:12,500 time so it would do 6 times as well. 387 00:24:12,700 --> 00:24:16,500 As people and answering a question about human society 388 00:24:16,500 --> 00:24:18,700 that people can just look up on the Internet. 389 00:24:18,900 --> 00:24:22,500 How can that be? And the answer, of course, as to 390 00:24:22,500 --> 00:24:28,400 how that can be is that as Josh Billings a 19th century, Sage 391 00:24:28,400 --> 00:24:32,100 put it, it ain't what, you don't know, that gets you into 392 00:24:32,100 --> 00:24:34,200 trouble. It's what, you know, for sure 393 00:24:34,200 --> 00:24:40,700 that ain't so. So it's no, we're convinced we 394 00:24:40,700 --> 00:24:43,800 know things about the world that Not to be wrong. 395 00:24:44,100 --> 00:24:48,100 And so one of the things we have to do in the words of Abraham 396 00:24:48,100 --> 00:24:52,400 Lincoln is disenthrall young people about the things that 397 00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:55,500 they've imbibed which are simply wrong about the world. 398 00:24:55,600 --> 00:24:58,400 And one of them is that it's going to hell in a handcart, 399 00:24:58,400 --> 00:25:04,400 it's not Yeah, the concept of humility is is so important. 400 00:25:04,800 --> 00:25:08,200 Just asking people today, though, things are horrible. 401 00:25:08,200 --> 00:25:11,000 I mean, does it look at what's going on in Ukraine? 402 00:25:11,400 --> 00:25:13,100 Things were so much better when I was a kid. 403 00:25:13,100 --> 00:25:15,300 I said, look Grandma, I love you. 404 00:25:15,400 --> 00:25:19,100 But when you were a kid there was literally Stalin going into 405 00:25:19,100 --> 00:25:24,100 Ukraine, killing far more people than have died today, you're 406 00:25:24,100 --> 00:25:27,200 just not right about this. Also you live through the second 407 00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:31,600 world war and Korea and Vietnam. You gotta stop this. 408 00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:34,100 Yes, it's bad but please stop pretending. 409 00:25:34,100 --> 00:25:37,900 It's, it's the end of the world. Yes. 410 00:25:37,900 --> 00:25:42,000 But I'm also very careful not to turn pangloss Ian if you 411 00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:46,300 remember dr. Pangloss said the things are for 412 00:25:46,300 --> 00:25:47,700 the best in the best of all possible. 413 00:25:47,700 --> 00:25:49,600 Worlds. You can't improve on this world 414 00:25:49,600 --> 00:25:52,800 because God made it and it therefore must be perfect. 415 00:25:52,800 --> 00:25:54,800 And if people are dying they must be bad people. 416 00:25:54,800 --> 00:25:59,200 So that's a good thing that you do and Volterra is mocking this 417 00:25:59,200 --> 00:26:02,700 theodicy. His philosophy and and I'm not 418 00:26:02,700 --> 00:26:05,600 here to say the world's perfect, I'm saying the world is a lot 419 00:26:05,600 --> 00:26:08,200 better than it was for most people 50 years ago. 420 00:26:08,500 --> 00:26:12,100 But that means it can be a lot better still in 50 years. 421 00:26:12,400 --> 00:26:14,700 You know. It's a Vale of Tears today 422 00:26:14,700 --> 00:26:18,400 compared with what it could be in in a few decades time. 423 00:26:18,700 --> 00:26:23,100 And yes I mean every year since that book the rational Optimist 424 00:26:23,100 --> 00:26:26,400 came out, I've given talks about it and every year people have 425 00:26:26,400 --> 00:26:29,100 said well you can't still surely be an optimist. 426 00:26:29,100 --> 00:26:30,800 I mean come on. Have you seen what's happening 427 00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:33,000 with the Euro crisis? Have you seen what's happening 428 00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:34,900 with Ebola? Have you seen what's happening 429 00:26:34,900 --> 00:26:37,800 with Syria? Have you seen what's happening 430 00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:41,600 with Ukraine, you know, Etc? There's always an excuse to 431 00:26:41,600 --> 00:26:42,700 think. Well, hang on. 432 00:26:42,700 --> 00:26:46,500 This is as bad as it ever gets. And, and my answer was, yes, 433 00:26:46,500 --> 00:26:48,900 Ukraine is terrible. Yes, Syria is terrible. 434 00:26:48,900 --> 00:26:52,800 Yes, Ebola, is a nasty disease, but that doesn't mean that 435 00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:56,400 everything is going wrong. Look at all the countries that 436 00:26:56,400 --> 00:26:59,700 haven't got Wars, but did have them 10 years. 437 00:26:59,900 --> 00:27:05,000 Is ago or something like that. So, you know, try and see the 438 00:27:05,000 --> 00:27:07,100 whole if something has dropped out of the news. 439 00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:10,400 If some country has dropped out of the news, chances are it's 440 00:27:10,400 --> 00:27:15,700 quite peaceful. What is prosperity and how can 441 00:27:15,700 --> 00:27:22,400 it be measured. Well, in the end for me, 442 00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:27,800 Prosperity is the ability to fulfill needs and wants. 443 00:27:28,100 --> 00:27:34,500 So to be able to supply yourself with enough food enough shelter 444 00:27:34,500 --> 00:27:38,200 enough, lighting lighting is one of my favorite examples of this 445 00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:44,600 if you want to read a book by artificial light for an hour, 446 00:27:44,600 --> 00:27:48,300 with an ordinary lamp it costs, It's you about a third of a 447 00:27:48,300 --> 00:27:51,700 second of work to achieve that. Okay. 448 00:27:51,700 --> 00:27:57,000 On the average u.s. wage back in 1880 with a kerosene lamp. 449 00:27:57,000 --> 00:28:00,700 It would have taken you 15 minutes of work on the average 450 00:28:00,700 --> 00:28:04,500 age on the average wage to afford that and back in 1800 451 00:28:04,500 --> 00:28:06,700 with a Tallow candle. It would have cost you about six 452 00:28:06,700 --> 00:28:11,400 hours, work to one hour of light, so that for me is the 453 00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:14,300 great measure. How much time do you have to 454 00:28:14,300 --> 00:28:19,200 work to fulfill a need? To fulfill a want to supply 455 00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:22,700 yourself with lighting and shelter, and food and 456 00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:26,400 entertainment, and all these other things you want. 457 00:28:26,500 --> 00:28:30,500 And if you take less, and less time to fulfill more and more 458 00:28:30,500 --> 00:28:33,700 needs and desires, then you're becoming more prosperous. 459 00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:41,000 Interesting. So instead of this GDP measure 460 00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:45,600 which is I mean easily manipulated, whether it's the 461 00:28:45,600 --> 00:28:49,800 Federal Reserve increasing the money supply, it's almost 462 00:28:49,800 --> 00:28:54,600 impossible to measure you're saying that it's the amount of 463 00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:56,500 time. It takes individuals to achieve 464 00:28:56,500 --> 00:29:00,900 something to achieve their and compared to what it would have 465 00:29:00,900 --> 00:29:04,700 been 10. 20, 30, 50 years ago, is that correct? 466 00:29:05,600 --> 00:29:10,300 Yes, I think the labor cost of fulfilling a need is a really 467 00:29:10,300 --> 00:29:15,000 good measure of how well off you are and on the whole the labor 468 00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:20,000 cost of most things has gone down and down and down most 469 00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:24,100 consumer goods, but the labor cost of how long you have to 470 00:29:24,100 --> 00:29:27,700 work to be able to buy, you know, education at a good 471 00:29:27,700 --> 00:29:32,200 University or to buy a house that's gone up for a lot of 472 00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:34,200 people. So not everything's going in the 473 00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:35,100 right direction. Action. 474 00:29:35,300 --> 00:29:38,800 But, you know, most of the things supplied by government or 475 00:29:38,800 --> 00:29:44,500 in some sense by a heavily regulated World tend to have 476 00:29:44,500 --> 00:29:48,200 gone up in price in labor cost. But most things supplied by the 477 00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:50,800 market, tend to have gone down in cost that must be telling us 478 00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:53,900 something about the efficiency of supply. 479 00:29:55,600 --> 00:30:00,100 What does it mean to say the world improves when ideas have 480 00:30:00,100 --> 00:30:05,600 sex? This was a phrase that I came up 481 00:30:05,600 --> 00:30:13,700 with, and it enabled me to have some sort of cheap 482 00:30:13,700 --> 00:30:18,200 sensationalism to spread my ideas when ideas have sex. 483 00:30:19,600 --> 00:30:22,500 I actually mean it in a really quite literal way. 484 00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:26,600 If you look at evolution by natural selection biological 485 00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:30,800 evolution, sexual reproduction plays a critical role, because 486 00:30:30,800 --> 00:30:34,600 what it does is it Brings together Innovations in one 487 00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:37,300 lineage sin. Combines them with Innovations 488 00:30:37,300 --> 00:30:40,100 in another lineage. So you might inherit from your 489 00:30:40,100 --> 00:30:43,300 mother, you know, some extraordinary skill that nobody 490 00:30:43,300 --> 00:30:46,500 else has got and you might inherit from your father, some 491 00:30:46,500 --> 00:30:50,300 different skill that nobody else has got but you've got both of 492 00:30:50,300 --> 00:30:53,300 them. So that's what sex is sex 493 00:30:53,300 --> 00:30:59,600 enables innovation in evolution to be cumulative to mean that 494 00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:01,500 you don't have to choose between. 495 00:31:01,600 --> 00:31:06,000 Do you know different traits and say well one of the lineage is 496 00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:11,900 got fur and the other lineages got fast for the runs fast or 497 00:31:11,900 --> 00:31:13,300 something. You say let's have a furry 498 00:31:13,300 --> 00:31:16,100 animal that runs fast, you know, let's put them both together. 499 00:31:16,500 --> 00:31:19,600 So that's what sex does is it brings together. 500 00:31:19,600 --> 00:31:21,900 The width of the technical term is recombination. 501 00:31:21,900 --> 00:31:25,000 It recombines genes so that you end up with new combinations of 502 00:31:25,008 --> 00:31:28,200 genes. Well, I think a very similar 503 00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:31,000 process happens in human Innovation, whether it's 504 00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:35,600 innovation in Dues or innovation in machines because the more you 505 00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:39,300 study Innovation the more you see that it happens when people 506 00:31:39,300 --> 00:31:44,000 bring their ideas together and combine them and most of the new 507 00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:47,500 things in the world are actually not new in the sense that 508 00:31:47,500 --> 00:31:51,100 they're they're just new combinations of existing things. 509 00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:56,500 You know that the iPhone is basically, you know the you 510 00:31:56,500 --> 00:32:02,900 know, a telephone and a diary and a torch and Compass and a 511 00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:05,500 calculator, all sort of combined together. 512 00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:12,600 So what I mean by, when ideas have sex, I mean when a new idea 513 00:32:12,600 --> 00:32:16,900 meets another new idea and comes together through a through 514 00:32:16,900 --> 00:32:19,800 through the process of exchange. What's critical is that human 515 00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:23,000 beings have this habit of exchange saying, I've got lots 516 00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:25,100 of these things, you've got lots of those things. 517 00:32:25,100 --> 00:32:27,400 Let's come together or I've got this idea. 518 00:32:27,400 --> 00:32:29,900 You've got that idea that's very unusual. 519 00:32:29,900 --> 00:32:33,500 Most animals don't do that. It's Because we did that that 520 00:32:33,500 --> 00:32:36,800 our ideas were able to have sex and produce new baby ideas. 521 00:32:37,300 --> 00:32:41,000 My favorite example, by the way of ideas, having sex is a thing 522 00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:44,300 called the pill camera, which is a device that you swallow, and 523 00:32:44,300 --> 00:32:47,900 it takes a picture of your insides for medical reasons. 524 00:32:48,900 --> 00:32:51,100 And it came about after a conversation over, a garden 525 00:32:51,100 --> 00:32:54,000 fence between a gastroenterologist and a guided 526 00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:56,400 missile designer. That's very nice example of 527 00:32:56,400 --> 00:33:01,600 ideas, having sex I love this quote from page 46, the 528 00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:04,900 cumulative acceleration of knowledge by Specialists that 529 00:33:04,900 --> 00:33:09,000 allows us each to consume more and more different things by 530 00:33:09,000 --> 00:33:12,800 each producing fewer. And fewer is I submit the 531 00:33:12,800 --> 00:33:17,100 central story of humanity. So many great insights from this 532 00:33:17,100 --> 00:33:20,300 book. The rational Optimist, what is 533 00:33:20,400 --> 00:33:25,100 your general thesis in the book? How Innovation Works and why it 534 00:33:25,100 --> 00:33:29,400 flourishes in Freedom? Well, I realized I've been 535 00:33:29,400 --> 00:33:32,600 writing about innovation in one way or another number of books, 536 00:33:32,900 --> 00:33:35,300 but I've never taken it head-on. I've never taken away. 537 00:33:35,400 --> 00:33:37,300 What is this phenomenon of innovation? 538 00:33:37,400 --> 00:33:39,900 Why does it happen to us and not to rabbits or rocks? 539 00:33:40,700 --> 00:33:44,300 What does it happen more in Silicon Valley than in Zimbabwe? 540 00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:48,500 You know, what is it about? Innovation that how do you and 541 00:33:48,500 --> 00:33:50,700 you turn it on? How do you turn it off Etc and 542 00:33:50,700 --> 00:33:53,500 it's some ways, it's a pretty mysterious process. 543 00:33:53,800 --> 00:33:56,600 If you talk to politicians about how to do you get a lot of hand? 544 00:33:56,800 --> 00:33:58,800 Waving you got a lot of people say, well you have to fund 545 00:33:58,800 --> 00:34:02,000 science. You have to make sure that 546 00:34:02,100 --> 00:34:04,400 there's plenty of Finance available for innovators. 547 00:34:04,400 --> 00:34:06,300 No no. Come on, you tell me what is it? 548 00:34:06,300 --> 00:34:08,800 You know, what's the secret? What's the Silver Bullet that 549 00:34:08,800 --> 00:34:12,500 will make Innovation happen in your country and they can't 550 00:34:12,500 --> 00:34:16,199 answer that question. Nobody really knows why Silicon 551 00:34:16,199 --> 00:34:19,000 Valley suddenly did this extraordinary burst of 552 00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:21,300 innovation in the second half of the twentieth century. 553 00:34:21,500 --> 00:34:25,699 Yes you can talk about defense spending and good universities 554 00:34:25,699 --> 00:34:29,500 and Venture capitalists going there and plenty of immigrants 555 00:34:29,500 --> 00:34:32,199 and all that kind of thing. But it's it's a pretty wooly 556 00:34:32,199 --> 00:34:34,699 recipe really. And you can say the same about 557 00:34:34,699 --> 00:34:38,600 Victorian Britain or in a sense, Italy or song China, you know, 558 00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:43,699 periods when there was bushfires of innovation bursting out baby, 559 00:34:43,699 --> 00:34:47,000 bushfires isn't a great metaphor for California at the moment, 560 00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:51,900 but you get the point. And so that's what I set out in 561 00:34:51,900 --> 00:34:56,199 this book to do was to decide to analyze too. 562 00:34:56,699 --> 00:35:00,400 Tell stories of Innovations, you know, airplanes computers, 563 00:35:01,300 --> 00:35:04,800 toilets, you know, anything that was that's been invented in the 564 00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:11,100 last few hundred years and try and see what themes emerged and 565 00:35:11,400 --> 00:35:15,100 the big theme was Freedom. If people have the freedom to 566 00:35:15,100 --> 00:35:18,700 experiment, freedom, to collaborate, freedom, to fail, 567 00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:21,700 freedom to move, and try somewhere else, where there's a 568 00:35:21,707 --> 00:35:27,300 more congenial environment, freedom to 25, Follow their 569 00:35:27,300 --> 00:35:29,000 ideas to invest behind their ideas. 570 00:35:29,300 --> 00:35:32,800 These are the things that really make it happen. 571 00:35:34,200 --> 00:35:39,100 But the, the first point I made in that book is that Innovation 572 00:35:39,100 --> 00:35:42,500 is more than invention. Invention is only a small part 573 00:35:42,500 --> 00:35:45,800 of it, coming up with a bright idea. 574 00:35:45,800 --> 00:35:51,100 A prototype of something is a very small part of making that 575 00:35:51,100 --> 00:35:55,900 thing into a usable affordable available and reliable tool. 576 00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:03,100 And the unsung heroes are the people who turn a bright idea 577 00:36:03,100 --> 00:36:06,700 into something that actually you can buy on Amazon for a very 578 00:36:06,700 --> 00:36:08,900 small amount of money, you know, to see what I mean. 579 00:36:09,200 --> 00:36:13,700 You know, that seems to me to be the the aspect of innovation. 580 00:36:13,700 --> 00:36:16,600 We tend to neglect. We talk about the inventors a 581 00:36:16,600 --> 00:36:18,700 lot. We make we give them patents, we 582 00:36:18,700 --> 00:36:21,800 make statues do them, but actually it's the innovators. 583 00:36:21,800 --> 00:36:25,100 It's the people who work out how to manufacture this thing in a 584 00:36:25,107 --> 00:36:28,100 reliable way and get it. People when they need it in a 585 00:36:28,100 --> 00:36:31,600 form that they want and attractive formal if you're 586 00:36:31,600 --> 00:36:34,200 Steve Jobs or someone like that, these are the guys. 587 00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:40,000 So you know Jeff Bezos is a great innovator in the sense of 588 00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:43,700 e-commerce being very much something that he's pioneered 589 00:36:43,900 --> 00:36:47,700 but he's not an inventor and he wouldn't claim to be but he's 590 00:36:47,700 --> 00:36:50,900 done a lot of good to the world. You can argue that you don't 591 00:36:50,900 --> 00:36:52,900 approve of some of the things. He's done etcetera, you know? 592 00:36:52,900 --> 00:36:56,600 But that's a different debate but he has changed the world. 593 00:36:57,300 --> 00:36:59,300 As an innovator, rather than an inventor. 594 00:37:00,800 --> 00:37:06,400 On Page 6, you say Serendipity plays a big part in Innovation 595 00:37:06,500 --> 00:37:09,900 which is why liberal economies with their free roving 596 00:37:09,900 --> 00:37:12,500 experimental opportunities do so. 597 00:37:12,500 --> 00:37:16,100 Well they give luck a chance Innovation happens when people 598 00:37:16,100 --> 00:37:20,100 are afraid to think experiment and speculate what else. 599 00:37:20,600 --> 00:37:24,500 It's so scary to say, let's trust a process instead of a 600 00:37:24,600 --> 00:37:27,200 result. So instead of embracing the 601 00:37:27,200 --> 00:37:31,900 process of Freedom, well, Things can go to heck in a hand basket, 602 00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:35,600 what we need is a leader to design something that'll really 603 00:37:35,600 --> 00:37:39,100 make it happen. Why should we, how would you 604 00:37:39,107 --> 00:37:43,700 sell people on the process of freedom, of experimentation, 605 00:37:43,900 --> 00:37:46,700 being the way you want to achieve Innovation? 606 00:37:46,900 --> 00:37:51,600 As opposed to say something that's very written in stone? 607 00:37:51,700 --> 00:37:55,500 That allows us all to look at the same thing and follow a 608 00:37:55,500 --> 00:38:01,000 single path. Well, the history of inventions 609 00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:03,900 is that again and again, people set out to invent one thing and 610 00:38:03,900 --> 00:38:06,600 end up, inventing, something else, you know, are trying. 611 00:38:06,600 --> 00:38:11,800 But Post-It note when he was by accident at 3M, Stephanie kwolek 612 00:38:11,800 --> 00:38:15,100 invented Kevlar by accident. When looking for something else, 613 00:38:15,200 --> 00:38:18,700 there's tons of examples of this but I think the best example of 614 00:38:18,700 --> 00:38:21,500 the importance of experimentation is actually a 615 00:38:21,500 --> 00:38:23,900 very old one and that is the Wright brothers. 616 00:38:24,300 --> 00:38:30,400 And there was a man named Samuel Langley Who was a brilliant 617 00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:35,800 astrophysicist and probably the cleverest man in America and he 618 00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:40,000 was head of the Smithsonian institution and he said to the 619 00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:43,200 US government give me twenty five thousand dollars and I will 620 00:38:43,200 --> 00:38:47,200 invent a powered airplane. I know how to do it now so they 621 00:38:47,200 --> 00:38:49,600 gave him the money. He said no, I don't need to talk 622 00:38:49,600 --> 00:38:52,900 to anyone. It's all in here I'm going to do 623 00:38:52,900 --> 00:38:56,500 it in secret in case anyone tries to steal my ideas and then 624 00:38:56,500 --> 00:39:00,200 I'll Unveil it when it's ready and he unveiled it on top of a 625 00:39:00,900 --> 00:39:04,700 houseboat on the Potomac. In December 1903, launched it 626 00:39:04,700 --> 00:39:08,200 into the air and it went straight into the water and it 627 00:39:08,200 --> 00:39:13,600 was a complete disaster. 10 days later on a Barrier island of 628 00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:16,800 North Carolina. Two bicycle mechanics, without a 629 00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:21,000 degree between them succeeded where Langley had failed and 630 00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:23,000 they got a powered plane into the air. 631 00:39:23,800 --> 00:39:26,100 They were just bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio. 632 00:39:26,100 --> 00:39:28,700 There was no Crowd watching, it had no money from the 633 00:39:28,700 --> 00:39:32,200 government, anything. But what they had done is they 634 00:39:32,200 --> 00:39:35,400 had picked the brains of anyone and everyone who's thinking 635 00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:41,000 about flight anywhere in the world, in Australia, Europe, in 636 00:39:41,000 --> 00:39:44,500 other parts of the US and they had picked the brains of people 637 00:39:44,500 --> 00:39:49,400 doing balloons, doing kites doing gliders, doing Wind Tunnel 638 00:39:49,400 --> 00:39:55,100 experiments studying Birds, they're drawn upon everyone, and 639 00:39:55,100 --> 00:39:58,900 anyone they had Decided they were the cleverest person and 640 00:39:58,900 --> 00:40:01,400 they knew how to do it inside their own head. 641 00:40:01,800 --> 00:40:06,000 And then they had done a ton of experiments they done for years 642 00:40:06,000 --> 00:40:09,200 of experiments with gliders before they even tried to put an 643 00:40:09,200 --> 00:40:13,800 engine on this thing and they had by trial and error. 644 00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:17,100 They had worked out how you steer a glider in the air, you 645 00:40:17,100 --> 00:40:18,700 know. I mean, it's not a trivial 646 00:40:19,200 --> 00:40:22,900 point, you know, if you're in the middle of, if you're flying 647 00:40:22,900 --> 00:40:24,800 through the air, how do you turn right turn left? 648 00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:27,100 It's, it's not obvious to start. Out with. 649 00:40:27,800 --> 00:40:33,600 And so all these things came together and so they're a very 650 00:40:33,600 --> 00:40:35,800 good example of how you should do Innovation. 651 00:40:35,800 --> 00:40:38,900 And Langley was a good, very good example of how not to do it 652 00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:43,000 with a government grant and knowing exactly how you're going 653 00:40:43,000 --> 00:40:48,100 to get there in the first place. In this book, you tell a number 654 00:40:48,100 --> 00:40:51,800 of stories of how Innovation comes to fruition. 655 00:40:51,900 --> 00:40:54,000 Do you have any favorite stories in this book? 656 00:40:54,000 --> 00:40:59,500 That really illustrates your thesis here and actually, my 657 00:40:59,500 --> 00:41:05,000 favorite one is inside the old one, and it's the insecticide 658 00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:09,800 treated bed. Net to solve malaria, something 659 00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:14,000 that's been championed by The Gates Foundation as a mechanism 660 00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:16,200 of solving malaria. Larry was increasing in the 661 00:41:16,200 --> 00:41:19,000 1990s globally, killing more people every year. 662 00:41:19,600 --> 00:41:22,600 Now it's been decreasing since 2003. 663 00:41:23,700 --> 00:41:27,300 Why in 2003? The insecticide treated bed nets 664 00:41:27,300 --> 00:41:30,600 started to be distributed, it turns out to be a brilliant 665 00:41:30,600 --> 00:41:34,600 solution, it deters mosquitoes, instead of as well as killing 666 00:41:34,600 --> 00:41:39,300 them, it works, even if it's got a hole in it and I thought this 667 00:41:39,300 --> 00:41:42,200 is a really interesting example. It's very low Tech Innovation. 668 00:41:42,200 --> 00:41:44,800 It could have been done decades before it. 669 00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:49,300 Those who did it, how was it discovered? 670 00:41:49,600 --> 00:41:52,000 And I it's not a well-known Story. 671 00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:58,500 I mean nobody had written it up. So I tracked down the two French 672 00:41:58,500 --> 00:42:02,100 scientists, who'd worked with colleagues. 673 00:42:02,100 --> 00:42:07,900 In Burkina Faso in the 1980s and set up a system in some 674 00:42:07,900 --> 00:42:11,400 experimental Huts which were designed for these experiments 675 00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:16,100 where they'd made 36 people sleeping these, Cuts night after 676 00:42:16,100 --> 00:42:19,100 night with different designs of mosquito, net. 677 00:42:20,100 --> 00:42:22,200 And then measured how many mosquitoes would come into the 678 00:42:22,200 --> 00:42:23,300 Hut. How many had gone out? 679 00:42:23,300 --> 00:42:25,900 How many died? I mean he's got a blood meal and 680 00:42:25,900 --> 00:42:27,900 so on. And did her just a beautiful 681 00:42:27,900 --> 00:42:31,900 experiment that showed that mosquito Nets were quite good at 682 00:42:32,900 --> 00:42:35,900 stopping, you getting bitten by mosquito Nets with insecticide 683 00:42:35,900 --> 00:42:39,800 on them were much better even if they had holes in them. 684 00:42:40,300 --> 00:42:43,300 Even if you know, in the course of wear and tear, you know, 685 00:42:43,300 --> 00:42:46,700 mosquito Nets, tend to get torn. You think that's useless, the 686 00:42:46,700 --> 00:42:50,600 mosquito fund a whole but but if it's got insecticide on it, it's 687 00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:53,000 such a deterrent that the mosquitoes don't find a whole 688 00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:57,300 and this showed that, you know, 95% reduction in your chances of 689 00:42:57,308 --> 00:42:59,300 being bitten by a mosquito. If you've got one of these 690 00:42:59,300 --> 00:43:03,200 things over your neck of your bit, a very simple experiment, 691 00:43:04,700 --> 00:43:09,900 beautifully designed done in Africa by some other humble 692 00:43:09,900 --> 00:43:14,000 scientists, I tracked down the French scientist talk to him and 693 00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:15,200 you know, he didn't speak. English. 694 00:43:15,200 --> 00:43:18,200 So I my French isn't very good so it wasn't very easy but, you 695 00:43:18,200 --> 00:43:21,700 know, so that ended up being my favorite because I think 696 00:43:22,300 --> 00:43:25,600 millions of lives have been saved by this low Tech 697 00:43:25,700 --> 00:43:29,000 development, and I like that for that example. 698 00:43:30,700 --> 00:43:34,700 Imagine Boris Johnson steps down tomorrow. 699 00:43:34,800 --> 00:43:39,100 Everyone else steps down in the English Parliament and a new 700 00:43:39,100 --> 00:43:43,000 state arises. What advice would you give them 701 00:43:43,100 --> 00:43:44,400 on? Some simple rules? 702 00:43:44,400 --> 00:43:47,500 They could Embrace if they want to say, have a much more 703 00:43:47,500 --> 00:43:51,900 Innovative society that can compete with places like China, 704 00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:56,000 Japan, all and every other country in the world. 705 00:43:57,700 --> 00:43:59,200 Well I think starting from a blank. 706 00:43:59,400 --> 00:44:01,500 Slate is just sort of to utopian. 707 00:44:01,500 --> 00:44:04,000 I can hardly imagine it. I mean yeah, sure. 708 00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:10,000 I would I would have a lot of fun doing that, but I think more 709 00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:14,500 important is to say, what advice can you give from here to 710 00:44:14,500 --> 00:44:17,400 governments to try and improve their Innovative capacity? 711 00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:21,600 And I've actually been giving that advice to Boris and others 712 00:44:22,400 --> 00:44:26,500 in a very lowly way. I'm not a, I'm not a trusted 713 00:44:26,500 --> 00:44:29,300 advisor or anything, but I've been banging the drum for it. 714 00:44:29,500 --> 00:44:33,200 Vacation and there are some really quite simple things like 715 00:44:33,600 --> 00:44:36,600 get government to take faster decisions. 716 00:44:37,700 --> 00:44:40,900 The, if you talk to entrepreneurs they go on and on 717 00:44:40,900 --> 00:44:45,800 about the extraordinary waste of time, getting a government 718 00:44:45,800 --> 00:44:50,400 agency to give a decision about something and you'd much rather 719 00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:52,700 they just said, no, you can't do that. 720 00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:56,800 Then that they take three years to say yes by which time your 721 00:44:56,800 --> 00:44:59,200 competitors, have stolen a march on UI detail. 722 00:44:59,400 --> 00:45:03,500 In the book how it took eight years for the European Union to 723 00:45:03,500 --> 00:45:08,000 approve a genetically modified Potato, by which time the 724 00:45:08,008 --> 00:45:09,500 inventor, it said we'll get lost. 725 00:45:09,500 --> 00:45:13,000 I'm off to America and I can't wait years for decision. 726 00:45:14,100 --> 00:45:18,500 So, you know, that's a very simple thing, just get faster 727 00:45:18,500 --> 00:45:21,000 decisions out of God, because government agencies have no 728 00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:22,800 incentive to take a fast decision. 729 00:45:23,900 --> 00:45:27,000 For them, taking no decision is much safer. 730 00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:29,900 Bet you don't lose your job. If you take no decision, if you 731 00:45:29,908 --> 00:45:32,100 just punt it down the road into the long grass. 732 00:45:32,600 --> 00:45:34,500 Whereas if you take the wrong decision you might lose your 733 00:45:34,500 --> 00:45:37,200 job. So there's a real problem of 734 00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:42,200 incentives here and regulation is a huge problem for 735 00:45:42,200 --> 00:45:45,000 innovators. It's often, you know, 736 00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:48,500 regulations that aren't really anything to do with the in if I 737 00:45:48,508 --> 00:45:51,300 mean, if you think about nuclear power, nuclear power is a 738 00:45:51,300 --> 00:45:53,900 perfectly good technology. Incredibly Safe incredibly 739 00:45:53,900 --> 00:45:55,700 effective. It kills far fewer people than 740 00:45:55,700 --> 00:45:57,500 renewable. Energy actually per unit of 741 00:45:57,500 --> 00:46:04,600 energy it produces and yet it's stuck in a hugely high cost non 742 00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:07,600 Innovative for. We're basically using the same 743 00:46:07,600 --> 00:46:10,500 designs as we used in the 1960s. Why? 744 00:46:10,500 --> 00:46:16,600 Because the regulations over what you must do to get a new 745 00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:19,100 design? Approved are so expensive. 746 00:46:19,100 --> 00:46:25,900 And so time-consuming that nobody bothers He says, let's do 747 00:46:26,100 --> 00:46:27,800 trial and error. Let's see what we can do. 748 00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:31,100 And also, once you get a design approved, you can't change it. 749 00:46:31,700 --> 00:46:34,000 You can't halfway through the construction process. 750 00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:36,300 Say actually, there's a better way of doing this. 751 00:46:36,300 --> 00:46:38,200 We want to do it slightly differently, which is what 752 00:46:38,200 --> 00:46:42,100 innovators do the whole time, you know, in cars or in Silicon 753 00:46:42,100 --> 00:46:45,700 chips or something, you know, they they change direction they 754 00:46:45,700 --> 00:46:47,900 learn as they're going along and say, actually there's a better 755 00:46:47,900 --> 00:46:50,500 way of doing this, you can't do that in nuclear, you have to 756 00:46:50,500 --> 00:46:54,100 have the whole thing approved before you even Start and that 757 00:46:54,100 --> 00:46:57,200 means you only you only try something safe that you already 758 00:46:57,200 --> 00:47:00,700 know what safe is fine. But you cut, that means you 759 00:47:00,700 --> 00:47:03,100 can't get safer things. You get old fashion designs, 760 00:47:03,100 --> 00:47:05,900 that cost him some amounts of money that are over, engineered 761 00:47:06,200 --> 00:47:07,100 etc. Etc. 762 00:47:07,900 --> 00:47:11,800 So, there's lots of things you can do to just free up, 763 00:47:11,900 --> 00:47:18,500 innovators to, to have more opportunity to try things and 764 00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:21,400 just, you know, open up trial and error. 765 00:47:21,400 --> 00:47:24,400 Is, it would be the theme that I Bang into the heads of my 766 00:47:24,400 --> 00:47:30,000 ministers, every five minutes when I was dictator, which thank 767 00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:34,300 God. I'm not going to be Let's take 768 00:47:34,300 --> 00:47:37,800 the thesis of these books, evolution of everything how 769 00:47:37,800 --> 00:47:41,600 Innovation Works, the rational Optimist and apply them to the 770 00:47:41,800 --> 00:47:44,100 today. That the only case I'm really 771 00:47:44,100 --> 00:47:49,500 familiar with is America there is a new organization designed 772 00:47:49,500 --> 00:47:53,800 by the Department of Homeland Security, terribly orwellian 773 00:47:53,800 --> 00:47:57,000 term but that's what they're called where they have a new 774 00:47:57,000 --> 00:48:01,600 organization called the government governing board of 775 00:48:01,600 --> 00:48:06,200 disinformation run by Woman named Nina jankowitz. 776 00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:12,600 Now, they're saying that what we need things are so terrible in 777 00:48:12,600 --> 00:48:16,800 this Marketplace of ideas, you might get false information and 778 00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:19,600 this false information could lead to terribly bad things. 779 00:48:19,900 --> 00:48:23,000 That's why we need to regulate the space of ideas. 780 00:48:23,300 --> 00:48:26,500 How do you talk to someone with that mindset where they say 781 00:48:26,800 --> 00:48:31,000 instead of having a society, where bad ideas can come to 782 00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:32,900 fruition? We need to regulate them. 783 00:48:33,100 --> 00:48:36,700 This way the correct ideas come to the Forefront and we can be 784 00:48:36,700 --> 00:48:40,300 in educated population. Yeah. 785 00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:45,700 Well as you allude the problem is top-down thinking it goes 786 00:48:45,700 --> 00:48:49,000 right back to my evolution of everything theme which is that 787 00:48:49,000 --> 00:48:54,300 we constantly see the world in top down for through top-down 788 00:48:54,300 --> 00:48:56,900 lens. We think in terms of there's a 789 00:48:56,900 --> 00:48:59,000 problem. So let's put someone in charge. 790 00:48:59,000 --> 00:49:01,400 Let's make a czar who can solve it. 791 00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:04,600 There's a problem in social media, there's no question about 792 00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:06,400 it. There's a problem of Greater 793 00:49:06,400 --> 00:49:10,600 extremism, greater polarization. Lots of Information, etc. 794 00:49:10,600 --> 00:49:12,800 Etc. And it's driving us apart in a 795 00:49:12,808 --> 00:49:16,900 most terrifying way as Jonathan haidt and others are documenting 796 00:49:16,900 --> 00:49:21,300 in an interesting way, but the solution is not to put one 797 00:49:21,300 --> 00:49:25,900 commissar in charge. However, brilliant, she or he 798 00:49:25,900 --> 00:49:30,700 may be because she or he will have axes to grind. 799 00:49:30,700 --> 00:49:33,300 And I think what has emerged would need a yank of its 800 00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:37,600 immediately within minutes of her being appointed was that 801 00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:40,400 everyone said, well, hang on. This woman has very strong views 802 00:49:40,400 --> 00:49:42,400 about things which of course she does. 803 00:49:42,400 --> 00:49:45,900 So have I but I shouldn't be put in charge either, you know, it's 804 00:49:45,900 --> 00:49:49,500 not the matter of choosing. The right person, it's a matter 805 00:49:49,500 --> 00:49:53,300 of choosing the collective wisdom of humankind to solve 806 00:49:53,300 --> 00:49:57,800 these problems. Now you know, so Jonathan haidt 807 00:49:57,900 --> 00:50:03,100 has this suggestion that the way to solve the horrible nature of 808 00:50:04,000 --> 00:50:08,900 social media where loud-voiced extremists are drowning, 809 00:50:09,100 --> 00:50:13,800 Moderates and beating up moderates a lot of the time and 810 00:50:14,500 --> 00:50:19,500 is to for example just a very simple rule when you log on to 811 00:50:19,900 --> 00:50:25,900 Twitter for the first time or other organizations, you should 812 00:50:25,900 --> 00:50:29,600 have a setting that automatically blocks anyone 813 00:50:29,600 --> 00:50:34,500 who's really rude and nasty and you know, does things in an ad 814 00:50:34,500 --> 00:50:38,800 hominem way and you can have that setting anything up to 125. 815 00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:42,800 I've and let's say, you know, you start off with a four and 816 00:50:42,800 --> 00:50:46,400 you can lower it. You can you can say actually I I 817 00:50:46,400 --> 00:50:48,800 don't want to hear anybody who's even remotely. 818 00:50:48,800 --> 00:50:50,100 Rude. I just want to hear polite 819 00:50:50,100 --> 00:50:53,200 people and I can lower it or you can raise it and say, actually a 820 00:50:53,200 --> 00:50:55,900 cool going to hear what these people who really screaming at 821 00:50:55,900 --> 00:50:58,400 each other. But that way, I think we would 822 00:50:58,700 --> 00:51:03,100 just we've got to find a way of taming this medium and the way 823 00:51:03,100 --> 00:51:06,400 is not to put in charge of disinformation Minister because 824 00:51:06,400 --> 00:51:10,500 a lot of things get labeled this The turn out to be true. 825 00:51:10,700 --> 00:51:13,200 I mean the lab leak is a classic example. 826 00:51:13,500 --> 00:51:17,200 Lab leak may be true. The US government says, it's a 827 00:51:17,300 --> 00:51:19,300 definite possibility. The World Health Organization 828 00:51:19,300 --> 00:51:23,100 says, it's a definite possibility, but four months in 829 00:51:23,100 --> 00:51:26,800 2020. You were called by the New York 830 00:51:26,800 --> 00:51:30,700 Times by Facebook by anyone a conspiracy theorist for even 831 00:51:30,700 --> 00:51:34,200 considering it. And that's a disgrace, you know, 832 00:51:34,200 --> 00:51:37,200 I'm sorry, but that was, you know, that was playing into the 833 00:51:37,200 --> 00:51:41,600 hands of Chinese propaganda. Under we now know, and that's 834 00:51:41,600 --> 00:51:45,000 partly where it was coming from, and that's what'll happen if you 835 00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:47,000 get one person in charge of this kind of thing. 836 00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:48,700 And they'll, they'll be a cushion. 837 00:51:49,000 --> 00:51:51,600 They'll bear the imprint of the last person who sat on them. 838 00:51:52,900 --> 00:51:57,400 And the Expressions you Brits have are so funny. 839 00:51:58,100 --> 00:52:03,100 The last person who sat on the phone, I forget where I was even 840 00:52:03,100 --> 00:52:10,100 going with though. The the point is, is that all of 841 00:52:10,100 --> 00:52:14,600 these shortcomings that we say, apply to people that apply in a 842 00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:18,100 state of Freedom where people are free to engage in. 843 00:52:18,200 --> 00:52:23,200 Voluntary exchanges also applies to Human Things once they're put 844 00:52:23,200 --> 00:52:28,400 in these positions of power Nina, Janka vets obviously fell 845 00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:33,400 for this ridiculous scam. That said, Hunter Biden's 846 00:52:33,400 --> 00:52:36,000 laptop, with all of his pictures on it. 847 00:52:36,100 --> 00:52:40,800 We're actually a plant by Putin and the Kremlin and then four 848 00:52:40,800 --> 00:52:46,400 years earlier Hillary, Clinton said 17, intelligence agencies 849 00:52:46,400 --> 00:52:51,800 said that the emails that trumps referring to are from Vladimir 850 00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:54,700 Putin and this is Russian disinformation on. 851 00:52:54,900 --> 00:52:56,800 On both attempts, they were totally wrong. 852 00:52:56,800 --> 00:53:01,700 They said, hey, a nuclear power, violated our government, our 853 00:53:01,700 --> 00:53:04,300 governing Independence, and they were wrong. 854 00:53:04,500 --> 00:53:07,800 No apologies or anything. So, not only do they not have an 855 00:53:07,800 --> 00:53:09,900 incentive. If they were the most 856 00:53:09,900 --> 00:53:13,200 well-meaning people on the planet Earth, they still would 857 00:53:13,200 --> 00:53:16,900 fall short and that's why the evolution of everything and how 858 00:53:16,900 --> 00:53:19,100 Innovation Works. I think are so vitally 859 00:53:19,200 --> 00:53:21,800 important. Because you say, yeah, there are 860 00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:24,600 this Thomas Edison guy and Nikola Tesla. 861 00:53:24,800 --> 00:53:26,900 These people had a lot of shortcomings. 862 00:53:27,200 --> 00:53:32,100 Make sure that they don't have a position of power where they 863 00:53:32,400 --> 00:53:35,700 wear their shortcomings don't face any consequences because 864 00:53:35,700 --> 00:53:39,100 then that then they won't be in this process of learning how to 865 00:53:39,300 --> 00:53:41,900 innovate. I absolutely love these books. 866 00:53:41,900 --> 00:53:44,100 I'm so appreciative that you wrote them. 867 00:53:44,300 --> 00:53:46,800 Do you have any favorite authors of yourself? 868 00:53:46,800 --> 00:53:49,800 Whether it's economists historians philosophers. 869 00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:56,300 Oh well, a lot, I mean, I lots of people are enormously admire, 870 00:53:56,300 --> 00:54:00,300 you know, Steven Pinker is a friend, and a just brilliant 871 00:54:00,700 --> 00:54:03,100 writer and thinker Deirdre McCloskey. 872 00:54:03,800 --> 00:54:07,600 What a wonderful user of the english-language books are 873 00:54:07,607 --> 00:54:11,300 probably far too long but they're just a tremendous ride 874 00:54:12,000 --> 00:54:14,000 while you're reading them in. And she, you know, she's an 875 00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:16,600 economic historian. So she's talking about the 876 00:54:16,900 --> 00:54:22,300 history of the world history of ideas, rich, Dawkins, the 877 00:54:22,300 --> 00:54:26,300 British Evolution biologist taught me and he's a friend and 878 00:54:26,300 --> 00:54:30,600 he's just a superb writer and has some as I think contributed 879 00:54:30,600 --> 00:54:35,600 great things to the, to the world of ideas. 880 00:54:35,600 --> 00:54:42,200 Actually, I wrote a book about Francis Crick and I'm lucky 881 00:54:42,200 --> 00:54:45,400 enough to know James Watson who's still alive and Watson and 882 00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:49,100 Crick, you know, they, it's extraordinary to me that I met 883 00:54:49,100 --> 00:54:51,000 both those people because I think they made the most 884 00:54:51,100 --> 00:54:54,500 Important scientific discovery of all time, I think it beats 885 00:54:54,500 --> 00:54:58,900 gravity and relativity and all that kind of thing into a cocked 886 00:54:58,900 --> 00:55:03,600 hat, to have discovered, one day, 28th of February 1953, to 887 00:55:03,600 --> 00:55:07,200 have suddenly realized that there is a linear digital code 888 00:55:07,200 --> 00:55:08,600 at the heart of all living things. 889 00:55:09,800 --> 00:55:13,400 And not a non-living things, you know, that double helix of DNA 890 00:55:13,400 --> 00:55:18,200 is what I'm referring to is just a remarkable thing and Jim 891 00:55:18,200 --> 00:55:23,500 Watson much-maligned These days in his old age because of 892 00:55:23,508 --> 00:55:26,700 various in cautious things he said, but he did write an 893 00:55:26,700 --> 00:55:30,000 extraordinarily good nonfiction novel about that experience 894 00:55:30,000 --> 00:55:34,000 called the double helix, which I recommend to any science writer 895 00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:37,400 to read. It's a, it's a, it's a 896 00:55:37,700 --> 00:55:43,200 remarkable and strange book. So, these are some of my heroes 897 00:55:43,200 --> 00:55:45,700 in the world of writing. But I just love people who 898 00:55:45,700 --> 00:55:48,300 write. Well, I think it's a fabulous 899 00:55:50,300 --> 00:55:52,800 skill. And, you know, there's nothing 900 00:55:52,800 --> 00:55:58,500 better than than following. Someone's ideas in prose, I 901 00:55:58,500 --> 00:56:03,400 think the McCloskey series of books is titled bhujbal dignity 902 00:56:04,300 --> 00:56:07,800 something in this area. Could you explain the general 903 00:56:07,800 --> 00:56:11,300 thesis that McCluskey attempt to explain in this span of human 904 00:56:11,300 --> 00:56:14,000 history? We see significant amount of 905 00:56:14,000 --> 00:56:16,900 increase in innovation in this. In this time. 906 00:56:17,100 --> 00:56:19,800 It's as a result of an ethic that people embraced can. 907 00:56:19,800 --> 00:56:25,000 You explain this thesis Yeah, well, she takes three books of 908 00:56:25,000 --> 00:56:27,000 600, pages long age to explain them. 909 00:56:27,000 --> 00:56:30,200 So I may not do a very good job in two minutes but I will, I 910 00:56:30,207 --> 00:56:32,200 will have a crack at it essentially. 911 00:56:32,200 --> 00:56:37,400 What she's saying is that for most of human history, we valued 912 00:56:37,400 --> 00:56:44,900 and admired some rather dodgy virtues, things like courage, 913 00:56:44,900 --> 00:56:50,000 and honor, and things like this. And that actually led to us on a 914 00:56:50,008 --> 00:56:52,800 world in which we killed our enemies and took her In general, 915 00:56:52,800 --> 00:56:55,500 this kind of thing. And then there are the, the 916 00:56:55,500 --> 00:56:59,600 Bourgeois values things like prudence. 917 00:56:59,600 --> 00:57:04,100 And, you know, making sure that two plus two equals five in your 918 00:57:04,100 --> 00:57:08,600 work etc, etc, that we despise and literature still despises 919 00:57:08,600 --> 00:57:12,900 them, you know that the movies you know they're all about 920 00:57:12,900 --> 00:57:16,100 superheroes going around doing superhero things. 921 00:57:16,100 --> 00:57:20,100 Instead of people who go to work and make things for other people 922 00:57:20,100 --> 00:57:25,200 and and So she's saying that, you know, when we came to Value, 923 00:57:28,400 --> 00:57:35,800 you know, buying low and selling high and being in the market and 924 00:57:35,800 --> 00:57:39,700 supplying people with what, you know, with bread for their lunch 925 00:57:39,800 --> 00:57:43,400 as a baker. You know, these kind of there 926 00:57:43,400 --> 00:57:46,600 was a moment in history, when we sort of, came to Value this, 927 00:57:46,600 --> 00:57:50,200 this kind of stuff and the result was the extraordinary 928 00:57:50,200 --> 00:57:54,300 enrichment of the human race. The great enrichment is the 929 00:57:54,300 --> 00:57:59,000 phrase she uses. So that's a sort of very very 930 00:57:59,200 --> 00:58:02,200 sketchy summary of at least one of one of the thoughts in those 931 00:58:02,200 --> 00:58:04,800 books. We have two minutes left. 932 00:58:04,800 --> 00:58:07,400 Sir, thank you so much for your time today. 933 00:58:07,800 --> 00:58:11,900 Do you have any advice on how people can sort of see through, 934 00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:16,800 guess you could call propaganda, what we can assume that let's 935 00:58:16,800 --> 00:58:20,900 say that the people in the media are very well intended. 936 00:58:22,100 --> 00:58:24,000 Do you have any advice on how people can see through 937 00:58:24,000 --> 00:58:28,400 propaganda or actual misinformation and maybe how 938 00:58:28,400 --> 00:58:31,500 they can differentiate truth from falsehood? 939 00:58:31,500 --> 00:58:37,500 Yeah, I think in the end, it bows down to always asking 940 00:58:37,500 --> 00:58:39,400 yourself. Is it true? 941 00:58:39,400 --> 00:58:44,100 You hear something on the media or you see something on the news 942 00:58:44,100 --> 00:58:49,000 and you can choose to believe it or not, believe it, you can 943 00:58:49,000 --> 00:58:51,100 choose to move on and do something else in your life, but 944 00:58:51,100 --> 00:58:54,700 if you're going to If it matters to you, if you think it's an 945 00:58:54,700 --> 00:58:59,200 important bit of news, just check it it's very easy these 946 00:58:59,200 --> 00:59:02,200 days to check the facts behind things. 947 00:59:02,200 --> 00:59:07,100 I mean I'm Amazed by how people never go and look, you know, if 948 00:59:07,100 --> 00:59:09,400 there's something about a scientific discovery, just just 949 00:59:09,400 --> 00:59:11,100 go and look up the original papers. 950 00:59:11,100 --> 00:59:12,600 Some? You may not understand all of 951 00:59:12,600 --> 00:59:15,600 it, but you can Jolly. Well, check that a new that you 952 00:59:15,600 --> 00:59:17,400 find. Hang on a minute, this reporters 953 00:59:17,400 --> 00:59:20,400 got the wrong end of the stick or he's greatly exaggerating. 954 00:59:20,400 --> 00:59:21,900 What these people are saying about? 955 00:59:22,000 --> 00:59:23,700 Climate change or something like that, you know? 956 00:59:23,700 --> 00:59:29,200 So let's let's just check stuff and the because of the internet, 957 00:59:29,200 --> 00:59:31,000 that's easier than it. You don't have to go to a 958 00:59:31,000 --> 00:59:36,900 library, you know, when I was young, if I read, you know, Paul 959 00:59:36,900 --> 00:59:39,300 Ehrlich saying, the whole world is going to starve to death in 960 00:59:39,300 --> 00:59:43,000 the next 20 years. I would have had to go to a 961 00:59:43,008 --> 00:59:46,100 library, to look up the data, Etc. 962 00:59:46,100 --> 00:59:48,800 Now, you know, you just click of the switch, you're onto the 963 00:59:48,800 --> 00:59:50,500 internet and you can check stuff so. 964 00:59:51,000 --> 00:59:56,300 So check The facts behind the claims, it's very easy to do and 965 00:59:56,300 --> 01:00:00,500 it's actually a lot of fun. Thank you to everyone for 966 01:00:00,500 --> 01:00:03,500 watching the libertarian Institute and the Keith and I 967 01:00:03,500 --> 01:00:05,800 don't try to on anyone podcast, mr. 968 01:00:05,800 --> 01:00:07,400 Ridley. Thanks so much for your time 969 01:00:07,400 --> 01:00:10,300 sir. Thank you very much, indeed for 970 01:00:10,300 --> 01:00:11,100 having me on the show.