back to indexAlex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights | Lex Fridman Podcast #231
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The following is a conversation with Alex Gladstein,
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Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation
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and the Oslo Freedom Forum.
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In recent times, Alex has focused on how cryptocurrency
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and especially Bitcoin can be a tool
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for empowering democracy and several liberties in the world,
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most crucially, parts of the world
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that are living under authoritarian regimes.
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As a side note, let me say that I have been learning a lot
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about the ways in which money can be used to amass power
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and in the same way, the decentralization of money
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can be used to resist the corrupting nature of this power.
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Alex and I do not agree on everything,
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but we strive for the same betterment of humanity.
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He's sensitive to the suffering in the world
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and is dedicating his life to finding solutions
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that lessen that suffering.
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Whether Bitcoin is one such solution, I don't know,
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but I think it has a chance
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and that means it is worth exploring deeply.
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I'm staying in this path of learning patiently
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and with as little ego as possible.
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I hope you come along with me on this journey as well.
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This is Alex Friedman podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors
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in the description.
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We recorded this conversation a while ago
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and I thought I lost the audio
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and was really disappointed with myself
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for messing this thing up,
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but luckily last week I found it and so rescued
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from out of the abyss of nonexistence.
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Here's my conversation with Alex Glasting.
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What are some universal human rights
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that you believe all people should have?
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So free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of belief,
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freedoms to participate in your government,
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the freedom to have privacy,
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the freedom to own things, property rights,
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these are all basic fundamental negative rights,
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what we call them.
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These are the basic fundamental human freedoms.
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What does negative rights mean?
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Negative rights are liberties
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and positive rights are entitlements.
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So after World War II when the UN came together,
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it was largely compromised between the Communist Soviet Union
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and the Free United States, right?
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So the US had on its side
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of the UN Declaration of Human Rights,
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a bunch of liberties essentially,
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things like free speech, freedom of association,
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freedom of assembly.
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The Soviets wanted entitlements like the right to work,
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the right to have housing, the right to water,
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the right to a vacation.
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So you actually read the UN Declaration for Human Rights,
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it's a negotiation between the Soviets and the Americans.
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Later, there was another document in the 70s
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released called the International Covenant
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on Civil and Political Rights
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and this is what H.R.F. uses as its sort of like load star,
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its founding document.
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And this is like essentially an international agreement
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on the negative rights.
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Those are the things we choose to focus on
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because essentially authoritarian regimes can commit fraud
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and claim they're giving the positive rights,
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the entitlements without having any of the negative liberties
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and they can do that
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because they don't have any like free speech
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When you take people's basic fundamental freedoms away,
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it's quite easy to make like a Potemkin village
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and pretend that there's the entitlements
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and that we have good healthcare
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and it's the same sort of thing
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that authoritarians have done for decades,
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Cuba and Venezuela and the Soviet Union.
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Do you think it's possible for authoritarian regimes
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to manipulate, to kind of lie about the negative rights
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as well by saying that the people have free speech,
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the people have the freedom to afford assembly
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and all those kinds of things.
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Can't you still manipulate the idea
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that citizenry still has those rights?
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The opposition leader of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim,
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he once told me the funny joke that in my country,
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we have freedom of speech,
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we don't have freedom after speech.
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So yeah, they can absolutely manipulate whatever they want
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but I've done research into socioeconomic data
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and I guess what I'm telling you is that authoritarian regimes
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which make up 53% of the world's population
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across 95 countries, about 4.3 billion people,
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those who live under those regimes
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are subject to massive fraud
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when it comes to things like literacy rates,
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life expectancy, any sort of socioeconomic data,
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economic growth, they can do this
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because there's no free press.
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So for us at the Human Rights Foundation
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and for people like me,
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we believe that the negative rights, the liberties,
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the things that are in, for example,
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the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution,
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these things are the table
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and then we can build on top of that,
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we can build the rest of our societies on top of that.
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The freest countries in the world
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have both the negative liberties
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and the entitlements like Norway, for example,
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but there's a big difference between Norway and North Korea.
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In North Korea, they only claim to have the entitlements
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and they definitely don't have the liberties.
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Do you think there's one right
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that's more important than others?
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You kind of suggested the freedom of the press,
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maybe freedom of speech,
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that if you take that away,
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all the other ones kind of collapse along
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with like from a ripple effect.
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Is there something fundamental
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that you like to focus your attention on
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to defend, to protect, to make sure it's there?
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Yeah, I think free speech is probably
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the most fundamental.
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It's probably why the founders
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chose to make it into the First Amendment.
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A lot of things are downstream from there.
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Property rights are also very, very important.
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Obviously, we've seen the toll
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of violent redistributionism in over the last 100 years,
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whether it was Lenin or Stalin or Mao
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or other regimes and everywhere from Ethiopia
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to colonialists everywhere to North Korea.
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It's not a pretty legacy.
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Is free speech clear to you as a concept?
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There's been quite a few debates,
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especially in the digital age.
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What it means to violate freedom of speech.
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There's been a lot of new like novel mechanisms
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for people to communicate with each other,
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especially on social networks.
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And it seems that unclear
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because a lot of times those are managed
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by private companies.
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It's unclear how much protection
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do the citizens have to have when they're communicating.
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A lot of people are being censored
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on these social platforms.
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Some people, even presidents,
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get removed from those social platforms.
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Have you thought about freedom of speech
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in the United States, but in the world?
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As it's implemented in the 21st century,
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given the internet and all those kinds of things?
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There is a Soviet dissident named Natan Sharansky,
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who survived the regime.
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And he wrote a book in which his thesis
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was essentially the way that you can define a free society
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through something called the town square test.
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Can you go to a public space where you live
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and criticize your ruler loudly
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without fear of retribution?
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If you can do that, you have free speech.
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I think that's a pretty good litmus test.
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Most people in this world cannot do that.
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If you live in Havana, if you live in Moscow,
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if you live in Beijing, you cannot do that.
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And that's not a free society.
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In Austin, Texas, in Boston, Massachusetts,
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in London, in Santiago, Chile, and Tokyo, Japan,
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in many democracies, you can do that.
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And I think that that's a really helpful basic sort
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Does the content of the criticism matter?
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Can it be complete lies, meaning conspiracy theories
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that involve claiming that the leader is, let's say,
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a lizard slash pedophile slash...
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I'm not saying that those are lies, look into it,
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but they're very unlikely phenomena.
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So does that matter?
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I think it ends poorly when the state tries
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to restrict speech.
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I think that's kind of how I would define censorship.
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I think censorship and deplatforming
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are two different things.
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Private companies, you know, they get to make up their own rules
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about what's allowed on their platforms.
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And I think that's very different from a government with guns
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and an army restricting the speech of its citizens
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with threats of violence.
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These things are different for me.
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That violence is a fundamental difference.
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I don't know, I've gotten a chance to have dinner
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with Alex Jones, and I've talked to him a few times offline.
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And I understand why people are so off put by him,
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but it does bother me that he's universally removed
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from every platform.
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It feels like there's many more evil people, bad people,
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compared to Alex Jones, who still are given a voice
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on these platforms.
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And so I'm uncomfortable with the universality
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of the application of the censorship by these platforms.
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But on the flip side, you're right, there's not a violence,
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there's not tanks, there's not guns
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behind that censorship.
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Yeah, it's a bit of a generalization,
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but Alex Jones would be in prison or dead
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if he were in North Korea or in Cuba or in Russia or in China.
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The authorities would not tolerate him to do what he did.
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And here, he can kind of do what he wants.
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He's encountering some resistance in the marketplace
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of ideas, large organizations, corporations,
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and a lot of public sentiment in different parts
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of our country don't like him.
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They're doing their best to drown out his voice.
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But that's very different from a violent threat
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of censorship from the state.
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And that's what we study.
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That's what I study.
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What is the state doing?
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That's paramount for me.
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Yeah, and that's true, because in the marketplace of ideas,
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there could be a company that springs up,
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that gives Alex Jones a platform,
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and the United States is not going
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to prevent those companies from functioning.
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Of course, from a technology perspective,
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there is AWS removing Parler from the platform.
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It gets a little weird as you get closer and closer
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to the compute infrastructure, because then you get closer
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and closer to the state.
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Actually, the more you get to the infrastructure
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that's usually managed by the state,
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the closer it gets to the control of the state.
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I would argue AWS is pretty damn close to infrastructure
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that's kind of controlled by the state.
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If you especially look at other nations, China, Russia,
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there's, I don't know who runs the compute infrastructure
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for Russia and China, but I bet the state
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has complete oversight over that.
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And so that level of compute infrastructure
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having control about which social networks can
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and cannot operate is very uncomfortable to me,
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but you're right, I think it's good to focus
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on the obvious violations of these principles
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as opposed to the gray areas.
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Of course, the gray areas are fascinating.
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You mentioned HRF, Human Rights Foundation.
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What is its mission?
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Yeah, so I've been working for HRF since 2007.
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We are a charity, a nonprofit, a 501c3 based in New York,
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and our mission is to promote and protect individual rights
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and freedoms in authoritarian societies around the world.
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So again, we define about 95 countries as authoritarian,
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meaning it's either a one party state
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or opposition politicians are outlawed or persecuted.
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There's no real free speech.
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There's no press freedom.
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There's no independent judiciary.
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There really aren't checks and balances
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and even trying to create like a human rights organization
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or like an environmental group would be illegal.
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And the majority of the world's population
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lives in that environment.
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That's very important.
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You said 53%, 4.3 billion people.
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And I saw you outlined a lot of different sources
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of suffering in the world.
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And then you sort of put people
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living under authoritarian governments
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as like more than all of them.
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I forget all the examples you provided, but then.
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Yeah, maybe you can mention if you remember.
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The number of people who are refugees,
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the number of people who suffer from natural disasters,
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the number of people who live under abject poverty,
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the number of people who don't have access
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to clean drinking water, all of these are dwarfed
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by the number of people who live under authoritarianism.
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And yet it's not something that we talk about a lot
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because people are mercantilist
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and the powers that be are happy to sacrifice
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freedoms and privacy for money.
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We live in a profit seeking world.
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To get an evidence of this,
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take a look at the list of sponsors
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of the upcoming Olympics in China
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where the CCP is currently committing genocide
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against the weaker population
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or look at the number of people
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and the famous investors who went to Saudi Arabia
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a couple of months ago for the Davos in the desert.
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I mean, Ray Dalio was there, all kinds of people were there.
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And at least they were invited
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and they said they were gonna go.
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And this is a government that at the time
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was torturing a female activist
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who just wanted to drive a car.
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This is a government that had murdered Jamal Khashoggi
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in a brutal fashion just a couple of years earlier.
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So, I mean, at the end of the day,
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when it comes down to brass tacks,
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I mean, the powers that be,
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even the free countries are led by people
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who are very, very happy to sacrifice
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all these pretty words about human rights
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when it comes down to profits, unfortunately.
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So, do you think capitalism,
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that's maybe one of the flaws of capitalism,
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is it turns a blind eye to injustices against human nature,
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against the human rights?
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Like it turns a blind eye to authoritarian governments?
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Look, I think that at the end of the day,
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like free trade is actually really good.
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And you can just look at France and Germany
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as an example of how like a capitalist structure
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If you have two capitalist actors,
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they're very unlikely to fight each other.
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There's very unlikely to be violence, right?
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These are two countries which basically murdered
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some large percentage of each other's male population
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three times in a hundred years in three different wars, right?
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And now today, war is like unthinkable.
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And a lot of that is because of increased collaboration,
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So, when you have two capitalist actors,
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they act in a very productive way with each other.
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But as soon as you introduce an authoritarian actor,
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So, I think what you have is a conflict
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between capitalist actors and authoritarian actors.
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And at the end of the day, people need to, yes,
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have more than just capitalist intentions.
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In the geopolitical level I'm talking about,
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they need to actually take a stand for principles.
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Otherwise, you have athletes and businesses
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and governments that are all too happy to do business
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with the Chinese Communist Party, for example, right now.
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I think that there is a little more
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than just kind of the pure profit, yes.
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You mentioned what are the signs
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that the state is an authoritarian state.
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How do you know if you're living in an authoritarian state
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or when you study another nation
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and analyze the behavior of another nation,
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how do you know that's an authoritarian state?
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Is it as simple as them having a dictator?
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Is it as simple as them as declaring
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that they don't have a democracy
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or is there something more subtle?
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There's a couple of good litmus tests.
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One is actually, can you have a gay pride parade?
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Serious, it actually lines up perfectly.
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It doesn't matter what religion the dictatorship is.
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They don't like minorities and they love to scapegoat,
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whether it's gays or religious minorities, et cetera.
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So, it lines up pretty well.
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That's really interesting.
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If you cannot have a gay pride parade in your country,
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because you're fearful that you're gonna get
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the crap kicked out of you,
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probably live in an authoritarian regime.
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I'm sure that it's not just about some kind of homophobia.
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That's really interesting.
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It's scapegoating.
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That's right, I'm going through.
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So, the scapegoats, minorities.
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There's another, you create another group and then you...
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Yeah, Uganda is a great example of this,
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but so is Saudi Arabia, so is China.
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I mean, so is Cuba.
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I mean, these are all regimes which demonize
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the LGBT communities.
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It's interesting because maybe you can correct me,
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but from my very distant outside of perspective,
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the way that certain authoritarian governments
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speak about gay people,
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is it's almost like, what is it?
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We don't have gay people in our country kind of idea,
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as opposed to scapegoating, which is like...
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Well, denial is the most powerful form of demonization.
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I mean, this is what the Iranian dictatorship does.
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A few years ago, when Ahmed Ahmadjad,
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who was then sort of the de facto leader,
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he came to Columbia University
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and he tried to give speech, which you can look up
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and he tried to claim that there were no gays in Iran.
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And that's the most powerful form of demonization
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is trying to just wipe out your outer existence.
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There's other good litmus tests too.
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You know, for example, you can think about comedy.
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Can you make money making fun of your government
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If you cannot, you live in a dictatorship most likely.
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I mean, it's shocking to people that I work with
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who live in dictatorships when I tell them
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that not only are comedians able to safely make fun
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of our government, but they get paid very well to do so.
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That's a hallmark of a free society.
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So that's another good litmus test.
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Hear that, Tim Dillon, you should go to North Korea,
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Yeah, and look, there are tons of flaws with democracies.
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These are really good tests, by the way.
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The United States is a deeply flawed country in many ways.
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Our prison system is a disaster.
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There's, you know, a horrible war on drugs.
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We committed a grievous crime, in my opinion,
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Like, we did a lot of problematic things,
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but our core architecture is still an open society.
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The people who criticized the US the most,
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usually live within it.
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And if they were to move to a different country
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and try to use that criticism against their new rulers,
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they wouldn't fare so well.
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So whether it's Chomsky or whomever,
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if they were to go to Cuba and live in Cuba
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and try to criticize Cuba like they do America,
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it wouldn't last very long.
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So I think what's important to distinguish
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between open societies and closed ones,
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or like free societies and authoritarian regimes,
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it doesn't mean that your government's gonna be good
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What it means is that the citizens
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have a way to push for reform,
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have a way to hold the rulers accountable.
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So even if you don't like what the US government does,
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whether it was under Biden or Trump or Obama or Bush,
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we can rotate them through voting.
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And we have an independent Supreme Court
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that rotates over time.
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And we have people that we can elect
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directly to serve our interests.
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And then there's like a free press,
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and there's lobbyists,
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and all kinds of people that jostle for power.
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So there's a separation of powers.
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And I like to think about a free society
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really as like at the bottom of the foundation
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of the pyramid really would be free speech.
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And then you would have civil society,
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like for example, human rights organizations,
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environmental groups, stamp collectors, athletes,
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any groups that come together,
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beyond the government's sort of strict instruction.
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And then on top of that,
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at the third level, you have separation of powers.
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Again, what I'm describing.
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So authoritarian regimes don't really have
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any of these layers to them, right?
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And then at the top, then you put elections.
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But the elections are meaningless
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if you don't have the foundation below.
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Every dictator gets elected.
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Kim Jong Un gets elected.
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He's the only person on the ballot.
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Every dictator from Hitler to Chavez,
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they all got elected.
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Elections on their own mean literally nothing.
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You have to have these other layers beneath
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to actually be an open and free society.
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I think it was very important for people to understand.
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Although Hitler in an interesting way at a certain point
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just said, I'm going to be a ruler forever,
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which is interesting.
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There's an important switch that happens when you,
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as opposed to having a facade of elections,
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you just put that aside and saying basically,
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like we're not even doing this.
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Yeah, there's like a ladder that you climb the election
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and you pull the ladder up
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and then no one else can climb up.
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This sadly happened in Egypt and it was quite predictable.
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After Mubarak was ousted after the Arab Spring,
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Morsi came in and it looked like,
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the Muslim Brotherhood was not really
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going to be very democratic,
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but it didn't really matter
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because then the military came back
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and now we have Sisi who's even worse than Mubarak.
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So a lot of times in these regimes, unfortunately,
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it's very difficult for people
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to build that democratic society afterwards.
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Some people have told me that when you live
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in a totalitarian or authoritarian regime,
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it's kind of like a political desert.
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What grows in the desert?
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Scorpions and cacti, right?
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So basically people with very extreme views
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because you as an authoritarian ruler,
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your best method for control
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is to get rid of the moderates.
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You have to crush the moderates, that's very important.
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You wanna have the only opposition to be extremists.
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That way when you go and have negotiations
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with the United States,
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you can kind of hold up the terrorists or whomever,
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the extremists and say, it's either us or them, right?
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And then the realists who run the US government
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are gonna choose you.
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And that's why, one of the reasons why the US government
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has supported so many dictators around the world
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over the last few decades.
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Do you think authoritarian systems emerge naturally?
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Like that's the natural state of things.
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If you take, if you incorporate what human nature is,
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well, is there always going to be corrupt people
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the rest of the top?
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And we almost have to construct systems
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that protect us against ourselves kind of thing.
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Another way to ask that is what kind of systems protect
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us from our own human nature?
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We started with authoritarianism or autocracy, right?
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Ruled by one or a small group oligarchy.
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And all humans lived under this structure
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for the virtual bulk of all human existence.
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Only until pretty recently did we start having
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The idea that we should be ruled by rules,
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not by rulers, very powerful.
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Invented in many places across the world,
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Western Africa had this idea.
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And so did the ancient Greeks.
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And they started to implement it.
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Although, as most know, we didn't have full democracy
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for a long, long time.
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Cause it was only property owners or only men,
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only people of a certain race.
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But this idea that we can like,
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rotate our rulers and that we could be ruled by rules
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is extremely powerful.
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And it really like, for me, the ideas behind this,
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I think unlocked a lot of the industrial revolution,
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these small personal freedoms that were allowed
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in some countries, but not others.
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And they unlocked a lot of the scientific innovation
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over the last few hundred years.
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And to me, there's like a really straight line
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between like scientific inquiry, free speech, freedoms,
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and then more prosperity and more effectiveness
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as a civilization.
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So I think that democracy, you know, ruled by the people
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is definitely an upgrade from autocracy or oligarchy,
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you know, which would be ruled by one
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or ruled by a small group.
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And I think that the democratic revolution
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has been an incredible thing for our world.
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And it's, you know, you can do half class full,
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The half class full is that almost half the world
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lives under democracy.
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Like that's an incredible achievement.
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But just under half.
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Yeah, just under half.
link |
But that's billions of people.
link |
It is billions of people.
link |
And if you look at the progress of things,
link |
it's getting better and better and better.
link |
I mean, if you, you know.
link |
Yeah, we're a little bit of a stalemate here.
link |
Democracy is really blossomed between World War II
link |
and the year 2000, especially in the 80s and 90s.
link |
You had an incredible wave of fall, you know,
link |
where many, many authoritarian regimes fell
link |
and were replaced by democracies.
link |
I think around 2015, the acceleration kind of came to a stand.
link |
It came to a standstill a little bit.
link |
There's some good news in some countries
link |
and there's bad news in others.
link |
Like in the last 10 years, you've had, for example,
link |
the Philippines has gone backwards.
link |
Thailand has gone backwards.
link |
Bangladesh has gone backwards.
link |
Turkey has gone backwards.
link |
That's like a half billion people right there.
link |
So you've had some positives, like, you know,
link |
there was positive movement forward in Armenia, Malaysia,
link |
some other countries.
link |
But we're kind of at its stalemate right now.
link |
And what most people fear about where we are right now,
link |
who I respect, is what is the digital transformation
link |
of the world due to this like progressive democracy
link |
or of open societies.
link |
And that's what concerns me the most.
link |
So I've, and we'll talk about one of the most fascinating
link |
technologies, which is Bitcoin, how it can help.
link |
But I have a sense that technology,
link |
like most technological innovations will give power
link |
to the individuals, will fight authoritarian governments
link |
as opposed to give more power to authoritarian governments.
link |
But your sense is there's ways to give for technology
link |
to be utilized as a tool for the abuse of the citizenry.
link |
In my work at ATREF, I started by helping to put together
link |
backpacks with foreign information that we sent
link |
to the Cuban underground library movement.
link |
So in Cuba, to own a book at the time,
link |
you had to have the government's permission.
link |
There was very little internet penetration.
link |
So we would send in movies,
link |
V for Vendetta dubbed into Spanish,
link |
and people would sit inside their homes
link |
and they'd watch it.
link |
And they would answer questions with each other
link |
and it was very powerful.
link |
And then after that, I worked with people inside North Korea.
link |
We would send in flash drives.
link |
We have this program called Flash Drives for Freedom.
link |
We've sent over 100,000 flash drives in our work
link |
into North Korea, a country of about 25 million people.
link |
It's a big difference that's many, many millions of hours
link |
of films, books, movies, et cetera.
link |
So I've seen the power that technology can have
link |
where in the 60s and 70s, to get,
link |
to break an information blockade,
link |
you had to send in crates of books into a communist country.
link |
So now all of a sudden, you can send the entire contents
link |
of what was once the Library of Alexandria
link |
on something the size of your thumbnail.
link |
Like that's remarkable.
link |
So obviously I've seen the positives of technology.
link |
We'll certainly get into Bitcoin.
link |
But I'm very concerned about essentially big data analysis,
link |
like what people call AI or general,
link |
specific kinds of AI, like very concerning.
link |
I think these are very authoritarian.
link |
I mean, it's very hard to make a case that AI
link |
is going to be good for human rights.
link |
Very difficult, in my opinion.
link |
It may be good for health.
link |
It may be good for our efforts to protect the planet.
link |
It may be good for a lot of scientific things.
link |
I find it very hard to believe
link |
it'll be good for civil liberties.
link |
This is fun, because I disagree.
link |
Give me your examples.
link |
I'm serious, what AI applications
link |
will improve civil liberties?
link |
I thought you meant examples of stuff
link |
that's already out there.
link |
Because I can give you examples that, for example,
link |
the kind of things that I would like to work on,
link |
but also the kind of things that I'm hoping to see,
link |
which is AI could be used by centralized powers,
link |
by governments, by big organizations,
link |
like Facebook and Twitter and so on,
link |
to collect data about people.
link |
But I believe there's a huge hunger among people
link |
to have control over their own data.
link |
So instead, you can have AI that's distributed,
link |
or people have complete ownership of their little AI systems.
link |
So the kind of stuff that I would like to build
link |
or like to see it to be built is,
link |
you could think of it as personal assistance,
link |
or AI that's owned by you,
link |
and you get to give it out.
link |
You have complete control over all of your data.
link |
You have complete control over everything
link |
that's learnable about your day to day experiences
link |
that could be useful in the market of goods and ideas
link |
and all those kinds of things.
link |
So it has to do with,
link |
so I know you talk about surveillance,
link |
which is very interesting.
link |
It's who gets to have control of the data.
link |
And I think, I believe there's a lot of hunger
link |
among regular people to have control over their data,
link |
such that if you wanna create a business,
link |
you have a lot of money to be made
link |
from a capitalist perspective
link |
by providing products that let people control their data,
link |
or you have no control.
link |
Sounds like to me you're describing encryption,
link |
or at least the ability to encrypt,
link |
the ability to use digital keys to secure your property.
link |
And that to me is a very powerful individual force
link |
for individual rights, very powerful.
link |
And it's what animates Bitcoin ultimately,
link |
which we'll get into.
link |
But for me, at least the way I look at it today in 2021,
link |
the threat from big data analysis
link |
used by governments and authoritarian regimes is terrifying.
link |
I mean, to actually see what the Chinese Communist Party
link |
is doing where they have hundreds of millions of cameras
link |
overseeing society,
link |
cameras that can tell who's a Uyghur and who's a Han,
link |
that to me is terrifying.
link |
And everything is sorted instantly.
link |
There are supercomputers that are built
link |
in a rumqi, in Xinjiang, for this explicit purpose.
link |
And it allows the government to quickly sort
link |
and basically commit genocide a lot faster.
link |
And it's really scary.
link |
So I do agree, and I've seen personally
link |
how powerful technology can be as a force for freedom.
link |
But I'm very, very worried about big data analysis
link |
in the hands of governments.
link |
See, that's funny,
link |
because I tend to see governments as ultimately incompetent
link |
in the space of technology
link |
to where they will always be lagging behind.
link |
So you look at what the Chinese surveillance systems are doing.
link |
I believe when, once it started getting bad enough,
link |
that like technologies would be created to resist that.
link |
So to mess with it from the hacker community,
link |
but also from the individual community.
link |
So surveillance is actually very difficult
link |
from a centralized perspective to detect,
link |
to collect data about you, to detect everything you are,
link |
because you can spoof a lot of that information.
link |
So I believe you can put power in the hands of the citizens
link |
to sort of feed the government fake data,
link |
to confuse it at a mass scale
link |
to where it'll make their surveillance less effective.
link |
But okay, that could be very sort of hopeful.
link |
Yeah, I mean, the practical application in Xinjiang,
link |
which is a territory the size of Alaska,
link |
where a large percentage of the population
link |
has been put into prison camps.
link |
The current issue of the New Yorker
link |
has an absolutely harrowing essay
link |
that tells the story of one such woman
link |
who in I believe 2017 got sucked into one of these camps
link |
and it took her a year or more to get out.
link |
And she's talking about how in each home in Xinjiang,
link |
each home has a QR code on it that the police can scan
link |
and get like a quick instant download of who lives there.
link |
Each car has like a scannable code.
link |
Every single person has their DNA taken
link |
and the DNA is being sifted through and analyzed by algorithms.
link |
So this is like the Chinese government's laboratory
link |
for how can we use technology to oppress?
link |
It's like sort of like digital Leninism.
link |
And that to me is one of the biggest risks in our world today
link |
and it's not talked about enough.
link |
That's interesting.
link |
So technology basically enables the automation of oppression.
link |
But to define technology, big data analysis
link |
and maybe specific AI, et cetera, does,
link |
but encryption allows us to fight back.
link |
It's very important people understand
link |
we have tools to fight back.
link |
Big brother can only grow if it can feed on your data.
link |
If it can't get your data, it can't grow.
link |
So you have to willingly give up stuff to the cloud
link |
for this monster to grow.
link |
We can like make the monster hungry and shrink it
link |
if we give it less data.
link |
And I think that's where I would agree with you
link |
in terms of like wanting to empower people to be able
link |
to do stuff on their own terms in a sovereign way.
link |
And yeah, maybe you're kind of thinking
link |
like the personal assistant who helps out Tony Stark
link |
or something like that.
link |
And that's, yeah, as long as there's no back doors
link |
and that's a sovereign thing that you've popped up
link |
and created and you have the keys to, absolutely.
link |
But practically speaking, if we're talking
link |
about the world today as is, we need to be concerned
link |
about the way that authoritarian regimes
link |
are using big data analysis and they're gonna buy
link |
this software and this equipment
link |
from the Chinese government, they're already doing it.
link |
Street level surveillance has already been purchased
link |
by governments everywhere from Latin America
link |
to Sub Saharan Africa to the heart of Europe.
link |
There's been huge scandals in Britain
link |
over their purchase of Chinese surveillance technology.
link |
Part of the Chinese government's Belt and Road campaign
link |
which is basically to build the infrastructure
link |
of this century and to be in control of it
link |
is this part of that idea is to ship out
link |
and install surveillance technology,
link |
both at the telecom level and at the surveillance level
link |
across dozens of countries around the world
link |
and have that back door.
link |
There's this national security law in China
link |
which states that companies that are Chinese
link |
which are abroad are mandated to send data back to Beijing.
link |
So they are building this huge global surveillance state.
link |
And again, not talked about enough.
link |
You should go Google and research the Belt and Road.
link |
And it's very important that we confront this.
link |
Yeah, I'm really glad you're talking about it
link |
because it's probably important to understand.
link |
I'm also hopeful that as people get educated
link |
about how much their data when collected, unencrypted,
link |
but in general can be used to harm them.
link |
I mean, it's almost like an education.
link |
I feel like if you know, it's a double edged sword
link |
because I feel like people become fearful too easily
link |
and that actually has a very negative effect
link |
on the quality of life.
link |
In some sense, you want to have tools
link |
that allow you to live freely as opposed to live in fear.
link |
If you live in fear, that's not a good way to live.
link |
So it's a balance.
link |
It's a free society versus a fierce society.
link |
Yeah, fierce society.
link |
And look, people are, it's all about the trade offs
link |
you make in your daily life.
link |
Like living more privately with more freedom
link |
is less convenient.
link |
You trade freedom and privacy for convenience
link |
and comfort and speed.
link |
It's an engineering decision and everything that you do.
link |
In the West, in advanced democracies,
link |
we have not necessarily personally seen
link |
the results of that trade off
link |
because we live in these free societies
link |
that have these checks and balances and freedoms.
link |
But as soon as you step into an authoritarian state
link |
and you make those trade offs,
link |
your life immediately becomes more real.
link |
And what people are worried about is that
link |
even in advanced economies, market democracies, et cetera,
link |
the people are worried that they might not survive
link |
the great social digital transformation.
link |
Look at what the NSA is capable of doing.
link |
I mean, for now, it's not that big of a problem
link |
because we still have free speech,
link |
but it's deeply concerning what Snowden revealed.
link |
And it's a nice reminder
link |
that we need to be focused on privacy and encryption
link |
and on helping users become more sovereign,
link |
regardless of where you live.
link |
It's kind of like a crutch to live in a free society.
link |
It's almost like a free lunch in a way.
link |
You're not gonna be sent to a prison camp
link |
because of the color of your skin or your beliefs
link |
or what you say about the government.
link |
And you're very lucky.
link |
Again, most people do live in a society
link |
where you can be persecuted for those things.
link |
And I feel like, especially in America, we forget that.
link |
We're distanced from that really strong reality, you know?
link |
On the topic of Snowden and the NSA,
link |
what should we be thinking about?
link |
Because that feels like already an outdated set
link |
of conversations because of the information
link |
we've gotten from the past.
link |
It feels like everything's gotten quiet now
link |
in terms of how much we actually know about the...
link |
I think the two lessons from Snowden are, A,
link |
the Patriot Act and the War on Terror and mass surveillance
link |
are not necessary for our democracy and for our freedoms.
link |
This was a false choice.
link |
We never had to sacrifice them to be safer.
link |
And we've seen that.
link |
Government has spent hundreds and hundreds
link |
of millions of dollars on these surveillance programs
link |
that you can read about,
link |
have amounted to very little,
link |
except for tremendous bureaucratic waste
link |
and erosion of our freedoms.
link |
But at the same time, we need to practice more privacy.
link |
And the dramatic increase in the usage of signal,
link |
for example, has been really, really great to see.
link |
It's fantastic that tens of millions of people
link |
are downloading signal and using it.
link |
You should try to be onboarding more and more
link |
of your conversations onto signal, for example,
link |
where governments can't see what you're saying.
link |
Maybe they can see the metadata.
link |
Maybe they can see that you sent,
link |
your phone number sent a message
link |
to someone else's phone number at this time,
link |
but they can't see what's inside.
link |
So using encryption in your life is very, very important.
link |
That's a good starting point.
link |
I would say that's kind of step A.
link |
The ideas of democracy,
link |
the ideas of the balance of power,
link |
the, all the ideas that we were talking
link |
about the constructs were inventions.
link |
I wonder if there's other inventions
link |
that will allow us to sort of not engage,
link |
not give governments or any centralized institutions
link |
Like why do citizens have to use signal?
link |
Why, because that's an effort.
link |
because you have to understand exactly why.
link |
So that's a nice little solution
link |
for a particular set of problems,
link |
but there's a million other ways that data,
link |
I'm sure, is being collected constantly.
link |
If we don't create a system
link |
that prevents the establishments of these centralized powers,
link |
then we'll always have this problem.
link |
Yeah, I think we can keep it simple
link |
for the purposes of this conversation.
link |
You have politics, information and money.
link |
Those are the three things I would encourage us to focus on.
link |
In politics, yes, someone invented democracy.
link |
I mean, whether it was the Greeks,
link |
the West Africans or many others around the world,
link |
around the same time invented this idea
link |
that we should be ruled by rules and not by rulers, right?
link |
And that has evolved dramatically, right?
link |
And now you, and then you have information.
link |
Information also used to be highly centralized, right?
link |
You know, think about how rich you had to be
link |
to gain access to a library before the printing press
link |
or how much money you had to have
link |
or how close to the king or the feudal lord
link |
you had to be to be able to have that ability.
link |
But now, the majority of the world,
link |
billions of people have access to all information
link |
in their pocket and they can set up an account
link |
on social media and get their word out.
link |
So not only politics,
link |
but information has been dramatically decentralized.
link |
And I would say that encrypted messaging
link |
is kind of a corollary to that second innovation
link |
and as much as now people are like more effortlessly,
link |
like signal is a lot easier to use than PGP, for example,
link |
they're more easily able to practice privacy
link |
when it comes to having private messages globally.
link |
These are all good things and we need to keep pushing.
link |
And I think money is like,
link |
honestly, maybe the most important piece.
link |
And that's why I spent so much time thinking about Bitcoin.
link |
Okay, so politics, information, money, let's talk about money.
link |
What is money and why is it important
link |
to think about in the context of human rights?
link |
I have witnessed money be peripheralized.
link |
It has taken a backseat in the human rights conversation.
link |
The idea of currency, who makes the money,
link |
who makes the rules, who issues it,
link |
who sets the interest rates, all these things.
link |
It is not on the menu of human rights activists.
link |
If you just do like a systematic study
link |
of like the human rights discourse
link |
over the last several decades, money is not there.
link |
It's also not really taught in schools.
link |
Like children don't really learn about money,
link |
where does it come from?
link |
It's kind of hidden from a lot of our discourse.
link |
Only really when I got into Bitcoin
link |
did I start learning more about money.
link |
I spent 10 years at the Human Rights Foundation
link |
and we did all kinds of programs around the world.
link |
We convened Oslo Freedom Forums in different places
link |
and I got to meet hundreds of dissidents.
link |
And very rarely did they ever speak about currency
link |
or bank accounts or moving money from one place to another.
link |
But when I started asking them,
link |
they always had amazing stories about money, always.
link |
I mean, my friend Ivan Moire,
link |
who started the this flag movement in Zimbabwe,
link |
which ended up toppling Robert Mugabe.
link |
When I asked him to come to San Francisco
link |
to give a talk about hyperinflation, which he lived through,
link |
he said, no one's ever asked me to do that before.
link |
But I'll come and he came, this was about three years ago.
link |
And the first thing he did when he got on the stage
link |
is he opened up a shirt and he brought on a necklace
link |
that had the 1980s Zimbabwean dollar on it.
link |
And he said, we in the activist community wear this
link |
as a symbol of where our country used to be
link |
because the Zimbabwean dollar used to be worth
link |
two British pounds.
link |
And then of course, over the next two and a half decades
link |
of economic mismanagement and corruption by Mugabe,
link |
it got inflated out of existence, right?
link |
You've seen those like $100 trillion Zimbabwean notes.
link |
So he had to live through that, which was terrible
link |
and crushing, but he is an expert on money.
link |
If you actually talk to human rights activists about money,
link |
they know a lot about money.
link |
They're just not usually asked to talk about it.
link |
So for me, when I study money or look at money,
link |
it's really about control.
link |
Who's creating it and how much does the population know
link |
about the creation of that money?
link |
And when it comes to Bitcoin, it's really the people's money.
link |
Like there is no shadowy force in charge of it.
link |
We all know the rules.
link |
We all know how it's gonna get minted
link |
and how it's gonna get printed.
link |
And that information is out there for everybody to see.
link |
And there's no special group of rules
link |
for one group of people or another group.
link |
A billionaire and a refugee are the same
link |
in the eyes of the protocol.
link |
This is a rather revolutionary concept.
link |
And in the same way that democracy allowed us
link |
to decentralize politics and have checks and balances.
link |
And in the same way that the internet
link |
is this culmination of technologies
link |
that allowed us to decentralize information,
link |
access to and control over it.
link |
Bitcoin, decentralizes money.
link |
I mean, no longer, again, is there one group of people
link |
who can just change it arbitrarily.
link |
We're all in the same playing field.
link |
And I think that that is a tremendous innovation.
link |
You know, from one perspective, money and inflation,
link |
hyperinflation is a kind of symptom of corruption
link |
as opposed to the core of the corruption.
link |
And at the flip side, in terms of resisting the corruption,
link |
resisting the abuse of human rights,
link |
it's interesting to think that fighting inflation
link |
or fighting the mismanagement of the money supply
link |
is a way to fight back authoritarianism
link |
or to fight authoritarianism. And that's an interesting
link |
concept that I think was introduced to me
link |
by just plugging myself intellectually
link |
into the Bitcoin community,
link |
but also just cryptocurrency in general.
link |
It's to like, it's not that money is a symptom.
link |
You know, money is a tool to fight back too.
link |
So in what way can Bitcoin be used
link |
to fight authoritarianism, not just in the United States,
link |
but all of those 53% that you're referring to,
link |
how can Bitcoin help?
link |
So we talked about authoritarianism
link |
and we talked about the surveillance state.
link |
To me, Bitcoin has two kind of key mechanisms
link |
through which it can help us.
link |
Number one, it's a sovereign savings account.
link |
It's debasement proof,
link |
meaning the government cannot print more
link |
whenever they want.
link |
This is very, very different from fiat currency,
link |
which by its very name, its very nature,
link |
can be issued on sort of demand by the rulers.
link |
And while I live in a country where the rulers
link |
do a reasonable job managing the money,
link |
most people aren't so lucky.
link |
So only 13% of humans in the world live in a country
link |
that's a liberal democracy with property rights
link |
and has what we call a reserve currency,
link |
meaning a currency so stable and desirable
link |
that other countries save in it
link |
at the central bank level.
link |
You basically have the US, the UK, Australia,
link |
Switzerland, the Euro, and Canada.
link |
I mean, those are like reserve currencies
link |
and these are liberal democracies
link |
where people have reasonable guarantees
link |
over property rights.
link |
Everybody else either lives under like a weaker currency
link |
or an authoritarian regime.
link |
That's 87% of the world's population,
link |
almost 7 billion people.
link |
So for them, a sovereign savings account
link |
that's permissionless,
link |
meaning you don't have to have ID to use it,
link |
is a big, big deal.
link |
And a lot of people talk about
link |
in Bobway or Venezuela has some like isolated cases.
link |
Oh, well, you know, hyperinflation only happens
link |
in those two countries.
link |
I actually did some research into this
link |
and there's about one point over, you know,
link |
close to 1.3 billion people
link |
who live under double or triple digit inflation.
link |
This is not an isolated instance.
link |
We're talking huge countries.
link |
Nigeria, 200 million people, 15% inflation.
link |
Turkey, 15% inflation for 100 million people.
link |
Argentina, 40% inflation for a country of 45 million people.
link |
So you can go down the list.
link |
There's about 35 countries
link |
where like people's earnings, their wages
link |
are literally disappearing in front of their eyes
link |
over a matter of weeks or months
link |
against things like the dollar, gold, real estate, right?
link |
So this is a huge issue.
link |
It absolutely is a human rights issue for me.
link |
I mean, when it comes to your time and energy,
link |
having control over that or having it stolen from you,
link |
I think this is pretty clear.
link |
And Bitcoin is like an immediate low cost,
link |
easily accessible solution for people.
link |
And I've learned this not from my own assumptions
link |
but by talking to people, by interviewing dozens of people,
link |
whether it's in Sudan,
link |
which currently has triple digit inflation,
link |
or people who've escaped from Syria
link |
who have used Bitcoin to get their wealth out of the country
link |
and then also to make payments back to people inside
link |
or Venezuela or elsewhere.
link |
It's very, very powerful.
link |
I think some very small percentage of people
link |
have used, have owned Bitcoin.
link |
So it's something like 1% of the world.
link |
Whatever the number is, the small...
link |
Call it 2% for the purposes of our account.
link |
About a little under 200 million people.
link |
At most, right now.
link |
So if we look at Zimbabwe, Sudan, if we look at...
link |
Small percentages of people.
link |
Do you think the technology is mature enough?
link |
Because it's not just about the idea,
link |
it's also about the implementation of it.
link |
Like, you know, Bitcoin, for the most part,
link |
requires access to the internet.
link |
And what do you think about accessibility of this technology
link |
now as a method of activism
link |
in the worst parts of the world?
link |
We often think like all the conversations we've had
link |
about Bitcoin is essentially middle class,
link |
like wealthy people relative to the rest of the world.
link |
They're kind of talking with sort of investment
link |
and high concept ideas.
link |
Then there's also the people in the world who are suffering,
link |
who are living through hyperinflation.
link |
They may not have a computer access to the internet.
link |
Like, how do you think Bitcoin can help there?
link |
Yeah, so again, we have one clear use case,
link |
which is a sovereign savings account
link |
that you can control, right?
link |
The other use case is an unstoppable payments network.
link |
This is very important for people
link |
who live behind, for example, sanctions.
link |
Like the US basically weaponizes the dollar
link |
and it like sanctions different countries.
link |
And instead of sanctioning like a handful of rulers,
link |
for example, which I would support,
link |
this is like a Magnitsky or smart sanctions.
link |
Sometimes we'll just say,
link |
we're just gonna shut off this whole country.
link |
So then people suffer.
link |
And then people suffer.
link |
Cuba or Iran are good examples.
link |
Average people suffer, right?
link |
So people in those two countries I just mentioned,
link |
Cuba, Iran or even Palestine,
link |
which is also sort of like blockaded by the Israelis.
link |
So you have Cuba, Iran, Palestine are three good examples
link |
where people inside all three of those countries now
link |
are using Bitcoin to do commerce, do their business,
link |
send money back and forth to their families.
link |
So the sanctions resistant.
link |
Sanctions resistant.
link |
It does not get stopped by sanctions, right?
link |
And also it's, again, remittances are extortionate.
link |
I mean, the average remittance costs as a high fee
link |
take several days.
link |
If your family is in Ghana or something like that
link |
or Nigeria and you live in the United States,
link |
it can take time to use Western Union.
link |
Sometimes, oh, it gets paused, it gets lost,
link |
there's issues, you have to deal with customer service.
link |
I mean, you know, the person has a cell phone
link |
which increasingly is the case.
link |
I mean, by the end of next year,
link |
more than five or six billion people,
link |
depending on different estimates,
link |
will have smartphones basically by the end of 2022.
link |
We're talking like the vast majority of humans
link |
will have access to smartphones.
link |
They can all have sovereign Bitcoin wallets.
link |
And there's even ways to access Bitcoin without the internet.
link |
But I mean, we can get into that.
link |
There's like hardware wallets and so on.
link |
What do you mean by sovereign Bitcoin wallet?
link |
You know, most users today are using Bitcoin
link |
in a custodial manner.
link |
So this is kind of like having a bank account
link |
where you have a deposit account at a bank, right?
link |
So you have a claim, right?
link |
You go to the bank and they have some of your money
link |
and you take it out, right?
link |
So what I would call non custodial Bitcoin use
link |
would be similar to withdrawing cash from an ATM.
link |
You have it, it's a bear instrument, okay?
link |
So when I, it's what's called a bear instrument.
link |
I know, I apologize.
link |
I'm outside of this community just selling smartphones.
link |
No, no, it's, yeah.
link |
So like a bear instrument would be like a bar of gold
link |
or a bank note or Bitcoin that you control,
link |
meaning you have the seed phrase, right?
link |
Which for the listeners essentially is 12 to 24
link |
English words that you write down on a piece of paper.
link |
That's your like password to get into your Bitcoin account.
link |
And that gives you that bear instrument quality, right?
link |
But unfortunately, most users still use Bitcoin
link |
in a custodial way, meaning they buy it on Coinbase
link |
or Square or something like that.
link |
You would put into the.
link |
Into the custodial category like a bank, yeah.
link |
And look, the good news is you can withdraw
link |
to your own control.
link |
And in the Bitcoin community,
link |
we try to teach this idea that it's not your keys,
link |
not your coins, in the same way that if you deposit
link |
your money at the bank, you might not get it back.
link |
I mean, it's low likelihood, but it's very possible.
link |
Same thing in Bitcoin.
link |
Like if you wanna get the full experience,
link |
you wanna actually custody your own Bitcoin.
link |
And you wanna put it whether it's on an open source
link |
software wallet, like the blue wallet is a good one
link |
for people to check out or a hardware wallet
link |
like cold card, for example.
link |
There's different ways to do this.
link |
But essentially like around the world,
link |
people are innovating.
link |
Like don't think so low of your fellow man.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
Like people are able to figure this out.
link |
You know, I get a lot of flack from people saying,
link |
oh, Bitcoin's so hard to use.
link |
I've read this article in New York Times saying
link |
this guy in Silicon Valley lost all of his Bitcoin.
link |
That's cause he was a moron and didn't care about it.
link |
This guy lost all this Bitcoin
link |
because it wasn't worth much 10 years ago.
link |
And he, you know, he forgot the password.
link |
But if you're like receiving your remittance
link |
from a family member, you're not gonna lose the password.
link |
And you trust in the basic intelligence of people
link |
to figure this out and to innovate and so on
link |
We're watching it, man.
link |
Yeah, you know, I'm, it's kind of funny that
link |
but people in the United States are not very savvy with money.
link |
It's exactly the way you're describing.
link |
It's like when you have very little money,
link |
you're going to be savvy with money.
link |
You're going to understand exactly the mechanisms that work
link |
that are resistant to the corruption that's around you.
link |
I mean, I remember sort of growing up in the Soviet Union,
link |
the general bureaucracy and the corruption
link |
of everything around you.
link |
You figure out ways around that.
link |
You figure out ways how to function within that kind of system
link |
to survive under inflation, under hyperinflation,
link |
under all like basically being unable to trust any kind of,
link |
even the police force and all those kinds of things.
link |
You figure it out.
link |
And in that same way, perhaps Bitcoin could be
link |
all the different ways to store and gain Bitcoin.
link |
These mechanisms could be something that's figured out
link |
in the third world as opposed to in the United States.
link |
Oh, I mean, I would say the capital of Bitcoin
link |
could easily be Lagos and not San Francisco
link |
in terms of users, in terms of people using it.
link |
And again, the two use cases as a savings account
link |
and as an unstoppable payment rail.
link |
These are the two ones that you should really think about.
link |
This is how people are using it today.
link |
Now, when it comes to could it possibly be adopted
link |
by like a sufficient majority of the population?
link |
And it's very similar to the way the mobile phone spread.
link |
At the beginning, the cell phone was only for rich people.
link |
It was only for the elite.
link |
It was huge. It didn't work very well.
link |
The interface sucked. It was clunky.
link |
Over time, it got smaller and smaller and cheaper and cheaper
link |
and easier to use and easier to use.
link |
And today, everyone benefits.
link |
So you're gonna watch a similar technology upgrade process
link |
Already in the last 10 years,
link |
Bitcoin has gotten so much easier to use.
link |
I mean, there are now mobile wallets that are so slick.
link |
There's one called MoonMUUN Wallet from a team in Argentina.
link |
And these guys created it
link |
because they saw their own currency
link |
devalued like three times in the last 20 years.
link |
And they've had a hell of a time trying to get their money back
link |
and forth from different countries.
link |
So they were like, let's make this easy for people.
link |
Again, you know, this is the people's money.
link |
This is something that cannot be controlled
link |
by governments or corporations.
link |
And that makes it very powerful.
link |
And I think it's actually quite exciting
link |
to be here in the adoption phase.
link |
In the early days.
link |
Yeah, man. This is the early days.
link |
And you also mentioned that sort of Bitcoin
link |
is the mechanism of a peaceful revolution.
link |
So it's a way to resist authoritarianism
link |
in a peaceful way.
link |
It's ultimately, you know,
link |
you mentioned sort of politics, information, and money.
link |
It seems like in the space of money,
link |
this is one of the peaceful mechanisms.
link |
It's a way to opt out.
link |
You can opt out peacefully from the system.
link |
And yeah, it's beautiful.
link |
So Bitcoin is currently, by far,
link |
the most popular sort of dominant cryptocurrency.
link |
That said, and I look forward to your letters,
link |
Bitcoin Maximilists.
link |
That said, you know, Internet Explorer
link |
was the most popular browser for quite a long time.
link |
And then other browsers came along
link |
that outcompeted it like Chrome, Firefox,
link |
People's Checkout Brave, it's a great browser.
link |
I think it's my favorite browser at this point.
link |
Anyway, so why Bitcoin?
link |
Why not another cryptocurrency?
link |
If you look in the next 10, 20, 50, 100 years,
link |
do you think it's possible for another cryptocurrency
link |
like Ethereum or something that it's not even here yet
link |
to overtake Bitcoin as a mechanism?
link |
When you say overtake, what do you mean?
link |
What do you mean overtake?
link |
Do you mean number of users?
link |
Do you mean a price per coin?
link |
Yeah, the number of users,
link |
because we're talking about 1%, 2%.
link |
And if we are serious about this being in the space of money
link |
as a way to give individuals power,
link |
fight the centralized powers that use the money system
link |
and so on, how do we get from 2% to 50%, right?
link |
That jump, is it obvious to you, not obvious,
link |
but do you think Bitcoin is the way to get from 2% to 50%
link |
or are there going to be other cryptocurrencies
link |
that may emerge that get us to 50%?
link |
No, I mean, Bitcoin is the innovation.
link |
The innovation is in having the decentralized mint.
link |
No one can change the monetary policy.
link |
Everything else is downstream from there.
link |
In Bitcoin, the mean would be 21 million.
link |
There's never gonna be any more than 21 million.
link |
Every other cryptocurrency either has an inflationary policy.
link |
I mean, there's gonna continue to be more and more of it
link |
over time or its monetary policy can be changed
link |
by a small group of people.
link |
This is vividly on display in Ethereum,
link |
which is like the second largest
link |
and second most robust cryptocurrency, right?
link |
I've talked to senior Ethereum engineers
link |
over the last couple of weeks trying to figure out
link |
what is the monetary policy of Ethereum?
link |
No one can tell me.
link |
No one knows how much ETH is gonna be minted
link |
in 2022 and 2023 after they shift to proof of stake.
link |
I've seen estimates that range from 100,000 to 2 million.
link |
So at the end of the day,
link |
you're gonna be trusting a small group of people
link |
to make those decisions.
link |
That is what we are escaping with Bitcoin.
link |
So all these other cryptocurrencies,
link |
they might have their use cases.
link |
Virtually all of them are not.
link |
It's very important for people to know
link |
that if you take like the 4,500 cryptocurrencies
link |
on CoinMarketCap, almost all of them are scams straight up.
link |
Even the ones that have like noble intentions,
link |
I just don't think are gonna add that much value ultimately.
link |
I think Bitcoin to me is the innovation
link |
and that's because it has a monetary policy
link |
and an issuance schedule that cannot be changed.
link |
And that's what gets me so excited about it.
link |
I mean, that's why it's such an important tool
link |
Yeah, it's interesting
link |
because when you grow from 2%,
link |
when you grow in the number of people using it
link |
at the scale they're using it,
link |
it's going to need to be resistant to governments
link |
and institutions messing with it.
link |
So it's interesting to see what kind of cryptocurrency
link |
would be resistant to that.
link |
Obviously, Dogecoin is gonna win.
link |
Well, I mean, look, the number two cryptocurrency
link |
in the world, probably by like how useful it is
link |
to people is Tether, which is totally centralized,
link |
So I'm not saying there won't be like new digital assets
link |
that are lumped into this category that have usage,
link |
but it's not the same innovation as Bitcoin.
link |
It's just sort of building on this idea
link |
of like a euro dollar maybe, like a dollar
link |
that is minted outside of the control
link |
of the US Federal Reserve, right?
link |
It would be a euro dollar.
link |
So stablecoins are kind of like euro dollars
link |
just minted by private actors in a way, right?
link |
But they're still tied to the dollar.
link |
They're pegged to the dollar.
link |
They're not escaping the system.
link |
Escaping the system is Bitcoin.
link |
We aren't reliant on the dollar.
link |
We have our own full store value,
link |
meaning of exchange, unit of account eventually.
link |
And the Bitcoin world will be denominated
link |
in different terms.
link |
And I think everything else will be tied to it.
link |
It does feel currently like Bitcoin is like pirates
link |
or something like that.
link |
And there's still like the central banks
link |
that are like the main navies of the different nations.
link |
It's just, if you talk about scale.
link |
So there's going to be a moment
link |
if Bitcoin continues to grow in its impact.
link |
When governments are going to seriously contend
link |
with what do we do with this?
link |
Do you think about those moments?
link |
Is Bitcoin, is the cryptocurrency world in general
link |
going to be able to withstand the serious legal pushback
link |
from countries, from nations,
link |
especially authoritarian nations?
link |
Yeah. So it's been interesting.
link |
It's been 12 years, more than 12 years
link |
since Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin.
link |
And they haven't been able to stop it.
link |
They have tried a lot.
link |
I wrote a long essay for Quillat on this.
link |
Like why haven't governments been able to stop Bitcoin?
link |
And my thesis is essentially
link |
that there's been like this mix of different kind of technical,
link |
social and economic and political incentives
link |
and disincentives that make it very difficult.
link |
And I think to me the best way to think about it
link |
is that Bitcoin is like a Trojan horse.
link |
So just to actually tell that story just a little bit
link |
because I think it's important
link |
to understand the classical mythology tale,
link |
I find this very interesting.
link |
Of the actual Trojan horse?
link |
Of the actual Trojan horse, yeah,
link |
which was told in the Aeneid actually by Virgil, right?
link |
And the idea was the Greeks had been like
link |
trying to take the city of Troy for like a decade
link |
at these like impregnable walls and they couldn't do it.
link |
And Ulysses and the rest of the Greek army were like,
link |
we don't know what to do.
link |
So Minerva, the God of strategy and war,
link |
kind of like they get this idea from her, I guess,
link |
to actually try to use subterfuge and trickery
link |
to take over the city.
link |
So the idea is, and this was sort of hatched
link |
by Ulysses to put this horse together
link |
that would kind of be like a gift.
link |
So the idea was the Greeks just like pretended to leave.
link |
They deserted, they left behind one soldier and this horse.
link |
And the Trojans looked at it and they were like,
link |
what's going on here?
link |
And they brought in the soldier and the soldier's like,
link |
look, they left, they're so sorry
link |
for all of the desecration and blood spill.
link |
This is their gift to you.
link |
It's honoring Minerva.
link |
It's like this trophy for you guys.
link |
And there were actually people inside Troy, Cassandra,
link |
a prophet, as well as Lao Kuan, who was like a priest,
link |
who said, no, no, no, this is obviously a trick.
link |
This is obviously a trick.
link |
But they were like dispatched and ignored
link |
because the horse was like, it was just like so badass.
link |
So the Trojans were like bringing it in the city.
link |
So they brought it in themselves.
link |
No blood spilled at all, right?
link |
In the middle of the night, of course,
link |
what you realize is the horse was packed
link |
with Greek soldiers and they come out and they let the army in,
link |
which was like hiding behind an island.
link |
So this idea that something could be so attractive
link |
that you really can't say no, even if you know
link |
what's inside of it, is it played in Bitcoin.
link |
So like in Bitcoin has this number go up technology, right?
link |
It is what we call it in sort of shorthand, NGU, right?
link |
But what people don't realize is that NGU
link |
is like the Trojan horse.
link |
Inside the Trojan horse is FGU, Freedom Go Up Technology.
link |
So dictators and rogue regimes and corporations
link |
are gonna buy, mine, tax, accumulate this thing
link |
because it's the best performing financial asset
link |
What they don't realize or they're gonna have to ignore
link |
is that they're also aiding and abetting
link |
this freedom technology, which allows individuals
link |
to be sovereign and eventually erodes their power.
link |
There's no question that rogue regimes and bad actors
link |
have already used and will continue to use Bitcoin.
link |
The thing is when you think about a North Korea
link |
or a Venezuela and that government instructs
link |
some of its bureaucrats and cronies and officials
link |
to start stealing Bitcoin or accumulating it or whatever
link |
for short term gain to get around sanctions
link |
and use it to buy dollars or something like that, right?
link |
Which they can't get normally.
link |
All those people who the regime has instructed
link |
to like figure this thing out and use it,
link |
they're all gonna realize, oh my God,
link |
this is money the government doesn't control
link |
and it's gonna spread like a virus, okay?
link |
So this is like the idea of the Trojan horse allegory.
link |
I think it's so important and powerful with Bitcoin.
link |
All the people talking about Bitcoin today on TV,
link |
they don't care about freedom or privacy.
link |
They just care about number go up.
link |
But what they don't realize is what's concealed within.
link |
And that's very, very powerful to me.
link |
So the people talking about Bitcoin on TV
link |
are maybe investor types?
link |
Yeah, professional investors, corporations,
link |
and soon governments.
link |
I mean, you just had today, this morning on CNBC,
link |
the leader, the Republican leader
link |
of the House of Representatives, a congressman,
link |
saying like we need to be pro Bitcoin as a country.
link |
And the other day, Peter Thiel had a very interesting comment
link |
where he was basically like, let's not fall behind China
link |
So you have influential people in our government
link |
like sort of posturing for this like, you know,
link |
Bitcoin race that's gonna happen in the next 10 years.
link |
You're gonna see this.
link |
Countries are gonna compete to stack Bitcoin.
link |
So you believe the thing that's shiny and sexy
link |
like the Trojan horse is the number go up?
link |
It's too hard to ignore.
link |
And to define that a little further is meaningless.
link |
It does seem like the more people get excited
link |
and start using Bitcoin, the more its value grows.
link |
So it's just a good.
link |
Yeah, it's a feedback loop.
link |
And then the reason you're excited about it,
link |
especially is the FG.
link |
Yeah, freedom go up.
link |
Freedom go up, which is it ultimately gives power
link |
to the individuals to decentralize the entire system.
link |
Yeah, I mean, like when Tesla stacks Bitcoin,
link |
they're just doing that as self interest.
link |
They think it's gonna be a good inflation hedge, fine.
link |
But what they maybe don't care about,
link |
don't realize or they don't need to care.
link |
I mean, Bitcoin's power is that like co opts people
link |
into promoting a freedom tool,
link |
even if they don't care about
link |
or even if they hate freedom, it doesn't matter.
link |
So when Tesla stacks Bitcoin and the price goes up
link |
and more interest goes up
link |
and more people around the world are like, wow, Bitcoin,
link |
then more people get involved.
link |
Again, more adoption, more price, more developers,
link |
better user interface, more privacy tools,
link |
more mining, more network security.
link |
It's just this like positive feedback loop
link |
that continues to grow
link |
and it will grow intensely in the next decade
link |
as we go through the adoption cycle.
link |
And the reason why I'm so excited about this
link |
is the human rights world,
link |
again, to get back to our previous conversation,
link |
is very hard to find people who have the empathy
link |
or the altruism to actually make a difference abroad
link |
in places like China or Saudi Arabia or North Korea.
link |
People are very quick to just like,
link |
they'll just quickly toss off the pretty words
link |
that they care about human rights.
link |
As soon as profits come into play.
link |
So there's no alignment of incentives, right?
link |
The reason why Bitcoin is so powerful
link |
is that it aligns the incentives.
link |
All of a sudden, they can be as greedy as they want.
link |
They are being forced to promote a freedom tool.
link |
This I've never seen before
link |
and it gives me a lot of like excitement.
link |
It's very refreshing
link |
because we've been laboring in the human rights space
link |
and you have to like raise money
link |
and it's all like nonprofit work
link |
and you're like begging for people
link |
to make a difference for you.
link |
Here you have this like incredible asset
link |
which people will accumulate out of self preservation,
link |
self interest and greed.
link |
And yet it will strengthen the power of the individual.
link |
That is what we need to fight, big brother.
link |
That's what we need to fight.
link |
Like what I'm scared is happening in China.
link |
Like this growing authoritarian state
link |
which is powered by big data analysis.
link |
This is our way to fight back.
link |
And it runs on this like really interesting engine again
link |
that like takes advantage of our base nature as humans.
link |
And I know that it sounds terrible for me to say this
link |
but I mean, ultimately we are self interested
link |
and it is hard to get people to care about others
link |
living a thousand miles away.
link |
You know, we are kind of localized in our empathy.
link |
Speaking as someone who works to help people
link |
who live in like a hundred different countries.
link |
It's very difficult to get Americans to care about
link |
what's happening in Belarus or in Kashmir.
link |
They're gonna definitely care about Bitcoin
link |
because they wanna see their net worth go up.
link |
They wanna do better for their family, et cetera.
link |
They're gonna get into this thing
link |
and it's really gonna like make that powerful tool
link |
for everyone else who's using it.
link |
So this interplay dynamic is fascinating to me.
link |
Yeah, I have to, I'm somebody who doesn't like
link |
their corrupting effects of greed.
link |
But it is also human nature.
link |
Yeah, I don't like it either
link |
but we have to be realists.
link |
You have to acknowledge it
link |
and then maybe use it for your advantage.
link |
And it's not just Bitcoin itself.
link |
Like exchanges today are adopting something
link |
called Lightning Network,
link |
which is a way to scale Bitcoin on a second layer.
link |
Much like we had gold bars,
link |
which we scaled with paper money
link |
and then we had Visa credit cards,
link |
which were a way of scaling the paper notes.
link |
Bitcoin scales through Lightning Network.
link |
It's a private instant globally final settlement network.
link |
It's something you all should check out.
link |
It's very, very interesting.
link |
The exchanges aren't adopting Lightning
link |
for its privacy benefits.
link |
Like Lightning operates off the chain,
link |
meaning surveillance companies can't see,
link |
they can't do chain analysis on Lightning
link |
because it's on an onion routed second layer
link |
kind of that works kind of like the tour project.
link |
The exchanges don't care about privacy.
link |
They're doing it because it reduces fees.
link |
Lightning is cheaper and faster.
link |
So again, we have this really interesting alignment
link |
of incentives where like the freedom tech
link |
is being promoted by people who don't,
link |
I don't, it doesn't matter what their incentives are.
link |
I could care less if they were altruistic or not.
link |
And I think this is,
link |
and you're gonna maybe see this even in the future.
link |
There's more things coming in Bitcoin down the pike.
link |
Lightning was enabled by an upgrade called Segwit, right?
link |
Which took place a few years ago,
link |
which was the culmination of the block size conflict.
link |
There's another thing coming up
link |
called cross input signature aggregation,
link |
which may, if it takes effect in the next few years,
link |
it may compel exchanges to collaboratively spend
link |
all their Bitcoin together in a way
link |
that really protects our privacy and fights surveillance,
link |
but they're not gonna do it for moral reasons.
link |
They're gonna do it because it's gonna save them money
link |
and improve their bottom line.
link |
Can you speak to that kind of collaborative
link |
so that you can have multiple parties
link |
in a single transaction kind of thing?
link |
Yeah, like, you can do that today, absolutely.
link |
It's called the coin join, for example.
link |
But right now it's more expensive to coin join at Bitcoin.
link |
You have to pay a premium for your privacy.
link |
This would flip that on its head
link |
and it would basically say, if you have one transaction,
link |
hey, pile them all in, have as many parties as you want.
link |
The more parties you get in,
link |
the cheaper it's gonna be per party, okay?
link |
And that's not possible in Bitcoin today,
link |
but it might be in the future.
link |
But again, the beauty in Bitcoin are these like,
link |
these ways that it just aligns human incentives
link |
and it aligns our like most base desires and needs
link |
and realities with like freedom and privacy.
link |
And that I've never seen before.
link |
And then that's why I think it's so interesting.
link |
So something that, like somebody like Eric Weiss,
link |
I actually spoke to this,
link |
the idea of blockchain in general.
link |
From like a 10,000 foot view,
link |
the blockchain is a centralized place
link |
to keep the record of everything
link |
that ever happened.
link |
And does that concern you?
link |
From a privacy perspective, from a control perspective,
link |
even though it's managed, especially,
link |
given the low frequency of transactions for Bitcoin,
link |
you can have a lot of small computers across the globe
link |
contain the entirety set of transactions,
link |
all of those kinds of features.
link |
Does that concern you that there's one place
link |
where everything is made public
link |
in terms of everything that ever happened?
link |
No, and I'll give you two reasons.
link |
Number one, the Bitcoin blockchain
link |
is ultimately a settlement layer.
link |
It's kind of like something like Fedwire in the United States.
link |
It's a way for like institutions to settle with each other.
link |
That's what I think it's gonna be like in 20, 30 years from now.
link |
The average person's never gonna touch
link |
the Bitcoin blockchain probably.
link |
They're gonna use things like Lightning
link |
or unfortunately they may use Bitcoin banks,
link |
but they'll either use custodians
link |
or they'll use second layer non custodial solutions
link |
The main chain's gonna get very expensive.
link |
It's gonna be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars
link |
or even more if the dollar starts to weaken
link |
to make a transaction on the main chain.
link |
And that will be reserved for like very large transactions
link |
or transactions that need final, final settlement,
link |
et cetera, et cetera.
link |
And I think that that's fine and that's okay.
link |
And it's very important that that ledger,
link |
that settlement layer be kept by thousands of people
link |
The Bitcoin blockchain is not centralized.
link |
It is decentralized.
link |
It is run by people like me who run a node at home.
link |
I run a personal server.
link |
I run the Bitcoin blockchain.
link |
That person runs it.
link |
There's no one in charge.
link |
Well, you have a full node?
link |
Yeah, I run a full node.
link |
I mean, it's pretty easy, man.
link |
You run it and that way you can be sovereign
link |
over all of your usage, right?
link |
And you can run it on a Raspberry Pi
link |
with less than 150 bucks of equipment.
link |
And that's so important because again,
link |
there is no Amazon web service vulnerability here.
link |
That is a problem.
link |
And I agree with you.
link |
We're trending in a bad direction.
link |
We're like, the government could just turn off
link |
a big important website or a news source.
link |
Well, they can't turn off Bitcoin
link |
because it doesn't live on AWS.
link |
And I think that that's very, very powerful.
link |
And then you can have something like a lightning network
link |
where you can escape some of the constraints of the blockchain
link |
depending on your needs of the privacy
link |
and all those kinds of things.
link |
Everything's an engineering trade off.
link |
But yeah, you can trade off some of the assurances
link |
of the base layer to go into lightning, for example.
link |
And there you can get more speed and more privacy.
link |
And the things that Bitcoin lacks,
link |
speed and privacy, for example,
link |
you can get on these second layers.
link |
So there's all kinds of cool engineering things
link |
that people are coming up with.
link |
But I also would just say anyone who says the blockchain,
link |
like that's a red flag for that person
link |
doesn't really know what they're talking about.
link |
Like Satoshi didn't use the blockchain in the white paper.
link |
Blockchain was a marketing term
link |
that people came up with later to try and do this thing
link |
that was kind of like it peaked in 2015
link |
and it continues to be an issue today
link |
of it's blockchain not Bitcoin.
link |
And that was like a very corporate kind of social attack
link |
on Bitcoin to say we could take this like ledger part
link |
of this radical thing that's for criminals
link |
and all these bad people.
link |
But we could take one part of it out
link |
and we could bring it over here
link |
and we could make it safe for everybody.
link |
The real McCoy's Bitcoin,
link |
I mean Satoshi referred to it as a time chain.
link |
I mean really what they're talking about
link |
is just these like blocks that are connected chronologically
link |
It's really not that exciting.
link |
The exciting part of Bitcoin is the proof of work,
link |
where the transaction processing is done by mining
link |
and by energy and by real world expenditures
link |
instead of like some central ledger.
link |
And when you remove the blockchain from Bitcoin,
link |
it's not very, to me it's just not that interesting.
link |
I don't know, to me the blockchain and time chain
link |
whatever as it philosophically is a pretty beautiful idea.
link |
I mean, it's pretty simple,
link |
but nevertheless it's beautiful from a big database person.
link |
It's an interesting way to store information
link |
that especially that's totally publicly accessible.
link |
It's, I know that to Bitcoin proof of work
link |
is the fundamental idea.
link |
But to cryptocurrency and digital money in general
link |
and to money, the blockchain is a really interesting idea
link |
The way I think about it is it's kind of, you know, physics.
link |
And I like that there's a place that you can rely on
link |
that's very difficult to mess with.
link |
But it's not though, like it's outside of maybe Ethereum.
link |
Every other blockchain is easy to mess with.
link |
So you're saying that proof of work is what makes it
link |
hard to mess with. Absolutely.
link |
Proof of work is the key.
link |
And Ethereum is about to leave proof of work.
link |
So it's about to go to proof of stake,
link |
which is literally the existing system
link |
where a small group of people get to decide
link |
the monetary policy.
link |
Yeah, reputation has a lot of value there
link |
and that you could be, it could be manipulated.
link |
I may sound brutal,
link |
but I'm coming at it from a political science perspective.
link |
For me, it's all about freedom versus dictatorship.
link |
And that's why I find it so compelling
link |
that regardless of how much power or might
link |
or how many armies you have,
link |
you can't change the rules of Bitcoin.
link |
If you're wrong about Bitcoin,
link |
what would that look like?
link |
What kind of thing that in 10, 20 years,
link |
that you, you're not wrong.
link |
Right, it doesn't pan out.
link |
It doesn't pan out, but other things
link |
that actually make you feel good
link |
about all the hard work you've done do pan out.
link |
Something you haven't expected, what might that be?
link |
Well, as we've talked about my career started
link |
in human rights and in promoting individual freedom
link |
and fighting authoritarianism,
link |
that fight will continue on,
link |
no matter what happens with Bitcoin.
link |
I think it would be a massive failure
link |
and a tragedy if this project like didn't work.
link |
The Bitcoin project?
link |
Yes, if the Bitcoin project didn't work,
link |
we would, it would, honestly,
link |
it's one of the only things that gives me hope
link |
because it is an effective way to push back
link |
against the creeping centralized control.
link |
If, for whatever reason, and I can't really see,
link |
one of the reasons I'm so into it
link |
is I can't really see how it's not gonna work.
link |
Again, I think the Trojan horse allegory is too powerful.
link |
These big centralized actors are gonna be too greedy
link |
and they're gonna want some as opposed to banning it.
link |
It's way easier for them to buy it than to ban it.
link |
I think that's just what's gonna happen.
link |
But if, for whatever reason it failed,
link |
I would have very little hope left
link |
because really, I mean, the Chinese model
link |
of like centralizing all of your data and controlling it,
link |
I mean, ultimately is a very, very powerful
link |
sort of like arch force.
link |
And I would be concerned that that would be
link |
all of our sort of destiny.
link |
I do have to sort of push back at a style of communication
link |
and you're not doing it today.
link |
You're being exceptionally eloquent
link |
in arguing these ideas.
link |
But me, especially just from studying history
link |
and being very skeptical from growing up
link |
in the Soviet Union, I'm very skeptical
link |
and cautious when I see a community of people
link |
being very sure of an idea.
link |
Doesn't matter what that idea is.
link |
And there's a huge amount of certainty around Bitcoin.
link |
Part of it is an important feature
link |
because it's number go up.
link |
Number go up is a really important part of the mechanism
link |
to make sure that it grows and impact network effects
link |
because it's really important to get excited
link |
about idea for it to take hold
link |
that's the way human nature works and so on.
link |
But I also get even something that you mentioned
link |
that others may not, if you mentioned blockchain,
link |
you're sensitive to the attacks that have been mounted
link |
where the word blockchain have been used.
link |
People have been fooled.
link |
I mean, like in people in the humanitarian sector
link |
have been fooled into thinking
link |
that some centralized blockchain project
link |
is gonna help some refugee all collapsed.
link |
There's a huge, it makes me sad
link |
that there's a huge number of scams.
link |
Like, you know what makes me really sad?
link |
Then just a tiny little tangent.
link |
There's been recently,
link |
I guess with the growing platform or something,
link |
there's been a bunch of fake Lex Friedman accounts.
link |
They must have a million.
link |
But not only do they do stupid stuff,
link |
but they've been messaging people.
link |
Oh, to get the Bitcoin and stuff like that, totally.
link |
And people write to me and they're saying like.
link |
I think it gets people.
link |
I think they click on stuff.
link |
I think they were not sure.
link |
And it makes me think like,
link |
people are gullible or not gullible,
link |
but like they're just like I am,
link |
which is they're like hopeful about the world.
link |
They're optimistic about the world.
link |
They're almost naive about the evil that's out there.
link |
This is what goes wrong with Bitcoin.
link |
People fall for these like,
link |
I mean, like in these different countries,
link |
I'm trying to like talk to different people about Bitcoin.
link |
And like the amount of like MLM schemes,
link |
pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes,
link |
they're just so many of them.
link |
And there's plenty here too, but like in Zimbabwe,
link |
I was talking to this guy who is a reporter
link |
who studies the FX like the foreign currency exchange markets.
link |
He's just saying one of the main reasons
link |
people don't want to get into Bitcoin
link |
is because they've been scammed so hard
link |
by all these other things.
link |
So I would say that that's one way it could go wrong
link |
is that like people just continue to be like afraid of it
link |
because of things that are like that in the past.
link |
Well, it's not just the volatility.
link |
It's just the, you know, yeah.
link |
If you think it's a pyramid scheme,
link |
you're not going to want to get involved.
link |
And in some sense,
link |
if I were to speak to the Bitcoin Maximus community,
link |
it's to maybe ease up on the certainty
link |
because that gives me the signal that it's a scam,
link |
So whenever somebody,
link |
whenever there's a lot of people being
link |
cultishly excited about something,
link |
I start being very skeptical.
link |
It's like, you know, I used to like Green Day
link |
before they became really popular.
link |
And then the moment they became really popular,
link |
I'm like, I don't know.
link |
Instead of wearing mascara as I got it,
link |
I don't like them anymore.
link |
So I got, I'm very skeptical about evangelists of an idea
link |
because I think Bitcoin on its own
link |
is just a powerful idea that stands.
link |
But I also understand that in a world
link |
of a lot of competing ideas
link |
where there's a lot of scams
link |
and a lot of money to be made through those scams
link |
that you have to be innovative
link |
in the kind of mechanisms you use
link |
to break through the scam, the auction of scams.
link |
I took this personality test
link |
and I'm a 99 skepticism.
link |
So I was first, sadly,
link |
because I was first introduced to Bitcoin in 2013.
link |
And I was like, eh, whatever.
link |
And it took me four years to actually get into it
link |
to go down the rap hole.
link |
I didn't really start to grasp it
link |
and start getting excited about it until 2017.
link |
So I was regrettably very, very skeptical for a long time.
link |
And I just thought it was like whatever.
link |
So I appreciate that.
link |
And you should be skeptical.
link |
But ultimately, you gotta believe in things like,
link |
I believe in democracy.
link |
I believe it's good for people.
link |
I believe it's better than tyranny.
link |
I believe in the internet.
link |
I know that we've had issues with centralization
link |
of the internet, but I still believe it's better
link |
to be connected than to have bridges between us.
link |
And I believe in Bitcoin.
link |
And to me, it's like a very similar progressive force
link |
that we're encountering.
link |
But yeah, be skeptical.
link |
Nothing will befall you that's bad
link |
if you're cautious and skeptical.
link |
That's a good mentality to have.
link |
One thing we haven't talked about,
link |
all the violations of the human rights
link |
that authoritarian regimes do,
link |
there's not a positive.
link |
But you mentioned that nationalism is a drug.
link |
There's something beautiful about loving your country,
link |
having pride in your country, loving the,
link |
there's a feeling of belonging.
link |
It could be country, it could be tribe,
link |
it could be family, that's really powerful.
link |
And that speaks to human nature as well.
link |
And that can sometimes overpower everything else.
link |
And sometimes it can be seen when you study history,
link |
when you look at Stalinist, the Soviet Union,
link |
or you can even look at Hitler and Nazi Germany,
link |
we tend to paint patriotism in a negative light.
link |
And then maybe when we look at the United States,
link |
but even here in the United States,
link |
people often paint patriotism in a bad light.
link |
Every time I say, I love America,
link |
so as an immigrant, I love this country.
link |
It's funny how that's taken as a political statement
link |
that people on the right have been more active
link |
in saying that they love the country
link |
and people on the left have not sort of,
link |
it's almost become a weird slogan
link |
as opposed to a statement of just love.
link |
And I understand that patriotism can be a slippery slope
link |
into letting your government,
link |
I mean, it's exactly what you're saying,
link |
the value of freedom of speech is you hold your government
link |
to account for all the ways they mess up.
link |
I mean, look, you have patriotism
link |
and then you have jingoism, right?
link |
It's very important when we stay on the patriotic side.
link |
Like as an American, I'm very patriotic in terms of,
link |
I love the values that this country was founded on
link |
if you read the Bill of Rights.
link |
And I love the fact that it was just flexible enough
link |
that we were able to change it to grant
link |
or at least to try to grant all people the same rights.
link |
It was not the original plan of the founders, right?
link |
It had to be changed.
link |
But since then, we've remained,
link |
those laws have remained and they're very good.
link |
And I'm very proud of that.
link |
What I'm not proud of is the jingoistic part of our country
link |
where we invade other countries and bomb other countries
link |
and not proud of our prison system.
link |
I think it's a huge stain on our nation.
link |
I'm not proud of a lot of things.
link |
So I think you can be patriotic,
link |
but you can be critical of your country.
link |
And that's important.
link |
I feel like the jingoistic thing is the thing
link |
that we need to watch out for.
link |
That's just my own personal take.
link |
Out of all the projects that the Human Rights Foundation
link |
works on, what's the most important one to you right now?
link |
Like that's been occupying your mind?
link |
Yeah, I just read again this New Yorker piece
link |
that just came out that you should read.
link |
It's called Ghost Walls.
link |
And it's the story of how the Chinese Communist Party
link |
is committing genocide right now,
link |
just like other regimes did and the Turks did
link |
to the Armenians and the Nazis did to the Jews.
link |
And it's happening again right now.
link |
We said never again.
link |
And that's just not true.
link |
We're letting it happen.
link |
And again, with the business stuff,
link |
like air B&B is like a sponsor of the Olympics, like what?
link |
At the individual level, at a business level,
link |
how does somebody like me, who's just one little aunt,
link |
how does somebody like Elon Musk,
link |
who's in charge of 10,000 aunts, fight it?
link |
Like how do we push back?
link |
A great blueprint is the fight
link |
against the South African apartheid.
link |
So we did a few events down in Johannesburg.
link |
And I've had the pleasure of being able to go
link |
to the apartheid museum several times.
link |
And it really does a good job of chronicling
link |
how they were able to do it.
link |
But the way it was done was good.
link |
Peaceful action from abroad was very important.
link |
So there was like the Sullivan principles.
link |
So like you can peacefully protest
link |
as a company, particular regimes.
link |
And it's very effective.
link |
And not just corporations,
link |
but like the Olympics is a great example.
link |
Like Chinese government should not be able
link |
to host the Olympics.
link |
The IOC should say no,
link |
not until you close down those prison camps.
link |
This is a perfect, peaceful way to push back.
link |
Same thing when we had the Korean Olympics a few years ago.
link |
North Korea should not have been allowed
link |
any sort of symbolistic kind of hosting rights there.
link |
They have prison camps, gulags that we can see
link |
from outer space, very clearly.
link |
And their regime is the cruelest one on the planet, probably.
link |
Why were they able to sit and cheer
link |
and get to sort of cohost those at the Olympics?
link |
This is spineless.
link |
Like the IOC, the Olympics,
link |
and major corporations should stand up,
link |
especially in the cultural sector
link |
where you don't lose anything.
link |
Like, you know, or you shouldn't have to lose anything.
link |
So I think if we look at the way
link |
that we forced the apartheid regime out,
link |
this international solidarity of musicians, athletes,
link |
performers, celebrities is very, very powerful.
link |
Unfortunately, today's celebrities are doing the opposite.
link |
We just, you know, have this press release
link |
go out yesterday about Acon.
link |
And he's off whitewashing the crimes
link |
of the dictator of Uganda
link |
and trying to build a future city there with him.
link |
You know, if this was the 1980s,
link |
Acon would be raising his fist and saying,
link |
we need to, you know, fight the apartheid regime.
link |
How do we get back to that?
link |
You know, we need to think about that.
link |
We have to figure out how to harness celebrities,
link |
influencers, and companies,
link |
and get them to actually stand up for something for once.
link |
I mean, that's something we've lost.
link |
We've really had a spine against that.
link |
And, you know, we've lost it, you know?
link |
And you lose things, you lose them forever.
link |
Tibet was a big cause for people in the 90s.
link |
Used to go to colleges and kids would have
link |
the Tibetan flags all over the dorm rooms.
link |
It was like, Radiohead would have Tibet on the stage
link |
and everybody wanted, you know, free Tibet was a big thing.
link |
Like, we've lost it for some reason.
link |
It's not a thing anymore and Tibet has been totally colonized,
link |
So I think it's important that we find a way to unlock
link |
an interest of in the celebrity classes
link |
among athletes, singers, presidents, you know,
link |
we need to find a way to punish these people.
link |
It's surprising cause we've become more and more connected
link |
so we can communicate more effectively at a large scale.
link |
And yet we seem to be worse and worse at real activism.
link |
It seems like the outrage that's overtaken
link |
the communication channels has been very US focused
link |
and often more about outrage
link |
and less about productive activism.
link |
I mean, it's very difficult to do these things
link |
at scale effectively.
link |
I do not believe we will be successful
link |
in boycotting the Chinese Olympics.
link |
We weren't in 2008.
link |
I don't think, they're much more evil now
link |
and I don't think we're gonna be able to do it this time.
link |
And again, to go back to the Bitcoin piece,
link |
that's why I'm like very interested in this thing
link |
because it doesn't require my altruism.
link |
It doesn't require some famous singer
link |
or some corporation to sacrifice anything.
link |
They're literally just gonna follow
link |
their own profit seeking self interested motives
link |
and they're gonna end up making a stronger
link |
human rights tool for other people.
link |
Do you think we're, it's kind of a dark question
link |
but do you think we're headed towards a war with China,
link |
the United States versus China?
link |
In the cyberspace and potentially even a hot war.
link |
I think there's too many people with too much money
link |
to be lost to go to a hot war on both sides.
link |
But eventually we're just gonna,
link |
someone's gonna have to stand up.
link |
I mean, the subjugation of Hong Kong
link |
and the genocide of the Uyghurs
link |
and the colonization of Tibet.
link |
I mean, Taiwan is the next big thing.
link |
I mean, Xi Jinping has made it very clear.
link |
You know, Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan.
link |
So we're gonna have to stand up for Taiwan
link |
for different reasons.
link |
Both for moral reasons, but also for semiconductor reasons.
link |
We need TSMC to be on our side,
link |
to not have China take over TSMC.
link |
So there's different reasons
link |
why we're gonna have to protect Taiwan.
link |
And you just hope it's not a hot war.
link |
I mean, at this point.
link |
Well, but also from inside the governments of China
link |
and Russia as well, but China I guess is the powerhouse here.
link |
How do these governments get reformed?
link |
Is there a hope for them to become democracies,
link |
like true democracies, represented democracies
link |
and sort of reformed them
link |
to be ethical players on the world stage?
link |
No empire lasts forever.
link |
And it's impossible to predict when these regimes fall.
link |
I mean, no one thought the Soviet Union
link |
was gonna fall when it fell.
link |
Like if you study the news and the scholarship of the era,
link |
no one knew that the Tunisian government
link |
was gonna fall after Muhammad Bozizi lit himself on fire.
link |
No one predicted that that would become
link |
what we now know as the Arab Spring, right?
link |
These things are impossible to predict.
link |
And one day the Chinese regime fall.
link |
I just, we don't know when.
link |
Yes, but and there's quite a few folks
link |
who talk about the fall of the American empire.
link |
And it also concerns me
link |
that we don't know when that might fall.
link |
You assume me as a very excited naive American.
link |
I'm very excited by this project
link |
that I think is the beacon of hope in the world still.
link |
But that's probably how you feel before it's the end.
link |
You wanna leave the party
link |
before it starts to deteriorate.
link |
I think America could continue to have
link |
like a major, major leadership role for a long, long time.
link |
I think certain things we do will become
link |
maybe no longer possible
link |
in terms of the way we intimidate people on the world stage
link |
and especially the way we use our currency as a weapon.
link |
I think that that's going to decline over time
link |
as we become more of a multipolar world.
link |
But I do still believe in America
link |
and the values that we're founded on despite all the warts.
link |
I do believe in us and I would prefer us absolutely
link |
to be the most prominent of the multipolar world
link |
vis a vis a regime like Russia or China.
link |
Absolutely, there's no question.
link |
So we've been talking about states and nations.
link |
But can we just briefly talk about Facebook and Twitter
link |
and companies that have a huge impact on the world as well.
link |
And actually one of the things
link |
that make America a great nation is
link |
it is the place from which these great companies
link |
Is there, from a human rights perspective,
link |
is there something that bothers you about Facebook,
link |
about these large companies?
link |
Is there something we need to fix,
link |
something we need to be upset about,
link |
fight back on, reform, do some sort of real activism about?
link |
I'm very concerned about social media platforms
link |
It almost feels like we're losing the golden age
link |
of the internet when we could go online
link |
and interact with each other and share
link |
and not be worried about censorship.
link |
It feels like that was a golden age,
link |
like in the late 90s, the 2000s.
link |
And now everything is becoming very politicized.
link |
And I'm not sure that there's a solution.
link |
Like I don't think there's a button we can press to fix it.
link |
I'm kind of afraid that this is sort of
link |
just what happens when societies digitize.
link |
Like I think that certain opinions
link |
just become demonized in the sort of,
link |
in the room, in the social room
link |
that we have on the internet.
link |
And I don't know if there's a magical solution there.
link |
I do know that there's technological solutions
link |
that will allow us to continue to communicate
link |
and for creators to reach their audiences
link |
without censorship.
link |
And that's very exciting.
link |
Like right now you could be deplatformed
link |
from like whether it's a Patreon or YouTube or whatever.
link |
And your bank account can be closed down, right?
link |
There are emerging ways that Adam Curry,
link |
like the Podfather and a bunch of other people
link |
are experimenting with,
link |
where you can essentially have your audio podcast
link |
across a whole bunch of different platforms.
link |
So it's censorship resistant.
link |
And then your audience can pay you over lightning
link |
in streaming money.
link |
Like they can stream you money as they listen.
link |
So you're removing the whole advertising piece.
link |
You don't need to do advertising anymore.
link |
You have this direct relationship with your audience.
link |
And this is possible with something like lightning
link |
where you can do streaming money that's censorship resistant.
link |
And a lot of the people who are building a lightning network,
link |
for example, Elizabeth Stark, who started Lightning Labs
link |
and has done within her company,
link |
the people that work with her
link |
have built a huge part of the lightning infrastructure.
link |
What animates her is this idea of like,
link |
again, artists and creators being able to have
link |
that direct ability to reach out
link |
and have that peer to peer relationship with their audience.
link |
And I'm excited for that.
link |
And I do think that's coming,
link |
but I am very worried that the golden age
link |
of like centralized social media platforms
link |
is kind of behind us.
link |
And I'm not sure how to fix that.
link |
I don't know if that's like a fixable problem.
link |
I have a hope that it's a fixable problem.
link |
I think it's fixable because there's demand for it to be fixed.
link |
That's the way I think about it.
link |
Well, is Twitter that bad right now?
link |
Like, I mean, it's fixable in as much as you can do a verification.
link |
So you can give a blue check to someone
link |
and then that person is like more credible
link |
and they go to the top of the comments.
link |
And there's like tweaks you can do.
link |
You can continue to improve it,
link |
but it's not going to fix the fact that like,
link |
Twitter can decide to kick off the president
link |
and like a lot of people are going to be upset by that, you know?
link |
Like there's ways you can improve the UX over time
link |
and they continue to do so.
link |
Like Clubhouse is a lot of fun, great phenomenon.
link |
So is Twitter's basis.
link |
So they continue to iterate,
link |
but the censorship to platforming piece,
link |
I'm not sure is fixable
link |
because if you, I mean, you watch the US government haul
link |
these people haul Zuckerberg and Dorsey and whatever
link |
in front of Congress, they want more censorship.
link |
I mean, our elected leaders want more censorship, right?
link |
See, I just believe censorship is a really harsh word.
link |
I believe it's possible to create technologies
link |
where it's not Twitter doing the censorship,
link |
but it's individuals doing their own selection
link |
of what they want and don't want to see.
link |
So for example, if you get sick and tired of Donald Trump
link |
and whatever he says, or you love Donald Trump,
link |
you get to select yourself.
link |
Like you get to have more control over what you consume.
link |
Twitter tries to do that a little bit,
link |
but they obviously fail,
link |
where ideas infiltrate our view that we,
link |
that like misinformation spreads really fast
link |
and conspiracy theories spread really fast
link |
to where the immune system that Twitter has created
link |
to try to censor conspiracy theories and misinformation
link |
is overfiring and you're now censoring too many people.
link |
So that, it's exactly the same intuition as you said before.
link |
If the state is doing it, in this case,
link |
Twitter is kind of the state,
link |
it's not going to work out well.
link |
But if you give power to the individuals
link |
to do this sort of the, not even censorship,
link |
but incentivization and deaccentivization
link |
of great thoughtful content and terrible low effort content,
link |
then I feel like that's going to create a system
link |
where there's going to be a much more open discourse
link |
of ideas, dangerous ideas, difficult ideas,
link |
controversial ideas, and people in a decentralized way
link |
will be able to use their own intelligence
link |
to select content, to share content, spread content.
link |
Let's keep it simple.
link |
Let's look at one example, Twitter and Jack Dorsey.
link |
And I think it's quite clear
link |
that what he believes is the solution
link |
is as you're kind of hinting at
link |
a more kind of like regionalized system,
link |
which is not have one, or we call federated system, right?
link |
Which does not just have like one company
link |
in charge of everything, but there's an open protocol.
link |
And then there's like different instances, right?
link |
So Twitter make, you know, Jack's dream for Twitter
link |
is that Twitter is this open protocol
link |
that the Russian government can use
link |
and the Chinese government can use
link |
and the Iranian government can use
link |
and the American government can use.
link |
And then Twitter as a company is going to use too.
link |
And you as the customer decide
link |
which implementation you want to join.
link |
And there's going to be different censorship
link |
on each instance or each federation,
link |
but the protocol itself would be like untouchable.
link |
This is kind of like the idea behind the internet, right?
link |
There's like different parts of the internet
link |
that are censored, but like at the very bottom
link |
of the very bottom of the backbone of it,
link |
it's like this globally connected,
link |
relatively unstoppable thing, right?
link |
So I think that's a pretty good vision.
link |
And Twitter's working towards that
link |
with the blue sky initiative.
link |
We'll see, I'm a little skeptical that it like works out
link |
because I've used, I use mastodon for example.
link |
Mastodon is an example of a federated social media.
link |
Now it's ruled by a benevolent,
link |
each instance is ruled by a benevolent dictator.
link |
It's just like I happen to like this one, so I know.
link |
So rather than trust one dictator, Twitter,
link |
you could choose which dictator do you want to trust?
link |
And that's kind of the federated model.
link |
And maybe we had that way, but you lose things.
link |
When it's federated, you lose the UX,
link |
you lose the slickness and the feel
link |
and all the millions of dollars they spend on developers.
link |
Like mastodon is like not anywhere close to
link |
as nice to use as Twitter.
link |
So I feel like it's again, it's this trade off
link |
that we make with everything where it's convenience,
link |
comfort, speed versus privacy and freedom, right?
link |
It's very hard to have something that gives you both.
link |
I think, yeah, it is a trade off.
link |
Have you used one of these things
link |
that you feel like is good?
link |
They're not, they're not, but the federator,
link |
I don't think it's a good,
link |
I think it requires genius, it requires skill,
link |
it requires great design to come up with a way to,
link |
there's a Pareto front here.
link |
There's a right way to hit that trade off.
link |
And I honestly think there's the UX,
link |
the experience should be centralized,
link |
should be designed by the company.
link |
But the data and like a lot of stuff
link |
that could be used to violate your basic rights
link |
should be owned by the individual.
link |
And I think there's a way to decouple those,
link |
like create an incredible experience to where you go there
link |
and you enjoy the market where you can share your data
link |
and have complete control over it and always have,
link |
I mean, there's a lot of basic UX ideas.
link |
Like just as an example,
link |
I think there should always be in everything you design
link |
a one button that's always there
link |
that says, forget I ever existed.
link |
Delete everything you know about me.
link |
And maybe it's one button that you click
link |
and it asks, are you sure?
link |
And you have to be able to say yes.
link |
Like that's a feature that's fundamental
link |
to a good social network, I believe.
link |
Like currently social networks,
link |
first of all, most of them don't allow you to do that.
link |
They don't make it transparent how much data they had,
link |
who they shared it with.
link |
And they also make it exceptionally difficult
link |
to delete accounts.
link |
So like that's a very basic starting point.
link |
But that having that button means that you have control
link |
but that's step one of the control.
link |
There's a transparency of knowing exactly
link |
when what data is being shared about you,
link |
how much data is already being recorded about you.
link |
All that is transparency.
link |
And I believe that's a really good business model
link |
because when there's transparency and control,
link |
people would be willing to give over a lot more data
link |
as long as they know what they're given over,
link |
as long as they know what they can delete.
link |
Yeah, I guess maybe you're more optimistic
link |
about people caring.
link |
I feel like not so few people actually care
link |
about their privacy and freedom.
link |
I've just watched everybody give it up, you know?
link |
I guess just to bookend that,
link |
I think we're at this moment
link |
where obviously the centralized platforms
link |
are just so much easier and better to use
link |
and to strike it out and adventure out
link |
and use like a federated instance
link |
or something even like Keybase,
link |
which is kind of like a cool encrypted way
link |
to like have group chats.
link |
It just requires like a lot of your time
link |
and a lot of people don't have that time.
link |
But I will say one thing,
link |
like I do think there is this future
link |
where we do go into more of this like try,
link |
it's called a tribal model or like tribes,
link |
which is this social environment
link |
being built on top of lightning by an app called Sphinx.
link |
And the idea is like kind of like,
link |
it's like a decentralized Slack,
link |
like you have your Slack instance,
link |
which has like a bunch of people in the community
link |
and you have different ways to message each other
link |
and it's all encrypted.
link |
And then it has like plugins for like things like Jitsi
link |
So like an open source encrypted video messenger,
link |
it has ways to like plug in the content you wanna get
link |
from like different platforms that you follow
link |
like podcasts, things like that.
link |
And again, it allows you to pay those people directly
link |
in a censorship resistant private way.
link |
So it's really nice to connect to the lightning network.
link |
So it's all sort of built on lightning
link |
but the idea you can think about it is like,
link |
you're slowly starting to build up the idea of a WeChat
link |
but with freedom principles.
link |
Cause right now WeChat's like the king of convenience
link |
and comfort, but of course it's feeding all that data
link |
to the big brother and the surveillance state.
link |
And then we have like our own versions over here
link |
in America that are not quite as convenient or amazing,
link |
but like we give up slightly less privacy and freedom.
link |
But this thing has a lot of promising features to it.
link |
It's worth checking out.
link |
It's very like early days.
link |
Like it feels like, I mean, I was pretty young
link |
but it feels like the 90s in the internet.
link |
Like it has that feeling where you know it's rough
link |
around the edges, but you can feel the magic.
link |
I'm very much like with Steve Jobs on this.
link |
I think the founding principles are exceptionally important
link |
but at the end of the day,
link |
the design of how sleek it is, how easy it is to use.
link |
And that's not just like pretty icing on the cake.
link |
That is, the icing is the cake.
link |
Because like how easy it is to use,
link |
how natural it is, it's the Trojan horse thing.
link |
Like you don't get, it has to be pretty and shiny.
link |
It has to fundamentally connect to the basics of human nature
link |
which is what is pleasant to use, what feels good to use.
link |
You have to trick people into eating a broccoli.
link |
You have to put like a delicious whatever on it.
link |
Well again, PTP is the kind of paint to use, right?
link |
If you want privacy.
link |
Yeah, so signals are not great.
link |
I mean, and it's way better than it was five years ago.
link |
And it's not quite as good as like,
link |
not quite as seamless, right?
link |
It's like a WhatsApp yet, but it's almost there.
link |
And they were able to do it.
link |
And you're gonna see that with Bitcoin wallets as well.
link |
I mean, they're almost there.
link |
They're like, if you use like a moon wallet is like,
link |
I mean, it's so cool looking and it's so seamless
link |
and they've spent so many hours thinking
link |
about your experience, we are getting there.
link |
Whereas 10 years ago is like impossible to use.
link |
One of the things that Signal doesn't have,
link |
and I believe these kinds of applications need to have
link |
is like a, I hate the term, but killer app,
link |
which is like a dumb, but very viral
link |
and popular reason to switch.
link |
It, I didn't see exactly, I mean, I've been using Signal,
link |
but I haven't seen a, you know, a big reason to.
link |
Well, you're on it, man.
link |
I mean, the reason.
link |
No, but I haven't switched everything to it.
link |
You know what I mean, like a.
link |
Yeah, the Exodus to Signal was in January.
link |
They had a huge user surge for two main reasons.
link |
One, hilariously enough, of course, was Elon tweeted,
link |
like you should use Signal, right?
link |
Which is not insignificant.
link |
And then the other one was that like WhatsApp
link |
changed kind of some of its terms of service
link |
and like, you know, announced to all of its users
link |
in this little pop up that it was going to be sort of
link |
like changing the way I handled your data.
link |
That spooked a lot of people.
link |
So these two things really combined
link |
and tens of millions of people in the following weeks
link |
between January and February joined Signal.
link |
It's like, it really has had it stay in the sun.
link |
And they are like frantically trying to keep up with it.
link |
Like, and it's really nice to see that this encrypted
link |
messaging service, which prioritizes your privacy
link |
in a way that, you know, the government, again,
link |
may know like the metadata, but doesn't know exactly
link |
what you're saying unless they can get your hands on your phone.
link |
I think that's very, very powerful.
link |
So it can be done.
link |
I don't want to be too jaded here.
link |
I think it can be done.
link |
Yeah, I think I think we can fight back and I think we can make
link |
it continue to make the digital communications tools
link |
and platforms in a way that really benefits us.
link |
Yeah, I'm not sure, but I'm hopeful as well.
link |
I'm hopeful that if you look at the trend of technologies,
link |
they ultimately are ones that respect privacy,
link |
respect security and basic human rights.
link |
I mean, that's at least the hope.
link |
So Gary Kasparov, I'm Russian.
link |
He means a lot to me on a personal level.
link |
He is the chairman of Human Rights Foundation.
link |
What does Gary have to do with anything?
link |
What's your relationship like with him?
link |
Do you like chess?
link |
What are his specific focuses and ideas around the HRF?
link |
Can you just speak to it in general?
link |
Yeah, so our chairman at the Human Rights Foundation
link |
was Voslov Havel, who of course was like
link |
the famous Czech democracy activist,
link |
who helped lead the Velvet Revolution
link |
and then ended up becoming the first democratically elected
link |
leader of the Czech Republic after the Soviet Union fell.
link |
He passed away in 2011.
link |
And it was very difficult to find a replacement
link |
because who can fill Havel's shoes, you know?
link |
But if one could, it would be Gary, right?
link |
So we really tried to get Gary to join
link |
and thankfully he agreed.
link |
And we've had an amazing relationship with Gary
link |
I mean, he's been relentless in his pursuit of freedom.
link |
I mean, he could have retired
link |
and taken his career in a different direction
link |
and he could be hanging out with Putin
link |
and have a pleasure yacht and all kinds of stuff.
link |
But he decided to risk it.
link |
And if you actually study, like the times
link |
when he was running for president in Russia,
link |
Amash Gessen followed him around in The Man Without a Face.
link |
It's a great book about Putin.
link |
There's a fabulous chapter
link |
where she's following around Gary when he's campaigning.
link |
And I mean, he risked a lot.
link |
I mean, he can't go back to Russia anymore.
link |
He gave up his country.
link |
He's given up a huge amount to be able to speak his mind
link |
and to have this dream, this beautiful vision
link |
of a free and democratic Russia.
link |
He really believes in it.
link |
It's been a great experience.
link |
I work very closely with Gary.
link |
We do different things around the world together.
link |
He's come out to a lot of events
link |
in different cities around the world.
link |
And he's been a very active chairman.
link |
This isn't some figurehead.
link |
He's very involved and it's really, really great.
link |
I mean, everything he's involved with is,
link |
you know, as one journalist who attends our events says
link |
when he walks in the room, you know,
link |
the average IQ of the room goes up pretty significantly.
link |
I'm not a big chess person, unfortunately.
link |
So I have not been able to connect with him on that.
link |
But I think he probably would prefer it that way.
link |
You know, all he gets is people
link |
who want to talk to him about chess, you know?
link |
So here we can talk about kind of human rights strategy
link |
and like how to, you know,
link |
improve our fight against dictators.
link |
But he really, you know, has that moral clarity
link |
that I really appreciate, so.
link |
Yeah, he has a lot of fascinating ideas
link |
about artificial intelligence as well.
link |
He's opened my eyes a little bit to the state of Russia today
link |
because I've read most books on Putin in the English language
link |
in sort of trying to understand things.
link |
And I try to look at it from a historical perspective,
link |
like almost like we're living 100 years from now
link |
and I look at Putin as a important figure
link |
in the history of human civilization
link |
and study it in that way.
link |
I think the way Gary looks at it,
link |
he probably doesn't appreciate me looking at the way I do.
link |
But the way he looks at it is we can still change
link |
the direction of Russia and we individual human beings
link |
and we communities and we nations can take actions,
link |
have policies that can change the direction of Russia.
link |
To me, I take a sort of going to the library,
link |
passive view of studying fascinating aspects of Russia.
link |
To me, Russia means like most of my family suffered
link |
through the Soviet Union and I see beauty in suffering,
link |
the poetry, the music, the stories.
link |
And just there's so much love that emerged from the pain
link |
that I just enjoyed the music of that.
link |
But to Gary and to many activists that I speak to,
link |
they love not just the Russia of the past.
link |
They have a vision and a hope for Russia of the future
link |
and they criticize me a little bit
link |
for being a little bit too scholarly about the past
link |
and ignoring the future and there's something to that.
link |
So he opens my eyes to look to the future of Russia.
link |
Gary and a handful of other Russian activists
link |
that we work closely with, including Vladimir Karamurza,
link |
who again, I mean, it's just incredibly heroic.
link |
The man has survived two poisonings by Putin.
link |
They like to say that, you know,
link |
Russians will bring democracy to Russia on their own terms.
link |
They don't need our help.
link |
This is what Vladimir especially says.
link |
But what he does say is that we should stop propping up Putin.
link |
Like that's kind of his, stop kind of legitimizing him.
link |
That's kind of his argument.
link |
He's like, we don't need your foreign interference.
link |
We don't need your ideas.
link |
We don't need your help.
link |
We can do it on our own,
link |
but please stop propping up our illegitimate ruler.
link |
That's kind of like his point of view,
link |
which I think is interesting and fair.
link |
Yeah, let me just say on one unrelated comment,
link |
some people criticize me and others
link |
like Joe Rogan for giving people a platform.
link |
I think it's some cases that's applicable,
link |
but I think in most cases, knowledge is power.
link |
And there's no such thing as giving a platform.
link |
The conversation just shines a light
link |
as long as you shine the light well.
link |
And as long as in shining the light
link |
and having the conversation,
link |
you reveal something fundamental
link |
about the state of things, about the people,
link |
whether that's Putin or some of the other controversial figures
link |
that have come up in possible future conversations.
link |
So I don't like this kind of platforming idea.
link |
I think conversations save us.
link |
They don't destroy us.
link |
Yeah, I mean, that's journalism though.
link |
I mean, that's very different from advocacy
link |
or strategic thinking about what to do with Russia.
link |
Absolutely, yeah, we should interview everybody
link |
and everybody should know exactly what they're thinking.
link |
Yeah, but journalism to me has become a dirty word
link |
because it's done so poorly by so many people that...
link |
You know, I listen to sometimes certain programs
link |
like, I don't know, like Meet the Press
link |
and the Fox Sunday program, just certain things,
link |
just to tune in and see what different news medias
link |
are paying attention to.
link |
And the kind of interviews they do is like five minutes at most,
link |
but usually it's like one minute.
link |
It's these quick clip things and it's very gotcha
link |
and they're looking for ways to sort of grab
link |
almost that misstatement.
link |
They want to catch you off guard.
link |
They want to ask the quote, like the harsh question,
link |
but without any of the dance of conversation
link |
that reveals the truth.
link |
You know, you can't just get to the truth by asking it.
link |
You have to sneak up on it.
link |
And I think that's an art form.
link |
And I think that art form involves long form conversation.
link |
Like I'm a huge believer in just,
link |
I guess that's what's called, I don't know,
link |
in depth journal or whatever,
link |
like where you spend months or years on a story.
link |
And in that same way, I think of long form conversation
link |
is like you spend many hours and you spend months and years
link |
preparing for those many hours,
link |
but like it's not this like short form trying to get
link |
the most controversial little tidbit of a story out.
link |
And unfortunately, the funding mechanisms behind journalism
link |
are such that they are incentivized clickbait journalism
link |
versus like in depth long form digging for the truth.
link |
I have a conflicted relationship with journalism
link |
because to me, press freedom is so core.
link |
And independent journalists around the world are so brave,
link |
especially in countries like Russia or China, et cetera.
link |
And really good journalism is still something I absolutely,
link |
I love and I enjoy.
link |
Like this, especially like to say again,
link |
this New Yorker piece on what's happening to the Uyghurs
link |
is incredibly well reported.
link |
However, on the other hand,
link |
you have in this sort of clickbait journalism
link |
that's all about sensationalism
link |
and that gets used as a tool.
link |
I mean, whether it be against things like privacy
link |
or Bitcoin or whatever,
link |
you have like people who sensationalize
link |
and it gets used in the service of the surveillance state,
link |
the war on terror, whatever.
link |
You know, it's a difficult,
link |
but you know, I think journalism is essential
link |
to a free society,
link |
but it can sometimes be,
link |
it can wear my patients thin sometimes.
link |
Like, to be honest, it's been a huge burden on me personally,
link |
if I were to just turn this into a therapy session
link |
for a brief moment.
link |
When I look at people, when I interact with people,
link |
I'd like to see the best in them.
link |
And the burden that weighs heavy on me
link |
is sometimes people I talk to me
link |
may not be good people.
link |
I'd love to, I believe everybody has good in them.
link |
And I try to focus on that.
link |
The burden that weighs on me
link |
is sometimes that there may be conversations
link |
where that's irresponsible.
link |
Where I have to also call people out.
link |
I have to do enough of the hard lifting
link |
and the hard work of knowing exactly
link |
what are the bad things that that person has done.
link |
And I also have the responsibility to call them out on it.
link |
And that's for me personally, just an unpleasant feeling.
link |
That's what we're speaking to journalism.
link |
Like, I think journalists are too much focused
link |
on the bad things a person has done,
link |
and not enough on the digging into the full complexity
link |
of the human being behind all the things that have been done.
link |
But at the same time, I can't have a conversation
link |
with Hitler and...
link |
Not ask about the prison camps.
link |
Yeah, no, so from the human rights perspective,
link |
one of our programs is we like,
link |
we try to go after people who do like PR for dictators.
link |
So like, and a lot of people do,
link |
like PR firms in Washington get hired
link |
by all these dictators.
link |
And they make a lot of money to make them look good.
link |
It's called whitewashing or putting lipstick on a pig
link |
or whatever you want to do.
link |
Astroturfing is like the fake social media accounts
link |
to make it seem like you're popular.
link |
But whitewashing is a huge issue.
link |
So I think it's completely fair to interview like dictators
link |
and stuff like that.
link |
Amunpour does a pretty good job.
link |
She's really good.
link |
She makes sure that there's no messing around.
link |
I mean, her interviews of Mussolini recently,
link |
the Ugandan dictator was very good.
link |
I mean, she's basically like, well,
link |
like, why are you rigging another election?
link |
Please tell us, you know?
link |
And she's fearless and she's good.
link |
And that can be a helpful thing to have
link |
on YouTube as a resource.
link |
But it's quite clear when it descends into a PR session.
link |
And you just have to be like very careful about it.
link |
Like Asma al Asad, the wife of the butcher in Syria,
link |
you know, was like profiled by Vogue.
link |
And it was this whole rows in the desert things,
link |
a bunch of nonsense.
link |
Terrible, terrible, terrible, total propaganda.
link |
But a like honest interview where you're asking
link |
about all the tough questions, very important.
link |
So I think it's just a matter of like content.
link |
Is there a good resource to study whitewashing?
link |
Like to know what manipulative PR looks like?
link |
I think you just, if you've researched the topic,
link |
you should know it inside you because it would be,
link |
is there anything you're afraid to ask?
link |
That would make sure you're asking all the questions.
link |
As long as you're asking all the questions that you have,
link |
But if there's something you're afraid to ask,
link |
then maybe you're self censoring, right?
link |
That's a good way.
link |
It takes us back to that like,
link |
what is it that litmus test about?
link |
Is your country a lot to have a gay pride parade?
link |
So there's like obvious things that might be on your mind
link |
that you just want to ask.
link |
And you shouldn't, you shouldn't run from them.
link |
As long as you feel like you're a free person
link |
when you're interviewing, I think you're good.
link |
That's beautifully put.
link |
Are there books, technical fiction, philosophical,
link |
that had an impact on your life that you recommend?
link |
Or even resources like blogs, films?
link |
I have four books I'll briefly mention.
link |
Number one is The Fear.
link |
The Fear had a deep impact on me.
link |
The Fear was written by Peter Godwin.
link |
It's about the systematic dismantling of Zimbabwe
link |
under Robert Mugabe.
link |
And it is a riveting book.
link |
I think everyone should read it
link |
because it helps you understand what it's like to go through,
link |
not just authoritarianism, but also hyperinflation.
link |
And I mean, really, you know, at the end of the day,
link |
what The Fear describes is how Mugabe took this country
link |
in the 1980s and he actually brought it back in time
link |
to the 1920s in terms of infrastructure,
link |
literacy rates, health rates, all these things.
link |
He stole so much from the people.
link |
And it's a heartbreaking book, but it's a very important book.
link |
And it's a way to do excellent, excellent journalism.
link |
So The Fear is a good one.
link |
And it's a personal story?
link |
Because he was, it's part of his whole family story
link |
and he's in there, he's interviewing people personally.
link |
So I would say that one.
link |
Is it also connected and starting to interrupt?
link |
Is it from the inflation perspective?
link |
Is it a good study of hyperinflation and the effects?
link |
Does Bitcoin at all come as a discussion of money?
link |
Does that come into the, or is it purely the experience
link |
of inflation as almost a symptom of an authoritarian government?
link |
A little bit, a little bit.
link |
I would say it's not deep.
link |
I have another book on that, which I'll recommend in a second.
link |
But I would just say that it's a very powerfully written book
link |
about how society can basically deteriorate
link |
and how you can lose everything.
link |
The second book is, I just mentioned it,
link |
but The Man Without a Face by Masha Gessen.
link |
Incredible book about modern Russia and Putin.
link |
Just a masterpiece.
link |
Could be one of your favorite books about Putin and Russia?
link |
That one's the best.
link |
I mean, she's just so fearless.
link |
She interviews Putin in the book at the end.
link |
Third one is a fiction book called The Mandibles,
link |
written by Lionel Shriver.
link |
This one's good, it's a good gift book.
link |
It's funny, it's dark, it's witty.
link |
But it's about the United States losing its status
link |
as the reserve currency and going into hyperinflation.
link |
And what's interesting is that the characters in the book
link |
map where we are today.
link |
The book itself is about the late,
link |
I think it's the late 2020s.
link |
And we have a populist president who
link |
decides to announce that the United States is basically
link |
going to default on its debts.
link |
And the rest of the world comes up with a new currency.
link |
And everybody switches to that one.
link |
And the dollar overnight becomes worthless.
link |
And all these economists are saying, no, it's fine.
link |
Inflation won't be a problem.
link |
And there's this one character who's an economist.
link |
And he's basically, he gets to the point
link |
where he's living as a refugee in Prospect Park in Brooklyn.
link |
And he's still saying everything's fine.
link |
So it's dry, it's witty.
link |
But it's also about the surveillance state.
link |
It's about centralization of power.
link |
So The Mandibles, I would highly recommend.
link |
So those three books, and then on the topic of Bitcoin,
link |
because we talked about it a lot,
link |
I would just say that my portal into Bitcoin
link |
was The Internet of Money by Andreas Antonopoulos.
link |
And I did it by audiobook.
link |
And I just think this is an important one for people
link |
to start with, because he goes through all the main concepts,
link |
whether it be proof of work or how the network functions.
link |
But he does it in a way that's extremely engaging
link |
and really fascinating.
link |
And it really just sparked my curiosity.
link |
Is it discussed in the technical sides
link |
or also the philosophical?
link |
Because a lot of people mention the Bitcoin standard
link |
as the philosophical entry into the whole Bitcoin world.
link |
Very different from the Bitcoin standard.
link |
It's more for the average person.
link |
It's not a history book.
link |
It's a collection of his talks that he gave
link |
over two or three years.
link |
It's not very technical.
link |
It's very approachable.
link |
And some of it might be dated now,
link |
because it's like 2015, 2016.
link |
It's great to hear a shout out for Andreas,
link |
because he seems to be one of the seminal figures
link |
to make Bitcoin ideas accessible.
link |
Oh, Andreas is the goat.
link |
Andreas is the goat.
link |
Andreas is the goat.
link |
I know a lot of people have issues
link |
with some of his more recent work, but Andreas is the goat.
link |
He's the reason I'm in Bitcoin.
link |
I mean, he's the reason I'm in Bitcoin.
link |
That's fascinating.
link |
And it's funny to watch the Bitcoin Maximus immune system
link |
also attacking him.
link |
And this whole feedback mechanism is working together.
link |
Well, I probably consider myself a maximalist,
link |
but I really like Andreas.
link |
So I think there's room for nuance.
link |
There's room for nuance in this world.
link |
I'm glad to hear that.
link |
If people are fascinated by your work,
link |
what is the way to get more of Alex?
link |
So two years ago, I came together with seven other people
link |
from around the world.
link |
And we wrote a book in a book sprint.
link |
We lived in a house for four days.
link |
We wrote a book together.
link |
It was really cool.
link |
It's like a design sprint, but we did it in book format.
link |
And my coauthors are from Nigeria, Venezuela,
link |
the Philippines from former Soviet Union from all over.
link |
And it's called The Little Bitcoin Book.
link |
And I'm still proud of it.
link |
It's something you give to somebody who knows nothing
link |
And it's not a technical book.
link |
It's about the sort of social political aspect of it.
link |
Like, why is it important for you, for your finances,
link |
for your freedom, for your future?
link |
And we've translated it into a lot of languages by now.
link |
I think English, Spanish, and Portuguese are for sale.
link |
And LittleBitcoinBook.com, you go buy it.
link |
But we've made it as a free PDF in Mandarin, Hindi,
link |
Punjab, Korean, Uyghur, which I was really excited about,
link |
And I mean, it spreads, man.
link |
It's been really, really cool.
link |
So I'm proud of that.
link |
I also made a video that did very well for Reason magazine
link |
called Why Is Bitcoin Protecting Human Rights
link |
It's five minutes.
link |
And I feel like I tried to boil everything
link |
that I want to tell you into this five minute video.
link |
Would recommend that.
link |
And then if you're interested in the why
link |
have governments not stopped it, which I think
link |
is really intriguing, that I wrote this long essay
link |
in Quillette in February called Why Haven't Governments
link |
And maybe that'll be a helpful guide to some folks.
link |
Is it speaking to the Trojan Horse idea
link |
that there's something enticing about it?
link |
Yeah, at the end, it does get into that.
link |
But it really also just kind of goes through, technically, why
link |
is it hard to do a 51% attack?
link |
Like, if a government wanted to, could it really
link |
get all that equipment?
link |
There's a semiconductor shortage.
link |
There's certain things that stop governments from doing it.
link |
And same thing with this idea of a 60102,
link |
which would be based on the idea of the executive order 6102,
link |
which is from 1933 when FDR made holding gold
link |
illegal in the United States.
link |
The idea is that banks would go around now with governments
link |
and try to steal everybody's Bitcoin.
link |
Well, in Bitcoin, we have a practice
link |
called Proof of Keys Day every January 3,
link |
which is coinciding with the launch of the Bitcoin blockchain,
link |
where we all withdraw our keys from exchanges
link |
and we'd be sovereign users.
link |
What we are doing is we are preparing for a 6102 attack,
link |
which will one day probably come, right?
link |
So the essay just goes through all of the possible attacks.
link |
And it runs through the ones that happened,
link |
like the Chinese and Indian governments,
link |
the two largest governments in the world,
link |
both tried to attack Bitcoin by banning their citizens
link |
from exchanging fiat for Bitcoin.
link |
Interest instead exploded.
link |
It's like the Barbara Streisand effect, where
link |
by making something public and saying, you shouldn't do X,
link |
it actually increases attention about X a lot more, right?
link |
So I think there's a lot of interesting game theory
link |
there that people would enjoy.
link |
Do you think, are you seriously concerned
link |
about this kind of thing where the idea is a sovereignty
link |
and that Bitcoin espouses would actually one day be tested?
link |
Do you have a legitimate concern?
link |
Because you said one day very well might.
link |
Do you think it might go down?
link |
First of all, Bitcoin has been attacked, again, many times.
link |
And we talk about the, you spoke about this with Nick Carter
link |
on your show, the sort of protocol wars or conflict
link |
or whatever, right?
link |
And Bitcoin almost died a whole bunch of times during that
link |
and ended up surviving.
link |
I didn't know how bad the blockchain was.
link |
Oh, it got really bad.
link |
It was sort of a very existential threat.
link |
And Bitcoin survived.
link |
And that's why I'm so intrigued by it,
link |
is that it basically survived an attack
link |
in an environment several years ago
link |
when Bitcoin was much more vulnerable than it is today.
link |
It survived an attack by a conglomeration
link |
of Chinese billionaires, Silicon Valley corporations,
link |
and a ton of people who owned the majority of the hash rate
link |
and all this infrastructure.
link |
They had 83% of all the hash rate,
link |
and they couldn't get what they wanted.
link |
And that was so intriguing to me.
link |
Like, why didn't it, why didn't it get killed?
link |
So as Nick said, I think you should read
link |
The Block Size War, which is a book
link |
that you can get on Amazon by Jonathan Beer.
link |
Really good, kind of like, really important
link |
to understand the scaling conflict
link |
and the different visions of what Bitcoin should be.
link |
And again, people like me believe
link |
it should be a freedom tool, not like a payments technology
link |
And I'm glad it worked out the way it did,
link |
because it almost didn't.
link |
Do you think humans civilization will destroy itself?
link |
So if we think about all the threats facing
link |
human civilization, nuclear war,
link |
natural or engineer pandemics,
link |
you know, we talk about human rights violations.
link |
We talk about authoritarian governments
link |
taking control of the money supply.
link |
But do you have great, grander concerns
link |
for the future of human civilization?
link |
Do you have hope for us becoming
link |
a multi planetary species? Yeah, I mean,
link |
I guess long term we'd want to decentralize, right?
link |
We don't want a single point of failure.
link |
In the physical space.
link |
The Earth is a single point of failure.
link |
But no, I mean, you look at all this kind of like
link |
space fiction and I mean, who would want to live on Mars,
link |
man? It's like a freaking desert.
link |
I mean, the Earth is so beautiful.
link |
I hope we can save it, you know?
link |
It's just so gorgeous.
link |
When you look at the Earth compared to any other
link |
like exoplanet or whatever you look at it,
link |
I mean, the Earth is so spectacular
link |
and wondrous and singular.
link |
I think we've got to do everything we can to save it here.
link |
I mean, I sure a lot of people would have said that
link |
about Europe before the explorers ventured out
link |
Columbus and the rest on to the unknown.
link |
The thing about human nature is that we are explorers too.
link |
Some small fraction of us are insane enough
link |
to explore in the most dangerous grounds.
link |
And I'm pretty sure there's quite a few people
link |
that would love to take the first step on Mars,
link |
the first few steps on Mars in the harshest of environments,
link |
even when the odds of survival extremely low.
link |
And I'm thankful for those people because I sit back
link |
and drink my vodka back here on Earth
link |
and enjoy good friendships because I think ultimately
link |
that step to Mars is going to be a first step
link |
into a multi, into exploring and colonizing
link |
the rest of the galaxy.
link |
Mars might be a harsh environment,
link |
but maybe space is not like other planets,
link |
other exoplanets, but also forget planets,
link |
just creating colonies that float about in space.
link |
There's exciting technologies that were yet to be discovered,
link |
yet to be engineered and built
link |
that I think require that first painful step.
link |
Like, yeah, the journey of a thousand miles
link |
starts with one step.
link |
I think Mars is that first step.
link |
Yeah, no, I was born the day before the Challenger blew up
link |
and it was always so tragic for me to look back on that
link |
because that really altered our arc
link |
in terms of space exploration.
link |
If that had not happened, we'd be in a very different arc
link |
and I do respect and admire people pushing for exploration,
link |
but at the same time, I just want to recognize
link |
that we know how unique Earth is
link |
and I do think we got to do everything we can to protect it.
link |
But I think you avoid answering the question
link |
if we're going to destroy ourselves.
link |
Oh, yeah, I guess if we do not, okay, fine.
link |
If we do not decentralize properly
link |
out into different physical spaces, probably, I guess, yeah.
link |
And then, I mean, do you have concerns
link |
that are immediately facing you?
link |
So not in terms of the injustices on the world,
link |
Yeah, look, I'm a lot more concerned
link |
about what's happening right now.
link |
Like, what is destroying ourselves?
link |
If you were to go and see what's happening
link |
in Xinjiang or North Korea right now or Eritrea,
link |
that is destroying ourselves and it's already happened.
link |
So I guess that's why I said, yes.
link |
I mean, if you don't decentralize
link |
and power is completely under one person,
link |
life is destroyed as we know it.
link |
And you don't have to go into science fiction
link |
to know what a totalitarian hellscape dystopia is.
link |
There's several that exist already.
link |
And, you know, let's try to like help those people
link |
at the same time as we're trying to like push out into space
link |
would be my like counter, I guess.
link |
Yeah, I agree with you.
link |
In my mind, just sort of destruction
link |
and suffering are next door neighbors.
link |
So we don't need to destroy all of human civilization
link |
if much a large fraction of it lives in conditions
link |
that we would equate to suffering.
link |
That's not a good world.
link |
Is there advice that you would give
link |
to young people today about life, about career,
link |
about how they can help a world where 53%
link |
are living under authoritarian governments,
link |
but in general, a world that's full of injustice
link |
but also full of opportunity?
link |
Just thinking about my own upbringing,
link |
I went to a public school here
link |
and we never learned about money.
link |
It was never part of our curriculum.
link |
Even personal finances was not part of our curriculum.
link |
You could take like an optional course
link |
to learn about like business or something.
link |
And I think that that would be really valuable
link |
as a young person or as a teenager
link |
to start incorporating into your children's lives
link |
is like a curiosity about what is money.
link |
I think it would be very healthy
link |
regardless of what path that takes them down
link |
because we don't think about it enough
link |
either from an administrative sort of personal finance thing
link |
about like responsibility or more fundamentally
link |
like what is it and who creates it,
link |
where did it come from?
link |
Both of those things are very important.
link |
So my advice to a young person would be
link |
to get to the point where you feel like
link |
you can answer the question, what is money?
link |
So you ultimately see money as a kind of power
link |
and freedom and a mechanism of suffering.
link |
It's so core to everything.
link |
The United States, whether you wanna call it
link |
the tax amount or conna, the empire, the hyper power,
link |
whatever you wanna call this moment in time
link |
where the US is dominant around the world,
link |
it is because of the fact that we have this petrodollar system
link |
where we are able to force the Saudis
link |
and other oil producing nations to sell their oil in dollars.
link |
That is really inescapable, inseparable from our power.
link |
And that's very rarely talked about.
link |
And it's very important to understand.
link |
So yeah, young people can start thinking
link |
about that stuff, it'd be good.
link |
I remember being, it sounds silly to say,
link |
but I remember being really uncomfortable
link |
that I was dependent on my parents
link |
at a young age for financial.
link |
You need to be 18 to have a bank account or whatever.
link |
One of the people that we supported at Ahraf
link |
through our, we do software development funding
link |
for people in Bitcoin, open source projects.
link |
And one of the guys we funded is this very young,
link |
smart sort of prodigy, he's like 17.
link |
But one of the reasons he got into Bitcoin
link |
was because he wanted to have control of his money
link |
when he was like 14.
link |
I mean, if you think in history, people who invented
link |
all kinds of incredible contributions to science or math,
link |
I mean, a lot of them did it before they were 15.
link |
So think about that maturity that is capable
link |
and possible in many people.
link |
Like I've participated in some of the years ago,
link |
some of the sort of selection processes
link |
for like the Teal Fellowship, which is like really amazing.
link |
Like these people who are 14, 15, 16,
link |
who don't need to go to college.
link |
They're already like so smart, they can figure it out.
link |
But they wouldn't be allowed to have a bank account, right?
link |
So, hey, I think that's kind of cool.
link |
Like now you have a permissionless money.
link |
You can open up yourself
link |
without permission from your parents, that's kind of cool.
link |
Yeah, that's fascinating to me.
link |
I feel like I would have loved my parents more.
link |
Have you had a little more separation?
link |
If I had freedom to fully realize myself
link |
because I felt like I was a little bit trapped,
link |
but I don't know, it's not explicit, right?
link |
It's a little bit, it's like a subtle push
link |
that you're somehow dependent on them.
link |
I mean, part of that is like,
link |
I think it actually very much has to do
link |
not talking about money, like what does it take
link |
to operate as an individual entity in this world?
link |
Like knowing that when you're 10 years old,
link |
knowing that when you're very young,
link |
so that you've, then you see how amazing it is
link |
to have the support of your parents until you're 18.
link |
Like have that freedom,
link |
have the freedom to appreciate the value your parents bring
link |
and at the same time, the freedom to leave
link |
in some capacity to carve your own path.
link |
I mean, just all of that, I think for weirdos like me,
link |
especially, because I was a very non traditional path
link |
that I think it would be very empowering
link |
and certainly it would be empowering in the third world.
link |
Not just weirdos like you, yeah, I was gonna mention
link |
one of the people I got who taught me about Bitcoin.
link |
Her name is Roya Mahbub.
link |
She's an Afghan technology CEO.
link |
And in 2013, she started paying her employees in Bitcoin
link |
because they were not allowed to open bank accounts.
link |
The women that worked for her,
link |
she started the country's first female,
link |
like all female software company.
link |
And if they brought cash home,
link |
they're like husbands or uncles or brothers
link |
would steal it from them.
link |
There's like a power patriarchal dominance thing going on.
link |
But they had phones and she was able to pay them in Bitcoin
link |
and no one knew and it gave them that power.
link |
And that's always stuck in my mind
link |
as a very interesting effect of this kind of thing,
link |
of permissionless money,
link |
like that it can be an empowerment tool.
link |
So in your own personal life,
link |
where did the deep concern for the suffering
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in the world come from?
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Where was that born?
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I was gonna be an engineer actually.
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And then in 2003, we invaded Iraq
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and I got very interested in why we did that as a nation.
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And I switched to my focus of study
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to like international relations
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and that's how I kind of went down
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the kind of political science democracy rabbit hole
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and ended up getting a job at the Human Rights Foundation.
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So that I'm a very much a child of like 9 11
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Those are the two really formative events for me personally.
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Can you break that apart a little bit?
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Like what illusion about this world was broken apart
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by the invasion of Iraq?
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Well, I think first of all,
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9 11 just shifted the world dynamics completely
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from a focus on big power politics
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between the US, Russia and China
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to this new threat of Islamic terror.
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And a lot of it we learned later,
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a lot of the things we did were manufactured,
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choreographed like there were no WMDs in Iraq.
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Like the reason our rulers said we needed to invade
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and destroy this country was a lie.
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And that I think has really been forgotten.
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Like I think a lot of like the Zoomers like today
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don't really know a lot about that time period.
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I mean, it was pretty crazy.
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Unanimously, I mean, Democrat, Republican,
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like Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, like and the Republicans,
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everybody wanted to invade this country.
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And it was very, it's very,
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it's a confusing time.
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There's a really good book by Ian McEwen called Saturday,
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a fiction book that takes place during I think 2003.
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And it's one day in the life of the doctor in London.
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It's really good though to revisit this time
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because he has two characters in the book,
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one of whom is very pro war
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and one of them is very against war.
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Basically he, the father himself is pro war
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and his son is against it and they have all these debates.
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And it's nice to go back to revisit at that time
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was it's really crazy.
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And it really showed you that like the media
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could be captured into like helping promote this idea
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of like invading another country.
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So I was very curious about why we did it
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and like who was pulling the strings
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and what are the reasons that we went.
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And what's really interesting is that like,
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I took all these courses on it
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and interviewed all these decision makers,
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whether they were like neocons or whatever,
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different people who were involved.
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And the whole like dollar reserve currency thing,
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like really never came up until like,
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I learned about it more recently because of Bitcoin.
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Like, and today when I look back,
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it seems kind of obvious
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that the reason we invaded Iraq
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was because Saddam Hussein wanted to sell oil and euros.
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This seems really obvious
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when you go back and look at the chronology of it.
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And we were like, no,
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we actually don't want you to sell dollars and euros
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because that would threaten the dollar.
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So we're gonna invade you and then you're not gonna do it
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and then no one else is gonna like sell the dollars and euros
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you just oil and euros, right?
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I guess you could say the same thing about Gaddafi,
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but we as a nation have very much protected
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our reserve currency, let's put it that way.
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Yeah, that's actually one of the things
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that Bitcoin community has motivated me to do
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is to look back to the histories that I have studied myself
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from just even the two world wars,
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the history of the 20th century
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from a perspective of the monetary system of money.
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And it's interesting.
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It's interesting to look at human history
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in the context of money.
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Can't we be patriotic and be pro America,
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but like not want the petro dollar?
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Like I should be proud of my country.
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Why do we need to be propping up the Saudis?
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Why do we need to be threatening to invade other countries
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if they sell their oil for a different currency?
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I think we can be just as powerful as we are today
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if not more powerful in a Bitcoin world.
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If you think about the infrastructure,
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Americans are building all the innovations
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we're building, all the wealth we have,
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I think we'll be fine, better than fine.
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And we won't have these horrible negative externalities.
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It's really an optimistic vision for the future.
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I thought we learned the lesson of 9 11
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and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, but maybe...
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We're believing in, you know,
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Biden announced we're leaving Afghanistan this year, 20 years.
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The Taliban are going to take over again.
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I mean, that's like at least a good,
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this is the longest war, right?
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I feel like the past 20 years or whatever,
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it is 18 years, 19 years.
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We've been very skeptical about invading other countries
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about, we've been skeptical
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about military intervention in other nations.
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Well, our leaders certainly haven't.
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We're like seven active wars right now.
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And neither the Russians and the Chinese,
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everybody's starting to invade everybody else.
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I mean, so yes, but I meant to a degree
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that I was worried about like conflicts
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with the hot conflicts with Iran, with North Korea,
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those kinds of things.
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There was not as much war mongering as I was afraid about,
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but yes, you're absolutely right.
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We're still, there's a big presence by the United States
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and other nations and across the world,
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that's military, the military industrial complex
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is a thing that has huge detrimental ripple effects
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throughout the entirety of our governments.
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Yeah, so the big question is,
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how do we prevent the rise of this like authoritarian
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surveillance state in China, while at the same time,
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kind of diffusing the military industrial complex
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That to me is like the biggest challenge of our time.
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I don't have the answer, but we should keep digging.
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Yeah, I believe there's a technological innovations.
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You're suggesting that perhaps one
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of the technological innovations like is Bitcoin.
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Bitcoin's a big part of it, yeah.
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On the money side, I think the information side,
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there's innovations that are open, that's possible.
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And the political side, I'm the most skeptical about.
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I just feel like there's without hot wars
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that we don't seem to make any kind of progress.
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Bureaucracy's just grow, corruption and greed grow
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and human nature does not do well in the political arena.
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So I hope technology can outpace
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the darker sides of human nature.
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So you're busy fighting the demons,
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the darkness that's out there,
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but looking in the mirror, you're a finite being.
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Unfortunately, this ride ends for you pretty soon.
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Do you ever ask yourself about the meaning middle
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of why the hell is descendants of apes
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are even on this thing,
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striving so hard to make a better world for ourselves?
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I don't often zoom out that much.
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I feel like my day job is pretty interesting.
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It keeps me very engaged with all the stuff
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we've been talking about.
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As far as the meaning of life though,
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it seems quite clear that we do have the possibility
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as a species to create the beautiful communities
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and constructs and to share an exploration
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of the world together that is often marred by cold realities
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that we've discussed,
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but I do feel like in a way that the meaning of life
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is that pursuit, of course, biologically
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is the spread of our species, right?
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But also to pursue knowledge and science and innovation
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and freedom most importantly.
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I think freedom has to guide us or else we end up
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with prison camps.
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If we don't let freedom guide us,
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we end up with the prison camps.
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So we need to have scientific innovation
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and adventurism and colonization of the stars,
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but without the slavery and without the prison camps.
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I think that's so key.
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There's something about the creation of beauty
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that seems fundamental to human nature
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and what seems beautiful is these communities
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that don't have suffering, they don't have injustice.
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And we have some kind of inner sense of what is injustice.
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I don't know, like some of the human rights
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that you've mentioned earlier,
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they're just philosophical constructs,
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but there also seem to be somehow deeply in us too.
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We have a sense of what is right and what is wrong.
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It's not just a kind of illusion
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that we've all agreed on.
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Yeah, like arbitrary power, torture, executions.
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We know these things are wrong.
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I mean, we know they're wrong.
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We don't have to read a book to know that.
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But you do need to, people can get brainwashed.
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I mean, you talk to people who've grown up in North Korea
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that they don't know any better.
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Like they don't know what's going on in the outside world.
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So they've never experienced anything differently.
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So that's why, look, technology can play a big role here
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in terms of the meaning of it all.
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It can really help emancipate, liberate people,
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at least so that they can make their own choices about what to do.
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At least so that we're on a level playing field.
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So technologies like the internet and Bitcoin,
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they can at least give you the option
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to do things your own way on your own terms.
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And then from there, we'll see.
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I think it's important that we have design choices
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where we can have a little more say
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and not everything be preprogrammed for us.
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That would be very disappointing.
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So, I mean, the open web and encryption in Bitcoin,
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these are things that help prevent social engineering
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and that promote more freedom and more possibilities, honestly,
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and more entrepreneurship and more creativity
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and more scientific inquiry.
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I mean, think about the people who tried to shut down
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scientific inquiry 500, 600 years ago or whatever
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that were trying to say,
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the earth was the center of everything
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and they were wrong.
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And then all these conservative religious types throughout history
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have always said that there's no value in science
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and there's no value in technology
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and they've been wrong the whole time.
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So let's continue pushing here. Let's continue pushing.
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It's kind of scary to me sometimes, humbling, beautiful,
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but also scary to think of, you mentioned North Korea,
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people are kind of living in ignorance.
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It's scary to me to think about how much ignorance there is
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in the world today, like how little I know personally
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or us as a human civilization knows there's yet to be discovered.
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Well, there's a difference between laziness and ignorance, right?
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So, I would be lazy if I didn't take advantage of the internet, right?
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Someone in North Korea doesn't have the option.
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They don't have the option.
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There's literally no way for them to access the internet.
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So there's kind of like social laziness
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that philosophers have warned about forever,
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that we basically become sheep, okay?
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And then there's actual like brainwashing and censorship
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that's possible, like by closing off your population
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and keeping them off like the internet, right?
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So I think these are two very different concepts.
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Absolutely. But I also mean just like,
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not even laziness, but cognitive limitations
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and just historical scientific limitations.
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Like, you know, we're a very young species.
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Like all of the exciting stuff we've been talking about
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have happened on the scale of decades, maybe centuries.
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It's very, we're very young
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and all the cool stuff we've come up with.
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And it's just humbling to think about how little we know.
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But you're right that, you know,
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ultimately having the freedom to keep exploring,
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keep venturing out.
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Even if we later discovered that a lot of the stuff
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we've been doing now is ethically horrible.
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If you think about animals or I think about robots a lot,
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the kind of things we might be doing to other consciousnesses
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that are here on earth might be,
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we might see as atrocities later on,
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but ultimately you have to have the freedom
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to explore those kinds of ideas.
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And without that freedom,
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you don't even get the chance to be lazy.
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Yeah, I mean, look, don't be a sheep.
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It's easy to be a sheep.
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No offense to sheep.
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And there's some practical things, man.
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Get on signal, start encrypting your messages.
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Take control over your privacy.
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The media doesn't want you to, but check out Bitcoin.
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You can be your own bank.
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You can transact with people around the world
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and no one can stop you.
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This can put a stop to a lot of arbitrary power
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and a lot of human rights violations.
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You know, don't use WeChat.
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You know, research what's happening in Xinjiang.
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I mean, learn about what's happening
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in the genocide in that country.
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And let's think about how we can build our societies
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so that we never have that kind of power
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concentration ever again.
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Each of us can make a difference.
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Alex, it's a huge honor to talk to you.
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I've been a fan of your work.
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A lot of people spoke really highly of you
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as one of the beacons of hope for our human souls.
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So I'm really glad we got a chance to talk.
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Thank you for wasting all this time with me today.
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It's been an honor. Thanks, man. A lot of fun.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation
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with Alex Glastin.
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To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors
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in the description.
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And now let me leave you with some words from Alice Walker.
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The most common way people give up their power
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is by thinking they don't have any.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.