Here's Where It Gets Interesting - What's Our Problem? with Tim Urban

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

Today, on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, co-founder of the website Wait But Why? joins Sharon to talk about a few big ideas, like censorship, the future of big tech, the role of government, and what we can do to combat corruption. They also talk about bad drawings of stick figures, and his new book, What’s Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Guest: Tim Urban Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Researcher: Valerie Hoback Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey friends, welcome. So excited to have you here today and I'm very excited to be chatting with author Tim Urban. Perhaps you have seen his wildly viral TED talk about procrastination. Maybe you have been reading his blog, Wheat But Why, for years. And he has a new book out called What's Our Problem? A self-help book for societies. And this book has so many drawings in it, so many stick figure drawings. And I told him, your stick figures are better than mine. And he was like, wow, I've never heard that before. We talk about

so many big ideas about things like censorship, the future of big tech, the role of government in society, and what we should do when we experience things like corruption. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. I am really excited to be chatting with Tim Urban today. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Congrats on your new book baby and also on your new human baby. Yes.

The book baby took a lot longer to make, actually. Publishing works at a glacial pace. It's absolutely glacial, especially as a blogger at Wait But Why, which is where probably a lot of people know you from or from your mega viral TED Talks, et cetera. Publishing a book takes freaking forever. Yeah. I mean, oh man, it's hard because with a blog post, you can kind of like have an outline, simple outline and just like power through it. But a book I mean, there's outlines within outlines within outlines. And it's like, I'll be you know, half, you know, three quarters of the way in and I'll forget if I you know, did in the latest version, did I even talk about this, I have to

go back and refresh myself slot to keep in your head at once. And this book especially just has a lot of different concepts in it. So it was it was a lot to wrangle together head at once. And this book especially just has a lot of different concepts in it. So it was a lot to wrangle together, but it's nice to finish. It's very, you know, a blog post is satisfying to finish, but a book is really satisfying to finish. So it pays off. I totally get it. But I am excited to share your book, What's Our Problem?, which is a self-help book for

societies with the broader audience because there are so many. I mean, we could take this conversation in like 50 different directions just based on some of the really interesting but accessible topics you have in here illustrated by your amazing drawings, your amazing stick figure drawings. What made you want to write a book, a self-help book for societies? Well, it started really because I like to think about what 2050 is going to be like. But as I'm writing about that, I'm writing all the amazing technologies that could be part of that. And this kind of, you know, utopia that we could have, I had this nagging feeling like we're kind of devolving as a society right now, right? It's like the tech is really, really exponentially just blowing up and in so many different sectors. And

we need like, we need to be wise right now. We have all this like godlike power with all these different kind of paradigm shifts that are happening in the world of tech and development. And then meanwhile, like we're acting like children, you know, with our politics and our discourse. And it's like the grownups left the room and it's like a bunch of kids. So that's what made me start to think, okay, like what, why do societies do this? Like tech goes up, right? Once we figure out a new tech, then that that's that. But with wisdom, societies seem to kind of like go cyclical. We go in these periods of like wisdom and then periods of kind of what looks in retrospect like foolishness and you kind of devolve. And so if we're in one of those now, why are we doing this right now? And how does it work? How does that even happen? It's not that

the individual people have gotten any worse. Like what's going on? So that was the premise. I like how you say in introduction, you are talking about how right now we're living inside of a book called The Story of Us. And you give some facts and statistics about what it's like to live inside this book and how to think about the story of us conceptually. But I also really related with it to this part that said, as the authors of the story of us, we have no mentors, no editors, no one to make sure it all turns out okay. It's all in our hands. And this scares me, but it's also what gives me hope. If we can all get just a little wiser together, it may be enough to nudge the story onto a trajectory that points toward an unimaginably good future. and of course as a writer the idea that there are side rails there's no bumper in the gutter at the bowling alley that is scary it is scary because you know how far afield and how quickly things can go far afield but you're right that it also gives the sense of hope of like this is an

incredible precipice that we're standing on, that we have the opportunity to create something that nobody has ever seen. And I wonder what your thoughts are about how we can nudge ourselves collectively into an unimaginably good future. When you live in a liberal democracy, you think, well, if something goes wrong, well, then the police will step in or whatever, or like the heads of the company will fire the people that need, you know, whatever. And if that goes wrong, then the military gets involved, you know, but either way, like, you know, there's someone to make sure it's okay. But you don't realize that once you get, you step out of that, there's no law of nature that makes things fair or okay, or there's actually nothing to protect us from things going really, really bad. So yeah, how do we collectively be wiser? And I think you have to think about individual humans and how none of us are really that wise or limited life experience. And we are all prone to cognitive biases. And, but as a, as a group, we, we can do amazing things. If you look at this amazing civilization around you, it wasn't built by individual human minds. It was built by this cool ability to mass cooperate and to put our heads together. And so we can collectively become way more intelligent than any individual and ways wiser than any person. We also can do the opposite, where the collective can do this other thing where it forms this kind of big, scary tribe and is like the madness of crowds. And we can become something that is big and dumb and scary. We have the capability of doing both of

these things. So it's not like the emergent property of lots of humans together is, is always good. It can go in both directions. And so to me, humans are smart together when they are in kind of a safe space to be individuals, when each person can put out their ideas and no idea is sacred and everyone can criticize each other's ideas. And people can safely put out hypotheses, even ones that are probably wrong. And people can put out ideas without worrying about some kind of punishment to them for putting out the wrong idea. I think that yields super intelligence. And if you look at the times when a bunch of humans combined together into something that's dumb and scary and not smart, the property of it is conformity. It's when everyone is scared to act out of line. And that's something that, you know, we have in our

DNA is to snap into that kind of ancient tribal mode where suddenly there's a sacred set of ideas. And, you know, we are the good group with the good ideas and they are the bad group with the bad ideas. And if you disagree with us, you're, you're one of them and you're going to get punished. So when, once that is in the air, once we kind of, we, we snap into this kind of other mode when we all want to conform and it becomes really scary to be an individual. And so all of that group intelligence melts away and is replaced by the other thing, the other kind of group giant, which is, I call it a golem, like a big Godzilla that tramps

through a society and can just destroy. And the core thing we need is discourse, open discourse, where we need to be able to have individual brains connect together like neurons into a larger brain. What, you know, here's something that I hear all the time, though. Yes, like, okay, great. Let's share our ideas. I like hearing from you. You like hearing from me.

Oh, you gave me something good to think about. What happens though, when some people's ideas that they want to share result in destruction, death, dehumanizing people, taking away people's rights? Why should I have to listen to that? Why do I want to listen to people say, y'all deserve to die. Well, if you think about that, look at the times in history when that was actually happening, when there was a genocide or a mass movement. It's rarely that, and it was a thriving society of open discourse and strong, trusted institutions and free press and free assembly and all that. And there were just some of those people had really bad ideas. That's never what it looks like. It's always a society where a certain powerful group was able to scare everyone into silence and scare everyone into, you know, there is a orthodoxy now

and anyone who goes against that is going to be killed or imprisoned or whatever. And anyone who goes against that is going to be killed or imprisoned or whatever. And that's the premise usually where really awful things happen. If you think about an individual, if the impulse to silence the individual who's saying bad things, it's actually not that individual that's going to be bad. It's the concept that silencing is possible right now. And that power, because if you ask 10 different people, what is offensive? What is dangerous speech? You're going to get 10 different answers. And so if the rule is, well, hate speech and dangerous speech should be silenced and everyone, 10 different people think have 10 different criteria, what ends up happening is the most powerful group gets to decide. So now you have the most powerful group

silencing what they consider to be dangerous hate speech. And inevitably that turns into the silencing of any ideas that the most powerful group doesn't like. What if you don't live in an idyllic liberal democracy though? Like the United States, which has been declining on the democracy scale over the last period of time. What happens if you are not beginning with that foundation of a liberal democracy in which, and by the, that you're like a Democrat. A liberal democracy is an Enlightenment era idea in which some of these principles are things we're talking about, like the free exchange of ideas, right to a free press, etc. What happens when your liberal democracy is on the decline, you have a small group with an outsized amount of power

who have managed to gerrymander and rig the system in such a way that people who believe strongly in the principles of democracy find it difficult to extricate themselves. And this rigged system of declining liberal democracy begins to enact ideas and laws that restrict and dehumanize the rights of other people. What then, Tim? Yeah, I mean, what you're talking about is corruption. People think of corruption as like, oh, God, the politicians are taking money and they're, you know, whatever. And that's one form of corruption. But to me, institutions have a kind of a promise. They come along with a promise. They come along with a kind of a core telos. You can say that the telos

of a voting system is to express the will of the people, right? And so anything, when you have this kind of the sacred purpose of any institution and something starts changing that, it starts going against what it's actually supposed to be doing, some other value starts to supersede that. That's corruption. And there's never going to be a perfect set of shining institutions that have no corruption at all. But I think one of the things that we've noticed in the declining, kind of, you're talking

about the declining on the democracy index, that to me is just there's an increase in corruption in different areas. Now, a liberal democracy, unlike a totalitarian dictatorship, where you need one thing like ironclad laws and then something to enforce them. That's it. And there's no freedom. A liberal democracy is kind of a much more nuanced concept because, you know, you know, on one end of the spectrum, you have a totalitarian dictatorship. On the other end, you have total anarchy, which almost always ends up with, before you know it, there's gangs and warlords, and then you have a totalitarian dictatorship. going to have a guiding set of laws in this legal system, but there's going to be a lot of freedom within those walls. The positive of that is, of course, freedom is just a good in itself, but also it yields incredible productivity. The free markets of countries like the US have created unprecedented productivity. One of the downsides of this is that unlike a totalitarian dictatorship, there is a lot of room to maneuver and a lot of room to kind of violate the spirit of the liberal democracy. So, you know, it's almost like for our liberal democracy, which is an artificial invention for it to work, the constitution and the legal system and all of that, but then it also takes liberal norms. The people in the country have to have a sense of what it means to be a good

lowercase l liberal. And the people who run institutions have to have a certain amount of integrity. So when you talk about the decline like this of a place like the US, yeah, it's something to be concerned about. And the answer is not that we need, usually it's not that we need stricter laws, because that's the point is, you know, you're not really supposed to have that in the US. So when you see something like gerrymandering, for example, that's legal, right? It's not violating the letter of the law. But it is violating the telos of the voting system to express the will of the people. Jefferson has some quote about how the Senate, there can't be so many rules in place to determine how everything will go, It has to be

that generally, the people are playing by a certain set of unwritten rules. And so I think in general, a lot of the unwritten rules are being undermined. I think it is true that if the letter of the law is not being violated, the spirit of the law is. There's no sense in anyone who's ever studied history that the framers of the Constitution intended for a tiny number of people to be able to completely control who will rule in their state, largely absent the input of the voters. But of course, because we have a liberal democracy, representative democracy, these people that we keep reelecting keep upholding these corrupt institutions, and it becomes increasingly frustrating for normal citizens who are like, but I see your corruption a mile away. It's like a bullseye, but I feel powerless to change it.

One of the things that people tell me all the time is saying things like, vote for somebody different or contact your representatives, feels like a platitude. It feels like a pat answer that does not actually produce any meaningful results, that doesn't actually result in any kind of change. They see every level of government as being corrupt or corruptable in some way. And I don't mean this to say that every single person is like on the take and they're all secretly pocketing millions of dollars from evil robber barons. I don't mean it in that way. But what I'm referring to your type of corruption, which is a violation of the intended purpose of said institution. What are people in a liberal democracy who don't want to be told

one more time, just show up and vote? Because they're like, I'm already doing that. I've been doing that since I was 18, Sharon. I've been showing up to vote. I read about who I'm supposed to vote for. I'm like, who's the best person? I do that. How do we move more in the direction of that utopian society that we have the power in this moment to construct? What can we do in your estimation? Well, I think, think of politics as two games. The first game is left versus right. That's like the steering wheel of the, you know, of the car, you know, and where, where are we going?

But there's a second game, which is a set of people in the country who, regardless of left versus right, want to kind of preserve the core functions of the liberal democracy and value free speech and fair voting, and who actually, you know, want to live in the spirit of a liberal democracy, and they want to do things with integrity. And then there's another group who they want to win the left-right battle at all costs. And so if their team is doing something that is in violation of kind of the spirit of the liberal democracy or even violating the law itself, if they're using coercion instead of persuasion, if they're being super hypocritical, it doesn't matter. It's all part of this big game.

They have to win. They have to win and beat the other side. And the first game is important. The second game is over whether the wheels are going to fall off or not. And so I think that before you can worry about the steering wheel, worry about the wheels. And regardless of how you feel in the horizontal left-right thing, when you see this side of things that is actually undermining the wheels of the car in return for short-term victory, you have to fight against it, even if it's on your own side. That has to come first. And so I think that what people should do rather than call their representative, and sure,

they can do that too. But first of all, just focus on the wheels and anyone, not just people, politicians, but when people are silencing this, you know, debate on campuses, right? That's a wheels thing. You're messing with the ability of the academic institution to do its thing, which requires free open thought and academic freedom. And so there's a lot of examples where I think you have to just say, which game are we even talking about here? And I think, you know, if there's a situation when no one's threatening the wheels of the

car, sure, now focus back on the steering wheel and worry about that. But, you know, there should be priorities. I call the steering wheel versus the wheels of the car game. I call it principle over party. You have to care about the principles of democracy more than you care about an elephant or a donkey. Because you won't have an elephant or a donkey if you don't care about the principles of democracy. And it's exactly like what you're saying, which is a different analogy, right? You have to care about these principles before you care about any policies that anyone is promising you. We say, what are your values? Well, we all have a lot of values, but they have a hierarchy and certain things are more important to us than others. And

you know that when the two values butt against each other. So when it comes to like our politics, in the end, principles or party, one of them is going to be more sacred to you in the end, deep down. And you might think it's principles, wait till it's tested. And so here's the thing. If you just say, I'm part of the blue party, you're stating that principles come first and therefore blue, right? But now if the blue party betrays your principles, the two values are now butting heads. And if you just stick with this notion, blue, good, red, bad, even in times when you might say, oh, well, the red party is even worse. Well, there are, but it can't be that simple. If there are some times, this is way too complicated and nuanced for one to always be better. So if you're sticking with kind of the party line on the blue

side, even when it doesn't go with your principles, then what you're admitting is that actually my feet are anchored to blue, not principles. Then if the blue party changes, then it'll leave you, or they nailed to blue and it'll leave your principles and you'll go with it. And so I think it's just kind of like doing a self audit on like what really happens when these two clash is important. Yeah. What would have to happen to force you to abandon your allegiance to the red or the blue? And if it's really hard for you to think of even one thing that could happen for you to be like, you know what, I might vote differently if X occurred. If you can't come up with something, then you know that your allegiance is absolutely not to

the principles of democracy. Also, do you and your friends agree on not just one issue, but on every single issue down the line? And does that checklist happen to be exactly aligned with one of the party's checklists? And if so, you've probably seeded your own independent thinking to this game, this larger game to this tribe. And why would you do that? Your brain's way too impressive to give away your independence in return for kind of allegiance to a certain kind of lame political... I want to encourage people to think of both Democrats and Republicans as like the way they would think of, I don't know, McDonald's and Verizon. These are like lame corporations. Like, sure, you might need them to get what you need, right? But like, are you going to like wear

a Verizon shirt around and be like, yeah, now Verizon has like a sale and you're like, hey, everyone, two weeks to get the best deal. It's like, wow, no one would do that. So why are you like running around repeating the exact checklist and the exact talking points of one of these big, lame political corporations? I completely agree with you. Neither of them is particularly interesting. Neither of them is coming up with any really new innovative ideas.

They're more interested in arguing with each other than in bettering the lives of Americans. And that makes me laugh. The idea that like, would you be spending all your time on Twitter posting about how great Verizon is? No. Right. That's a boring life. Right.

And it's not cool. And people want to be cool. And it would be seen as dramatically uncool. And I want people to feel just as uncool being like a proud minion of this giant kind of stupid political organization. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me?

Steve! It is my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from The Office and our friendship with brand new guests, and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new office ladies, 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus on Mondays, we are taking a second drink.

You can revisit all the office ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to office ladies on the free od free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. I want to talk a little bit about one of the very hot topics du jour, which is about things like book bans and censorship, because the United States is moving into a very unprecedented, or perhaps it is precedented, but a very new resurgence

of book bans in schools. And just as a caveat, we're not talking about three-year-olds reading adult romance books, okay? That's not what we're talking about when we're talking about things like book bans and censorship. We're not talking about five-year-olds getting a copy of an adult magazine. That's not in a school library anyway. But what, if any, part or what, if any, role do book bans and coursework bans and club bans have in a thriving liberal democracy in your view? Yeah, this is a very complicated topic because I think there is an element of what people are calling book bans, which are actually positive development and an element that are a negative development. And I think it's also worth premising this with, I believe that both political sides are guilty of this. It's been much more kind of publicized recently, the book bans coming from the right,

which are trying to ban, in some cases, LGBTQ books from schools, things like that. So now on the right, what's happened is this is very complicated, because I think that what you would call the woke left has overreached when it comes to schools in a lot of ways, and is that my problem with what's been happening is not, oh, you know, the ideas of not critical race theory itself, but the ideas from that school of thought have entered the classroom, I don't have a problem with that. If the teacher wants to teach about any kind of ideology, great. The problem is that it should be taught alongside lots of ideology. So who agrees with this ideology? Who disagrees? Where did it come from? What are some totally different

ideologies? That's an education. If students are taught that this political ideology, which is what it is, is the one correct ideology, that's indoctrination, right? That's the definition of indoctrination. It's not education. So I think there's been some really bad things there as well. So that's why when I think there are some steps being taken by right-wing governments to curb this, I actually think some of those steps are good. Again, I don't think that they should be banned from the classroom, I think that should be required to be taught alongside other things. But of course, when you have a kind of I think a good effort to curb something bad very quickly, another group jumps in and says, Well, while we're here,

why don't we also ban these things. So I think that then you see some, like I said, the actual removing of books that have LGBTQ themes from school libraries, or instead of just saying that I think that these ideas must be taught, you know, with transparency in the curriculum, and also taught alongside other things, they actually have gone so far as to ban, you know, anything, any lesson that makes people feel anguish or, or what, you know, based on their race or ethnicity or whatever. And, you know, I just, I mean, I'm a Jew. I learned about the Holocaust and I felt anguish based on that or something, you know, something that makes people feel guilt. Well, I learned about racial injustice and criminal justice reform, you know, and we were learning about that and I felt, you know, yeah, I felt guilt or whatever. So, but again, that would be potentially

the teacher could be fired for that now. So that's overreach as well. So I just think with these topics, these need to be discussed with such nuance. It's not as ever going to be as simple as the right is banning books and that's bad or the woke left is being authoritarian and that's bad. And that's the end of the discussion.

Isn't it true though, that playing both sides of some ideas is inherently dangerous? Is there an alternative side to Hitler? Is there an alternative side to chattel slavery? You know, like, what idea are we teaching that alongside? You know, like, well, Hitler had these ideas. What do you guys think? And here's some other ideas that other people might've had about the Holocaust. What do you think? I mean,

is, aren't there some ideas that are so horrific that there is no two sides in it? Sure. I mean, in general, what I would say about both sides-ism, right? What I think about that is that sometimes both sides are genuinely being bad at the same time, in which case the neutral way to talk about it is both sides are being bad, right? And sometimes one side is being much worse, in which case saying both sides are bad is bias itself. It's bias towards both sides-ism. So I think that both sides-ism can be either the correct neutral thing, or it can actually be a form of bias on its own. Now, when you're talking about, okay, so we want a balanced education. Should we talk about why Nazism was good? No,

I'm not saying that. And I think that it should be judged on a case-by-case basis. Of course, you can't just say, yes, whatever the teacher wants to teach is good. So people on the right would argue that the ideas within kind of the critical race theory line of thinking are really dangerous and bad. But to me, I don't think that they're so bad that they could not be taught as alongside a larger curriculum. To me, there's not much being taught in schools right now that I think is so bad that it needs to be banned. I don't know any schools that are teaching something to me that is so reprehensible that it must be banned as opposed to taught alongside the criticisms of it. highly controversial issue, right? I know you write a lot about technology and how we can use technology for our own advancement and how it can also be used as a tool to destroy people. We can also aid in our own destruction from the misuse of technology. But I would love to hear more about your thoughts about things like,

let's just use Twitter as an example. Twitter choosing which types of posts it's willing to host, which ones it's willing to promote, which ones it's willing to allow to be searched. The government saying, hey, this is misinformation. Can you take this down? The government saying, hey, this is misinformation. Can you take this down? And the entire pantheon of related issues surrounding what some people think is censorship and tech and what some people think is the right of a private company to host what kind of speech they're interested in hosting. the first amendment, it's about what the government can and can't do. Private companies can do whatever they want. They can be, I can start a social network right now that says, this is a social network for godly people. Anyone who's anyone who writes anything, you know, atheist is going to be banned and those posts will be totally allowed to do that. Right. It's just, just in the same way that I can start a club in my house and say, I'm inviting people over. And if you say something I don't like, I'm going to kick you out of the club.

So it's totally fine. On the other hand, we're in a weird world that's pretty unprecedented world where a company like Twitter is so important. It became the way that the leader of the US was communicating with the world. I mean, man, that's important, right? And so it's important. And some people have suggested that it should be treated, these things should be treated like a utility. And so the owners of these companies actually should not be treated like the owners

of typical private companies. It's a very hard one. The thing that rubs me the wrong way about Twitter or whatever is, I said, if I start a social network and I say, this is for godly people, then that's it, right? Okay. I'm being honest about what it is. And so there's no corruption there, by the way. If I kick you out because you question the existence of God, there's nothing corrupt. I'm doing what I promised I would do. The problem on a place like Twitter is that what I would like to see is an ironclad set of a kind of like a constitution, a public constitution that says, this is what we ban for. You know, I think targeted campaigns of

harassment, right, should be not allowed, right? I don't think I wouldn't be a free speech absolutist about it. I think that's quickly turns the platform to trash. But there should be a very detailed and thorough document that is public, transparent that says this is what we ban for and this is what we don't ban for. And when someone is banned, you can just cite, oh, it's item 4A, it was violated. And here's the proof. And this is what we banned for, and this is what we don't ban for. And when someone is banned, you can just cite, oh, it's item 4A, it was violated, and here's the proof, and this is, you know, and it should be applied consistently, right? And so at that point, there's no corruption, you just follow the thing that's obviously easier said than done. It's very hard to classify these things. It's not easy, right? But the Constitution wasn't easy to write. I mean, sometimes you write

a document that requires a ton of nuance, and that kind of maybe even like we do develop our laws through, you know, through court precedents over time, maybe there's a case and there's a way that it's kind of like publicly debated. And then that becomes precedent. I mean, it sounds like over the top, but I think if something is so important, I think that is the way you do it. You create the best laws you can, the best rules you can. And then when there's a hazy case, you kind of have a public debate about it. And then that sets a new precedent. Now, that's not what they're doing, right? They have a very hazy set of guidelines. And they basically use them to ban people that the people who run the company happen to not like usually. And, you know, of course, the government saying,

well, we're going to start banning misinformation. And misinformation, you know, goes from everything that is genuine, dangerous misinformation to stuff that actually turned out a year later to not even be wrong. That's classic First Amendment violation to me that that is the government using its muscle to, to censor a company. So again, it wasn't the government officially doing it, which is why it probably technically wasn't a First Amendment violation. It was them suggesting to this other company that they do it. But to me, that is just, it's not, again, it doesn't, it's a perfect example of what we were talking about earlier. It doesn't necessarily violate the law, but it violates the spirit for sure. So as long

as you have these non-transparent rules that are being enforced by people kind of at their whim based on the political leanings of the people at the company and with government pressure without any transparency, that to me is a huge problem that people should be pushing back against. What is one way that we could use technology for the betterment of society? If you had a magic wand, you were giving your druthers, and I was like, make it happen. What would you like to wave your magic wand and make happen when it comes to technology? Well, tech is a double-edged sword, right? happen when it comes to technology? Well, tech is a double edged sword, right? You have the internet and cable TV spring around spring up and in the 80s and 90s. And now you have instead of these,

these professional news casters, talking for 30 minutes a day broadcasting the news and trying to be accurate, you have a totally different thing, right? You have this these these stations that are entertainment that are basically there to fire up one tribe about how awful the other tribe is, you know, accuracy be damned. So that's technology that is, I think, harming things. Now, the cool thing about tech is you can often use this, you know, use the same thing to fight against the bad thing. And so one thing that I wish existed is some kind of system to give kind of a credit, almost like a credit rating agency for media accuracy. Something that can use AI in some complex way to both evaluate the accuracy of claims. Sometimes if someone claims X, sometimes they could say,

this is factually wrong, and here's why. But also something could say, there's no evidence that X is correct. It seems like the X is correct with a 70% probability only, not 100. So you can actually comment on how much conviction should be expressed with the statement. So I think AI could do this, and it could then apply it to both, you know, to media brands, to CNN as a whole. It could also apply it to individual journalists. It could apply it to individual big accounts that tweet, to podcasters. And now there could be, the reason that media has gotten worse, it's not that the people working at MSNBC or Fox news or the judge report or Breitbart are necessarily that different than the people that were working at ABC in 1965.

It's that the incentives have totally changed and there's now you're not rewarded for accuracy. You're rewarded for clicks, right? And so the incentive system. So what I'm talking about, this credit rating agency, something that could apply a certain accuracy number to all these things, what it would do is it would give a, there would be a penalty for inaccuracy. Right now, there's none. And there's just no way for a person who, a consumer who just wants accuracy to find it right now. It's hard to know. And, you know, if you go to, if you go to the store, you know, you can look at the nutrition facts on

the back of the food you might want to buy. And right now there's no nutrition facts on any, you know, journalists record. And so if you could suddenly say, wow, this one sub stacker is amazingly accurate, you know, over time and, and really expresses the proper amount of doubt given that, you know, it would suddenly encourage at least a swath of the journalist world and the media world to work hard to try to climb that ladder and show that they're more accurate than the others. It would bring back an incentive in the other direction because right now there just is none and there's no way for consumers to even seek it out. There are people that do that job, consumers to even seek it out. There are people that do that job, but it's not AI,

called ad fontes. Are you familiar with them? No. Ad fontes means to the source. And they have such a website where they actually employ an entire team of people from the left, right, and center to rate not just the bias, but also the reliability of things like news sources and podcasts. Wow. I need to get into that. Yeah. It's Ad Fontes Media, A-D-F-O-N-T-E-S Media, I believe is their website. But again, I think they're fantastic, but there are limitations in that their team of 30 people or however many it is, they can't watch every news program. They can't read every single article. They're talking about general trends of this news organization is center rated with a very high accuracy or a very high reliability. This news

organization is very far left and is mostly based on opinion, etc. They're speaking about general trends rather than the specific tweets or the specific news articles. So I totally hear what you're saying, that AI is a potential use for being able to digest larger quantities of information at one time. But what will happen when the robots become sentient and try to take over? Yeah, I mean, that's a whole other can of worms. I mean, talk about double edged sword here, right? Of course, you can have the ultimate, it's putting godlike magic wand into all kinds of people's hands. And then it can also just misfire and do some incredible damage, well intentioned, incredible damage. But I think that we're going to hear a lot about the risks and the dangers, but man, there's also a lot of really

amazing potential positive applications. And I think, I mean, I'm really picturing like you could just install a Chrome extension that could, you know, have every, you know every statement, every tweet. You can just have a little badge next to it with the accuracy rating. And that means it has scanned everything, has all the information it could possibly have on the internet about that topic and every data set that could ever have.

And it instantly can just... So I mean, I like to think about the positive aspects of AI too. And this does seem like potentially one of them. I think AI's potential in medical diagnostics is another fantastic arena that is, you know, we are just now standing on the precipice of. That I think will be one way in which we really appreciate, in five years, we're going to look back at 2023 and be like, we knew nothing.

Yeah, I look forward to a future where I have, you know, right now people wear these wearables, right? They have their Apple Watch or their Fitbit. And it's like, you know, maybe they have a glucose monitor in their actual bloodstream, but it's so crude, right? The hardware is so crude. What about when we have little sensors implanted in us that, now conspiracy theorists are going to go wild when this happens, but like little sensors implanted in us that conspiracy theorists are going to go wild when this happens, but like little sensors implanted in us that can actually, you know, you open your

app and there's your actual levels of everything all at the same time. When something's wrong, the AI, your AI kind of medical assistant knows everything going on in your body, your entire medical history, what you ate that day, your glucose levels, how much sleep you got last night. And it can just find things way before you ever would have before and diagnose things. And you're going to get specific nutrition advice for your genome and your body and your current situation. So anyway, it's a whole other topic, but I get really excited about like, we will look back on today as like such a crude time for getting, you know, one size fits all nutrition advice.

And a doctor goes in and pinches your wrist and says, does this hurt? And you say, yes. And they try to guess what it is. I mean, it's just, to me, it seems like we're in the deep past. Yeah. It's a little bit like how we joke around now about AOL dial up internet. Like remember AOL instant messenger. That's what medical diagnostics are going to seem like in the very

near future. Yes, agreed. Oh my goodness. I loved chatting with you. I really enjoyed reading your book. Thank you so much for being here. This is truly just the tip of the iceberg of some of the ideas and thoughts and ways of thinking about the world that you put out on your website, that you tweet about that are in your new book. I love that your work is not about telling you what to think, but teaching people how to think. That is really a key component, a missing component. What is happening in American public discourse is people are just parroting rote answers from the proverbial Verizon company and don't have any new ideas of their own. So thanks for being here, Tim. Thank you, Sharon.

Tim Urban's book is out now. You can buy What's Our Problem? A self-help book for societies wherever you prefer to get your books. And you can also visit Tim's website, waitbutwhy.com. Thanks for being here. This show is researched and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. Our executive producer is Heather Jackson. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. And if you enjoyed this episode, would you consider leaving us a rating or review

on your favorite podcast platform that helps us so much and we always love to see your shares and tags on social media we'll see you again soon