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“The basic question that the book explores is if humans are so smart, why are we so stupid?
We are definitely the smartest animal on the planet. We can build airplanes and atom bombs and computers and so forth. And at the same time, we are on the verge of destroying ourselves, our civilization, and much of the ecological system.
And it seems like this big paradox that if we know so much about the world and about distant galaxies and about DNA and subatomic particles, why are we doing so many self-destructive things?
And the basic answer you get from a lot of mythology and theology is that there is something wrong in human nature and therefore we must rely on some outside source like a god to save us from ourselves.
And I think that’s the wrong answer, and it’s a dangerous answer because it makes people abdicate responsibility.”
“I think that the real answer is that there is nothing wrong with human nature. The problem is with our information.
Most humans are good people. They are not self-destructive.
But if you give good people bad information, they make bad decisions.
And what we see through history is that yes, we become better and better at accumulating massive amounts of information, but the information isn’t getting better.
Too many people, especially in places like Silicon Valley, think that information is about truth, that information is truth. That if you accumulate a lot of information, you will know a lot of things about the world. But most information is junk.
Information isn’t truth.
The main thing that information does is connect. The easiest way to connect a lot of people into a society, a religion, a corporation, or an army, is not with the truth.
The easiest way to connect people is with fantasies and mythologies and delusions. And this is why we now have the most sophisticated information technology in history and we are on the verge of destroying ourselves.”
This is an important BOOK, especially at this exact moment in time.
You can read the interview on VOX.
And if you prefer listening to the podcast of the interview above you can do that HERE.