Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics

Lex Fridman Podcast #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics Machine transcription by Qwen3-ASR 0.6B (MLX, local, Apache-2.0). May contain recognition errors. The following is a conversation with Tim Urban, his second time on the podcast. He's the author and illustrator of the amazing blog called "Wait, but why," and is the author of a new book coming out tomorrow called "What's Our Problem: A Self-Help Book for Societies." We talk a lot about this book in this podcast, but you really do need to get it and experience it for yourself. It is a fearless, insightful, hilarious, and I think important book in this divisive time that we live in. The Kindle version, the audiobook, and the web version should be all available on date of publication. I should also mention that my face might be a bit more beat up than usual. I got hit in the chin pretty good since I've been getting back into training jujitsu, a sport I love very much after recovering from an injury. So if you see marks on my face during these interludes of conversations, you know that my life is in a pretty good place. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got House of Macadamias for healthy snacks. Indeed for hiring excellent teams and Athletic Greens for health. Jews, wise and my friends. Also, if you want to work with our amazing team, we're always hiring. Go to lexfreeman dot com slash hiring. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you must skip them, please do check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. 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There are certain things in life that if you take care of them, they give you the freedom to take on anything in any way you want. Just knowing that when I take care of the quote unquote adult stuff, I am free to be a child basically, which is to explore the world, to follow my curiosity, to take big risks, to be fearless but also to be joyful. All of that. And to me, it's kind of the nutrition side of that is Athletic Greens help me with that. I also take electrolytes that really helps and fish oil as well. But that's pretty much about it. Oh yeah, drink a lot of water, of course. Anyway, they'll give you one month supply of fish oil when you sign up at athleticgreens dot com slash lex. This is the lex Friedman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here is Tim Urban. You wrote an incredible book called "What's Our Problem: A Self-Help Book for Societies." In the beginning, you present this view of human history as a thousand page book, where each page is two hundred and fifty years, and it's a brilliant visualization because almost nothing happens for most of it. So what blows your mind most about that visualization when you just sit back and think about it? It's a boring book. So nine hundred and fifty pages, ninety five percent of the book, hunter gatherers kind of doing their thing. I am sure there is you know there is some there is obviously some major cognitive and advancements along the way and language. And I am sure you know the bow and arrow comes around at some point. You know so tiny things, but it's like okay now a four hundred pages till the next thing. But then you get to page nine fifty and things start moving. Recorded history starts at nine seventy six. Right, right. So basically the bottom row is when anything interesting happens. There is a bunch of agriculture for a while before we know anything about it, and then recorded history starts. Yeah, twenty five pages of actual like recorded history. So when we think of prehistoric, we're talking about pages one through nine seventy five of the book, and then history is page you know nine seventy six to one thousand. If you were reading the book, it would be like epilogue AD. You know the last little ten pages of the book, and we think of AD is super long, right two thousand years. The Roman Empire two thousand years ago, like that's so long. Human history has been going on for over two thousand centuries. Like that is, it's just it's hard to wrap your head around. And this is, I mean, even that's just the end of a very long road. Like you know, one hundred thousand years before that, it's not like you know, it's not like that was that different. So it's just there is been people like us that have emotions like us that have physical sensations like us. For for so so long, and who who are they all, and what was their life like? And it's you know, I think we have no idea what it was like to be them. The the thing that's craziest about the people of the far past is not just that they had different lives, they had different fears, they had different dangers and different responsibilities, and they lived in tribes and everything, but they didn't know anything. Like we just take it for granted that we're born on top of this tower of knowledge, and from the very beginning we we know that the earth is a ball floating in space, and we know that we're going to die one day, and we know that you know we evolved from animals and all the those were all like incredible you know epiphanies quite recently and the people a long time ago they just had no idea what was going on and like I am kind of jealous because I feel like it I mean it might have been scary to not know what's going on but it also I feel like would be you'd have a sense of awe and wonder all the time and and you don't know what's going to happen next and once you learn you are kind of like oh that's like it's a little grim but they probably had the same capacity for consciousness to experience the world to wander about the world maybe to construct narratives about the world and myths and so on. They just had less grounded systematic facts to play with. They still probably felt the narratives the myths they constructed as intensely as we do. Oh yeah, they also fell in love. They also had friends and they had falling outs with friends. Didn't shower much though. No, they did not smell nice. Maybe they did. Maybe beauty's in the eye of the beholder. Yeah, maybe it's all like relative. How many people in history have experienced a hot shower? Like almost none. That's like when were hot showers invented one hundred years ago. Like less, so like George Washington never had a hot shower. It's like it's just kind of weird. Like he he took cold showers all the time or like. And again, we just take this for granted, but that's like an unbelievable life experience to have a rain a controlled little booth where rains hot water on your head and then you get out and it's not everywhere it's like contained. That was like you know they a lot of people probably lived and died with never experiencing hot water. Maybe they they had a way to heat water over a fire, but like then it's I don't know it's just like there is so many things about our lives now that are complete just total anomaly. It makes you wonder like what is the thing they would notice the most. I mean the sewer system like it doesn't smell in cities. Incredible. What does a sewer system do? I mean, it gets rid of waste efficiently, such that we don't have to confront it both with our with any of our senses, and that's probably wasn't there. I mean, what else? Plus all the medical stuff associated with. Yeah, I mean, how about the disease? Yeah, how about the the cockroaches and the rats and the and the disease and the the the plagues and you know and and then when they got so they they caught more diseases but then when they caught the disease they also didn't have treatment for it so they often would die or they would just be in a huge amount of pain. They also didn't know what the disease was. They don't know about microbes. That was this new thing the idea that these tiny little animals that are causing these diseases. So what did they think you know in the the bubonic plague you know in the the Black Death the thirteen hundreds people thought that it was an act of God because you know God's angry at us because why would you know why would you not think that if if you didn't know what it was. And so the crazy thing is that these were the same primates. So I do know something about them. I know in in some sense what it's like to be them because I am a human as well and to know that this particular primate that I know what it's like to be experienced such different things. It's and and like this isn't our life is not the life that this primate has experienced almost ever so it's just it's just a bit strange. I don't know. I have a sense that we would get acclimated very quickly. Like if if we threw ourselves back a few thousand years ago, it would be very uncomfortable at first, but the whole hot shower thing you'll get used to it. Oh yeah, after a year you would not even like miss it because there is a few trying to remember which book that talks about hiking that Appalachian trail. But you kind of miss those hot showers. But I have a sense like after a few months after a few years. Well, your scale recalibrates. Yeah, I was saying the other day to a friend that whatever you are used to, you start to think that oh, that the people that have more than me are more fortunate. Like it just sounds incredible. I would I would be so happy, but you know that's not true because experience. What would happen is you would you would you would get these new things or you would you would get these new opportunities and then you would get used to it and then you would the hedonic treadmill you'd come back to where you are and likewise though because you think oh my god what if I had to you know have this kind of job that I never would want or I had this kind of marriage that I never would want. You know what if you did you would adjust and you get used to it and you might not be that much less happy than you are now. So on the other side of the you being okay going back you know you we would survive if we had to go back. You know we'd have to learn some skills and but but we would buck up and you know people have gone to war before that were in the you know shopkeepers a year before that they were in the trenches the next year. But on the other hand, if you brought them here, you know I always think it would be so fun to just bring forget the hunter gatherers bring a seventeen hundreds person here and tour them around, take them on an airplane, show them your phone and all the things it can do, show them the internet, show them the grocery store. Imagine taking them to a Whole Foods. Likewise, I think they would be completely awe struck and on their knees crying tears of joy, and then they'd get used to it and they'd be complaining about like they don't you don't have the this oranges in stock because like you know and that's the grocery store is a tough one to get used to like when I when I first came to this country, the the abundance of bananas was the thing that struck me the most or like fruits in general but food in general but bananas somehow struck me the most that you could just eat them as much as you want that took a long time for me probably took several years to really like get acclimated to that is that why didn't you have bananas the number of bananas fresh bananas I don't that that wasn't available bread yes bananas no yeah it's like we don't even know what to like we don't even know the proper levels of gratitude you know walking around the grocery store I don't know to be like the bread's nice but the bananas are like we're so lucky I don't know I am like oh I could have been the other way I have no idea. Well, it's interesting then where we point our gratitude in the West in the United States. Probably, do we point it away from material possessions towards, or do we just aspire that to do that towards other human beings that we love? Because in the East in the Soviet Union, growing up poor, it's having food is the gratitude, having transportation is gratitude, having warmth and shelter is gratitude. And now, but see within that the deep gratitude is for other human beings. It's the the penguins huddling together for warmth in the cold. I think it's a person by person basis. I mean, I am sure yes, of course in the West we will on average feel gratitude towards different things or maybe a different level of gratitude. Maybe we feel less gratitude than some than countries that. You know, obviously I think the easiest the person that's most likely to feel gratitude is going to be someone who's on whose whose life happens to be one where they just move up up up throughout their life. A lot of people in the greatest generation, you know, people who were born in the twenties or whatever, and a lot of the boomers too. The story is the greatest generation group dirt poor and they often ended up middle class. And the boomers, some of them started off middle class and many of them ended up quite wealthy. And I feel like that life trajectory is naturally going to foster gratitude, right? Because you are not going to take for granted these things because you didn't have them. You know, I didn't go out of the country really in my childhood very much. You know, like you know, we we traveled, but it was to Virginia to see my grandparents or Wisconsin to see other relatives or you know maybe Florida for going on to the beach, and then I started going out of the country like crazy in my twenties because I I really you know became my favorite thing, and I feel like because I if I had grown up always doing that it would have been another thing. I am like yeah, that's just something I do, but I still every time I go to a new country, I am like oh my god, this is so cool. And in another country, this thing I've only seen on the map, I am like I am there now, and so I feel like it it it a lot of times it's a product of what you didn't have and then you suddenly had, but I still think it's case by case in that there is a there is like a meter in in everyone's head you know that I think on on on at a ten you are you are experiencing just immense gratitude right which is a euphoric feeling it's a great feeling and it's it makes you happy it's to savor what you have to look down at the mountain of stuff you have that you are standing on right to look to look down at and say oh my god I am so lucky and I am so grateful for this and this and this and you know obviously that's a happy exercise now when you move the meter meter down to six or seven maybe you think that sometimes but you are you are not always thinking that because you are sometimes looking up at this cloud of things that you don't have and the things that they have but you don't or things you wished you had or you thought you were going to have or whatever and that's the opposite direction to look right and and that's the either that's it's envy that's yearning or often it's it's it's if you think about your past it's it's grievance right and so then you go on to a one and you have someone who feels like a complete victim they are just a victim of the society of their their their siblings and their parents and their their loved one and they are they're wallowing in everything that's happened wrong to me everything I should have that I don't everything that has gone wrong for me and so that's a very unhealthy mentally unhealthy place to be. Anyone can go there, you know. There is an endless list of stuff you can it can be aggrieved about and an endless list of stuff you can have gratitude for. And so it's it's in some ways it's a choice and it's a habit and maybe it's part of how we are raised or our natural demeanor but it's such a good you are really good at this by the way. Your Twitter is like go on well like like you are you you you are constantly just saying man I am lucky or like I am I am so grateful for this and that's it's it's a good thing to do because you are reminding yourself but you are also reminding other people to think that way it's like we are lucky you know and and so anyway I think that scale can go from one to ten and I think it's hard to be a ten I think you'd be very happy if you could be but I think trying to be above a five and looking down at the things you have more often than you are looking up at the things you don't or being you know resentful about the things that people have wronged you and well the interesting thing I think it's an open question but I suspect that you can control that knob for for the individual like you yourself can choose like the Stoic philosophy you can choose where you are as a matter of habit like you said but you can also probably control that on a scale of a family of a tribe of a nation of a society. I mean, a lot you can describe a lot of the things that happens in Nazi Germany and different other parts of history through a sort of societal envy and resentment that builds up. Maybe certain narratives pick up and then they infiltrate your mind and then now your knob goes to from the gratitude for everything it goes to resentment and envy and all Germany between the two World Wars you know like like you said the Soviet kind of mentality. So yeah, and then when you are soaking in a culture, so there is kind of two factors, right? It's it's it's what's going on in your own head and then what's surrounding you and what's surrounding you kind of has concentric circles. There is your immediate group of people because that group of people if they're a certain way, if they feel a lot of gratitude and they talk about it a lot, that kind of isolates you from the broader culture because you know the people are going to have the most impact on you are the ones closest. But often they're all the all the concentric circles are saying the same thing that people around you are feeling the same way that the broader community which is feeling the same way as the broader country, um, and you know I think this is why I think American patriotism, you know nationalism, you know can be tribal can be very not not a good thing, patriotism, um, I think is is a great thing because really what is patriotism I mean it's if you love your country you should love your fellow countrymen you know to patriot you know that's a rig in quotes it's like patriotism is like I think a feeling of like um unity, um and but it also comes along with an implicit kind of concept of gratitude because it's like we are so lucky to live in you know people you know think it's chauvinist to say we live in the best country in the world right and you know yes when Americans say that no one likes it right but actually it's not a bad thing to think it's a nice thing to think it thinks it's a way of saying I'm so grateful for all the great things this country gives to me and this country has done and and I think you know if you heard the Philip you know a Filipino person say you know what the Philippines is the best country in the world no one in America would say that's chauvinist they'd say awesome right because when coming from someone you know who's not American it sounds totally fine but I think I think you know a national pride is actually good now again that can quickly translate into xenophobia nationalism and so you know you have to make sure it doesn't go off that cliff but yeah there's good ways to formulate that like you talk about we'll talk about like high run progressivism high run conservatism those are two different ways of of embodying patriotism so you could talk about maybe loving the tradition that this country stands for or you could talk about loving the people the that ultimately push progress and those are from an intellectual perspective a good way to represent patriotism we got to zoom out because this this graphic is epic a lot of images in your book are just epic on their own it's brilliantly done but this one has famous people for each of the cards like the best of yeah for you and by the way good for them to be the person yeah that that it's not that I could have chosen lots of people for each card but I think most people would agree you know that's a pretty fair choice for each each page and to good for them to be you know you you crush it if you can be the person for your whole 250 year page so well I noticed you put Gandhi didn't put Hitler I mean there's a lot of people going to argue with you about that particular last page true yes you're right I could have I could have put an I actually I was thinking about Darwin there too Darwin Einstein yeah exactly you really could have put anyone you think about putting yourself for a second yeah I should have I should have that would have been awesome I'm sure that would have endeared the readers to me from right from the beginning of the first page of the book a little bit of a messianic complex going on but yeah so the list of people just you know so these are 250 year chunks the last one being from 1770 to 2020 and so it goes Gandhi Shakespeare Joan of Arc Genghis Khan Charlemagne Mohammed Constantine Jesus Cleopatra Aristotle Buddha it's so interesting to think about this very recent human history that's 11 pages so it would be 2750 almost 3000 years just that there are these figures that stand out and that define the course of human history and it's like the crazy the craziest thing to me is that like Buddha was a dude he was a guy with like arms and legs and fingernails that he may be bit and like he liked certain foods and maybe he got like you know he had like digestive issues sometimes and like he got cuts and they stung and like he was a guy um and he had hopes and dreams and he probably had a big ego for a while before he I guess Buddha totally overcame that one but like and it's like who knows you know you know what the myth the mythical figure Buddha who knows how similar he was but the fact same with Jesus like this was a guy like to me it's he's a primate yeah what a impact he was a cell first and then a baby yeah he was a fetus at some point a dumb baby trying to learn how to walk yeah like having tantrum yeah um because he's frustrated because he's in the terrible twos Jesus was in the terrible twos Buddha never had a tantrum let's be honest the myth the mother was like this baby's great like wow figure something out it just but I mean this I mean listen hearing learning about Genghis Khan it's incredible to me because it's just like this was some Mongolian you know herder guy who was taken as a slave and he was like dirt poor you know catching rats is a you know young teen with you know to feed him and his mom and his I think his brother um and it's just like the the the odds when he was born he was just one of you know probably tens of thousands of random teen boys living in Mongolia in the 1200s the odds of that person any one of them being a household name today that we're talking about it's just crazy like what had to happen and it's for that guy to for that poor dirt poor herder to take over the world I don't know so history just like continually blows my mind like you know and he's the reason you and I related probably yeah no I mean it's it's it's also that's the other thing is that some of these dudes by becoming king by being having a better army at the right time you know William the Conqueror whatever has is in the right place at the right time with the right army you know and there's a weakness at the right moment and he comes over and he exploits it and ends up probably having you know I don't know thousand children and those children are high up people who might be have a ton of the species is different now because of him like if if that forget England's different or you know European borders look different like like we are like we look different because of a small handful of of people you know certain when sometimes I think I'm like oh you know this part of the world I can recognize someone's Greek you know someone's Persian someone's wherever because you know they kind of have certain facial features and I'm like it may have happened I mean obviously it's that that's a population but it may be that like someone 600 years ago that looked like that really spread their seed and that's why the ethnicity looks kind of like that now sorry anyway yeah yeah do you think individuals like that can turn the direction of history or is that an illusion that narrative we tell ourselves well it's both I mean so I said that William the Conqueror right or Hitler right it's not that Hitler was born and destined to be great at all right I think in a lot of cases he's frustrated artist with a temper who's turning over the table in his studio and hitting his wife and being kind of a dick and a total nobody right um I think almost all the times you could have put Hitler baby on Earth he's a he's a rando right you know and and maybe he's a you know maybe sometimes he becomes a you know some kind of you know he uses this speaking ability because that ability was going to be there either way but maybe he uses it for something else but um but that said I also I think but it's not that World War II was going to happen either way right so it's it's both it's that like these circumstances were one way and this person came along at the right time and those two made a match made in in this case hell but it makes you wonder yes it's a match in hell but are there other people that could have taken his place or do these people that stand out they're the rare spark of that genius whether it takes us towards evil towards good whether those figures singularly define the trajectory of humanity you know what defines the trajectory of humanity in the 21st century for example might be the influence of AI might be the influence of nuclear war negative or positive not in the case of nuclear war but the bioengineering nanotech virology what else is there maybe the structure of governments and so on maybe the structure of universities I don't know there could be singular figures that stand up and lead the way for human there will be but I wonder if the society is the thing that manifests that that person or that person really does have a huge impact I think it's probably a spectrum where there are some cases when a circumstance was such that something like what happened was going to happen if you pluck that person from the Earth I don't know whether the Mongols is a good example or not but maybe it could be that if you pluck Genghis Khan as a baby there was because of the specific way Chinese civilization was at that time and the specific you know climate you know that was that was causing a certain kind of pressure on the Mongols and the way they they still had their their great archers and they had their horses and they had a lot of the same advantages so maybe it was like it was waiting to happen right it was going to happen either way and may not have happened to sit to the extent or whatever so maybe or you could go the full other direction say actually this was probably not going to happen and you know I think World War II is an example where I kind of think World War II really was kind of the the the work of of course it relied on all these other circumstances you had to have the resentment in Germany you have had the Great Depression but like I think if you take Hitler out I'm pretty sure World War One World War II doesn't happen well then it seems like easier to answer these questions when you look at history even recent history but let's look at now let's look at I'm sure we'll talk about social media so who are the key players in social media Mark Zuckerberg what's the name of the MySpace guy Tom Tom it's just Tom yeah there's a meme going around where like MySpace is like the perfect social media because no algorithmic involvement everybody's happy and positive also Tom did it right at the time you were like oh man Tom only made like a few million dollars oh socks to not be zuck Tom might be living a nice life right now where he doesn't have this nightmare that these other people have yeah and he's always smiling in his profile picture he looks and so there's like Larry Page so with Google that's kind of intermingled into that whole thing into the development of the internet Jack Dorsey now Elon um who else I mean there's people playing with the evolution of social media and to me that seems to be connected to the development of AI and it seems like those singular figures will define the direction of AI development and social media development with social media seeming to have such a huge impact on our collective intelligence it does feel in one way like individuals have an especially big impact right now in that a small number of people are pulling some big levers um and you know there can be a little meeting of three people at Facebook and they come out and they come in they come out of that meeting and make a decision that totally changes the world right on the other hand you see a lot of a lot of conformity you see a lot of you know they all pulled the plug on Trump the same day right so that suggests that there's some bigger force that is also kind of driving them in which case it's less about the individuals I think you know this is you know what is leadership right I mean to me leadership is the ability to move things in a direction that the cultural forces are not already taking things right a lot of times people seem like a leader because they're just kind of hopping on the cultural wave and they happen to be the person who gets to the top of it now it seems like they're but actually the the wave was already going like real leadership is when um is is when someone actually changes the the wave changes the shape of the wave like I think Elon with you know SpaceX and and with Tesla like genuinely like shaped a wave you know maybe you could say that EVs were actually like they were going to happen anyway but it it's there's no it's not much evidence about at least happening when it did you know if we end up on Mars you know you can you can say that Elon was a genuine like leader there and so there are examples now like Zuckerberg definitely has done a lot of leadership along the way he's also um potentially kind of like caught in a a storm that is happening and you know he's one of the figures in it so I don't know and it's possible that he is a big shaper if the metaverse becomes a reality if in 30 years we're all living in a virtual world to many people that seems ridiculous now that that was a poor investment he talked about getting you know 10 you know I think it was something like a billion people with a VR headset in their pocket in by you know I think it was 10 years from now back in 2015 so we're we're behind that but when I he was talking about that and honestly I this is something I've been wrong about because I went to like one of the Facebook conferences and tried out all the new Oculus stuff and I was like you know pretty early talking to some of the you know major players there because I was going to write a big post about it that then got swallowed by this book but um but I would have been wrong in the post because in what I would have said was that this thing is you know when I tried it I was like this is you know some of them were sucks some of them make you nauseous and they're just not that your headsets were big and you know but I was like the times when this is good it is I have this feeling I haven't had it reminds me of the feeling I had when I first was five and I went to a friend's house and he had Nintendo and I and he gave me the controller and I was looking at the screen and I pressed a button and Mario jumped and I said I said I can make the something on the screen move and the same feeling I had the first time someone showed me how to send an email is like really early and he's like you can send this and I was like it goes I can press enter on my computer and something happens on your computer those were obviously you know when you have that feeling it often means you're you're witnessing a paradigm shift and I thought this is one of those things and I still kind of think it is but it's kind of weird that it hasn't you know like where's the VR revolution like yeah I'm surprised because I'm I'm with you my first and still instinct is this feels like it changes everything VR feels like it changes everything but it's not changing anything like a dumb part of my brain is genuinely convinced that this is real then the smart part knows it's not but that's why the dumb part was like we're not walking off that cliff the smart part's like you're on your rug it's fine the dumb part of my brain is like I'm I'm not walking off the cliff so I was like it's crazy I feel like it's waiting for like that revolutionary person who comes in and says I'm going to create a headset like honestly Steve Jobs iPhone of honestly a little bit of a Carmack type guy which is why it was really interesting for him to be involved with with Facebook it's basically how do we create a simple dumb thing that's 100 bucks but actually create that experience and then there's going to be some viral killer app on it and that's going to be the gateway into a thing that's going to change everything I mean I don't know what exactly was the thing that changed everything with a personal computer does that understood why that maybe graphics like what well was the use case I mean exactly wasn't wasn't the the 84 Macintosh like a moment when it was like this is actually something that normal people can and want to use because it was less than 5000 dollars I think was and I just think it had some like Steve Jobs user friendliness already to it that other ones it hadn't had I think Windows 95 was a really big deal the I remember like because I I'm old enough to remember the MS DOS when I was like kind of remember the command and then suddenly this concept of like a window you drag something into you double click an icon which now seems like so obvious to us was like revolutionary because it made it it made it intuitive so you know I don't yeah Windows 95 was good it was crazy yeah I forget what the big leaps was because I was Windows 2000 which sucked and then Windows XP was good I moved to Mac around 2004 so I stopped I sold just sold to the devil yeah I see well us the people still use Windows and Android the device and the operating system of the people not you elitist folk with your books and your what else and success okay you write more technology means better good times but it also means better bad times and the scary thing is if the good and bad keep exponentially growing it doesn't matter how great the good times become if the bad gets to a certain level of bad it's all over for us can you elaborate on this why why is there why does the bad have a that property that if it's all exponentially getting more powerful then the bad is going to win in the end was is my misinterpreting that in no so the first thing is I noticed a trend which was like the centuries the good is getting better every century like the 20th century was the best century yet in terms of prosperity in terms of GDP per capita in terms of life expectancy in terms of poverty and disease