Future Of Our Kids | Why We Behave The Way We Do |Yuval Harari India Tour Exclusive @YuvalNoahHarari

0:00 when you see a spider and you're afraid of it this is actually a memory from hundreds of thousands of years ago most people like to eat sweet sugary stuff if it's not good for me why is it so good it doesn't make any sense so this is for instance something which to understand it you need to understand evolution [Music] I don't know how many of you guys are

0:30 envious of me right now um it's not every day that you sit across the man that you deeply admire you were a huge fan so yes Professor Harari I'm a huge huge fan everybody here I'm sure we're all part of the sapiens family and I must say that you know when I start building out pizza press I had no idea that we would reach 20 million and I had no idea that I'll be interviewing you one day honestly if you ask me as as

0:57 part of being a parent to a teenager I would love to ask you uh if our ancestors had any tips on raising teenagers and dealing with toddler Tantrums but I know that we're not here for that so I'm not going to take any more time everybody is here to listen to you so I'm going to dive straight into the questions I hope you're ready [Music] why should we understand human evolution especially the little children seated here why is it important to them it's

1:28 because it takes a long time to acquire a deep fear of something millions of years ago when humans evolved in Africa the word dangerous spiders there so when you see a spider and you're afraid of it this is actually a memory from hundreds of thousands of years ago when we lived in the wild and there were many dangerous spiders cars on the other hand they've been around for just a hundred years this is not enough time to

2:01 develop this kind of deep-seated bodily fear of them so it doesn't come from the body the fear of cars you have to educate people to tell them about the dangers of cars um so this is for instance something which to understand it you need to understand evolution similarly not just fear but also the things that we like most people like to eat sweet sugary stuff parents spend a lot of time teaching kids to be aware of

2:33 cars they also spend a lot of time telling them don't eat so many sweets and it's strange I mean if it's not good for me why is it so good it doesn't make any sense why should my body all the time be craving to eat something which is not good for it I mean the body isn't stupid yeah so what's happening and again if you look at the world today it makes no sense but if you look at the world of how we

2:58 evolved for hundreds of thousands of years it suddenly makes sense because when we lived in the African Savannah there were a lot of spiders but on almost no sweet things the only sweet things were either fruits or honey and if you live in the African Savannah and you don't have a lot of food and you come across a tree full of sweet fruits the sensible thing to do is to eat as many of them as quickly as possible

3:29 because if you eat just one or two and says okay I'll come back tomorrow and I eat some more you come back tomorrow there are no fruits left because the baboons ate everything so our body is programmed like you find something sweet eat as much of it as possible as quickly as possible we're following that very strictly yes and we're following it I mean these are the instructions we've read the instructions these are the instructions of the body

3:52 we open the fridge you we find a chocolate cake we do what what what they told us the the what evolution told us to do we our bodies it hasn't caught up with the fact that we are no longer in the African Savannah uh we are living in a modern society and there are lots of sweet things around and and um yeah now it's it's problematic so this is why evolution is important it's not some theoretical thing that you're

4:20 learning University it's connected to your deepest fears and your deepest desires every day as someone who's read most of your books I thought the Illustrated version was kind of just made for children you simplified it even further with unstoppable us What would your inspiration behind unstoppables like what inspired you the idea was to take the Big Ideas of sentience of human history and tell them in a way which will be accessible

4:51 to somebody who is 10 years old like maybe even think about myself when I was 10 what are the things that I wished I mean that somebody would have told me when I was 10 years old but you know you need to tell them in a way which will be understandable so you need to use you know a lot of examples and illustrations and and simple language which actually makes it much harder to write it because when you write for adults

5:20 and you're not really sure what you want to say you hide it kind of you hide behind the big words and the long sentences and yeah I'm not sure what I want to say so okay I'll write this very big complicated sentence nobody will really understand that's fine um but when you write for kids you can't do that I mean if you write these big long sentences with complicated words they just leave the book so you have to think doubly hard what do

5:44 I really want to say and what I learned from years of teaching in universities and so forth is that if you can't explain it in a simple way it means you don't really understand it so if you if you find yourself writing this very complicated thing you just need to go back think more and ready be sure what do you want to say it's not true of all subjects I don't know like quantum mechanics that's difficult I mean there is no way to

6:15 simplify it but uh with the key ideas of History it should be possible to present them a simple way why because it's about our daily life history is not something that happened thousands of years ago to some King it's what happening to us every day even as kids so it should be accessible to also to kids right absolutely and I think like you rightly said it's just about making it simpler to make it more

6:46 accessible we're at that stage where I think each one of us is somewhere insecure that build technology make our children you know and their skill sets redundant or will we will they be competing or what will they be competing for um so do you think humans will still run the world um and I ask you this because you know parents parents of today we want to know how can they be unstoppable being Unstoppable is not necessarily something

7:16 we should aim for I chose the title Unstoppable us because it has a double meaning it has that you know the positive meaning that yes we are very powerful we can do whatever you we want and so forth but it also has a negative meaning that we also cannot stop ourselves that no matter what we achieve this is a characteristic of human beings no matter what we achieve we always want more We Can't Stop like you have a million

7:41 dollar you want two million dollars you have 10 million dollars you want a hundred million dollars it's very difficult to kind of just stop relax and be satisfied with what you have this is why we conquer the world human beings but this is also why we are in many ways destroying the world the ecosystem unbalancing the entire ecosystem uh driving so many species to Extinction and also endangering our own future so I think willing to learn how to stop

8:10 and just you know just enjoy what we have instead of all the time looking for more and technology is is part of this issue because we are very good at inventing new technologies that give us more and more power but we are not very good in using all that power to make ourselves happier all to make the world a better place now technology itself it can be used for good purposes or for bad purposes this

8:42 is true of almost every technology there is no good technology and there is no bad technology you can use a knife to murder somebody you can use the knife to save their life in surgery and you can use the knife to cut salad for dinner the life doesn't care what you do with it it's it's our choice so um the key is not just to invent the technology but to invest the time to develop our own minds to develop our

9:09 wisdom our compassion so that we would use knives to sell save people and not to kill them and it's the same with the new technology like AI but there is one big difference AI is different from every previous technology in history from knives from atom bombs from cars from everything why is it different it's the first technology in history that can make choices by itself now I just can't choose what to do with them but a I can

9:41 like we now have armies around the world for instance developing autonomous weapon systems what is commonly called Killer Robots this is the weapon it's the first weapon in history that can decide by itself whether to kill somebody whether to attack somebody and like this self-driving cars and so many other Technologies and this is very dangerous because uh very soon we may no longer have a choice

10:12 about what to do with the technology the technology will make the choice it will even choose about us for instance everybody today when I don't know how it is in India but in certain parts of the world when you apply today to a bank to get a loan like you want to buy your a house you don't have enough money you go to the bank and you ask the bank for a loan it's not a human being who makes this very crucial

10:39 decision about your life it's an AI an algorithm that collects data on you and decides whether to give you a loan or not and if the computer says no don't give this person a loan and you go to the bank and you ask why not what's wrong with me and the bank says we don't know the computer said no and we just trust our computer so we don't give you a loan and this is increasingly happening in

11:06 more and more fields in life so you apply to University you apply to get a job all kinds of things and your faith is in the hands not of a human being but of a computer an AI and uh we have to be extremely careful about it because uh if we lose control of the future there is no guarantee that the AI will make good decisions about us almost makes me feel like if the digital footprints that we will leave behind we

11:38 may not be able to trace them back so if you made a mistake the system has recorded that right so like you said for University or for college or whatever else it's so important for us to be so conscious of what digital Footprints we're leaving behind because systems are going to be making those choices and not humans yeah and the frightening thing about that is that you know it turns the whole of life into one long job interview

12:05 because previously when you apply you say to college you know okay I have a few stressful days I go to do this exam or that exam and and they decide according to that now your whole life is like this exam because maybe I don't know you're 10 years old and you do something stupid somewhere and it's recorded and then when you apply to a good school it comes up and you don't get accepted to the good school and

12:32 because of that later on again it's it's never it's never it never disappears you don't get accepted to college so you don't get a good job all the way to the you don't get accepted to the good Cemetery because of what you did when you attend everything is recorded nothing is ever forgotten so everything you do at any moment of your life may meet you 10 years 20 years down the road I don't know maybe in 20 years you're a

13:00 politician you're running for elections maybe you already a judge they want to make your Supreme Court judge and this thing you did when you're a teenager comes up because it it's it never disappears it is never deleted and you know it's broader in a sense because competition let's say for status is part of the life of every human and every animal also dogs also elephants also Lions they all compete for status

13:30 but most in the case in most cases you have times of competition and then you have times to relax increasingly there is no such time what I'm doing what I'm saying at any moment can be known to everybody so it's part of this status competition and this creates a kind of stress which nobody before had to deal with we

14:01 all the time had this ability to switch from between stress and relaxation now it's all stress in the earlier ages especially in the chapter that you mentioned about the Stone Age where people actually left selfies with their handburns right and the ones that was really really dear to them which was on board they'd actually carry that and that wasn't shared but today we want to share everything how is that not ingrained in our previous Behavior or is it

14:27 yeah we are social animals so it's very important for us how other people see us we very often see ourselves Through The Eyes of of other people but again I mean for all of history um you always had times off when nobody sees what you do when you can be just with yourself when you can explore yourself or behave in in I don't know in in a stupid ways with all these

15:00 human rights that people have people also need the right to stupidity from time to time like when you're on stage here we are talking with each other and we have all these people here and maybe people are watching at home so we have to be very responsible if I say something stupid if I say something which is insulting to some people which may cause hatred which may cause anger this is irresponsible so I have to have

15:24 to be very very careful about what I say in public but women when I'm in private maybe with just a couple of friends I can say stupid things and that's important because it gives my mind time to relax I mean I can tell you that being here on stage it's stressful I have to think very carefully what I say but then I I give my mind time to relax and increasingly today in the world there is no time to relax because you

15:51 don't know who is listening and who is recording whatever and you know it's it's true of of of of people like us it's true of politicians that you have this this thing that I don't know that they say some stupid joke in a party to somebody and tomorrow morning it's all over the Internet and they're in big trouble and I think we should hold politicians very much responsible to what they say in public in a public speech on

16:15 television because the the words of a leader they are like seeds that go into the minds of millions of people and if you sow seeds of hatred in the minds of millions of people that's very irresponsible creates so much misery and violence but again if if if you afterwards in a private parties tell some stupid joke I think politicians should have a right to stupidity in private just like everybody else when you talk of larger

16:46 corporations like McDonald's or a tick tock um and how these can be more harmful and then you know earlier we feared the line coming or you know any of these animals coming in you know we fear them in the past but we all are aware that it's a danger but how do we move from knowledge to action like you know it's there it's no you know that you're you're getting too used to it you know that you're getting too

17:13 addicted to it but how do you move past it well there are two things to think about first of all it's not easy to understand it because again we are used to dangers like spiders like tigers things like that um to understand you know what is a cooperation like you have I don't know Google or Facebook that collects information on me what is Facebook you know try to explain to a 10 year old what is a corporation

17:39 you have all these books explaining to kids about animals about tigers about elephants it's very important I think it's very important but how many times does an average kid in Mumbai meet a tiger it's quite rare but they meet corporations every day they meet Facebook and McDonald's and Coca-Cola and Google every day and they need to know what is this thing and how to be how to be careful about it you don't run away because this is the

18:08 modern world you have to engage with them so we have a chapter in the book which tries to explain what is a corporation to 10 year olds and it's it's it's it's not easy but we thought it was very important basically you know corporations are fairy tales for adults you know like people believe in in I don't know in in demons and in angels so a corporation is basically like that it's not something you can you know a

18:34 tiger you can see it you can touch it you can eat as a smell it's a real thing a corporation you can't see Google you can't smell Facebook it's just a story in our mind it's a story in which millions billions of people believe so it gives this immense power but in the end it is just an a story in our mind it has no body it has no mind of its own can't feel anything

19:04 um so one thing is is just to understand what it is that that's complicated the other thing is to you know these big corporations they are eating information they are eating our information and get bigger and bigger because of that this is such a strange thing and uh when how to deal with them we we earlier we talked about it's not good for you to eat too much sugar um it's also that that's that's not good

19:36 for you for your body you also need an information diet for our mind you know we we are very careful many people today are very careful about what they put into their mouth what they eat but we tend to be very careless about what kind of information we put into our mind we sometimes have this I don't know junk food diet of information that we just for hours we just sit and feed ourselves with hatred with anger with greed

20:09 and the same way they have these labels on oh no no chocolate and things like that it has I don't know 20 sugar 40 fat if you want to eat it okay go ahead but at least you know what's in it they need something like that also on all these videos and tweets and things like okay this video it has 40 grid 20 hatred anger if you want to eat it okay oh my God that was that was brilliant

20:35 that was absolutely brilliant you know India is going through certain interesting phase traditionally we've grown up as a very hierarchical Society right uh and if I have to just colloquially say and I hate to say it but you know a farmer's son will be politician son will be but I think social media or access to information technology is somewhere breaking those barriers is that something that happened in the past is it a phenomenon or is it

21:07 here to stay as Technology Program yeah I mean I think I mean we I said a lot of bad things about technology but of course Technologies also can be a force for good you know and with all these social media yes it's a good thing it gives voice to many people that previously had no voice in many cases it encourages you know creativity and um I don't know 20 30 years ago the dominant model in the media business was

21:35 like in television that uh people thought that the consumers they were called couch potatoes you know the view of the average person or these average people these normal people They are couch potatoes they just sit all day on this and they are on their couch like potatoes and there's watch television and they do nothing and when social media started appearing many of the big Executives they didn't understand the rationale behind it because they said okay we can have

22:05 millions of videos on YouTube but who is going to make millions of videos we don't have the money to pay all the actors and and screenwriters and people who with microphones I mean who's going to make it all of this and when some people said okay you know the users will make the videos you're joking what users will make the videos the users are couch potatoes they don't do anything they just want to be entertained and it

22:30 turned out to be completely wrong that people got up from the couches and started dancing and singing and making videos of themselves and it released a huge flood of creativity which is a good thing and as you said it also broke down uh some of the hierarchies in the world and we know this is not the first time it's happening in history it happened many times before um maybe one of the biggest Revolutions of the previous centuries was uh

23:00 changing the gender hierarchy you know for thousands of years you had all these Revolutions in the world new religions new social movements political systems but one thing always remained constant women will almost always uh subordinated to many and you had all these stories also in many religions they often had a religious justification that you know to put it in a very simple way God likes men more than women well God likes boys more than girls this is why only boys

23:31 can be rabbis or or priests so only they should go to school and this was very common in so many cultures and over the last century even though we are still far from having complete equality people realize that this is just not true this is just some crazy story that somebody invented thousands of years ago and it's just not true and it was remarkable to see the uh swiftness of the change

24:01 so again we haven't reached complete equality and there are countries which are still far behind like we have seen now what's happening in Afghanistan or the demonstrations in Iran and and so forth but it's it was one of the biggest changes in human history and for me the historian what was really remarkable and positive about it is that it was almost completely peaceful you have a lot of people who think that if there is a big social problem and if

24:32 you want to make a big change in society you must use violence it's the only way that you can make big changes is with violence you have this you know famous saying I think by learning or somebody that if you want to make an omelette you need to break some eggs and the amazing thing about the feminist Revolution and about the changes in in general hierarchy is that um at least from the side of women they

24:58 use no violence they didn't start any wars they didn't send anybody to the guillotine of the concentration camps they didn't even assassinate any president or prime minister and still they completely changed the world so when I look at what social media is doing right now I think yeah it's also it is again negative potential we talked about earlier but it has huge positive potential uh to break and change the hierarchies

25:31 in in a peaceful way just by giving people more voice and being able to to to to express themselves um and we don't know of course what will happen in the future I hope it will come in a positive direction that we know how to uh um harness the immense potential of social media for good and not for spreading hatred and anger and fear we have enough of those already we don't need more now we also have some men like Gandhi

26:01 who said and I and I will make the whole world blind absolutely coming coming from India you have to hear that another question that I'd love to ask when we have all the parents here we're a very very in you know we're a generation who's sort of earning our own and coming into being on our own um and we as you know as millennials are pretty much self-made we feel as parents that our kids are extremely entitled and

26:32 they're growing up in a state of abundance which we haven't experienced how did our ancestors deal with abundance and and and what there's any impact or any any historic evidence to that on raising people in abundance well you know I mean there is to a large extent material abundance but there is still shortages of many other things that um you know we shouldn't think of young people today as being so privileged and

27:03 so yes they are protected from some dangers and problems that previously were very common like famine but they are exposed to so many new dangers and so many new anxieties like what we talked about with social media so it's not like they oh they have it easy what are they complaining about they um have very huge challenges and you know ultimately

27:34 humans and we've talked about it before are not very good with abundance because it's so difficult for us to be satisfied you know I have a dog he goes he eats after he eats he just goes back and falls asleep and sleeps the most of the day it doesn't want anything more you don't get bothered no but for human being no no matter what we achieve we always want something more so okay we have enough food I want this I want that

28:05 and it's it's never ending and this is kind of the uh I don't know the psychological challenge or even the spiritual challenge that every person faces within themselves and you look at the most powerful people today in the world you look at the billionaires you look at the presidents strike me as particularly happy people or satisfied people and um you know with other enormous power I mean some of them are good

28:36 people they do good but some of them because of you know many times because of their own psychological issues they inflict suffering on millions of people in their pursuit of some imaginary goal but um I don't know I don't know who it was who said it but but if if you if people could just sit quietly for a moment it would go a long way towards solving many of Humanity's problems but but it's just too difficult for us did our ancestors

29:07 also have to face the pressures of coming first in class and studies well depending which answer so if we think about people in the Stone Age there are no school in the Stone Age no you don't have to sit for an exam in mathematics or history or whatever but you do have tests every day you need to climb a tree to pick fruits if you don't if you're not very good at climbing trees and you fall down and

29:33 break your leg or break your head you could die um you have I mean there is a tiger running after you if you don't know what to do again it endangers your life you need to cross a river and you're not you're not very good swimmer again so they they face life and death tests almost every day um again it's not about being better than somebody else but very often the key to succeed in any of these issues is to cooperate with the

30:05 others whether it's getting fruits or escaping a tiger or crossing a river uh the key lesson that you learn as a stone age person is that if you try to do everything by yourself you're dead you just can't survive just by yourself you have to cooperate with other people that's the real human superpower uh so it's not about being better than everybody

30:35 it's about being able to cooperate with them and you know each if you live in a hunter gutter or band each person in the band usually there is something that they are the best at so somebody can be the best hunter but somebody else is the best healer so if you get wounded they know how to treat you somebody is the best tool maker somebody is the best Storyteller so there is a role for for everybody it's not just

31:02 about competing and being the best this one's the flavor of the Season which is did our ancestors play sport football cricket was there which was their favorite sport we don't know exactly what games they played in the Stone Age but they definitely played a lot of games uh you know even even animals play games like our closest relatives in nature like the chimpanzees they play lots of games so uh sometimes they know that they play with sticks they they play imitation

31:30 games like sometimes you see in Old gyms walking and then he doesn't know it but behind him a couple of youngsters are walking and imitating how he's walking um and people scientists watch it so they see oh yeah these chimps they are playing um so we know that animals play and our ancestors also played he didn't have of course computer games and balls and things like that but to a large extent much of life I mean the the difference

31:59 between play and work was was blurred many of our games today are actually you know in a way trying to go back to life in the Stone Age if you wake up if you're a kid you wake up in the morning and you say I wish I didn't have to go to school I would have much preferred to go to the forest and climb a tree or fish in the river you're basically missing part of your body is

32:25 remembers how it was in the Stone Age and wants to go back there you always say that kids would not taught history well if you had to go back and teach history how would you do it hmm I'm talking about my own studies yes you know I don't know how it is here but in my country in Israel they teach kids at least this is how I was told they teach almost only the history of our people

32:49 they teach the history of Israel and of the Jewish people even if they talk about somebody else like the Romans or the French or anybody it's always about what they did to us it's never like they have their own laughs and as you grow up learning this kind of History you get the impression that we are the most important people in the world the whole of history is just about us you know it's like a like a again a play

33:21 on stage like we're at the center of the stage and you know we have these Romans and Greeks there on the side and I don't know the Chinese they are far away they don't even count It's All About Us and it sounds funny but it also has tragic consequences because you feel that uh you're the only thing that matters in the world or your people like if something bad is done to your people that is this is terrible but

33:45 if we do something bad to somebody else ah that doesn't matter because it's us I mean we are allowed to do it and it took me many many years to realize you know actually the world is not turning around the Jewish people it may look like it but it's not the truth it's not true and for most of history I mean you know the the Jewish history is interesting there are but it's not the center of the

34:10 world and it's looking back it's it's amazing how long it took me to realize this very simple fact that you know now in India you probably said but this is obvious I mean you know history turns around us the Jews I mean who cares about them but it's it's almost every people have this kind of misconception that they are the most important people in the world and everything is about them um and um you know it's it's it's it's

34:37 very humbling to realize that it's not about any of us um and there are many other humans in the world there are many other animals in the world there are many other planets and Galaxy and so forth um we are not at the center of the stage and uh coming to terms with this I think is again it's it's it's really kind of um spiritual Quest to

35:08 dissolve some of this ego some of these self-centeredness but you also realize that it makes it relaxes things it makes life a lighter also you can you can listen more you can see more you know it even happens on the level of a completely individual level like you talk with somebody and you never will listen to them because you're constantly thinking about what you want to say

35:42 it's very common human experience that you're talking with somebody and you're actually just wanting to say something and the only reason you kind of listen to the other person you're waiting till they make a pose so you can insert your thing and going through life like that I mean this is horrible I mean you're completely closed to to the world so um you know one of the reasons that I wrote the book is to tell his story from a completely

36:10 different perspective and when you go back to the Stone Age uh none of the people that exist today in the world uh was there in the Stone Age In the oldest nations in the world are maybe 5 000 years old you look at something like Egypt um you know ancient Egypt okay it's the same as Egypt today you can argue about it but let's say 5000 years old but you go back 50 000 years and there

36:38 are no Jews no Muslims no Indians no Chinese no nothing they're still humans just like us as smart as us they can feel everything we feel but it's a completely different uh scene and um maybe one last thing to say about it if you go if you really go back 50 000 years it's amazing to realize that besides unspecies of humans there are other human species around black neanderthalsova and um this is in a way one of the again

37:10 when I grew up and I came across these other human species this was in a way shocking because uh again we are so we are self-centered not just nationally but also as a species we think that the whole of nature turns around us and that we are completely different from all the other animals because there is no no other animal is like us the closest the chimpanzees they are still quite different but to realize that 50 000

37:40 years ago there were other human species on Earth and probably our ancestors are responsible for their disappearance it's kind of the original sin of humanity getting rid of our closest relatives in nature but also we have today evidence that there was some interbreeding between the species so you know 50 000 years ago there was a kid who's maybe his mother was a sapiens and

38:12 his father was in the undertale and we are all the descendants of that mixed couple and especially you know today with all these talks about different ethnic groups and religions and is it okay for a person from one religion to marry a person from another religion and what are we talking about in other religion you have two animals from different species having a kid together and all of us are the descendants of that Union so this gives you some perspective about

38:43 the kind of conflicts that we are encountering today thank you you all thank you for this wonderful wonderful chat for parenting tips celebrity interviews recipes conversations with experts DIYs and lots more subscribe to kids talk press now