00:00:00.000 Anyways, it is chapter 17 unsustainable part 2 of that chapter.
00:00:25.000 And in this chapter, what we've been learning about is the ambiguity, almost the study
00:00:33.960 And David has previously mentioned in this chapter, how sustain can mean something
00:00:39.440 along the lines of, provide you with what you need, but also sustain can mean, keep things
00:00:46.000 the same way, to sustain a particular way of life, way of doing things.
00:00:51.680 And with human beings, with people, these two senses of the word sustain can be an utter
00:01:03.760 In order for us to provide ourselves with what we need, we're going to have to have new
00:01:09.640 resources come into being, create new knowledge, enable us to weather the problems that the
00:01:16.840 So we are only sustained by constant and rapid progress, constant and rapid problem solving.
00:01:24.440 So without further ado for this episode, let's get straight into the reading.
00:01:28.880 And David writes, the Easter Islanders culture sustained them in both senses.
00:01:34.160 This is the hallmark of a functioning static society.
00:01:37.880 It provided them with a way of life, but it also inhibited change.
00:01:41.800 It sustained their determination to enact and reenact the same behaviors for generations.
00:01:47.320 It sustained the values that placed forests, literally beneath statues.
00:01:52.720 And it sustained the shapes of those statues and the pointless project of building ever
00:01:58.560 Moreover, the portion of the culture that sustained them in the sense of providing for
00:02:05.400 Other Stone Age societies have managed to take fish from the sea and so cropped without
00:02:09.520 wasting their efforts in endless monument building.
00:02:12.520 And if the prevailing theory is true, the Easter Islanders started to starve before the fall
00:02:18.120 In other words, even after it had stopped providing for them, it retained its fatal
00:02:23.080 proficiency at sustaining a fixed pattern of behavior.
00:02:26.720 And so it remained effective at preventing them from addressing the problem by the only means
00:02:36.280 Atenborough regards the culture as having been very valuable and its fall as a tragedy.
00:02:41.520 Bernasquez view was closer to mine, which is that since the culture never improved, it's
00:02:46.800 survival for many centuries was a tragedy, like that of all static societies.
00:02:54.600 This is reminiscent of some other things that David has said over the years that I've heard.
00:03:00.640 It conjures in the mind what David says about how species don't care that they're going
00:03:09.360 There's nothing about the species of panda bears that causes the species to be worried about
00:03:16.800 There's nothing in the genes that causes worry in the pandas.
00:03:20.520 The pandas don't know they're going extinct, okay?
00:03:22.920 Because may suffer, they may experience pain, who knows, I don't have a particularly
00:03:28.400 strong view on that, I happen to think that it's possibly the case that animals because
00:03:34.400 of the different kind of software running on their brain so they aren't capable of certain
00:03:40.200 All that aside, a species as it gradually goes extinct doesn't have a way in the species
00:03:51.480 Now, this is similar to this idea here about how some people misdirect their concern
00:03:59.720 about the fall of a civilization because I think that psychologically they're worried
00:04:05.720 about the individual people and certainly we should worry about individual people but
00:04:12.560 Cultures don't care, cultures don't have minds, cultures simply are a certain group of
00:04:18.520 means, a mean plex that is going on and sometimes those cultures are terribly damaging.
00:04:25.400 People who are interested in linguistics, you often hear that they bemoan and regret the fact
00:04:34.120 Now aside from it being of academic interest, there's no need to worry about a language
00:04:40.000 It's not causing particular suffering for those people who once spoke that language because
00:04:47.200 We should of course be primarily concerned about the suffering of other people but this
00:04:54.320 is very different to being concerned about the suffering of a language or the suffering
00:05:01.280 Cultures don't suffer, languages don't suffer in the same way that species don't suffer.
00:05:05.720 So if you misdirect your focus of concern, then what your app to do is to be worried
00:05:13.400 less about individual people and their suffering and more worried about the abstract of
00:05:19.560 something like a civilization that is actually the cause of the suffering of individual
00:05:26.240 And by the way, it seems to be the case if you look into certain languages, certain dead
00:05:30.840 languages or certain languages that aren't very popular anymore or that are going extinct.
00:05:36.280 Some of these languages seem incapable of being able to represent things like complex numbers.
00:05:44.320 They have more difficulty with abstract concepts than certain other modern languages like
00:05:49.240 English or like French or like Cantonese and so on and so forth.
00:05:53.600 But if you have an ancient type language that has somehow remained extant in an Amazon
00:06:00.160 rainforest or some other South American place and people still speak these languages,
00:06:05.840 they're incapable not because their minds are incapable, they're incapable at times of being
00:06:14.920 So I've read, I could be wrong about this but this is what I've read that in certain languages
00:06:19.520 for example you can't count beyond a certain highest number because what happens then is
00:06:25.240 that you just say and more and more rather than having specific words for certain numbers.
00:06:30.520 And for similar reasons there's difficulty with logic in other languages as well.
00:06:34.720 That might be a reason why certain cultures don't make the advances that have been made
00:06:41.120 in certain other cultures because their language is less able to adapt itself in order
00:06:49.680 It could be the case, that's just a conjecture, I could be wrong about that.
00:06:53.440 But for here as David says there we should not be concerned about certain cultures, certain
00:07:00.000 societies which actually actively cause not only the society to become static but like all
00:07:08.200 static societies exacerbate the suffering that's going on with individuals in those societies
00:07:14.760 because the individuals are capable of suffering and if they weren't in that static
00:07:19.360 society which is putting ever more effort into building ridiculous monuments then they
00:07:24.040 might be able to make progress and endless stream of knowledge creation in order to lift themselves
00:07:30.160 out of the terrible diastrates in which they find themselves on some hapless island losing
00:07:37.720 its finite resources because they do not have the capacity, the time, energy and effort
00:07:43.840 required in order to create more knowledge which allows them to find new resources.
00:07:49.440 Let's continue, David writes, Appenborough is not alone in drawing frightening lessons from
00:07:54.920 the history of Easter Island, it has become a widely-adduced version of the spaceship
00:07:59.720 Earth metaphor but what exactly is the analogy behind the lesson?
00:08:04.160 The idea that civilization depends on good forest management has little reach but the broader
00:08:09.720 interpretation that survival depends on good resource management has almost no content.
00:08:15.160 Any physical object can be deemed a resource and since problems are soluble all disasters
00:08:20.720 are caused by poor resource management, the ancient Roman ruler Julius Caesar was stabbed
00:08:27.320 So one could summarise his mistake as imprudent iron management resulting in an excessive
00:08:34.880 It is true that if he had succeeded in keeping iron away from his body he would not have
00:08:40.480 died in the exact way he did yet as an explanation of how and why he died that ludicrously
00:08:49.320 The interesting question is not what he was stabbed with but how it came about that other
00:08:53.360 politicians plotted to remove him violently from office and they succeeded.
00:08:58.120 A perperian analysis would focus on the fact that Caesar had taken vigorous steps to ensure
00:09:07.840 And then on the fact that his removal did not rectify but actually entrenched this progress
00:09:13.400 To understand such events and their wider significance one has to understand the politics
00:09:17.520 of the situation, the psychology, the philosophy, sometimes the theology, not the cutlery.
00:09:23.520 The Easter Islanders may or may not have suffered a forest management fiasco but if they
00:09:28.360 did the explanation would not be about why they made mistakes, problems are inevitable
00:09:33.360 but why they failed to correct them pausing their just my reflection on that summary I suppose
00:09:40.440 So any particular problem does not necessarily have to be the end of society because as
00:09:48.160 we hear throughout the book problems are inevitable what the real problem is is the persistent
00:09:53.680 failure to even attempt to correct certain problems.
00:09:58.120 So in the case of tyrannical regimes if people are getting removed violently one emperor
00:10:05.160 after another the problem there is the inability to find a mechanism which we call democracy
00:10:12.640 in the perperian sense of removing rulers without violence.
00:10:17.040 And if you're a ruler and the previous ten rulers have all been stabbed to death or otherwise
00:10:22.320 removed via a mob of some sort then you better be thinking to yourself that there's
00:10:27.280 something wrong with the system and you need to correct this system in some way.
00:10:31.280 And so too with so-called resource management any prior civilization ancient civilization
00:10:38.640 that has gone extinct due to a problem of resource management it isn't because they ran
00:10:47.400 It's because that as they ran out of wood they couldn't conjure an idea about how to stop
00:10:54.440 depleting the wood let's say or doing what they were doing rather than trying to figure
00:11:00.600 out solutions trying to create new knowledge trying to make progress.
00:11:05.240 And of course we can judge these ancient civilization these civilizations that have gone
00:11:10.560 extinct because we are in the lofty position of being the sole remaining civilization
00:11:18.160 If there have been dynamic societies before they've gone extinct things have gone wrong
00:11:23.560 probably they've turned the status or static societies around them have attacked them.
00:11:28.840 And so this is why we if we want to survive if we want to be the sole exception to the rule
00:11:35.280 that every single society that has ever existed has gone extinct if we want to be the exception
00:11:42.080 We have to use this creative capacity to continue to solve problems and when we encounter
00:11:47.240 them to really turn our critical faculties towards solving that problem including criticizing
00:11:53.400 the society itself that's very important being able to criticize mechanisms within society
00:11:59.000 processes in society not in the thoughtless manner not criticism just for the sake of criticism
00:12:05.120 targeted criticism when there's a problem people today of course politically and this
00:12:09.960 has always been the case can become critical of the Western tradition and the enlightenment
00:12:15.880 traditions without first understanding what it's all about.
00:12:19.720 In other words they criticize criticism itself they criticize let's say democracy or they
00:12:25.640 criticize let's say capitalism these are means of correcting errors in rulers and policies
00:12:32.280 and the market respectively and if you have a misunderstanding of what these systems are
00:12:38.520 if you think that capitalism which is actually freedom is oppressive and if you think
00:12:43.760 that democracy which is actually a way of changing rulers without violence is in fact
00:12:48.680 a form of tyranny keeping down the small person or something like that then what you're
00:12:53.400 apt to do is to focus your criticism in the wrong place namely against means of correcting
00:13:00.280 errors and if there's one thing as the beginning of infinity says and if there's one
00:13:03.720 moral maxim that David in some mood says that he should regard as the solid foundation
00:13:09.400 if you like of course he wouldn't like that as being a starting point for all morality
00:13:15.920 or at least of being a a moral maxim that we shouldn't be able to correct change alter
00:13:22.880 that one being do not destroy the means of error correction that being the one moral
00:13:28.800 maxim that we have to protect at all costs if you are the kind of person that thinks
00:13:34.640 that democracy has to be cast aside because it's not working for certain people or that capitalism
00:13:40.080 needs to be cast aside because it's not working for people what you're doing is misunderstanding
00:13:44.800 what those systems are about those systems are about correcting errors and if you were
00:13:49.640 to destroy those systems you're destroying means of correcting errors it's the same reason
00:13:55.840 by the way that the death penalty is is morally abhorrent to many of us because a person
00:14:03.120 or how evil they are can in theory in principle correct their errors and so even the worst
00:14:11.640 most awful person because a person is really a software program they're a mind a mind
00:14:17.360 can be changed and if their mind is changed of course they might end up feeling guilty
00:14:20.880 about all the terrible things are done but if you kill them there's no means of correcting
00:14:25.480 that error so you've destroyed a means of correcting their error in other words they're
00:14:30.280 very poor mental state they're very poor ideas so that is that is way off topic here let's
00:14:37.160 go back to the book and David says quote I have argued that the laws of nature cannot
00:14:42.480 possibly impose any bound on progress by the arguments of chapter one and three denying
00:14:48.520 this is tantamount to invoking the supernatural in other words progress is sustainable indefinitely
00:14:55.400 but only by people who engage in a particular kind of thinking and behavior the problem
00:14:59.960 solving and the problem creating kind characteristic of the enlightenment and that requires
00:15:04.760 the optimism of a dynamic society one of the consequences of optimism is that one expects
00:15:10.320 to learn from failure one's own and others but the idea that our civilization has
00:15:15.560 something to learn from Easter Islanders alleged forestry failure is not derived from any
00:15:20.440 structural resemblance between our situation and theirs because they fail to make progress
00:15:24.400 and practically every area no one expects the Easter Islanders failures in same medicine
00:15:29.000 to explain our difficulties in curing cancer or their failure to understand the night
00:15:32.920 sky to explain why a quantum theory of gravity is elusive to us the Easter Islanders
00:15:37.400 errors both methodological and substantive were simply too elementary to be relevant to us
00:15:43.000 and their imprudent forestry if that really is what destroyed their civilization would be
00:15:47.400 typical of their lack of problem solving across the board we should do much better to study
00:15:52.440 their many small successes than their entirely commonplace failures if we could discover their
00:15:57.400 rules of thumb such as stone mulching to help grow crops on poor soil we might find
00:16:02.600 valuable fragments of historical and ethnological knowledge or perhaps even something
00:16:06.680 of practical use but one cannot draw general conclusions from rules of thumb it would be astonishing
00:16:12.280 if the details of a primitive static societies collapse had any relevance to hidden dangers that
00:16:17.800 may be facing our open dynamic and scientific society let alone what we should do about them
00:16:23.400 pause there just my reflection on this one of the more powerful points that Sam Harris the
00:16:29.480 podcaster and author has made neuroscientists has made over the years with respect to morality
00:16:36.120 is in his strident and quite accurate arguments against moral relativism and this is the idea that
00:16:43.720 for example the fundamentalist Islamic cult the Taliban should be respected in moral terms
00:16:54.840 that if they have certain abhorrent moral practices we in the west shouldn't judge them nor anyone
00:17:02.120 else for that matter so the Taliban might be an extreme example of as Sam would say they're
00:17:08.760 using the example the terrible example of the honor killing let's say or throwing acid in the face
00:17:15.320 of young girls for the crime of being seen with a man outside of the house so on and so forth
00:17:20.920 as Sam says being a moral relativist on this point thinking that the Taliban has some reasonable
00:17:30.760 stance something to teach us about morality is rather like saying well maybe they have something
00:17:36.920 that teaches about chemistry or physics of course they don't that would be ridiculous there's
00:17:42.600 nothing in their holy books that can inform us about the standard model it's laughable to think
00:17:48.120 that anything scientific could be learned by an ancient culture that actively seeks not knowledge
00:17:56.840 but stasis and so to in morality and very much echoes the point here we should pity people
00:18:05.240 that today still live in cultures like that but because of cultural relativism very much because
00:18:10.440 of cultural relativism there is a lack of will of trying to save people from these terrible cultures
00:18:19.480 now it's not the case that we should go in there into these cultures necessarily and use violence
00:18:25.640 or use force unless people want us to unless there are people within that culture who are crying
00:18:32.040 out for help and they're possibly I don't know enough about geopolitics in order to comment
00:18:36.200 upon this with any reasonable accuracy but what I would say is that anyone who wants to escape
00:18:43.400 that kind of culture should be welcomed with open arms just as recently both the United Kingdom
00:18:51.240 and Australia have said that anyone from Hong Kong who wants to come to our countries is very
00:18:57.080 welcome because the tyrannical backward political ideology that drives communist China is causing
00:19:05.800 great suffering and we can see that it is morally right for us to allow anyone from those countries
00:19:12.680 who wants to come here with enlightenment values with the ideas of democracy freedom capitalism
00:19:19.240 and so on it should be allowed to in fact not to allow that is morally reprehensible we should
00:19:26.760 be standing up for those values which means we need to spread those values far and wide
00:19:32.520 okay back to the book and David writes the knowledge that would have saved the Easter Island
00:19:37.720 as civilization has already been in our possession for centuries a sextant would have allowed them
00:19:42.200 to explore their ocean and bring back the seeds of new forests and of new ideas greater wealth
00:19:47.720 and a written culture would have enabled them to recover after a devastating plague but most of
00:19:52.280 all they would have been better at solving problems of all kinds if they had known some of our
00:19:57.560 ideas about how to do that such as the rudiments of a scientific outlook such knowledge would
00:20:02.600 not have guaranteed their welfare anymore that it guarantees ours nevertheless the fact that their
00:20:08.040 civilization failed for lack of what ours discovered long ago cannot be an ominous warning of what
00:20:14.520 the future could hold for us pause there just reflecting on that so at number is mistake and the
00:20:21.000 mistake of a certain kind of environmentalist thinker when looking at failed civilizations like this
00:20:28.840 is to misunderstand the qualitative difference between that kind of civilization and ours
00:20:35.480 that kind of civilization is not attempting to make progress they're trying to maintain sustain
00:20:42.040 a particular way of life which is not making progress which is probably enacting certain
00:20:47.960 religious rituals and for that reason is going to devote ever more resources to doing the thing
00:20:54.760 which is causing extinction of their culture and of their society ours is different ours is
00:21:01.880 trying to exploit everything we can in the physical environment using our creative knowledge
00:21:08.200 in order to sustain us to sustain our continually rapid progress and change so the sustain there
00:21:16.360 is similar in the first sense namely we both want to sustain our societies we both want to sustain
00:21:22.520 things as they are but for the Easter Islanders things as they are are the same from day to day
00:21:29.800 to year to year but for us things are different from day to day and from year to year we are
00:21:35.400 deliberately trying to change things namely in the direction of improvement of progress of the
00:21:40.680 objective better and so our computers get faster our cars become more efficient our power generation
00:21:47.160 is better and so on and so forth things get better our medicine gets better our science gets better
00:21:51.400 we learn more that's what we want to sustain we want to continue to do that and the only way
00:21:56.360 for us to continue to sustain rapid progress and rapid change is by continually creating more
00:22:03.080 knowledge about how to exploit the things around us maybe people don't like to hear the word exploit
00:22:08.360 it sounds pejorative but to me this is really what we want to do because we want to take the raw
00:22:13.880 materials that are around us there's a boring matter that most of the universe consists of just
00:22:21.800 otherwise useless hydrogen and helium gas and rocks and dust and the stuff that is out there in the
00:22:27.720 cosmos we want to exploit that we want to take that and transform it into something truly astonishing
00:22:33.560 a civilization an open ended stream of knowledge creation that's what we want to do we want to create
00:22:39.400 a new spaceship universe where it's the universe that is really sustaining us not because the
00:22:47.800 universe is some godlike figure that's going to look after us but rather that the universe will be
00:22:54.600 under our control under our control just like my house is under my control to some extent
00:23:01.000 that I've got air conditioning and flowing water and electricity and so on and so forth eventually
00:23:07.800 in the distant future larger regions of space will be able to sustain us sustain us in the same way
00:23:14.280 that people's homes sustain them now because the people are able to control the material out of
00:23:20.120 which their home is made and so too we'll be able to do that with ever larger regions of space
00:23:25.640 and ever greater quantities of matter and raw materials back to the book David says this knowledge
00:23:32.360 based approach to explaining human events follows from the general arguments of this book we know
00:23:37.640 that by achieving arbitrary physical transformations that are not forbidden by the laws of physics
00:23:43.160 such as replanting a forest can only be a matter of knowing how we know that finding out how
00:23:49.240 is a matter of seeking good explanations we also know that whether a particular attempt to make
00:23:53.800 progress will succeed or not is profoundly unpredictable it can be understood in retrospect
00:23:59.160 but not in terms of factors that could have been known in advance thus we now understand why
00:24:04.440 alchemists never succeeded at transmutation because they would have had to have understood
00:24:10.520 some nuclear physics first but this could not have been known at the time and the progress they
00:24:15.640 did make which led to the science of chemistry depended strongly on how individual alchemists
00:24:20.760 thought and only peripherally on factors like which chemicals could be found nearby the conditions
00:24:27.320 for a beginning of infinity exist in almost every human habitation on earth in his book
00:24:33.160 guns germs and steel the biogeographer Jared Diamond takes the opposite view he proposes what he
00:24:38.920 calls an ultimate explanation of why human history was so different on different continents
00:24:43.720 in particular he seeks to explain why it was Europeans who sailed out to conquer the Americas
00:24:48.440 Australasia in Africa and not vice versa in diamonds view the psychology and philosophy
00:24:53.400 and politics of historical events are no more than ephemeral ripples on the greater
00:24:57.240 river of history its courses set by factors independent of human ideas and decisions
00:25:02.440 specifically he says the continents on our planet had different natural resources different geographies
00:25:08.280 plants animals and microorganisms and details aside that is what explains the broad
00:25:13.880 sweep of history including which human ideas were created and what decisions were made politics
00:25:20.200 philosophy cutlery and all pause there just my reflection i think in the future
00:25:27.160 there can be no greater complement for an author than to have been criticized by David Deutsch
00:25:34.600 especially in the beginning of infinity and so David is about to do a withering critique of
00:25:40.840 Jared Diamonds not only his book but his entire world view comparing him to angles and marks
00:25:47.480 being on that continuum and quite rightly too now you can look up Jared Diamond he's been
00:25:52.840 interviewed by many people including Sam Harrison the making sense podcast and indeed he is a great
00:26:01.400 pessimist and ignores or perhaps just well doesn't have the thought that there is a reality to
00:26:09.800 abstractions i guess this is one of the more fundamental differences between i think alike
00:26:16.920 David Deutsch and the David Deutsch worldview and the typical academic intellectual and scientist
00:26:23.080 who thinks that all all events have to be explained in terms of physical causes that the
00:26:32.200 only way in which we can try and understand physical reality is by recourse to events in physical
00:26:39.720 reality and that seems to make perfectly logical sense after all what else could it be
00:26:44.920 supernatural no no there can be causal things that go on events that go on in abstract reality
00:26:55.080 that cause changes in physical reality this is not supernatural this is not magic this is
00:27:00.280 mundane this yeah the reality of abstract abstractions is all the way back there in chapter five and
00:27:05.400 you can read about it there but suffice it to say for now as we've come to learn what people
00:27:12.280 what knowledge people creates has a real impact on what happens day to day what happens to a
00:27:19.640 civilization what happens to a person David Deutsch could have chosen to study physics or not
00:27:25.400 having chosen to study physics he could have chosen various different avenues within the entire
00:27:32.920 discipline of physics he chose the deepest and most fundamental areas of physics and then chose
00:27:38.680 to explore quantum computation or the the interface between computation and the quantum theory
00:27:46.520 inventing the field of quantum computation and it's that that abstract thought that he had
00:27:53.000 whenever he wrote it wherever he wrote it so he he he had the thought what is a thought he had
00:27:57.720 the idea what's an idea an idea and I thought they abstract things but they're really real
00:28:03.320 I mean they exist inside your mind but they're instantiated there as as day in David terminology
00:28:11.960 crackles of electricity between neurons a certain pattern of electrical firing but it's not
00:28:17.720 identical to that pattern of electrical firing after all we can take that thought or that
00:28:22.520 idea in the case of quantum computation and write it down on a piece of paper or on a chalkboard
00:28:27.800 or he could explain it in a lecture as he's done in various places these different forms explaining
00:28:32.760 it that sound waves writing it down that's ink on paper having the thought that is of course
00:28:39.640 electrical crackles all these different instantiations as we call them a ways of representing the
00:28:46.520 idea but the idea itself the idea itself is an abstraction and that abstract idea actually has
00:28:55.480 physical effects in the real in the real world the physical world the real world consists of
00:29:01.160 these abstract things as well as these physical things and the abstract things have real effects
00:29:07.000 on the physical things there are now institutes and research bodies around the world racing
00:29:15.160 to produce quantum computers and so that's the effect of David Deutscher's ideas of generating
00:29:21.880 this industry there's multi billion dollar industry now he's one of the most key people in this
00:29:29.640 entire race towards quantum computation without David Deutscher who knows when quantum computers
00:29:35.480 would have been thought of or really refined the point where they are now we might be waiting
00:29:40.440 another fifty years for a David Deutscher to come along if David Deutscher never existed for us to be
00:29:47.240 at the point where we are now with quantum computers and eventually there will be an industry of
00:29:51.000 quantum computers where we have desktop quantum computers and that will all be due to ideas that
00:29:58.040 have their genesis at some point in David Deutscher's mind and before that to the pioneers of quantum
00:30:04.680 theory and so on and so forth so these abstract ideas have real world consequences that's common
00:30:11.240 sense isn't it well it seems common sense only in light of hearing that idea so now that I've
00:30:17.880 explained that David explained it now it seems you know how could it have been otherwise but if
00:30:22.760 you've never heard that before then you're liable to think that the only way in which you can
00:30:26.600 explain events that have happened in physical reality including throughout human history is by
00:30:34.360 recourse to physical stuff is by looking at the resources for example and that's what
00:30:41.880 Jared Diamond has done and again Jared Diamond and and other authors that I mentioned and
00:30:48.360 critique throughout this book should take it as a great complement because there are many people who
00:30:52.360 have these sort of pessimistic ideas but Jared Diamond no doubt has expressed these pessimistic
00:30:57.960 ideas and a very clear and forceful way and so David could have picked any number of people who
00:31:03.480 have similar ideas to this but he's picked Jared Diamond and so let's go back to the critique and
00:31:08.840 David writes for example part of his explanation Jared Diamond's explanation of why the Americas
00:31:15.480 never developed a technological civilization before the advent of Europeans is that there were no
00:31:20.200 animals there suitable for domestication as beasts of burden llamas are native to South America
00:31:27.480 and have been used as beasts of burdens since prehistoric times so Diamond points out that they
00:31:32.760 are not native to the continent as a whole but only to the Andes Mountains why did no technological
00:31:37.800 civilization arise in the Andes Mountains why did the Incan Empire not have an enlightenment?
00:31:43.000 Diamond's position is that other biogeographical factors were unfavorable the communist thinker
00:31:49.240 Friedrich Engels proposed the same ultimate explanation of history and made the same
00:31:53.880 proviso about llamas in 1884 and Engels wrote the eastern hemisphere possessed nearly all the
00:32:00.520 animals adaptable to domestication the western hemisphere America had no mammals that could be
00:32:05.880 domesticated except the llama which moreover was only found in one part of South America owing to
00:32:11.800 these differences and natural conditions the population of each hemisphere now goes on its own way
00:32:18.120 and that's from the origin of the family private property in the state Friedrich Engels based on
00:32:23.000 notes by Karl Marx I just paused there I've spent some time in South America I love it there it's
00:32:27.960 a wonderful place a picturesque particularly like Bolivia and the place is full of llamas and our
00:32:33.560 packers and varunkers I think is the other one anyway there's three creatures that all look
00:32:39.160 similar look a little bit ridiculous to be honest they can all be domesticated in fact they're
00:32:44.440 domesticated here in Australia which is completely unlike for the most part South America
00:32:50.520 and yet people love their wool you know you get very high quality fleece of these creatures
00:32:56.200 so it's simply false it's simply false to say there couldn't be domesticated I mean this is a
00:33:01.320 strange ad hoc attempt to shoehorn in an explanation that really doesn't fit anyway let's
00:33:07.880 keep going and David writes but why did llamas continue to be only found in one part of South
00:33:14.440 America if they could have been useful elsewhere Engels did not address that issue but diamond
00:33:19.880 realized that it cries out for explanation because unless the reason that llamas were not
00:33:24.840 exported was itself biographical diamonds ultimate explanation is false so he proposed a biographical
00:33:32.600 reason he pointed out that a hot low land region unsuitable for llamas separates the
00:33:38.520 Andes from the Highlands of Central America where llamas would have been useful in agriculture
00:33:43.320 pause their my reflection again again I defy any other continent to put up their hand to say
00:33:52.280 they are hotter consistently than Australia okay sometimes there are some places and in fact
00:33:59.560 certain places in Central America might fit that bill but barely barely I mean it is very
00:34:07.000 hot and dry here in Australia and yet we farm llamas I'll put some photos up they are common
00:34:15.160 sign in some places here in New South Wales in my own state aquarium so this is simply again
00:34:20.200 false it's a shoehorning in it's it's it's it's an attempt without it's it's a pure guess
00:34:28.680 it's a pure guess there is absolutely no reason why human beings cannot take something like
00:34:35.240 the llamas from one place but even an ancient culture they can carry the water with them they can
00:34:39.560 carry the food with them animals are very robust kangaroos will survive in hot and cold climates llamas
00:34:46.920 will survive in hot and cold climates I mean the the horse famously you know sort of began in
00:34:54.360 Arabia somewhere other and now it exists everywhere around the world cows are a similar sort of a
00:34:59.000 thing animals you know they can tolerate quite a wide range of temperatures so this is simply
00:35:05.240 you know to a person who I guess is interested in agriculture would seem ridiculous I think
00:35:11.480 anyway now let's persevere David writes but again why my such a region have been a barrier
00:35:19.800 to the spread of domesticated llamas traders traveled between south and central america for
00:35:25.720 centuries perhaps overland and certainly by sea where there are long-range traders it is not
00:35:30.840 necessary for an idea to be useful in an unbroken line of places for it to be able to be spread
00:35:36.360 as our remark in chapter 11 knowledge has the unique ability to take aim at a distant target
00:35:42.360 and utterly transform it while having scarcely any effect on the space between
00:35:47.800 just pausing there is my reflection no apologies if this becomes irritating that's just one of
00:35:53.640 those sentences that if you're dipping into this podcast now and you haven't listened to all
00:36:00.200 50 something episodes as of today could easily blow by you that's such an important point about
00:36:08.280 David's conception of knowledge that is unique to David Deutsch and there's very much a
00:36:14.040 quotable piece of David Deutsch again let me just repeat he writes there knowledge has the unique
00:36:21.640 ability to take aim at a distant target and utterly transform it without having any effect on things
00:36:26.280 in between so we are beginning the process of transforming Mars it is very very early on but the
00:36:34.440 number of probes up there now studying that particular place that the distant far off in a rock
00:36:41.640 one day in the distant future we will have something approaching a civilization there we will have
00:36:47.160 buildings there and that is not because a force of nature like gravity or the electromagnetic force
00:36:54.680 or some nuclear force whatever has aimed itself there it's because we people
00:37:00.760 our knowledge has been aimed to that place and then transformed it much like the way in which
00:37:08.360 Europeans aimed their knowledge in the form of people and boats traveling to the Americas and to
00:37:17.480 Australasia in various other places and then transformed those places Sydney only exists
00:37:23.160 because knowledge from England was aimed from England via boats centuries old boats now
00:37:34.440 coming to Australia and then radically transforming the civilizations that were here the continent
00:37:41.160 that was here into a beautiful thriving metropolis and civilization where people are now
00:37:49.480 creating an open-ended stream of knowledge creation okay so let me just read a little bit more
00:37:56.440 and we'll end it here for today and David writes after talking about how knowledge can
00:38:02.280 transform a place once it's been aimed there he writes so what would it have taken for some of
00:38:09.000 those traders to take some llamas north for sale only the idea the leap of imagination to guess
00:38:15.800 that if something is useful here it might be useful there too and the boldness to take the speculative
00:38:22.200 and physical risk pollination traders did exactly that they ranged further across a more formidable
00:38:28.440 natural barrier carrying goods including livestock why did none of the South American traders
00:38:33.720 ever think of selling llamas to the Central Americans we may never know but why should it have
00:38:38.760 had anything to do with geography they may simply have been two set in their ways perhaps innovative
00:38:43.720 uses for animals with taboo perhaps such a trade was attempted but failed every time because of
00:38:49.320 sheer bad luck but whatever the reason was it cannot have been that the hot region constituted a
00:38:54.920 physical barrier because it did not okay ending the reading there for today and yet I went to
00:39:04.440 Machu Picchu in Peru where the so-called lost city of the Incas still stands and much has made
00:39:13.880 about what happened to the Incas well I think the Incas are still there I don't think the Incas
00:39:18.440 are white now the Incas are the catch when people that still exist still live still now thrive
00:39:25.640 throughout Bolivia and Peru and parts of Argentina as well wonderful communities of people there
00:39:34.920 people that met the Spanish conquistadors and yes it was a violent meeting and yes
00:39:41.960 terrible atrocities were committed on all sides the Incans themselves were a terribly violent
00:39:47.320 people you know having the belief that you needed to sacrifice young children regularly and in fact
00:39:55.640 to put young children at the base of the buildings I think it's centuries gone by and that has
00:40:01.320 gradually morphed into llama fetuses now being put in the base of newly built buildings these
00:40:09.320 ancient Incans were clearly part of a static society they had built great buildings and monuments
00:40:16.360 in rather inaccessible places and so certainly the engineering feats there were quite impressive
00:40:23.880 for the time but not as impressive as for example the Spanish who conquered them and who
00:40:31.400 not merely conquered them but really I think taught them how to succeed and thrive and survive
00:40:41.240 and probably rather than wiping them out through disease which is often the way in which it's
00:40:46.680 suggested that that encounter went that the Spanish merely massacred or caused the death by
00:40:54.280 disease of so many Incans that may have happened as well but largely the Incans survive the native
00:41:00.440 people they're survived and now thrive and certainly in a place I believe here Bolivia is very much
00:41:06.840 a native American nation and the the the the Spaniards of former minority unlike in let's say
00:41:17.480 for the South in Argentina where they form a majority and so South America is just an absolutely
00:41:22.440 fascinating place a beautiful place to visit and an interesting study in how static societies
00:41:31.400 can become dynamic societies the static society left behind but clearly that ethnic group of people
00:41:39.320 continue through to today but they're no longer a static society nothing like what they used to be
00:41:45.080 so sure there are aspects of the culture that have been preserved over time but the important
00:41:52.440 aspects of the culture that was the Incans the ancient Incan culture that kept them from making
00:41:59.400 rapid progress has largely been destroyed and isn't that good the people themselves have survived
00:42:07.800 but the culture large parts of the culture have been done away with replaced by better
00:42:13.000 enlightenment values and so although Bolivia is one of these places where I've talked before in the
00:42:18.040 podcast about how if only they had better governments had be far more wealthy nevertheless they are
00:42:24.520 still a more or less modern society certainly in comparison to the static society of the Incans
00:42:31.080 okay so that's it for today we're going to have a part three maybe they'll be a part four I'm not
00:42:36.120 sure because this is such such an important chapter that really as I said in the previous episode
00:42:41.320 I think brings together so much of earlier chapters in the beginning of infinity that we really
00:42:47.480 need to spend time unpacking what is sitting until next time bye-bye
00:44:17.720 an epilogue oh what we might call an Easter egg for the true die hard fans
00:44:24.520 2020 was a difficult time for many people and like many people I wasn't working in the same
00:44:31.720 way that I was working previously many people were furloughed I wasn't exactly furloughed but I
00:44:37.400 wasn't doing the same job that I'd been doing for the last sort of 20 years and so I had
00:44:44.520 2020 large part of 2020 devoted to spending time on a close and focus study of the beginning of
00:44:53.000 infinity and associated material and making more of these these podcasts and so the rate of podcast
00:45:00.040 making increased but as many may have noticed this year in 2021 the rate of podcast making has
00:45:07.560 somewhat declined and that's because I've taken on a new job and that's been unfortunate
00:45:12.760 but happily I won't be doing that job for much longer I'll be able to devote far more time to the
00:45:20.760 beginning of infinity and to associated work and to promoting these ideas and in fact it looks like
00:45:27.160 that this will become my real focus because Naval Ravakand who has been a great supporter of
00:45:36.200 podcast over the last few months and I've been really buoyed by the fact that he has sent me
00:45:43.320 some nice comments about the podcast that I've been doing and I won't be saying much right now
00:45:50.280 but suffice it to say for the moment that we're going to work on some common projects together
00:45:55.480 we've already done some and anyone who's following podcasts maybe aware that I've had some
00:46:00.600 conversations with Naval over there on Clubhouse and the very first of the podcast that I've
00:46:06.760 been doing with Naval will be coming out soon and this episode is the first one where really it is a
00:46:14.280 joint venture between Naval and I. Naval is not here physically but he's certainly here in spirit
00:46:20.520 he's such a great supporter of the podcast that the podcast will be leveling up I hope to some
00:46:25.800 extent over the coming months so as we're coming to the end of the podcast beginning of infinity
00:46:33.880 series I regard this as really just the beginning of the beginning of infinity that we will be able
00:46:40.280 to promote these ideas in concert with Naval and be able to really begin spreading the message
00:46:47.640 well of course the message has already begun to be spread by David Deutsch himself but we're always
00:46:53.480 at the beginning of the beginning of infinity and so it's a wonderful time for the community of
00:47:00.200 people who are supporters of the books and supporters of David's ideas and trying to cure the world
00:47:05.560 of what has become a pessimistic culture in the intellectual community certainly and so
00:47:12.760 over the coming months I hope that you see some differences I hope that you see some more content
00:47:19.320 about the work of David Deutsch promoting these ideas clarifying some scientific and philosophical
00:47:26.600 understandings that can help us all perhaps benefit and when I say all I really do mean all as
00:47:33.240 the subtitle of the beginning of infinity says these are explanations that transform the world
00:47:39.480 and so we hope we can restart reinvigorate that transforming of the world through this book
00:47:46.040 through this brilliant book and these brilliant ideas by this brilliant philosopher and physicist
00:47:50.120 David Deutsch and now we have some other people on board people who are extremely successful in
00:47:57.240 promoting things in entrepreneurship and in being able to get a message out there so look forward
00:48:03.560 to some additional content from myself from Naval and from other people associated with trying to
00:48:11.560 promote these ideas because we really do think it is not just intellectually stimulating to have
00:48:17.720 these conversations it really can be world changing and we do need it and although the world we
00:48:23.320 should be optimistic about the way in which the world is not everyone is and we can never do
00:48:28.280 without enough optimism never do without enough optimism in the Deutschian sense where we can create
00:48:34.680 knowledge ever faster solve problems ever faster and have a lot of fun doing so so until next time