WEBVTT - Ep151 "Can One Be a Rational Optimist About the World?" with Matt Ridley 0:00:05.080 --> 0:00:09.319 How do ideas have sex and why does that matter 0:00:09.440 --> 0:00:15.400 for innovation? Why do brains tend to systematically misread the future. 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:18.280 Why do we feel that the world is getting worse 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:21.360 when by almost all the measures we can make, it's 0:00:21.440 --> 0:00:26.439 getting better. What if optimism is actually the more rational stance? 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:31.840 Is optimism a personality trait or can it be evidence based? 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:36.680 If innovation isn't primarily about lone geniuses, what is it 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:37.680 really about? 0:00:38.280 --> 0:00:38.560 Today? 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:41.839 We're joined by scientists and author Matt Ridley as we 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:45.240 talk about what it means to be, in Ridley's term, 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:52.920 a rational optimist. Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me, David Egelman. 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:55.800 I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford and in 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:59.480 these episodes we sail deeply into our three pound universe 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:02.840 to understand and some of the most surprising aspects of 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:22.480 our lives. So let's start with a question, what story 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:26.000 do you tell yourself about the future? Because we all 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:30.280 carry around a narrative and internal model about where things 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:33.680 are headed, and that story shapes everything. 0:01:33.720 --> 0:01:34.600 It shapes our. 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:38.560 Moods, our decisions, our sense of what is possible now. 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:41.039 One of the facets of history that I've always found 0:01:41.080 --> 0:01:45.760 the most fascinating is that every generation believes that it's 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:51.800 living through uniquely perilous times. Every generation feels the shadow 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:56.080 of something large and ominous hanging overhead, something that makes 0:01:56.440 --> 0:02:00.880 this moment more fragile, more dangerous, and more on the 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:04.160 brink than anything that came before. Just as a personal 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:06.200 example of this, when I was growing up in the 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:09.920 seventies and eighties, there was a very specific cloud hanging 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:14.480 over everything, and that was nuclear annihilation. When I was 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:17.840 a kid, we all watched a film called The Day After, 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:20.480 and if you saw that, you know that it represented 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:23.600 the zeitgeist of that time, which was that the world 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:26.880 was going to end not with a whimper, but a 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:29.360 bang in a very specific way, and it was going 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:32.200 to happen any year now. So in my school we 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:36.200 practiced drills where we would get under our desks. Now, 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:39.600 I think even as kids, we appreciated at least somewhat 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:42.519 that this wasn't really going to help if a nuclear 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:45.440 bomb dropped, A little desk wasn't going to give us 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:48.680 much protection. But still we did the drills because it 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:52.639 was part of the atmosphere, this kind of ambient anxiety 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:54.000 that everyone shared at the time. 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:55.480 So there were big. 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:59.200 Concerns like nuclear war, and there were more local concerns too, 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:03.359 like television sets, and parents were worried about it constantly. 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:06.919 In case younger listeners don't know this, the television used 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:10.000 to be called the boob tube from whence we get 0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:14.160 the pun YouTube The word boob meant an idiot or 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:18.760 a fool, and that encapsulated this fear that the television 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:22.720 was going to make everyone lose major IQ points. Kids 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:27.359 would stop going outside, no more imagination, no more creativity. Instead, 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:30.360 the kids were going to sit drooling in front of 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:34.720 Gilligan's Island or love Boat, spooning TV dinners into their mouths, 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:39.080 and becoming passive consumers of flickering images, similar to the 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:41.480 way that we talk about social media now. And as 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:44.320 an interesting side note, when the printing press was invented 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:47.280 in the fifteenth century, a lot of thinkers were concerned 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:50.000 that that was going to make kids stupider, because now, 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:53.160 instead of having to remember things, they could just pick 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:57.160 up the book off the shelf and find the answer there. Anyway, 0:03:57.200 --> 0:04:00.840 back to the nineteen eighties, there were fears about drugs, 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:07.560 about cultural collapse, about population explosion and mass starvation, So 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:10.960 every era sits under its cloud of existential threats. And 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:13.480 I'm not dismissing these It's not that these threats aren't 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:16.320 real and urgent. The only point I want to make 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:20.800 for now is that those fears feel difficult or impossible 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:25.360 to solve when you are inside them. But when you 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:29.240 step back and look at the data, we always get surprised. 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:33.760 Problems get solved by innovation, at least so far every 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:36.800 single time. This is a pattern we see again and again, 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:41.760 confident predictions of decline that don't play out in fact, 0:04:41.880 --> 0:04:45.520 across the entire globe, the large scale trends are clear. 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:50.799 You find massive declines in poverty, increases in lifespan, improvements 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:55.760 in health, expansions, and access to knowledge and technology. But 0:04:56.040 --> 0:04:58.680 here's the fascinating thing that we're going to talk about today. 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:00.760 If you tune into your own. 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:04.320 Mind, especially as you scroll through the news, you might 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:08.200 feel something very different. You get a sense that things 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:11.760 are deteriorating, that everything is heading in the wrong direction. 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:14.039 So what is going on here? 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:17.919 Well, from a neuroscience perspective, this is not surprising because 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:21.080 the brain is a prediction machine that is tuned to 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:26.080 detect threats. If we think in evolutionary terms, missing something 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:31.799 dangerous had consequences measured in survival. So the system leans 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:36.040 heavily towards vigilance. And this is why bad news carries 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:40.040 a lot of attentional weight. With good news, it's totally different. 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:44.640 The moment something gets better, the moment it genuinely improves, 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:48.599 it becomes invisible. It just becomes part of the new baseline. 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:50.400 So look at the things that would have seemed like 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:55.159 miracles to our great great grandparents, things like electrification of 0:05:55.200 --> 0:06:00.560 the nation, or clean water, or antibiotics or a global 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:03.800 instant communication. Any one of these would have seemed like 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:07.479 a science fiction miracle, and now they're just the way 0:06:07.520 --> 0:06:11.039 that things are. We just flick a switch or we 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:14.719 dial the faucet, and we essentially never think twice about 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:18.000 the fact that we're bringing daylight into our home at 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:22.800 night time, or we're diverting a clean, little river of water. 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:24.480 Right to us whenever we want it. 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:29.160 So our brains build models of a world that feels 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:33.000 more dangerous than it statistically is, and a future that 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:35.520 feels more precarious than it. 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:36.360 Actually might be. 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:39.520 Today, we're going to explore this tension through the lens 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:42.560 of someone who has spent years thinking deeply about it, 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:46.640 the scientist and author Matt Ridley. He's written many books 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:50.560 on topics from genomes to technology, but a special interest 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:54.320 today is his book called The Rational Optimist. Ridley earned 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:57.400 his doctorate in zoology at Oxford and has gone on 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:00.159 to do many things, including serving as an editor for 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:03.520 The Economist and serving in the British House of Lords 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:06.760 on the Select Committees for Science and Technology and AI. 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:09.480 So we're going to zoom in on this topic of 0:07:09.640 --> 0:07:13.680 rational optimism because generally, when we talk about optimism, it 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:17.040 sounds like we're talking about temperament, like some people are 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:20.680 just wired to be upbeat. But Ridley's argument has been different. 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:25.800 He's all about grounding his optimism in evidence. He studies 0:07:26.160 --> 0:07:31.360 long term, measurable changes that reveals something about how human 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:42.120 societies evolve over time. Here's my conversation with Matt Ridley. So, Matt, 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:46.560 let's start broadly. When you say rational optimism, what is that? 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:50.520 What can make optimism rational instead of just hopeful? 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:53.880 The answer to that is evidence. In other words, I'm 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:58.960 optimistic about the future not because I'm hopeful or I 0:07:59.040 --> 0:08:04.880 have a positive mood. It's because the extraordinary improvements in 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:08.120 human living standards in almost every way you can imagine 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:10.720 that have happened in my lifetime and in nobody else's 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:16.080 lifetime before that are set to continue and are something 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:19.600 worth noting and celebrating, and by the way, are also 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:23.680 in sharp contrast to the gloomy predictions that the adults 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:25.360 always make at every stage. 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:27.880 Why do you think that humans are so drawn to 0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:32.040 pessimism even in eras of measurable progress. 0:08:32.480 --> 0:08:35.280 It's an extraordinary phenomenon, and we tend to think it's new. 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:38.040 The gloom and doom of today wasn't the way people 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:41.840 thought in the sixties or seventies. But I think it 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:44.720 goes back a very long way, and it speaks to 0:08:44.800 --> 0:08:47.920 something in human nature. I mean, that's why fire and 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:54.240 brimstone preachers were such a success in previous centuries. And 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:57.360 there's several reasons I think for this. One is that 0:08:57.679 --> 0:09:02.199 bad news is more salient. You know, if something catastrophic 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:03.600 is going to happen, you want to hear about it. 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:05.559 If something good is going to happen, you don't necessarily 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:08.800 need to know about it, So we are more alert 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:11.480 to that. And there's lots of evidence that given the 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:15.280 choice between bad news stories and good news stories, people 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:18.760 prefer to read the bad news stories, and editors know that. 0:09:19.480 --> 0:09:22.160 Television producers know that everybody knows that, so of course 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:24.600 they feed into that, and they therefore make it worse. 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.040 The second reason is that the more we know about 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:33.640 a situation, the caerier we are. So people are actually 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:37.120 quite optimistic about local things in their lives, about the 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:43.360 success of their own careers and marriages, but the success 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:47.080 of their own town or village. But the bigger the 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:50.080 unit you look at, the more pessimistic they get, so 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:53.960 that they're relying on news sources for that and not 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:57.920 on their own experience when they think about the world. 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:02.520 But there's another evolutionary psychology reason I think here, which 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:05.160 is that we're always in competition with each other, and 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:12.920 the person who was alert to bad news probably survived 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:16.920 bad periods in prehistory better. You know, you and I 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:20.280 walking to the water hole on the Savannah one hundred 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:23.560 thousand years ago. You say, I don't think we should 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:25.800 go this way. There might be a lion behind those rocks, 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:28.640 and I say, no, no, everything's getting better. I've just 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:32.199 read a book about it. Your genes are in the 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:35.559 next generation at the expense of mine and probably via 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:36.360 my girlfriend. 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:41.440 So when you look across the centuries, what do you 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:45.720 see as the strongest evidence that the world is improving. 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:51.800 I think the big one is poverty. There's a wonderful 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:54.720 experiment that Hans Rosling did was he asked a thousand 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:56.839 people in America and they then repeated this in lots 0:10:56.880 --> 0:11:01.000 of other countries. Do you think the percentage of the 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:05.080 world population that lives in extreme poverty has doubled, halved, 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:08.760 or stayed the same in the last twenty years. Sixty 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:11.640 five percent of people said it had doubled, five percent 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:14.200 said it had halved. The five percent were right, the 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:17.040 sixty five percent were wrong. But when you think about it, 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:21.240 if you wrote those three answers on three bananas and 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:23.559 threw them into a cage with a monkey in it, 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:26.040 the monkey would pick up the correct answer to that 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:30.160 question thirty three percent of the time, not five percent 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:32.000 of the time. So it would do six times as 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:35.200 well as human beings in answering this question about human society, 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:38.640 which is a pretty amazing fact when you think about it. 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:42.160 There's a wonderful quote from Josh Billings at nineteenth century 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:45.080 stage who said, it ain't what you don't know that 0:11:45.160 --> 0:11:47.520 gets you into trouble, it's what you know for sure 0:11:47.559 --> 0:11:52.960 that ain't so. And so, in my lifetime, the percentage 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:55.120 of the world living on less than a dollar ninety 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:58.760 a day and twenty eleven dollars has gone from fifty 0:11:58.840 --> 0:12:02.400 percent half the world living on that extremely low level 0:12:02.440 --> 0:12:06.600 of income to about eight percent. Now, nobody has ever 0:12:06.640 --> 0:12:09.760 lived through a transformation like that, And of course money 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:12.880 isn't everything, but that's a measure of how many of 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:15.920 your needs you can fulfill. And it goes along with 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:19.480 incredible improving lifespan, lifespan going up at the rate of 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:24.360 seven hours a day at the moment globally falling child mortality. 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:29.160 But we're not just wealthier. We're healthier, happier, cleverer, kinder, freer, 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:31.839 more peaceful, and more equal. People are very surprised when 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:34.600 you say this, but for the last fifty years, people 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:37.000 in poor countries have been getting rich much faster than 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:39.600 people in rich countries, and that really does make a 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:40.760 difference to equality. 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:44.640 What are the metrics of progress that you think people 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:46.920 most consistently underestimate. 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:50.360 There's an extraordinary graph that our world in data has 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:54.280 done among other people, and it shows the distribution of 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:58.200 income in the nineteen sixties, and it's a two humped camel. 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:01.080 It has a great, big hump of very poor people 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:04.960 and a hump of rich western middle class people in 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:09.160 Europe and America, and not much in between. And the 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:12.440 big change of the last fifty years has been almost 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:16.320 the whole of Asia moving into that middle chunk, so 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:19.880 that it's now a one humped camel. Most of Africa 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:23.200 hasn't yet made that move, but it's starting to, and 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:25.880 it's doing so roughly the speed that Asia did so 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:27.400 a generation ago. 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:29.800 What is the reason Africa hasn't made that movie? 0:13:29.880 --> 0:13:29.920 In? 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:31.480 What's it going to take to get there? 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:35.000 When I wrote The Rational Optimist in twenty ten, I 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:38.800 got criticized by one reviewer because I used the phrase 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:41.040 even in Africa things are getting better. 0:13:41.880 --> 0:13:42.600 And the reason I. 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:46.720 Used that phrase was because I was reading people saying, look, 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:50.640 Asia has had improved living standards. Africa's never going to 0:13:50.679 --> 0:13:53.800 achieve that. There's far too much population pressure, far too 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:57.120 much poverty, far too much disease, far too much conflict. 0:13:57.679 --> 0:14:01.120 It just it's not realistic to expect it to go 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:05.080 through a radical transformation in living standards, and I said, no, 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:08.120 there's evidence that it is going to do that, and 0:14:08.240 --> 0:14:11.760 even in Africa, you are seeing these these measures move 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:13.920 in the right direction. And then I got criticized for 0:14:13.960 --> 0:14:17.040 being a racist by saying using this phrase even in Africa, 0:14:17.640 --> 0:14:20.800 which was outrageous because I was saying exactly the opposite. 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:23.280 But you know, people will do these kind of things. 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:27.400 So Africa had lagged behind the rest of the world 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:31.520 in terms of industrialization, in terms of trade. It has 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:35.680 various geographical disadvantages. You know, it doesn't have great places 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:39.960 for ports, and the hinterland is not very accessible in 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:43.160 the way it is in other continents and so on. 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:45.120 So there, you know, there are things like that, but 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:49.880 above all, it was disfigured by disease. You know, the 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:54.680 degree to which malaria was very, very widespread in Africa, 0:14:55.640 --> 0:14:58.600 and other diseases like sleeping sickness, and of course in 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:02.720 the twentieth century age, I've really did set back African 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:07.200 living standards. That has something to do with the fact 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:11.280 that we are originally an African species, that we've been 0:15:11.320 --> 0:15:15.640 in Africa longer than any other continent, and that I 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:21.000 think has meant that more and more pathogens and microbes 0:15:21.160 --> 0:15:24.960 have had a chance to hone attack on us in 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:28.840 that continent. But as I say, that's changing incredibly fast. 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:31.920 The malaria thing is really really interesting because you get 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:36.280 widespread predictions right up until the early two thousands the 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:38.200 malaria is going to go on getting worse, and it 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:42.080 was getting worse. The mortality from malaria was beginning to 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:44.920 improve in Asia, but it was actually getting rapidly worse 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:48.680 in Africa. Why was it getting worse, Well, because there's 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:52.880 more people and there are you know the Yeah, basically 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:56.440 it's the rising population and not much in the way 0:15:56.480 --> 0:15:59.880 of public health services or mosquito control and things like 0:15:59.880 --> 0:16:03.800 that up and then in two thousand and three, the 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:09.120 graft suddenly switches, it suddenly starts going down. African malaria 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:12.640 mortality starts going down, and it's gone down ever since. 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:16.360 What happened in two thousand and three. It's really interesting, actually, 0:16:16.400 --> 0:16:18.360 and I tracked it down for one of my books, 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:23.480 the book about Innovation. The Gates Foundation basically picked on 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:26.280 one technology and said we're going to fund this technology 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:31.680 that wasn't a vaccine, and it wasn't an insecticide. It 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:38.160 was insecticide impregnated mosquito nets because they were picking up 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:41.160 on an experiment that had been done in Boquino Fasso 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:44.440 in the nineteen eighties in which they put thirty six 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:50.240 people in huts specially designed for catching mosquitoes, and they 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:54.359 measured how many people got bitten under different circumstances. And 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:58.000 they tried mosquito nets, and they tried mosquito nets with 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:01.240 insecticide on them. They found it had a massive to 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:04.399 terrent effect. And then they tried tearing holes in the 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:07.440 mosquito nets, which is quite often happens. You know, it's 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:10.720 very difficult to keep a mosquito net intact. And they 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:15.240 found that a mosquito net with holes in it that 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:18.920 had insecticide on it was better than a mosquito net 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:22.600 that didn't have holes in it, that didn't have insecticide 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:24.720 on it. So they realized that this was actually a 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:27.720 very cheap technology, very low tech technology that you could 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:30.600 distribute to people and it wouldn't stop working just because 0:17:30.640 --> 0:17:33.400 people tore holes in it by mistake. And so they 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:38.680 really pushed this technology and it has made an enormous difference. 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:42.520 And I tried to track down the French scientists who 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:46.000 worked with a bikinos for Fascia scientists to do this experiment. 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:48.760 I eventually found one of them living in retirement in 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:51.120 southern France because I just thought it was such an 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:54.159 interesting story. It's probably one of the biggest life saving 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:57.320 stories of the lot, and it's very low tech. You know, 0:17:57.600 --> 0:18:01.480 it's not all about digital electrons. So I kind of 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:02.240 like that story. 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.240 Yes, so many of the big changes in the world 0:18:05.280 --> 0:18:08.960 have come from very simple things like chlorinated water and 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:11.880 so on. So we touched on this issue about brains 0:18:11.920 --> 0:18:15.320 being threat detectors and so when things are getting worse, 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:18.080 we feel that immediately. But why do you suppose progress 0:18:18.240 --> 0:18:19.920 generally feels so invisible. 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:24.919 I think we take it for granted. When something gets better, 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:27.840 we say, fine, you know I can now use my 0:18:27.960 --> 0:18:31.560 telephone when I'm walking around, a big deal. You know, 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:36.480 I'm cool with that. But the damn thing doesn't work everywhere. 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:41.600 So do you know what I mean? And so, just 0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:43.280 to give you an example, I went in my first 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:46.879 way mo last November when I was in Austin, and 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:49.800 it took me about ten minutes to get relaxed about 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:51.840 having no driver in the car. I mean, it was 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:56.720 very easy to get cool about that. I'm sure within 0:18:57.040 --> 0:18:59.640 half an hour I'd be complaining about way not going 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:02.240 faster enough or something. But you know, for God's sake, 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:05.560 this is a car driven by a robot, and here 0:19:05.600 --> 0:19:08.680 am I, somebody was born in the nineteen fifties, sitting 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:12.240 in it, going to my destination, happily chatting to my 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:14.800 friend in the back of this guy. It's an incredible thing. 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:19.600 And so the degree to which we just lock in 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:23.600 the things that happen and move on to complaining about 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:27.680 the things that don't happen is very, very human. Yeah. 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:29.920 I recently took my first way mow and I had 0:19:29.960 --> 0:19:33.800 my kids with me, and I told them, probably uselessly, 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:36.840 I said, you know, really pay attention to this, because 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:38.760 this is the first time I've ever had this experience. 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:40.320 But for you guys, this is just part of the 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:42.280 background furniture of the world. 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:43.280 Yes. 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:46.560 And I think our friend Kevin Kelly, I think he 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:49.560 was the one who said technology is what gets invented 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:53.280 after you're born, and all the stuff that already exists 0:19:53.320 --> 0:19:54.879 we don't pay any attention to. 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:58.040 There's a one man oracle on all these topics. He's 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:13.760 just so so interesting to talk to him. 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:15.719 Okay, So what I want to ask you about is 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:19.840 how we make progress. And in your work you've emphasized 0:20:19.880 --> 0:20:23.080 the importance of the exchange of ideas, as you call it, 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:24.520 ideas having sex. 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:25.719 So tell us about that. 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:30.120 Why is recombination more powerful than individual genius? 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:39.680 Right? Well, almost every new device we manufacture isn't made 0:20:39.760 --> 0:20:44.879 from brand new stuff. It's existing stuff reconfigured in new ways, 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:50.040 different combinations of existing atoms, different combinations of existing molecules 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:53.360 and substances, and so on. So in a sense, all 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:57.320 we're doing is coming up with new combinations. Now, as 0:20:57.320 --> 0:21:01.040 an evolutionary biologist, I see a very close parallel here 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:05.440 with what happens in genetics and evolution. That is to say, 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:11.919 when a species develops a new gene for solving a 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:16.640 new problem, it doesn't do so ab initio. It generally 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:21.919 does so by combining different bits of different genes to 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:25.879 come up with a new gene. And the process that 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:29.440 allows it to do that is called sex. I mean, 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:34.240 that is sexual reproduction's main result. I'm not going to 0:21:34.240 --> 0:21:36.520 say main purpose because I've written a book saying well, 0:21:36.560 --> 0:21:38.159 you know, it didn't know that's what it was going 0:21:38.200 --> 0:21:41.760 to achieve, But the invention of sexual reproduction several billion 0:21:41.880 --> 0:21:49.240 years ago enabled us to draw upon innovations in genes 0:21:49.359 --> 0:21:51.560 that happened to our fathers as well as our mothers. 0:21:51.600 --> 0:21:54.760 And so if you imagine two different lineages of mammals 0:21:54.800 --> 0:21:58.959 and one invents milk and the other invents fur, if 0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:04.000 they're a sexual, there's no chance of getting both. You 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:07.040 either have to choose which dry want fur or milk, 0:22:07.160 --> 0:22:10.160 you know which is the better invention. But if they're sexual, 0:22:10.200 --> 0:22:12.600 you can say, I think I'd like both those inventions, please. 0:22:13.320 --> 0:22:17.840 So I think the role of trade and exchange in 0:22:17.960 --> 0:22:22.720 human society is very very analogous, if not even homologous, 0:22:23.160 --> 0:22:26.479 with sex. You know, I mean when I say ideas 0:22:26.520 --> 0:22:31.359 having sex, I'm not even speaking metaphorically. I'm trying to 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:35.040 be literally true. And I think that's really interesting. Just 0:22:35.040 --> 0:22:41.320 to give you my favorite slightly ridiculous example of ideas 0:22:41.359 --> 0:22:46.320 having sex in technology, there was a technology called the 0:22:46.359 --> 0:22:52.120 pill camera developed twenty years ago. You swallow it. It 0:22:52.160 --> 0:22:55.239 takes a film as it's going through your system and 0:22:55.400 --> 0:22:59.720 gives the doctor an idea of where you know where 0:22:59.760 --> 0:23:02.520 you're problems are. If you've got a problem in your 0:23:03.320 --> 0:23:07.959 enteric system, it came about after a conversation over a 0:23:08.000 --> 0:23:13.160 garden fence between a gastro enterologist and a guided missile designer. 0:23:14.840 --> 0:23:18.440 That's a sort of really weird example two of ideas 0:23:18.440 --> 0:23:19.000 having sex. 0:23:19.880 --> 0:23:23.360 So what conditions have to be in place for innovation 0:23:23.520 --> 0:23:29.000 ecosystems to really thrive for ideas to have sex successfully? 0:23:29.080 --> 0:23:31.200 I looked at in my book How Innovation Works. I 0:23:32.080 --> 0:23:34.960 sort of told a whole bunch of stories from different 0:23:35.160 --> 0:23:40.680 areas of technology, and several key themes kept emerging. They all, 0:23:40.760 --> 0:23:43.199 in the end boiled down to one word, and that 0:23:43.280 --> 0:23:48.040 word is freedom above all, the freedom to experiment. So 0:23:48.800 --> 0:23:51.680 if you talk to great innovators, they talk about trial 0:23:51.720 --> 0:23:55.120 and error. They don't talk. They insist that you never 0:23:55.160 --> 0:23:57.600 get it right first time, that you don't actually know 0:23:58.600 --> 0:24:02.600 what you're going to discover some times, but you have 0:24:02.720 --> 0:24:07.200 to fail and fail and fail again and fail again, 0:24:07.280 --> 0:24:11.439 and then suddenly you start to succeed. So Thomas Edison 0:24:11.680 --> 0:24:15.359 famously said, I haven't failed, I've just found ten thousand 0:24:15.440 --> 0:24:19.720 ways that don't work. And he tried six thousand different 0:24:19.760 --> 0:24:23.960 types of plant material before he was satisfied with the 0:24:23.960 --> 0:24:26.159 type of Japanese bamboo to use for the filament of 0:24:26.200 --> 0:24:29.040 his first light bulb. Now I've talked to Jeff Bezos 0:24:29.080 --> 0:24:31.119 and he says much the same sort of thing. You 0:24:31.119 --> 0:24:33.720 know that if you're not swinging and missing, you're not 0:24:34.280 --> 0:24:38.360 going to innovate. And people like Edison and Bezos, they're 0:24:38.359 --> 0:24:41.600