Lex Fridman Podcast
#360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics
20 Feb 2023
Tim Urban is the author of the blog Wait But Why and a new book What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - House of Macadamias: https://houseofmacadamias.com/lex and use code LEX to get 20% off your first order - Indeed: https://indeed.com/lex to get $75 credit - Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex to get 1 month of fish oil EPISODE LINKS: Tim's new book: https://waitbutwhy.com/whatsourproblem Tim's Twitter: https://twitter.com/waitbutwhy Tim's Website: https://waitbutwhy.com Tim's Instagram: https://instagram.com/timurban Tim's TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk5C149J9C0 PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (05:48) - Human history (21:47) - Greatest people in history (29:35) - Social media (36:17) - Good times and bad times (47:48) - Wisdom vs stupidity (49:55) - Utopia (1:04:05) - Conspiracy theories (1:17:16) - Arguing on the Internet (1:37:16) - Political division (1:47:10) - Power games (1:55:09) - Donald Trump and Republican Party (2:12:17) - Social justice (2:34:59) - Censorship gap (2:42:30) - Free speech (2:46:33) - Thinking and universities (2:54:56) - Liv Boeree joins conversation (3:07:15) - Hopes for the future
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
The following is a conversation with Tim Urban, his second time on the podcast. He's the author and illustrator of the amazing blog called Wait But Why, and is the author of a new book coming out tomorrow called What's Our Problem?, a self-help book for societies. We talk a lot about this book in this podcast, but you really do need to get it and experience it for yourself.
It is a fearless, insightful, hilarious, and I think important book in this divisive time that we live in. The Kindle version, the audiobook, and the web version should be all available on date of publication. I should also mention that my face might be a bit more beat up than usual.
I got hit in the chin pretty good since I've been getting back into training jiu-jitsu, a sport I love very much, after recovering from an injury. So if you see marks on my face during these intros or conversations, you know that my life is in a pretty good place. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast.
We got House of Macadamias for healthy snacks, Indeed for hiring excellent teams, and Athletic Greens for health. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to work with our amazing team, we're always hiring. Go to lexfriedman.com slash hiring. And now, on to the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle.
I try to make these interesting, but if you must skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by a sponsor that brings a smile to my face, House of Macadamias.
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I need my snacks portioned perfectly because otherwise if you have like a giant jar of like macadamia nuts, they're too delicious, they're too good. So the fact that they're segmented perfectly for you is really nice. Whether it's bars or whole nuts, it's a variety of deliciousness that brings joy to my life and I really love it.
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Chapter 2: How does social media influence our perceptions?
Like I mentioned, we're hiring, and you should be using the best tools for the job when you do that, because friends, there's nothing more important than the people you surround yourself with. And I'm gonna go bro science for a second and pull out a random statistic. I remember reading an article yesterday
about the amount of time that an average American spends in their workplace across different roles and positions and industries and so on. I don't remember what the number is, but it was tremendous. It was huge. So those hours are really important. It's really important not just for the productivity and the success of a company, but just for your happiness, for your fulfillment. And so
To me, that's what hiring is. It's like building up a team of awesome people that make each other better. And you should use the best tools for the job. I certainly use Indeed. It's amazing. Indeed knows when you're growing your own business, every dollar counts. That's why with Indeed, you only pay for quality applications that match your job requirements.
Visit Indeed.com slash Lex to start hiring now. That's Indeed.com slash Lex. Terms and conditions apply. This show is also brought to you by Athletic Greens and its AG1 drink, which is an all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. It replaced the multivitamin for me, it replaced so much for me, and it gave me so much.
In fact, right after I'm done saying the words I'm saying now, I'm walking over to the fridge. Which is where I made an AG1 drink that's now cold. I'm going to open the container and I'm going to consume the deliciousness knowing that my nutritional basis is taken care of.
There's certain things in life that if you take care of them, they give you the freedom to take on anything in any way you want. just knowing that when I take care of the quote unquote adult stuff, I'm free to be a child, basically, which is to explore the world, to follow my curiosity, to take big risks, to be fearless, but also to be joyful, all of that. And to me,
It's kind of the nutrition side of that is Athletic Greens helped me with that. I also take electrolytes. That really helps. And fish oil as well. But that's pretty much about it. Oh, yeah. I drink a lot of water, of course. Anyway, they'll give you one month supply of fish oil when you sign up at athleticgreens.com slash Lex. This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Tim Urban. You wrote an incredible book called What's Our Problem, a self-help book for societies. In the beginning, you present this view of human history as a 1,000-page book where each page is 250 years. And it's a brilliant visualization because almost nothing happens for most of it.
So what blows your mind most about that visualization when you just sit back and think about it?
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Chapter 3: How does Tim Urban visualize human history?
The myth.
The mother was like, this baby's great. Wow. Let's figure something out. It just, I mean, listen, hearing, learning about Genghis Khan, it's incredible to me because it's just like, this was some Mongolian,
you know, herder guy who was taken as a slave and he was like dirt poor, you know, catching rats as a, you know, young teen with, you know, to feed him and his mom and his, I think his brother. And it was just like, the odds on, when he was born, he was just one of, you know, probably tens of thousands of random teen boys living in Mongolia in the 1200s.
The odds of that person, any one of them being a household name today that we're talking about, it's just crazy, like, what had to happen. And for that guy to... For that poor... dirt poor herder to take over the world. I don't know. So history just like continually blows my mind. Like, you know.
And he's the reason you and I are related, probably.
Yeah, no, I mean, it's also, that's the other thing, is that some of these dudes, by becoming king, by being, having a better army at the right time, you know, William the Conqueror, whatever, is in the right place at the right time with the right army, you know, and there's a weakness at the right moment, and he comes over and he exploits it and ends up
probably having, you know, I don't know, a thousand children.
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Chapter 4: What insights does Tim Urban share about the past?
And those children are high up people who might be have a ton of, the species is different now because of him. Like if that, forget England's different or, you know, European borders look different. Like, like we are like, we look different because of a small handful of people. You know, when I, sometimes I think I'm like, oh, you know, this part of the world,
I can recognize someone's Greek, you know, someone's Persian, someone's wherever, because, you know, they kind of have certain facial features. And I'm like, it may have happened. I mean, obviously it's that that's a population, but it may be that like someone 600 years ago that looked like that really spread their seed. And that's why the ethnicity looks kind of like that now. Sorry. Anyway.
Yeah. Yeah. Do you think individuals like that can turn the direction of history or is that an illusion that narrative we tell ourselves?
Well, it's both. I mean, so I said William the Conqueror, right? Or Hitler, right? It's not that Hitler was born and destined to be great at all, right? I think in a lot of cases, he's some frustrated artist with a temper who's turning over the table in his studio and hitting his wife and being kind of a dick and a total nobody, right?
I think almost all the times you could have put Hitler baby on earth. He's a rando, right? And maybe sometimes he becomes some kind of, he uses the speaking ability because that ability was going to be there either way, but maybe he uses it for something else. But that said, I also think, but it's not that World War II was going to happen either way, right? So it's both.
It's that these circumstances were one way, and this person came along at the right time, and those two made a match made in, in this case, hell.
But it makes you wonder, yes, it's a match in hell, but are there other people that could have taken this place? Or do these people that stand out, they're the rare spark of... that genius, whether it take us towards evil, towards good, whether those figures singularly define the trajectory of humanity.
What defines the trajectory of humanity in the 21st century, for example, might be the influence of AI, might be the influence of nuclear war, negative or positive, not in the case of nuclear war, but the bioengineering, nanotech, virology, what else is there? Maybe the structure of governments and so on. Maybe the structure of universities. I don't know.
There could be singular figures that stand up and lead the way for human. But I wonder if the society is the thing that manifests that. that person or that person really does have a huge impact.
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Chapter 5: What is the role of the 'dumb part' of our brain in social media interactions?
Mm-hmm.
Remember I said the dumb part of my brain when I'm doing VR won't step off the cliff, but the smart part of my brain knows I'm just on the rug? That dumb part of our brain is really dumb in a lot of ways. It's the part of your brain where you can set the clock five minutes fast to help you not be late.
The smart part of your brain knows that you did that, but the dumb part will fall for it, right? That same dumb part of your brain can forget that the person behind that screen, behind that handle is a human that has feelings. And that doesn't mean they're a bad person for forgetting that, because it's possible.
Well, this really interesting idea, and I wonder if it's true that you're right, is that both primitive mindedness and high mindedness tend to be contagious. I hope you're right, that it's possible to make both contagious. Because our sort of popular intuition is only one of them, the primitive mindedness is contagious, as exhibited by social media.
To compliment you again, don't you think that your Twitter to me is like, I was just looking down and I mean, it is a, it's just high mindedness. It's just high mindedness down, down, down, down, down. It's, it's, it's gratitude.
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Chapter 6: How do primitive and high-mindedness ideas spread in society?
It's optimism. It's love. It's forgiveness. It's all these things that are the opposite of grievance and victimhood and resentment and pessimism. Right. And, and, There's, I think, a reason that a lot of people follow you because it is contagious. It makes other people feel those feelings.
I don't know. I've been recently, over the past few months, attacked quite a lot. And it's fascinating to watch because it's over things that I think I probably have done stupid things, but I'm being attacked for things that are totally not worthy of attack. I got attacked for a book list.
I saw that piece, by the way. I thought it was great.
But you can always kind of find ways to, I guess the assumption is this person surely is a fraud or some other explanation.
Chapter 7: What are the implications of political division and power games in today's society?
He sure has dead bodies in the basement he's hiding or something like this. And then I'm going to construct a narrative around that and mock and attack that. I don't know how that works, but there is, there does, and I think you write this in the book, there seems to be a gravity issue pulling people towards the primitive mind.
When it comes to anything political, right? Religious, certain things are bottom heavy, you know, for our psyche. They have a magnet that pulls our psyches downwards on the ladder. And why? Why does politics pull our psyches down on the ladder? Because it... For the tens of thousand years that we were evolving during human history, it was life or death. Politics was life or death.
And so there's actually an amazing study where it's like – They challenged like 20 different beliefs of a person. And different parts of the person's brain, and they had an MRI going, different parts of the person's brain lit up when non-political beliefs were challenged versus political beliefs were challenged.
When political beliefs were challenged, when non-political beliefs were challenged, the like the rational, like the prefrontal cortex type areas were lit up.
When the political beliefs were challenged, and then I'm getting over my head here, but it's like the parts of your brain, the default mode network, the parts of your brain associated with like introspection and like your own identity were lit up. And they were much more likely to change their mind on all the beliefs, the non-political beliefs.
When that default mode network part of your brain lit up, you were gonna, if anything, get more firm in those beliefs when you had them challenged. So politics is one of those topics That just literally, literally lights up different part of our brain. Again, I think we come back to primitive mind, higher mind here. It's like it gets our higher.
This is one of the things our primitive mind comes programmed to care a ton about. And so it's going to be very hard for us to stay rational and calm and looking for truth because we have all this gravity to it.
Well, it's weird because politics, like what is politics? Like you talk about, it's a bunch of different issues and each individual issue, if we really talk about- Yeah, tax policy.
Like why are we being emotional about this?
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Chapter 8: How can awareness and courage combat the challenges of modern ideologies?
I don't think we're actually that, I mean, yeah, we're emotional about something else.
Yeah, I think what we're emotional about is this, my side, the side I've identified with is in power and making the decisions and your side is out of power. And if your side's in power, that's really scary for me because that goes back to, you know, the idea of who is making, who's, who's pulling the strings in this tribe, right? Who's in, who's the chief?
Is it your family's patriarch or is it mine? You know, I, you might not have food if, if, if we don't win this, you know, kind of whatever, you know, chief election. So, I think that it's not about the tax policy or anything like that. And then it gets tied to this like broader, I think a lot of our tribalism has really coalesced around this.
We don't have that much religious tribalism in the US, right? Now they know the Protestants and the Catholics hate each other. We don't have that really, right? And honestly, you say people like to say we have racial tribalism and everything, but
A white – even a kind of a racist white conservative guy I think takes the black conservative over the woke white person any day of the week right now.
So that's the strongest source of division.
It tells me that I think politics is way stronger tribalism right now. I think that that white racist guy loves the black –
conservative guy compared to the white woke guy right there's no so so to me i think not again not that racial tribalism isn't a thing of course it's always a thing but like political tribalism is the number one right now so race is almost a topic for the political division versus the actual sort of element of the tribe it's a political football it's yeah
So there's, I mean, this is dark because, so this is a book about human civilization. This is a book about human nature, but it's also a book of politics, about politics. It is just the way you list it out in the book. It's kind of dark how we just fall into these left and right checklists.
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