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Yuval Noah Harari: evaluation

17 Jul 2023 Lex Fridman Podcast #390 – Yuval Noah Harari: Human Nature, Intelligence, Power, and Conspiracies

“Kill those millions. Ethics, aesthetics, truth, they don’t matter. The only thing that matter is the victory of the state or the victory of the class.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

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Speaker
Yuval Noah Harari
Attribution
Verified speaker
Claim type
evaluation
Recorded
17 Jul 2023
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

Transcript context

…So the reason these two classes of ideologies failed as the sacrifice of truth, not just failed, but did a lot of damage as the sacrifice of truth and sacrifice of beauty? … and sacrifice of hundreds of millions of people. Again, for human suffering like, okay, in order for our nation to win, in order for our class to win, we need to kill those millions. Kill those millions. Ethics, aesthetics, truth, they don’t matter. The only thing that matter is the victory of the state or the victory of the class. Liberalism was the antithesis to that. It says, no, it has a much more complicated view of the world. Both communism and fascists, they had the very simple view of the world. Your loyalty, a hundred percent of it, should be only to one thing. Now, liberalism has a much more complex view of the world. It says, yes, there are nations. They are important. Yes, there are classes. They are important, but they are not the only thing. There are also families. There are also individuals. There are also animals. Your loyalty should be divided between all of them. Sometimes, you prefer this. Sometimes, you prefer that. That’s complicated. With this. Sometimes you prefer that. That’s complicated. But life is complicated. But also, I think, maybe you can correct me, but liberalism acknowledges the corrupting nature of power. When there’s a guy at the top who sits there for a while managing things, he’s probably going to start losing a good sense of reality and losing the capability to be a good manager.…

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