Robert Wright: evaluation

Transcript context

…No. No, I've never heard this. That's my main point. Everyone in China has heard about it. I don't even know if it's true, but I think it is. I mean, I, I interrogated some of the AIs and followed some sources. I think it's true, but my main point is this is just typical. There are... The reason you haven't heard about it isn't because there's no chance it's true, it's just it's not the kinda thing our media system really wants to amplify. And, and s- similarly, our picture of what's going on in China, there are definitely some, some things I would consider bad going on there, but I guarantee our view of them, of, our view of even what they are is not the same as the average Chinese person's, and in some cases I think our view may be kind of distorted because it's like, who want, who wants to be the person who says, "I don't think that human rights situation is quite as bad as you're saying"? Nobody wants to say that, right? And so there, there are just... I, I would just, I would just start out by, you know, reexamining the sense of threat in, in, in, in the light of an understanding of the cognitive biases and media filters at work, and understand that China feels threatened by us. It's like, you know, e- everyone... You know, Israel's attack on Iran I think was motivated by a genuine belief on the part of most Israelis that this was a defensive thing to do. How many people in Iran see it that way, right? I mean... And vice versa. I could flip the tables and describe that. It is just so common to have this, the asymmetry of perception that... And, and, and it, and it leads to the positive c- feedback cycle, right? This famously led to, well, contributed to World War I, is military postures meant defensively were taken as offensively, so there was a countermove that was conceived of as defensive but looked offensive to the other side, so there was another countermove and so on. I, I... And this is... I mean, I can tell you what policies I'd favor if, if I were president, which is actually the question you asked, but o- one reason, you know, in my book I spend, well, I spend time on policies, but more time on this kinda psychological stuff, is, like, as long as it is easy for people who want to amplify our sense of threat to do that, it's gonna be hard, whether... You know, and politicians very often have a political interest in, in, in threat amplification, threat inflation, and arms makers do and so on, and I, I, I, you know, I can lay out the policies, um, but if you wanna hear 'em, I'm happy to. Yeah, let's do it. What's... I mean, what-…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.