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[HORS-SERIE] Polycrisis : how to remains optimistic ? with Jason Silva
VLAN! Podcast
[HORS-SERIE] Polycrisis : how to remains optimistic ? with Jason Silva
/
Today, I am with Greg Pouy. Hi Greg.
He is the host of the French podcast Vlan, and we are going to interview Jason Silva. Hello Jason
Hello. Jason explore modernité and technology and how it both benefits and disrupts humanité. Le pression of this can impact our mental health, but it turns out, mo ing past our comfort zone is cognitively beneficial. Blowing our mental health, is a challenge. Greg, zone is cognitively beneficial. Blowing a mind boost cognitive flexibilité.
It does.
It does. You can explain us how, exac tly. My first question is, at a time where we feel like so close to loose control of our technology, with A. I. And other things. What’s making you an optimist, Steele ? Yeah, thank you for the.
Question and thank you both for having me in this hybrid podcast conversation. You know, it’s interesting. I am… I feel a lot of resonance with the words of Kevin Kelly. Kevin Kelly is one of the cofounders of Wired magazine. He’s considered a technology maverick and futurist. He uses the term protopian, when he’s discussing his views of the future, his orientation. So it’s not the same as being a utopian, a utopian, but it’s not the same as being a futurist. topian optimist that just assumes everything will be fine, or a dystopian that has just succumbed to doom and gloom and fatalism. But a protopian believes that, hey man, we may be flawed, stumbling primates, but when we work together, we are primates that can fly. So, no doub t, we’re at an inflection point, a kind of intelligence explosion, when it comes to things like artificial intelligence. I’v e been lecturing about exponential technologies for 10 y ears, and I’m not sure I can do it. I don’t know.
I feel like I’v e been talking about this for a long time. So, I am not really that surprise that the world is finally waking up to the pace of change, the pace of innovation. And, there are some legitimate concerns, no doubt, when it comes to A. I. It could go off the rails. It could be weaponized, it could play out in ways that we can’t even predict, the so called unknown unknown. But at the same time, I am not sure I am going to be able to say, I am not going to be able to say, I am not going to be able to say, I am not going to be able to say, I am not going to be able to say, I am not going to be able to say, I am not going toI mean, look how far we have come. Look how fast we have gotten here. Like we were crawling the savannas of Africa and now we are like building space telescopes that can peer into the Big Bang.
I can call on my phone, I can call my mother with a device that Amber Case calls a techno social wormhole opener. The smartphone like just o pens up a techno social wormhole, whereby space and time and geography collapse, and I can see another person and talk to another person across oceans, across continents. So I see technology all around me, that, as Arthur C. Clarke said, is indistinguishable from magic. So, creatures that engender things indistinguishable from magic can get their act together if they need to and if they want to. So, and the protopian view, I believe, is exac tly that. It says, Hey man, if we get our act together, we have within us the capacity to do it. And I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it.As Stuart Brandt said, we are as gods and might as well get good at it. So, it’s not saying… There’s no guarantee, I suppose. But my intuition and my feeling, and I suppose my faith, lies in us, in this being our finest hour, in us rising to the occasion.
But at the same time, you cannot ignore that we live in a very individualistic socie ty. I totally agree with you. I mean, the human are stronger because they go together and because of language and all those. But at the same time, since the Enlightenment, we are very much i nto de this individualistic. And I, when I listen to a talk like Tristan Harris on the on the on the A. I, people are listening and yet they are wondering, yes, but how can I take advantage myself of A. I. ? So, they are listening to Tristan saying, oh yeah, A. I. Is super dangerous. And at the same time, wondering how they can take advantage of it, because they don’t want to be last. So, you know, the struggle and that, that’s, to me, is the issue.
Absolutely. And you know, I am not a fan of A. I, but I am a fan of Tristan Harris. I am a fan of Tristan Harris. I am a fan of Tristan Harris. I am a fan of Tristan Harris. I am a fan of Tristan Harris. I am a fan of Tristan Harris. Iknow it’s nothing new under the sun, that technology is and has always been, a double edged sword. And so, the alphabet, how wonderful this tool to encode human knowledge.
Allege, to allow us to communicate and you can weaponize language. Writing, same thing. The printing press, how liberating, but also, hate speech, propaganda can really propagate itself through the printing press. Same with social media. Without social media, I know that my career wouldn’t really have been possible and the hearts and minds that I touch through my work, that thank me for the ways in which my work has served their life, wouldn’t be possible for that. We’re not for that medium, for that technology, but we’v e seen the weaponization of social media. We’v e seen what it did to the United States. In the elections, we’v e seen how it was used. Cambridge Analytica, we’v e seen what happened with Brexit. I mean, incredibly problematic stuff. And I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I guess, that’s just the story of man, un fortunately. The story of humanity is, in some ways, we are Promethean beings and we s teal fire from the gods, but perhaps we got ahead of ourselves.
We didn’t have the the wisdom and the prudence, as Daniel Schmitt has put it, of a leader of a nation. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’tknow what Zuckerberg or said. To to to utilize, to deploy thes e tools in the best of ways, we sort of just deploy them in the use cases happen, and some are good and some are bad. M aybe we need to get ahead of that before the tools are out of our hands. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.Ils ont des trucs de world shaking and world destroying tools.
Who should be the ways men we’re trusting ?
Yeah, good question. In terms of like, who do we listen to ? Is probably the toughest question of all. And I talk about this as well, that human beings, their existence, and we’re storytelling animals and our our compass, our… The way we orient ourselves, the way we orient our behaviour, the thing that tells us how to act in the world is a storytelling structure. You know, like guys seem to be like… At the very bottom of consciousness is story. Meaning is extracted from story. And so, and so, and so, these narratives, the stories, the stories, they sustain us or they can destroy us. You know, there’s nothing more tragic, but also fascinating about, ah, somebody who chooses to take their own life, especially in the Western world, where we have secured such material prospérité, such material wealth, something that our ancestors would have like, dreamed about, you know, cell phone, Internet, communication, whatever, cable télévision, and that today, more people die by suicide than die from natural disasters and armed conflicts, combine.
Well, suicide is a crisis of storytelling, in my opinion. When the story you tell yourself about yourself is no longer convincing, when the narrative that sustains your life, when the narrative that gives your life meaning, collapses or gets inverted or gets corrupted, like a software file. Well, if you don’t have a story, you can’t live. A man can live a few, you know, weeks, without food, a few days, you know, with a lot of food, but you can’t live. So, you know, suicide is a crisis of storytelling, in my opinion. Well, suicide is a crisis of storytelling, in my opinion. When the story you few days with out water, but not for a minute with out hope, not for a minute, without a sustaining narrative. And so, the narrative matters. Jamie Weal, during the Harvest conference, talks about when people come together and are like jolted into aliveness by something called soul force. It’s the thing that wakes us up, you know, this affirmation of life in spite of its tragedy. And he cites people like Martin Luther King, you know, potentielly Nelson Mandela.
I love language, I love literature, I love poetry. I want the best storyteller or the storyteller that wins to be a very literate one. I want just an inspirational voice that becomes the voice, you know, that we all orient our lives around. But I don’t want it to be an ideological voice. I don’t want it to be a populist voice. I don’t want it to be a voice that separates us, that casts us into a world of us versus us. versus them. I want a unifying voice that sees the other as oneself and that, at the same time, celebrates our differences. And so, that requires a different kind of thinking. You know, somebody informed by the overview effect, somebody informed by psychedelic, egoless rapture, somebody who’s been moved by song. I mean, it’s a big thing that I’m looking, you know, for the person to be the storyteller of our times. The people I tend to respect the most are filmmakers, because I think they tell the best stories. They tell the best stories through modern myths, which I think films are.
Christopher Nolan, for example, his new film that he’s making about, you know, Oppenheimer, I am, become death, you know, about the invention of the atomic bomb. I probably feel there’s probably more relevanc e in this new film. I haven’t seen it yet, but mo re relevanc e in this new film now, as we face all thes e cataclysmic potential, you know, runaway effects with our technology, to watch a film, you know, and to be able to see a film, you know, and to be able to see a film, you know, and to be able to see a film, you know, anda film about what happend, you know, w hen we really started to play God and discover atomic power. So, again, long winded answer, but I think it’s story tellers, the right story tellers
Description de l’épisode
Jason Silva is a filmmaker and a futurist but it’s very hard to reduce Jason into words really.
I was lucky enough to have been invited to Harvest, a conference hold in Kaplankaya and this interviewed is a special one as it’s co-host with Rose Clevery who is the host of the podcast named after the conference Harvest Series.
In 6 years, it’s a first for me and I like doing new things.
I hope you will like the format with 2 co-host.
Jason is an optimist when thinking about the challenges that we have ahead of us.
Modern technologies both serve to benefit and disrupt humanity at once and with the rise of social media and AI the disruption level is at risk of increasing rapidly. But Jason Silva is ultimately an optimist when it comes to technology, as it showcases the full capacity and potential of the human brain and our creativity to awe and be awed. He believes that those who are able to create such ‘magical’ tools as also capable of “getting their act together if they need to and if they want to”. Why is Jason Silva so optimistic about technology at a time when AI is causing a lot of social anxiety? He responds it’s because he is neither a utopian nor a dystopian, but rather a protopian.
We talk about creativity, technology, social media and trying to explore Jason universe and understand how he envisions life and the future.
[HORS-SERIE] Polycrisis : how to remains optimistic ? with Jason Silva
/
Today, I am with Greg Pouy. Hi Greg.
He is the host of the French podcast Vlan, and we are going to interview Jason Silva. Hello Jason
Hello. Jason explore modernité and technology and how it both benefits and disrupts humanité. Le pression of this can impact our mental health, but it turns out, mo ing past our comfort zone is cognitively beneficial. Blowing our mental health, is a challenge. Greg, zone is cognitively beneficial. Blowing a mind boost cognitive flexibilité.
It does.
It does. You can explain us how, exac tly. My first question is, at a time where we feel like so close to loose control of our technology, with A. I. And other things. What’s making you an optimist, Steele ? Yeah, thank you for the.
Question and thank you both for having me in this hybrid podcast conversation. You know, it’s interesting. I am… I feel a lot of resonance with the words of Kevin Kelly. Kevin Kelly is one of the cofounders of Wired magazine. He’s considered a technology maverick and futurist. He uses the term protopian, when he’s discussing his views of the future, his orientation. So it’s not the same as being a utopian, a utopian, but it’s not the same as being a futurist. topian optimist that just assumes everything will be fine, or a dystopian that has just succumbed to doom and gloom and fatalism. But a protopian believes that, hey man, we may be flawed, stumbling primates, but when we work together, we are primates that can fly. So, no doub t, we’re at an inflection point, a kind of intelligence explosion, when it comes to things like artificial intelligence. I’v e been lecturing about exponential technologies for 10 y ears, and I’m not sure I can do it. I don’t know.
I feel like I’v e been talking about this for a long time. So, I am not really that surprise that the world is finally waking up to the pace of change, the pace of innovation. And, there are some legitimate concerns, no doubt, when it comes to A. I. It could go off the rails. It could be weaponized, it could play out in ways that we can’t even predict, the so called unknown unknown. But at the same time, I am not sure I am going to be able to say, I am not going to be able to say, I am not going to be able to say, I am not going to be able to say, I am not going to be able to say, I am not going to be able to say, I am not going toI mean, look how far we have come. Look how fast we have gotten here. Like we were crawling the savannas of Africa and now we are like building space telescopes that can peer into the Big Bang.
I can call on my phone, I can call my mother with a device that Amber Case calls a techno social wormhole opener. The smartphone like just o pens up a techno social wormhole, whereby space and time and geography collapse, and I can see another person and talk to another person across oceans, across continents. So I see technology all around me, that, as Arthur C. Clarke said, is indistinguishable from magic. So, creatures that engender things indistinguishable from magic can get their act together if they need to and if they want to. So, and the protopian view, I believe, is exac tly that. It says, Hey man, if we get our act together, we have within us the capacity to do it. And I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it.As Stuart Brandt said, we are as gods and might as well get good at it. So, it’s not saying… There’s no guarantee, I suppose. But my intuition and my feeling, and I suppose my faith, lies in us, in this being our finest hour, in us rising to the occasion.
But at the same time, you cannot ignore that we live in a very individualistic socie ty. I totally agree with you. I mean, the human are stronger because they go together and because of language and all those. But at the same time, since the Enlightenment, we are very much i nto de this individualistic. And I, when I listen to a talk like Tristan Harris on the on the on the A. I, people are listening and yet they are wondering, yes, but how can I take advantage myself of A. I. ? So, they are listening to Tristan saying, oh yeah, A. I. Is super dangerous. And at the same time, wondering how they can take advantage of it, because they don’t want to be last. So, you know, the struggle and that, that’s, to me, is the issue.
Absolutely. And you know, I am not a fan of A. I, but I am a fan of Tristan Harris. I am a fan of Tristan Harris. I am a fan of Tristan Harris. I am a fan of Tristan Harris. I am a fan of Tristan Harris. I am a fan of Tristan Harris. Iknow it’s nothing new under the sun, that technology is and has always been, a double edged sword. And so, the alphabet, how wonderful this tool to encode human knowledge.
Allege, to allow us to communicate and you can weaponize language. Writing, same thing. The printing press, how liberating, but also, hate speech, propaganda can really propagate itself through the printing press. Same with social media. Without social media, I know that my career wouldn’t really have been possible and the hearts and minds that I touch through my work, that thank me for the ways in which my work has served their life, wouldn’t be possible for that. We’re not for that medium, for that technology, but we’v e seen the weaponization of social media. We’v e seen what it did to the United States. In the elections, we’v e seen how it was used. Cambridge Analytica, we’v e seen what happened with Brexit. I mean, incredibly problematic stuff. And I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I guess, that’s just the story of man, un fortunately. The story of humanity is, in some ways, we are Promethean beings and we s teal fire from the gods, but perhaps we got ahead of ourselves.
We didn’t have the the wisdom and the prudence, as Daniel Schmitt has put it, of a leader of a nation. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’tknow what Zuckerberg or said. To to to utilize, to deploy thes e tools in the best of ways, we sort of just deploy them in the use cases happen, and some are good and some are bad. M aybe we need to get ahead of that before the tools are out of our hands. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.Ils ont des trucs de world shaking and world destroying tools.
Who should be the ways men we’re trusting ?
Yeah, good question. In terms of like, who do we listen to ? Is probably the toughest question of all. And I talk about this as well, that human beings, their existence, and we’re storytelling animals and our our compass, our… The way we orient ourselves, the way we orient our behaviour, the thing that tells us how to act in the world is a storytelling structure. You know, like guys seem to be like… At the very bottom of consciousness is story. Meaning is extracted from story. And so, and so, and so, these narratives, the stories, the stories, they sustain us or they can destroy us. You know, there’s nothing more tragic, but also fascinating about, ah, somebody who chooses to take their own life, especially in the Western world, where we have secured such material prospérité, such material wealth, something that our ancestors would have like, dreamed about, you know, cell phone, Internet, communication, whatever, cable télévision, and that today, more people die by suicide than die from natural disasters and armed conflicts, combine.
Well, suicide is a crisis of storytelling, in my opinion. When the story you tell yourself about yourself is no longer convincing, when the narrative that sustains your life, when the narrative that gives your life meaning, collapses or gets inverted or gets corrupted, like a software file. Well, if you don’t have a story, you can’t live. A man can live a few, you know, weeks, without food, a few days, you know, with a lot of food, but you can’t live. So, you know, suicide is a crisis of storytelling, in my opinion. Well, suicide is a crisis of storytelling, in my opinion. When the story you few days with out water, but not for a minute with out hope, not for a minute, without a sustaining narrative. And so, the narrative matters. Jamie Weal, during the Harvest conference, talks about when people come together and are like jolted into aliveness by something called soul force. It’s the thing that wakes us up, you know, this affirmation of life in spite of its tragedy. And he cites people like Martin Luther King, you know, potentielly Nelson Mandela.
I love language, I love literature, I love poetry. I want the best storyteller or the storyteller that wins to be a very literate one. I want just an inspirational voice that becomes the voice, you know, that we all orient our lives around. But I don’t want it to be an ideological voice. I don’t want it to be a populist voice. I don’t want it to be a voice that separates us, that casts us into a world of us versus us. versus them. I want a unifying voice that sees the other as oneself and that, at the same time, celebrates our differences. And so, that requires a different kind of thinking. You know, somebody informed by the overview effect, somebody informed by psychedelic, egoless rapture, somebody who’s been moved by song. I mean, it’s a big thing that I’m looking, you know, for the person to be the storyteller of our times. The people I tend to respect the most are filmmakers, because I think they tell the best stories. They tell the best stories through modern myths, which I think films are.
Christopher Nolan, for example, his new film that he’s making about, you know, Oppenheimer, I am, become death, you know, about the invention of the atomic bomb. I probably feel there’s probably more relevanc e in this new film. I haven’t seen it yet, but mo re relevanc e in this new film now, as we face all thes e cataclysmic potential, you know, runaway effects with our technology, to watch a film, you know, and to be able to see a film, you know, and to be able to see a film, you know, and to be able to see a film, you know, anda film about what happend, you know, w hen we really started to play God and discover atomic power. So, again, long winded answer, but I think it’s story tellers, the right story tellers
