Transcription
柏格鲁恩研究所最初在柏林一家博物馆楼上的公寓里开展工作，前国家元首和全球思想家在那里进行安静的探索性对话。但我们的真正起源是在洛杉矶的一家咖啡馆，尼古拉斯·柏格鲁恩（一位具有全球视野的投资者）与内森·加德尔（一位与加州政治和媒体有着深厚联系的记者）会面。我们研究所的联合创始人可能来自不同的世界，但他们都有一种感觉，即我们所遵循的旧制度不再奏效。为公众服务的机构正在落后。所需与可能之间的差距不断扩大。我是唐·中川，洛杉矶柏格鲁恩研究所所长，这里是《未来学》。[音乐] 2008年全球金融危机之后，在我们研究所的早期，我们面临着陷入短期思维的政治体系。从加州开始，我们着手解决这个问题。我们联系了来自左右翼、工会和全球金融界的领导人。但这些不仅仅是地方性问题。所以我们也向外看，向西向东，召集了不太可能的思想家和实干家联盟，寻找新的想法和新的制度架构，以应对21世纪的挑战。气候冲击、数字颠覆、脆弱的民主、日益加剧的不平等。在北京，尼古拉斯和内森开始与学者和高级官员会面，以了解一个截然不同的体系如何能够使7亿多人摆脱贫困，如何建设基础设施，如何实现长期规划。这并不是要复制中国的模式。而是要促进东西方之间的对话，以探索我们可以从彼此身上学到什么。历史上，像这样现有体系动摇的时刻，常常预示着伟大的变革。犁、印刷术、蒸汽机，每一次都重塑了社会，并要求与之匹配的新的政治和经济结构。现在，我们发现自己正处于人类又一个转折点之中。人工智能正在以我们才刚刚开始表达的方式改写我们社会的DNA。我们继承的制度不是为如此快速、如此互联的世界而建立的。虽然研究所对技术能将我们带往何处持乐观态度，但我们也深知它可能构建的反乌托邦。在这里的《未来学》节目中，我们正在做的工作是命名下一个事物，想象一个我们可以共同实现的未来，而不是一个我们必须共同努力去阻止的未来。在本期节目中，尼古拉斯和内森回顾了他们所见、所建以及如何专注于设计能够跟上我们现在所处世界步伐和复杂性的机构。现在，我们自己的尼古拉斯·柏格鲁恩和内森·加德尔在《未来学》节目中。所以，尼古拉斯，当我们第一次在洛杉矶见面时，嗯，2009年、2010年，我们来自完全不同的世界。你是一位全球投资者。我曾是《知识季刊》的编辑，也是《洛杉矶时报》辛迪加的全球服务编辑。但我记得我们第一次谈话就像我们今天谈话一样，那就是“事情不再像以前那样运作了”。一个想要按照自己的方式运作的世界，现在不再是这样了。我记得当时我们觉得我们有点像一对奇怪的夫妇，就像费利克斯和奥斯卡在杰克·莱蒙和沃尔特·马修主演的著名电影《奇怪的夫妇》中一样。年轻的人可能不记得那部电影了，但电影里有一个著名的场景，这两个人合住一套公寓，奥斯卡在公寓里烦躁地走来走去，费利克斯问：“奥斯卡，有什么问题？”他说：“系统有问题。这就是问题所在。”这恰恰反映了我们当时对世界的看法。我认为我们共同拥有的，以及在某种意义上在智力上将我们联系起来建立研究所的是这样一个想法：治理的质量很重要，无论社会是倒退还是前进。我记得我们早期的一次谈话，我们都曾广泛地游历过亚洲，多年来，我们看到新加坡从一个贫困的地区发展成为一个第一世界国家。中国使7亿人摆脱了贫困。而在同一年，我们居住的加州却在倒退。债务像塞拉山脉一样高。有D+的学校。在监狱和高等教育基础设施上的支出比中国还要多。我们在加州花了20年时间，却没能建起一列子弹头列车，而中国在同一时期却建了2万英里。所以我记得我们建立研究所的第一个动力是思考如何从这些地方的治理中学习，并以某种方式将其适应于我们民主和个人主义的方式。所以，在我记忆中，这就是研究所的开端，我想知道你当时的想法，以及我们是如何发展的。所以，正如你所说，系统是问题，或者说是机会，我认为当时是这样，现在仍然是这样，而且只要我们人类存在，就将永远是这样。这是一个如何组织自己的问题，其中一部分是系统性的，我认为我们从一开始在研究所的方法就是尝试以一种可能不那么传统或至少不那么孤立的方式做事，我们试图解决问题的方式，正如你所说，治理确实很重要，人们的生活以及他们过得幸福或不幸福的生活，确实取决于他们居住的体系运作得有多好，治理得有多好。所以，我们从一开始就看待事物的方式，直到今天，我们觉得与仅仅与政客、经济学家、学者或哲学家打交道不同。我们将处理我们关心或认为重要的任何重大问题，通过与所有这些人交谈并与他们互动。而且，由于研究所是独立的，我们坦率地说，有奢侈的余地，能够跨学科、跨不同的知识来源、经验来源进行互动。所以我们做到了。另一个是，从一开始我们就觉得，西方或者你内森在美国长大，我欧洲长大的文化，并不是唯一的文化，而且在本世纪可能不会占主导地位，我们把亚洲等其他地方作为例子。所以，研究所一直以来都涉及来自世界各地的人和文化，因为我们觉得我们可以学习，而且不仅是学习，而且要有一个运转良好、繁荣的世界，我们需要真正地跨文化互动，所以我们做到了。所以，尼古拉斯，那么我们所做的，我想是在2010年初或2011年，作为非学术人士，我们都不是学术人士，我们从实践开始，而不是从理论开始。所以，我们早期有两个项目，我认为值得一提，以说明研究所的思维方式和我们所做的事情。一个是“长远思考加州委员会”，另一个是“21世纪委员会”。让我先谈谈“长远思考委员会”，你可以补充一些我可能忘记或没有整理好的东西。正如你提到的跨学科和来自不同领域的人们混合在一起，那个小组是由13位杰出的加州公民组成的。正如我提到的，加州正处于危机之中，学校是D+，监狱和高等教育的支出更多，赤字巨大。我们把当时的加州州长阿诺德·施瓦辛格召集到一起，在此之前，民主党州长盖·戴维斯曾被罢免。第一次会议，我们让他们握手，因为我们想表达的观点是，我们关注结构性问题。我们不搞政治斗争，我们不参与党派政治。其他成员包括来自各地的两党人士，他们有治理经验，比如杰里·布朗，他在施瓦辛格之后成为州长，他曾与我们作证；前国务卿乔治·舒尔茨；共和党方面的前国务卿康多莉扎·赖斯；以及来自民主党方面的前议长、前财政部长、社区活动家、工会代表、加州最高法院前首席大法官。所有这一切都是为了拉开与日常政治的距离，着眼于大局。我们如何解决这个问题？退一步看，我们如何解决这个问题？我们起草了一份报告，并在随后几年中通过立法实施，改革了直接民主制度。有谈判、审议、透明度，以及设立一个应急基金，因为预算的波动会使州一年富裕，下一年贫困。所以，不深入细节，重点是我们把来自不同生活领域的人们聚集在一起，着眼于大局，远离日常政治，试图解决问题。然后，“21世纪委员会”是在全球层面做同样的事情。在那时，我们谈论的是2011年左右，我们仍然从全球金融危机中恢复过来。而且，没有一个全球性的公民社会组织能够将发达经济体和新兴经济体聚集在一起。世界正因金融危机而分裂。所以，想法是将经验与全球思想家联系起来，与那些从非传统角度解决问题的人联系起来。这个小组第一次在巴黎开会，你还记得。我们当时会见了法国总统萨科齐，因为当时的想法是为G20提供建议，而G20的主席是轮流的。当时是法国。所以，我们与萨科齐会见了这群人，会议结束后，我们的中国合作伙伴曾说，我认为新上任的中国总统需要会见这个小组。所以，之后，正如你所知，我们去了中国，并在接下来的几年里与习近平和中国领导层会面，以建立一个理解的桥梁，当时这个理解的桥梁比现在更多。我认为你提出了很多非常相关、非常正确的观点，内森。首先，研究所的DNA中很重要的一点是，思想确实很重要。思想确实能带来改变。我的意思是，对我们是谁产生了影响。而且，对我们人类来说，一直都是如此。即使在今天，经过数千年，我们仍然生活在一个由2000年前在希腊发展的思想家塑造的世界里，西方有宗教思想，从耶稣基督到东方思想，孔子、老子、佛陀。所以，思想确实很重要，这是驱动我们、塑造我们研究所的因素之一。但我们思考如何处理这些思想的方式是，看看它们如何在现实世界中得到检验。所以，研究所的DNA是，是的，发展思想，但然后，让我们看看它们是如何实践的，甚至尝试在现实世界中检验它们，这就是“长远思考加州委员会”背后的原因，正如你所说，这是一个两党合作的努力，为加州提出改革思想，委员会确实提出了这些想法，而且很有趣，我想我会问你一个问题，只是为了处理今天的加州，有趣的是，加州也许是美国的一个重要例子，但它是一个非凡的成功，巨大的经济体，我认为加州可能是世界第五大经济体。所以，生产力极高。而且，在技术方面，可能是世界上最具创造力、最具影响力的地区。但是，当你住在比如我们都住的洛杉矶时，你可以看到，尽管取得了所有成功，但这个地方却运转不灵，对大多数人来说肯定运转不灵。存在巨大的不平等，不仅在结果上，也在机会上。所以，你会想，系统有什么问题？所以，我们试图通过“长远思考委员会”来解决这个问题，我们从几个不同的角度来解决它。在加州这样的地方，民主是如何运作的？加州是一个缩影，因为它有直接的公民投票，意味着直接民主。那么，它实际上是如何运作的，以及它如何分配经济利益？它是有效率地、公平地分配，还是没有？你可以看到，在加州，即使是出于好意，它实际上并没有实现。所以，问题可能是文化上的，可能是结构上的，因此是系统性的，这就是研究所的独特之处。我们将尝试从根源上解决问题。所以在加州，你有一个投票系统，这是一个结构性的，相当抽象的系统，因为它是加州民主运作结构的一部分。我们在“长远思考加州委员会”上致力于改革这个投票系统。我们确实取得了一些改变，但没有完全达到委员会推荐的程度。我们从经济角度审视了如何使系统更公平，让更多人参与加州的经济未来。我们研究了诸如普遍基本资本而非普遍基本收入的想法，资本意味着所有权参与，作为例子。所以，这些都是非常结构性的，而且这些都不是大多数所谓的智库、政府组织甚至大学会解决的事情，因为它们太长远了，而我们愿意在研究所里，在一个关注短期、关注明天能做什么的世界里，我们愿意关注那些因为结构性问题而需要时间，或者尤其是在民主国家需要双方以勇敢的方式走到一起做出改变的事情，这些事情并不总是容易的，但这就是我们觉得研究所能够带来价值的地方，而且我认为它确实带来了价值。是的，我认为，通过这些各种活动，我们从一开始就发展了一些范式转变。研究所的理念正如你所说，是为未来孕育基础性思想。如果范式是看待现实的框架，那么当出现新的、新兴的情况时，这个框架就必须改变，其中一些情况你已经描述过了。所以，在“长远思考加州委员会”的经验过程中，在全球意义上的“21世纪委员会”以及我们的一些其他活动中，我们还有一个欧洲小组，组织方式类似。我们提出了三个主要的思想，可以说是范式转变，我认为这些思想将解决你提到的民主问题，以及更大的问题。所以，让我快速地解释一下，看看你是否想补充我说的话。三个P：无民粹主义的参与；通过普遍基本资本进行的财富预分配，你提到了；以及行星现实主义。无民粹主义的参与，有点像你在加州所说的。问题在于，政治体系被有组织的特殊利益集团所俘获，因此无法运作。所以，想法是，而且越来越多的参与者不断被引入。因此，无民粹主义的参与的想法是，由于社交网络和社交媒体的参与力量，将更多的参与者引入政治领域。从来没有比现在更需要像开国元勋那样拥有制衡机制的机构来梳理众多的声音、复杂的利益冲突、大量的争议信息。所有这些都在分裂社会。在这种情况下，你要么走向威权主义，要么走向更多的公民参与。正如你所知，无民粹主义参与的想法是，通过新的中介机构，例如审议性公民大会，将社交网络和更广泛的公民社会融入治理，以补充代议制政府。因为在某种程度上，代议制政府被有组织的特殊利益集团所束缚，将更广泛的利益、不受特殊利益集团俘获的更广泛公民社会引入游戏就变得非常重要，以解决民主问题。如果你不能通过更多的公民参与来做到这一点，人们就会转向威权主义和煽动主义，正如我们所见。民主的想法是，公民真正拥有自己的未来。但是，为了让民主运作，它们仍然必须委托权力，而权力属于政府，政府应该帮助管理事务。好吧，如果当选官员只是政治工具，或者代表不同的派别，只是不同的政党，而不是真正代表公民的需求和愿望，那么系统最终就不会真正发挥作用。问题是如何在一个技术上使每个人都有发言权变得更加可能 Thus, what is the question of delivery in an environment where everyone can have a voice technologically? So what we've been working on in California is to really have smaller groups of citizens contribute through deliberative gettogethers on different issues in a way that's binding through votes or really just to inform citizens as to the value of different issues, different referendums and this has been done in other places for example in Ireland in front of very very sensitive contentious emotional referendums in this case abortion and samesex marriage Ireland asked citizens in to advise each other on what these referendums meant potentially. And it was very effective because even though these issues were so emotional when the results came in, nobody contested them because they had been discussed and informed by fellow citizens in advance. And that's one way to engage citizens. And the question in an environment which is more and more divisive, more and more in silos potentially thanks to social media. How do you bring people together as opposed to apart? And how do you educate citizens? Because you want to engage them. You want to educate them. And that's one way is to engage citizens in those debates and that has been effective in a number of different countries is being tested more and more and this is one of the things that we through the think long committee the bipartisan committee that was created by the institute in California that's what we proposed and we think that the tools exist to engage citizens and for democracies to really work that's needed. Yeah. I think the experience of of the citizens assemblies in Europe and and some of the deliberative democracy groups we've done in California is you can reach consensus if you bring people out of the partisan electoral politics into an island of goodwill so to speak where they can have access to information so they really are informed about decisions they're making. It's that's a key element of participation about populism. Now the idea of of predistribution is and again all these fit in in our paradigm shift work in the sense of foundational ideas for the future. As things change in the future we have to think about how we have to reframe the way we we think about policy and about how we govern. So predistribution and universal basic capital the idea there is that the innovations of digital capitalism are increasingly divorcing employment and income from productivity growth and wealth creation. And that's increasing the gap of inequality between those who own the robots and those who only labor for a living. So a social contract that responds to that dynamic should foster an ownership share by all in the intelligent regime in in the wealth of the intelligent machines that are displacing gainful employment. The aim is to enhance the assets of the less welloff in the first place predistribution rather than only as during the industrial age redistribute the wealth of others after the fact. The idea is to not just break up concentration of wealth at the top but to build it from below. And you do that by spreading the ownership. Now I know that you have experience you've lived some time in Australia and you have an experience with how this kind of sharing of wealth through savings and investment really can improve the wealth and lessen the inequality of society. So maybe you want to talk about that a little bit. The idea is to make everybody an owner as opposed to having halves and halves not is to make everybody an owner especially in a world where intellectual property is going to become more and more valuable. And the people who develop the intellectual property are with time especially when networks are becoming more and more important digital networks they're the real owners of the economy and for prosperity to reach everyone everybody cannot just be sharing in let's call it the results through redistribution, meaning taxes and social services, which is complicated, toxic and inefficient, but much better to bring people in from the beginning as owners. And that has been done in some countries through sovereign wealth funds, for example, Singapore or in a democratic environment, Australia. Australia has a scheme of savings plans called superanuation which were started only 20 years ago but has really made pretty much every Australian family rich. So you don't have poverty across Australia. you actually have one of the highest medium incomes in the world in Australia thanks to something that was only started maybe 20 years ago. Another thing on the participation political participation side that we can learn from Australia is that you have mandatory voting which means that all citizens are involved in the political process. So a country like Australia has been able to bridge two issues. One is to get people involved in the political process so that's happening across the population and two make everybody an owner into the future so that you really don't have poverty and this hasn't been done through taxes. It hasn't been done through a redistribution, but really the opposite, predistribution, giving everyone a chance to own a piece of the future. And therefore, you you can see that it actually is something that can be done at scale. And even though it can't be done within a couple of years, it can be done over a couple of decades which is pretty fast. Yeah. I think the the because this there's savings there's investment and it's return on those investments which is making the Australian participants in this thing is called superanuation fund wealthy. The I think the fund was started 1991 around there. And now it's worth $4 trillion and at 260% of the GDP of Australia. And a figure I've written about recently is that for the voting age adults per voting age adult, the wealth is $770,000. They're the one of the top countries in the world because of this savings and investment plan. So that's the idea of predistribution and universal basic capital participation in ownership of the future so to speak. The third P is the planetary realism. So what planetary realism arose out of our work with with China and and the fact that as relations geopolitical relations broke down with China over trade and technology issues nonetheless climate change is still a super imperative. So the old idea of realism was that nation states are the main actors in the global stage and the idea of realism is that nation states look out over their own interests despite the interest of others. Well, obviously that doesn't work when it comes to climate change because it affects everyone. So planetary realism is is realizing that we're in a new era and the old nation state fighting each other on some issues can't extend to an issue like climate change because then we'll you know we'll never be able to stop the planet from roasting. So one idea that comes out of that for example is even with China a partnership of rivals. We have many conflicts with China, but China and the US could decouple from each other and still survive, but the planet's not going to survive the decoupling of climate policies between the two largest carbon emitters. So that's planetary realism. And then there's an additional paradigm shift, I'd say, from globalization to the planetary. We're in in a period of deglobalization. But what globalization meant was trade, technology and markets crossing borders. What the idea of the planetary means is the borders are crossing us that human civilization is embedded and entangled in the earth systems and we have now come to realize that earth systems are a self-regulating and self-maintaining system that we've disrupted through technology and and industry. But it's only through technology at the same time that we are able to even understand earth's systems through planetary scale comp computation. If we did not have planetary scale sensors and computation we wouldn't know that climate change exist. So the technology in some sense that got us into the mess is also going to be very important in getting us out. So those are the the aspects of planetary realism and they're being tested today as the world breaks apart with different industrial strategies and lack of cooperation on climate change and we need a lot of work there. But those are the three Ps, the three paradigm shifts maybe you want to say participation about populism predistribution and planetary realism. Um now out of the last one for example going back to China and our exchanges with China one of the things you realize when you start looking at governance and comparing governing systems is that they have a lot of underlying assumptions that come from their culture. And in the end it's those conflicts or those correspondences that really matter. So one one thing we haven't touched on is the philosophy aspect so to speak. So as we said we we convene people from different walks of life in different disciplines and different places to address problems. And we want to test ideas in practice. But we also need to think how how is how do we address philosophically all these changes taking place. For example, one thing we do in the Beijing institute in Beijing, you may want to talk about that center is looking at AI artificial intelligence not just from the western perspective but what it means in Dowoism, Confucianism and Buddhism who look at AI very differently less as a threat and more as another co-creator of of existence and reality. So maybe you can talk about the Beijing center a little bit because the the Beijing center at at Beda un at Beijing University is focused on these philosophical issues not on political issues. From the beginning we've looked at things cross-culturally and we started engaging with the other side of the world culturally politically on purpose meaning China. So the institute started with a center in Los Angeles in the west in America but then established a center in Beijing on the campus of Peking University in China on purpose and we now have a third center in Venice in Italy because it's not America and it's not China a place that's frankly a little bit more neutral and the idea that these same questions questions that we have in the west are questions for all of us no matter where we are around the world because we are all sharing the same planet. We're all humans. So the questions of technology, the questions of health, the questions of climate are questions that we can debate and deal with in the west but Chinese Indians no matter where you are also have to deal with them. So in China, we address or try to address the same issues that we're addressing in Los Angeles but much more adapted to the culture and drawing on the richness of the history and the culture that has developed over thousands of years. So there's a very different approach to things like technology to the role of humans, nature and the things that humans have developed including technology than the relationships we have in the west with these. So in China we have from the beginning and continue to engage with probably the most important thinkers, cultural thinkers, philosophical thinkers who today still in China have a voice and have relevance and will shape the future of China because the leadership actually is interested and listens to intellectual thinkers in a place like China. So we have been able to continue to engage on issues that will affect all of us humans as opposed to the shorterterm political issues which are important which a center like ours will have frankly limited impact on the other longer term more philosophyical questions though that we can address and will still have an impact on not only China but on what's happening at the planetary level. I wanted to add on in terms of you know the paradigm shifts what's I think one of the things that we do at the institute is sort of look at everything from not only the standpoint of what's there today but what could be and to look at really what the shift is for example the shift in our worlds has been from let's say fairly slow to very fast. So at the institute we sort of look at things to see what does it mean over the long term. So we take almost the opposite approach of what the the pace of ideas and the pace of response to the ideas is in media even in academia certainly in politics which is very very fast and shortterm. we take the exact opposite view which is how do we engage on the same issues long term as opposed to short term. So we take the appar shift and look and and sort of and turn it upside down in terms of economics I mean economic wealth is becoming more and more concentrated because of technology. So we take the exact opposite approach. How can you spread wealth ownership in a way that's productive? Not a punishment on those who are not involved but really empowering them in terms of democratic or political participation in a world where you have more and more participants meaning voters. How do you make the political contest that exists in the west an exercise that is productive not just a contest? well by finding a way to have citizens participate. So again we take the opposite tack of what actually is the practice in terms of the impact of technology everything is black or white. We think that we almost think the opposite. I think everything that is white can be black and everything that black can be white in the sense that technology is definitely both. Meaning it empowers by definition. And the question is how do you make technology something that is still a help to us humans while we're still around? but in a way that obviously coexists with other elements of what is nature and we are part of nature. So we take a I would say a longer term view we take a view that's still in terms of technology when technology seems to be frankly unstoppable and really part of the solution. We also take the view that you still as as long as we are around we still want to involve and listen to human wisdom. So we take sort of the the long-term view still the human view even in dealing with things that seem to be further and further away from humans. So these are the kind of things in terms of the shifts that are happening that we are interested in. Geographically and politically same thing the world has broken up in the last 10 years visibly in terms of cultures. China for itself, India for itself, Russia for itself, the west divided within itself but also for itself and so everyone is more siloed in terms of culture but yes there are certain things that are planetary that can only be dealt with at the planetary level. they have no cultural or national boundaries health, climate, technology and how do we deal with those? So you're you're the institute or we try the institute to be realistic about the shifts but then as opposed to letting us sort of accept the shifts we almost take the opposite tack and test it to see if there's a way a longer term way to address them. Yeah, a good example a good example of that is in technology. So in in AI AI in particular artificial intelligence that through our various meetings and institutions I mean councils and so on we participate with all the people who are doing the AI engineering up in Silicon Valley. At the same time and they're the ones who are very gung-ho you know let's just go all the way with note breaks in developing AI towards artificial general intelligence. At the same time we are also in touch in our work with the foundational scientists who are very concerned about the dangers of AI that AI can grow out of control. So I would say that we're one of the few kind of institutions that has feet in both camps and has tried to again as we do in all things kind of relate these different silos to each other. So one example I think that's that's worth mentioning is the meeting and then we bring in the China situation as well. the the meeting we had recently in Italy, we brought together the top AI scientists from China with the top AI scientists from the west to talk about safe AI is a global public good. How do you just like climate change and mitigating climate change is a global public issue so too is AI safety. So again we brought together people from completely different places to convene and address the issues in the long term. So therefore we're seen our publication noa people actually write this to us. We're seen as dystopian aware technooptimists meaning we're exactly the kind of hybrid you're talking about. We see promise in technology. We're also very aware of the downside and we try to bring those two together. The other P on philosophy is the philosophy prize. What was your concept behind that? Part of the key inspirations behind the institute is that ideas matter and there's a Nobel Prize to reward great writers, great economists, physicists. But what about rewarding ideas, the value of thinking? And we felt that ideas are just as valuable as anything else. And since it's very much aligned to what we believe in at the institute, we created a philosophy price which is at the same level as the Nobel, a million dollars roughly. And therefore every year we give an award to a thinker who's made a difference. And this has been now close to 10 years that we've done so. And the jury, an independent jury has awarded the prize to leading thinkers like Charles Taylor, but also people who've made a difference in terms of the way we practice our lives like Roose Ginsburg. and thinkers who are maybe not so wellknown but are deep thinkers not necessarily well known in the west like Karatani who was the winner two years ago the Japanese thinker so the idea of the philosophy prize is very much one to underline the value of ideas in a world that's addicted to the newest the fastest ideas are much slower and their impact develops over time is tested over time but has incredible lasting value. As I mentioned before, we still live in a world that has been defined by Socrates by Jesus by KL Marx by Kant in the west and in the east Confucious and Laur and Buddha are still the dominant influences in terms of how people relate to each other. and they are new influential and great thinkers. But it's more important today to think in a world that's being changed by technologies that are being developed by us because these technologies are reshaping who we are. The question is who do we want to be? Between gene editing, between AI, between quantum computing, we can change our own nature. So before we change our natures, we should think deeply who do we want to be? And that's a philosophical question. And that's why we engage with thinkers and with philosophers. And that's also one of the reasons why we created a magazine Noa which you could think is a crazy idea in an environment where people are fighting with each other over X, Twitter or other platforms second by second. Why create a magazine that publishes a couple of significant but longer articles every week. In a way it's madness but it very much reflects our thinking that yes we have to be a bit deeper a bit slower in a way more analog because we still are in terms of how we address the digital changes. Maybe Nason, you can as a former journalist, you can tell us or tell me anyway how we ended up creating Noa, a magazine that now I think reaches a very good audience and publishes extraordinary content. But how did we create something that's really quite old-fashioned in a very modern world? Yeah. Well, it's it's exactly first of all, it's exactly a reflection of everything we've been talking about the institute. It's a place where you can connect the dots and link the correspondence of ideas by bringing different people from different places together with one with one focus. So for example you mentioned that on the technology issue we were talking about technology before you have a dialogue going on I mean not face to face but in the pages of noa between Uval Harrari who says AI is an alien species that's going to invading us not from outer space but from California and then since we're here in California we have the AI science scientists who were creating the aliens talking about is is our artificial int is artificial intelligence conscious and we try to bring all of that together in one place and the reason that no and no can do that because of of the independence of the buguan institute but we do it because it's not happening elsewhere a predecessor to the noa was the world post which we published in the Washington Post. It's all, as you were saying, it's all quick, it's all daily, it's all a meme of the moment. You can't penetrate to the the depths of what the real issues are, and noa the pace of NAMA and the way we look at the world enables us to do that in long form and an and and often having untimely meditations about things like the planetary or universalism when politics is going nationalistic. So, it's kind of a a little refuge, from the, the pace and mania of the rest of the media. So, I think that's why it's attractive to people because, as you were saying before, it's the opposite of the way most new media is being launched, which is just the other way, is how to get many clicks, how to how to spread memes and dominate the discourse for 30 or 40 seconds. So we're very much focused on the I would say the quality of the discussion, the quality of the ideas and also the hopefully the originality of the ideas and not taking a position upfront ideological or even cultural but being open to what we can learn from the ideas from mixing the cultures and the fields, the disciplines from different people who have a different angle. Meaning a physicist may have something impactful to say about consciousness. Even though he's not or she's not a neuroscientist. a neuroscientist may have a point of view that could have an impact on something far field from what they do. same with a philosopher who may have an indirect impact on something that is let's say in the economy and we do this from a western standpoint but also from a non-western standpoint and I think that's part of the value of the institute and in this podcast series we're going to be rolling out all those people exactly to talk about the paradigm shifts and the different ways of framing reality and how we can operate effectively in it. You know, on a on a personal level, my my personal life is pretty much tied up with my intellectual life. And when we met, I was like you and I think this is probably the connection. I was kind of fed up with the posity of new thinking about what was going on in the world that as editor of the the global service of LA Times syndicate I couldn't really explore because newspapers as we've just been discussing were already declining at the time. They were no longer platforms for for really dealing with the big issues, and I was just losing interest in journalism and in ideas and at the same time having had been involved in California politics for you know knowing Governor Jerry Brown was a friend of mine. We traveled around the world in China, Russia, other places. I was kind of involved in California. California was a real mess. I felt as a patriot it was important to help try to fix things. And I was also frustrated with the already then we're talking about 2010 or so the growing partisanship. Where it's just not in my nature as you were saying to make things black and white. It's in my nature to try to find where the consensus, where's the common ground, where the correspondence. So all of these things were were kind of going on in my professional life and in my mind and then you came along with basically the same mentality. And so I think that was really a a meeting of fate in that in that sense in terms of paradigm shift a paradigm shift and and I guess all of this involved like what's next? what you know even if we analyze the problem might then what? So a paradigm shift is a framing of reality that helps make sense of the world and allows you to effectively operate in that world. A paradigm shift is when reality changes it needs to be reframed. So the world does make sense and you can operate effectively in that world. And precisely to go back to your comments on the long term you've got to look at both history and you have to look forward at the same time in order to really foster a paradigm paradigm shift because as as the physicist Ilopazine once said I think it's true is that the future is not so much determined by the past as our image of the future determines what we're doing now. And I think that's why the paradigm shift thing is is so important. So Nicholas, one thing I one thing I noticed when we met and I knew it would be a good marriage in that sense is that we both sent our whole I spent 25 years interviewing big names for big papers. Yaser Arafat, Shimone Perez, Gorbachev, Mandela, that kind of thing. You never spend a day without having lunch or coffee or something with somebody new.
您拥有这个不可思议的网络，我也拥有这个网络，将它们结合起来的想法，呃，呃，其潜力是显而易见的。但当时是什么让您，然后，呃，您建立了这个网络，即使有很多商人，但您总是有想法。是什么让您，可以说，从将商业作为您的主要关注点，转向了想法？所以，就我而言，这几乎就像回家一样，因为我在巴黎长大，并且在青少年时期就对思想世界感兴趣。我对哲学和政治感兴趣，我读了很多超出我理解能力的书，嗯，但我被像萨特或加缪这样的作家所能学到的东西迷住了，而且，嗯，与遵循思考或写作的道路相反，我认为我应该了解一些关于现实世界的事情，我走了很长的弯路。坦率地说，我所做的只是回到我最初的热情，那就是思考，推测，嗯，我们是谁，我们可能是谁，我们可能成为谁。在商业领域走了很长的弯路确实有一个好处。我学到了很多，也旅行了很多。所以，我看到了不同的文化，不同的方式，以及实践。我看到了想法和实践之间的区别。在我们研究所的工作中，我们一直都能看到这一点，因为我们可以看到想法是如何被实施的，或者没有被实施，被测试的，或者没有被测试的，但我们重视双方。我们重视想法，我们也重视实践。在我的一生中，我能够体验到这两种。我之所以投身于思想世界和研究所，是因为它能够将新想法、更好想法的发展和探索与，嗯，再次看到，嗯，现实会如何，您知道，会如何对待这些想法。嗯，坦率地说，这也有点自私的，嗯，努力，因为，正如您所提到的，它让我，让我们集体地与令人难以置信的有创造力，嗯，嗯，深思熟虑，嗯，在某些情况下是勇敢的，各种各样的人互动。嗯，这是一种个人体验。能够与一些最有趣的人互动，嗯，不仅是理论上的，嗯，而且是实践中的，嗯，并通过，嗯，Noa 或即将推出的播客系列，也能够与世界分享他们的想法，嗯，并让他们的想法受到世界的挑战，就范式转变而言。这对我是个范式转变，因为我也看到世界在变化，我感到在一个将与今天截然不同，与我们开始研究所的15年前截然不同，并且我认为在未来15年也将截然不同的世界里。为什么不参与这些范式转变呢？这些范式转变，嗯，我认为当时就很明显，但今天仍然如此，那就是我们正从模拟转向数字，但两者都仍然非常有效。嗯，我们如何，嗯，协商，嗯，这种转变？我们如何，嗯，作为模拟生物，嗯，比我们启用的数字，嗯，代理慢得多，我们如何，嗯，可以说，生活在这两个世界里？我们如何让这两个世界共存？这是第一个。嗯，我们如何，嗯，嗯，在这样的环境中，嗯，80亿，嗯，人类，他们如何，嗯，分享资源，信息，嗯，未来，我们在地球上拥有的一切？嗯，这些转变正变得，嗯，对每个人都更加透明。这是另一个范式转变。嗯，嗯，以及您如何实际，嗯，导航它，嗯，对我们每个人作为个体，也对文化，国家，州，不同的，嗯，利益相关者。嗯，这让我们想到文化在地缘政治中的作用。毫无疑问，在这个世纪，存在着从，嗯，西方到东方的转变。嗯，我一直认为这个世纪是太平洋世纪。嗯，这就是我们所在的地方，加利福尼亚，但看向另一边的太平洋。嗯，所以，范式转变是巨大的，嗯，能够在研究所参与这段旅程，并使他人能够通过参与研究所，通过研究所的工作，通过，嗯，出版他们的声音，在Noa上或通过这个播客理论，来帮助我们导航，是一种参与的方式，嗯，作为一个人，这就是生活，就是与他人互动。我们都认为这会很有趣，而且确实如此。是的，它需要，它需要，嗯，它需要很有趣。未来学是 Studio B 和 Waveland 的制作，由 Realm 发行。我们的执行制片人是 Nicholas Burguan，Nathan Gardell's，Don Nakagawa，Niels Gilman 和 Jason Hoke。未来学由 Grant Slater，Alex Gardell's 和 Natalia Ramos 制作。我们的副制片人是 Alyssa Martin。未来学的主题音乐由 Marcus Begala 创作。节目由 Aaron Bastinelli 混音和母带处理。特别感谢 Heather Mason，Olivia Derenzo，Carly Muleori 和 Nick Godard。[音乐]