[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf, where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age.
[00:00:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey everyone, Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute.
[00:00:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Almost two months ago to the day, we had futurist and author Byron Reese on the podcast
[00:00:24] [SPEAKER_01]: to talk about AI and its possibilities and risks. I warned you all then that I would have him
[00:00:30] [SPEAKER_01]: back on to talk about his new book, We Are Agora, in which he sets out to scientifically
[00:00:35] [SPEAKER_01]: prove that humans together make a superorganism, like bees make a hive, and what that means for
[00:00:42] [SPEAKER_01]: our future and how we should spend our day. Nerdy, inspiring, awesome.
[00:00:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Rob Gonzalez and I had the pleasure of digging into Agora with him.
[00:00:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Byron Reese, welcome back to the podcast. Rob and I are so excited to talk with you about
[00:00:57] [SPEAKER_01]: your latest book, We Are Agora. Thank you so much.
[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_01]: I am so excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'd like to start with a line from your closing chapter.
[00:01:07] [SPEAKER_01]: The message of this book is that though our challenges are great,
[00:01:11] [SPEAKER_01]: we are more than up to the task of overcoming them.
[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Did you know that was the message of the book when you started writing it or was it
[00:01:19] [SPEAKER_01]: in the research and writing that you discovered its message?
[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Definitely the latter. I write books mainly about things I don't know much about or
[00:01:27] [SPEAKER_00]: questions I'm trying to answer. I wrote one about how people had such a different outcome
[00:01:32] [SPEAKER_00]: than animals. This one came out of me being a beekeeper and learning something about bees.
[00:01:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Bees are a superorganism. Bee hives are. The bee is an individual animal, but the group of bees,
[00:01:46] [SPEAKER_00]: the hive, is actually an animal. Not metaphorically, it literally is.
[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_00]: It has a body temperature. It's a warm-blooded creature. It holds its body
[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_00]: temperature at 97 degrees, has a 100 year lifespan, it has a memory of its own,
[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_00]: it reproduces at its level all these things. It's actually an animal. I wondered if it was
[00:02:05] [SPEAKER_00]: possible that humans together form another creature. If so, what would that mean? Can I
[00:02:12] [SPEAKER_00]: prove it? What would that look like and why would I care? I didn't know any of that.
[00:02:17] [SPEAKER_00]: I really didn't when I started working on the book.
[00:02:23] [SPEAKER_01]: That was why it was, I think in part, why it's so fascinating to read is that you take
[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_01]: us on that journey of discovery. I know it's part of your scientific method, or you tell me,
[00:02:35] [SPEAKER_01]: but to not draw any conclusion until you feel like you're done. That's what it felt like.
[00:02:42] [SPEAKER_01]: That was what was so exciting about the ride.
[00:02:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. I've been told the books read like you're at lunch with a friend and you're
[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_00]: talking about things that excite you. That's what I want it to be. It is, you're right.
[00:02:55] [SPEAKER_00]: My journey exactly. I really started with a different question, which is your cells are
[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_00]: all alive. If I took you apart a cell at a time and put each of those cells in a petri dish,
[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_00]: they would continue to live, but you will have vanished. What are you at that point?
[00:03:16] [SPEAKER_00]: You, it turns out, are actually a superorganism as well.
[00:03:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I struggled the whole time I was writing the book, coming up with an analogy. The closest one
[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I got was, have you ever seen those posters? It might be a poster of a kitten, but when you
[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_00]: get in and you look at it really closely, you see that each of the pixels is a photo of
[00:03:48] [SPEAKER_00]: different kittens. I was like, oh, I'm going to go to the library. I'm going to go to the
[00:03:49] [SPEAKER_00]: library.
[00:03:50] [SPEAKER_00]: That's what we are. At one level, we're cells, but at another level, we're a different pattern.
[00:03:54] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a continuity of that pattern that is us, but we're not really alive the way a cell is.
[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_00]: We're like a community. Then it does start seeming quite reasonable that a group of people
[00:04:09] [SPEAKER_00]: are, you have about 250 different kinds of cells in your body that are highly specialized
[00:04:14] [SPEAKER_00]: and those come together and through their interaction, they form you
[00:04:20] [SPEAKER_00]: the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics tracks about 10,000 different jobs. Those are analogous to
[00:04:25] [SPEAKER_00]: the different cells, the different functions within this creature. I named the creature Agora,
[00:04:30] [SPEAKER_00]: which is a word for an old marketplace in ancient Greece where all the people would
[00:04:36] [SPEAKER_00]: come together and they would debate and they would do commerce and they would do all these
[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_00]: things. It was like the energy of human interaction. We are individual cells in this
[00:04:46] [SPEAKER_00]: creature, Agora. The creature has a long lifespan and it can reproduce and it has a memory of its
[00:04:54] [SPEAKER_00]: own and all these other things. Really what got me was the idea of could I prove it?
[00:05:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Was it just kind of like a metaphor for people coming together can do more than we
[00:05:07] [SPEAKER_00]: can individually or is it really an animal and how could I prove it? I made falsifiable
[00:05:15] [SPEAKER_00]: predictions that half a dozen of them that if they could all be disproven, that would logically come
[00:05:25] [SPEAKER_00]: out of the fact of Agora being an actual creature. If it's a superorganism, it would have emergent
[00:05:32] [SPEAKER_00]: capabilities. That is the bulk of humanity together can do things that no individual can do.
[00:05:38] [SPEAKER_00]: We that would be the first one. Individual bees can't live apart from the beehive
[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_00]: that they have co-evolved to a degree they're completely dependent on it. So
[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_00]: a falsifiable prediction would be that humans can't live outside of society. Another one was
[00:05:55] [SPEAKER_00]: that we would enforce rigid conformity because if a bee or an ant starts acting weird, they kill
[00:06:00] [SPEAKER_00]: it. Is there an equivalent with humans and so forth. I made a series of those and I have
[00:06:07] [SPEAKER_00]: very little doubt that it is and I think I can prove it. What is exciting to me about that?
[00:06:16] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not one of those, oh well then okay nice to know. What I think it does is I think it
[00:06:23] [SPEAKER_00]: provides an actual answer to the question why are we here? A scientific answer to the question
[00:06:29] [SPEAKER_00]: why are we here? That's a tall order because science doesn't like why questions. Science is
[00:06:33] [SPEAKER_00]: like how does this happen? When did this happen? Why are we here? That is something science like
[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_00]: tries to change the subject on any time that comes up and I think I know exactly why we are
[00:06:46] [SPEAKER_02]: here. So then next week or. Goodbye everyone that's it. I will say I really like the
[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_02]: structure of the book. It reminded me in some ways of you know the cosmos episode where they
[00:07:01] [SPEAKER_02]: doing powers of 10 and they start at human scale and they zoom down to the cell and then
[00:07:09] [SPEAKER_02]: down to the atom and then even below the atom and then they zoom out and you go from like
[00:07:13] [SPEAKER_02]: human to world to solar system to galaxy to and so on and so forth. It gives you just
[00:07:20] [SPEAKER_02]: the sense of scale and in this book you started with what is life even? Can we even
[00:07:28] [SPEAKER_02]: define it over time? So the building up from foundational principles up to the superorganism
[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_02]: I thought that worked really well. I do have a question though is I get the to your point on
[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_02]: why I get the curiosity driving you to explore this idea but was there something that was
[00:07:52] [SPEAKER_02]: driving you for you yourself to actually make the argument for the agora organism?
[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Is there like a I don't even know like a moral imperative or a drive that you have internally
[00:08:05] [SPEAKER_02]: to discover the answer to that question that brought this up or is it simply curiosity?
[00:08:11] [SPEAKER_00]: No, I would say that it was more curiosity. The wonderful thing about it is when you think
[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_00]: about beehives you know the beehive doesn't work because of some super bee that does all
[00:08:28] [SPEAKER_00]: the work. I mean the queen isn't really in charge. That's not even a very good metaphor
[00:08:31] [SPEAKER_00]: that's she's just the reproductive unit. The hive works because all the bees do their bit
[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_00]: and that's the same with us and if anything the moral imperative that comes out of it
[00:08:46] [SPEAKER_00]: is there a lot of people I know who feel like they should be doing more with their life
[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_00]: that you know they have they have so and so gifts and they're put in these positions
[00:08:56] [SPEAKER_00]: and they feel the weight of that or even the weight that they're not living up to their
[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_00]: potential. And what I learned with this is it's best to put all of that behind you that
[00:09:07] [SPEAKER_00]: agoria is so big no one of us can actually influence it all that much. It isn't the power
[00:09:11] [SPEAKER_00]: of the people that run things it turns out that it's like a clock. The most important gears
[00:09:17] [SPEAKER_00]: in the clock aren't the biggest ones they just happen to be the biggest ones. And so the book
[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_00]: almost is about like chill and really what it says is that you know bees make honey and they
[00:09:32] [SPEAKER_00]: do it you know every bee goes out and finds a flower and does this thing and comes back a
[00:09:37] [SPEAKER_00]: bit at a time. I tell a story in the book in the last chapter about a man who committed suicide
[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_00]: in 1947 by jumping off the golden gate bridge and there happened to be a scientist I mean a
[00:09:51] [SPEAKER_00]: psychologist who studied suicide at Stanford who went up to check these things out and he went
[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_00]: to that guy's apartment and it turns out he lived alone and he didn't really have any
[00:10:02] [SPEAKER_00]: particular problems but he had left a suicide note for nobody in particular it's not addressed
[00:10:07] [SPEAKER_00]: to anybody he just left it and it said I'm going to walk to the bridge now if one person
[00:10:13] [SPEAKER_00]: smiles at me along the way I will not jump. And I found that to be a chilling story that
[00:10:22] [SPEAKER_00]: then that really is what we are to do as humans that's the net of it all is
[00:10:29] [SPEAKER_00]: is we survive because we collectively support each other and I go back to 50,000 years ago when we
[00:10:35] [SPEAKER_00]: got down to maybe 800 mating pairs of humans and we look at how we survived then and archaeology
[00:10:40] [SPEAKER_00]: yeah archaeological evidence suggests we actually took care of the old and the affirmed
[00:10:45] [SPEAKER_00]: and that a Gora like a beehive it is affirmed and it is it works when all the parts just
[00:10:52] [SPEAKER_00]: do their thing and they support each other it's a very modest conclusion in a way it isn't
[00:10:58] [SPEAKER_02]: a big grand one and I feel so much better about my video game habits already yeah you should
[00:11:05] [SPEAKER_00]: just chill Rob yeah no it's exactly what it is just I think what I say at the very end I say
[00:11:15] [SPEAKER_00]: put no heavier burden on yourself than this to try every day to be a slightly better person
[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_00]: you were yesterday and try to smile at that person that is walking towards the bridge
[00:11:26] [SPEAKER_00]: and that is all that it takes to build utopia all that it takes to build utopia
[00:11:33] [SPEAKER_01]: wow I'm gonna have to think on that a lot so you know as I was preparing for the podcast
[00:11:39] [SPEAKER_01]: I was like sure fitting this book into a 40-minute podcast no problem but here we are so
[00:11:46] [SPEAKER_01]: you write about the seven forces that are required to achieve superorganism status
[00:11:52] [SPEAKER_01]: can you rattle off the seven and if you if you had seven minutes in an elevator with a skeptic
[00:11:58] [SPEAKER_01]: which probably means the elevator is broken down or you press the emergency button but
[00:12:02] [SPEAKER_01]: in any event if you had those seven minutes what would you say about the forces to make
[00:12:07] [SPEAKER_01]: them buy you a cup of coffee to hear more like what what would you want to leave there's
[00:12:14] [SPEAKER_00]: a phenomenon known as emergence and emergence is when the whole of the system takes on
[00:12:19] [SPEAKER_00]: properties that none of the components have so no gear in a clock can tell time but the clock
[00:12:25] [SPEAKER_00]: can tell time it has an emergent property of being able to tell time you're an emergent
[00:12:31] [SPEAKER_00]: creature by the way none of yourselves has a sense of humor but you have a sense of humor
[00:12:35] [SPEAKER_00]: and emergence is a very mysterious thing we we it is undeniably scientific
[00:12:43] [SPEAKER_00]: but the idea of how something can take on characteristics that it doesn't have
[00:12:48] [SPEAKER_00]: is complicated it's hard to understand and I don't know that there's actually been a very
[00:12:52] [SPEAKER_00]: good analysis of it and I broke it down to these seven things you have to have a source
[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_00]: of energy for instance you have to have a way to encode information even if it's passive
[00:13:04] [SPEAKER_00]: like a city can encodes information by you've heard of desire paths that's where you know people on
[00:13:11] [SPEAKER_00]: a campus take a shortcut across some field to get between two buildings that makes a trail and
[00:13:18] [SPEAKER_00]: that trail is encoding information and every time you walk across it you're accessing information
[00:13:22] [SPEAKER_00]: because you're accessing this this preferential task the individual pieces of data are lost but
[00:13:28] [SPEAKER_00]: the information lives on and and so forth so there are these seven things I think come together
[00:13:35] [SPEAKER_00]: that make emergence happen it's very strange because there are these weird things like
[00:13:43] [SPEAKER_00]: termites will eat non-load bearing wood in a structure before they eat the load bearing
[00:13:48] [SPEAKER_00]: wood now termites don't know what load bearing wood is right they don't they don't know any of
[00:13:55] [SPEAKER_00]: bees when they go out when they swarm every year and they go find a new home there's all these
[00:14:00] [SPEAKER_00]: complexities about what makes a great home having to do with the size of the opening the
[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_00]: proximity to ants proximity to other bees has sheltered from the rain how much volume inside
[00:14:09] [SPEAKER_00]: of it all of these things and no bee knows what they're doing nobody knows what they're
[00:14:13] [SPEAKER_00]: doing we know that because none of them have ever swarmed before it's a one-time thing
[00:14:17] [SPEAKER_00]: you know they only live a few weeks and so somehow they had this ability that's emergent
[00:14:22] [SPEAKER_00]: the hive has this emergent ability of being able to find a new home even though there's nothing
[00:14:28] [SPEAKER_00]: their brains are half the size of a grain of salt that that's all they have and so how are
[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_00]: they able to do these complicated things and that's what that chapter that's what that section
[00:14:38] [SPEAKER_00]: is about it says here's how you get these higher levels of complexity from very simple things
[00:14:46] [SPEAKER_02]: yeah this it reminds me of the the old economist essay I think this might have been
[00:14:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Milton Friedman essay about the pencil yeah eye pencil that is exactly right in fact I cite that
[00:14:58] [SPEAKER_00]: and so the thing is is that it was written by a man named Leonard Reed and the idea was that
[00:15:05] [SPEAKER_00]: nobody on the planet knows how to make a pencil there's nobody who could fell the tree
[00:15:10] [SPEAKER_00]: make the paint make the lead crimp the ferrule make the steel all of that nobody but pencils
[00:15:15] [SPEAKER_00]: and what's fascinating is that the pencil is a simple example your body has um has 30 different
[00:15:22] [SPEAKER_00]: elements in it that's all it takes to make you an iphone has 60 different elements in it
[00:15:27] [SPEAKER_00]: and and yet iphones get made and really I think by the way that is the big why are we here
[00:15:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean I'll just say it out loud which is okay I gotta do this all right all right why are
[00:15:40] [SPEAKER_00]: we here why are we here there's this theory called the Gaia hypothesis and it was put forth
[00:15:44] [SPEAKER_00]: by a man named James Lovelock and what it says is that the earth
[00:15:51] [SPEAKER_00]: behaves like a living organism all the life on the earth behaves like a living organism
[00:15:55] [SPEAKER_00]: that holds certain values within a realms that are conducive to life what would that be
[00:16:02] [SPEAKER_00]: that would be why is the salinity of the ocean held constant for 500 million years
[00:16:06] [SPEAKER_00]: every year more salt goes into the ocean and water evaporates so why doesn't it get
[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_00]: every year well there's a mechanism that keeps it steady the percent of oxygen in the atmosphere
[00:16:15] [SPEAKER_00]: unchanged the temperature of the planet largely unchanged even though the sun's burning 30
[00:16:20] [SPEAKER_00]: hotter than it was a billion years ago and so it has these mechanisms that hold things
[00:16:26] [SPEAKER_00]: in life in where places that are conducive to life now it was unclear if Lovelock thought
[00:16:32] [SPEAKER_00]: it was alive I think he did or if he just said it behaved as if it is it doesn't really
[00:16:38] [SPEAKER_00]: matter for what I'm about to say if it is alive or behaves like a living system what would it
[00:16:44] [SPEAKER_00]: want and you could say it has once the way you say a sports car wants you to burn premium in it
[00:16:50] [SPEAKER_00]: right it's a reasonable the system you can dance around the wording what are the ideal
[00:16:55] [SPEAKER_00]: operating conditions of the system it would want to live and it would want to reproduce
[00:17:00] [SPEAKER_00]: that's what all living things want should it worry about dying absolutely a big rock is
[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_00]: going to hit this planet it's a statistical uncertainty that big rock is going to hit this
[00:17:12] [SPEAKER_00]: planet and wipe out the life so what should it do well what it needs I wrote a whole book about
[00:17:21] [SPEAKER_00]: why there's only one intelligent life on one intelligent life form on this planet why aren't
[00:17:25] [SPEAKER_00]: there 20 or nine none would be the far more predictable number because almost all life isn't
[00:17:31] [SPEAKER_00]: intelligent and it might be that intelligence is a pretty volatile substance that intelligent things
[00:17:38] [SPEAKER_00]: grow beyond their environment and then they die and I think it's this I think that planets
[00:17:45] [SPEAKER_00]: that fail to evolve an intelligent life form get hit by rocks and are extinct and planets
[00:17:53] [SPEAKER_00]: that evolve too many intelligent life forms blow themselves up and that there's this Goldilocks
[00:17:58] [SPEAKER_00]: number of one and that's still very risky but what choice does the planet have if it doesn't
[00:18:03] [SPEAKER_00]: have one intelligent species to defend it it's going to get hit by a rock and it's going to
[00:18:08] [SPEAKER_00]: die now again none of this means the planet's thinking about this or anything you can just say
[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_00]: it's Darwinian planets that over evolve too much life die out under evolve life die out
[00:18:20] [SPEAKER_00]: the planets that evolve one life form occasionally find an intelligent life form those perpetuate
[00:18:27] [SPEAKER_00]: and they reproduce and I believe that planets reproduce and we'll talk about that in a minute
[00:18:32] [SPEAKER_02]: if you want to yeah it's interesting there's a couple things to dig into there one is
[00:18:37] [SPEAKER_02]: whether or not we get hit by a rock the sun is going to expand and make life on earth untenable
[00:18:41] [SPEAKER_02]: anyway on some on some period of time and um and go nova so there's a there's a ticking clock
[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Carl Sagan actually in his in his book Cosmos had a wonderful section on the Drake equation
[00:18:55] [SPEAKER_02]: which is effectively why haven't we heard from other intelligent species yet and it kind of goes
[00:19:00] [SPEAKER_02]: into the math which is which I thought was pretty fascinating but along those lines I mean
[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_02]: you know you're saying there were a lot of planets either under evolve or over evolve
[00:19:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Sagan in his book Contact I think that the main character asked the question
[00:19:19] [SPEAKER_02]: um how do we survive this moment that we're in you know all of a sudden with atomic energy and
[00:19:25] [SPEAKER_02]: atomic bombs and we've got the ability to extinguish everything there's like this tipping
[00:19:29] [SPEAKER_02]: point where beyond which we can either make the life that's earth has created including
[00:19:36] [SPEAKER_02]: this agora organism we can we can have it exist beyond the timeline that's that's
[00:19:50] [SPEAKER_02]: work with this uh with this agora thesis right if we're one giant organism that would want to
[00:19:56] [SPEAKER_02]: reproduce and would want to survive but we've got this ability to destroy ourselves and
[00:20:01] [SPEAKER_02]: everything else and it's not clear that we're that we're not going to um does does the agora
[00:20:06] [SPEAKER_02]: concept give you faith that we're not going to does it somehow make us does it somehow give
[00:20:12] [SPEAKER_02]: us resilience you know what i mean i don't know if that question no no i love it it's
[00:20:15] [SPEAKER_00]: perfect this was i couldn't have scripted that any better you're talking about the great filter
[00:20:19] [SPEAKER_00]: theory the idea that the reason there's not more life is because there's a big filter that
[00:20:24] [SPEAKER_00]: you get smart enough and you blow yourself up yes that's exactly it so here's what i think
[00:20:30] [SPEAKER_00]: here's let me tell you some really mysterious things one life appears to have only started
[00:20:36] [SPEAKER_00]: on this planet one time or we know it only persisted one time how do we know that because
[00:20:41] [SPEAKER_00]: all life is related to each other it's why you can take you know everybody knows you're 99
[00:20:46] [SPEAKER_00]: the same uh dna as a champ you're 50 the same as mildew like there's one kind of life and you
[00:20:52] [SPEAKER_00]: can take genes from it it's all based on dna gtca encoding it's all we have this one kind
[00:21:01] [SPEAKER_00]: and what's weird so that's that's strange okay why did it just happen once what's weird is
[00:21:07] [SPEAKER_00]: seems to have happened right as the earth was cooling like way back at the very beginning
[00:21:11] [SPEAKER_00]: so that's really strange too and then it seems to have evolved fully formed because we don't
[00:21:19] [SPEAKER_00]: have older kinds of of life non-dna life that somehow has come down it seems to have appeared
[00:21:27] [SPEAKER_00]: in its full complexity and i think all of that supports the notion called pen spermia
[00:21:32] [SPEAKER_00]: which isn't particularly fringe the idea that um that life came here organic matter came here on
[00:21:40] [SPEAKER_00]: a meteorite or something that just crashed into the planet now there's directed pen spermia that
[00:21:44] [SPEAKER_00]: you know aliens came and put people places i'm not talking about that this is just that
[00:21:49] [SPEAKER_00]: biological matter can survive in space it can land in a nice warm it can land in a nice
[00:21:55] [SPEAKER_00]: warm puddle on some planet and it can take hold and then guess what would happen it would
[00:22:00] [SPEAKER_00]: be one kind of life it would be fully formed and by the way it's its molecular makeup won't
[00:22:07] [SPEAKER_00]: necessarily match the planet is on which is the case with us we have elements in our life that
[00:22:12] [SPEAKER_00]: exist way out of proportion with how common they are on the earth and so that's what i
[00:22:17] [SPEAKER_00]: think happens is that uh planets reproduce planets reproduce the same way plants do they
[00:22:24] [SPEAKER_00]: spores out that our sun is a third generation sun it there used to be one here it blew up then
[00:22:32] [SPEAKER_00]: there was a second one and it blew up and we're on the third one and every time that happens all
[00:22:36] [SPEAKER_00]: this biological matter gets thrown everywhere it drifts through space and lands on some planet
[00:22:42] [SPEAKER_00]: and it's like oh it takes hold and all of a sudden life comes up there and it's fully
[00:22:46] [SPEAKER_00]: formed and it only happens once because it's just wildly improbable thing and so should
[00:22:52] [SPEAKER_00]: take comfort in that no uh we still could blow ourselves up that's the thing life is so
[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_00]: inherently volatile that's why the planet can't afford to evolve 20 intelligent species only
[00:23:05] [SPEAKER_00]: planets that occasionally evolve one those only occasionally make it so no we're not home
[00:23:10] [SPEAKER_02]: free by any stretch of the imagination what did you give credit to this planet for the
[00:23:18] [SPEAKER_02]: you know the the other um the cousins to homo sapiens there's about i don't know six other
[00:23:23] [SPEAKER_02]: races neanderthals are the ones that everyone knows but there's a there's a handful others
[00:23:27] [SPEAKER_02]: that existed um humans eventually won and then even humans went through the big squeeze 75 000
[00:23:35] [SPEAKER_02]: years ago or so right um but uh you know is that is that just like an exception to it like
[00:23:42] [SPEAKER_02]: there were maybe six of us or were we all kind of the same thing and there just had to
[00:23:45] [SPEAKER_00]: be one super organism that was going to win out i mean i have an opinion on that which is
[00:23:53] [SPEAKER_00]: uh something happened to a human 50 000 years ago give or take that gave them speech
[00:24:00] [SPEAKER_00]: and what it really gave them was the ability to think in speech there's a wonderful quote
[00:24:05] [SPEAKER_00]: from helen keller where she talks about her mental life before her teacher came where she
[00:24:10] [SPEAKER_00]: had no capacity of thought she didn't realize she was a thing that there existed a world
[00:24:15] [SPEAKER_00]: outside of her that she was part of something she said time had no meaning to her that's how i
[00:24:20] [SPEAKER_00]: think we were and then one human this is kind of the gnome chomsky kind of theory one human
[00:24:25] [SPEAKER_00]: just fortuitously evolved this ability not to to speak but to think in language that's a
[00:24:31] [SPEAKER_00]: different way to think to think in language and that that is so that really is the secret
[00:24:36] [SPEAKER_00]: sauce and that's so overwhelmingly powerful that that tribe immediately got it and they
[00:24:41] [SPEAKER_00]: took over everything now falsifiable assumptions and all that one if i'm right we're going to find
[00:24:48] [SPEAKER_00]: alien life and it's going to be our dna so highly falsifiable we're going to find gtca
[00:24:54] [SPEAKER_00]: dna on other planets that you will be able to intersperse with our genes the second thing
[00:24:59] [SPEAKER_00]: is that when you look at when we got cave art the first cave art weren't these stick figures
[00:25:06] [SPEAKER_00]: it was this beautiful stuff that just happened and we got that the exact same instant
[00:25:10] [SPEAKER_00]: according to the archaeological record that we got musical instruments and the same exact instant
[00:25:16] [SPEAKER_00]: that we got uh represented representation of things abstract representations like carvings
[00:25:21] [SPEAKER_00]: of of goddesses and things like that all happened the same week basically um and i think it was
[00:25:27] [SPEAKER_00]: these humans it's an unhuman had this happen and it's so overwhelmingly powerful that they
[00:25:33] [SPEAKER_00]: and we are all descendants of her
[00:25:37] [SPEAKER_01]: you know byron i'd love to um kind of um digging to the next level or trying to find an example of
[00:25:46] [SPEAKER_01]: of the possibility of us not destroying ourselves um you know one of the one of
[00:25:52] [SPEAKER_01]: the examples that you mentioned which just because i'd seen the netflix um the netflix
[00:25:59] [SPEAKER_01]: program society of the snow recently you talked about the yorguay rug bait rugby team and their
[00:26:06] [SPEAKER_01]: experience and uh and if for those of our listeners that haven't seen society this know
[00:26:12] [SPEAKER_01]: i highly recommend it but i was wondering if we could use that as a way of you explaining
[00:26:18] [SPEAKER_01]: um i don't know is it fair to say that it gives you hope that does there's two things
[00:26:25] [SPEAKER_00]: along those lines so the first one is there is this notion of the overview effect which
[00:26:30] [SPEAKER_00]: astronauts when they go up in space and they look down and they see the unity of the earth
[00:26:35] [SPEAKER_00]: and all of that they had this profound realization that we're all one people and
[00:26:39] [SPEAKER_00]: all of that it's very inefficient to like send people up to space to be able to look down
[00:26:42] [SPEAKER_00]: on the earth and i i hope that what agora does is it um it is the overview effect it
[00:26:53] [SPEAKER_00]: doesn't have to like the right hand but it has to know that they will share the same thing
[00:26:59] [SPEAKER_00]: they will live or die together now the story you talk about is actually something that
[00:27:04] [SPEAKER_00]: happened to me before i wrote the book and that was i was reading about uh the story
[00:27:11] [SPEAKER_00]: so that 1972 this team of uruguay of rugby players and some other people they crash land
[00:27:19] [SPEAKER_00]: in the mountains and a bunch die immediately a bunch die because there are all these blizzards
[00:27:23] [SPEAKER_00]: come and at one point a guy named nando one of the survivors is listening to their only
[00:27:29] [SPEAKER_00]: working radio by himself and he hears a message that they have given up searching for them they
[00:27:35] [SPEAKER_00]: have been given up for dead so he runs to his friends and he says i just heard some great
[00:27:41] [SPEAKER_00]: news on the radio and that is that we've been given up for dead they called off the search
[00:27:46] [SPEAKER_00]: and his everybody was like why is that good news and he said because it means we're
[00:27:51] [SPEAKER_00]: going to get out of this on our own and when i read that i wondered if he really said that
[00:27:57] [SPEAKER_00]: and what did he really think and so i love the world we live in because five minutes later
[00:28:02] [SPEAKER_00]: after after i asked myself that question i found his email address and i sent him an email
[00:28:07] [SPEAKER_00]: and the next morning he wrote me back and he said yeah it's exactly what i said he said
[00:28:12] [SPEAKER_00]: it was terrible news that i just tried to put a positive spin on but you see i think he got
[00:28:17] [SPEAKER_00]: all wrong it was great news because up until that point they had been looking for the rescue
[00:28:24] [SPEAKER_00]: plane they had been waiting for the rescue planes to come get them and the minute they
[00:28:31] [SPEAKER_00]: had been given up her dad he was right they stopped looking to the sky for their answer
[00:28:36] [SPEAKER_00]: and they looked the only other place they could look which was within themselves and so no
[00:28:40] [SPEAKER_00]: rescue plane came and saved them those rugby players they saved themselves and that would be
[00:28:45] [SPEAKER_00]: same message carl shagan delivered one very simple you know and he said there's no hint that
[00:28:51] [SPEAKER_00]: anybody's going to come and save us from ourselves it's up to us and and that's that is
[00:28:56] [SPEAKER_00]: what gives me um his hope is that when we stop looking for some external force to save us
[00:29:02] [SPEAKER_00]: and we say okay we're going to do it ourselves uh that's that's what i got from that
[00:29:08] [SPEAKER_01]: that's great uh yeah i'm guessing everyone at this point is wondering if not screaming
[00:29:15] [SPEAKER_01]: what does this have to do with digital commerce stay in your lane crossby you know we'll do this
[00:29:20] [SPEAKER_01]: every once in a while as we'll open the aperture and say what you know we need to
[00:29:25] [SPEAKER_01]: find hope and uh and um so can you answer the question like when people you were saying you
[00:29:36] [SPEAKER_01]: try and make that person smile you um what does that have to do with digital commerce
[00:29:43] [SPEAKER_00]: well what it says is that um i give the analogy of i use the example of manhattan
[00:29:54] [SPEAKER_00]: manhattan has 10 000 restaurants uh has 40 000 restaurants excuse me and every day
[00:30:00] [SPEAKER_00]: 10 000 tons of food is trucked in to restock those restaurants 10 000 tons and you say okay
[00:30:07] [SPEAKER_00]: who's in charge of figuring out how much flour they need for bagels and how much cod to import
[00:30:13] [SPEAKER_00]: and how much pizza sauce and all of that and the answer of course is nobody is right every
[00:30:19] [SPEAKER_00]: individual store just places their order and and it it has it happens to somehow be the
[00:30:27] [SPEAKER_00]: the same thing with taxis nobody's saying okay we need 4 000 up here by central park we need 800
[00:30:32] [SPEAKER_00]: over here every taxi driver to sort of does their thing and all together it works and so
[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_00]: what it says is that whatever it is you do uh you actually it actually does matter like
[00:30:47] [SPEAKER_00]: it's all part of this functioning organism you're like an actual cell in this giant
[00:30:51] [SPEAKER_00]: creature the reason we had to be created the reason we're here is to deflect that asteroid
[00:31:00] [SPEAKER_00]: before it hits the planet ultimately that's why we're here we even sent up a nasa sent up a dark
[00:31:04] [SPEAKER_00]: probe like crashing to an asteroid see if they get deflected ultimately we're here to protect
[00:31:08] [SPEAKER_00]: the life on this planet that's what our species is and it's easy against something that big
[00:31:13] [SPEAKER_00]: to feel inconsequential and small like well what is it that i'm doing but it's like in
[00:31:18] [SPEAKER_00]: order for that to happen you had to have a school system and you had to have teachers and you had
[00:31:22] [SPEAKER_00]: to have food you had to have a person with a hoe hoeing you had all of that together it's like
[00:31:27] [SPEAKER_00]: we're bees in the hive and so it's like whatever you do don't don't second guess it
[00:31:33] [SPEAKER_00]: that like oh i should be doing more do what it is you do that's your part to play in this
[00:31:38] [SPEAKER_00]: and your bit of support for something else and then help other people when you can
[00:31:45] [SPEAKER_00]: um it's very edifying to a person your your role is small but your role is essential
[00:31:55] [SPEAKER_01]: i love that i think you know i remember when i was coming out of college i i felt like i need
[00:32:01] [SPEAKER_01]: to make a difference and was trying to rattle around to figure out what that was and and
[00:32:07] [SPEAKER_01]: i thought it needed to be in government or i thought you know i thought i need to run
[00:32:11] [SPEAKER_01]: something big and over time i've just begun to realize that my big thing is the people that
[00:32:21] [SPEAKER_01]: i see the people that i work with the people that i love uh and how i show up in the world
[00:32:31] [SPEAKER_01]: and how you know and and that that reverberation if you if you multiply all those reverberations
[00:32:37] [SPEAKER_01]: and they're more positive than not then goodness should result is sort of how i ended up feeling
[00:32:43] [SPEAKER_01]: about it made me sort of i guess sort of the chill pill you were talking about i guess i
[00:32:47] [SPEAKER_00]: got there and that's 100 what the book is about yeah it says that 93 percent of us are
[00:32:53] [SPEAKER_00]: good only seven percent of us are bad i actually have a reason for that a highly exact number
[00:32:58] [SPEAKER_00]: and that um is that if those 93 percent of the people that's why history slowly but
[00:33:05] [SPEAKER_00]: I know it doesn't seem that way sometimes but you compare today to 50 years ago or 500 years ago
[00:33:10] [SPEAKER_00]: or 5000 years ago by any measure you want life expectancy infant mortality status of women
[00:33:16] [SPEAKER_00]: individual liberty self-government access to education any measure metric you want almost
[00:33:21] [SPEAKER_00]: anywhere in the world by any standard things are better now than they were anytime in the
[00:33:25] [SPEAKER_00]: past so we're on the right track because those 93 percent of good people do little good things
[00:33:32] [SPEAKER_00]: all the time and collectively those billions of positive things or our billions of trips
[00:33:37] [SPEAKER_00]: to flowers to get a little bit of nectar to go make a little honey and do our part
[00:33:43] [SPEAKER_01]: so much of what you uh the the seems like the instigation for your research really was
[00:33:50] [SPEAKER_01]: this deep understanding and curiosity about bees uh and as an example yeah
[00:34:00] [SPEAKER_00]: let's tell that story real quickly this is a funny story so i was i grew up on a farm in east
[00:34:05] [SPEAKER_00]: texas my my parents were um good people but they had a moral blind spot on the issue of child
[00:34:12] [SPEAKER_00]: labor and i was one of those kids who had like chores every morning in the dark before i went
[00:34:18] [SPEAKER_00]: to school and uh and but i was a boy scout and so one week i got a break from my chores
[00:34:23] [SPEAKER_00]: and i went to boy scout camp and when you go to boy scout camp you take merit badge classes
[00:34:27] [SPEAKER_00]: and they're always about woodcraft but i was a real nerdy kid surprise surprise i was a nerdy
[00:34:33] [SPEAKER_00]: kid and when when summer i go there and i saw they finally had a nerdy merit badge i could
[00:34:38] [SPEAKER_00]: sign up for and it was bookkeeping so i signed up for bookkeeping and uh because i thought what
[00:34:45] [SPEAKER_00]: what more fun could i have this summer than to learn accounting right well seven other
[00:34:49] [SPEAKER_00]: nerdy boy scouts all show up and the instructor the bookkeeping instructor comes out and says
[00:34:55] [SPEAKER_00]: there's no such thing as a bookkeeping merit badge the boys cats of america would never
[00:34:59] [SPEAKER_00]: offer a bookkeeping merit badge there was a typo and you've all just signed up for beekeeping
[00:35:07] [SPEAKER_00]: and that is the story of how i became a beekeeper that's awesome how's the uh how's
[00:35:13] [SPEAKER_02]: the honey real good we should have asked that at some point i love the bees you know there's
[00:35:19] [SPEAKER_00]: a there's an old mythology that when a when a bee owner dies you go it's called the telling
[00:35:25] [SPEAKER_00]: of the bees and you go tell the bees you go tell the hive your owner has died and that they will
[00:35:30] [SPEAKER_00]: understand that the number there's 30 40 000 bees in that hive and if you count the number
[00:35:36] [SPEAKER_00]: of neurons in each bee that hive is about as many neurons as an animal has so it makes sense
[00:35:43] [SPEAKER_00]: it just distributed which is biased against it because it's not contained in a in a fleshy
[00:35:47] [SPEAKER_00]: orb it's distributed but this doesn't mean it's not a creature and i did read that when
[00:35:53] [SPEAKER_00]: elizabeth died they went and told the royal bees that she had passed away
[00:35:59] [SPEAKER_00]: there's a lot of lore like that in in it
[00:36:03] [SPEAKER_00]: my bees also my bees also you know they never bothered me when i would mow the grass around
[00:36:09] [SPEAKER_00]: them i could push them power mower i push it under them on hot days they would form a big
[00:36:15] [SPEAKER_00]: beard outside of the hive they would all flap their wings and they would circulate air
[00:36:22] [SPEAKER_00]: uh fabulous creatures and again none of them know what they're doing what they're all thinking is
[00:36:26] [SPEAKER_00]: all right i'm gonna go hang on this beard and flap my wings but i have no idea why i'm doing
[00:36:31] [SPEAKER_00]: this right like they don't know they they don't they don't know about convection it's it's an
[00:36:38] [SPEAKER_00]: emergent property that comes about from the interaction of these six forces that you mentioned
[00:36:41] [SPEAKER_01]: at the beginning so i'll just close with reinforcing what you have said a couple of times
[00:36:48] [SPEAKER_01]: through here the quote that really stood out to me so put no heavier burden on yourself other
[00:36:53] [SPEAKER_01]: than be as kind as you can be and try every day to be a slightly better person than you
[00:36:59] [SPEAKER_01]: were yesterday that really is all it takes to build utopia and then you say we really
[00:37:04] [SPEAKER_01]: can do this and how do i know because we are agoram so byron thank you so much for
[00:37:13] [SPEAKER_01]: being so freaking curious and uh and not stopping your curiosity until you get an answer that is
[00:37:21] [SPEAKER_01]: provable and and then using that to inspire the rest of us we really appreciate you well thank
[00:37:27] [SPEAKER_00]: you for having me on the uh and and thank you to your audience for indulging something
[00:37:32] [SPEAKER_02]: that's not digital marketing i tried my best to tie it in our audience is part of the 93
[00:37:39] [SPEAKER_01]: percent so it's all yeah they're a little pretty good well i am thinking of that one but yeah
[00:37:44] [SPEAKER_01]: everybody else yeah byron thank you so much great to talk to you again thanks again to
[00:37:51] [SPEAKER_01]: byron for joining us his book we are agora is available wherever you buy your books and of
[00:37:56] [SPEAKER_01]: course amazon thanks to you for being part of the dsi super organism