#360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics | Lex Fridman Podcast

If you approach a complex issue with nuance, you will likely be attacked by both sides of the low-rung thinking political spectrum 

If human history were a 1,000-page book, then the hunter-gatherer period would be the first 950 pages 

Criticism culture attacks the idea while cancel culture attacks the person

Media companies in the past had to actually balance neutrality and accuracy or they would lose their viewership to their competitors 

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• Different parts of the brain light up when political beliefs are challenged versus when non-political beliefs are challenged 


• The default-mode network of the brain lights up when political beliefs are challenged


• Our primitive mind comes pre-programmed to care a lot about politics


• Right now, tribalism has coalesced around politics more than anyt

The media is not penalized for lying; corporate media journalists are incentivized to lie because they are rewarded with clicks and not held accountable by their team for lying

• Death is the human physical machine failing 


• There is no law of nature that says the machine must fail 


• Tim Urban is excited for the time when the person can decide when their machine fails 


• He thinks that people will look back on death, as it happens today, as barbaric 


• The ultimate achievement is humans dying when they are read

The 20th century was the best century yet across every metric that matters  It also had the biggest wars in history, the biggest genocide in history, the biggest existential threat yet with nuclear weapons, the biggest economic crash in history, etc.

It is optimal to create a culture where no idea is sacred so each idea can be properly scrutinized