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.

• 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 ready to die


• He believes

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

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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 anything

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

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

Leadership is the ability to move something in a direction that the cultural forces are not already taking things 

Criticism culture attacks the idea while cancel culture attacks the person

Ideologies quickly become religions to their followers, at which point the solutions proposed by such ideologies can no longer be challenged