The Ethical Challenges Posed by Technology - Interview with Luis de Miranda

today on the show I have a great pleasure to welcome Luis de Miranda to talk about societal challenges posed by Technology's huge progress hello Louise thanks for joining us today hi it's a pleasure to be here thank you very much I'm looking forward to our discussion we wish you have an impressive career your philosopher your novelists you have a strong understanding of business and technology is that right I don't know if it's for me to say that but it's true that I've had many ways of expressing the same interest which is how thinking is part of being a human being which seems to be something that many of us tend to forget and so this can be expressed through metaphorical novels through philosophical essays but also through philosophical conversations with people who are leaders in different fields and that's exactly what we would like to do today with you it's to inspire to share your wisdom with leaders in the Indus history politicians so that we see what kind of impact technology will have on us your past talk research at the University of South in Sweden you studied at one of the top Business Schools in France and you've published several books including the MIT press now I'd like to jump right away into the questions what in your line should decision makers Tech CEOs and politicians be aware of with today's technology and the future of the technology I think there is a clear Paradigm change going on which can be summarized with one word and that is purpose in several Fields whether it's health care whether it's AI I would say anything that involves a responsibility over not only the world but other human beings and other beings and non-humans too I think that we are perhaps understanding or we should understand or at least some leaders are beginning to understand and that without purpose we are devising solutions that are actually problems at the time so we've had 200 300 years of Industrial Revolution which was about producing new things in the world without much regards or how those things will develop in the future and what we are understanding now is that we need to think about the purpose the higher purpose of our activity in the world and this is something that we humans are in fact not very good at it takes time it takes energy it takes philosophical energy it takes a lot of thinking and consideration to Define one's purpose whether it's your purpose but the purpose also of a corporation so I think this is what's happening now and this is why I believe there is a new category that can be introduced in systems which I call philosophical Health here's the system philosophically healthy is the software is the program is the corporation is the organization philosophically healthy and that has to do a lot with the long-term purpose do you think that our society is the way they are now or philosophically healthy no I think they're not I think they are in some pockets of awareness trying to be but I think The Reptilian Brain is doing a lot of the gearing still in human groups so there's a lot of corruption in all the traditional I don't want to sound too moralistic all the traditional pitfalls of human leadership that are still going on so I think that a lot of work needs to be done to keep up the flame of purposefulness and and philosophical health so you just spoke about the reptilian parade that's referring to our Evolution or lack of it you think we'll be able to evolve fast enough waste already to relate should just relax and I've been optimistic by nature and I think there are two reasons for being optimistic which are either we heal and evolve to use your term such that we learn to live in harmony and in Oneness with earthlings either we don't and what I think is that there might be an extinction of the human species but not a full Extinction of life so Life Will Go On Without us without us and so in both cases I think it's fine okay that's what you call optimism cool now it's about the next question then about the optimism there are plenty of movies in series you probably know them ready player one slow Crush her Lord Matrix Black Mirror these are all needy spoken films do you have any reference to something that shows us a beautiful bright future there's a series that I really liked which is I would say rather optimistic because it shows a cooperation between Ai and humans and that's a person of interest it's not the newest one I think it was on maybe five ten years ago so I do believe that in terms of fiction you're describing fiction so people like to be scared right I've always been surprised because it's not at all my thing by the popularity of Thrillers and scary movies so people like to be scared people watch the news just that shows that they like to be worried so the tendency is indeed again to shock The Spectator we're and bad news seem to function better than good news which has perhaps to do with another feature of the repeaterian brain which is that humans do not always Rejoice of other humans success that easily okay that's not very optimistic either and a while ago I read a very good book you might know it's called paradiser and in that's actually one of your books and in that one I didn't think it was very optimistic either you have Clara and Uno basically it's a couple they try to refine some enchantment in a couple going into a metaverse is there a message of optimism in that book I mean it's it's clearly a critical description of how meta verses can be used right to create alienation to create addiction to create derealization sorry for the big words but I can the realization is the loss of not only contact but awareness of what is real what is not real addiction of course because we get more and more and of this platforms but there is like there is an optimistic message in that novel which is that we can even if it's a small group of humans always disrupt totalitarian regimes or group thing or any behaviors that might hinder our capacity for creativity and freedom and so the characters these are creating a liberating virus that might be seen as something but I think I'm optimistic in the potential for us humans to overcome a lot of behaviors that do not create Oneness and then do not create awareness and Harmony I believe we have that in us all of us but I believe this needs to be constantly reactivated almost on a daily basis like a martial art and is this when you see the future that is shaping ahead of us I mean with what you described in your book for example or the future overall of society you have two kids are you thinking that's the kind of future they're going to grow up in and evolve is that good for you are you feeling happy about it yeah I'm not the kind of people who thinks they was better before I think it was always a mess so the mess continue and within this chaos I think it's possible for individuals and some groups to co-create a form of Integrity so this is what I will transmit and this is what I am transmitting to to my children and hopefully also to my counselor is we can talk about that a bit later is the sense that we can nevertheless learn the joy of being one and being in the world with Integrity it's an immense Joy and it's also something that is not only private but that has an impact upon the world so the fight is a joyful one and worth continuing okay and integrity is a key thing so you think about integrity but we have now the possibility of soon to really truly digitize ourselves we started with a pandemic to digitize our companies learning content ways of working and now we can discharge ourselves we have worked with Virtual Worlds with training in Virtual Worlds having events so the first thing that people do in a virtual world when they're coming there guys start to try to look taller stronger women start to have to increase their body shapes and their clothes won't we prefer to live in a virtual world where our digital twin will be better than us and we're going to stay there I think we need to be careful with words we're not digitizing ourselves we are playing with digital images that we might give a name that is the same name that us and that we might pilot in a way or another but they that represents only one percent of our person right I have lately I'm teaching medical students and I always tell them the person is in you is everything that cannot be measured and therefore are not digitized so if for some people better means adding more hair or less hair I don't know in my case or a certain size Etc that is not a problem of objectivity that's more a problem of our evaluation of what is the good what is the good life right so there's a lot of Education again I'm sounding like a moralist but yes that's a bit your job too right I don't know my job is to help people think so unfortunately because there is a lot of stupidity in this world it sounds sometimes like we're being more or less right so I've I am quite amazed today at the new trend this is not new because it's a comeback of what happened with the seams in the 90s so now we have speculation for virtual real estate right people are buying virtual real estate in the metaverse close to celebrities Etc the problem of silly behavior is not a problem that emerged with digitalization right it's something that just keeps going on so in a way it's again the Nazi nothing new it's just that we are demultiplying the spaces of nonsense yeah but look you speak about nonsense but in Instagram a lot of people start to associate themselves with their Instagram representation of themselves now if the virtual world the metaverse makes it even more real then won't we prefer to be there sorry but maybe you're going to metaverse and say now I have hair and you liked it very much and you stay there in a bit better verse maybe that's a representation of yourself you prefer won't you prefer to be staying in a virtual world rather than come back to reality if you're asking me the question and if my main preoccupation in life was to have hair I wouldn't be here talking to you from the perspective of philosophy I think that there will be people who prefer to spend many hours in a virtual representation of themselves as much as there are people who like to drive Lamborghini 300 kilometers per hour on the highway as much as there are people who take dangerous drugs on a regular basis as much as the list goes on and on the question is are they sustainably feeling joyful so that's the question that I would ask they might feel the occasional adrenaline shot but this is not what philosophy defines as the good life the good lives if it exists needs to be one where the experience of joy is a constant and sustained one and one which at least that's what philosophy has been proposing since Ito Aristotle's Etc experiences in which that state of sometimes called Equanimity equality of Soul Harmony of soul is not one that is constantly threatened by everyday events which might be either good bad like boredom for example we don't often speak of boredom when we speak about this digital addiction Behavior but I think that a lot of people who are engaging in this addictive digital Behavior are people who have a problem of being with themselves right there's a French since you are French and I spent so many years in France there is a French novel from the end of the 18th century called a charm trip around my bedroom and it's I've gotten the name of the author but he realizes that if you look at your bedroom with enough curiosity and creativity you can spend hours discovering new phenomena perhaps that's a metaphor right but and I think that this capacity to enjoy the real will come back it's a little bit the message of paradise my novel which you quote is that at the moment we are in the moment of human history where we forgot about being one most people are completely scattered they are one person on Monday another person on Tuesday I see a lot in my counselors they are not grounded and so the other thing is that there is a constant economical battle to grasp our attention to give you an example lately what I do where I'm at the table with my family if the started in the evening what I call Art of conversation moments so instead of turning the TV right and look for the new episode or the new film Etc we just talk and it sounds so simple right but it is fantastic how do you pick the topic how does that work we just go with the flow and my impression is that I feel so grateful after I feel that I get to know the people that are important for me better and it doesn't have to be a philosophical topic because I can tell you that sometimes my family they are a little bit annoyed that I always try to bring up so it can be something very simple it doesn't matter because it's precisely the art of a conversation which is something the French used to be good at maybe they're still good at I don't know but it's not really what you say it's about what happens in between the lines a little bit like the dialogue we're having now so I think that while this digital attractions are developing I think there will be a counter current of discovering the depth the creative and joyful depth of the real what want to listen to you it seems that we oppose the the joyful of the real to the virtual we don't want to make of course a simplistic oppositions what is real what is not real it's it there is always a thin line between creation and mere acceptation of the data right so this year I've been conducting a pilot study with people living with on wheelchair with severe spinal cord injury and their tetraplegic and they all told me they are tetraplegic but they're living a good life they have jobs they have a family they Define themselves as flourishing and they all told me everything is possible so there we I was going to say clearly and be 95 paralyzed and say everything is possible and yet I I trust them though when they tell me that so they are on a level that is not the level of realism mere acceptation of the standard view of the world they are in a level of the leap of faith they are in a level where they believe that they can tap into possibility to despite their condition and we all have different conditions that we have to struggle with more or less from that given we can nevertheless have an attitude that is Mind Over reality so I'm not of course opposing the good old real to Virtual to the virtual I think the virtual the original dimension of the virtual is actually what might have given the human would come back to Evolution here the human species a an edge over other species which is our capacity to tap into the possible sometimes it's called counterfactual thinking right and so that's easy to play with it possible is present in virtual reality and might have good effects we know that in some cases it has even therapeutic effects when it's used in to treat some for example for beers Etc I believe in AI I worked quite a bit with computer science I believe in an AI that is not meant to replace humans but to cohabit with us and allow us to keep and develop a sense of the possible and I understand the possible maybe even with AI and in a virtual setting in a virtual world might make things even more possible than as you said someone is really handicapped physically the body might be a constrained while your minds either virtual world can do everything it wants right yeah as long as it's not escapism because there are many forms of escapism that Humanity has invented our history shows that it's not always good it's not always bad right there's a book called denial by two evolutionaries and they basically insist that human species is the species that has the highest capacity for denial perhaps the only species that is so good at denial right so we know that we will die nevertheless we live every day as if we were Immortal for example so this capacity for denial is not necessarily always a bad thing because if we were for example submerged by the feeling of death every day we would basically stop doing anything perhaps we will find everything Vain and that's the definition for depression so in many cases we need to Escape right we need to Define our own perception of things but here's the key word is that the virtuality that is liberating is one that you co-define if it's a virtuality that is imposed by others I don't believe much in its capacity to heal cure or liberate and what we see today in the metaverse is that it is we are just Spectators using tools that are developed by others but in another virtual world now now you can create your own instances of virtual world you can have with blockchain based Virtual Worlds you can own part of that virtual world and that's referring to virtual world like ones created by big billion dollar companies that want to as you said create a virtual for you and you respect their rules you are in their world but you can co-create the virtual world in that case that would be more positive I guess yeah and then we're talking about the happy few as with philosophy happy few has access to thinking time I would suppose that I have a few also has access to programming in the sense that you're saying so that's a minority but of course what we would like to see is that the emancipating tools whether they are cognitive or technological are distributed more fairly yeah so new I'd like now to touch a little bit because we can talk for hours I think about the society and and the impact technology about an act to get used on the the work on the job how what will the future of work look like in your mind well I'm afraid I might just set out to a few cliches here but I'm going to avoid those cliches I'm going to tell you what the future of work should be according to my philosophical Health perspective for example I consult for people who work at vaten father who is the first producer of energy here in Sweden and they are interested in philosophical health and some of them have regular conversations with me but very often the stress of having to deal with the everyday management of their tasks puts them back in the default mode of autopilot Behavior so I would love the future of work to be one where companies understand that thinking time is important for not only for the well-being of their employees but also for the creativity and purpose purposefulness of the corporation so we should spend less time doing autopilot bureaucratic tasks and we should integrate thinking creative and even Meandering wandering exploring time in our work so in a way every job should become partly r d r d in in a broader sense of being curious that would be for me the ideal future of work and that would liberate of course jobs because what we see today is that as there is unemployment and what is more sad is that there are a lot of peoples who are doing the jobs of three people we see in Academia for example I started my academic career very late in life so I'm still an early career but I see a lot of professors who actually tell me that with their title supposedly prestigious title came a lot as bureaucracy and they actually have less and less time to think that's a paradox isn't it yes so here's my like say My Wish list for the future of work whether it's more digital or not working at home of course can bring that capacity to if you have your books for example around you you can have a better balance between personal growth or even Collective growth and and executive tasks but that could also be the case in an office now he said that the future of work people need to have more time and maybe we will get to that because before thanks to technology or because of it a lot of blue colors does that job now with a very powerful AI that is improved incredibly even just in the past 12 months maybe the wine colors will be next that means the whole society will have we might not have jobs within the next decade and we would have plenty of time what do we do with that time and how do we Finance everybody yeah so there are a lot of books that explore that possibility it's even a Neo communist Utopia to say fine let's go let's Implement AI such that it's the end of words as we know it yes so I don't have a problem with people having time to have a more flourishing life of course this is great but for that we would need to not only re-evaluate the way we evaluate the jobs the way we look at people who don't have certain titles for example Etc but also of course since we are still living in a capitalist Society people are going to ask for some security once they have that Financial Security they might ask for some social gratification and that has to do as I was saying just a few minutes ago with how we value different activities so for example yesterday my car battery was dead and I didn't have this booster for the battery which I now purchased because I discovered it's quite helpful especially in countries like Sweden where it can get very cool so I had someone come in less than one hour sent by my insurance and he just became and he came with this booster and the car started and my my fiance and I we thought wow he looked very joyful he was like almost dancing and he was just a I was going to say just but that's the problem here is that I think that in a country like Sweden manual work is valued even in terms of salary even into that's an example of people not necessarily needing to have prestige in order to have a work that they find meaningful and it was certainly meaningful he was very helpful for us made your day in a way he saved your day yeah we can say that but what about the universal basic income in some cities they have implemented it in France I was even a presidential candidate who was defending the concept so now you speak about still some kind of a capitalistic system where we have a certain purpose a functional purpose Society but imagine that tomorrow we have money because we were born the state the society finances us and AI takes care of the rest what do we do what do you do what do I do so Universal needs to be Universal right so it is often discussed as something which is basically already existing if you take country like France but several other countries in Europe people have some sort of buffer when they are unemployed right and it can start high then it starts low and in some cases you have some sort of symbolic or minimal amount that can continue for many years so we don't call it Universal income right we call it something else but in fact it is where it is sometimes called to the universal income which is not spoken of as universal I think we should be completely radical about that which means that everyone could earn the same amount of money and then we detach the salary from what we do and then communism yeah except that yeah it would be a form of communism in the sense that there would be a common salary but maybe the term communism is not the most fortunate to use given the history of it which is very problematic so let's just say that if we're talking about a universal income then it should be really Universal then Elon Musk and you should earn the same now the joy we get from having purposeful and meaningful and ambitious tasks should not be correlated to the amount of money a lot of a psychological studies show that we are happy to have more money until a certain salary I don't know exactly how much but let's say just for the sake of the example that Beyond 3 000 Euros per month in your bank accounts if I give you six thousand you're not going to be more joyful under that perhaps yeah you need because it's connected also to the economy and what you need to not to worry I'm not a specialist I'm not an economist but I think that if we want the universal income it should be fully Universal and we can play with our brain we know we have this Reptilian Brain so we can make in a giant experiment and see what is the level of money that we need for everybody to be satisfied and not demotivated right because we want people who take initiative of course Etc and uh we should try let's jump on this okay great fantastic today that is universal basic income we don't have to work anymore there's nothing we must do to make a living and we are free from Financial fears is that going to be good for our species are we gonna uh make love all the time or fight with each other all the time what are we gonna do what is going to be the philosophical Health such Society our species is not looking very good so anything that we could try that would be different I would welcome it and again I'm not a specialist there are many other new forms of life that we could try we already fight a lot with each other we already engaged in a lot of strange Behavior so it's not like things could be much worse I'm saying that from the point of view of a country where life is pretty good the quality of life in Sweden for the middle class has not yet been damaged but I am aware that this is a privilege and this is one of the reasons why I moved to Sweden along with other more family reasons but also the love for nature is is that we see that in many countries that middle class has been so damaged as we know that it is precarious and it is constantly in this financial worry that you're mentioning so this is of course a means of control political control so I don't think that the luxury of imagining more philosophically healthy forms of life and again I think the first stage would be to think about what the options are there is a French comic book called lanciver ear zero one I don't know if you you know it but it's very famous from this early 70s and it's basically the idea is that okay let's stop everything and think about another way of life so in that comic book people just stop they just stop everything and I think we of course in a more pragmatic way right we should take more time for example one thing we could think about is what if we all worked 50 of our time and the other 50 we spend on thinking about new forms of life this is actually how this is how my days look like but I would like to share this because it's great we're very lucky on that you're very lucky yeah I'm also precarious and I'm also don't know I'll be unemployed in one month and then perhaps not unemployed in three months I took many risks and I have paid a lot with my blood to be able to have the life I wanted and the Fight Continues Again by the way respect for this because that's not easy to sacrifice one's safety and follow one stream so well done you can only relate to this as an entrepreneur exactly and of course and as an entrepreneur you probably relate to the fact that I say there are five principles of philosophical Health one is mental heroism is that we're talking about it takes some courage to live according to your vision whether it's a vision for a more fair way of doing something whatever it is where is a vision about a form of society Etc that's the first then in order to do that you need to have a deep orientation so you need to know what that purpose is and that takes something then the third principle is critical creativity so it's important to be creative but in a way of course that is critical such that we remain attached to the real and it's necessities fourth one is deep listening so it's what we're trying to do to each other now but it it can be also trained such that we realize that in many of our relations and interconnections with other humans we don't really listen deeply and just listen deeply even to ourselves create surprising results and the fourth one is the Creole so if you read Paradise or you're familiar with that term so it just means that it is healing to remain connected to what I think is the ultimate ground of all there is which is this creative flow of possibilities and it sounds like a very abstract thing but in fact it's something that we can feel in our body we can feel our sense of the possible and it's very important to cultivate that because the day where you were on there someone wakes up with the sense that nothing is possible that's actually my definition of health is to have a good sense of the possible and if you have a bad sense of the possible you start being ill in fact and then that might have physical incidences in the near future or mental that's what makes you happy I believe the feeling that everything is possible you just have to think work on it and and take life as it comes too that's something very important I think yeah I like that idea of being alert to what Destiny is presenting to you and we Western people are not very good at that because we were trained to think that the Earth is an empty Rock and you need to so much effort to fight against the nature in especially in French there is this long intellectual history of thinking and nature is all style and we need to build things all the time so you're right it's sometimes just listening to the clues that our environment is presenting to us provided that we know where we're going because as I think it's a Greek stoic philosopher who said there is no favorable wind if you don't have a destination for your boat and I think that's a great great message again as an entrepreneur that's something very important to keep in mind Luis I think we could get going for quite a few hours look at your brains more but I think you you also have to move to the next steps would you have a last advice for decision makers politicians in the light of all the huge progress of technology is that just a simple message that you would like to share with them with us p-r-u-n-e prune your life because in order for a tree to be healthy you need to cut some branches such that the tree flourishes and I think we are a generation that wants too much we want everything at the same time and I think it's time again for it's related to this Oneness that I was mentioning in the beginning and integrity pruning our life and eliminating everything that is not essential that's true for personal growth but that's also true for entrepreneurs like you I believe yes the minimalism or optimalism but I remember that I'll keep in mind that prune your life I like this very much Louise I would like to thank you very much for taking some of the times for us and I wish you a wonderful day a week and prune your life thank you and enjoy your continuation of conversations with different people for I think it's remarkable that you are open to different uh ways of looking at the world and I think that it's exciting to start a company to be an entrepreneur and have a startup now because we are in a time where a small company any commercial Endeavor cannot be only commercial anymore it needs to be holistic so good luck with that thank you very much thanks for the chat have a good one cheers bye

2023-04-25 00:21

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