So, imagine that you had your smartphone miniaturized and hooked up directly to your brain. If you had this sort of brain chip, you'd be able to upload and download to the internet at the speed of thought. Accessing social media or Wikipedia would be a lot like -- well, from the inside at least -- like consulting your own memory. It would be as easy and as intimate as thinking. But would it make it easier for you to know what's true? Just because a way of accessing information is faster it doesn't mean it's more reliable, of course, and it doesn't mean that we would all interpret it the same way. And it doesn't mean that you would be any better at evaluating it. In fact, you might even be worse, because, you know, more data, less time for evaluation.
Zamislite da ste dali svoj pametni telefon smanjiti i priključiti izravno u svoj mozak. Da imate takav moždani čip, mogli biste učitavati i preuzimati s interneta brzinom misli. Pristupanje društvenim mrežama ili Wikipediji bilo bi vrlo slično, barem iznutra, konzultiranju s vlastitim pamćenjem. Bilo bi jednako lako i intimno kao razmišljanje. Ali bi li vam bilo lakše znati što je istina? Samo zato što je neki način pristupanja informacijama brži, naravno, ne znači da je i pouzdaniji i ne znači da bi ga svi protumačili na isti način. I ne znači da biste bili išta bolji u procjenjivanju. Zapravo, možda biste čak bili gori jer, znate, više podataka znači manje vremena za procjenu.
Something like this is already happening to us right now. We already carry a world of information around in our pockets, but it seems as if the more information we share and access online, the more difficult it can be for us to tell the difference between what's real and what's fake. It's as if we know more but understand less.
Nešto takvo nam se već događa upravo sada. Već nosimo ogromnu količinu podataka u svojim džepovima, ali čini se da što više informacija dijelimo i dobivamo na internetu, to nam je teže odrediti što je stvarno, a što lažno. Kao da znamo više, ali razumijemo manje.
Now, it's a feature of modern life, I suppose, that large swaths of the public live in isolated information bubbles. We're polarized: not just over values, but over the facts. One reason for that is, the data analytics that drive the internet get us not just more information, but more of the information that we want. Our online life is personalized; everything from the ads we read to the news that comes down our Facebook feed is tailored to satisfy our preferences. And so while we get more information, a lot of that information ends up reflecting ourselves as much as it does reality. It ends up, I suppose, inflating our bubbles rather than bursting them. And so maybe it's no surprise that we're in a situation, a paradoxical situation, of thinking that we know so much more, and yet not agreeing on what it is we know.
To je, pretpostavljam, jedna od odlika modernog života, to da velik dio javnosti živi u izoliranim balonima informacija. Polarizirani smo: ne samo po pitanju vrijednosti, nego i činjenica. Jedan od razloga je to što nam analiza podataka koja pokreće internet ne daje samo više informacija, nego više informacija koje želimo. Naš život na internetu je personaliziran; sve, od reklama koje čitamo, do vijesti koje nam se pojavljuju na Facebooku, skrojeno je prema našim sklonostima. I zato, dok dobivamo više informacija, velika količina njih u konačnici odražava nas same, kao što nas odražava i stvarnost. Zbog njih se u konačnici naši baloni napuhuju, umjesto raspršuju. Zbog toga možda nije čudno da smo u situaciji, u paradoksalnoj situaciji, zbog koje mislimo da znamo puno više, bez da se slažemo oko onoga što znamo.
So how are we going to solve this problem of knowledge polarization? One obvious tactic is to try to fix our technology, to redesign our digital platforms, so as to make them less susceptible to polarization. And I'm happy to report that many smart people at Google and Facebook are working on just that. And these projects are vital. I think that fixing technology is obviously really important, but I don't think technology alone, fixing it, is going to solve the problem of knowledge polarization. I don't think that because I don't think, at the end of the day, it is a technological problem. I think it's a human problem, having to do with how we think and what we value.
Kako ćemo riješiti taj problem polarizacije znanja? Jedna od očitih taktika je pokušati popraviti tehnologiju, redizajnirati naše digitalne platforme, kako bismo ih učinili manje podložnima polarizaciji. Sa zadovoljstvom prenosim da mnogo pametnih ljudi iz Googlea i Facebooka rade samo na tome. I ti projekti su iznimno važni. Mislim da je, očito, popravljanje tehnologije vrlo važno, no ne i da će se samo popravljanjem tehnologije riješiti problem polarizacije znanja. To ne mislim jer, na kraju, ne smatram da je to tehnološki problem. Mislim da je to ljudski problem, koji je povezan s time kako razmišljamo i što cijenimo.
In order to solve it, I think we're going to need help. We're going to need help from psychology and political science. But we're also going to need help, I think, from philosophy. Because to solve the problem of knowledge polarization, we're going to need to reconnect with one fundamental, philosophical idea: that we live in a common reality. The idea of a common reality is like, I suppose, a lot of philosophical concepts: easy to state but mysteriously difficult to put into practice. To really accept it, I think we need to do three things, each of which is a challenge right now.
Mislim da ćemo trebati pomoć kako bismo ga riješili. Trebat će nam pomoć psihologije i politologije. Ali, smatram da će nam također trebati i pomoć filozofije. Jer, kako bismo riješili problem polarizacije znanja, morat ćemo se ponovno povezati s jednom fundamentalnom idejom filozofije: da živimo u zajedničkoj stvarnosti. Ideja zajedničke stvarnosti ista je kao, pretpostavljam, mnogo filozofskih koncepata: laka za izjaviti, ali misteriozno teška za primjeniti. Kako bismo je zbilja prihvatili, mislim da moramo učiniti tri stvari, od kojih svaka trenutno predstavlja izazov.
First, we need to believe in truth. You might have noticed that our culture is having something of a troubled relationship with that concept right now. It seems as if we disagree so much that, as one political commentator put it not long ago, it's as if there are no facts anymore. But that thought is actually an expression of a sort of seductive line of argument that's in the air. It goes like this: we just can't step outside of our own perspectives; we can't step outside of our biases. Every time we try, we just get more information from our perspective. So, this line of thought goes, we might as well admit that objective truth is an illusion, or it doesn't matter, because either we'll never know what it is, or it doesn't exist in the first place.
Prvo, moramo vjerovati u istinu. Možda ste primjetili da naša kultura trenutno ima problematičan odnos s tim konceptom. Čini se da, ako se toliko razilazimo u mišljenju, kako je nedavno rekao jedan politički komentator, izgleda kao da činjenice više ni ne postoje. Ta misao je zapravo izražaj zavodljive linije argumentacije koja visi u zraku. Ona je sljedeća: jednostavno ne možemo odstupiti od vlastitih perspektiva; ne možemo se odvojiti od vlastite pristranosti. Svaki put kada pokušamo, samo dobivamo još informacija iz naše perspektive. I tako se taj niz misli razvija, da možemo priznati kako je objektivna istina iluzija, ili da nije važna, jer je ili nikada nećemo pojmiti, ili niti ne postoji.
That's not a new philosophical thought -- skepticism about truth. During the end of the last century, as some of you know, it was very popular in certain academic circles. But it really goes back all the way to the Greek philosopher Protagoras, if not farther back. Protagoras said that objective truth was an illusion because "man is the measure of all things." Man is the measure of all things. That can seem like a bracing bit of realpolitik to people, or liberating, because it allows each of us to discover or make our own truth.
To nije nova filozofska misao - skepsa prema istini. Krajem prošlog stoljeća, kao što neki od vas znaju, bila je vrlo popularna u određenim akademskim krugovima. Ali, zapravo datira iz vremena grčkog filozofa Protagore, ako nije i starija. Protagora je rekao da je objektivna istina iluzija, jer je "čovjek mjerilo svih stvari". Čovjek je mjerilo svih stvari. To se ljudima može činiti temeljnim dijelom realpolitike, ili oslobađajućim, jer svakome od nas dopušta da otkrivamo ili stvaramo vlastitu istinu.
But actually, I think it's a bit of self-serving rationalization disguised as philosophy. It confuses the difficulty of being certain with the impossibility of truth. Look -- of course it's difficult to be certain about anything; we might all be living in "The Matrix." You might have a brain chip in your head feeding you all the wrong information. But in practice, we do agree on all sorts of facts. We agree that bullets can kill people. We agree that you can't flap your arms and fly. We agree -- or we should -- that there is an external reality and ignoring it can get you hurt.
Ali zapravo, ja to smatram racionalizacijom kojom si podilazimo, maskirano u filozofiju. Miješa teškoće bivanja sigurnim s nemogućnošću istine. Gledajte, naravno da je teško oko ičega biti siguran; možda svi živimo u "Matrici". Možda u svojoj glavi imate čip koji vas hrani pogrešnim informacijama. Ali u praksi, slažemo se oko raznih činjenica. Slažemo se da metci mogu ubiti ljude. Slažemo se da ne možemo zamahnuti rukama i poletjeti. Slažemo se, ili bismo se trebali složiti, da postoji vanjska stvarnost i da si ignoriranjem toga možemo naštetiti.
Nonetheless, skepticism about truth can be tempting, because it allows us to rationalize away our own biases. When we do that, we're sort of like the guy in the movie who knew he was living in "The Matrix" but decided he liked it there, anyway. After all, getting what you want feels good. Being right all the time feels good. So, often it's easier for us to wrap ourselves in our cozy information bubbles, live in bad faith, and take those bubbles as the measure of reality.
Ipak, skepsa prema istini može biti primamljiva jer nam dopušta da racionaliziramo vlastitu pristranost. Kada to radimo, skoro smo kao onaj tip u filmu koji je znao da živi u "Matrici", ali je zaključio da mu se tamo svejedno sviđa. Na kraju krajeva, dobar je osjećaj dobiti ono što želiš. Dobar je osjećaj biti stalno u pravu. I tako, često nam je lakše zatvoriti se u svoje komforne balone informacija, živjeti kroz licemjerje i te balone smatrati mjerilom stvarnosti.
An example, I think, of how this bad faith gets into our action is our reaction to the phenomenon of fake news. The fake news that spread on the internet during the American presidential election of 2016 was designed to feed into our biases, designed to inflate our bubbles. But what was really striking about it was not just that it fooled so many people. What was really striking to me about fake news, the phenomenon, is how quickly it itself became the subject of knowledge polarization; so much so, that the very term -- the very term -- "fake news" now just means: "news story I don't like." That's an example of the bad faith towards the truth that I'm talking about.
Mislim da je primjer toga kako to licemjerje utječe na naše djelovanje naša reakcija na fenomen lažnih vijesti. Lažne vijesti koje su se internetom širile u vrijeme američkih predsjedničkih izbora 2016. bile su dizajnirane da hrane našu pristranost, dizajnirane da napuhuju naše balone. Ali, ono zbilja zapanjujuće nije bilo samo to što su zavarale toliko ljudi. Ono što mi je zbilja zapanjujuće po pitanju lažnih vijesti, tog fenomena, je to koliko su one same postale subjektom polarizacije znanja, toliko da sâm pojam "lažne vijesti" sada znači samo "vijest koja mi se ne sviđa". To je primjer licemjerja prema istini o kojoj govorim.
But the really, I think, dangerous thing about skepticism with regard to truth is that it leads to despotism. "Man is the measure of all things" inevitably becomes "The Man is the measure of all things." Just as "every man for himself" always seems to turn out to be "only the strong survive."
No, ono što mislim da je uistinu opasna stvar kod skepse prema istini, to što vodi k despotizmu. "Čovjek je mjerilo svih stvari" neizbježno postaje "TAJ čovjek je mjerilo svih stvari". Kao što "svaki čovjek za sebe" čini se, uvijek ispada da je "samo snažni opstaju".
At the end of Orwell's "1984," the thought policeman O'Brien is torturing the protagonist Winston Smith into believing two plus two equals five. What O'Brien says is the point, is that he wants to convince Smith that whatever the party says is the truth, and the truth is whatever the party says. And what O'Brien knows is that once this thought is accepted, critical dissent is impossible. You can't speak truth to power if the power speaks truth by definition.
Na kraju Orwellove "1984." misaoni policajac O'Brien muči protagonistu Winstona Smitha s ciljem uvjeravanja da je dva plus dva jednako pet. Ono što O'Brien navodi kao cilj je to da želi uvjeriti Smitha da što god partija kaže jest istina, a istina je što god partija kaže. I ono što O'Brien zna jest da, čim ta misao bude prihvaćena, kritičko neslaganje postaje nemoguće. Ne možete govorenjem istine prkositi vlasti, ako vlast po definiciji govori istinu.
I said that in order to accept that we really live in a common reality, we have to do three things. The first thing is to believe in truth. The second thing can be summed up by the Latin phrase that Kant took as the motto for the Enlightenment: "Sapere aude," or "dare to know." Or as Kant wants, "to dare to know for yourself."
Rekao sam, kako bismo prihvatili da uistinu živimo u zajedničkoj stvarnosti, moramo činiti tri stvari. Prva je vjerovati u istinu. Druga može biti sažeta kroz latinsku izreku koju je Kant uzeo kao moto prosvjetiteljstva: "Sapere aude", ili "usudi se znati". Ili, kao što Kant ističe, "usudi se znati sâm".
I think in the early days of the internet, a lot of us thought that information technology was always going to make it easier for us to know for ourselves, and of course in many ways, it has. But as the internet has become more and more a part of our lives, our reliance on it, our use of it, has become often more passive. Much of what we know today we Google-know. We download prepackaged sets of facts and sort of shuffle them along the assembly line of social media. Now, Google-knowing is useful precisely because it involves a sort of intellectual outsourcing. We offload our effort onto a network of others and algorithms. And that allows us, of course, to not clutter our minds with all sorts of facts. We can just download them when we need them. And that's awesome.
Mislim da je u ranim danima interneta mnogo nas smatralo da će nam informacijska tehnologija uvijek olakšati da znamo sami i, naravno, na puno načina i jest. Ali kako internet sve više postaje dijelom naših života, naše oslanjanje ili korištenje njega postalo je pasivnije. Mnogo toga što danas znamo, znamo zbog Googlea. Preuzimamo već upakirane setove činjenica i miješamo ih na pokretnoj traci društvenih mreža. Znanje putem Googlea je korisno, zato što uključuje vrstu intelektualnog outsourcing-a. Dio našeg truda prebacujemo na mrežu drugih i na algoritme. To nam dopušta, naravno, da umove ne zatrpavamo raznim vrstama činjenica. Možemo ih jednostavno preuzeti kada ih trebamo. I to je fantastično.
But there's a difference between downloading a set of facts and really understanding how or why those facts are as they are. Understanding why a particular disease spreads, or how a mathematical proof works, or why your friend is depressed, involves more than just downloading. It's going to require, most likely, doing some work for yourself: having a little creative insight; using your imagination; getting out into the field; doing the experiment; working through the proof; talking to someone.
Ali, postoji razlika između preuzimanja seta činjenica i pravog razumijevanja toga kako ili zašto te činjenice jesu to što jesu. Razumjeti zašto se određena bolest širi, ili kako matematički dokaz funkcionira, ili zašto vam je prijatelj u depresiji, uključuje više od preuzimanja. Zahtjevat će, najvjerojatnije, da dio posla obavite sami: da imate nešto kreativnog uvida, koristite maštu, izlazite na teren, radite eksperiment, razrađujete dokaz, razgovarate s nekim.
Now, I'm not saying, of course, that we should stop Google-knowing. I'm just saying we shouldn't overvalue it, either. We need to find ways of encouraging forms of knowing that are more active, and don't always involve passing off our effort into our bubble. Because the thing about Google-knowing is that too often it ends up being bubble-knowing. And bubble-knowing means always being right. But daring to know, daring to understand, means risking the possibility that you could be wrong. It means risking the possibility that what you want and what's true are different things.
Ja, naravno, ne govorim da trebamo prestati stjecati Google znanje. Samo kažem da ga ne trebamo ni precjenjivati. Moramo pronaći načine da potičemo oblike znanja koji su aktivniji i koji ne uključuju uvijek da naš trud prebacujemo na naš balon. Jer, stvar s Google znanjem je to što ono prečesto ispadne balon-znanje. A balon-znanje znači da smo uvijek u pravu. Ali usuditi se znati, usuditi se razumjeti, znači riskirati mogućnost da možemo biti u krivu. To znači riskirati mogućnost da su ono što želimo i ono što je istinito dvije različite stvari.
Which brings me to the third thing that I think we need to do if we want to accept that we live in a common reality. That third thing is: have a little humility. By humility here, I mean epistemic humility, which means, in a sense, knowing that you don't know it all. But it also means something more than that. It means seeing your worldview as open to improvement by the evidence and experience of others. Seeing your worldview as open to improvement by the evidence and experience of others. That's more than just being open to change. It's more than just being open to self-improvement. It means seeing your knowledge as capable of enhancing or being enriched by what others contribute. That's part of what is involved in recognizing there's a common reality that you, too, are responsible to.
Što me dovodi do treće stvari koju mislim da moramo činiti, ako želimo prihvatiti to da živimo u zajedničkoj stvarnosti. Treća stvar je: imajmo malo skromnosti. Pod skromnost mislim na epistemičku skromnost, što znači, u nekom smislu, da znamo da ne znamo sve. Ali, to znači i više od toga. To znači gledanje vlastitog svjetonazora kao otvorenog prema poboljšanju kroz dokaze i iskustva drugih. Gledanje svog svjetonazora kao otvorenog prema poboljšanju kroz dokaze i iskustva drugih. To je više od otvorenosti prema promjenama. To je više od otvorenosti prema samonapretku. To znači uviđanje da vaše znanje može biti poboljšano i obogaćeno kroz doprinos drugih. To je dio onoga što je uključeno u prepoznavanje zajedničke stvarnosti za koju ste i vi odgovorni.
I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that our society is not particularly great at enhancing or encouraging that sort of humility. That's partly because, well, we tend to confuse arrogance and confidence. And it's partly because, well, you know, arrogance is just easier. It's just easier to think of yourself as knowing it all. It's just easier to think of yourself as having it all figured out. But that's another example of the bad faith towards the truth that I've been talking about.
Mislim da nije previše nategnuto reći da naše društvo nije posebno dobro u poboljšavanju ili poticanju takve vrste skromnosti. To je djelomično tako jer, pa, imamo tendenciju miješati aroganciju i samopouzdanje. I djelomično je tako jer je, znate, arogancija jednostavno lakša. Jednostavno je lakše misliti da znamo sve. Jednostavno je lakše misliti da smo sve shvatili. Ali, to je drugi primjer licemjerja prema istini o kojoj sam govorio.
So the concept of a common reality, like a lot of philosophical concepts, can seem so obvious, that we can look right past it and forget why it's important. Democracies can't function if their citizens don't strive, at least some of the time, to inhabit a common space, a space where they can pass ideas back and forth when -- and especially when -- they disagree. But you can't strive to inhabit that space if you don't already accept that you live in the same reality. To accept that, we've got to believe in truth, we've got to encourage more active ways of knowing. And we've got to have the humility to realize that we're not the measure of all things.
I tako se koncept zajedničke stvarnosti, kao mnogi filozofski koncepti, može činiti tako očitim da ga možemo zanemariti i zaboraviti zašto je važan. Demokracije ne mogu funkcionirati ako njezini građani ne teže, barem dio vremena, tome da nastanjuju isti prostor, prostor u kojem mogu razmjenjivati ideje naročito kada se ne slažu. Ali, ne možete težiti tome da nastanjujete taj prostor ako već ne prihvatite da živite u istoj stvarnosti. Da bismo to prihvatili, moramo vjerovati u istinu i moramo poticati aktivnije znanje. I moramo imati skromnosti da shvatimo da nismo mjerilo svih stvari.
We may yet one day realize the vision of having the internet in our brains. But if we want that to be liberating and not terrifying, if we want it to expand our understanding and not just our passive knowing, we need to remember that our perspectives, as wondrous, as beautiful as they are, are just that -- perspectives on one reality.
Možda jednog dana ostvarimo viziju posjedovanja interneta u našim mozgovima. Ali, ako želimo da to bude oslobađajuće, a ne zastrašujuće, ako želimo da to proširi naše razumijevanje a ne samo naše pasivno znanje, moramo zapamtiti da naše perspektive, koliko god čudesne i prekrasne bile, su samo to - perspektive jedne stvarnosti.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)