became what we are today Homo sapiens we
moved on from just a human being on to
being something that is smart something
that can think in something that start
to make progress and this is where we
are today we started making progress for
70,000 years 12,000 years ago we had the
second major revolution the first one
was the cognitive the second one was the
Agricultural Revolution so 12,000 years
ago we decided to move on from being
hunters and gatherers on to staying at
home becoming farmers and create cities
to live in larger societies and our
progress exploded 500 years ago we saw
the last the third major revolution in
human history and that was the
Scientific Revolution and pretty much
everything we talked today about
progress and innovation is driven by
this 500 year change of everything and
how we know how we deal with knowledge
and how we experiment to distrust our
intuition but basically for the last 70
thousand years we have created progress
in pretty much every area of our lives
and then seventy thousand years later
today we pulled all our creative
capabilities together we put everything
we know together to build that one thing
that would change everything forever the
selfie stick now this is a piece of
technology that solves a particular
problem that pretty much no other animal
has and if you imagine an an alien
coming to earth and you chop would be to
explain what a selfie stick is for this
is not an easy job because you would
have to explain that people like to take
pictures of themselves and then they
like to post these pictures online and
because our arms are not long enough to
take good pictures of ourselves we need
this device so it solves a problem that
only humans have and in our history
innovation always happens when we have a
question
there’s no answer for all we have a
problem that there is no solution for so
in terms of is this the question is this
a good idea
well this is a specifically human idea
that’s for sure
another idea I want to talk about is
this one 1927 we are in London the
streets are so the on the streets of
London our soul is so bad it’s so
polluted that you can’t take your child
outside to play now what do you do this
is the solution to the problem it’s
called the baby cage and it comes in
this self-assembly box you put it
together
outside your window on the fifth floor
and you see the babies happy you know
the baby cage now when we think about
what’s what’s a good idea and what
drives progress for us as human beings
what takes us from 70 thousand years ago
to today it’s the question what is a
good idea and how do we know this is a
good idea how do we know that something
is worth pursuing and other things are
not today you might have a feeling that
this is not the solution to the problem
again the problem is the air is too bad
on the streets so the solution is the
baby cage now when we think about
problems and solutions we need to ask
where does it come from that we belief
at some point this is a good idea a
hundred thousand pieces sold so this was
a commercially successful innovation but
are we making progress by doing this
stuff and how do we know today this is
maybe not the solution to the problem
anymore well it comes down to this big
word of assumptions and this is what
drives us we use assumptions as the
building blocks of what we know about
the future so everything we know
everything we predict everything we
imagine is based on assumptions in
certain areas now when you want to study
assumptions there’s a great place to go
to that’s the church now I’m the son of
a pastor so I got to see a lot from this
church and religion and religion is
based on very strong assumptions and
when you live in the u.s. you get come
across a particular type of assumption
that can’t couldn’t be any stronger and
this has a lot to do with how humans
think about progress there are people
who believe that everything has been
created for us
creationism they believe in intelligent
design and many humans on this planet
believe in intelligent design when it
comes to innovation progress – we
believe that it takes an intelligent
designer to create stuff we believe that
it takes creative geniuses to design
what we don’t see is that there are many
questions that are open about this
belief now what I’m concerned with is
not whether this is right or wrong or
whether this is a good thing or not this
is just the wrong question if we ask is
this a good question I want to replace
this question with the question what are
the assumptions that drive our beliefs
what are the assumptions the things that
we just take for granted that we don’t
question now when you think now another
thought experiment just you to get to
these assumptions imagine you are an
intelligent designer right see you are
the creator and your job is to design
human beings would you design them like
this now think about it your job is to
design the men in the room
gentlemen you might have noticed that
you have nipples – what for if you are
an intelligent designer and your job is
to design the product human being why
would you put things on us that we don’t
need that obviously have no function and
if you think further how we as human
beings function biologically this seems
to there seems to be a lot of flaws
there’s some things that are kind of
weird now you reproductive Fitness seems
to be one of the things that you need to
fix as an intelligent designer so you
wanted to make sure that we survive so
why would you put just thinking but why
would you put the male testicles
outside the body well these are kind of
crucial for our survival yet you put
them outside the body completely
unprotected now if you’re an intelligent
designer why would you do that
now the question is not is intelligent
design right or wrong the question is
what’s behind it and I think we have a
conception of talent behind that that’s
very similar to intelligent design so we
celebrate people like Elon Musk and
Steve Jobs because they have something
that we don’t have they have creative
genius and we invent this strategy to
think about Talent in this way
so that we can say well I do not develop
products and services and business
models or generally ideas that change
the world because I don’t have the
talent well and this is dangerous so now
the question is when is an assumption
good for us and when is an assumption
bad for us when we talk about innovation
and progress we need to talk about
evolution rather than revolution because
what really happens is not that human
history is a chain of revolutions in
which a creative genius an intelligent
designer created one level after the
other and we are better than before
really what happens is a constantly
evolving system so what what does
Charles Darwin say about evolution he
says it’s not the strongest or the most
intelligent of a species that survive
it’s those that are most adaptable to
change well guess what the same is true
for our ideas if you think about the
selfie stick it’s not the best it’s not
the most intelligent idea that survives
it’s just the one that makes sense right
now because it solves a problem right
now this is true for all our ideas and
then interestingly Joss Davin also said
this so this is a prediction that’s
based on one of his assumptions and he
was obviously wrong because a lot of
people felt very offended by his
theories right so the theory of
evolution itself is not free of
assumptions that don’t make sense or
they lead to a wrong conclusion or
prediction even there is an assumption
that did not make sense so 2004 someone
had another idea for a smartphone rather
taking pictures of yourself he would
throw this ha up high as high as he
could that was also the name of the app
it was called throw your iPhone as high
as you can now this is a good idea just
from a conceptual few point you are a
creator you want to drive innovation by
providing a smart phone to people and
then their idea is to throw it as high
as I can now what happens is the iPhone
is in grass without gravity for a split
second when it’s up in the air and from
that moment it just measures the time
until it reaches the bottom and from
that time it knows how high it was
that’s the technology behind it so what
the app does you just build an
international high score and make sure
that people can compare themselves to
everyone else in the world and now
people throw up their iPhones up in the
air as high as they can and of course
many of those don’t catch the iPhones
when they come back until Apple finds
out why so many broken iphones show up
at the store and ban the app now what
happens is not the question is not is
this a good idea but why do people based
on what assumptions do people think this
is a great idea to throw my iPhone as
high as I can what makes us human is the
real question why do human beings do
that because there are so many
unanswered questions around why we do
what we do instead of asking does that
make sense we need to ask what is it
that drives our assumptions now
predicting stuff is incredibly difficult
and we’re not very good at it because it
means we have to imagine something and
we’re not very good at imagining stuff
that we haven’t experienced we are very
good at imagining self-driving cars
because we’ve seen cars driving around
well we can imagine being a winner of a
lottery because we’ve all seen winners
of lotteries we’re not so good imagining
losing a lottery because we don’t see
losses very often and that’s the purpose
of lotteries and playing them alright so
we can imagine being the winner and it’s
a good feeling so predicting stuff is
very often not driven by a very logical
conclusion from
in that we have proof for but based on
all the stuff we believe in and there’s
of course a lot of stuff that we don’t
know so we have to believe now how do we
predict and what really is a prediction
this is the only data set I want to show
you to show what happens in red you see
the amount of people that drowns in
swimming pools over here and in black
you see the number of movies that
Nicolas Cage’s in in a given year and
you see the connection right so now
what’s your conclusion now the natural
human conclusion would be we built a
committee and do not allow Nicolas Cage
to make any more movies because
obviously he’s responsible for the rise
in drownings Nicolas Cage kills people
in swimming pools is that the conclusion
we can draw of course that but humans
are made to see patterns we are dreamed
we trained to see things that are not
there and based on this thing that’s not
there we build assumptions and these can
get very strong so the conclusion here
could of course be in both directions
but the reality is there’s absolutely no
connection between the two which you see
when you look into the future and the
past of this timeline because this is
only a very narrow perspective of what’s
really happening right there is no
connection before and after but this
looks like a correlation it really does
not have a purpose for a meaningful
correlation but we want to see it so we
build our prediction based on data like
this now this is one of my favorite
quotes
it’s from gottlieb daimler and he said
that the demand for cars can’t be higher
than 1 million and now this is a
prediction he said in 1909 by the way
this he said there won’t be more cars
than that because there is no demand for
more cars than that and his conclusion
or his assumption driving this
conclusion is because they’re not enough
people who know how to drive a car
because at the time you had to be a
professional car driver but you had to
be your chauffeur
well of course he didn’t know that we
today would develop self-driving cars so
the whole basis of his argument is gone
but what we see the problem of a
prediction is usually not the prediction
it’s the assumption that it’s based on
so instead of working on the prediction
we need off to start working on the
Immanuel Kant says that enlightenment is
man’s emergence from a self-imposed
immaturity and that is not nice
so to get out of this to get better at
finding our assumptions and building
better predictions based on this we need
to get our self-imposed immaturity fixed
immaturity means we can’t use our mind
in the way that we want to use it
because other people influence what we
think and this is self-imposed
that means not someone else is
responsible and in charge of fixing this
but us that means we need to focus our
minds on the beliefs that we all carry
we need to focus on the assumptions that
we have every single one of us that’s
the job says Iman account and now that
in the end takes one thing and that’s
courage and courage is a little tricky
now there’s a great quote from a movie
from a Disney movie that I like it’s
courage is not the absence of fear
courage is the realization that some
things are more important than our own
fear now I have this little prediction
journal and two months ago I wrote in
that journal Donald Trump never gonna
happen well based on what assumptions I
did not look at my assumptions and of
course you see that I was terribly wrong
and so where many other people most
other people but what drives our
assumptions is very often that we ignore
what we really should look at so to get
to that courage instead of assuming that
we are right and then looking for
evidence for our assumption and making
our beliefs even stronger we need to
start questioning our own assumption
and the big deal in the end will be to
start always with the assumption that
we’re wrong rather than giving in to our
need to always be right thank you very much