Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Raissa Mendes
Technologies are advancing at an almost unimaginable rate.
We have robots that can clean our homes,
we have cars that can drive themselves,
we have drones that can deliver packages,
we even have apps that can help you find a new job
when you lose yours to a robot, a car or a drone.
Technologies are helping us to realize the dreams
we’ve been hearing about for years from TEDx talks like this.
But I’m not a dreamer, and this is not one of those TEDx talks.
I am a philosopher, and we tend to deal more with nightmares.
I came here today to be the bad guy, to tell you what you don’t want to hear:
that technologies are giving us everything that we want, and that is a bad thing.
That is a bad thing not because of what technologies are doing to us,
but because of what we are doing to technologies.
What I want to focus on specifically
is what I see as the dominant trend in technological innovation today:
what I call the leisure as liberation model of technological design.
This is an idea that goes back as far as Aristotle,
and it’s really quite simple:
the less we have to work, the more human we become.
For Aristotle, this idea is an argument for slavery:
since the slaves do all the undesirable work,
then the rest of society can become
the virtuous humans that they were born to be.
We also find this idea in Karl Marx.
In Marx, this idea becomes an argument for central planning,
for letting the state manage the undesirable work in such a way
that it liberates both slaves and slave owners alike.
Now, today, we of course think that we are beyond slavery and central planning,
finding them both to be reprehensible and dehumanizing,
but I think what we’ve really done
is simply change what we mean by slavery and central planning.
We think it is wrong to enslave humans,
but we think it is perfectly acceptable to design artificially intelligent beings
and make them do whatever we want.
We think it is wrong for state governments to interfere in our personal affairs,
but we think it’s perfectly acceptable to design algorithms
that tell us what we can and cannot do.
The question that presents itself for us today then is this:
more people have more leisure than ever before,
but does that mean that we are more liberated, more free, more human?
Let me give you an example:
“Netflix and chill.”
These three words are not only a marketing campaign.
They are a slogan, a rallying cry, perhaps even a zeitgeist.
The idea is pretty simple: have fun, let Netflix do all the work.
Netflix has algorithms that can find anything you want to watch
and play it for you nonstop, freeing you up to, well, chill.
“Don’t think, don’t act. Let Netflix think and act for you.”
We are confronted by an ecological catastrophe:
Netflix and chill.
(Laughter)
We are in the midst of a refugee crisis:
Netflix and chill.
Donald Trump!
Netflix and chill.
(Laughter)
Maybe it would be better to actually think of this phenomenon
as “Netflix and freeze to death.”
If thinking and acting are what it means to be human,
then technologies are becoming more human, not us.
Is this what we want?
Do we want technologies to not only work with us,
but to work as us?
The problem is certainly not
that technologies are incapable of liberating us.
Netflix can help us not only to chill, but to become better educated.
Twitter can help us not only to troll, but to unite.
Facebook can help us not only to share baby pictures,
but to share experiences.
The revolutionary potential of technologies
has been largely unappreciated and unused,
taken up by some, but mocked by most.
#Activism is an opportunity for unison as well as derision.
The problem is that it seems we don’t want to be liberated,
we don’t want to be more human.
Maybe we don’t even like being human.
This is the flaw in the thinking of Aristotle and Marx,
the flaw in the leisure as liberation model of technological design,
the flaw that the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche first identified
over a hundred years ago as the disease of nihilism.
Nihilism is the embrace of nothingness, of not caring,
of the belief “nothing matters.”
Nihilism can take many forms,
and therefore, it is very important that we not only think of it
as the depressive resignation from the world
experienced by primarily overprivileged teenagers.
Nihilism can be not only active, but participatory; even joyous.
Just think of the classic Batman villain of the Joker.
He wants to create chaos for no other reason than he can,
and he has a great time doing it.
Or just think of all the people who voted for Brexit,
and then spent the next day googling “what is Brexit.”
Or just look at me.
Yes, I am a nihilist,
and in fact, it’s because I’m such a good nihilist
that I’m able to recognize the nihilism all around.
According to Nietzsche, there are primarily five strategies
that we use to embrace nihilism and avoid ourselves and reality:
self-hypnosis, mechanical activity,
petty pleasures, herd formations, orgies of feeling.
And I came here today to tell you I’m guilty of all five,
and I’m guessing some of you are, too.
I like watching TV, I like having routines,
I like helping those in need, I like rooting for the Red Sox,
I like twitting about Trump.
Now, I know all of these sound like perfectly normal activities,
and they are perfectly normal,
but it’s exactly their normalcy that’s the problem.
We are very comfortable zoning out for hours on end.
We are very comfortable making as few decisions as possible.
We are very comfortable viewing others as needy.
We are very comfortable losing ourselves in the crowd.
We are very comfortable being judge, jury and executioner
in the court of public opinion.
Let me focus on orgies of feeling,
since this was the nihilist strategy Nietzsche was most concerned about,
for, as he put it, it makes the sick sicker.
Today, we don’t have to wait
for an inquisition, a witch trial or a revolution
to be able to participate in a violent and emotional outburst
that can consume an entire society.
Today, all we have to do is log into Facebook or Twitter,
see what’s trending and start clicking.
It doesn’t matter if what’s trending is positive or negative.
All that matters is that so many people are participating,
then we can spread whatever message we want
and feel totally justified and totally anonymous.
So again, what’s important to realize
is that these nihilistic comforts are not new.
What is new is how we’re using technologies
to enhance and spread our nihilism.
Let me give you a more specific example.
On November 5th,
a Denver Guardian’s story is posted on Facebook
about an FBI agent involved in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails
who mysteriously died.
The story is shared over 560,000 times on Facebook,
making it comparable to the most shared stories of the Washington Post
and the Los Angeles Times.
Now, what should concern us
is not that the story went viral the week of the election,
not that the story is completely fake,
but that there is no “Denver Guardian.”
Whether or not you shared this story,
or any of the thousands of similar fake news stories
currently circulating on Facebook,
you are part of the problem.
By normalizing the amount of time we spend on social media,
by normalizing responding to click-paid headlines
without ever reading the article,
by normalizing the competition for most likes,
most retweets and most followers,
by normalizing trusting an article for no other reason
than how many others have shared it,
by normalizing cyberbullying and hacking, we are all part of the problem.
Now, it is very tempting for me to say,
“I am the philosopher. Here’s the problem. You solve it.”
But I do have the idea for a solution, or at least, the beginning of one.
If we are using technologies nihilistically,
if we’re using technologies to uncouple freedom and responsibility,
what we need to do is to bring freedom and responsibility back together again.
In other words, we have to become responsible.
Now, I know this is the time in the TEDx talk
when I tell you my personal uplifting story
about how I defeated nihilism and became responsible,
but that too is a nihilistic tendency.
To want someone to tell you how to be responsible is not how to be responsible.
Responsibility is not something that you do.
It’s something you are.
To be responsible is to be human,
is to be an individual,
is to be able to say, “I did this, and here’s why I did it.”
This doesn’t mean that you must break every social convention you can find
in order to show off how awesomely unique you are.
This means that you have to be introspective,
that you have to recognize your nihilistic tendencies,
that you have to be able to figure out why you don’t want to make decisions,
why you don’t want to be in charge, why you don’t want to be independent,
why you don’t want to be you.
As Nietzsche put it, you have to become who you are.
Now, I know what you’re thinking,
“I would love to be an introspective and engaged individual,
but who has the time?”
But that’s nihilism talking, not reality.
The problem is not that you don’t have the time to do what you want.
The problem is that you don’t have the want to do what you have time for.
We’re becoming better and better
at outsourcing our responsibility to technologies,
and therefore, we’re becoming better and better
at outsourcing our humanity to technologies.
Leisure is not liberating us to become more human.
Leisure is liberating us from being human.
This is what we must resist.
Become responsible.
Don’t let this happen to you.
Don’t let this happen to your friends.
Don’t Netflix and freeze to death.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Technologies are advancing at an almost unimaginable rate.
We have robots that can clean our homes,
we have cars that can drive themselves,
we have drones that can deliver packages,
we even have apps that can help you find a new job
when you lose yours to a robot, a car or a drone.
Technologies are helping us to realize the dreams
we’ve been hearing about for years from TEDx talks like this.
But I’m not a dreamer, and this is not one of those TEDx talks.
I am a philosopher, and we tend to deal more with nightmares.
I came here today to be the bad guy, to tell you what you don’t want to hear:
that technologies are giving us everything that we want, and that is a bad thing.
That is a bad thing not because of what technologies are doing to us,
but because of what we are doing to technologies.
What I want to focus on specifically
is what I see as the dominant trend in technological innovation today:
what I call the leisure as liberation model of technological design.
This is an idea that goes back as far as Aristotle,
and it’s really quite simple:
the less we have to work, the more human we become.
For Aristotle, this idea is an argument for slavery:
since the slaves do all the undesirable work,
then the rest of society can become
the virtuous humans that they were born to be.
We also find this idea in Karl Marx.
In Marx, this idea becomes an argument for central planning,
for letting the state manage the undesirable work in such a way
that it liberates both slaves and slave owners alike.
Now, today, we of course think that we are beyond slavery and central planning,
finding them both to be reprehensible and dehumanizing,
but I think what we’ve really done
is simply change what we mean by slavery and central planning.
We think it is wrong to enslave humans,
but we think it is perfectly acceptable to design artificially intelligent beings
and make them do whatever we want.
We think it is wrong for state governments to interfere in our personal affairs,
but we think it’s perfectly acceptable to design algorithms
that tell us what we can and cannot do.
The question that presents itself for us today then is this:
more people have more leisure than ever before,
but does that mean that we are more liberated, more free, more human?
Let me give you an example:
“Netflix and chill.”
These three words are not only a marketing campaign.
They are a slogan, a rallying cry, perhaps even a zeitgeist.
The idea is pretty simple: have fun, let Netflix do all the work.
Netflix has algorithms that can find anything you want to watch
and play it for you nonstop, freeing you up to, well, chill.
“Don’t think, don’t act. Let Netflix think and act for you.”
We are confronted by an ecological catastrophe:
Netflix and chill.
(Laughter)
We are in the midst of a refugee crisis:
Netflix and chill.
Donald Trump!
Netflix and chill.
(Laughter)
Maybe it would be better to actually think of this phenomenon
as “Netflix and freeze to death.”
If thinking and acting are what it means to be human,
then technologies are becoming more human, not us.
Is this what we want?
Do we want technologies to not only work with us,
but to work as us?
The problem is certainly not
that technologies are incapable of liberating us.
Netflix can help us not only to chill, but to become better educated.
Twitter can help us not only to troll, but to unite.
Facebook can help us not only to share baby pictures,
but to share experiences.
The revolutionary potential of technologies
has been largely unappreciated and unused,
taken up by some, but mocked by most.
#Activism is an opportunity for unison as well as derision.
The problem is that it seems we don’t want to be liberated,
we don’t want to be more human.
Maybe we don’t even like being human.
This is the flaw in the thinking of Aristotle and Marx,
the flaw in the leisure as liberation model of technological design,
the flaw that the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche first identified
over a hundred years ago as the disease of nihilism.
Nihilism is the embrace of nothingness, of not caring,
of the belief “nothing matters.”
Nihilism can take many forms,
and therefore, it is very important that we not only think of it
as the depressive resignation from the world
experienced by primarily overprivileged teenagers.
Nihilism can be not only active, but participatory; even joyous.
Just think of the classic Batman villain of the Joker.
He wants to create chaos for no other reason than he can,
and he has a great time doing it.
Or just think of all the people who voted for Brexit,
and then spent the next day googling “what is Brexit.”
Or just look at me.
Yes, I am a nihilist,
and in fact, it’s because I’m such a good nihilist
that I’m able to recognize the nihilism all around.
According to Nietzsche, there are primarily five strategies
that we use to embrace nihilism and avoid ourselves and reality:
self-hypnosis, mechanical activity,
petty pleasures, herd formations, orgies of feeling.
And I came here today to tell you I’m guilty of all five,
and I’m guessing some of you are, too.
I like watching TV, I like having routines,
I like helping those in need, I like rooting for the Red Sox,
I like twitting about Trump.
Now, I know all of these sound like perfectly normal activities,
and they are perfectly normal,
but it’s exactly their normalcy that’s the problem.
We are very comfortable zoning out for hours on end.
We are very comfortable making as few decisions as possible.
We are very comfortable viewing others as needy.
We are very comfortable losing ourselves in the crowd.
We are very comfortable being judge, jury and executioner
in the court of public opinion.
Let me focus on orgies of feeling,
since this was the nihilist strategy Nietzsche was most concerned about,
for, as he put it, it makes the sick sicker.
Today, we don’t have to wait
for an inquisition, a witch trial or a revolution
to be able to participate in a violent and emotional outburst
that can consume an entire society.
Today, all we have to do is log into Facebook or Twitter,
see what’s trending and start clicking.
It doesn’t matter if what’s trending is positive or negative.
All that matters is that so many people are participating,
then we can spread whatever message we want
and feel totally justified and totally anonymous.
So again, what’s important to realize
is that these nihilistic comforts are not new.
What is new is how we’re using technologies
to enhance and spread our nihilism.
Let me give you a more specific example.
On November 5th,
a Denver Guardian’s story is posted on Facebook
about an FBI agent involved in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails
who mysteriously died.
The story is shared over 560,000 times on Facebook,
making it comparable to the most shared stories of the Washington Post
and the Los Angeles Times.
Now, what should concern us
is not that the story went viral the week of the election,
not that the story is completely fake,
but that there is no “Denver Guardian.”
Whether or not you shared this story,
or any of the thousands of similar fake news stories
currently circulating on Facebook,
you are part of the problem.
By normalizing the amount of time we spend on social media,
by normalizing responding to click-paid headlines
without ever reading the article,
by normalizing the competition for most likes,
most retweets and most followers,
by normalizing trusting an article for no other reason
than how many others have shared it,
by normalizing cyberbullying and hacking, we are all part of the problem.
Now, it is very tempting for me to say,
“I am the philosopher. Here’s the problem. You solve it.”
But I do have the idea for a solution, or at least, the beginning of one.
If we are using technologies nihilistically,
if we’re using technologies to uncouple freedom and responsibility,
what we need to do is to bring freedom and responsibility back together again.
In other words, we have to become responsible.
Now, I know this is the time in the TEDx talk
when I tell you my personal uplifting story
about how I defeated nihilism and became responsible,
but that too is a nihilistic tendency.
To want someone to tell you how to be responsible is not how to be responsible.
Responsibility is not something that you do.
It’s something you are.
To be responsible is to be human,
is to be an individual,
is to be able to say, “I did this, and here’s why I did it.”
This doesn’t mean that you must break every social convention you can find
in order to show off how awesomely unique you are.
This means that you have to be introspective,
that you have to recognize your nihilistic tendencies,
that you have to be able to figure out why you don’t want to make decisions,
why you don’t want to be in charge, why you don’t want to be independent,
why you don’t want to be you.
As Nietzsche put it, you have to become who you are.
Now, I know what you’re thinking,
“I would love to be an introspective and engaged individual,
but who has the time?”
But that’s nihilism talking, not reality.
The problem is not that you don’t have the time to do what you want.
The problem is that you don’t have the want to do what you have time for.
We’re becoming better and better
at outsourcing our responsibility to technologies,
and therefore, we’re becoming better and better
at outsourcing our humanity to technologies.
Leisure is not liberating us to become more human.
Leisure is liberating us from being human.
This is what we must resist.
Become responsible.
Don’t let this happen to you.
Don’t let this happen to your friends.
Don’t Netflix and freeze to death.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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