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  • ALAIN DE BOTTON: It's a real pleasure

  • to be here, not least because this book was

  • written on Google Docs.

  • Is anyone here-- who here is on-- are you guys building it

  • here?

  • It is the most wonderful tool.

  • And actually a book before this, called "Art as Therapy,"

  • I co-wrote with a colleague in Tasmania on Google Docs.

  • And we would work simultaneously.

  • And it would not have been possible without your work.

  • So really from my heart, thank you.

  • You guys are doing a great job.

  • What I want to talk about today is a book

  • which is all about information and how

  • we are categorizing it and using it.

  • So it's kind of a Google topic, very much.

  • But the kind of information that I'm talking about

  • is news, news information.

  • We're very confused I think as a society

  • as to the way we are using news.

  • I think it's one of the most inefficient uses of our time.

  • Of anything that we do in the day,

  • the way that we access information

  • through this thing, this massive entity called "the news,"

  • right, is full of redundancy.

  • It's full of quirks.

  • It's full of perversions.

  • It's not working as it should.

  • There's an enormous opportunity to make news go better.

  • And that's what my book is about.

  • Trying to imagine how, in a different range of areas,

  • we could make news go better.

  • Because I think it's terrible at the moment.

  • Not terrible, I'm being hyperbolic.

  • But not great.

  • Part the problem, of course, is we are not educated in it.

  • So when we go to school, people will

  • tell us a little bit about paintings

  • and how to look at them.

  • And people will tell us a little bit about drama and literature.

  • But no one tells you what on earth you're

  • supposed to do when you come across this kind of thing,

  • or this kind of thing.

  • We're not systematically inducted

  • into the weirdness of the news world.

  • One of the problems, of course, is information overload.

  • Way back in the 18th century, there

  • was some promises made about what

  • would happen if news became widely and freely available.

  • The great promise of the Enlightenment

  • is put information out there, people will read it, use it,

  • and society will improve.

  • OK, that's the dream.

  • It hasn't really worked out that way.

  • It's almost nowadays as though you've got two options.

  • If you want to try and keep a population passive,

  • supine, not really able to understand reality,

  • OK, the first option is the North Korean option.

  • You throttle the pipe of news.

  • No news, right.

  • Then people don't know what's going on and they're confused.

  • But the other way to make sure that people don't know what's

  • going on and are confused is you give them

  • so news they don't what on earth is going on.

  • I mean, you guys unusually clever.

  • But most people don't know what on earth

  • was happening last week.

  • We don't know because there is too much information.

  • And most of it is orphaned.

  • It's ripped out of context, et cetera.

  • And therefore, the promise of news

  • has been seriously undermined.

  • In many ways, news replaces this religion.

  • Just as in the olden days, you used

  • to go to religion and religion would tell you

  • what was right and wrong, what the important issue of the day

  • is.

  • Now, we switch on the news.

  • That will tell us what is important,

  • what's right and wrong.

  • But, of course, huge assumptions there.

  • And just as you can be an agnostic, a skeptic,

  • an atheist in relation to religion,

  • so all those tags can apply also for the news.

  • And I would probably characterize myself

  • on the more skeptical/agnostic/aethist end

  • of the business.

  • Nevertheless, I recognize the unbelievable importance

  • of this stuff.

  • If you're planning a coup, always drive your tanks not

  • to the homes of the computer programmers, the poets,

  • the historians, the novelists.

  • You take your tanks to the news HQ

  • because that is where social, political reality is

  • made in the consciousness of the population.

  • So it's an incredibly valuable and important area.

  • But it's going wrong in lots of ways.

  • Let me run you through some of the areas where

  • I think it's going wrong.

  • One of the things is the very important stuff

  • of life, all right, used to be at the top of the headlines.

  • It used to be at the top of the news.

  • The important stuff is at the top

  • and the kind of frothy stuff is at the bottom.

  • The news, what is news, should be important.

  • And that's why we tune in.

  • And that's why news can command our affection.

  • However, nowadays, if you put something

  • like this on the front page of your site

  • or your news bulletin, the greatest news story on Earth,

  • your ratings will plummet.

  • No one is interested in this at all.

  • However, if you put her on, wow, Taylor Swift, everybody's

  • interested in Taylor Swift, particularly in shorts.

  • This is one of the perennial favorites of all news

  • organizations, endless photos like this.

  • OK, what are we going to do about this?

  • Well, one response of many serious journalists

  • is to despair.

  • They're prone to despair.

  • And this fact really leads them to take to the hills,

  • and hunker down, and escape civilization.

  • I'm hopeful because I know about the history of the Renaissance.

  • And in the Renaissance, the Catholic Church

  • knew that it had an awful lot of complex messages

  • to get across to people, arduous messages, difficult messages.

  • Really about how to live like Jesus Christ, kind

  • of difficult, all about the Gospels, et cetera.

  • So when they set about doing their altar

  • pieces of giant advertisements for their faith,

  • they realized that they had to do some particular things

  • in order to get the message across.

  • So if you've got something important to say

  • and you simply put it in the hands of the bearded guy

  • there on the bottom right, with a big book and the big beard,

  • no one listens to guys with big beards like that.

  • You're just not going to sell the message.

  • That's why they took the Taylor Swifts of the day, who

  • are in the centerpiece, and gave them

  • very lovely clothes, and hair, and svelte appearance

  • in order to sell the message.

  • So in other words, they realized that they

  • were in the business of popularization,

  • not merely the gathering of important information,

  • but it's conveyance, all the techniques of artistry.

  • They realized they had to work very hard,

  • not just to gather what Jesus said,

  • but to make sure the what Jesus said

  • was going to be listened to.

  • And that might involve them getting

  • Giovanni Bellini to make an altarpiece.

  • It's kind weird because most news organizations now

  • see themselves as data driven businesses.

  • We bring you the data, the important facts.

  • And we leave it on the table and you will read it and consume it

  • and then you will be overwhelmed.

  • The Catholic Church, much wiser.

  • If you simply put the Gospels on the table,

  • with the guy with the beard, no one will listen.

  • You need to work a little harder.

  • So this altarpiece is a symbol, a metaphor if you like,

  • for that extra work we're going to need to do.

  • The other thing about the news, of course,

  • is there's too much of it, as I mentioned.

  • But there isn't really too much of it.

  • What there is is stories that keep saying they're brand new

  • and they're never happened before in history of the world.

  • But in fact, of course they've happened before.

  • It's just we're taught by the news organizations

  • not to recognize what we could call archetypes.

  • The news is full of archetypes.

  • In my book I say that there are 32 archetypes that

  • keep running round and round.

  • They're the same stories.

  • It just keeps running.

  • The Kiev story, it's an archetype.

  • It's been running since 1789.

  • Of course, the news will never tell me that.

  • No.

  • For the news, it's totally new.

  • Something completely unbelievable has happened.

  • But it doesn't want you to understand the threads that

  • are running constantly through human life.

  • This happens just with less significant stories as well.

  • Let me show you a story which looks like lots of stories,

  • but in fact only one story.

  • So there's this guy and there's this lady.

  • And there's these guys.

  • Now basically, that looks like three stories.

  • It's about only one story because what it's a story of is

  • there's Prince William, a high and mighty guy,

  • wrestling with a car seat, with a baby seat.

  • Wow and amazing.

  • This is Taylor Swift again and she's

  • at Whole Foods buying lettuce.

  • Amazing.

  • A high and mighty person buying things.

  • And this is a high and mighty son of God.

  • But he's born in humble circumstances.

  • He could have been in a place.

  • It's the same story.

  • It's emotional structure is identical.

  • But the news is not in the business

  • of sharpening our eyes to the similarities between stories,

  • reducing the number of phenomena.

  • I come from the background of philosophy.

  • It's all about trying to reduce phenomena down to some noumena.

  • The news works in the opposite direction.

  • Everything is always new.

  • We've never seen it before, et cetera.

  • That makes life dizzying.

  • It makes it harder to navigate.

  • The area that we know as foreign news,

  • OK, the great promise of foreign news

  • used to be you send out some reporters.

  • You give them some fiber optic cables.

  • You give them a satellite.

  • They will tell you about stuff going

  • on in other parts of the world.

  • And then people will care.

  • They will agitate for change and the world will improve.

  • Nonsense.

  • None of that happens.

  • Last week, 200 people were killed

  • in fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

  • None of you know that.

  • I only know that because I'm in the business.

  • It just washes over us.

  • And the reason is, again, this problem of data.

  • People think.

  • News organizations believe that you can go out there and get

  • the facts, like 200 people died.

  • And people go, oh, my goodness, how awful, how terrible.

  • We must do something about it.

  • We must write to the congressman.

  • You don't do anything about it because you don't care.

  • And the reason you don't care is why should you

  • care about the death of 200 people whose lives you never

  • knew existed?

  • You didn't know that they were alive.

  • So who cares if they're dead.

  • I mean it's like a mirage.

  • If I put you in a performance of "King Lear,"

  • you might be weeping at the end of a performance of "King

  • Lear" for a guy who what, didn't even live.

  • So there you are.

  • You're weeping about people who never lived,

  • written 300 years ago.

  • And meanwhile, you're totally indifferent about someone

  • who did live yesterday.

  • So what's going on?

  • Are we monsters?

  • Are we crazy?

  • No.

  • Again, it comes back to the fact that information

  • needs to enter our imaginations.

  • And it can only do that through a technique

  • which I will call art.

  • Art is the discipline that's designed

  • to get important concepts powerfully

  • into our imaginations.

  • And the art form that is most relevant to news gathering

  • is photojournalism.

  • I come from the background of philosophy

  • and most philosophers are quite depressive people.

  • But, boy, you haven't met a depressed category

  • like photojournalists.

  • They are really depressed.

  • And the reason is no one is paying for their work anymore.

  • So people like Magnum are in panic and all the rest of it

  • because the value of photojournalism is gone.

  • Now, what is good photojournalism?

  • And why might we need it?

  • What's a good photograph?

  • What's a bad photograph?

  • What's a good photograph?

  • It is something that you could spend

  • years of your life trying to figure out.

  • But I'm going to tell you the answer in one second.

  • I think that a good photograph is

  • one which advances your understanding of a situation.

  • It's rich in information.

  • OK.

  • I don't care about the color balance, or the field,

  • the thing, and whether it's wonky.

  • It's how much information, new information does it carry?

  • And a bad photograph is one which many confirms,

  • corroborates information which you have probably

  • gathered nonpictorially before.

  • It's an image of corroboration, not an advancing of knowledge.

  • Let me show you a good photograph.

  • This is a good photograph taken by a woman Stephanie Sinclair,

  • who spent some time in the Yemen.

  • She won a Pulitzer Prize for this photo essay

  • on child marriage in the Yemen.

  • Now, we think you know about child marriage in the Yemen.

  • But we don't really.

  • And this photograph tells us why.

  • You see when you look at that photograph,

  • you realize that it's not children.

  • It's not girls getting married to men.

  • Those aren't girls.

  • If you look at their faces, these are little old ladies.

  • The trauma of what they've been through has aged them 40 years.

  • And similarly, the men are not men.

  • They don't, you know, in command.

  • These are boys.

  • These are lost boys.

  • It's far more poignant, weird, disturbing

  • than one might have thought.

  • So this is a picture rich in information.

  • It's bringing you something that you

  • didn't know without the picture.

  • And we need to make a case for that,

  • for good photographs as bearers of information.

  • This is true in all areas.

  • I mean this is a bad photograph of President Obama.

  • It's a dead photograph.

  • The reason it's dead is you don't learn anything

  • about the guy.

  • Everything you knew about this guy

  • is not advanced one iota by seeing this photograph.

  • Here's a good photograph of President Obama.

  • This was taken by Pete Souza, who is the White House press

  • photographer.

  • Now, we know that Obama lies all the time, lies to get elected.

  • We didn't know that Obama lies in order

  • to please the child of a White House

  • staffer, who is into Spiderman.

  • And that's kind of charming, and cute, and interesting.

  • And hm, yeah, great.

  • So there's stuff going on here.

  • And that's good photography.

  • So good photography is a route to information,

  • having its proper due impact on us.

  • But let me move on now to kind of an awkward topic.

  • You guys seem really nice.

  • And on a good day, I'm quite nice.

  • And people out there seem quite nice.

  • And it's very easy to think that people are quite nice until you

  • read a news article and you go, as they say in the trade,

  • below the line and you find out about the comments, what

  • people are saying, what all the people are saying,

  • on social media too.

  • And then you're in for a shock because you realize then

  • that actually people aren't nice.

  • They're crazy, vindictive, bitter, angry, furious, just

  • insane.

  • This is some comments I found at the bottom of a "Guardian"

  • article on the chancellor of the Exchequer, the money guy

  • at the British government.

  • He's very much hated.

  • People are insulting him.

  • One guy wants to put a pillow over his face.

  • The other one wants to kick him up the thing.

  • It's violent.

  • It derogatory.

  • You have this in the States as well.

  • This is the modern phenomena.

  • People go celebrate social media,

  • how lovely it is about social media.

  • Then you find this is what you're

  • hearing about social media.

  • So what's going on?

  • Are we crazy as a species?

  • No.

  • No, We're not crazy.

  • We just writing our journals in public.

  • You know how it is when you keep a journal.

  • And you've got a bad day.

  • And then you go up to your bedroom.

  • And you take our your journal.

  • And you say, I've had enough.

  • I'm killing myself.

  • I hate everybody.

  • I hate myself.

  • I'm a loser, everybody's thing.

  • And your tears are mixing with the ink.

  • And it's all very poignant and emotional.

  • I'm just being a little autobiographical.

  • And you put the journal away.

  • Then you rejoin group life.

  • And it's very, very important that no one

  • knows what you wrote in that journal.

  • Because if they do, they can't look at you the same way again.

  • It's really bad information to know about you.

  • So you got to keep that private.

  • Now, I believe the same holds true in a way

  • with these comments.

  • These are just journal entries.

  • And because we've got to get out there, and trust people,

  • and love, and do business with people,

  • it's really important that we don't know certain things

  • about our fellow human beings.

  • Because if we do, it'll make a lot of things very hard.

  • So I don't know if you guys are working on this.

  • But I have serious doubts about the social validity

  • of some of these comments.

  • We're not quite understanding what they do to our minds.

  • But we're living in communities.

  • And this is giving us information

  • about communities we might not want to hear.

  • So something to bear in mind.

  • Look, here's something else now about the news.

  • This is a guy and his five-year-old son.

  • And shortly after this picture was taken,

  • the man took this boy and his sister,

  • who is a couple of years older, he took them into his car.

  • And he stabbed them with a knife and then he killed himself.

  • And this took place in a little lane in the south of England.

  • And the car was found a few days later, with the bodies,

  • and the blood everywhere.

  • And when this story ran in the world's most popular English

  • language website, which is called the "MailOnline," which

  • none of you have ever read I hope,

  • so when this ran in the "MailOnline,"

  • this was the most popular story that they ran two years ago.

  • OK.

  • So what's going on?

  • Are we sick?

  • Are we mad?

  • What are we doing?

  • Will we care, how horrible, ugh.

  • What are we doing?

  • OK, let's go to Aristotle, who has some interesting insights.

  • Now, Aristotle, in the 4th century BC,

  • was very aware that his fellow Athenians did a weird thing

  • every year.

  • They went out and looked at tragedies,

  • plays by Sophocles and Euripides,

  • on the foothills of the Acropolis.

  • They looked at this sort of stuff.

  • They looked at stories of incest, and of murder,

  • and all kinds of disastrous events.

  • And Aristotle made a very fascinating point.

  • He said look, it is horrific.

  • It is ghastly.

  • But properly appreciating the dynamics within tragedy

  • is part of the civilizing process.

  • An education in horror has a role

  • to play in symbolizing in civilizing

  • you, a very weird point.

  • Now, why is Aristotle saying this?

  • Because he felt that in the hands of a great tragedian,

  • like Sophocles or Euripides, a story can be told in such a way

  • that rather than calling the guy who

  • has murdered his family a weirdo,

  • or a nut case, or et cetera, you start

  • to see something very, very frightening indeed.

  • Which is that all of us are capable of anything

  • if pushed in a certain way.

  • That all of us are capable of doing this to our children,

  • for example.

  • And I know it sounds unreasonable.

  • But that's what he believed.

  • And I think he was right.

  • We are on the edge of a precipice all of time.

  • And when we don't do these things

  • it's because we've not been pushed hard enough

  • or we've been blessed by a certain capacity

  • for self-restraint.

  • But it's there.

  • The fear should be there.

  • So we should feel pity for the tragic hero,

  • who has ruined his or her life.

  • And we should feel fear for ourselves,

  • how close we come to the precipice.

  • All of that is available.

  • And as so often happens in the news,

  • the news takes us to an interesting place

  • and then doesn't capitalize.

  • The news is full of undigested meals.

  • It is full of raw ingredients that

  • have not been properly combined.

  • And one of its mainstays, which is tragic news,

  • is on the precipice, on the edge of something very interesting.

  • And it doesn't take us to the most interesting thing.

  • This also goes on with this, car crashes.

  • I mean car crashes are hugely popular.

  • Everybody loves a good car crash.

  • The news loves a good car crash.

  • There's been snow, a massive pile-up, many dead.

  • But of course as you'll know, nothing

  • beats this, a really good plane crash,

  • preferably a wide-bodied airliner, huge explosion,

  • fireball, and many dead, off the scale popular.

  • Again, are we monsters?

  • No.

  • We're searching for the meaning of life.

  • In looking at these things, we're

  • searching for the meaning of life.

  • Back in the Middle Ages, it used to be a classic piece

  • of Interior decoration to put a skull on your table

  • or have a picture of a skull on your wall.

  • Why?

  • Because the thought of death, the reminder of death,

  • is a very important part of leading

  • you to focus on what is important in life.

  • So it is not in order to make life meaningless.

  • But it is in order to try and separate out

  • the things that are meaningful and the things that

  • are less rich in meaning.

  • And in a way, these are our modern memento mores.

  • These are our modern skulls on a table.

  • We don't really use them as such.

  • So again, we're not quite using the information

  • which is on the edge of something

  • very interesting in the way that it should be used.

  • Look.

  • At the end of the day, what the news is trying to do

  • a lot of the time is terrifying us.

  • It's trying to suggest that we cannot survive and that there

  • are bad things on the horizon, bird flu, a snowfall.

  • I mean my goodness, the snow.

  • Everything that is supposed to be bad is coming on the horizon

  • and we are meant to be terrified.

  • And that's why when we break down on a cold, dark night

  • and we have to go and seek out the help of a stranger,

  • we know that we are going to be chopped up in small pieces

  • and put in the trunk because we have read the news.

  • And we know that everybody out there

  • is a serial killer, a murderer, or a pedophile, et cetera.

  • And then we come across a stunning realization

  • that, of course, people are really nice.

  • And always go, oh, I was stuck in a snowdrift

  • and you know what, people are really nice.

  • Of course, they're really nice.

  • We've got an unbelievably crooked sense of statistics.

  • By its very nature, news overrepresents

  • the weird, dark stuff.

  • But because it's on all the time,

  • we tend to think nowadays that the weird, dark stuff is us.

  • It precisely isn't us.

  • That's why it's in the news.

  • But we miss that very basic point.

  • The human brain is very bad at holding on to this distinction.

  • And it matters a lot because the news

  • start to influence what we think it

  • means to live among Americans.

  • What are Americans like?

  • Well, they're on the whole crazy.

  • And they shoot people in huge numbers.

  • And, well, that's because we've read the news.

  • So it's very harmful.

  • There's very little of our information

  • nowadays that is gathered through our own senses,

  • through our own experiences.

  • We have offloaded the task of making up our minds

  • in large measure to people like the news industry,

  • like the "New York Times."

  • Think of that asinine comment, asinine strap line,

  • "all the news that's fit to print."

  • If ever there was a more hubristic comment.

  • All the news, are you sure, are you

  • really sure you've got all the news that's fit to print?

  • Oh, yes, yes, absolutely.

  • We've gone out there and we looked at everything.

  • All right.

  • So anything, anything happening in Wall Street,

  • a few blocks from your offices?

  • This is 2006.

  • And he goes anything happening at all?

  • Oh, it all seems fine, yeah.

  • And Ben Bernanke told us it's all fine.

  • And we're over-- OK, great.

  • So you just walked past the most major calamity, systemic errors

  • in the banking crisis, all the news that's fit to print.

  • It is not "the news."

  • It is some news, gathered together,

  • often by very mediocre people, in a hurry,

  • drinking cups of Styrofoam coffee,

  • and not thinking too hard.

  • And they've scooped up this stuff for you

  • in order to make reality seem like it has a narrative.

  • It's full of holes and errors.

  • And we just have to keep our eyes open all the time.

  • Look, I was talking about fear.

  • The other thing, of course, the news sometimes

  • does is to make us hopeful, particularly

  • around the area of science and technology.

  • You guys will know about this.

  • That's why you guys are in the news so often.

  • The news is to the best friend of science and technology.

  • Because it's all about saying that we

  • are advancing towards a sunlit uplands.

  • And so soon, very, very soon, everything will be solved,

  • all human problems will be solved.

  • This is the kind of progeny of the Enlightenment dream.

  • And that's why the news is constantly telling us

  • that if you drink more cranberry juice or less cranberry juice,

  • or have walnuts before desert, or have

  • an aspirin, or [INAUDIBLE], you'll

  • delay Alzheimer's or kidney diseases.

  • This is like a major thing.

  • There's a constant story going round and round and round.

  • And what the news is not telling you is you're going to die.

  • Whatever happens, you will die.

  • OK.

  • This is this vital piece of information

  • that has been delayed.

  • So death, it seems like a rumor.

  • It comes from a airliner or a car crash, et cetera.

  • It's not telling you that-- and the thing

  • that the news replaced, these guys,

  • all right, for all their faults--

  • I'm speaking to you as a Jewish atheist--

  • these guys at least knew that it was coming.

  • And they reconciled it to you in a sober context.

  • It was not going to be by surprise.

  • The news does not induct us into the steady state

  • of the human condition, which is death

  • is inevitable, around 80 years old.

  • OK.

  • There's going to be no discoveries unless Google

  • has something we don't know.

  • But, you know.

  • OK.

  • The other area is celebrity.

  • Now, celebrity news upsets a lot of people.

  • Because when we think about celebrity news--

  • when serious people gather together late at night

  • and worry about the condition of the human soul, they think,

  • oh, yes, we live in a culture where the kids are only

  • interested in celebrity news.

  • And this kind of lady here doesn't add to the argument.

  • I mean it's true.

  • Yeah.

  • There's a lot of this stuff around.

  • So what are we going to do about it?

  • Well, the thing to do is to get rid of celebrity news

  • and just live quietly.

  • Now, my view is we can't.

  • Celebrity is really important.

  • We need celebrities.

  • We need to admire.

  • We need role models.

  • Every functioning society, every functioning civilization

  • has had role models.

  • You can't do away with them.

  • We don't know how to be without looking at others

  • and modelling our behavior on theirs.

  • It's very normal.

  • We need to adjust to it.

  • So the thing to do is not to get rid of celebrities,

  • but to find our way to the right sort of celebrities.

  • How are we going to do that?

  • Well, you can see sort of hints of this.

  • The other day, Natalie Portman took her son to the park.

  • OK.

  • And it's really boring going to the park with your child.

  • I don't know if you've got kids.

  • It's cold.

  • And then it's so boring.

  • And it's quite nice to think, well, I took my kid to the park

  • and so did Natalie Portman.

  • That's pretty nice.

  • Yeah.

  • So the light of glamor shines for a few moments

  • on an ordinary activity.

  • And that's very good.

  • So for a small moment, Natalie has become Saint Natalie

  • of taking your child to the park.

  • And, of course, these guys who came before

  • knew that the role of saints is to bolster behavior

  • in areas where it needs bolstering.

  • So we need celebrities.

  • We just need the right sort.

  • And the problem is that the high-minded types who

  • run the more high-minded news organizations

  • are not interested in celebrity.

  • They think it's bad.

  • And so what do we end up with?

  • We end up with celebrities, but celebrities

  • that were made-- and celebrities are always

  • made-- by news organizations of the lowest

  • common denominator sought.

  • So let's brain up celebrity.

  • We should have some celebrities of a more ambitious nature.

  • Now, here's something else that the news

  • does to us all the time.

  • And we should be ready for it.

  • You'll know this guy, won't you, working in the industry?

  • You know who he is?

  • Yeah.

  • OK.

  • So here's this man, Elon Musk.

  • And he's very, very successful.

  • Here's his wife.

  • And he's got now five children.

  • And he's just doing amazing things.

  • And he's just great.

  • And often you get a Sunday supplement or a Saturday--

  • you know weekend magazine.

  • And there will be a story about Elon

  • at home with his kids, a nice piece.

  • Or maybe Elon's-- I don't know-- discovered how to cook pasta

  • or something.

  • And we're supposed to be interested and charmed

  • and then put the newspaper down and get on with our lives.

  • How on Earth are we going to do that?

  • It used to be the case in the news

  • when there was kind of strobe lighting or something,

  • there would be a warning coming up going,

  • strobe lighting coming, or look away, et cetera.

  • There should be a major warning, envy, envy warning, right?

  • Many stories in the news drive us insane with envy

  • because we live in meritocratic, mobile societies,

  • where, if you've got a good idea,

  • or you could be the next Larry, et cetera.

  • So it's constantly tantalizing us, the sense of possibility.

  • And it's the news that brings us this information.

  • The thing is that we still live under

  • a Judeo-Christian heritage which thinks very badly of envy.

  • You're not supposed to think about envy, a very bad person.

  • The thing is about envy, envy is really important.

  • It's really important to be envious quite a lot of the time

  • because envy is a confused, but in some

  • ways telling story about who you want to be.

  • And the thing to do with envy is rather than squashing it

  • and pretending everything's fine and it doesn't exist,

  • you need to analyze your envy to sort out

  • the wheat from the chaff and to get

  • to the root of what the envy might be telling you.

  • I recommend that we keep an envy diary

  • where we see the patterns of all the people

  • who have made us envious over the last day.

  • And we gather this up.

  • And we'll see patterns emerging.

  • When I start to analyze my envy for Elon Musk,

  • I realize I don't really what I found Paypal or be there

  • when e-Bay was starting.

  • That's not really me.

  • And his wife is very nice, but so is mine.

  • So it's not really that.

  • But why I really admire this guy is that he's courageous.

  • He's unbelievable.

  • Time and time again, he's got an idea.

  • Everybody thinks he's crazy.

  • And he goes for it and he bets big time.

  • That's the honorable thing.

  • That's what I want to learn from that.

  • The news is not in the business of doing that.

  • It's just telling us how he's cooking pasta or his latest

  • project on Mars.

  • The information is presented to us

  • without any understanding of what

  • it's doing to us, making us crazy with envy,

  • or how we might transcend that envy

  • and take it somewhere productive.

  • So again, what you'll notice through everything

  • I've been saying is the news isn't

  • totally on the wrong thing.

  • It's just constantly not doing some key moves that it should

  • be doing to render the information that it presents

  • to us effective.

  • It's stalled at the last minute before doing

  • something interesting.

  • Now, look, here's something else.

  • I want to talk about bias now in news.

  • Now, bias in news has got a really bad reputation.

  • And when we think of a bad news organization,

  • we'll think of like Fox News or the "MailOnline"

  • very biased sources of information.

  • And when we think of good news sources,

  • we'll think high-minded people, and those guys at NPR,

  • very balanced sort of people, or maybe the guys on the BBC.

  • I mean the BBC, it's for my country, but it's everywhere.

  • They're the most high-minded organization.

  • And they do not present bias because what

  • they do when they present the news is they just

  • like to say that they're giving you the information,

  • and then they're giving you opposing viewpoints,

  • and they're leaving it to you to make up your mind.

  • So if they're doing a feature on genital mutilation,

  • they'll get someone who's very against genital mutilation.

  • And in the interest of balance, they'll

  • get someone who's pro-genital mutilation.

  • If they're doing a story on genocide,

  • well, someone who's very pro-genocide,

  • anti-genocide, just to get both sides of the story.

  • The only time they ever came off the fence was over apartheid.

  • After much soul searching, they thought about it

  • and then they realized apartheid was a bad thing.

  • And they were going to say that.

  • But until then, they're just leaving it to us viewers

  • to look.

  • And that's a characteristic of high-minded news organizations

  • around the world.

  • It's disastrous.

  • We do not need a lack of bias.

  • We need good bias.

  • What is bias?

  • Bias is simply a way of evaluating data.

  • Trying to work out what does it mean, what should

  • a reasonable person think, where's it going, et cetera.

  • If I told you that President Obama is weighing up

  • whether to build that pipeline between the tar sands of Canada

  • and the Gulf of Mexico and then I said,

  • well, look, I'm just giving you the facts.

  • You make up your own mind.

  • You want to go no, come on, you've been thinking about it.

  • You're the BBC.

  • Just tell me what should I think?

  • The BBC's line is very patronizing.

  • It sort of assumes that the audience is incredibly easily

  • influenced.

  • And whatever is said to them, they'll kind of bowled over

  • And could go jump off a cliff if told to by somebody.

  • So the very important thing to do

  • is not to tell them anything.

  • But, of course, most of us, ever since we've been sort 3 or 4

  • are so good at filtering out bias that we don't like.

  • When your parents told you it's fish fingers time.

  • Come and sit down at the table.

  • No, it's not.

  • We are very good at blocking out any lesson that we don't want.

  • This is just second nature, right?

  • We are very good at recognition and also blocking it.

  • We need a take on the big questions.

  • We need the media not just to present us

  • with a narrow range of information.

  • All this comes to the fore with the financial crisis, which

  • is just the key because it happened in living memory.

  • It's a key moment when information gathering failed

  • on a spectacular scale, an information interpretation.

  • Despite the unbelievable plethora of news outlets,

  • the story didn't get through.

  • The story that there was a systemic problem in the banks

  • didn't get through.

  • Part of the reason for that is the agenda was very narrow.

  • If you talk to news journalists now,

  • they'll go, well, everything's fine in our world

  • because anyone, anyone can publish a newspaper.

  • Anyone can set up a Twitter account.

  • And you want to go, yeah, of course they can.

  • But only very, very few people ever get listened to.

  • So this argument about like, well,

  • everybody's got a Twitter account, yeah, sure.

  • Everybody's got 50 followers.

  • Only a very few people have got 49 million followers.

  • So this is really the difference.

  • And the problem with the financial world

  • and the financial crisis is that it wasn't properly analyzed.

  • We do not have a media in this country,

  • or in many countries, that properly

  • analyzes the way the economy works.

  • And it sound striking because how could that be possible?

  • Well, it's possible because you've

  • got the proof of the pudding.

  • You hear outrage out in the street.

  • Think of the Occupy Movement, OK.

  • The Occupy Movement is the progeny

  • of our news organizations.

  • In other words, it generates outrage and total confusion.

  • These guys are outraged.

  • They want to do something.

  • They're very nice.

  • They're very lovely people.

  • And in a few weeks, the police will come along and hose them

  • down.

  • And nothing will happen because in order

  • to change the world, as you guys know, you need ideas.

  • Passion is not enough.

  • You need passion plus ideas.

  • It is to some extent the responsibility of the news

  • to give us those ideas.

  • It didn't.

  • These guys were starved of ideas.

  • Part of the problem is that the news

  • keeps thinking that the problems of the world

  • can neatly be identified with a few bad apples.

  • If you open the hearts of most journalists,

  • you will find inscribed on their heart the word "Watergate."

  • Watergate remains the most mesmeric occasion

  • for journalists.

  • Because it involves things that they love, right, a secret.

  • A chance for the journalists to behave like a spy

  • and go in and find the secret, and then

  • the humiliation of the powerful.

  • They just live for this stuff.

  • The problem is very nice.

  • The problem is most of the problems

  • in the world do not fit that paradigm.

  • You're not going to catch the problems

  • if you think it's a secret.

  • The real problem is that many of the things that

  • are most wrong with the world are not secrets.

  • All this stuff about Edward Snowden, et cetera, nonsense.

  • The really important information is in public hands.

  • You know it already.

  • The thing is it's not pulled together.

  • It's not analyzed properly.

  • So it's about getting the nasty guy

  • and putting the handcuffs on.

  • It's about analyzing the systemic faults in our society.

  • And this, the news is very bad at doing.

  • Look, I'm just going to pull it together now.

  • But the fundamental assumption of news

  • is the most important things in the world

  • have happened very recently.

  • I mean I'm just being childishly simple.

  • But that is the basis, right.

  • The most important things have happened relatively recently,

  • possibly since the last bulletin or since the last time

  • you checked Twitter.

  • Now, that is sometimes very true, sometimes very,

  • very true, but almost never.

  • It's very rarely true that the most important things in life

  • happened very recently.

  • Mankind has a very, very long history.

  • And there are lots and lots of truth way back.

  • Those truths are news because news is really important stuff

  • that no one's thinking about.

  • So "Plato's Republic," which no one is thinking about, is news.

  • It's in a way as much news as what's

  • going on in Kiev because it's important

  • and no one is thinking about it.

  • And it needs to be brought to our attention.

  • But the news doesn't recognize that.

  • I mean, boy, if you advance that argument with the average news

  • editor, they'll-- well, they'll have you marched out

  • of the building.

  • So we need to bear that in mind.

  • We need to bear that it's called the news, but it's some news.

  • At the end of the day, we have to make sure

  • that Wi-Fi never arrives on airplanes.

  • Because we need time, all of us, to try and find out

  • the news from other sources, other

  • than these mass-produced machines

  • called newspapers, websites, et cetera.

  • We need to find out the news from ourselves, from inside.

  • I mean part of the problem of news is it's so respectable.

  • It's so prestigious.

  • If you're sitting down at home on a Sunday morning

  • and somebody says, so what are you doing?

  • You go, I'm reading the news.

  • All right.

  • Oh, carry on reading the news.

  • And if you go a bit of you know-- rerun that scenario,

  • so what are you doing?

  • Well, I'm just sitting out of the window and kind of-- I'm

  • remembering something.

  • When I was 12 and I had a kind of insight when a breeze was--

  • Come on, get and do the washing up.

  • It's simply not respectable to daydream, to free associate.

  • And yet, of course, as we know, that's

  • where often the insights are made.

  • That's when they come.

  • Without noticing, there are lots of things

  • that don't make it in the news this guy.

  • He makes it in the news.

  • But he's out there.

  • He's a metaphor for a lot of the stuff that we keep missing.

  • Here's a little autobiographical endpoint.

  • I'm a philosopher by training.

  • And philosophers really think they're right, right?

  • They're an embattled minority.

  • But they really think they have the truth.

  • And they're going to go to their deaths with it.

  • The problem is no one cares and no one listens.

  • The average work of academic philosophy in the United States

  • sells under 300 copies, under the 300 copies,

  • important information, 300 copies.

  • And I mentioned the "MailOnline,"

  • the English language's most popular global website,

  • the "MailOnline," 40 million hits a day.

  • So 40 million hits a day and 300.

  • That's the world we're living in.

  • That's the kind of challenge.

  • Anyway, I was having a late night

  • chat with some philosopher friends

  • and we were tossing these ideas around.

  • And then one insomniac night, I was thinking about this.

  • And I thought, OK, look, why don't we

  • get some philosophers to rewrite the "MailOnline?"

  • We'll use all the same stories, all the dramas, the disasters,

  • et cetera, except we won't have their slant towards kind

  • of racism, and bigotry, and melodrama.

  • We'll look at truth, and complexity, and subtlety,

  • and justice, et cetera.

  • And we'll start a new news outlet.

  • So we did that.

  • And it's called "The Philosophers' Mail."

  • And you can see it at philosophersmail.com.

  • And it's in many ways a practical application

  • of many of the ideas that are worked out theoretically

  • in my book.

  • I recommend it to you.

  • Now on that note, some questions.

  • Thank you so much for listening.

  • But come back with your questions.

  • Thank you.

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • AUDIENCE: I think you may be a little optimistic about bias.

  • I mean areas where I know the story,

  • I find that you either get Democrat news

  • or you get Republican news.

  • You don't get honest news.

  • Yeah.

  • I can pick lots of areas I know.

  • But one area I'll pick is why is it in the United States

  • that we only get only part of what's going on,

  • even in Israel?

  • I mean you can't see the stories that

  • show up in "Haaretz," in the US.

  • I mean you'd have people accusing you

  • of all sorts of stuff.

  • Nobody in the US Congress have the courage

  • to say what's happens in "Haaretz."

  • Why is that?

  • ALAIN DE BOTTON: Yeah.

  • Look, I think part of the problem

  • is that-- you said it's left wing, right wing bias.

  • I mean it's crazy that at this stage in civilization,

  • we're still dominated by this idea of left wing, right wing

  • bias.

  • Can we just have a bit more bias?

  • I mean let's imagine we had a Buddhist bias, OK.

  • So what's Buddhist bias?

  • So the Buddha, the five-fold truths, et cetera,

  • there's a take on the world.

  • Imagine reading the news through a Buddhist lens.

  • You could do that.

  • And it would pick out all sorts of things.

  • Imagine reading the news through a psychoanalytic lens.

  • Imagine reading the news through a lens

  • where the sensibility of Walt Whitman

  • would be programmed into the machine.

  • And you would start to see the sort of things

  • that Walt Whitman might picked up and been-- in other words,

  • we're at the dawn of bias.

  • So I agree with you.

  • We're getting such a limited set of biases around Israel.

  • But I don't think the answer is, well,

  • we're getting the right wing bias

  • and I wish we could have left wing bias.

  • I mean let's open it up.

  • There's a lot of other kind of perspectives we could have.

  • AUDIENCE: I love all your works, especially the ones

  • that you did earlier.

  • I'm wondering how you did--

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • ALAIN DE BOTTON: I'll remain stoic on that.

  • That's OK.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • Anyone likes to hear that.

  • It's like someone saying to you, you look great.

  • But you looked better younger.

  • But you look great.

  • Yeah.

  • Great.

  • Yeah.

  • AUDIENCE: Nice.

  • AUDIENCE: Specifically referring to "Consolations of Philosophy"

  • and Proust's book.

  • But how do you determine your topic?

  • Because you covered a range of topics, travel,

  • I guess work, love, different direct statement

  • on philosophies.

  • And my second question is are there

  • any works that you're particularly proud of

  • or particularly sort of not proud of?

  • ALAIN DE BOTTON: Good.

  • So, look, I think what really motivates

  • me is what I could broadly called emotional intelligence.

  • There's all kinds of visions of intelligence.

  • I'm interested in the emotional intelligence part.

  • And that's broadly speaking, wisdom,

  • a very [INAUDIBLE] time.

  • What is wisdom?

  • Wisdom is the part of knowledge that is not merely true,

  • but is also useful and helpful.

  • And I'm very interested in that tradition,

  • which is a neglected tradition.

  • And I'm from the humanities background.

  • And my interest is in reading the history of culture,

  • the history of the humanities, with an eye to wisdom

  • and pulling that stuff out.

  • And I'm interested in how to get it

  • to have an impact in the world.

  • And when I'm in despair in the middle of night,

  • I sometimes think, ah, do books do anything?

  • What should I be doing?

  • So a few years ago I founded a school,

  • called the School of Life.

  • It's going really well.

  • We're opening branches all over the world now.

  • And that's a school where people go and they take lessons

  • in how to break up with someone, and how to negotiate things

  • with their parents, and how to die.

  • And there are moments of community.

  • So I'm very proud of having started up the School of Life

  • and how well it's going.

  • And now I'm interested in online.

  • And I'm thinking-- I did an app--

  • I did a book called "Art as Therapy."

  • And when we did it, we did an app

  • to go with it, which paralleled pictures with some text that

  • brought out the redemptive moral of the picture.

  • And that had 2 million hits.

  • And I thought, wow, that's great because the book only

  • sold 50,000 copies.

  • And you think, whoa, that's kind of interesting.

  • So I'm about wisdom.

  • And then I'm about looking for channels

  • down which to get that information.

  • That's what keeps me up at night.

  • That's what I'm interested in.

  • AUDIENCE: Thank you.

  • ALAIN DE BOTTON: Thanks.

  • AUDIENCE: So allow me to play devil's advocate here.

  • ALAIN DE BOTTON: Yeah.

  • AUDIENCE: So presume have this vision

  • of bias-- sorry to keep returning to this.

  • But suppose we have this vision of Buddhist bias,

  • and poet bias, and all that.

  • It would be good given the sheer volume of this stuff

  • to have some kind of central organizing force

  • to pull all these biases together, sort of give them

  • to you as an aggregational function.

  • So if you allow that that is a natural conclusion

  • from the construction inside your system,

  • that's seems awfully familiar to you have your left

  • leaning expert, you have your right leaning expert,

  • you have your Langston Hughes leaning expert.

  • And the role of the news agencies in this situation

  • would be to take all these smaller, very undistributed

  • sources of bias and aggregate them together.

  • And I would like to hear your response did

  • the proposition that the system of decentralized bias

  • will inevitably, given the small bandwidth of the distribution

  • of ideas, tend towards some kind of aggregating force, which

  • will return to the status that we're in now?

  • ALAIN DE BOTTON: Look, I think we've got more bandwidth maybe

  • than you suggest.

  • I think that the bandwidth is currently clogged up

  • with what you might call orphaned pieces of information.

  • Because we're talking here at Google,

  • I'm just trying to frame it in language

  • that would seem natural to you.

  • You guys are all about ordering information.

  • Now, the news is also about ordering information.

  • The thing is I guess I'm interested in the more

  • psychological, philosophical level of ordering.

  • If I tell you $100 million has gone missing from the bank

  • account of the president of Uganda,

  • OK, that's a piece of information.

  • That is a piece of news.

  • $100 million has gone.

  • That information is at this moment

  • not properly contextualized.

  • In other words, I think about that

  • and I think, oh, that sounds bad.

  • But I don't know what to do with it.

  • If you say to people-- in Africa,

  • they have-- in that part of the world,

  • they've got a vision of the clan, which

  • means that the president did not think he was stealing.

  • He was giving to his family.

  • He was being an honorable man.

  • In other words, that's very different from stealing.

  • So you guys are applying a stealing narrative

  • on that story and I want to apply an African clan

  • narrative.

  • And it becomes completely different.

  • OK.

  • Now, we do this with any number of stories.

  • Now, suddenly that story about the $100 million going missing

  • becomes a lot more interesting.

  • It's starting to get lively.

  • It's starting to be more than just another boring, orphaned

  • fact.

  • And I think what we need to do with the news is

  • get a lot better at reconnecting orphaned pieces of information

  • with the question, the context, the theme, which will properly

  • bring out its interest.

  • I think that the news, the way we consume news

  • is a little bit like having about 40 novels constantly

  • presented to us where we're allowed to read one sentence

  • and then the novel is removed.

  • Then another novel is given us, and another one, another.

  • We can't follow.

  • We can't hold onto it.

  • It's very disorganized.

  • And I'm not sure that quite answered your question.

  • But I think I'm circling the dilemma perhaps

  • you're circling.

  • AUDIENCE: OK.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • ALAIN DE BOTTON: Perhaps we can chat later or something.

  • AUDIENCE: I'll get out of the way, just to--

  • AUDIENCE: So you've painted quite a troubling picture

  • I think.

  • You've explained that fundamentally

  • the aim of news agencies is to astound and terrify us

  • with recent news and that everyone

  • has 50 Twitter followers.

  • So it's very hard for anyone to change that.

  • So how do we fix it?

  • ALAIN DE BOTTON: How do we fix it?

  • OK.

  • Well, I think there's two things.

  • Ideas, we got to get the ideas straight.

  • And then we've got to go and get some money

  • to do something about it.

  • That could sound sort of terribly idealistic.

  • I've met quite a lot of people, with lots of money,

  • in positions of power.

  • And my number one conclusion is they're not necessarily that

  • sure what they're doing or what they could do.

  • Sometimes you think, Rupert Murdoch,

  • he knows exactly what he's doing.

  • He's got his-- scheew, he's doing it

  • because he's committed.

  • And he's kind of sticking around and someone brings him

  • this idea, someone brings him that idea.

  • There's a little more fluidity.

  • So I'm kind of optimistic about the way the world is in a way

  • because what you need to do is to think

  • through the anomalies of the news

  • and then start a proper news organization that

  • will put it to right.

  • And that will cost about a billion dollars,

  • which is not that much and Google should give it to me.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • And I will spend it wisely.

  • You do need, unfortunately-- you know my real problem

  • as an author is that I've realized that for years, I've

  • been writing books going the world should be like this,

  • and you should do that, and you should do this, et cetera.

  • And no one cares because the position of the author

  • is a romantic figure, from the 19th century.

  • It's this idea of like a genius guy

  • like comes in and has a great idea and then

  • the world changes.

  • Nonsense.

  • It doesn't change.

  • The only way the world changes is through institutions,

  • agglomerations of people working in discipline

  • for a common goal.

  • It's the only way to do it.

  • In other words, what I presented to

  • you here is some of the thought.

  • And now it requires an institution and money

  • to get these things going.

  • There are examples, Glenn Greenwald

  • going to Pierre Omidyar and getting lots of money.

  • My problem with Glenn Greenwald's journalism

  • is it's missing out on an awful lot of stages here.

  • It's based on the idea-- that's what it's completely based on,

  • the Watergate paradigm.

  • It's also based on the idea that information in itself

  • is enough.

  • And the darker and more shocking it

  • is, the more people will be impressed by it

  • and the more action will be taken, which I don't think

  • is true.

  • So, as well, I think intellectual quirks there.

  • But I think that's the kind of model.

  • That's the way it should go.

  • AUDIENCE: You were saying that the plane crashes and car

  • crashes are the reminders of death

  • that the news presents to us.

  • But then in the next section on science,

  • you said that the news is trying to avoid

  • the fact that we're going to die.

  • So can you [INAUDIBLE] that--

  • ALAIN DE BOTTON: Yes.

  • AUDIENCE: --contradiction?

  • ALAIN DE BOTTON: I think what the news does

  • is to make death a bizarre, catastrophic spectacle that

  • happens occasionally, rather than, as we know,

  • a daily event.

  • So by making it so spectacular, by focusing death

  • on the spectacular moments, very rarely

  • do you a story about octogenarian's heart

  • gives out peacefully after a short illness.

  • That is not news.

  • So in a way, death becomes this kind

  • of massive pornographic event that happens very occasionally

  • off the screen, rather than a daily, steady reality.

  • And the daily, steady reality is hang on guys,

  • science is getting there.

  • The guys at MIT has the next wave of whatever

  • and perhaps miniature robots, et cetera.

  • Rather than going, it's going to be

  • too late for anyone reading this.

  • Anyone reading this is going to die.

  • the eternal life is at least 600 years away.

  • It will probably come.

  • It will come, but 600 years away.

  • AUDIENCE: We only have time for two more questions.

  • ALAIN DE BOTTON: OK.

  • AUDIENCE: Great.

  • So you mentioned kind of the dichotomy

  • between the 40 million hits on a website versus 300 books being

  • sold.

  • And I think it's an interesting idea.

  • As someone who has come from academia and [INAUDIBLE]

  • and was kind of disillusioned by it, or putting

  • in hours and hours of research into something

  • that nobody is really reading, and it really

  • doesn't become actionable or practical

  • in most people's lives.

  • On the other hand, you have information that's really--

  • everybody's reading, but there's nothing there.

  • Do you see any news outlets or any sort

  • of form of communication that's bridging the gap?

  • Because I kind of see the ivory tower.

  • And most of the professors at least

  • that I worked with, they thought writing anything that

  • could be understood by the general public

  • was beneath them--

  • ALAIN DE BOTTON: Yeah.

  • AUDIENCE: --which is problematic.

  • So do you see a space there that [INAUDIBLE]?

  • ALAIN DE BOTTON: Look, there is totally a space.

  • There is totally a space.

  • This is where our era is.

  • I mean we are living in that era.

  • Because the architecture of news and of the authority around

  • news has broken down.

  • It used to be the case the "New York Times" would tell us

  • something, oh, everybody listens.

  • Now, "Upworthy" could tell you something or "The Huffington

  • Post," et cetera.

  • It's kind of a chaos of the marketplace, which

  • means that if you've got serious things to say,

  • you can very easily get lost.

  • And I think the only solution in a market system

  • is the most serious people get into bed with the people who

  • can sell stuff, and who are the artists.

  • And look, I mean I don't want to be idealistic,

  • but let's think of Shakespeare, right?

  • Shakespeare, the great thing about Shakespeare,

  • is that he was a popular writer.

  • He was saying the most interesting things.

  • But he was a business person who wanted to fill the theater.

  • And so he wanted like the local guys from the fish market

  • to come in.

  • And so he got a little bit of blood

  • and guts some guns and things just to keep them happy.

  • And then he also wanted to explore the deeper stuff.

  • And this is where we are.

  • This is the kind of age we're in.

  • So we're needing to be nimble in a way

  • that perhaps serious people didn't need to be 20 years ago.

  • Yeah.

  • AUDIENCE: So you may have alluded to this slightly.

  • But the problem I see is that we have

  • news concentrated in the hands of a few.

  • And the few may have realized that this

  • is a tool that can be used for mass psychology and mass

  • propaganda.

  • And I think we're seeing some of that happening now.

  • And one way to spot it is by looking at any big story,

  • let's say Syria.

  • And you look at what the major US outlets put out on Syria

  • and it's all aligned along the same view.

  • Now, something as complex as that

  • is going to have two, three, maybe

  • a dozen very different viewpoints.

  • But they're never heard.

  • So there's some collusion going on in my view

  • within the major news.

  • And I want to get your comment.

  • ALAIN DE BOTTON: Look, I think it's

  • even worse than a collusion.

  • I mean this is the kind of Chomsky line.

  • The Chomsky line says there are elderly white males sitting

  • somewhere, controlling the media, sort

  • of pulling the strings, trying to get

  • us to think in certain ways, in the interests of war

  • and the military machine.

  • I think it's even worse than that.

  • Because if there really were these guys,

  • we can go out there and get them.

  • We could do a scoop on them.

  • The problem is it's largely unconscious.

  • It's unconscious bias of the worse sort.

  • People just-- in any area you look

  • at, education, Syria, housing, interest rates, economic income

  • distribution, et cetera, there's the questions

  • you're allowed to ask and the questions

  • that sound a bit weird.

  • And I've been on news programs where

  • I've raised a weird question and boy do they get you out fast.

  • It's like, oh, what's this question you're asking?

  • We thought you were coming to talk about classroom sizes.

  • And now you're starting to talk about what education is for

  • and what learning is about.

  • Off the stage.

  • There's censorship of this kind of thing.

  • I think we need to keep asking those really uncomfortable

  • questions, yeah, and be aware of it, Look, I don't know.

  • This is where I am.

  • This is the battle really.

  • Let's keep fighting against that blindness.

  • We have surrendered an awfully big part of our brains

  • to organizations.

  • And it used to be the case that you knew-- you know,

  • a friend of mine who used to live under communism,

  • would say, under communism, the great thing

  • was we knew it was all wrong in the media.

  • So we thought quite hard.

  • The problem is nowadays people think it's right.

  • And so they've stopped thinking.

  • That's the problem.

  • Thank you very much.

  • AUDIENCE: Great.

  • Thank you.

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • ALAIN DE BOTTON: Thanks.

ALAIN DE BOTTON: It's a real pleasure

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