Chris Blattman: War and Violence
政治与社会历史与文明音乐与艺术技术与编程心理与人性
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"And they coordinated to read my old proposal so that when I showed up for my defense, they said, you're actually think you're defending, but we were actually, we want you to only talk about this other thing that you were going to do because this is like, you should not go."
他们协调阅读了我的旧提案，以便当我出席辩护时，他们说，你实际上认为你在辩护，但实际上，我们希望你只谈论你要做的另一件事，因为这就像，你不应该去。
— Chris Blattman （2:25:53.400）
"We know you could invade us. We know we're weak. We know we'll be strong in the future. We promise to not wield our and abuse our or just merely just sort of take what we can get in the future when we're strong. We're gonna restrain ourselves in future."
我们知道你可能会入侵我们。我们知道我们很弱。我们知道我们未来会变得坚强。我们承诺不会挥舞我们的、滥用我们的，或者只是在我们强大的时候拿走我们能得到的东西。以后我们一定要克制自己。
— Chris Blattman （1:57:21.400）
"I think there's more, but those are two that are really fundamental here because I think those two things reduce the incentives for war in two ways."
我认为还有更多，但这两件事在这里非常重要，因为我认为这两件事以两种方式减少了战争的动机。
— Chris Blattman （2:15:44.400）
"There's that feeling, and I think that means there's a lack of understanding of culture of people, and we need to kind of bridge that understanding."
有这种感觉，我认为这意味着人们缺乏对文化的理解，我们需要在这种理解之间架起桥梁。
— Chris Blattman （2:19:30.400）
"But every day you have to go through that to get to the, cause you're trying to actually understand how to help people. You're trying to understand how that trauma has manifested, how they either, some people get stronger as a result of that."
但每天你都必须经历这些才能到达目的，因为你正在尝试真正了解如何帮助人们。你试图了解这种创伤是如何显现的，他们或者某些人如何因此而变得更坚强。
— Chris Blattman （2:30:26.400）
🎙️ 完整对话（2654 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
What are your thoughts on the ongoing war in Ukraine?
您对乌克兰持续不断的战争有何看法？
Lex Fridman (00:03.000)
How do you analyze it within your framework about war?
您如何在您的战争框架内分析它？
Lex Fridman (00:06.320)
How far would they go to hang onto power
为了保住权力他们会走多远
Lex Fridman (00:09.680)
when push came to shove is I think the thing
当事情到了紧要关头时，我认为是这样的
Lex Fridman (00:12.980)
that worries me the most and is plainly
这最让我担心，而且很明显
Lex Fridman (00:16.520)
what worries most people about the risk of nuclear war.
大多数人担心核战争的风险。
Lex Fridman (00:19.120)
Like at what point does that unchecked leadership
就像不受约束的领导力在什么时候
Lex Fridman (00:22.640)
decide that this is worth it?
决定这值得吗？
Lex Fridman (00:24.860)
Especially if they can emerge from the rubble still on top.
尤其是如果他们能够从废墟中爬出来，仍然在上面的话。
Chris Blattman (00:31.900)
The following is a conversation with Chris Blattman,
以下是与克里斯·布拉特曼的对话，
Lex Fridman (00:34.340)
professor at the University of Chicago,
芝加哥大学教授，
Chris Blattman (00:36.340)
studying the causes and consequences of violence and war.
研究暴力和战争的原因和后果。
Lex Fridman (00:41.040)
This he explores in his new book called
他在他的新书中对此进行了探讨
Lex Fridman (00:44.180)
Why We Fight, The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace.
我们为何战斗、战争的根源与和平之路。
Lex Fridman (00:48.860)
The book comes out on April 19th,
该书于4月19日出版，
Lex Fridman (00:51.160)
so you should preorder it to support Chris and his work.
所以你应该预订它来支持克里斯和他的工作。
Lex Fridman (00:54.800)
This is the Lux Friedman podcast.
这是勒克斯·弗里德曼的播客。
Chris Blattman (00:56.800)
To support it, please check out our sponsors
为了支持它，请查看我们的赞助商
Lex Fridman (00:58.800)
in the description.
在描述中。
Lex Fridman (00:59.880)
And now, dear friends, here's Chris Blattman.
现在，亲爱的朋友们，这是克里斯·布拉特曼。
Lex Fridman (01:04.800)
In your new book titled Why We Fight,
Chris Blattman (01:07.400)
The Roots of War and the Paths for Peace,
Lex Fridman (01:10.240)
you write, quote, let me be clear what I mean
Chris Blattman (01:13.880)
when I say war.
Lex Fridman (01:15.740)
I don't just mean countries duking it out.
Chris Blattman (01:18.420)
I mean any kind of prolonged violence struggle
Lex Fridman (01:21.340)
between groups.
Chris Blattman (01:22.580)
That includes villages, clans, gangs, ethnic groups,
Lex Fridman (01:25.960)
religious sects, political factions, and nations.
Chris Blattman (01:29.600)
Wildly different as these may be,
Lex Fridman (01:31.840)
their origins have much in common.
Chris Blattman (01:34.760)
We'll see that the Northern Irish zealots,
Lex Fridman (01:37.560)
Colombian cartels, European tyrants,
Chris Blattman (01:40.400)
Liberian rebels, Greek oligarchs, Chicago gangs,
Lex Fridman (01:44.240)
Indian mobs, Rwandan genociders,
Chris Blattman (01:48.080)
a new word I learned, thank you to you.
Lex Fridman (01:50.320)
Those are people who administer genocide.
Chris Blattman (01:55.240)
English soccer hooligans and American invaders.
Lex Fridman (01:59.960)
So first, let me ask, what is war?
Chris Blattman (02:03.760)
In saying that war is a prolonged violence struggle
Lex Fridman (02:07.560)
between groups, what do the words prolonged groups
Lex Fridman (02:11.080)
and violent mean?
Lex Fridman (02:12.600)
I sit at the sort of intersection of economics
Lex Fridman (02:14.520)
and political science, and I also dwell a little bit
Lex Fridman (02:17.840)
in psychology, but that's partly because I'm married
Chris Blattman (02:20.720)
to psychologists, sometimes do research with her.
Lex Fridman (02:23.680)
All these things are really different.
Lex Fridman (02:24.720)
So if you're a political scientist,
Lex Fridman (02:25.680)
you spend a lot of time just classifying
Chris Blattman (02:27.380)
a really narrow kind of conflict, and studying that.
Lex Fridman (02:30.580)
And that's an important way to make progress
Chris Blattman (02:33.120)
as a social scientist.
Lex Fridman (02:34.180)
But I'm not trying to make progress,
Chris Blattman (02:35.460)
I'm trying to sort of help everybody step back and say,
Lex Fridman (02:38.360)
you know what, there's like some common things
Chris Blattman (02:39.880)
that we know from these disciplines
Lex Fridman (02:42.680)
that relate to a really wide range of phenomena.
Chris Blattman (02:46.280)
Basically, we can talk about them in a very similar way
Lex Fridman (02:48.680)
and we can get really similar insights.
Lex Fridman (02:49.880)
So I wanted to actually bring them together,
Lex Fridman (02:54.320)
but I still had to like say,
Chris Blattman (02:56.840)
let's hold out individual violence,
Lex Fridman (02:58.600)
which has a lot in common, but individuals choose
Chris Blattman (03:03.180)
to engage in violence for more
Lex Fridman (03:05.440)
and sometimes different reasons.
Lex Fridman (03:06.720)
So let's just put that aside so that we can focus a bit.
Lex Fridman (03:10.560)
And let's really put aside short incidents of violence,
Chris Blattman (03:13.800)
because those might have the same kind
Lex Fridman (03:16.480)
of things explaining them.
Lex Fridman (03:18.000)
But actually, there's a lot of other things
Lex Fridman (03:19.480)
that can explain short violence.
Chris Blattman (03:20.720)
Short violence can be really demonstrative.
Lex Fridman (03:25.000)
Like you can just, I can use it to communicate information.
Chris Blattman (03:28.000)
The thing that all of it has in common
Lex Fridman (03:29.600)
is that it doesn't generally make sense.
Chris Blattman (03:31.360)
It's not your best option most of the time.
Lex Fridman (03:34.040)
And so I wanted to say, let's take this thing
Chris Blattman (03:36.600)
that should be puzzling.
Lex Fridman (03:37.900)
We kind of think it's normal,
Chris Blattman (03:39.540)
we kind of think this is what all humans do.
Lex Fridman (03:42.280)
But let's point out that it's not normal
Lex Fridman (03:45.680)
and then figure out why and let's talk about why.
Lex Fridman (03:47.420)
And so I was trying to throw out the short violence,
Chris Blattman (03:50.400)
I was trying to throw out the individual violence.
Lex Fridman (03:53.160)
I was also trying to throw out all the competition
Chris Blattman (03:56.560)
that happens that's not violent.
Lex Fridman (03:58.040)
That's the normal, normal competition.
Chris Blattman (03:59.500)
I was trying to say, let's talk about violent competition,
Lex Fridman (04:01.440)
because that's kind of the puzzle.
Lex Fridman (04:03.920)
So that's really interesting,
Lex Fridman (04:04.920)
because you said usually people try
Chris Blattman (04:07.920)
to find a narrow definition and you said progress.
Lex Fridman (04:10.880)
So you made progress by finding a narrow definition,
Chris Blattman (04:13.760)
for example, of military conflict in a particular context.
Lex Fridman (04:18.560)
And progress means, all right, well,
Lex Fridman (04:20.960)
how do we prevent this particular kind of military conflict?
Lex Fridman (04:24.420)
Or maybe if it's already happening,
Lex Fridman (04:26.240)
how do we deescalate it and how do we solve it,
Lex Fridman (04:29.920)
sort of from a geopolitics perspective,
Lex Fridman (04:31.720)
from an economics perspective?
Lex Fridman (04:33.600)
And you're looking for a definition of war
Chris Blattman (04:36.300)
that is as broad as possible,
Lex Fridman (04:38.760)
but not so broad that you cannot achieve
Chris Blattman (04:41.800)
a deep level of understanding of why it happens
Lex Fridman (04:45.200)
and how it can be avoided.
Chris Blattman (04:46.780)
Right, and a common, basically like recognize
Lex Fridman (04:49.480)
that common principles govern some kinds of behavior
Chris Blattman (04:52.940)
that look pretty different.
Lex Fridman (04:54.520)
Like an Indian ethnic riot is obviously pretty different
Lex Fridman (04:59.360)
than invading a neighboring country, right?
Lex Fridman (05:01.600)
But, and that's pretty different than two villages,
Chris Blattman (05:04.560)
or two gangs, a lot of what I work on
Lex Fridman (05:06.180)
is studying organized criminals and gangs.
Chris Blattman (05:08.040)
Two gangs going to war you'd think is really different,
Lex Fridman (05:10.000)
and of course it is, but there are some common principles.
Chris Blattman (05:13.400)
You can just think about conflict and the use of violence
Lex Fridman (05:16.400)
and not learn everything, but just get a lot,
Chris Blattman (05:19.720)
just get really, really far by sort of seeing
Lex Fridman (05:21.720)
the commonalities rather than just focusing
Chris Blattman (05:23.440)
on the differences.
Lex Fridman (05:24.380)
So again, those words are prolonged, groups, and violent.
Lex Fridman (05:28.680)
Can you maybe linger on each of those words?
Lex Fridman (05:31.000)
What does prolonged mean?
Lex Fridman (05:33.080)
Where's the line between short and long?
Lex Fridman (05:36.240)
What does groups mean, and what does violent mean?
Lex Fridman (05:39.080)
So let me, you know, I have a friend who,
Lex Fridman (05:42.580)
someone who's become a friend through the process
Chris Blattman (05:44.320)
of my work and writing this book also,
Lex Fridman (05:47.220)
who was 20, 30 years ago, was a gang leader in Chicago.
Lex Fridman (05:53.120)
So this guy named Napoleon English, or NAP.
Lex Fridman (05:55.560)
And I remember one time he was saying,
Chris Blattman (05:57.360)
well you know, when I was young I used to,
Lex Fridman (05:59.440)
I was 15, 16, and he'd go to the neighboring
Chris Blattman (06:03.120)
gang's territory, he says I'd go gang banging,
Lex Fridman (06:05.120)
and I said, well, I didn't know what that meant.
Lex Fridman (06:06.560)
I said, what does that mean?
Lex Fridman (06:07.520)
And he said, oh, that just meant I'd shoot him up.
Chris Blattman (06:09.800)
Like I'd shoot at buildings, I might shoot at people.
Lex Fridman (06:13.400)
I wasn't trying to kill, he wasn't trying to kill them.
Chris Blattman (06:15.360)
He was just trying to sort of send a signal
Lex Fridman (06:18.040)
that he was a tough guy, and he was fearless,
Lex Fridman (06:20.800)
and he was someone who they should be careful with.
Lex Fridman (06:24.760)
And so I didn't want to call that war, right?
Chris Blattman (06:27.320)
That was, that's something different.
Lex Fridman (06:30.800)
That was, it was short, it was kind of sporadic,
Lex Fridman (06:33.220)
and he wasn't, and he was basically trying
Lex Fridman (06:36.280)
to send them information.
Lex Fridman (06:37.560)
And this is what countries do all the time, right?
Lex Fridman (06:40.200)
We have military parades, and we might
Chris Blattman (06:44.800)
have border skirmishes, and I wanted to sort of,
Lex Fridman (06:49.480)
so what's short is a three month border skirmish,
Chris Blattman (06:52.860)
a war, I mean, I don't try to get into those things.
Lex Fridman (06:55.840)
I don't want to, but I want to point out that like,
Chris Blattman (06:59.280)
these long, grueling months and years of violence
Lex Fridman (07:02.040)
are like the problem and the puzzle.
Lex Fridman (07:04.800)
And I just, I didn't want to spend a lot of time
Lex Fridman (07:07.320)
talking about the international version of gang banging.
Chris Blattman (07:12.280)
It's a different phenomenon.
Lex Fridman (07:13.480)
So what is it about Napoleon that doesn't nap,
Chris Blattman (07:16.560)
let's call him, not to add confusion,
Lex Fridman (07:19.240)
that doesn't qualify for war?
Lex Fridman (07:21.840)
Is it the individual aspect?
Lex Fridman (07:23.880)
Is it that violence is not the thing that is sought,
Lex Fridman (07:28.600)
but the communication of information is what is sought?
Lex Fridman (07:35.000)
Or is it the shortness of it?
Lex Fridman (07:37.600)
Is it all of those combined?
Lex Fridman (07:39.280)
It's a little bit, I mean, he was the head of a group,
Chris Blattman (07:41.720)
or he's becoming the head of a group at that point.
Lex Fridman (07:45.520)
And that group eventually did go to war
Chris Blattman (07:47.400)
with those neighboring gangs, which is to say
Lex Fridman (07:49.280)
it was just long, drawn out conflict
Chris Blattman (07:51.960)
over months and months and months.
Lex Fridman (07:53.840)
But I think one of the big insights from my fields
Lex Fridman (07:58.400)
is that you're constantly negotiating over something, right?
Lex Fridman (08:02.880)
Whether you're officially negotiating
Chris Blattman (08:04.360)
or you're all posturing, you're bargaining over something
Lex Fridman (08:07.760)
and you should be able to figure out a way to split that pie.
Lex Fridman (08:12.760)
And you could use violence.
Lex Fridman (08:14.520)
But violence is, everybody's miserable.
Chris Blattman (08:16.080)
Like if you're nap, like if you start a war,
Lex Fridman (08:18.200)
one, there's lots of risks.
Chris Blattman (08:19.960)
You could get killed, that's not good.
Lex Fridman (08:22.560)
You could kill somebody else and go to jail,
Chris Blattman (08:24.040)
which is what happened to him, that's not good.
Lex Fridman (08:26.560)
Your soldiers get killed, no one's buying your drugs
Chris Blattman (08:28.880)
in the middle of a gunfight, so it interrupts your business.
Lex Fridman (08:31.160)
And so on and on, it's really miserable.
Chris Blattman (08:32.920)
This is what we're seeing right now,
Lex Fridman (08:34.880)
as we're recording the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Chris Blattman (08:37.840)
is now at the fourth or fifth week.
Lex Fridman (08:40.040)
Everybody's, if it didn't dawn on them before,
Chris Blattman (08:42.920)
it's dawned on them now just how brutal and costly this is.
Lex Fridman (08:47.200)
As you describe for everybody.
Lex Fridman (08:49.400)
So everybody is losing in this war.
Lex Fridman (08:51.720)
Yeah, I mean, that's maybe the insight.
Chris Blattman (08:53.200)
Everybody loses something from war.
Lex Fridman (08:56.120)
And there was usually, not always,
Lex Fridman (08:58.960)
but the point is there was usually a way
Lex Fridman (09:01.280)
to get what you wanted or be better off
Chris Blattman (09:04.200)
without having to fight over it.
Lex Fridman (09:05.880)
So there's this, fighting is just politics by other means.
Lex Fridman (09:10.000)
And it's just inefficient, costly, brutal, devastating means.
Lex Fridman (09:14.520)
And so that's like the deep insight.
Lex Fridman (09:16.040)
And so I kind of wanted to say,
Lex Fridman (09:18.600)
so I guess like what's not war?
Chris Blattman (09:20.960)
I mean, I don't try to belabor the definitions
Lex Fridman (09:23.840)
because there's reams and reams of political science papers
Chris Blattman (09:28.480)
written on like what's a war, what's not a war.
Lex Fridman (09:30.840)
People disagree.
Chris Blattman (09:34.680)
I just wanted to say,
Lex Fridman (09:36.400)
war is the thing that we shouldn't be doing.
Chris Blattman (09:38.140)
Or war is the violence that doesn't make sense.
Lex Fridman (09:41.040)
There's a whole bunch of other violence,
Chris Blattman (09:42.500)
including gang banging and skirmishes
Lex Fridman (09:44.960)
and things that might make sense,
Chris Blattman (09:47.080)
precisely because they're cheap ways of communicating
Lex Fridman (09:49.720)
or they're not particularly costly.
Chris Blattman (09:53.800)
War is the thing that's just so costly
Lex Fridman (09:55.280)
we should be trying to avoid
Chris Blattman (09:56.160)
is maybe like the meta way I think about it.
Lex Fridman (09:59.280)
All right.
Chris Blattman (10:00.320)
Nevertheless, definitions are interesting.
Lex Fridman (10:02.760)
So outside of the academic bickering,
Chris Blattman (10:06.480)
every time you try to define something,
Lex Fridman (10:08.480)
I'm a big fan of it, the process illuminates.
Lex Fridman (10:13.620)
So the destination doesn't matter
Lex Fridman (10:15.160)
because the moment you arrive at the definition,
Chris Blattman (10:18.480)
you lose the power.
Lex Fridman (10:20.600)
Yeah, one of the interesting thing,
Chris Blattman (10:21.800)
I mean, so people, if you wanna do,
Lex Fridman (10:24.280)
some of what I do is just quantitative analysis of conflict.
Lex Fridman (10:26.920)
And if you wanna do that,
Lex Fridman (10:29.120)
if you wanna sort of run statistics on war,
Chris Blattman (10:31.260)
then you have to code it all up.
Lex Fridman (10:32.680)
And then lots of people have done that.
Chris Blattman (10:34.360)
There's four or five major data sets
Lex Fridman (10:36.480)
where people or teams of people have over time said,
Chris Blattman (10:39.480)
we're gonna code years of war between these groups
Lex Fridman (10:42.520)
or within a country.
Lex Fridman (10:44.000)
And what's interesting is how difficult,
Lex Fridman (10:46.360)
these data sets don't often agree.
Chris Blattman (10:48.160)
You have to make all of these,
Lex Fridman (10:49.640)
the decision gets really complicated.
Lex Fridman (10:51.880)
Like when does the war begin, right?
Lex Fridman (10:53.760)
Does it begin when a certain number
Lex Fridman (10:56.480)
of people have been killed?
Lex Fridman (10:58.080)
Did it begin, what if there's like lots of skirmishing
Lex Fridman (11:02.000)
and sort of little terror attacks or a couple bombs lobbed
Lex Fridman (11:05.900)
and then eventually turns into war?
Chris Blattman (11:08.180)
Do we backdate it to like
Lex Fridman (11:11.160)
when the first act of violence started?
Lex Fridman (11:13.540)
And then what do we do with all the times
Lex Fridman (11:15.360)
when there was like that low scale,
Chris Blattman (11:17.400)
low intensity violence or bombs lobbed
Lex Fridman (11:19.920)
and do we call those wars
Lex Fridman (11:22.600)
or maybe only if they eventually get worse?
Lex Fridman (11:24.340)
Like, so you get, it actually is really tricky.
Lex Fridman (11:26.920)
And the defensive and the offensive aspect.
Lex Fridman (11:28.720)
So everybody, Hitler in World War II,
Chris Blattman (11:32.840)
it seems like he never attacked anybody.
Lex Fridman (11:34.980)
He's always defending against the unjust attack
Chris Blattman (11:38.640)
of everybody else as he's taken over the world.
Lex Fridman (11:41.280)
So that's like information propaganda
Chris Blattman (11:44.520)
that every side is trying to communicate to the world.
Lex Fridman (11:48.040)
So you can't listen to necessarily information
Chris Blattman (11:50.640)
like self report data.
Lex Fridman (11:52.240)
You have to kind of look past that somehow.
Chris Blattman (11:55.040)
Maybe look, especially in the modern world
Lex Fridman (11:57.160)
as much as possible at the data.
Lex Fridman (11:58.880)
How many bombs dropped?
Lex Fridman (12:01.320)
How many people killed?
Lex Fridman (12:03.260)
How the number of estimates of the number of troops moved
Lex Fridman (12:06.620)
from one location to another and that kind of thing.
Lex Fridman (12:09.040)
And the other interesting thing
Lex Fridman (12:10.420)
is there's quantitative analysis of war.
Lex Fridman (12:13.920)
So for example, I was looking at just war index
Lex Fridman (12:17.240)
or people trying to measure, trying to put a number
Chris Blattman (12:21.760)
on what wars are seen as just and not.
Lex Fridman (12:24.880)
Oh really, I've never seen that.
Chris Blattman (12:26.360)
It's, there's numbers behind it.
Lex Fridman (12:28.680)
It's great.
Lex Fridman (12:30.520)
So it's great because again,
Lex Fridman (12:32.800)
as you do an extensive quantification of justice,
Chris Blattman (12:38.680)
you start to think what actually contributes
Lex Fridman (12:41.880)
to our thought that for example, World War II is a just war
Lex Fridman (12:46.600)
and other wars are not.
Lex Fridman (12:49.520)
A lot of it is about intent
Lex Fridman (12:51.760)
and some of the other factors like that you look at
Lex Fridman (12:54.240)
which is prolonged, the degree of violence
Chris Blattman (12:56.840)
that is necessary versus not necessary
Lex Fridman (13:00.200)
given the greater good, some measure of the greater good
Chris Blattman (13:03.720)
of people, all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (13:06.120)
Then there's reasons for war, you know,
Chris Blattman (13:08.640)
looking to free people or to stop a genocide
Lex Fridman (13:13.840)
versus conquering land, all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (13:17.280)
And people try to put a number behind it.
Lex Fridman (13:19.360)
And a lot of.
Chris Blattman (13:20.200)
It's based on, I mean, what I'm trying to imagine is,
Lex Fridman (13:23.080)
I mean, suppose I wake up and, or whatever,
Chris Blattman (13:26.200)
suppose I think my God tells me to do something
Lex Fridman (13:29.440)
or my God thinks that, or my moral sense thinks
Chris Blattman (13:33.960)
that something that another group is doing is repugnant.
Lex Fridman (13:36.760)
I'm curious, are they evaluating the validity of that claim
Chris Blattman (13:41.880)
or just the idea that like, well, you said it was repugnant,
Lex Fridman (13:44.320)
you deeply believe that, therefore it's just?
Chris Blattman (13:46.720)
I think, and that could be corrected on a lot of this,
Lex Fridman (13:50.040)
but I think this is always looking at wars
Chris Blattman (13:52.520)
after they happened and trying to take a global perspective
Lex Fridman (13:56.840)
from all sort of a general survey of how people perceive.
Lex Fridman (14:00.680)
So you're not weighing disproportionately the opinions
Lex Fridman (14:04.200)
of the people who waged the war.
Chris Blattman (14:05.680)
Yeah, I mean, I kind of ended up dodging that because,
Lex Fridman (14:11.120)
I mean, one is to just point out that wars,
Chris Blattman (14:14.800)
actually most wars aren't necessary.
Lex Fridman (14:16.880)
And so in the sense that there's another way
Chris Blattman (14:19.560)
to get what you wanted.
Lex Fridman (14:22.840)
And so on one level, there's no just war.
Chris Blattman (14:25.560)
Now that's not true because take an example
Lex Fridman (14:28.720)
like the US invasion of Afghanistan.
Chris Blattman (14:30.960)
The United States has been attacked.
Lex Fridman (14:32.800)
There's a culpable agent, reliable evidence
Chris Blattman (14:37.240)
that this is Al Qaeda.
Lex Fridman (14:39.160)
They're being sheltered in Afghanistan by the Taliban.
Lex Fridman (14:43.280)
And then the Taliban, this is a bit murky.
Lex Fridman (14:46.560)
It seems that there was an attempt to say hand him over
Chris Blattman (14:50.120)
or else and they said, no way.
Lex Fridman (14:53.160)
Now you can make an argument that invading
Lex Fridman (14:56.840)
and attacking is strategically the right thing to do
Lex Fridman (14:59.400)
in terms of sending signals to your future enemies
Chris Blattman (15:02.680)
or if you think it's important to bring someone to justice,
Lex Fridman (15:06.000)
in this case, Al Qaeda, then maybe that's just war
Chris Blattman (15:09.240)
or that's a just invasion.
Lex Fridman (15:11.040)
But it hinges on the fact that the other side
Chris Blattman (15:14.720)
just didn't do the seemingly sensible thing,
Lex Fridman (15:17.640)
which is say, okay, we'll give them up.
Lex Fridman (15:20.920)
And so it was completely avoidable in one sense.
Lex Fridman (15:26.000)
But if you believe, and I think it's probably true,
Chris Blattman (15:28.080)
if you believe that for their own ideological
Lex Fridman (15:31.480)
and other reasons, you know, Mullah Omar in particular
Lex Fridman (15:36.080)
and Taliban in general decided we're not going to do this,
Lex Fridman (15:40.920)
then now you're not left with very many good choices.
Lex Fridman (15:45.680)
And now, you know, I didn't wanna talk about
Lex Fridman (15:48.440)
is that a just war or is that, what's justice or not?
Chris Blattman (15:51.120)
I just wanted to point out that like one side's
Lex Fridman (15:55.160)
intransigence, if that's indeed what happened,
Chris Blattman (15:57.160)
one side's intransigence sort of maybe compels you
Lex Fridman (16:00.640)
to basically eliminates all of the reasonable bargains
Chris Blattman (16:04.080)
that you could be satisfied with and now you're left
Lex Fridman (16:06.040)
with really no other strategic option but to invade.
Chris Blattman (16:08.600)
I think that's a slight oversimplification,
Lex Fridman (16:10.300)
but I think that's like one way to describe what happened.
Lex Fridman (16:14.520)
So your book is fascinating and your perspective
Lex Fridman (16:16.700)
on this is fascinating.
Chris Blattman (16:18.360)
I'll try to sort of play devil's advocate at times
Lex Fridman (16:21.000)
to try to get a clarity.
Lex Fridman (16:22.880)
But the thesis is that war is costly,
Lex Fridman (16:27.760)
usually costly for everybody.
Lex Fridman (16:30.280)
So that's what you mean when you say nobody wants war
Lex Fridman (16:33.880)
because you're going to,
Chris Blattman (16:35.480)
from a game theoretic perspective, nobody wins.
Lex Fridman (16:41.760)
And so war is essentially a breakdown of reason,
Chris Blattman (16:47.040)
a breakdown of negotiation, of healthy communication
Lex Fridman (16:50.760)
or healthy operation of the world, some kind of breakdown.
Chris Blattman (16:54.600)
You list all kinds of ways in which it breaks down.
Lex Fridman (16:58.680)
But there's also human beings in this mix.
Lex Fridman (17:05.200)
And there is ideas of justice.
Lex Fridman (17:07.160)
So for example, I don't want to,
Chris Blattman (17:09.440)
my memory doesn't serve me well on which wars
Lex Fridman (17:12.160)
were seen as justice, very, very few in the 20th century
Chris Blattman (17:15.600)
of the many that have been there.
Lex Fridman (17:17.820)
The wars that were seen as just, first of all,
Chris Blattman (17:19.960)
the most just war seen is World War II by far.
Lex Fridman (17:24.180)
It's actually the only one that goes above a threshold
Chris Blattman (17:28.160)
that's seen as just, everything that's seen as unjust.
Lex Fridman (17:31.120)
It's less, it's like degrees of unjustness.
Lex Fridman (17:36.640)
And I think the ones that are seen as more just
Lex Fridman (17:39.320)
are the ones that are fast,
Chris Blattman (17:41.760)
that you have a very specific purpose,
Lex Fridman (17:44.080)
you communicate that purpose honestly
Chris Blattman (17:46.520)
with the global community, and you strike hard, fast,
Lex Fridman (17:50.580)
and you pull out to do sort of, it's like rescue missions.
Chris Blattman (17:55.880)
It's almost like policing work.
Lex Fridman (17:57.580)
If there's somebody suffering,
Chris Blattman (17:58.960)
you go in and stop that suffering directly, and that's it.
Lex Fridman (18:02.760)
I think World War II is seen in that way,
Chris Blattman (18:05.920)
that there's an obvious aggressor
Lex Fridman (18:09.620)
that is causing a lot of suffering in the world
Lex Fridman (18:11.680)
and looking to expand the scale of that suffering.
Lex Fridman (18:15.000)
And so you strike, I mean, given the scale,
Chris Blattman (18:19.000)
you strike as hard and as fast as possible
Lex Fridman (18:22.520)
to stop the expansion of the suffering.
Lex Fridman (18:25.960)
So that's kind of how they see.
Lex Fridman (18:28.200)
I don't know if you can kind of look with this framework
Chris Blattman (18:32.480)
that you've presented and look at Hitler and think,
Lex Fridman (18:36.240)
well, it's not in his interest to attack Czechoslovakia,
Chris Blattman (18:43.000)
Poland, Britain, France, Russia, the Soviet Union,
Lex Fridman (18:48.000)
America, the United States of America, same with Japan.
Lex Fridman (18:59.040)
Is it in their long term interest?
Lex Fridman (19:01.440)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (19:04.520)
So for me, who cares about alleviating
Lex Fridman (19:08.000)
human suffering in the world, yes, it's not.
Chris Blattman (19:11.880)
It seems like almost no war is just.
Lex Fridman (19:15.480)
But it also seems somehow deeply human to fight.
Lex Fridman (19:21.560)
And I think your book makes the case, no, it's not.
Lex Fridman (19:25.280)
Can you try to get at that?
Chris Blattman (19:28.120)
Because it seems that war, there is some,
Lex Fridman (19:31.180)
that drama of war seems to beat in all human hearts.
Chris Blattman (19:35.840)
Like it's in there somewhere.
Lex Fridman (19:37.540)
Maybe it's, maybe that's like a relic of the past
Lex Fridman (19:41.200)
and we need to get rid of it.
Lex Fridman (19:42.480)
It's deeply irrational.
Chris Blattman (19:44.720)
Okay, so obviously we go to war
Lex Fridman (19:46.160)
and obviously there's a lot of violence.
Lex Fridman (19:47.520)
And so we have to explain something
Lex Fridman (19:49.800)
and some of that's going to be aspects of our humanness.
Lex Fridman (19:52.920)
So I guess what I wanted us to sort of start with,
Lex Fridman (19:56.860)
I think it was just useful to sort of start and point out,
Chris Blattman (19:59.320)
actually, there's really, really, really, really strong
Lex Fridman (1:00:01.620)
and their group.
Lex Fridman (1:00:02.700)
And that's what makes it like the meta,
Lex Fridman (1:00:05.920)
for me, the meta cause of conflict
Chris Blattman (1:00:08.300)
in all of human history, and sadly, today.
Lex Fridman (1:00:12.420)
Does the will to power play into this,
Lex Fridman (1:00:14.700)
the desire for power?
Lex Fridman (1:00:17.420)
Like, that's a human thing, again, in the calculation.
Lex Fridman (1:00:20.520)
That, shall we put that in the misperceptions bucket?
Lex Fridman (1:00:24.740)
Or is it, is misperceptions essentially
Chris Blattman (1:00:29.140)
about interaction between humans,
Lex Fridman (1:00:31.060)
and power is more about the thing you feel in your heart
Lex Fridman (1:00:35.260)
when you're alone as a leader?
Lex Fridman (1:00:37.880)
You know, I said there were three strategic reasons,
Chris Blattman (1:00:40.480)
like the unchecked leaders,
Lex Fridman (1:00:41.580)
the commitment problems, uncertainty.
Chris Blattman (1:00:43.180)
There are two sort of more psychological,
Lex Fridman (1:00:45.300)
and I call them intangible incentives and misperceptions.
Chris Blattman (1:00:47.440)
The way that like a game theorist,
Lex Fridman (1:00:48.740)
or the way that a behavioral economist would think
Chris Blattman (1:00:50.780)
about those two is just to say preferences,
Lex Fridman (1:00:53.900)
and then erroneous beliefs and mistakes.
Lex Fridman (1:00:57.120)
It's like, so our preferences are our preferences, right?
Lex Fridman (1:01:00.260)
And so utility functions, whatever we want to call it,
Chris Blattman (1:01:02.980)
like there's not, that's why I wouldn't call them
Lex Fridman (1:01:05.700)
a misperception or rationality.
Chris Blattman (1:01:07.620)
We want, we like what we like.
Lex Fridman (1:01:09.700)
If we like power, if we like relative status,
Chris Blattman (1:01:12.820)
if we like, if we like our racial purity,
Lex Fridman (1:01:17.980)
if we like our liberty, if we like,
Chris Blattman (1:01:19.620)
whatever it is that we have convinced ourselves we value.
Lex Fridman (1:01:22.980)
Maybe you fell in love with a rival queen, a king.
Chris Blattman (1:01:25.560)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (1:01:26.400)
When I said it was a big bucket full of stuff that rhymes,
Chris Blattman (1:01:29.300)
like that's a pretty messy bucket.
Lex Fridman (1:01:31.440)
Like there's a lot of different stuff in there.
Lex Fridman (1:01:33.140)
And I'm just trying to say, like, let's be clear
Lex Fridman (1:01:36.540)
that just about the shared logic of these things
Chris Blattman (1:01:40.020)
is maybe just, you know, they're really dissimilar,
Lex Fridman (1:01:41.880)
but let's be clear about the shared logic.
Lex Fridman (1:01:44.180)
And if it were true that deep down,
Lex Fridman (1:01:46.800)
we were aggressive people who just liked violence
Lex Fridman (1:01:49.100)
and enjoyed the blood, or some percentage of us do,
Lex Fridman (1:01:52.660)
that would be there too.
Lex Fridman (1:01:53.860)
And so I just want to say that's,
Lex Fridman (1:01:59.520)
but you know, we're really quick to recognize those, right?
Chris Blattman (1:02:02.440)
When we diagnose a war as an armchair analyst
Lex Fridman (1:02:05.520)
or as a journalist or something, we really jump to those.
Chris Blattman (1:02:09.600)
We don't need a lot of help to like see those happening.
Lex Fridman (1:02:14.200)
So we probably put a little bit too much emphasis on them
Chris Blattman (1:02:17.040)
is maybe the only thing that I would caution
Lex Fridman (1:02:19.360)
because the others are more subtle
Lex Fridman (1:02:21.000)
and they're often there and they contribute.
Lex Fridman (1:02:24.940)
So just to link on something you said before,
Chris Blattman (1:02:27.880)
would it be accurate to say when the leaders
Lex Fridman (1:02:30.440)
become detached from the opinion of the people,
Lex Fridman (1:02:35.760)
is that's more likely to lead to war?
Lex Fridman (1:02:38.720)
So...
Lex Fridman (1:02:40.080)
And mechanically, it's just,
Lex Fridman (1:02:41.720)
they're gonna bear fewer costs.
Lex Fridman (1:02:43.320)
So it's gonna basically narrow the set of deals
Lex Fridman (1:02:47.400)
that they're gonna be willing to accept instead of violence.
Chris Blattman (1:02:50.320)
At the same time, most of the time it's not enough
Lex Fridman (1:02:53.880)
because the leaders still bear a lot of costs of war.
Chris Blattman (1:02:56.360)
You could be deposed, you could be killed,
Lex Fridman (1:02:59.020)
you could be tried,
Lex Fridman (1:03:00.580)
and the public purse is going to be empty.
Lex Fridman (1:03:02.800)
That's like the one story throughout history
Chris Blattman (1:03:04.580)
is at the end of the day,
Lex Fridman (1:03:06.000)
your regime is broke as a result of war.
Lex Fridman (1:03:08.680)
And so you still internalize that a little bit.
Lex Fridman (1:03:12.680)
If I had to say like, you know,
Chris Blattman (1:03:14.360)
in my three buckets or through my buckets so far,
Lex Fridman (1:03:17.560)
I sort of started with like Ukrainian intransigence,
Lex Fridman (1:03:20.920)
and then I jumped, and then I said the essentially,
Lex Fridman (1:03:22.800)
then you really have to understand Russian autocracy
Chris Blattman (1:03:25.360)
just to understand why they would ask something so cruel.
Lex Fridman (1:03:29.320)
But I mean, I think the uncertainty
Chris Blattman (1:03:31.400)
is really important here as well.
Lex Fridman (1:03:34.120)
Like if you think of it, like think of all of the things,
Chris Blattman (1:03:36.800)
the way this has played out,
Lex Fridman (1:03:38.420)
and just in some ways how many,
Chris Blattman (1:03:40.160)
in how many ways we've been surprised.
Lex Fridman (1:03:41.820)
We've been surprised by the unity
Lex Fridman (1:03:44.320)
and the coherence of the West and the sanctions.
Lex Fridman (1:03:46.600)
That's sort of what's happened
Chris Blattman (1:03:48.200)
is it was in the realm of possibility,
Lex Fridman (1:03:49.760)
but it was sort of like the best case scenario
Chris Blattman (1:03:51.760)
from the perspective of the West
Lex Fridman (1:03:53.800)
and the worst case scenario for the Russians.
Chris Blattman (1:03:56.100)
The second thing is just the pluckiness
Lex Fridman (1:03:58.120)
and the effectiveness and the intransigence
Lex Fridman (1:04:01.560)
and the nobility of this Ukrainian resistance.
Lex Fridman (1:04:03.920)
That's again, was within the realm of possibility,
Lex Fridman (1:04:06.900)
but wasn't necessarily the likely thing, right?
Lex Fridman (1:04:09.000)
It was again, maybe the worst realization for Russia,
Chris Blattman (1:04:11.460)
the best realization in some sense
Lex Fridman (1:04:13.160)
for in terms of revealed strength and resolve.
Lex Fridman (1:04:18.680)
And then the other thing that's been revealed
Lex Fridman (1:04:20.240)
is just how like the corruption and ineptitude
Lex Fridman (1:04:24.160)
and problems on the Russian military side.
Lex Fridman (1:04:26.720)
Again, within the realm of possibility,
Chris Blattman (1:04:28.900)
maybe people who really knew the Russian military
Lex Fridman (1:04:30.720)
are less surprised than the rest of us,
Lex Fridman (1:04:32.560)
but also one of the worst possible draws for Russia.
Lex Fridman (1:04:36.520)
And so Putin asking this terrible price
Lex Fridman (1:04:41.400)
and expecting Ukraine to roll over
Lex Fridman (1:04:45.040)
or the West to roll over at least to a degree
Chris Blattman (1:04:48.800)
was based on like a different set of,
Lex Fridman (1:04:52.800)
was based on just expecting something
Chris Blattman (1:04:54.960)
in the middle of the probability distribution
Lex Fridman (1:04:56.720)
and not one of all these different tale events.
Lex Fridman (1:04:59.200)
And so the fact that the world's so uncertain
Lex Fridman (1:05:00.880)
and the fact that Putin can come
Chris Blattman (1:05:02.080)
with a different set of expectations
Lex Fridman (1:05:04.160)
than the Ukrainians and the West
Lex Fridman (1:05:05.680)
and all these players can just have a hard time agreeing
Lex Fridman (1:05:09.960)
on just what the facts are
Chris Blattman (1:05:11.680)
because we live in an uncertain world.
Lex Fridman (1:05:12.940)
Everyone's quick to say, oh, he miscalculated.
Chris Blattman (1:05:14.720)
Well, I'm not, I don't know if he miscalculated.
Lex Fridman (1:05:17.040)
I think he just, he got a really bad draw
Chris Blattman (1:05:20.800)
in terms of what the realized outcomes are here.
Lex Fridman (1:05:23.240)
And so, I mean, good for everybody else in some sense,
Chris Blattman (1:05:27.200)
except the fact that it's involving a lot of violence
Lex Fridman (1:05:29.580)
is the tragedy.
Chris Blattman (1:05:30.420)
So.
Lex Fridman (1:05:31.240)
Well, there's also economic pain,
Chris Blattman (1:05:32.640)
not just for the Russian people and the Ukrainian people,
Lex Fridman (1:05:35.140)
but the whole world.
Lex Fridman (1:05:37.240)
So it, you know, you could talk about things
Lex Fridman (1:05:43.680)
that we are surprised from an analysis perspective
Chris Blattman (1:05:47.080)
of small victories here or there,
Lex Fridman (1:05:49.760)
but I think it's universally true
Chris Blattman (1:05:51.720)
that everybody loses once again in this war.
Lex Fridman (1:05:55.600)
Right, and so the question is just like,
Chris Blattman (1:05:57.740)
when does it, you know, why did Russia choose to invade
Lex Fridman (1:06:01.120)
when Ukraine didn't give this up?
Chris Blattman (1:06:02.840)
Well, Russia anticipated that it would be able to seize
Lex Fridman (1:06:07.440)
what it wanted, the available bargain that it deserved,
Chris Blattman (1:06:10.520)
quote unquote, based on its power in the world,
Lex Fridman (1:06:13.680)
it wasn't getting, and so it thought it could take that.
Lex Fridman (1:06:16.800)
And the uncertainty around that made it
Lex Fridman (1:06:19.580)
potentially more likely that he would choose to do this.
Lex Fridman (1:06:22.120)
But in particular, one of the other things
Lex Fridman (1:06:24.480)
that I think is probably less important in this context,
Lex Fridman (1:06:27.220)
but still plays a role, but less important than many wars,
Lex Fridman (1:06:30.740)
is the fact that it's really hard to resolve
Lex Fridman (1:06:32.760)
that uncertainty, right?
Lex Fridman (1:06:34.480)
In theory, Ukraine should be able to say,
Chris Blattman (1:06:37.120)
look, this is exactly how resolved we are,
Lex Fridman (1:06:40.640)
we're super resolved, and your military
Chris Blattman (1:06:43.960)
is not as strong as you think it is.
Lex Fridman (1:06:45.840)
You mean before the conflict even begins?
Lex Fridman (1:06:47.920)
Everybody should be like, you know what?
Lex Fridman (1:06:48.760)
You lay on the table, here's my cards, here's your cards.
Chris Blattman (1:06:52.200)
Exactly, like that's, as a competitor in this,
Lex Fridman (1:06:55.080)
you can use that uncertainty to your advantage.
Lex Fridman (1:06:57.000)
I can try to convince you, I can bluff, right?
Lex Fridman (1:07:00.320)
And so anyone who's ever played poker
Lex Fridman (1:07:02.160)
and bluffed or called a bluff, that's the inefficiency,
Lex Fridman (1:07:05.280)
that's the analogy in some ways to war.
Chris Blattman (1:07:06.760)
It's not the perfect analogy,
Lex Fridman (1:07:08.120)
but the uncertainty and the circumstance,
Chris Blattman (1:07:10.460)
you don't have to miscalculate.
Lex Fridman (1:07:11.480)
The fact that if you bluff and lose,
Chris Blattman (1:07:14.280)
it doesn't mean that you miscalculated.
Lex Fridman (1:07:16.200)
You made an optimal choice, given the uncertainty
Chris Blattman (1:07:18.520)
of the situation, to take a gamble.
Lex Fridman (1:07:20.180)
And that was a wiser thing for you to do than to not bluff
Lex Fridman (1:07:24.360)
and just to fold or to just not ping in that round.
Lex Fridman (1:07:28.440)
And so the uncertainty of the situation
Chris Blattman (1:07:30.640)
gives both sides incentives to bluff,
Lex Fridman (1:07:32.400)
gives neither side an incentive to try to reveal the truth.
Lex Fridman (1:07:35.200)
And then at some point, the other side says,
Lex Fridman (1:07:36.960)
you know what, you say you're resolved.
Chris Blattman (1:07:39.440)
You say you're gonna mount an insurgency.
Lex Fridman (1:07:41.440)
Well, guess what?
Chris Blattman (1:07:43.880)
Every other, you know, people on my border has folded
Lex Fridman (1:07:48.640)
and you're gonna fold too, the minute the tanks roll in
Lex Fridman (1:07:52.040)
and the minute the Air Force comes in,
Lex Fridman (1:07:53.520)
I'm gambling that you're bluffing.
Lex Fridman (1:07:55.240)
And so that inherent uncertainty of the situation
Lex Fridman (1:08:00.280)
just causes a lot of short wars, actually,
Chris Blattman (1:08:05.800)
because it's this sort of bluff and call dynamic
Lex Fridman (1:08:09.640)
that goes on.
Chris Blattman (1:08:10.600)
And, you know, the thing that's worth thinking
Lex Fridman (1:08:12.280)
is we might end up at a place in a few months
Chris Blattman (1:08:16.360)
where the thing that Ukraine concedes
Lex Fridman (1:08:20.480)
is not so far from what Russia demanded in the first place.
Chris Blattman (1:08:23.520)
Russia's on it, I want a neutral,
Lex Fridman (1:08:26.880)
I mean, who knows how,
Chris Blattman (1:08:28.120)
it's not the ambitious thing the Russians wanted.
Lex Fridman (1:08:30.760)
But if we end up in a place where Ukraine
Chris Blattman (1:08:34.200)
is effectively neutral, never joins NATO,
Lex Fridman (1:08:37.880)
is not being militarily supplied by the West,
Lex Fridman (1:08:42.080)
and where Russia has de facto control over the East
Lex Fridman (1:08:47.240)
and Crimea, if not fully recognized,
Chris Blattman (1:08:49.000)
probably, who knows if they'll get ever internationally
Lex Fridman (1:08:51.520)
and Ukrainian will recognize, but effectively controls,
Chris Blattman (1:08:56.720)
Russia will have accomplished
Lex Fridman (1:09:00.120)
what it asked for in the first place,
Lex Fridman (1:09:03.120)
and both parties had to get there through violence
Lex Fridman (1:09:07.080)
rather than through negotiation.
Lex Fridman (1:09:09.040)
And you wouldn't need misperceptions and mistakes,
Lex Fridman (1:09:12.080)
and you wouldn't need Putin's delusions of glory
Chris Blattman (1:09:17.160)
or whatever to get there,
Lex Fridman (1:09:18.480)
you would just need the ingredients
Chris Blattman (1:09:20.240)
I've given so far, which is like an unwillingness
Lex Fridman (1:09:23.080)
to do that without fighting on the part of the Ukrainians,
Chris Blattman (1:09:27.480)
an autocratic leadership in Russia
Lex Fridman (1:09:29.640)
who would make those demands
Chris Blattman (1:09:31.320)
because it's in their self interest,
Lex Fridman (1:09:32.760)
and then uncertainty leading them to fight.
Lex Fridman (1:09:36.640)
And that sadly is like the best case,
Lex Fridman (1:09:41.000)
that feels like the best case scenario right now,
Chris Blattman (1:09:43.400)
which is the war is just five months and not five years.
Lex Fridman (1:09:50.400)
Given the current situation.
Chris Blattman (1:09:51.920)
Given the current situation.
Lex Fridman (1:09:53.920)
Because the suffering has already happened,
Lex Fridman (1:09:57.400)
and lost homes, people moving,
Lex Fridman (1:10:02.400)
having to see their home in rubble,
Lex Fridman (1:10:08.400)
and millions of people, refugees having to escape the country,
Lex Fridman (1:10:12.400)
and hate flourishes versus the common humanity
Chris Blattman (1:10:21.400)
as it does with war.
Lex Fridman (1:10:23.400)
And on top of all of that,
Chris Blattman (1:10:25.400)
if we talk from a geopolitical perspective,
Lex Fridman (1:10:29.400)
the warmongers all over the world are sort of drooling.
Chris Blattman (1:10:36.400)
They've now got narratives,
Lex Fridman (1:10:38.400)
and they got that whatever narratives,
Chris Blattman (1:10:40.400)
you can go shopping for the narratives.
Lex Fridman (1:10:43.400)
The United States has its narratives
Chris Blattman (1:10:45.400)
for whatever geopolitical thing it wants to do
Lex Fridman (1:10:47.400)
in that part of the world.
Chris Blattman (1:10:50.400)
That's another little malevolent interaction
Lex Fridman (1:10:53.400)
between two of these buckets,
Chris Blattman (1:10:54.400)
like those unchecked leaders,
Lex Fridman (1:10:55.400)
and those intangible incentives, those preferences,
Chris Blattman (1:10:58.400)
is that unchecked leaders spend, autocrats, whatever,
Lex Fridman (1:11:03.400)
spend enormous amounts of time trying to manipulate the values
Lex Fridman (1:11:07.400)
and beliefs of their population, of their group.
Lex Fridman (1:11:12.400)
Now, sometimes they do it nobly,
Lex Fridman (1:11:14.400)
but that's what Winston Churchill there was trying to,
Lex Fridman (1:11:16.400)
it's not clear that Britains were ready to stand up.
Chris Blattman (1:11:19.400)
There were a lot of Americans and a lot of Britains
Lex Fridman (1:11:20.400)
who were like, you know what?
Chris Blattman (1:11:22.400)
Hitler, not such a bad guy.
Lex Fridman (1:11:24.400)
His idea is not so terrible.
Chris Blattman (1:11:25.400)
I never liked those Jews anyways.
Lex Fridman (1:11:27.400)
Many were thinking.
Chris Blattman (1:11:28.400)
We had political leaders in the US
Lex Fridman (1:11:30.400)
who were basically not pro Nazi,
Lex Fridman (1:11:33.400)
but were just not anti Nazi.
Lex Fridman (1:11:36.400)
And Churchill was just trying to instill a different resolve.
Chris Blattman (1:11:40.400)
He was trying to create that thing.
Lex Fridman (1:11:42.400)
He was trying to create that value.
Lex Fridman (1:11:43.400)
And in the American Revolution, it was as well.
Lex Fridman (1:11:45.400)
The founding fathers, the leaders of the revolution,
Chris Blattman (1:11:48.400)
it's not that everybody just woke up one morning
Lex Fridman (1:11:50.400)
in the United States
Lex Fridman (1:11:51.400)
and had this ideology of liberty and freedom.
Lex Fridman (1:11:53.400)
Some of that was true.
Chris Blattman (1:11:54.400)
It was out there in the ether,
Lex Fridman (1:11:55.400)
but they had to manufacture and create it
Chris Blattman (1:11:58.400)
in a way that I think they believed and was noble,
Lex Fridman (1:12:01.400)
but there's a lot of manufacturing and creation
Chris Blattman (1:12:04.400)
of these values and principles that is not noble,
Lex Fridman (1:12:07.400)
and that is exactly what Hitler did so well.
Chris Blattman (1:12:09.400)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:12:10.400)
The anti Semitism was present throughout the world,
Lex Fridman (1:12:13.400)
but the more subtle thing that I feel like
Lex Fridman (1:12:17.400)
may be more generally applicable
Chris Blattman (1:12:23.400)
is this kind of pacifism
Lex Fridman (1:12:26.400)
that I think people in the United States felt like.
Chris Blattman (1:12:29.400)
It's not my conflict.
Lex Fridman (1:12:31.400)
Why do I need to get involved with it?
Lex Fridman (1:12:33.400)
And I think Churchill was fighting that,
Lex Fridman (1:12:37.400)
the general...
Chris Blattman (1:12:38.400)
Apathy.
Lex Fridman (1:12:40.400)
It's the apathy of rational calculus,
Lex Fridman (1:12:45.400)
like what are we going to gain if we fight back?
Lex Fridman (1:12:50.400)
Hitler seems to be pretty reasonable.
Chris Blattman (1:12:54.400)
He's saying he's going to stop the bombing,
Lex Fridman (1:12:57.400)
that you're still going to maintain your sovereignty
Chris Blattman (1:13:01.400)
as the great people of Britain.
Lex Fridman (1:13:04.400)
Like why are we fighting again?
Lex Fridman (1:13:06.400)
And that's the thing that's hard to break
Lex Fridman (1:13:08.400)
because you have to say, well,
Chris Blattman (1:13:11.400)
you have to speak the principle,
Lex Fridman (1:13:13.400)
you have to speak at some greater sort of
Chris Blattman (1:13:16.400)
long term vision of history.
Lex Fridman (1:13:19.400)
So like, yes, now it may seem like
Chris Blattman (1:13:23.400)
it's a way to avoid the fight,
Lex Fridman (1:13:25.400)
but you're actually just sort of
Chris Blattman (1:13:27.400)
putting shackles on yourself.
Lex Fridman (1:13:29.400)
You're destroying the very greatness of our people
Chris Blattman (1:13:33.400)
if we don't fight back.
Lex Fridman (1:13:35.400)
And to think about this with like the current case
Chris Blattman (1:13:37.400)
with Russia, I mean,
Lex Fridman (1:13:38.400)
some people look at Putin's speeches
Lex Fridman (1:13:41.400)
and papers he's written on Ukraine
Lex Fridman (1:13:45.400)
historically being a part of Russia
Lex Fridman (1:13:46.400)
and trying to deny the...
Lex Fridman (1:13:49.400)
basically create all these nationalist narratives
Lex Fridman (1:13:51.400)
and they think, well, Putin really believes,
Lex Fridman (1:13:53.400)
and he might, Putin really believes this
Lex Fridman (1:13:55.400)
and that's why he's invading.
Lex Fridman (1:13:56.400)
And that might also be true
Lex Fridman (1:13:58.400)
and that would contribute to...
Lex Fridman (1:14:01.400)
just make a peaceful bargain even harder to find.
Lex Fridman (1:14:04.400)
But I suspect what's at least a minimum true
Lex Fridman (1:14:07.400)
is Putin's trying to manufacture
Chris Blattman (1:14:10.400)
support for an invasion in the population
Lex Fridman (1:14:12.400)
through propaganda.
Lex Fridman (1:14:14.400)
And so he's doing on some level
Lex Fridman (1:14:19.400)
the same thing that Winston Churchill was doing
Chris Blattman (1:14:21.400)
in mechanical terms,
Lex Fridman (1:14:23.400)
which is to try to manipulate people's references.
Lex Fridman (1:14:27.400)
But doing it in a sinister, malevolent, evil,
Lex Fridman (1:14:31.400)
self serving way because it's really in his interest,
Chris Blattman (1:14:33.400)
whereas this was anything but, right,
Lex Fridman (1:14:37.400)
in the Churchill example.
Chris Blattman (1:14:38.400)
The dark human thing is like
Lex Fridman (1:14:41.400)
there's moments in World War II
Chris Blattman (1:14:44.400)
where Hitler's propaganda,
Lex Fridman (1:14:46.400)
he began to believe his own propaganda.
Chris Blattman (1:14:49.400)
It's like...
Lex Fridman (1:14:50.400)
I think he probably always believed...
Chris Blattman (1:14:51.400)
I think he was a sincere believer.
Lex Fridman (1:14:53.400)
Well no, no, no, but there's a lot of places
Chris Blattman (1:14:58.400)
where there was uncertainty
Lex Fridman (1:15:01.400)
and they decided to do propaganda
Lex Fridman (1:15:04.400)
and that propaganda resolved the uncertainty
Lex Fridman (1:15:06.400)
in his own mind.
Lex Fridman (1:15:08.400)
So for example, he believed until very late
Lex Fridman (1:15:11.400)
that America is a weakling,
Chris Blattman (1:15:14.400)
militarily and as an economic power
Lex Fridman (1:15:17.400)
and just the spirit of the people.
Lex Fridman (1:15:19.400)
And that was part of the propaganda they were producing
Lex Fridman (1:15:21.400)
and because of that propaganda when he became
Chris Blattman (1:15:23.400)
the head of the army,
Lex Fridman (1:15:25.400)
he was making military actions,
Chris Blattman (1:15:27.400)
he like nonchalantly started war with America,
Lex Fridman (1:15:30.400)
with the United States of America,
Chris Blattman (1:15:32.400)
where he didn't need to at all.
Lex Fridman (1:15:34.400)
He could have avoided that completely,
Lex Fridman (1:15:35.400)
but he thought, eh, whatever.
Lex Fridman (1:15:37.400)
They're easy.
Lex Fridman (1:15:39.400)
So I think that propaganda first, belief second.
Lex Fridman (1:15:42.400)
And I think as a human being, as a dictator,
Chris Blattman (1:15:46.400)
when you start to believe the lies
Lex Fridman (1:15:48.400)
with which you're controlling the populace,
Chris Blattman (1:15:50.400)
you're not able to,
Lex Fridman (1:15:52.400)
you become detached from this person
Chris Blattman (1:15:54.400)
that's able to resolve in a very human way
Lex Fridman (1:15:58.400)
the conflict in the world.
Chris Blattman (1:16:00.400)
I mean, when I said the meta,
Lex Fridman (1:16:02.400)
the big common factor that causes war
Chris Blattman (1:16:04.400)
over and over and over again is unaccountable power.
Lex Fridman (1:16:06.400)
It's not just because it's mechanically,
Chris Blattman (1:16:08.400)
like one of my five explanations is saying,
Lex Fridman (1:16:10.400)
well, if you're unaccountable,
Chris Blattman (1:16:11.400)
you don't bear the costs of war,
Lex Fridman (1:16:12.400)
you might have private incentives.
Lex Fridman (1:16:13.400)
So yes, bargains are harder to find,
Lex Fridman (1:16:15.400)
but it leads to all these nasty interactions.
Lex Fridman (1:16:17.400)
So earlier I said there's this interaction
Lex Fridman (1:16:19.400)
between the values and the unchecked leaders
Chris Blattman (1:16:22.400)
because those idiosyncratic values of your leader
Lex Fridman (1:16:25.400)
become more important when they're unchecked.
Lex Fridman (1:16:27.400)
But the uncertainty point you just made
Lex Fridman (1:16:29.400)
is like a deep point.
Chris Blattman (1:16:30.400)
It's to say actually that like the fundamental problem
Lex Fridman (1:16:34.400)
that all autocrats have is an information problem
Chris Blattman (1:16:37.400)
because nobody wants to give them
Lex Fridman (1:16:39.400)
the right information.
Lex Fridman (1:16:40.400)
And they have very few ways to aggregate information
Lex Fridman (1:16:44.400)
if they're not popular, right?
Lex Fridman (1:16:46.400)
And so there's a whole cottage industry
Lex Fridman (1:16:49.400)
of political science sort of talking about
Chris Blattman (1:16:51.400)
like why autocrats love fixed elections
Lex Fridman (1:16:55.400)
and why they love Twitter
Lex Fridman (1:16:56.400)
and why they actually like it in a controlled way.
Lex Fridman (1:16:58.400)
It solves an information problem.
Chris Blattman (1:17:00.400)
Like that's your crucial,
Lex Fridman (1:17:01.400)
if you're like Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin,
Chris Blattman (1:17:05.400)
you need to solve an information problem
Lex Fridman (1:17:06.400)
just to avoid having rebellion on your hands
Chris Blattman (1:17:08.400)
in your own country every day
Lex Fridman (1:17:10.400)
because uncertainty kind of gets magnified
Lex Fridman (1:17:13.400)
and you get all this distorted information
Lex Fridman (1:17:15.400)
in this apparatus of control.
Lex Fridman (1:17:16.400)
And so that's like another nasty interaction
Lex Fridman (1:17:19.400)
between uncertainty and unchecked leaders
Chris Blattman (1:17:22.400)
is you end up in this situation
Lex Fridman (1:17:25.400)
where you're getting bad information.
Lex Fridman (1:17:27.400)
And it's not that you believe your own lies.
Lex Fridman (1:17:30.400)
It's just that you sort of believe,
Chris Blattman (1:17:32.400)
you're sort of averaging what you believe
Lex Fridman (1:17:34.400)
over the available information
Lex Fridman (1:17:36.400)
and you don't realize that it's such a distorted
Lex Fridman (1:17:39.400)
and biased information source.
Chris Blattman (1:17:42.400)
One of the other things about this time
Lex Fridman (1:17:45.400)
that was a surprise to me in the fog of uncertainty,
Lex Fridman (1:17:50.400)
how sort of seemingly likely nuclear war became.
Lex Fridman (1:17:59.400)
Not likely, but how it.
Chris Blattman (1:18:02.400)
Less unlikely than before.
Lex Fridman (1:18:03.400)
Exactly, that's a better way to say it.
Chris Blattman (1:18:05.400)
It started to take a random stroll away
Lex Fridman (1:18:09.400)
from zero percent probability into this kind of land
Chris Blattman (1:18:12.400)
of maybe like, it's hard to know,
Lex Fridman (1:18:15.400)
but it's like, oh wow, we're actually normally
Chris Blattman (1:18:18.400)
talking about this as if this is part of the calculus,
Lex Fridman (1:18:21.400)
part of the options.
Lex Fridman (1:18:22.400)
But before we talk about nuclear war,
Lex Fridman (1:18:24.400)
because I'm going to need a drink,
Lex Fridman (1:18:26.400)
do you need to go to the bathroom?
Lex Fridman (1:18:28.400)
Sure, I'll take a break.
Lex Fridman (1:18:30.400)
So back to nuclear war.
Lex Fridman (1:18:32.400)
What do you think about this?
Chris Blattman (1:18:34.400)
That people were nonchalantly speaking about nuclear wars
Lex Fridman (1:18:38.400)
if it doesn't lead to the potential annihilation
Chris Blattman (1:18:41.400)
of the human species.
Lex Fridman (1:18:44.400)
What are the chances that our world
Lex Fridman (1:18:46.400)
ascends into nuclear war?
Lex Fridman (1:18:48.400)
Within your framework, you wear many hats.
Chris Blattman (1:18:51.400)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:18:52.400)
One is sort of the analyst, right?
Lex Fridman (1:18:59.400)
And then one is a human.
Lex Fridman (1:19:00.400)
What do you think are the chances we get
Lex Fridman (1:19:02.400)
to see nuclear war in the century?
Lex Fridman (1:19:04.400)
Well, you know, the official doomsday clock
Chris Blattman (1:19:07.400)
for nuclear warfare sits in the lobby of my building.
Lex Fridman (1:19:10.400)
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
Chris Blattman (1:19:12.400)
sort of shares a building with us,
Lex Fridman (1:19:14.400)
so it's always there every day.
Lex Fridman (1:19:15.400)
Can you describe what the doomsday clock is?
Lex Fridman (1:19:17.400)
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists,
Chris Blattman (1:19:19.400)
it's something that this group of physicists
Lex Fridman (1:19:21.400)
sort of said to sort of mark just how close we are
Chris Blattman (1:19:23.400)
to nuclear catastrophe, and they started it decades ago.
Lex Fridman (1:19:26.400)
And it's a clock, and it's sort of how close
Chris Blattman (1:19:28.400)
are we to midnight, where midnight is nuclear Armageddon
Lex Fridman (1:19:31.400)
or the destruction of humanity.
Lex Fridman (1:19:33.400)
And it's been sitting, I mean, it's actually,
Lex Fridman (1:19:35.400)
it hasn't moved as close to,
Chris Blattman (1:19:37.400)
it hasn't moved as close to midnight
Lex Fridman (1:19:41.400)
in the last few weeks as it probably should have,
Chris Blattman (1:19:43.400)
only because it was already so close.
Lex Fridman (1:19:46.400)
There's actually limited room for it to move
Chris Blattman (1:19:48.400)
for a bunch of other reasons.
Lex Fridman (1:19:49.400)
I think there's a whole political thing
Chris Blattman (1:19:51.400)
that once it's really hard,
Lex Fridman (1:19:52.400)
it's really easy to move it closer.
Lex Fridman (1:19:55.400)
And it's really hard if you're the person
Lex Fridman (1:19:56.400)
in charge of that clock to move it away, right?
Chris Blattman (1:19:58.400)
Because that's always very controversial.
Lex Fridman (1:20:00.400)
So it always sits there,
Lex Fridman (1:20:01.400)
but it forces you to think about it
Lex Fridman (1:20:03.400)
a little bit every day.
Lex Fridman (1:20:04.400)
And I admit I was nonchalant about it until recently
Lex Fridman (1:20:13.400)
in a way that many, many other people were.
Chris Blattman (1:20:16.400)
I still think the risk is very low,
Lex Fridman (1:20:19.400)
but kind of for the reasons we've talked,
Chris Blattman (1:20:24.400)
it's just so unimaginably costly
Lex Fridman (1:20:27.400)
that nobody wants to go that route.
Lex Fridman (1:20:29.400)
So it's like the extreme version of my whole argument
Lex Fridman (1:20:33.400)
was why we most of the time don't fight
Chris Blattman (1:20:35.400)
is because it's just so damn costly.
Lex Fridman (1:20:37.400)
And so that's the incentive not to use this.
Lex Fridman (1:20:40.400)
And if they do use it,
Lex Fridman (1:20:42.400)
that's the incentive to use it in a very restrained way.
Lex Fridman (1:20:47.400)
But because we know we do go to war
Lex Fridman (1:20:50.400)
and there's all these things that interfere with it,
Chris Blattman (1:20:52.400)
including miscalculation and all of these human foibles,
Lex Fridman (1:20:55.400)
and several of those nuclear powers
Chris Blattman (1:20:58.400)
are not accountable leaders,
Lex Fridman (1:21:00.400)
I think we have to be a lot more worried
Chris Blattman (1:21:02.400)
than many of us were very recently.
Lex Fridman (1:21:04.400)
I pointed out earlier the whole reason we're in this mess
Chris Blattman (1:21:06.400)
is because the only people who have this private interest
Lex Fridman (1:21:09.400)
in having Ukraine give up its freedom
Chris Blattman (1:21:11.400)
is this Russian cabal and elite that gets their power
Lex Fridman (1:21:17.400)
and is preserved and is threatened by Ukrainian democracy.
Lex Fridman (1:21:22.400)
How far would they go to hang onto power
Lex Fridman (1:21:25.400)
when push came to shove
Chris Blattman (1:21:28.400)
is I think the thing that worries me the most.
Lex Fridman (1:21:31.400)
And is plainly what worries most people
Chris Blattman (1:21:34.400)
about the risk of nuclear war.
Lex Fridman (1:21:36.400)
Like at what point does that unchecked leadership
Lex Fridman (1:21:39.400)
decide that this is worth it?
Lex Fridman (1:21:41.400)
Especially if they can emerge from the rubble still on top.
Chris Blattman (1:21:46.400)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:21:48.400)
And I don't know that any of us
Chris Blattman (1:21:51.400)
have really fully thought through
Lex Fridman (1:21:53.400)
all of that calculus and what's going on.
Chris Blattman (1:21:55.400)
Very recently around the anniversary of January 6th
Lex Fridman (1:21:58.400)
there were a lot of questions about
Lex Fridman (1:21:59.400)
was the United States going to have another civil war?
Lex Fridman (1:22:02.400)
On the one hand I think it's almost unimaginable.
Chris Blattman (1:22:05.400)
Sort of like in the same way I think that a nuclear war
Lex Fridman (1:22:08.400)
and complete Armageddon is unimaginable.
Lex Fridman (1:22:10.400)
But I remember something that
Lex Fridman (1:22:15.400)
when both of those questions get asked
Chris Blattman (1:22:17.400)
I remember something I was in the audience
Lex Fridman (1:22:20.400)
of listening to some great economists speak about
Chris Blattman (1:22:23.400)
20 years ago about the risk of an Argentina style
Lex Fridman (1:22:26.400)
financial meltdown of the United States.
Lex Fridman (1:22:27.400)
Like what's the total financial collapse?
Lex Fridman (1:22:30.400)
And they said you know what the risk is vanishingly small
Lex Fridman (1:22:35.400)
but that's terrifying because until recently
Lex Fridman (1:22:38.400)
the answer was zero.
Lex Fridman (1:22:40.400)
And so the fact that it's not zero
Lex Fridman (1:22:42.400)
should deeply, deeply scare us all
Lex Fridman (1:22:44.400)
and we should devote a lot of energy
Lex Fridman (1:22:46.400)
to making it zero again.
Lex Fridman (1:22:48.400)
And that's how I feel about the risk of a civil war
Lex Fridman (1:22:50.400)
in the U.S. and that's how I feel about the risk
Chris Blattman (1:22:52.400)
of nuclear war is it's higher than it used to be
Lex Fridman (1:22:55.400)
and that should terrify us all.
Chris Blattman (1:22:57.400)
To me what terrifies me is that all this kind of stuff
Lex Fridman (1:22:59.400)
seems to happen like overnight like super quick
Lex Fridman (1:23:03.400)
and it escalates super quick when it happens.
Lex Fridman (1:23:06.400)
So it's not like I don't know what I imagine
Lex Fridman (1:23:11.400)
but it just happens like if a nuclear war happened
Lex Fridman (1:23:15.400)
it would be something like a plane like in this case
Chris Blattman (1:23:20.400)
with Ukraine a NATO plane shut down
Lex Fridman (1:23:23.400)
over some piece of land by the Russian forces
Chris Blattman (1:23:29.400)
or so the narrative would go
Lex Fridman (1:23:31.400)
but it doesn't even matter what's true or not
Chris Blattman (1:23:33.400)
in order to spark the first moment of escalation
Lex Fridman (1:23:38.400)
and then it just goes, goes, goes.
Chris Blattman (1:23:40.400)
Well I think that happens sometimes.
Lex Fridman (1:23:41.400)
I mean again it's this thing that you know
Lex Fridman (1:23:44.400)
what social scientists call it selection
Lex Fridman (1:23:46.400)
on the dependent variable.
Chris Blattman (1:23:47.400)
Like there's all these times when that didn't happen
Lex Fridman (1:23:49.400)
when it stopped, when it escalated one step
Lex Fridman (1:23:53.400)
and then people paused or escalated two steps
Lex Fridman (1:23:55.400)
and people said whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Lex Fridman (1:23:57.400)
And so we remember the times when it went boom, boom, boom
Lex Fridman (1:24:01.400)
boom, boom, boom, boom and then the really terrible
Chris Blattman (1:24:03.400)
thing happened but that fortunately that's not
Lex Fridman (1:24:05.400)
you know I start off the book with an example
Chris Blattman (1:24:07.400)
of a gang war that didn't happen in Medellin, Colombia
Lex Fridman (1:24:10.400)
which is my day job is actually studying conflict
Lex Fridman (1:24:13.400)
and gangs and violence of these other kinds of groups
Lex Fridman (1:24:17.400)
also very sinister and most of the time they don't fight
Lex Fridman (1:24:23.400)
and that escalation doesn't happen.
Lex Fridman (1:24:24.400)
So the escalation does happen quickly sometimes
Chris Blattman (1:24:27.400)
except when it doesn't which fortunately.
Lex Fridman (1:24:29.400)
So we remember the ones when it does.
Chris Blattman (1:24:30.400)
It's really important to think about all that.
Lex Fridman (1:24:32.400)
Like I remember talking to I think Elon Musk
Chris Blattman (1:24:37.400)
on this podcast I was sort of like talking about
Lex Fridman (1:24:41.400)
the horrors of war and so on and then he said
Chris Blattman (1:24:45.400)
well you know like most of human history
Lex Fridman (1:24:48.400)
because I think I said like most of human history
Chris Blattman (1:24:51.400)
had been defined by these horrible wars.
Lex Fridman (1:24:58.400)
He's like no, most of human history is just peaceful
Chris Blattman (1:25:01.400)
like farming life.
Lex Fridman (1:25:03.400)
We kind of remember the wars but most of human history
Chris Blattman (1:25:07.400)
is just you know is life.
Lex Fridman (1:25:09.400)
Yeah and most of the competition between nations
Chris Blattman (1:25:12.400)
was like blood, I would say bloodthirsty
Lex Fridman (1:25:16.400)
without drinking that blood in the sense that
Chris Blattman (1:25:19.400)
it was intense, it would loathsome and so a lot
Lex Fridman (1:25:23.400)
of the rivalry and a lot of the competition
Chris Blattman (1:25:25.400)
which is also can be problematic in its own ways
Lex Fridman (1:25:29.400)
is not violent and most of human history is about
Chris Blattman (1:25:32.400)
the oppression of the majority by a few
Lex Fridman (1:25:35.400)
and there are moments when they rise up and revolt
Lex Fridman (1:25:39.400)
and there's a revolution we remember those
Lex Fridman (1:25:41.400)
but most of the time they don't.
Lex Fridman (1:25:44.400)
And the story of political change and transformation
Lex Fridman (1:25:48.400)
and freedom is there's a few revolutions that are violent
Lex Fridman (1:25:51.400)
but most of it is actually revolutions without
Lex Fridman (1:25:55.400)
that kind of violent revolt.
Chris Blattman (1:25:57.400)
Most of it is just the peaceful concession of power
Lex Fridman (1:26:00.400)
by elites to a wider and wider group of people
Chris Blattman (1:26:03.400)
in response to their increased economic
Lex Fridman (1:26:05.400)
bargaining power, their threat that they're going to march.
Lex Fridman (1:26:08.400)
So even if we want to understand something like
Lex Fridman (1:26:11.400)
the march of freedom over human history
Chris Blattman (1:26:14.400)
I think we can draw the same insight that actually
Lex Fridman (1:26:17.400)
we don't, most of the time we don't fight
Chris Blattman (1:26:20.400)
we actually concede power, no you don't
Lex Fridman (1:26:23.400)
the elite doesn't sort of give power to the masses
Chris Blattman (1:26:26.400)
right away, they just co op the few merchants
Lex Fridman (1:26:28.400)
who could threaten the whole thing and bring them
Chris Blattman (1:26:31.400)
into the circle and then the circle gets a little bit
Lex Fridman (1:26:34.400)
wider and a little bit wider until the circle
Chris Blattman (1:26:36.400)
is ever widened, maybe not ever but encompasses
Lex Fridman (1:26:39.400)
most if not all and that's like a hopeful
Lex Fridman (1:26:42.400)
and optimistic trend.
Lex Fridman (1:26:45.400)
Yeah if you look at the plot, if you guys could pull it up
Chris Blattman (1:26:48.400)
of the wars throughout history, so the rate of wars
Lex Fridman (1:26:51.400)
throughout history does seem to be decreasing
Chris Blattman (1:26:54.400)
significantly with a few spikes and the sort of
Lex Fridman (1:26:57.400)
the expansion, it's like half the world is under
Chris Blattman (1:27:02.400)
authoritarian regimes but that's been shrinking
Lex Fridman (1:27:05.400)
and shrinking and shrinking.
Chris Blattman (1:27:07.400)
Steven Pinker's one person, one famous scholar
Lex Fridman (1:27:10.400)
who brings up this hypothesis, I mean there's sort of
Chris Blattman (1:27:12.400)
two ways, there's actually two separate kinds of violence
Lex Fridman (1:27:15.400)
that one where I think he's completely right
Lex Fridman (1:27:17.400)
and one where I think we're not sure, maybe not
Lex Fridman (1:27:20.400)
where he's completely right, sort of interpersonal violence
Chris Blattman (1:27:23.400)
homicides, everyday violence has been going down
Lex Fridman (1:27:26.400)
down down down down down down, that's just unambiguously
Lex Fridman (1:27:28.400)
and it's mostly because we've created cultures
Lex Fridman (1:27:31.400)
and states and rules and things that control
Chris Blattman (1:27:34.400)
that violence.
Lex Fridman (1:27:35.400)
Now the warfare between groups, is that less frequent?
Chris Blattman (1:27:40.400)
Well you know, it's not clear that he's right
Lex Fridman (1:27:42.400)
that there's fewer wars, you might say that there's
Chris Blattman (1:27:47.400)
wars are more rare because they're more costly
Lex Fridman (1:27:50.400)
because our weapons are so brutal.
Chris Blattman (1:27:52.400)
The costs of war go up, as the costs of war go up
Lex Fridman (1:27:55.400)
not entirely but for the most part that gives us
Chris Blattman (1:27:57.400)
an incentive not to have them and but then when
Lex Fridman (1:28:00.400)
they do happen they're doozies.
Lex Fridman (1:28:03.400)
So is Pinker right?
Lex Fridman (1:28:04.400)
I hope he's right but I don't think that officially
Chris Blattman (1:28:07.400)
that trend is there.
Lex Fridman (1:28:08.400)
I think that we might have the same kind of levels
Chris Blattman (1:28:14.400)
of intergroup violence because maybe those five fundamentals
Lex Fridman (1:28:19.400)
that lead to war have not fundamentally changed
Lex Fridman (1:28:22.400)
and thus made us, given us a more peaceful world
Lex Fridman (1:28:25.400)
now than a couple hundred years ago.
Chris Blattman (1:28:27.400)
That's something to think about so obviously
Lex Fridman (1:28:29.400)
looking at his hypothesis, looking at his data
Lex Fridman (1:28:31.400)
and others like him but I have noticed one thing
Lex Fridman (1:28:34.400)
which is the amount of pushback he gets.
Chris Blattman (1:28:37.400)
That there is this, this is speaking to the general
Lex Fridman (1:28:40.400)
point that you made which is like we overemphasize
Chris Blattman (1:28:44.400)
the anecdotal like the and don't look objectively
Lex Fridman (1:28:49.400)
at the aggregate data as much.
Chris Blattman (1:28:51.400)
There's a general cynicism about the world
Lex Fridman (1:28:53.400)
and not, I don't even mean cynicism, it's almost
Chris Blattman (1:28:56.400)
like cynicism porn or something like that
Lex Fridman (1:28:58.400)
where people just get, for some reason they get
Chris Blattman (1:29:02.400)
a little bit excited to talk about the destruction
Lex Fridman (1:29:05.400)
of human civilization in a weird way.
Chris Blattman (1:29:09.400)
Like they don't really mean it I think.
Lex Fridman (1:29:12.400)
If I were to like psychoanalyze their geopolitical
Chris Blattman (1:29:16.400)
analysis is I think it's a kind of, I don't know,
Lex Fridman (1:29:20.400)
maybe it relieves the mind to think about death
Chris Blattman (1:29:24.400)
at a global scale somehow and then you can go have
Lex Fridman (1:29:27.400)
lunch with your kids afterwards and feel a little
Chris Blattman (1:29:30.400)
better about the world, I don't know what it is.
Lex Fridman (1:29:32.400)
But that, it's not very scientific, it's very
Chris Blattman (1:29:34.400)
kind of personal, emotional and so we shouldn't,
Lex Fridman (1:29:37.400)
we should be careful to look at the world in that way
Chris Blattman (1:29:40.400)
because if you look broadly there is just like
Lex Fridman (1:29:44.400)
how you highlight, there's a will for peace
Chris Blattman (1:29:47.400)
among people, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:29:50.400)
You mentioned Medellin, by the way how do you
Lex Fridman (1:29:53.400)
pronounce it Medellin or Medellin?
Lex Fridman (1:29:55.400)
Both are fine, I think there they say Medellin
Chris Blattman (1:29:58.400)
because that's kind of the accent is the zh on the double L.
Lex Fridman (1:30:01.400)
But Medellin would be totally fine as well.
Lex Fridman (1:30:05.400)
What lessons do you draw from the Medellin cartel
Lex Fridman (1:30:08.400)
from the different gang wars in Colombia, Medellin?
Lex Fridman (1:30:11.400)
What's the economics of peace and war between drug cartels?
Lex Fridman (1:30:16.400)
Here's what was really insightful for me.
Lex Fridman (1:30:18.400)
So I live in Chicago and people are aware that
Lex Fridman (1:30:22.400)
there's a violence problem in Chicago.
Chris Blattman (1:30:24.400)
It's actually not the worst American city by any stretch
Lex Fridman (1:30:26.400)
of the imagination for shootings but it's pretty bad.
Lex Fridman (1:30:29.400)
And Medellin has these better, much many more
Lex Fridman (1:30:33.400)
and probably many better organized gangs than Chicago.
Lex Fridman (1:30:38.400)
And yet the homicide rate is maybe half.
Lex Fridman (1:30:42.400)
And now, I mean there have been moments when these
Chris Blattman (1:30:48.400)
gangs go to war in the last 30 years when Medellin
Lex Fridman (1:30:51.400)
has become the most violent place on the planet
Lex Fridman (1:30:53.400)
but for the most part right now they're peaceful.
Lex Fridman (1:30:55.400)
And so what's going on there?
Chris Blattman (1:30:58.400)
I mean one thing is there's a hierarchy of organizations
Lex Fridman (1:31:02.400)
so that above these reasonably well organized neighborhood gangs
Chris Blattman (1:31:05.400)
there's a set of sort of more shadowy organizations
Lex Fridman (1:31:07.400)
that have different names.
Chris Blattman (1:31:09.400)
Some people call them razones, some people would call them
Lex Fridman (1:31:11.400)
bandas criminales, criminal bands.
Chris Blattman (1:31:13.400)
You might just call them mafias.
Lex Fridman (1:31:16.400)
And there's about 17 of them depending on how you want to count.
Lex Fridman (1:31:20.400)
And they themselves have a little operating board called,
Lex Fridman (1:31:25.400)
sometimes they call it the office, la oficina,
Chris Blattman (1:31:27.400)
sometimes they call it la mesa, the table.
Lex Fridman (1:31:30.400)
Well each individual one or as a group?
Chris Blattman (1:31:32.400)
As a group, as a group.
Lex Fridman (1:31:34.400)
So they meet and they don't meet personally all the time,
Chris Blattman (1:31:37.400)
sometimes they meet, but they consult.
Lex Fridman (1:31:39.400)
A lot of the leaders of these groups are actually in prison
Lex Fridman (1:31:42.400)
and they're in the same wings in prison.
Lex Fridman (1:31:44.400)
They have represented, oh they meet in prison.
Chris Blattman (1:31:46.400)
Well they're, whatever, if I'm on a cell block with you
Lex Fridman (1:31:49.400)
I'm meeting you anyways.
Lex Fridman (1:31:51.400)
So actually imprisoning leaders and putting them in the same cell block
Lex Fridman (1:31:55.400)
but not putting them, if you get arrested here in the United States
Lex Fridman (1:31:58.400)
and you're a criminal leader and you get put in a super max prison
Lex Fridman (1:32:01.400)
you cannot run your criminal empire.
Chris Blattman (1:32:02.400)
It's just too difficult, it's impossible.
Lex Fridman (1:32:04.400)
There it's possible and you might think, and they do,
Chris Blattman (1:32:07.400)
they still run their empire.
Lex Fridman (1:32:08.400)
And you might think that's a bad idea, but actually
Chris Blattman (1:32:12.400)
cutting off the head of a criminal organization,
Lex Fridman (1:32:14.400)
leading it to a bunch of hot headed young guys who are disorganized
Chris Blattman (1:32:17.400)
is not always the path to peace.
Lex Fridman (1:32:19.400)
So having these guys all in the same prison patios is actually,
Chris Blattman (1:32:24.400)
it reduces imperfect information and uncertainty.
Lex Fridman (1:32:29.400)
It provides a place for them to bargain, they can talk.
Lex Fridman (1:32:32.400)
And so La Oficina is like a lot of these informal meetings.
Lex Fridman (1:32:35.400)
And they have these tools that they use to control the street gangs.
Lex Fridman (1:32:41.400)
So instead of there being like 400 gangs all sort of
Lex Fridman (1:32:44.400)
in this anarchic situation of competing for territory
Lex Fridman (1:32:46.400)
and constantly at war, the Rezones are keeping them in line.
Lex Fridman (1:32:50.400)
And they will use sanctions, they will, where the sanction might be
Chris Blattman (1:32:57.400)
I will put a bullet in your head if you don't.
Lex Fridman (1:33:00.400)
It's a little more honest than the sanctions between nations.
Chris Blattman (1:33:03.400)
Exactly, but they will sit them down, they'll provide,
Lex Fridman (1:33:07.400)
they'll help them negotiate, they will provide,
Chris Blattman (1:33:09.400)
I said there are these things called commitment problems
Lex Fridman (1:33:11.400)
where like there's some dynamic, I have some incentive
Chris Blattman (1:33:13.400)
to like exterminate you, but that's going to be costly for everybody.
Lex Fridman (1:33:16.400)
So I'm going to, what's the solution?
Chris Blattman (1:33:18.400)
Well, I'm going to provide commitment.
Lex Fridman (1:33:19.400)
I'm going to like enforce this deal.
Lex Fridman (1:33:21.400)
And yeah, you don't like this deal now because you could
Lex Fridman (1:33:23.400)
take advantage of your situation and wage war,
Lex Fridman (1:33:26.400)
but I'm going to give you a counter incentives.
Lex Fridman (1:33:28.400)
And so they keep the peace.
Lex Fridman (1:33:31.400)
And so they're a little bit like the UN Security Council
Lex Fridman (1:33:35.400)
and peacekeeping forces and sanctions regimes.
Chris Blattman (1:33:37.400)
It's like the same kinds of tools, the same parallels.
Lex Fridman (1:33:40.400)
And they're imperfect, they don't always work that well.
Lex Fridman (1:33:44.400)
And they're unequal, right?
Lex Fridman (1:33:45.400)
Because it's not like they're pursuing this in the interests
Chris Blattman (1:33:47.400)
of like democratic, blah, blah, blah.
Lex Fridman (1:33:50.400)
But it kind of works.
Chris Blattman (1:33:53.400)
Until it doesn't, and 10 years ago in the mid 1990s,
Lex Fridman (1:33:58.400)
there were wars and this breaks down.
Lex Fridman (1:34:00.400)
And it kind of gave me this perspective on the international institutions
Lex Fridman (1:34:03.400)
and all the tools we've built, that we do the same things, right?
Chris Blattman (1:34:06.400)
Sanctions are designed to make unchecked leaders face the cost of war.
Lex Fridman (1:34:14.400)
It's a solution to one of the five problems, right?
Lex Fridman (1:34:18.400)
And mediators are a solution to uncertainty.
Lex Fridman (1:34:22.400)
And international institutions that can enforce a peace and agreement
Chris Blattman (1:34:25.400)
are a solution to commitment problems.
Lex Fridman (1:34:27.400)
And all of these things can be solutions to these intangible incentives,
Chris Blattman (1:34:30.400)
like these preferences for whatever you value,
Lex Fridman (1:34:33.400)
and miscalculations because they will punish you for your miscalculation,
Chris Blattman (1:34:37.400)
or they will get a mediator to help you realize why you're miscalculating.
Lex Fridman (1:34:41.400)
So they're doing all these things.
Lex Fridman (1:34:42.400)
And it made me realize that the comparison to the UN Security Council
Lex Fridman (1:34:47.400)
and all our tools is actually a pretty good one
Chris Blattman (1:34:49.400)
because those are pretty unequal too.
Lex Fridman (1:34:51.400)
And those are pretty imperfect.
Chris Blattman (1:34:54.400)
We have five nations with a veto on the Security Council
Lex Fridman (1:34:58.400)
and a lot of unequal power,
Lex Fridman (1:35:00.400)
and they're manipulating this in their own self interest
Lex Fridman (1:35:03.400)
or their group's interests.
Lex Fridman (1:35:06.400)
So anyway, so it's actually some of the things that work in Medellín
Lex Fridman (1:35:12.400)
and why they work help give me a lot of perspective
Chris Blattman (1:35:14.400)
on what works in the international arena
Lex Fridman (1:35:16.400)
and why we have some of the problems we have.
Lex Fridman (1:35:19.400)
So there's not, in some deep way,
Lex Fridman (1:35:22.400)
there's not a fundamental difference between those 17 mafia groups and...
Chris Blattman (1:35:26.400)
The UN Security Council.
Lex Fridman (1:35:28.400)
We're such funny descendant of apes.
Chris Blattman (1:35:33.400)
We put on suits.
Lex Fridman (1:35:35.400)
I'm sure they have different cultural garbs that they wear.
Lex Fridman (1:35:39.400)
What are your thoughts?
Lex Fridman (1:35:40.400)
I mean, that's the sense I got from Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa,
Chris Blattman (1:35:43.400)
who founded the Medellín Cartel.
Lex Fridman (1:35:46.400)
Having spoken with people on this podcast,
Chris Blattman (1:35:50.400)
Dr. Roger Reeves, who was a drug transporter,
Lex Fridman (1:35:53.400)
it seems like there, it seems like it was,
Chris Blattman (1:35:58.400)
I don't know the right term,
Lex Fridman (1:36:00.400)
but it was very kind of professional and calm.
Chris Blattman (1:36:03.400)
It didn't have a sense of danger to it.
Lex Fridman (1:36:05.400)
Like it's negotiating.
Lex Fridman (1:36:07.400)
So like the danger is always on the table as a threat,
Lex Fridman (1:36:09.400)
as part of the calculation,
Lex Fridman (1:36:10.400)
but you're using that threat in order to deescalate,
Lex Fridman (1:36:13.400)
in order to have peace.
Chris Blattman (1:36:14.400)
Everybody is interested in peace.
Lex Fridman (1:36:17.400)
So something that happened last year,
Chris Blattman (1:36:19.400)
we were a little bit able to watch in real time
Lex Fridman (1:36:21.400)
because we had a few contacts.
Lex Fridman (1:36:22.400)
So we've been meeting and talking to a lot of these leaders in prison
Lex Fridman (1:36:25.400)
and a bit outside of prison.
Chris Blattman (1:36:27.400)
Many of them will talk to us.
Lex Fridman (1:36:30.400)
And so the homicide rate,
Chris Blattman (1:36:34.400)
I mentioned the homicide rate in Medellín,
Lex Fridman (1:36:36.400)
maybe two thirds or half of the Chicago level,
Chris Blattman (1:36:39.400)
it had been climbing.
Lex Fridman (1:36:41.400)
Some of these street level gangs were starting to fight.
Chris Blattman (1:36:46.400)
Maybe at sort of the, on some level,
Lex Fridman (1:36:49.400)
it seems that like maybe some of those leaders were like saying,
Chris Blattman (1:36:53.400)
well, you know, we're actually not sure how strong these guys are.
Lex Fridman (1:36:55.400)
Let's let them fight just to test it out.
Lex Fridman (1:36:57.400)
Let's have these skirmishes, right?
Lex Fridman (1:36:58.400)
It wasn't prolonged warfare.
Chris Blattman (1:36:59.400)
It was like, let's just sort of feel out how strong everybody is
Lex Fridman (1:37:02.400)
because then we'll be able to reapportion the drug corners
Lex Fridman (1:37:04.400)
and stuff accordingly.
Lex Fridman (1:37:06.400)
So they were kind of feeling each other out through fighting
Lex Fridman (1:37:09.400)
and the homicide rate doubled
Lex Fridman (1:37:11.400)
and then it increased by the same amount again.
Lex Fridman (1:37:14.400)
And so it was approaching something that might get out of control,
Lex Fridman (1:37:17.400)
which wasn't in anybody's interest.
Chris Blattman (1:37:19.400)
It wasn't in the government's interest.
Lex Fridman (1:37:20.400)
It wasn't in their interest.
Lex Fridman (1:37:21.400)
And so then magically all these leaders on these patios, right,
Lex Fridman (1:37:27.400)
different prisons, they're spread out around a bunch of prisons.
Chris Blattman (1:37:31.400)
Everybody gets transferred to a new prison on the same day,
Lex Fridman (1:37:34.400)
which means they all get to be in the same holding area for three days
Chris Blattman (1:37:38.400)
before they're all moved elsewhere.
Lex Fridman (1:37:40.400)
So the government had a role in this.
Lex Fridman (1:37:42.400)
And then somebody who's like a trusted mediator on the criminal side
Lex Fridman (1:37:46.400)
gets himself arrested and happens to be put in the same spot.
Lex Fridman (1:37:51.400)
And a week later, the homicide rate is 30% of what it was.
Lex Fridman (1:37:59.400)
It's back to its normal moderate, unfortunately not zero, right,
Lex Fridman (1:38:03.400)
but it's back to where it was because it didn't make sense to have a war.
Lex Fridman (1:38:09.400)
And everybody, government, mafia leaders, everybody sort of like,
Chris Blattman (1:38:14.400)
they figured out a way to sort of bargain their way to peace.
Lex Fridman (1:38:18.400)
Can I ask you something almost like a tangent?
Lex Fridman (1:38:20.400)
But you mentioned you got a chance potentially to talk to a few folks,
Lex Fridman (1:38:24.400)
some were in prison, some were not.
Lex Fridman (1:38:27.400)
Is it productive?
Lex Fridman (1:38:30.400)
Is it interesting?
Chris Blattman (1:38:32.400)
Maybe by way of advice, do you have ideas about talking to people
Lex Fridman (1:38:36.400)
who are actively criminals?
Chris Blattman (1:38:38.400)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:38:39.400)
It really depends on the situation.
Lex Fridman (1:38:41.400)
So like the first time I worked in a conflicted place was in Northern Uganda
Lex Fridman (1:38:46.400)
in maybe the last couple of years of a long running war.
Lex Fridman (1:38:49.400)
So this would have been 2004, 2005.
Lex Fridman (1:38:51.400)
This is a small East African country.
Lex Fridman (1:38:53.400)
And the north of the country had been engulfed in, think of it as like a 20 year
Lex Fridman (1:39:00.400)
low level insurgency run by a self proclaimed messiah who wasn't that popular
Lex Fridman (1:39:08.400)
and no one joined his movement so he would kidnap kids.
Lex Fridman (1:39:11.400)
And so the, I never, I could talk to people who'd come back from being there.
Chris Blattman (1:39:18.400)
I never once, if I'd wanted to, and I was writing about that armed group,
Lex Fridman (1:39:22.400)
I never talked to anybody who was an active member of that armed group.
Chris Blattman (1:39:25.400)
It was quite rare.
Lex Fridman (1:39:26.400)
It wouldn't have been easy or safe.
Lex Fridman (1:39:28.400)
And that's sometimes true.
Lex Fridman (1:39:31.400)
I'm starting to do some work in Mexico probably and I'm not going to be talking
Chris Blattman (1:39:35.400)
to any criminal, they'll kill people.
Lex Fridman (1:39:37.400)
When you say you're not going to talk to them and they'll kill people, which people?
Chris Blattman (1:39:44.400)
So, I mean, journalists are routinely killed for knowing too much in Mexico.
Chris Blattman (1:39:49.400)
There's no, there's no compunctions about killing them and there's no consequences.
Lex Fridman (1:39:54.400)
Who kills a journalist?
Lex Fridman (1:39:56.400)
It's not the main people that you spoke with, it's their, is it their lackeys
Lex Fridman (1:40:03.400)
or is it rival gangs?
Lex Fridman (1:40:07.400)
This is true of a Chicago gang and this is true of a Medellin gang.
Chris Blattman (1:40:11.400)
It's probably true of a Mexico gang.
Lex Fridman (1:40:12.400)
It's like you might have your group of 30 people.
Chris Blattman (1:40:15.400)
One or two of them might be shooters.
Lex Fridman (1:40:17.400)
Most people don't shoot.
Chris Blattman (1:40:18.400)
Most people don't like to do that.
Lex Fridman (1:40:20.400)
Or you don't even have any of those people in your group because you're trying
Chris Blattman (1:40:24.400)
to run a business.
Lex Fridman (1:40:25.400)
You don't need any shooters.
Chris Blattman (1:40:26.400)
You can just hire a killer when you need them on contract.
Lex Fridman (1:40:30.400)
And so, if somebody's asking questions and you don't want them to ask questions
Chris Blattman (1:40:36.400)
or you think they know too much in a way that threatens you and it's cheap for you
Lex Fridman (1:40:42.400)
and you have no personal compunctions, then you can put a contract out on them
Lex Fridman (1:40:47.400)
and they'll be killed.
Lex Fridman (1:40:49.400)
That doesn't happen in Columbia.
Chris Blattman (1:40:53.400)
It doesn't happen in Chicago.
Lex Fridman (1:40:58.400)
I don't know.
Chris Blattman (1:40:59.400)
There's lots of reasons for that.
Lex Fridman (1:41:00.400)
I can't say exactly why.
Chris Blattman (1:41:01.400)
I think one reason is like they know what will happen is that there will be consequences,
Lex Fridman (1:41:06.400)
that the government will crack down and make them pay and so they don't do it.
Lex Fridman (1:41:11.400)
And that is not what happened in Mexico.
Lex Fridman (1:41:14.400)
They won't kill like a DEA agent.
Chris Blattman (1:41:16.400)
They know that the US has made it clear, you kill one of our agents, we will make you pay.
Lex Fridman (1:41:21.400)
And so, they're very careful to minimize death of an American.
Lex Fridman (1:41:25.400)
But you kill journalists and nobody comes after them or is able to come after them.
Lex Fridman (1:41:29.400)
And so, they've realized they can get away with this and that seems to be the equilibrium there.
Chris Blattman (1:41:33.400)
That's my initial sense.
Lex Fridman (1:41:36.400)
But we spent a lot of time before we started talking to criminals.
Chris Blattman (1:41:40.400)
We spent a year trying to figure out what was safe before we actually – and failing.
Lex Fridman (1:41:45.400)
There are lots of safe things to do.
Chris Blattman (1:41:47.400)
It was also really hard to figure out how to talk to people in these organizations.
Lex Fridman (1:41:50.400)
We failed 40 times before we figured out a way to actually access people.
Chris Blattman (1:41:55.400)
Is it worth it talking to them if you figure out – because it's not never going to be safe.
Lex Fridman (1:42:00.400)
It's going to be when you estimate that there's some low level of risk.
Lex Fridman (1:42:05.400)
Like what's the benefit as a researcher, as a scholar of humans?
Lex Fridman (1:42:10.400)
Yeah.
Chris Blattman (1:42:11.400)
So, I actually don't think – let's compare it to something.
Lex Fridman (1:42:15.400)
Okay, I'm in Austin for the first time and I'm walking around
Lex Fridman (1:42:18.400)
and there's all these people buzzing around on these scooters without helmets.
Lex Fridman (1:42:23.400)
We need to definitely interview them and say, what the hell is wrong with you?
Chris Blattman (1:42:26.400)
So, nothing I have ever done in my entire career is as risky as that.
Lex Fridman (1:42:32.400)
That's a nice way to compare journalism in a war zone and scooters in Austin.
Chris Blattman (1:42:38.400)
Some war zones – I worked in northern Uganda and I worked in Liberia and I work now in Medellin
Lex Fridman (1:42:43.400)
and I'm starting to work in Mexico.
Lex Fridman (1:42:45.400)
And both those particular places and then the things I did in those places
Chris Blattman (1:42:49.400)
where I spent a lot of time making sure that what I was doing was not unduly risky.
Chris Blattman (1:42:54.400)
Todd, could you pull up a picture of a person on a scooter in Austin
Lex Fridman (1:42:59.400)
so we can just compare this absurd situation where I doubt it's the riskiest thing
Chris Blattman (1:43:04.400)
because now we have to look at the data.
Lex Fridman (1:43:06.400)
I understand the point you're making, but – wow.
Chris Blattman (1:43:09.400)
So, I'm not trying to say there's zero risk.
Lex Fridman (1:43:11.400)
I think there's like a calculated risk and I think you become good at –
Chris Blattman (1:43:16.400)
you work at becoming good at being able to assess these risks
Lex Fridman (1:43:20.400)
and know who can help you assess these risks.
Chris Blattman (1:43:22.400)
Yeah. I think there's another aspect to it too.
Chris Blattman (1:43:27.400)
When you're riding a scooter, once you're done with the scooter, the risk has disappeared.
Chris Blattman (1:43:34.400)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:43:35.400)
There's something lingering when you have to look over your shoulder,
Chris Blattman (1:43:38.400)
potential for the rest of your life as you accumulate all these conversations.
Lex Fridman (1:43:42.400)
Yeah. I've chosen, but I've also advised my students
Lex Fridman (1:43:45.400)
and I wouldn't go and do this with an armed group that would think I knew too much and therefore –
Lex Fridman (1:43:52.400)
some people do that.
Chris Blattman (1:43:53.400)
Some journalists I think are very brave and take risks and do that
Lex Fridman (1:43:56.400)
and good for them and I'm happy they do that.
Chris Blattman (1:43:58.400)
I don't personally – I don't personally do that.
Lex Fridman (1:44:02.400)
So, these guys are very – I mean, Medellín is a business.
Chris Blattman (1:44:06.400)
They're just – they're selling local drugs and they are laundering money for the big cartels
Lex Fridman (1:44:12.400)
and they are shaking down businesses for money or selling services in some cases
Lex Fridman (1:44:19.400)
and they make a lot of money and it's a business and they're in prison.
Chris Blattman (1:44:25.400)
So, they can talk about most of what they want to talk about because there's no double jeopardy.
Chris Blattman (1:44:30.400)
They've been incarcerated for it.
Lex Fridman (1:44:33.400)
And you're just talking shop.
Lex Fridman (1:44:36.400)
And they're just – so, it's worth it I think because the risk is very low,
Lex Fridman (1:44:41.400)
but if you actually want to weaken these organizations and they're extremely powerful,
Chris Blattman (1:44:45.400)
they're extremely big facet of life in a lot of cities in the Americas in particular,
Lex Fridman (1:44:50.400)
including some of the United – some American cities.
Chris Blattman (1:44:53.400)
If you want to understand how to weaken these groups over time,
Lex Fridman (1:44:58.400)
you have to understand how their business works.
Lex Fridman (1:45:00.400)
And we're – like, imagine you were made like the – whatever the oilses are of the United States.
Lex Fridman (1:45:08.400)
Or maybe you're in charge of the finance industry, right?
Chris Blattman (1:45:11.400)
You're the regulator for oil and energy or for finance and then you get in the job and someone says –
Lex Fridman (1:45:18.400)
and then you're like, well, how many firms are there and what do they sell and what are the prices?
Lex Fridman (1:45:22.400)
And everyone is like, well, you know, we don't really know.
Lex Fridman (1:45:25.400)
You would not be a very good regulator, right?
Lex Fridman (1:45:27.400)
And if you're a policeman or you're someone who's in charge of counter organized crime,
Lex Fridman (1:45:31.400)
you're just a regulator.
Chris Blattman (1:45:32.400)
You're trying to regulate an illicit – you're regulating an industry that happens to be illicit
Lex Fridman (1:45:36.400)
and you have no information.
Lex Fridman (1:45:38.400)
And so, that's kind of what we do.
Lex Fridman (1:45:41.400)
We figure out how the system works and like what are the economic incentives
Lex Fridman (1:45:45.400)
and what are the political incentives.
Lex Fridman (1:45:47.400)
Any interviews and conversations help with that?
Chris Blattman (1:45:49.400)
They help a lot.
Lex Fridman (1:45:50.400)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chris Blattman (1:45:51.400)
We do that – so, we have – I mean, I don't do – I do some of those,
Lex Fridman (1:45:53.400)
but I'm on the side – my Spanish is okay.
Chris Blattman (1:45:57.400)
It's not great and –
Lex Fridman (1:45:59.400)
Do you have a translator usually if you ever go directly?
Chris Blattman (1:46:01.400)
Well, if only because I can't understand the street vernacular.
Lex Fridman (1:46:04.400)
Like I'm just totally hopeless.
Chris Blattman (1:46:06.400)
Nor could many people who speak Spanish as a second language.
Chris Blattman (1:46:09.400)
It's totally – you go to prison, you talk to these guys and they're speaking in the local dialect and it's tough.
Lex Fridman (1:46:16.400)
But more importantly, like I just don't need to be there and that's not my – I'm a quantitative scholar.
Lex Fridman (1:46:21.400)
I'm the guy who collects the data.
Chris Blattman (1:46:23.400)
So, we have people on our team and colleagues and employees who are doing full time interviews.
Lex Fridman (1:46:30.400)
And then I just sometimes go with them.
Lex Fridman (1:46:32.400)
What about if we – you mentioned Uganda.
Lex Fridman (1:46:35.400)
Yeah.
Chris Blattman (1:46:36.400)
Joseph Kony, the Ugandan warlord.
Lex Fridman (1:46:38.400)
Exactly.
Chris Blattman (1:46:39.400)
I'm seeing here he kidnapped 591 children in three years between 2000 –
Lex Fridman (1:46:44.400)
Oh, he probably – they must have kidnapped.
Chris Blattman (1:46:46.400)
They probably kidnapped for at least a short time, like a few hours to a day, more than 50,000 kids.
Lex Fridman (1:46:53.400)
As a terror tactic?
Chris Blattman (1:46:55.400)
A little bit.
Lex Fridman (1:46:56.400)
I mean, most of those people they just let go after they carried goods.
Chris Blattman (1:47:00.400)
They held on to – they tried to hold on to thousands.
Chris Blattman (1:47:02.400)
The short story – listen, if you're not popular, if you're running an armed movement and you need troops and nobody wants to fight for you,
Chris Blattman (1:47:12.400)
you can either give up or you can have a small clandestine terror organization that tries a different set of tactics.
Lex Fridman (1:47:19.400)
But if you want a conventional army and you don't want to give up, then you have to conscript.
Lex Fridman (1:47:24.400)
And if you want to conscript and you don't – here we conscript and then we say if you run away, we'll shoot you.
Lex Fridman (1:47:30.400)
And we control the whole territory, so that's a credible promise.
Chris Blattman (1:47:35.400)
If you're a small insurgency organization, people can run away and then you can't promise to shoot them very easily
Lex Fridman (1:47:41.400)
because you don't control all the territory.
Lex Fridman (1:47:43.400)
And so what these movements do is they try to brainwash you.
Lex Fridman (1:47:46.400)
And I think what they figured out after years of abducting children, you know, you talk about evil.
Chris Blattman (1:47:51.400)
They figured out that, you know, we have to – maybe like – I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:47:56.400)
Say like maybe one in a hundred will like buy the rhetoric.
Lex Fridman (1:47:59.400)
So we just have to conscript or abduct a large number of kids and then some small number of them will not run away.
Lex Fridman (1:48:06.400)
And those will be our committed cadres.
Lex Fridman (1:48:08.400)
And those people can become commanders.
Lex Fridman (1:48:10.400)
Because they'll buy the propaganda and they'll buy the messianic messages.
Lex Fridman (1:48:15.400)
But because most people wise up, we have – especially as they get older, we just have to abduct vast numbers of kids in order to have a committed cadre.
Lex Fridman (1:48:23.400)
And so it has the other benefit of sort of being terrifying for the population and being a weapon in itself.
Lex Fridman (1:48:30.400)
But I think for them it was just primarily a way to solve a recruitment problem when you're a totally like hopeless and ideologically empty rebel movement.
Lex Fridman (1:48:46.400)
So in some sense it's – yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:48:49.400)
So that's maybe the short story.
Lex Fridman (1:48:51.400)
It was a real tragedy.
Chris Blattman (1:48:52.400)
I heard one interview of a dictator where the journalist was basically telling them like how could you be doing this, basically calling out all the atrocities the person is committing.
Lex Fridman (1:49:08.400)
And the dictator was kind of laughing it off and walked away.
Chris Blattman (1:49:11.400)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:49:12.400)
And like he cut off the interview.
Chris Blattman (1:49:13.400)
That feel like a very unproductive thing to be doing.
Lex Fridman (1:49:16.400)
You're basically stating the thing that everyone knows to his face.
Chris Blattman (1:49:20.400)
Maybe that's pleasant to somebody.
Lex Fridman (1:49:22.400)
But that feels unproductive.
Chris Blattman (1:49:25.400)
It feels like the goal should be some level of understanding.
Lex Fridman (1:49:29.400)
Yeah.
Chris Blattman (1:49:30.400)
He's been super elusive.
Lex Fridman (1:49:33.400)
I mean why he's been fighting – it's Conan, yeah.
Chris Blattman (1:49:36.400)
I mean why he's fought this, I don't know.
Chris Blattman (1:49:39.400)
It's not a great example of – the way I look at that situation is it's a little bit particular to the way Uganda works.
Lex Fridman (1:49:51.400)
But most of the political leadership for most of its post independence history came from the north of the country.
Lex Fridman (1:49:59.400)
That was like the power base.
Lex Fridman (1:50:02.400)
And it was dictatorial.
Lex Fridman (1:50:04.400)
So you've heard of people like Idi Amin, but people have heard of like Milton Abote and all these people were all from the north.
Lex Fridman (1:50:12.400)
And then you get the current president who came to power in 1986.
Lex Fridman (1:50:15.400)
So he's been around a long time, this guy, Museveni.
Chris Blattman (1:50:17.400)
He was from the south.
Lex Fridman (1:50:21.400)
And he was fighting against these dictators and he was fighting for a freer and better Uganda.
Lex Fridman (1:50:27.400)
And in many ways – I mean he's still a dictator himself, but he did create a freer and better Uganda.
Lex Fridman (1:50:32.400)
So he's a thug, but he was better than thugs before him.
Lex Fridman (1:50:37.400)
And he came to power and he was like – and some of the northerners were like, we want to keep up the fight.
Lex Fridman (1:50:45.400)
And he was like, you know what, you guys, I'm strong enough to continue to the north.
Lex Fridman (1:50:49.400)
You guys go, you want to have a crazy insurgency up there?
Lex Fridman (1:50:53.400)
And some kook believes he's like speaking, you know, through the Holy Spirit, you know, speaking through him and he's going to totally disrupt the north?
Chris Blattman (1:51:05.400)
I don't care.
Lex Fridman (1:51:06.400)
That's great.
Chris Blattman (1:51:07.400)
You guys just fester and fight and that's going to totally destabilize this power, this traditional power base.
Lex Fridman (1:51:15.400)
And then that's just going to help me consolidate control.
Lex Fridman (1:51:17.400)
So he was an autocrat, he was an unchecked leader who allowed a lunatic to run around and cause mayhem because it was in his political interest to do so.
Lex Fridman (1:51:30.400)
And there is no puzzle.
Chris Blattman (1:51:34.400)
In some ways, it's that simple and kind of tragic.
Lex Fridman (1:51:39.400)
There's little to understand.
Chris Blattman (1:51:41.400)
Yeah, it took me a lot – well, you know what, it's not so easy.
Lex Fridman (1:51:44.400)
In the middle of it, I didn't understand that.
Chris Blattman (1:51:46.400)
I don't think a lot of people did.
Lex Fridman (1:51:48.400)
And I think I could persuade most people who study or work there now to see it that way.
Chris Blattman (1:51:54.400)
I think people that would make sense to people, but it didn't make sense in the moment.
Chris Blattman (1:51:58.400)
In the moment, this is happening, it's terrible, and you don't realize how avoidable it was.
Chris Blattman (1:52:04.400)
Basically, it was the absence of effective police actions that kept the lunatic from being contained.
Lex Fridman (1:52:12.400)
And that lunatic would never – it's not that skillful of our movement, right?
Chris Blattman (1:52:17.400)
It could have been shut down, and there was just never any political will to shut it down.
Lex Fridman (1:52:22.400)
The opposite.
Chris Blattman (1:52:23.400)
That's what I meant.
Chris Blattman (1:52:24.400)
That unchecked leader, not only do you not bear the cost, but you might have a private incentive as an autocrat to see that violence happen.
Lex Fridman (1:52:30.400)
And in this case, it was just keeping a troublesome part of the country busy.
Chris Blattman (1:52:35.400)
If it's okay to look at a few other wars, so we talked about drug wars in Medellin.
Lex Fridman (1:52:42.400)
Are there other wars that stand out to you as full of lessons?
Lex Fridman (1:52:45.400)
We can jump around a little bit.
Lex Fridman (1:52:46.400)
Maybe if we can return briefly at World War II, from your framework, could World War II have been avoided?
Lex Fridman (1:52:55.400)
This is one of the most traumatic wars, global wars.
Chris Blattman (1:53:00.400)
One obvious driver of that war was the things that Hitler valued and then was able to use his autocratic power to either convince other people or to suppress them.
Lex Fridman (1:53:21.400)
And so some people stop there and say that, and then in the West basically, and then of course they were able, because they were such an economic and political powerhouse, they were able to sort of make demands of the rest of Europe that you can kind of see the fold.
Chris Blattman (1:53:38.400)
You know, letting Nazis march into Denmark without a fight or France folding very quickly, you can kind of see as like an appeasement or an acknowledgement of their superiority and their ability to bargain without much of a fight.
Lex Fridman (1:53:52.400)
And then you can see the Western response as a principled stand.
Chris Blattman (1:53:56.400)
I think that's, and there's a lot of truth to that.
Chris Blattman (1:53:58.400)
You know, in terms of the strategic forces, a lot of political scientists see a version of a commitment problem, basically where Germany says, you know what, we're strong now, we're temporarily strong, we're not going to be this strong forever.
Chris Blattman (1:54:14.400)
If we can get this terrible bargain and get everyone to capitulate through violence, if we strike now and then solidify our power and keep these, in World War I it was prevent the rise of Russia and prevent the strengthening of Russian alliances as well.
Lex Fridman (1:54:39.400)
And so we have an incentive to strike now and there's a window of opportunity that's closing and that they thought was closing as soon as 1917 in World War I.
Lex Fridman (1:54:48.400)
And I don't know that that story is as persuasive in World War II.
Lex Fridman (1:54:51.400)
I think there was an element of a closing window.
Chris Blattman (1:54:53.400)
Well, they kept talking about a closing window because they really thought there was a closing window. I think there's a nature of that window is different in that there was a kind of pacifism and it seems like if war broke out, most nations in the vicinity would not be ready.
Chris Blattman (1:55:13.400)
By the people, the leaders that are in power, they weren't ready so the timing is really right now. But I wonder how often that is the case with leaders in war that feels like the timing is now.
Chris Blattman (1:55:25.400)
The other commitment problem, the other shift that was happening that he wanted to avert that is kind of wrapped up with his ideology is this idea of like a cultural and a demographic window of opportunity that if he wanted, if conditional on having these views of a Germanic people and a pure race and that now is that he had to strike now before any opportunity to sort of establish that was possible.
Lex Fridman (1:55:54.400)
I think that's one, it's an incentive that requires his ideology as well.
Lex Fridman (1:55:59.400)
So to avoid it within this framework, would you say is there, you kind of provide an explanation, but is there a way to avoid it? Is violence the way to avoid it? Because people kind of tried rational, peaceful kind of usual negotiation and that led to this war. Is that unique to this particular war, let's say World War I or World War II?
Lex Fridman (1:56:28.400)
So there's an extra pressure from Germany on both wars to act. Okay, so we've highlighted that. Is there a way to alleviate that extra pressure to act?
Chris Blattman (1:56:37.400)
Let me use World War I as an example. Suppose, as many German generals said at that time, we have a window of opportunity before Russia where we might not win a war with Russia. So the probability that we can win a war is going to change a lot in the next decade or two, maybe even in the next few years. And so if we are in a much better bargaining position now, both to not use violence, but if necessarily use violence.
Chris Blattman (1:57:04.400)
Because otherwise, Russia is going to be extremely powerful in the future and they'll be able to use that power to change the bargaining with us and to keep us down. And the thing is, is in principle, Russia could say, look, we don't wanna get invaded right now.
Chris Blattman (1:57:21.400)
We know you could invade us. We know we're weak. We know we'll be strong in the future. We promise to not wield our and abuse our or just merely just sort of take what we can get in the future when we're strong. We're gonna restrain ourselves in future.
Chris Blattman (1:57:38.400)
Or we're gonna hand over something that makes us powerful because that's the bargain that would make us all better off. And the reason political economists call it a commitment problem is because that's a commitment that would solve the problem.
Lex Fridman (1:57:50.400)
And they can't make that commitment because there's nobody who will hold them accountable. So anything, any international legal architecture, any set of enforceable agreements, any UN Security Council, any world government, anything that would help you make that commitment is a solution.
Chris Blattman (1:58:08.400)
All right, if that's the core problem. And so that's why, you know, in Medellin, you know, the oficina can do that. They can say, listen, yes, combo that's strong today is gonna be weak tomorrow. You have an incentive to eliminate this combo over here, because they're gonna be strong.
Lex Fridman (1:58:28.400)
But guess what? You're not gonna do that. And we're gonna make sure, we're gonna promise that when these guys do get strong, we're gonna restrain what they can do.
Chris Blattman (1:58:36.400)
Most of our constitutions in most stable countries have done precisely that, right? There's a lot of complaining right now in the United States about the way that the Constitution is apportioned power between states.
Chris Blattman (1:58:49.400)
That was a deal. That was a commitment. The Constitution in the United States was a deal made to a bunch of states that knew they were going to be weak in future because of economic and demographic trends, or guess they might be.
Lex Fridman (1:59:02.400)
And it said, listen, you cooperate and we'll commit not to basically ignore your interests over the long run. And now, you know, 250 years later, we're still honoring those commitments.
Chris Blattman (1:59:18.400)
It was part of the deal that meant that there actually would be a union. And so we do this all the time. So a constitution is a good example of how every country's constitution, especially a country who's writing a constitution after a war, that constitution and all of the other institutions they're building are an attempt to like provide commitment to groups who are worried about future shifts in power.
Lex Fridman (1:59:42.400)
And does that help with avoid civil war? So could you speak to lessons you learned from civil wars, perhaps the American Civil War or any others?
Lex Fridman (1:59:52.400)
So Lebanon, one of the ways Lebanon had tried for a long time to preserve the interests of minority groups, powerful minority groups who were powerful at the time and knew that the demographics were working against them, was to guarantee, you know, this ethnic religious group gets the presidency and this ethno religious group gets the prime ministership and this ethno.
Lex Fridman (20:02.200)
incentives not to go to war
Chris Blattman (20:03.520)
because it's gonna be really costly.
Lex Fridman (20:04.880)
And so all of these other human or strategic things,
Chris Blattman (20:08.080)
all these things, the circumstantial things
Lex Fridman (20:10.560)
that will eventually lead us to go to war
Chris Blattman (20:13.080)
have to be pretty powerful before we go there.
Lex Fridman (20:16.720)
And most of the time.
Chris Blattman (20:18.400)
Sorry to interrupt.
Lex Fridman (20:19.520)
And that's why you also describe very importantly
Chris Blattman (20:22.560)
that war throughout human history is actually rare.
Lex Fridman (20:25.640)
We usually avoid it.
Chris Blattman (20:27.800)
You know, most people don't know about
Lex Fridman (20:30.280)
the US invasion of Haiti in 1994.
Chris Blattman (20:32.940)
I mean, a lot of people know about it,
Lex Fridman (20:34.120)
but people just don't pay attention to it.
Chris Blattman (20:35.720)
We don't, we're gonna, you know,
Lex Fridman (20:37.640)
the history books and school kids are gonna learn
Chris Blattman (20:39.560)
about the invasion of Afghanistan for decades and decades,
Lex Fridman (20:43.640)
and nobody's going to put this one in the history books.
Lex Fridman (20:47.520)
And it's because it didn't actually happen
Lex Fridman (20:50.440)
because before the troops could land,
Chris Blattman (20:54.560)
the person who'd taken power in a coup basically said fine.
Lex Fridman (20:58.960)
There's this famous story where Colin Powell goes to Haiti,
Chris Blattman (21:03.240)
to this new dictator who's refused
Lex Fridman (21:05.600)
to let a Democratic president take power.
Lex Fridman (21:08.200)
And tries to convince him to step down or else.
Lex Fridman (21:11.840)
And he says, no, no, no.
Lex Fridman (21:12.760)
And then he shows him a video,
Lex Fridman (21:14.780)
and it's basically troop planes
Lex Fridman (21:16.840)
and all these things taking off.
Lex Fridman (21:19.000)
And he's like, this is not live.
Chris Blattman (21:20.280)
This is two hours ago.
Lex Fridman (21:21.600)
So it's a, and basically he basically gives up right there.
Lex Fridman (21:26.760)
So that was.
Lex Fridman (21:27.600)
That's a powerful move.
Chris Blattman (21:29.080)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (21:30.280)
I think Powell might've been one of his teachers
Chris Blattman (21:33.040)
in like a US military college,
Lex Fridman (21:34.480)
because a lot of these military dictators
Chris Blattman (21:36.240)
trained at some point.
Lex Fridman (21:37.500)
So they had some, there was some personal relationships
Chris Blattman (21:39.440)
at least between people in the US government
Lex Fridman (21:40.720)
and this guy that they were trying to use.
Chris Blattman (21:42.840)
The point is, and that's like what should have happened.
Lex Fridman (21:45.920)
That makes sense, right?
Chris Blattman (21:46.800)
Like, yeah, maybe I could mount an insurgency
Lex Fridman (21:51.020)
and yeah, I'm not gonna bear a lot of the cost of war
Chris Blattman (21:52.680)
cause I'm the dictator.
Lex Fridman (21:53.520)
And maybe he's human and he just wants to fight
Chris Blattman (21:55.520)
or gets angry or it's just in his mind,
Lex Fridman (21:57.460)
whatever he's doing.
Lex Fridman (21:58.300)
But at the end of the day, it's like,
Lex Fridman (21:59.160)
this does not make sense.
Lex Fridman (22:02.260)
And that's what happens most of the time,
Lex Fridman (22:04.620)
but we don't write so many books about it.
Lex Fridman (22:06.720)
And now some political scientists go
Lex Fridman (22:10.680)
and they count up all of the nations that could fight
Chris Blattman (22:13.040)
cause they have some dispute
Lex Fridman (22:14.080)
and they're right next to one another,
Chris Blattman (22:15.920)
or they look at the ethnic groups
Lex Fridman (22:17.480)
that could fight with one another
Chris Blattman (22:18.600)
cause there's some tension
Lex Fridman (22:19.800)
and they're right next to one another.
Lex Fridman (22:22.320)
And then whatever, some number like 999 out of 1000
Lex Fridman (22:25.800)
don't fight because they just find some other way.
Chris Blattman (22:29.880)
They don't like each other, but they just loathe in peace
Lex Fridman (22:32.760)
because that's the sensible thing to do.
Lex Fridman (22:35.000)
And that's what we all do, we loathe in peace.
Lex Fridman (22:37.400)
And we loathed the Soviet Union in relative peace
Chris Blattman (22:40.280)
for decades and India loathes Pakistan in peace.
Lex Fridman (22:44.320)
I mean, two weeks into the Russian invasion of Ukraine,
Chris Blattman (22:46.760)
again, it was in the newspapers,
Lex Fridman (22:48.800)
but most people didn't, I think, take note.
Chris Blattman (22:51.440)
India accidentally launched a cruise missile at Pakistan
Lex Fridman (22:55.680)
and common suit.
Lex Fridman (22:57.660)
So they were like, yeah, this is,
Lex Fridman (22:59.420)
we do not want to go to war.
Chris Blattman (23:00.640)
This will be bad.
Lex Fridman (23:01.600)
We'll be angry, but we'll accept your explanation
Chris Blattman (23:05.920)
that this was an accident.
Lex Fridman (23:07.200)
And so these things find to the radar.
Lex Fridman (23:10.760)
And so we overestimate, I think,
Lex Fridman (23:12.440)
how likely it is the sides are gonna fight.
Lex Fridman (23:15.660)
But then of course, things do happen.
Lex Fridman (23:17.000)
Like Russia did invade the Ukraine
Lex Fridman (23:19.440)
and didn't find some negotiated deal.
Lex Fridman (23:22.640)
And so then the book is sort of about half the book
Chris Blattman (23:26.560)
is just sort of laying out,
Lex Fridman (23:28.640)
actually like there's just different ways this breaks down.
Lex Fridman (23:31.120)
And some of them are human.
Lex Fridman (23:32.640)
Some of them are this,
Chris Blattman (23:34.160)
I actually don't think war beats in our heart.
Lex Fridman (23:37.240)
It does a little bit, but we're actually very cooperative.
Chris Blattman (23:40.920)
As a species, we're deeply, deeply cooperative.
Lex Fridman (23:44.040)
We're really, really good.
Lex Fridman (23:45.160)
So the thing we're not, we're okay at violence
Lex Fridman (23:47.840)
and we're okay getting angry and vengeance
Lex Fridman (23:50.120)
and we have principles that will sometimes lead us,
Lex Fridman (23:53.420)
but we're actually really, really,
Chris Blattman (23:55.080)
really good at cooperation.
Lex Fridman (23:57.040)
And so that's, again, I'm not trying to write
Chris Blattman (23:59.840)
some big optimistic book where everything's gonna be great
Lex Fridman (24:02.320)
and we're all happy and we don't really fight.
Chris Blattman (24:03.840)
It's more just to say, let's start,
Lex Fridman (24:06.400)
let's be like a doctor.
Lex Fridman (24:07.520)
As a doctor, we're gonna focus on the sick, right?
Lex Fridman (24:10.300)
I'm gonna try, I know there's sick people,
Lex Fridman (24:12.200)
but I'm gonna recognize that the normal state is health
Lex Fridman (24:14.760)
and that most people are healthy.
Lex Fridman (24:16.400)
And that's gonna make me a better doctor.
Lex Fridman (24:18.040)
And that's, I'm kind of saying the same thing.
Chris Blattman (24:19.380)
Let's be better doctors of politics in the world
Lex Fridman (24:22.200)
by recognizing that like normal state is health.
Lex Fridman (24:25.240)
And then we're gonna identify like what are the diseases
Lex Fridman (24:28.440)
that are causing this warfare.
Lex Fridman (24:30.440)
So yeah, the natural state of the human body
Lex Fridman (24:33.240)
with the immune system and all the different parts
Chris Blattman (24:36.840)
wants to be healthy and is really damn good
Lex Fridman (24:39.400)
at being healthy, but sometimes it breaks down.
Chris Blattman (24:41.920)
Let's understand how it breaks down.
Lex Fridman (24:43.440)
Yeah, exactly.
Lex Fridman (24:44.280)
So what are the five ways that you list
Lex Fridman (24:47.120)
that are the roots of war?
Chris Blattman (24:48.920)
Yeah, so I mean, they're kind of like buckets.
Lex Fridman (24:50.600)
They're sort of things that rhyme, right?
Chris Blattman (24:52.680)
In the interview, because it's not all the same.
Lex Fridman (24:54.320)
There's like lots of reasons to go to war.
Chris Blattman (24:55.560)
There's this great line,
Lex Fridman (24:57.220)
there's a reason for every war and a war for every reason.
Lex Fridman (24:59.640)
And that's true.
Lex Fridman (25:00.800)
And it's kind of overwhelming, right?
Lex Fridman (25:02.760)
And it's overwhelming for a lot of people.
Lex Fridman (25:04.480)
It was overwhelming for me for a lot of time.
Lex Fridman (25:05.920)
And I think one of the gifts of social science
Lex Fridman (25:09.200)
is actually people have started to organize this for us.
Lex Fridman (25:11.480)
And I just tried to organize it like a tiny bit better.
Lex Fridman (25:14.320)
Buckets that rhyme.
Chris Blattman (25:15.360)
Buckets with some economics.
Lex Fridman (25:17.400)
Yeah, the terrible metaphor, right?
Lex Fridman (25:18.240)
And bad at metaphors.
Lex Fridman (25:19.980)
So the idea was that like that basic,
Chris Blattman (25:22.480)
like something overrides these incentives.
Lex Fridman (25:24.080)
And I guess I was saying there's five ways
Chris Blattman (25:26.960)
that they get overrided.
Lex Fridman (25:28.000)
And three are, I'd call strategic.
Chris Blattman (25:30.160)
Like they're kind of logical.
Lex Fridman (25:31.360)
There's circumstances that,
Lex Fridman (25:34.560)
and this is, they're sort of,
Lex Fridman (25:36.180)
where strategic is, strategy is like game theory.
Chris Blattman (25:40.040)
You could use those two things interchangeably.
Lex Fridman (25:41.840)
But game theory is sort of making it sound more complicated,
Chris Blattman (25:44.400)
I think, than it is.
Lex Fridman (25:45.240)
It's basically saying that there's times
Chris Blattman (25:46.920)
when this is like the optimal choice
Lex Fridman (25:49.760)
because of circumstances.
Lex Fridman (25:51.200)
And one of them is when the people who are deciding
Lex Fridman (25:55.020)
don't bear those costs.
Lex Fridman (25:56.960)
So that's, or maybe even have a private incentive
Lex Fridman (25:59.800)
that's gonna, that's, if they don't,
Chris Blattman (26:02.560)
if they're ignoring the cost,
Lex Fridman (26:03.640)
then maybe the costs of war are not so material.
Chris Blattman (26:06.700)
That's a contributing factor.
Lex Fridman (26:07.960)
Another is just, there's uncertainty,
Lex Fridman (26:10.160)
and we could talk about that,
Lex Fridman (26:11.080)
but there's just the absence of information
Chris Blattman (26:13.520)
means that it actually, there's circumstances
Lex Fridman (26:15.360)
where it's your best choice to attack.
Chris Blattman (26:17.760)
There's this thing that political economists
Lex Fridman (26:19.480)
call commitment problems,
Chris Blattman (26:20.640)
which are basically saying there's some big power shift
Lex Fridman (26:23.040)
that you can avoid by attacking now.
Lex Fridman (26:24.480)
So it's like a dynamic incentive.
Lex Fridman (26:25.880)
It's sort of saying, well, in order to keep something
Chris Blattman (26:28.080)
from happening in the future, I can attack now.
Lex Fridman (26:30.720)
And because of the structure of incentives,
Chris Blattman (26:32.960)
it actually makes sense for me,
Lex Fridman (26:34.080)
even though war is, in theory, really costly,
Chris Blattman (26:38.420)
or it is really costly nonetheless.
Lex Fridman (26:40.680)
And then there's these sort of human things.
Chris Blattman (26:42.840)
One's a little bit like just war.
Lex Fridman (26:44.160)
One sort of thing, there's like ideologies or principles
Chris Blattman (26:46.400)
or things we value that weigh against those costs,
Lex Fridman (26:50.900)
like exterminating the heretical idea
Chris Blattman (26:54.040)
or standing up for a principle might be so valuable to me
Lex Fridman (26:58.220)
that I'm willing to use violence, even if it's costly.
Lex Fridman (27:02.720)
And there's nothing irrational about that.
Lex Fridman (27:05.000)
And then the fifth bucket is all of the irrationalities,
Chris Blattman (27:08.920)
all the passions and all of the most importantly,
Lex Fridman (27:11.180)
I think, like misperceptions, the way we get,
Chris Blattman (27:13.160)
like we basically make wrong calculations
Lex Fridman (27:15.800)
about whether or not war is the right decision.
Chris Blattman (27:17.800)
We misunderstand or misjudge our enemy
Lex Fridman (27:21.760)
or misjudge ourselves.
Lex Fridman (27:23.080)
So if you put all those things into buckets,
Lex Fridman (27:25.480)
how much can it be modeled in a simple game theoretic way
Lex Fridman (27:29.840)
and how much of it is a giant human mess?
Lex Fridman (27:32.940)
So four of those five are really, on some level,
Chris Blattman (27:36.080)
easy to think strategically and model in a simple way
Lex Fridman (27:41.220)
in the sense that any of us can do it.
Chris Blattman (27:43.200)
We do this all the time.
Lex Fridman (27:45.940)
Think of bargaining in a market for a carpet or something
Chris Blattman (27:50.940)
or whatever you bargained for, you're thinking a few steps
Lex Fridman (27:55.300)
ahead about what your opponent's going to do.
Lex Fridman (27:58.700)
And you stake out a high price, like a low price,
Lex Fridman (28:01.460)
and the seller stakes out a high price.
Lex Fridman (28:04.300)
And you might both say, oh, I refuse to,
Lex Fridman (28:06.540)
I could never accept that.
Lex Fridman (28:07.660)
And there's all this sort of cheap talk,
Lex Fridman (28:10.980)
but you kind of understand where you're going
Lex Fridman (28:13.140)
and it's efficient to like find a deal
Lex Fridman (28:15.700)
and buy the market, buy the carpet eventually.
Lex Fridman (28:18.440)
So we all understand this game theory and the strategy,
Lex Fridman (28:21.000)
I think intuitively.
Chris Blattman (28:22.480)
Or maybe even a closer example is like, suppose,
Lex Fridman (28:26.800)
I don't know, you have a tenant you need to evict
Chris Blattman (28:28.960)
or any normal kind of legal,
Lex Fridman (28:31.720)
it's not yet a legal dispute, right?
Chris Blattman (28:33.160)
Like we just have a dispute with a neighbor
Lex Fridman (28:34.920)
or somebody else.
Chris Blattman (28:36.080)
Most of us don't end up going to court.
Lex Fridman (28:38.440)
Going to court is like the war option.
Chris Blattman (28:40.800)
That's the costly thing that we just ought to be able to avoid.
Lex Fridman (28:43.400)
We ought to be able to find something between ourselves
Chris Blattman (28:46.160)
that doesn't require this hiring lawyers
Lex Fridman (28:51.080)
and a long drawn out trial.
Lex Fridman (28:53.320)
And most of the time we do, right?
Lex Fridman (28:55.320)
And so we all understand that incentive.
Lex Fridman (28:57.960)
And then for those five buckets,
Lex Fridman (29:00.960)
so everything except all the irrational
Lex Fridman (29:02.800)
and the misperceptions are really easy to model.
Lex Fridman (29:05.360)
Then from a technical standpoint,
Chris Blattman (29:06.640)
it's actually pretty tricky to model the misperceptions.
Lex Fridman (29:10.000)
And I'm not a game theorist.
Lex Fridman (29:11.480)
And so I'm more channeling my colleagues
Lex Fridman (29:13.360)
to do this and what I know, but it's not rocket science.
Chris Blattman (29:18.080)
I mean, I think that's what I try to lay out in the book
Lex Fridman (29:22.000)
is like there's all these ideas out there
Chris Blattman (29:24.480)
that can actually help us just make sense
Lex Fridman (29:26.640)
of all these wars and just bring some order
Chris Blattman (29:30.120)
to the morass of reasons.
Lex Fridman (29:33.240)
Well, to push back a lot of things in one sentence.
Lex Fridman (29:37.120)
So first of all, rocket science is actually pretty simple.
Lex Fridman (29:39.840)
I'll defer to you actually.
Chris Blattman (29:43.480)
Well, I think it's because unfortunately it's very
Lex Fridman (29:46.040)
like engineering, it's very well defined.
Chris Blattman (29:48.960)
The problem is well defined.
Lex Fridman (29:50.120)
The problem with humanity is it's actually complicated.
Lex Fridman (29:53.640)
So it is true it's not rocket science, but it is not true.
Lex Fridman (29:56.440)
It's easy because it's not rocket science.
Lex Fridman (29:58.560)
But the problem, the downside of game theory
Lex Fridman (2:00:19.400)
And a lot of countries will apportion seats in the parliament to ethno religious groups. And that's an attempt to like give a group that's temporarily powerful some assurances that when they're weak in the future that they'll still have a say, right?
Chris Blattman (2:00:40.400)
Just like we apportioned seats in the Senate in a way that's not demographically representative but is like unequal, quote unquote, in a sense to help people be confident that there won't be a tyranny of the majority.
Lex Fridman (2:00:51.400)
And now that just happens to have been like a really unstable arrangement in Lebanon because eventually like the de facto power on the ground just gets so out of line with this really rigid system of the presidency goes to this ethno religious group and this prime ministership goes, that it didn't last, right?
Lex Fridman (2:01:09.400)
But you can think of every post conflict agreement and every constitution is like a little bit of humans best effort to find an agreement that's going to protect the interests of a group that temporarily has an interest in violence in order to not be violent.
Lex Fridman (2:01:34.400)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:01:35.400)
And so there's a lot of ingenuity and it doesn't always work, right?
Chris Blattman (2:01:40.400)
Which actually from a perspective of the group, threatening violence or actually doing violence is one way to make progress for your group.
Chris Blattman (2:01:48.400)
We're talking about groups bargaining over stuff, right? We're talking about Russians versus Ukraine or Russians versus the West or maybe it's managing games versus one another.
Chris Blattman (2:01:57.400)
Like a lot of their bargaining power comes from their ability to burn the house down, right? And so if I want to have more bargaining power, I can just arm a lot and I can threaten violence.
Lex Fridman (2:02:08.400)
And so the strategically wise thing to do, I mean, it's terrible, it's a terrible equilibrium for us to be forced into, but the strategically wise thing to do is to build up lots of arms to threaten to use them, to credibly threaten to use them.
Lex Fridman (2:02:21.400)
But then trust or hope that like your enemy is going to see reason and avoid this really terrible, inefficient thing, which is fighting.
Lex Fridman (2:02:32.400)
But the thing that's going on the whole time is both of you arming and spending like 20% of GDP or whatever on arms, that's pretty inefficient.
Lex Fridman (2:02:40.400)
Yes.
Chris Blattman (2:02:41.400)
That's the tragedy. We don't have war and that's good, but we have really limited abilities to like incentivize our enemies not to arm and to keep ourselves from arming.
Chris Blattman (2:02:52.400)
We'd love to agree to just like both disarm, but we can't. And so the mess is that we have to arm and then we have to threaten all the time.
Lex Fridman (2:03:01.400)
Yeah, so the threat of violence is costly nevertheless. You've actually pulled up that now disappeared a paper that said the big title called Civil War and your name is on it. What's that about?
Chris Blattman (2:03:15.400)
Well, that was, I mean, when I was finishing graduate school and this was a paper with my advisor at Ted Miguel at Berkeley.
Lex Fridman (2:03:22.400)
Most nations, the paper opens, have experienced an internal armed conflict since 1960. Yet while they were, you still got school on this or no?
Lex Fridman (2:03:32.400)
Maybe last year or just graduated, I think.
Chris Blattman (2:03:35.400)
I wish I was in a discipline that wrote papers like this. This is pretty badass.
Lex Fridman (2:03:40.400)
How is Civil War central to many nations development? It has stood at the periphery of economic research and teaching, so on and so forth. And this is looking at Civil War broadly throughout history or is it just particular civil wars?
Chris Blattman (2:03:55.400)
We were mostly looking at like the late 20th century. I mean, I was trained as a what's called development economist, which is somebody who studies why some places are poor and why some countries are rich.
Lex Fridman (2:04:06.400)
And I, like a number of people around that time, stumbled into violence. I mean, people have been studying the wealth and poverty of nations basically since the invention of economics, but there was a big blind spot for violence.
Chris Blattman (2:04:23.400)
Now there isn't any more. It's like a flourishing area of study in economics, but at the time it wasn't. And so there were people like me and Ted who were sort of part political scientists, because political scientists obviously had been studying this for a long time,
Chris Blattman (2:04:38.400)
who started bringing economic tools and expertise and partnerships with political scientists and adding to it.
Lex Fridman (2:04:44.400)
And so we wrote this. So after like people have been doing this for five or 10 years in our field, we wrote like a review article telling economists like what was going on. And so this was like a summary for economists.
Lex Fridman (2:04:55.400)
So the book in some ways is a lot in the same spirit of this article. This article, I mean, it's designed to be not written as like a boring laundry list of studies, which is what, that's the purpose this article was for.
Lex Fridman (2:05:07.400)
It was for graduate students and professors who wanted to think about what to work on and what we knew. This book is like now trying to like not just say what economists are doing, but sort of say what economists, political scientists, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, like how do we bring some sense to this big project?
Lex Fridman (2:05:24.400)
And policymakers, like what do we know? And what do we know about building peace? Because if you don't know what the reason for wars are, you're probably not going to design the right cure.
Lex Fridman (2:05:37.400)
And so anyway, so that was the, but I started off studying civil wars because I stumbled into this place in Northern Uganda basically by accident. It was no intention of working in civil wars. I'd never thought about it. And then basically I followed a woman there.
Chris Blattman (2:05:57.400)
Oh, we'll talk about that. And for people who are just watching, we have an amazing team of folks helping out, pulling pictures and articles and so on, mostly so that I can pull up pictures on Instagram of animals fighting, which is what I do on my own time.
Lex Fridman (2:06:13.400)
And then we could discuss, analyze, maybe with George St. Pierre. That's what all he sends me for people who are curious.
Lex Fridman (2:06:19.400)
But let me ask you, one of the most difficult things going on in the world today, Israel, Palestine. Will we ever see peace in this part of the world? And sort of your book title is The Roots of War and the Paths for Peace, or the subtitle, Why We Fight. What's the path for peace? Will we ever see peace?
Chris Blattman (2:06:42.400)
Yeah. If we think about this conflict in the sense of like this dispute, this sort of contest, this contest that's been going on between Israelis and Palestinians, it's been going on for a century. And there are really just 10 or 15 years of pretty serious violence in that span of time.
Chris Blattman (2:07:05.400)
Most of it from 2000 to 2009 and stretching up to like 2014. There are like sporadic incidents, which are really terrible. I'm not trying to diminish the human cost of these, by the way. I'm just trying to point out that whatever's happening, as unpleasant and challenging and difficult as it is, is actually not war.
Lex Fridman (2:07:21.400)
And so it is at peace. There's sort of an uneasy stalemate. The Israelis and Palestinians are actually pretty good at just sort of keeping this at a relatively low scale of violence.
Lex Fridman (2:07:28.400)
There's a whole bunch of like low scale sporadic violence that can be repression of civilians, it can be terror bombings and terror actions, it can be counter terror violence, it can be mass arrests, it can be repression, it can be denying people the vote, it can be rattling sabers, all these things that are happening, right?
Lex Fridman (2:07:51.400)
And it can be sporadic three week wars or sporadic, you know, very brief episodes of intense violence before everybody sees sense and then settles down to this uneasy. We're right not to think of that as like a peace and there's certainly no stable agreement, right?
Lex Fridman (2:08:10.400)
So a stable agreement and amity and any ability to move on from this extreme hostility, we're not there yet and that's maybe very far away. But this is a good example of two rivals who most of the time have avoided really intense violence.
Lex Fridman (2:08:29.400)
So you talked about this, like most of the time, rivals just like avoiding violence and hating each other in peace. So is this what peace, to answer my question, is this what peace looks like?
Chris Blattman (2:08:46.400)
Not always, but I mean, it's kind of my worry. To go back to like the Russia Ukraine example, like I kind of, it's really hard, it's gonna be really hard to find an agreement that both sides can feel they can honor, that they can be explicit about, that they'll hold to, that will enable them to move on.
Chris Blattman (2:09:05.400)
Yeah, feels like a first step in a long journey towards a greatness for both nations and a peaceful time, flourishing, that kind of thing.
Chris Blattman (2:09:15.400)
I mean, you can think of like what's going on in Israel, Palestine, there's a stalemate. Both of them are exhausted from the violence that has occurred. Neither one of them is quite willing to, for various reasons, to create this sort of stable agreement.
Chris Blattman (2:09:31.400)
There's a lot of really difficult issues to resolve. And maybe the sad thing, maybe we'll end up in the same situation with Russia, Ukraine. This is where, you know, if they stop fighting one another, but Russia holds the east of the country and Crimea and nobody really acknowledges their right to that,
Chris Blattman (2:09:50.400)
that might, within there's just gonna be a lot of tension and skirmishing and violence, but that never really progresses to war for 30 years. That would be a sad, but maybe possible outcome.
Lex Fridman (2:10:03.400)
So that's kind of where Israel, Palestine looks to me. And so someone, if we're gonna talk about why we fight, then the question we have to ask is like why, you know, like the Second Intifada, like that was the most violent episode.
Chris Blattman (2:10:15.400)
Like why did that happen and why did that last several years? That would be like, we could analyze that and we could say, what was it about these periods of violence that led there to be prolonged intense violence? Because that was in nobody's interest. That didn't need to happen.
Lex Fridman (2:10:29.400)
And partly I don't talk about that in the book. I wanted to avoid really contemporary conflicts for two reasons. One is I, things could change really quickly. I didn't want the book to be dated. I wanted this to be a book that had like longevity and that would be relevant still in 10 years or 20 years maybe before someone writes a better one.
Lex Fridman (2:10:49.400)
Or before the human civilization ends.
Chris Blattman (2:10:52.400)
Exactly. And circumstances can change really quickly. So I wanted it to be enduring and meant partly just avoiding changing things and changing these and avoiding these controversial ones. But I, of course I think about them. And so like a lot of my time, I decided actually last year to teach a class where I'd take all these contemporary conflicts I wasn't working on the book and where I wasn't really an expert, whether it's India, Pakistan, China, Taiwan, Israel, Palestine, Mexican cartel state drug wars and a few others.
Lex Fridman (2:11:21.400)
And then teach a class on them with students and we'd work through it. We'd read the book and then we'd say, all right, none of us are experts. How do we make sense of these places? And we focused in the Israel Palestine case of mostly trying to understand why it got so violent and spend a little bit of time on what the prospects are for something that's more enduring.
Chris Blattman (2:11:40.400)
It's hard to know that stuff now. I mean, it's easier to do the full analysis when looking back when it's over.
Chris Blattman (2:11:47.400)
Well, Israel is in like a tough place. They have this attachment to being part of the West. They have this attachment to liberal ideals. They have an attachment to democracy and they have an attachment to a Jewish state. And those things are not so easily compatible.
Chris Blattman (2:12:03.400)
Because to recognize the rights of non Jewish citizens, right, or to have a one state solution to the current conflict undermines the long term ability to have a Jewish state.
Lex Fridman (2:12:21.400)
And to do anything else and to deny that denies their liberal democratic ideals. And that's a really hard contest of priorities to sort out.
Chris Blattman (2:12:42.400)
Yeah, it's complicated. Of course, everything you just said probably has multiple perspectives on it from other people that would phrase all the same things, but using different words.
Lex Fridman (2:12:51.400)
Well, I try to analyze these things in like a dispassionate way.
Lex Fridman (2:12:54.400)
But unfortunately, just having enough conversations, even your dispassionate description would be seen as one that's already picked aside.
Lex Fridman (2:13:05.400)
And I'll say this because there's holding these ideals. I'll give you another example. The United States also has ideals of freedom and other like human rights.
Lex Fridman (2:13:19.400)
So it has those ideals, and it also sees itself as a superpower and as a deployer of those, enforcer of those ideas in the world. And so the kind of actions from a perspective of a lot of people in that world, from children, they get to see drones, drop bombs on their house where their father is now, mother dead.
Lex Fridman (2:13:42.400)
They have a very different view of this.
Chris Blattman (2:13:45.400)
You're beginning to see why I didn't. I wanted to write about those things and think about those things, but I wanted this book to do something different.
Chris Blattman (2:13:54.400)
I didn't want it to fall on one of these polarizing... On a personal level, because I think I'm kind of a liberal democratic person at heart, my sympathies in that sense lie in many ways with the Palestinians, despite the way I...
Chris Blattman (2:14:07.400)
I mean, just the fact that people are... They're not representative, and they got a very raw, real politic kind of deal. Most people in history have gotten this raw, real politic kind of deal in their past, right? Where somebody took something from you.
Lex Fridman (2:14:22.400)
It's a good summary of history, by the way.
Chris Blattman (2:14:24.400)
That's it. History is just full of raw deals.
Lex Fridman (2:14:27.400)
For regular people.
Chris Blattman (2:14:28.400)
Right. And both sides are, in a principled way, refusing to make the compromise. And that's not like a both sides are right kind of argument. I'm just sort of saying, it's a factual statement that neither one wants to compromise on certain principles.
Lex Fridman (2:14:47.400)
And they both can construct and in some ways have very reasonable... I don't want to have self justifications for those principles, and that's why I'm not very hopeful, is I don't see a way for them to resolve those things.
Chris Blattman (2:15:04.400)
Speaking of compromise and war, let me ask you about one last one, which may be in the future.
Lex Fridman (2:15:10.400)
China and the United States.
Chris Blattman (2:15:12.400)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:15:13.400)
How do we avoid an all out hot war with this other superpower in the next decade, 50 years, 100 years? Because sometimes when it's quiet at night, I can hear in the long distance the drums of war beating.
Chris Blattman (2:15:31.400)
Yeah.
Chris Blattman (2:15:32.400)
In the second part of the book, I talk about what I think have been these persistent paths to peace, and one of them is increasing interdependence and interrelationships, and another one is more checks and balances on power.
Chris Blattman (2:15:44.400)
I think there's more, but those are two that are really fundamental here because I think those two things reduce the incentives for war in two ways.
Lex Fridman (2:15:51.400)
One is, remember when we were talking about this really simple strategic game where whether I'm Russia or Ukraine or whatever, any two rivals, I want more of the pie than you get, and the costs of war are deterrents, but only the costs of war that I feel, right?
Chris Blattman (2:16:11.400)
I don't care.
Lex Fridman (2:16:12.400)
I do not care about the costs of war to your side, my rival side.
Chris Blattman (2:16:15.400)
I'm not even thinking of that.
Lex Fridman (2:16:16.400)
That's just worth zero to me.
Chris Blattman (2:16:18.400)
I just don't care in that simple game.
Lex Fridman (2:16:20.400)
Now, in reality, many groups do care about the well being of the other group, at least a little bit, right?
Chris Blattman (2:16:27.400)
In some sense, to the degree we, first of all, if our interests are intertwined, like our economies are intertwined, that's not a surefire way for peace, and we shouldn't get complacent because we have a globally integrated world, but that's going to be a disincentive.
Lex Fridman (2:16:44.400)
And if we're socially entwined because we have great social relationships and linkages and family or we're intermarriage or whatever, all these things will help.
Lex Fridman (2:16:53.400)
And then if we're ideologically intertwined, maybe we share notions of liberty or maybe we just share a common notion of humanity.
Chris Blattman (2:17:00.400)
So, I think the fact that we're more integrated than we've ever been on all three fronts in the world but with China is providing some insulation, which is good.
Chris Blattman (2:17:10.400)
So, I would be more worried if we started to shed some of that insulation, which I think has been happening a little bit.
Chris Blattman (2:17:17.400)
U.S. economic nationalism, whatever could be the fallout of these sanctions or a closer Chinese alliance with Russia, all those things could happen.
Chris Blattman (2:17:28.400)
Those would make me more worried because I think we've got a lot of cushion that comes from all of this economic, social, cultural interdependence.
Chris Blattman (2:17:36.400)
The social one with the Internet is a big one. So, basically, make friends with the people from different nations, fall in love.
Chris Blattman (2:17:45.400)
You don't have to fall in love. You can just have lots of sex with people from different nations, but also fall in love.
Chris Blattman (2:17:51.400)
The thing that also should comfort me about China is that China is not as centralized or as personalized a regime as Russia, for example.
Lex Fridman (2:18:00.400)
And neither one of them is as centralized or personalized as some tinpot, purely personalized dictatorship like you get in some countries.
Chris Blattman (2:18:08.400)
The fact that China, the power is much more widely shared is a big insulation, I think, against this war, well, future war.
Chris Blattman (2:18:18.400)
The attempts by Xi Jinping to personalize power over time and to make China a more centralized and personal ruled place, which he's successfully moved in that direction, also worries me.
Chris Blattman (2:18:35.400)
So, anything that moves China in the other direction, not necessarily being democratic, but just like a wider and wider group of people holding power,
Chris Blattman (2:18:43.400)
like all of the business leaders and all the things that have been happening over the last few centuries have actually widened power.
Lex Fridman (2:18:49.400)
But anything that's moving in the other direction does worry me because it's going to accentuate all these five risks.
Chris Blattman (2:18:55.400)
I am worried about a little bit of the demonization. So, one of the things I see with China as a problem for Americans, maybe I'm projecting, maybe it's just my own problem,
Lex Fridman (2:19:08.400)
but there seems to be a bigger cultural gap than there is with other superpowers throughout history where it's almost like this own world happening in China, its own world in the United States,
Lex Fridman (2:19:19.400)
and there's this gap of total cultural understanding. We're not competing superpowers. They're almost like doing their own thing.
Chris Blattman (2:19:30.400)
There's that feeling, and I think that means there's a lack of understanding of culture of people, and we need to kind of bridge that understanding.
Chris Blattman (2:19:37.400)
I mean, you know, the language barrier, but also cultural understanding, making movies that use both and explore both cultures and all that kind of stuff.
Chris Blattman (2:19:48.400)
It's okay to compete, you know, like Rocky, where Rocky Balboa fought the Russian. In fact, historically inaccurate because obviously the Russians win.
Chris Blattman (2:20:00.400)
But, you know, we have to, I'm just kidding, as a Philly person, I was of course rooting for Rocky. But the thing is, those two superpowers are in the movies.
Lex Fridman (2:20:07.400)
China is like its own out there thing. We need more Rocky 7.
Chris Blattman (2:20:13.400)
I do think there's a certain inscrutability to the politics there and an insularity to the politics such that it's harder for Westerners, even if they know, even just to learn about it and understand what's going on.
Chris Blattman (2:20:24.400)
I think that's a problem and vice versa. So I think that's true. But at the same time, we could point to all sorts of things on the other side of the ledger, like the massive amounts of Chinese immigration into the United States and the massive number of people who are now.
Chris Blattman (2:20:40.400)
Like how many, so many more Americans, business people, politicians understand so much more about China now than they did 34 years ago because we're so intertwined.
Lex Fridman (2:20:50.400)
So I don't know where it balances out. I think it balances out on better understanding than ever before. But you're right, there was like a big gulf there that we haven't totally bridged.
Lex Fridman (2:21:01.400)
And like I said, lots of inter Chinese in the United States, sexual intercourse, no, and love and marriage and all that kind of social cohesion. So once again, returning to love, I read in your acknowledgement, and as you mentioned earlier, the acknowledgement reads,
Chris Blattman (2:21:22.400)
quote, I dedicate this book to a slow and all defunct internet cafe in Nairobi, because it set me on the path to meet, work with, and most importantly, marry Jenny Annan.
Chris Blattman (2:21:38.400)
Jenny Annan. There's a lot of beautiful letters in this beautiful name. This book have been impossible without her and that chance encounter. Tell me, Chris, how you found love and how that changed the direction of your life.
Chris Blattman (2:21:56.400)
I was in that internet cafe, I think it was 2004. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was a good development economist and I cared about growth, economic growth, and I thought industrialization is like the solution to poverty in Africa, which I think is still true.
Lex Fridman (2:22:16.400)
And therefore I need to go study firms and industry in Africa. And so I went and one of the most dynamic place for firms and industry at the time, still to some extent now was Kenya, and all these firms are on Nairobi.
Lex Fridman (2:22:29.400)
And so I went and I got a job with the World Bank, they were running a firm survey and I convinced them to let me help run the firm survey.
Lex Fridman (2:22:37.400)
And so now I'm in Nairobi and I'm wearing my suit and with the World Bank for the summer and my laptop gets stolen by two enterprising con artists, very charming. And so I find myself in an internet cafe.
Lex Fridman (2:22:52.400)
With no laptop.
Chris Blattman (2:22:54.400)
In a suit. Exactly. Kenya didn't get connected to the big internet cables until maybe 10 years later. And so it was just glacially slow. So it would take 10 minutes for every email to load.
Lex Fridman (2:23:08.400)
And so there's this whole customer norm if you just chat to the next person beside you all the time. It was true all over anywhere I'd worked on the continent.
Lex Fridman (2:23:18.400)
And so I strategically sat next to the attractive looking woman when I came in and it turned out she was a psychologist and a PhD student, but she was a humanitarian worker.
Lex Fridman (2:23:30.400)
And she'd been working in South Sudan and Northern Uganda and this kids affected by this war. All these kids who were being conscripted were coming back because they're all running away after a day or 10 years and needed help or to get back into school.
Lex Fridman (2:23:45.400)
So she was working on things like that. And I think she talked to me in spite of the fact that I was wearing a suit, maybe because I knew a little bit about the war, which most people didn't. Most people were totally ignorant.
Lex Fridman (2:23:55.400)
And then we had a fling for that week. And then we didn't really, actually then we met up a little short while later. And then it was kind of, then we kind of drifted apart.
Chris Blattman (2:24:05.400)
I was living in Indiana and spending a lot of time in Uganda. And then one day I was chatting with someone I knew who worked on this, a young professor who was a friend of mine.
Lex Fridman (2:24:17.400)
And I said, oh, you know, you work on similar issues, you should meet this woman. And I talked to her because you guys would have like, you know, professional research interests overlap.
Chris Blattman (2:24:26.400)
There's so few sort of people looking at armed groups in African Civil Wars, at least at the time. And he said, wow, that's a fascinating research question.
Lex Fridman (2:24:35.400)
And I walked into the building and I thought, that is a fascinating research question. And I phoned Jeanie and I said, remember me and, you know, tell me more. I was just talking to someone about this. Tell me more.
Lex Fridman (2:24:47.400)
And like, I started asking her more questions about it. We ended up talking for two or three hours. And over the course of those three hours, we hatched a very ambitious, kind of crazy, like, plan.
Chris Blattman (2:25:02.400)
We were going to like find the names and all the kids who were born like 20 or 30 years ago in the region, and we were going to track a thousand of them down. We were going to randomly sample them and then we were going to find them today and we were going to track them.
Lex Fridman (2:25:17.400)
And then we were going to use like some variation and exposure to violence and where the rebel group was to actually like show what happens to people when they're exposed to violence and conscription.
Chris Blattman (2:25:25.400)
We were going to like tell, you know, psychologically, economically, we're going to like answer questions and that, which would help you design better programs. Right. And so we hatched this plan, which is totally cockamamie.
Chris Blattman (2:25:35.400)
It's so cockamamie that when I pulled my previous dissertation proposal from my committee, like the next week and gave them a new one, they unanimously met without me to decide that this was totally bonkers and to advise me not to go.
Lex Fridman (2:25:53.400)
And they coordinated to read my old proposal so that when I showed up for my defense, they said, you're actually think you're defending, but we were actually, we want you to only talk about this other thing that you were going to do because this is like, you should not go.
Chris Blattman (2:26:03.400)
Oh, wow. I mean, it is incredibly ambitious. Super interesting though.
Chris Blattman (2:26:08.400)
It actually worked exactly according to plans. The first and last time in my entire career.
Chris Blattman (2:26:12.400)
You actually pulled off an ambition, like a gigantically crazy ambition.
Chris Blattman (2:26:16.400)
That's my work. That's my shtick. Like my day to day research job is not writing books about why we fight. My thing is like, I go, I collect data on things that nobody else thought you could collect data on.
Lex Fridman (2:26:26.400)
And so I always do pull it off, but it never turns out like I thought it was going to. Like it's always, there's so many twists and turns and always goes sideways in an interesting way.
Lex Fridman (2:26:36.400)
It works, but it's all, but this one actually we pulled off in spite of ourselves and as planned. And, and so Ted Miguel, who I wrote that paper with was actually the one person of my advisors who was like, well, you know what?
Chris Blattman (2:26:49.400)
He's, he was sympathetic to this. He was like, eh, why don't you just go for a couple months and like check it out and then come back and work on the other thing.
Lex Fridman (2:26:56.400)
And that's, and so I followed Jeannie there and went there and then, but, and, and I don't know, what's this? I always remember, you know, this movie Speed, the Keanu Reeves and, and Sandra, whatever these people are.
Lex Fridman (2:27:09.400)
And they have this relationship in these intense circumstances and they like, well, and I think at the end of the movie, they are sort of like, this will never work because these relationships in intense circumstances never matter, which is what we assumed.
Lex Fridman (2:27:20.400)
And that turned out not to be true. So we've been married 15 years and we have two kids and yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:27:26.400)
And that's when you fell in love with psychology and learn to appreciate the power of psychology.
Chris Blattman (2:27:30.400)
Exactly. So that's the psychology in the book as well, because I, and so we ended up, we, for most of our work for the first five or 10 years was together actually.
Chris Blattman (2:27:38.400)
What's the hardest piece of data that you've been chasing that you've chased in your life? Like, what are some interesting things? Cause you mentioned like one of the things you, you kind of want to go somewhere in the world and find evidence and data for things that people just haven't really looked to get, gain an understanding of human nature, maybe from an economics perspective.
Lex Fridman (2:28:00.400)
What's what, what, what kind of stuff either in your past or in your future you've been thinking about?
Chris Blattman (2:28:06.400)
Well, I mean the hardest, there's hard and two cents. The hardest emotionally was interviewing all those kids in Northern Uganda. That was just like a gut punch every day.
Chris Blattman (2:28:16.400)
Um, and just hearing the stories like that was the hardest, but it wasn't hard because it was, you could, the kids were everywhere and everybody would talk to you about it and they could talk about it.
Chris Blattman (2:28:26.400)
No one had gone and interviewed kids that had gone through war in the middle of an active war zone. Nobody was going to displacement. All the things we did, no one had done that before. So now lots of people do it.
Lex Fridman (2:28:37.400)
Could you actually speak to their, their stories? What's like the shape of their suffering? What, what were common themes? What, how did that, those stories change you?
Chris Blattman (2:28:52.400)
I remember I said you could like your dispassion itself and your passion itself. I think I had to learn to create the dispassion itself. I mean, we all have that capacity when we analyze something that's far away and happens to people different than us, but you have to.
Chris Blattman (2:29:06.400)
I think I discovered and developed an ability to like put those aside in order to be able to study this. So, um, you get maybe harder in a way that you have to be guard against. So you have to try to remember to put your human head on.
Chris Blattman (2:29:23.400)
It's really horrible. Like if I want to conscript you and I don't want you to run away, then I want to make you think you can never go back to your village.
Lex Fridman (2:29:32.400)
And the best way for me to do that is for, to make you, force you to do something really, really, really, really horrible that you could, you almost can credibly believe you can never really go back.
Lex Fridman (2:29:43.400)
And it might be like killing a loved one. And so, and just having, hearing people tell you that story in all of the different shapes and forms.
Chris Blattman (2:29:53.400)
To a point, what was horrible about it is they did this so routinely that you'd be sitting there in an interview with somebody and they'd be telling you the story and it's like the most horrible thing that could happen to you or anyone else.
Chris Blattman (2:30:05.400)
And, but there's some voice in the back of your mind saying, okay, we really need to get to the other thing. You know, we know that I know how this goes. Like I've heard, you know, there's this thing like, okay, okay, I'm not learning anything new here.
Chris Blattman (2:30:18.400)
Like there's some part, you know, deep evil, terrible part of you that's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, but let's get onto the other thing, but I know I have to go through this.
Lex Fridman (2:30:26.400)
But every day you have to go through that to get to the, cause you're trying to actually understand how to help people. You're trying to understand how that trauma has manifested, how they either, some people get stronger as a result of that.
Chris Blattman (2:30:35.400)
Some people get weaker. And if you want to know how to help people, then you need to get to that. I wasn't trying to get to something for my selfish purposes.
Chris Blattman (2:30:42.400)
I was trying to figure out, okay, we need to know what your symptoms are now.
Chris Blattman (2:30:45.400)
That's such a dark thing about us. So if you're surrounded by trauma, God, that voice in the back of your head that you just go, yeah, I know exactly how this conversation goes. Let's skip ahead to the solutions to the next.
Chris Blattman (2:31:02.400)
Yeah. So that was, that was, yeah. So that was because you then have to deal with yourself. So it's very helpful if you like come home every night to someone who's a gone through the same thing and B is a professional and very, very, very, very good counseling psychologist.
Chris Blattman (2:31:17.400)
The hardest thing, I mean, the organized crime stuff has been the hardest. Just figuring out how to get that information took us years of just trial and error, mostly error of like just how to get people to talk to us or how to collect data in a way that's safe for me and safe for my team and safe for people to answer a survey.
Chris Blattman (2:31:38.400)
Like how do you get, how do you get the information on what gangs are doing in the community or how it's hurting or helping people? Like you've got to run surveys and you've got to talk to gang members, all these things that nobody knows how to do that.
Lex Fridman (2:31:53.400)
And so we had to sort of really slowly, not nobody, there's a few other things. There's other academics like me who are doing this, but it's a pretty small group that's trying to like collect systematic data.
Lex Fridman (2:32:04.400)
And then there's a slightly bigger and much more experienced group that's been talking to different armed groups. But every time you go to a new city and there weren't that many people working on this in Medellin, there were a few, you have to like discover a new, like it's really unique to that city and place.
Lex Fridman (2:32:20.400)
So there's not, there's not like a website for each of the 17 mafia groups. There's no Facebook group. We have a, we've created like our own wiki. We have a private wiki where we document everything and it's a collaborative enterprise between lots of researchers and journalists and things.
Lex Fridman (2:32:35.400)
So they, they now have, they can't see, you can't go online and see this.
Chris Blattman (2:32:38.400)
That's individual research. It's not, I mean, they're hiding by design. Some of them have Facebook pages and things of this nature. So they, they do have public profiles a little bit, but not, not, not so explicitly. No. So they're clandestine.
Chris Blattman (2:32:51.400)
Here's an example. So one of the things that's really endemic in Medellin, it's true in a lot of cities, it's true in American prisons, is gangs govern everybody's everyday life.
Lex Fridman (2:32:59.400)
So if you have a, in an American prison, particularly Illinois or California, Texas is another big one, but also in a city in Medellin, if you have a problem, a debt to collect or dispute with a neighbor or something, you could go to the government and they do, and they can help you solve it.
Lex Fridman (2:33:17.400)
You go to the police or you can go to the gang. And so, and that's like a really everyday phenomenon. But then, then there's a question of like, how do you actually, how do you actually figure out how, what services they're offering?
Lex Fridman (2:33:28.400)
And how much they pay for them? And do you actually like those services? And how do they, how do you comparison shop between the police and the gang? And what would get you to go from the gang to the police? And then how's the gang strategically going to respond to that?
Lex Fridman (2:33:42.400)
And what was the impact of previous policies to like make state governing better? And how did the gangs react? And so that's, we had to sort of figure that out. And that, that was, so that was just hard in a different way.
Lex Fridman (2:33:54.400)
But I don't do the most, the mostly punishing stuff I couldn't do any longer. So that's much easier in that sense.
Lex Fridman (2:34:00.400)
By the way, on, you know, Jorge Ochoa, some of these folks are out of prison. Have you gotten a chance to talk to them?
Lex Fridman (2:34:25.400)
But also they were, they were there in a different era. The system was totally different. That's super interesting. Maybe one day we'll do that. Yeah, that was 30 years ago. And the system of, I mean, La Oficina, Pablo Escobar created La Oficina.
Chris Blattman (2:34:40.400)
He integrated what's, what all these 17 corazones and all these street gangs are the fragmented former remnants of his more unified empire, which he gave the name La Oficina. I mean, I think, you know, it's a little bit apocryphal, but the idea is that, you know, I think he said, every doctor has an office, so should we.
Chris Blattman (2:35:00.400)
I still can. I still love that there's parallels between these mafia groups and the United Nations Security Council. This is just wonderful. So, so, so deeply human.
Chris Blattman (2:35:12.400)
Let me ask you about yourself. So you've been thinking about war here in part dispassionately. Just analyze war and try to understand the path for peace. But you as a single individual that's going to die one day, maybe talking to the people that have gone through suffering.
Lex Fridman (2:35:34.400)
What do you think about your own mortality? Do you, how has your view of your own finiteness changed having thought about war?
Chris Blattman (2:35:44.400)
Maybe the reason I can do this work is because I don't think about it a lot.
Lex Fridman (2:35:48.400)
Your own mortality or even like mortality?
Chris Blattman (2:35:52.400)
Yeah, I mean, well, I have to think about death a lot, so.
Lex Fridman (2:35:56.400)
But there's a way to think about death, like numbers in a calculation when you're doing geopolitical negotiations, and then there's like a dying child or a dying mother.
Chris Blattman (2:36:08.400)
Yeah, I guess I know I'm in a place where there's risk. And so I think a lot about minimizing any risks such that I think about mortality enough that I just, because I'm kind of an anxious person. And so like, I'm kind of a worry ward, like in a way.
Lex Fridman (2:36:29.400)
And so I'm really obsessive about making sure anything that I do is low risk.
Lex Fridman (2:36:36.400)
So that gives you something to focus on. A number is the risk and you're trying to minimize it. And yet there's still the existential dread. Your risk minimization doesn't matter.
Lex Fridman (2:36:48.400)
Yeah, I've never been in a life threatening situation.
Chris Blattman (2:36:54.400)
That's somebody who, you know what you sound like? That's Alex Honnold that does the free climbing. He doesn't see that as like.
Chris Blattman (2:37:01.400)
That sounds exactly the same. Because you just said, I've never done anything as dangerous as those people riding a scooter.
Chris Blattman (2:37:09.400)
I've actually been a rock climber for like 25 years with a long break in between. But I'm the same way. You know, actually rock climbing is an extremely safe sport if you're very careful.
Lex Fridman (2:37:20.400)
But free climbing is the opposite of that. But I mean like, if you've got a rope that's attached to you that goes up is like attached to 18 trees and comes back down, you're fine.
Chris Blattman (2:37:32.400)
You know, and you wear a helmet. You're good. You're totally fine.
Lex Fridman (2:37:36.400)
Yeah, but this is super safe too.
Chris Blattman (2:37:38.400)
It's free climbing. No, no, no.
Lex Fridman (2:37:40.400)
We're watching free climbing, Alex Honnold.
Chris Blattman (2:37:42.400)
I mean, because you're only going to put your hands and feet on sturdy rock and then you know the path and. No, no, no.
Chris Blattman (2:37:50.400)
Totally. I have some friends and colleagues, I've known people who do some of these totally wacky extreme sports and have paid the price.
Lex Fridman (2:37:59.400)
So I think it's totally, totally different. I think.
Lex Fridman (2:38:05.400)
So even in that, by the way.
Chris Blattman (2:38:07.400)
I can't even watch those movies because those freak me out too much because it's just too risky. Like I can't. I don't even. Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:38:13.400)
So those things, I've never watched like free solo or anything. There's just too much.
Chris Blattman (2:38:18.400)
Still not as dangerous as riding a scooter in Austin.
Lex Fridman (2:38:20.400)
Yeah, totally.
Chris Blattman (2:38:21.400)
I'm not going to let that go.
Lex Fridman (2:38:23.400)
But even in that, it's just risk minimization in the work that you do versus the sort of philosophical existentialist view of your mortality. This thing just ends.
Lex Fridman (2:38:37.400)
Like what the hell is that about?
Chris Blattman (2:38:39.400)
Yeah. I have this amazing capacity not to think about it, which might just be a self defense mechanism.
Chris Blattman (2:38:44.400)
My father in law, Jeannie's father is an evangelical pastor, actually. He's now retired. And this we would talk about when we were getting married.
Chris Blattman (2:38:54.400)
They weren't terribly thrilled that she was marrying an agnostic or atheist or something.
Chris Blattman (2:39:00.400)
We love each other very much. It's fine now. But I only started discussing this and some of the, because that was one of his questions for me.
Chris Blattman (2:39:07.400)
Like, well, how can you possibly believe that there's nothing afterwards? Because that's just like too horrible to imagine.
Lex Fridman (2:39:14.400)
And we really never saw eye to eye on this. And my view was like, listen, I can't convince myself otherwise.
Chris Blattman (2:39:22.400)
Anything else seems completely implausible to me. And for some reason, I can't understand. I'm at peace with that.
Chris Blattman (2:39:28.400)
Like, it's never bothered me that one day it's over. And the fact that people have angst about that and that they would seek answers makes total sense to me.
Lex Fridman (2:39:39.400)
And I can't explain why that doesn't consume me or doesn't bother me.
Lex Fridman (2:39:46.400)
And yet you are at peace.
Chris Blattman (2:39:49.400)
Yep. Maybe if I was worried, but if I was more worried about it, maybe I wouldn't be able to do. I don't know. I don't know. But then again, I don't take the risk. I'm still like, I don't know. But I minimize all sorts of risks.
Chris Blattman (2:39:58.400)
I'm like, yeah, I minimize, you know, I try to optimize like groceries in the fridge, too.
Chris Blattman (2:40:07.400)
That's a very economist way to live, I would say. That's probably why you're good at it.
Chris Blattman (2:40:12.400)
That might be true. That might be there's some selection into economics of these cold calculators.
Lex Fridman (2:40:17.400)
The chicken or the egg, we'll never know. Do you have advice for young people that want to do as ambitious, as crazy, as amazing of work as you have done in life?
Lex Fridman (2:40:28.400)
So somebody who's in high school, in college, either career advice on what to choose, how to execute on it, or just life advice, how to meet some random stranger.
Lex Fridman (2:40:40.400)
Yeah, exactly.
Chris Blattman (2:40:41.400)
Or maybe a dating advice.
Chris Blattman (2:40:43.400)
That part's easy. You have to fly coach and go to the internet cafes. All the development workers that I know that fly business class, I'm like, you'll never meet somebody.
Chris Blattman (2:40:54.400)
I actually spent a lot of time writing advice on my blog, and I've got like pages and pages of advice.
Lex Fridman (2:40:59.400)
And one of the reasons is because I never got that. When I grew up, I went to a really good state school in Canada called Waterloo.
Chris Blattman (2:41:06.400)
I loved it, but people didn't go on the trajectory that I went on from there. And I had some good advisors there, but I never got the kind of advice I needed to pursue this career.
Lex Fridman (2:41:16.400)
So it's very concentrated in elite colleges, I think, sometimes, in elite high schools. So I tried to democratize that. That was one reason I started the blog.
Lex Fridman (2:41:26.400)
But a lot of that's really particular because every week I have students coming in my office wanting to know how to do international development work, and I just spend a lot of time giving them advice.
Lex Fridman (2:41:34.400)
And that's what a lot of the posts are about.
Lex Fridman (2:41:35.400)
Do they have very specific questions? Is it like country by country kind of specific questions?
Chris Blattman (2:41:40.400)
The thing that they're all trying to do that I think is the right – I don't have to give them a really basic piece of advice because they're already doing it.
Chris Blattman (2:41:46.400)
They're trying to find a vocation. They're really interested – and what I mean by that is it's like a career where they find meaning, where the work is almost like superfluous because they would do it for free.
Lex Fridman (2:41:59.400)
And they're passionate about it, and they really find meaning in the work.
Lex Fridman (2:42:02.400)
And then it becomes a little bit all consuming. So scientists do that in their own way. I think international development, humanitarian workers, people who are doctors and nurses.
Chris Blattman (2:42:11.400)
We all do our careers for other reasons, right? But they find meaning in their career.
Lex Fridman (2:42:17.400)
So I don't have to tell them whatever you do find meaning and try to make it a vocation, something that you would do for free, amongst all of these many, many, many options.
Chris Blattman (2:42:28.400)
That's what I would tell – but that's what I would tell high school students and young people in college.
Chris Blattman (2:42:35.400)
Sometimes it's hard to find a thing and hold onto it.
Chris Blattman (2:42:39.400)
Well, that's the other – it took me a long time. So I actually started off as an accountant. I was an accountant with Deloitte and Touche for a few years. So I did not –
Lex Fridman (2:42:47.400)
But that – did you wake up in the morning excited to be alive?
Chris Blattman (2:42:52.400)
I was miserable. I found it by accident, which is another different story, but I landed in this job and a degree where I was studying accounting, and I was miserable.
Chris Blattman (2:43:01.400)
I was totally miserable, and I hated it, and I was becoming a miserable person. And so I eventually just quit, and I did something new.
Lex Fridman (2:43:10.400)
But then I was working in the private sector, and I actually just needed trial and error.
Chris Blattman (2:43:15.400)
I actually had to try on three or four or five careers before I found this mixture of academia and activism and research and international development.
Lex Fridman (2:43:23.400)
And when did you know that this was love, when you found this kind of international development? This was the academic context, too?
Chris Blattman (2:43:32.400)
The key lesson was just trial and error, which we all have to engage in until it feels right.
Chris Blattman (2:43:36.400)
It's okay. All right. Step one is trial and error, but until it feels right, because it often feels right but not perfect.
Chris Blattman (2:43:43.400)
Yeah, if it's true, right enough. I mean, I was really intellectually engaged. I just loved learning about it. I wanted to read more.
Chris Blattman (2:43:51.400)
In some sense, I was doing – I was in account, but I was reading about world history and international development and poor countries in my spare time.
Lex Fridman (2:44:00.400)
And so it was like this hobby, and I was like, wait a second. I could actually do that. I could research this and even write the neck of those books, and that's kind of what I did 25 years later.
Chris Blattman (2:44:11.400)
That didn't occur to me right away. I didn't even know it was possible. This is the other thing people do.
Chris Blattman (2:44:15.400)
People do their nine to five job, and then they find meaning in everything else they do.
Chris Blattman (2:44:19.400)
They're volunteering, and they're family, and they're hobbies and things, and that was my social milieu. And that's a great path, too.
Chris Blattman (2:44:26.400)
Because not all of us can just have a vocation or we don't find it, I think. And then you just circumscribe what you do in your work, and then you go find –
Lex Fridman (2:44:33.400)
and that's not entirely true because everyone in my family does like their job and get a lot of fulfillment out of it, but I think it's not – that's a different path in some ways.
Lex Fridman (2:44:44.400)
So it's good to take the leap and keep trying stuff, even when you've found a little local minima.
Lex Fridman (2:44:50.400)
Yeah. The hardest part was it got easy after a while. It was quitting.
Lex Fridman (2:44:56.400)
But now I take this to a lot of – and one of the people – I think one of the reasons I discovered your podcast or maybe Tyler Cowen –
Lex Fridman (2:45:04.400)
Yeah, he's amazing.
Chris Blattman (2:45:05.400)
Tyler takes this approach to everything. He takes this approach to movie. He's like, walk into the movie theater after half an hour if you don't like the movie.
Chris Blattman (2:45:14.400)
You know what kind of person he probably is? I don't know, but now that you say this, he's probably somebody that goes to a restaurant.
Chris Blattman (2:45:21.400)
If the meals is not good, I could see him just walking away, like paying for it and just walking away.
Lex Fridman (2:45:26.400)
Yeah, and just go eat something better. That's exactly right.
Lex Fridman (2:45:29.400)
And I thought that was kind of crazy, and I'd never – I was the person – I would never just put a book down halfway, and I would never stop watching a movie.
Lex Fridman (2:45:38.400)
But then I convinced my wife – we lived in New York when we were single initially – sorry, not when we were single.
Chris Blattman (2:45:43.400)
When we were childless, and we lived in New York, there's all this culture and theater and stuff, and I just said, let's go to more plays, but let's just walk out after the first act if we don't like it.
Lex Fridman (2:45:54.400)
And she thought that was a bit crazy, and I was like, no, no, no, here's the logic. Here's what Tyler says.
Lex Fridman (2:45:58.400)
And then we started doing it, and it was so freeing and glorious. We'd just go – we'd take so many more chances on things, and we would – and if we didn't like it – and we were walking out of stuff all the time.
Lex Fridman (2:46:07.400)
And so I think I did that – realizing that that's how I – I just kept quitting my jobs and trying to find something else, like some risk.
Chris Blattman (2:46:17.400)
Because that's how wars start, without the commitment. You need the commitment. Otherwise, no.
Chris Blattman (2:46:26.400)
That's a different kind of commitment problem. That's a different commitment problem.
Chris Blattman (2:46:29.400)
Some of it – I'm sure there's a balance, because the same thing is happening with dating and marriage and all those kinds of things, and there's some value just sticking it out.
Chris Blattman (2:46:38.400)
Because some of the – maybe don't leave after the first act, because the good stuff might be coming later.
Chris Blattman (2:46:45.400)
Yeah, that's a good point.
Lex Fridman (2:46:46.400)
The balance.
Chris Blattman (2:46:47.400)
Yeah. Well, I don't know. So when I met Jeannie, she was very wary of a relationship with me, because as I explained to her, I hadn't had a relationship longer than two or three months in 11 years.
Lex Fridman (2:46:59.400)
And so she thought this person thought serious. And what I said to her – and she tells the story. This is how she tells the story.
Chris Blattman (2:47:04.400)
She says, I didn't believe him when he said that I just – after two or three months, you kind of have a good sense whether this is going somewhere, and I would just decide if it was over.
Lex Fridman (2:47:12.400)
And I walk away. So I took this approach to dating, like as soon as I thought it wasn't going to go somewhere. And then I decided with her that this was it, this was going to work.
Lex Fridman (2:47:20.400)
And then I like – and then never – and she didn't believe – now she believes me.
Lex Fridman (2:47:24.400)
You finally got to be right.
Chris Blattman (2:47:28.400)
Okay, so this is an incredible conversation. Your work is so fascinating, just in this big picture way, looking at human conflict and how we can achieve peace,
Chris Blattman (2:47:38.400)
especially in this time of the Ukraine war. I really, really, really appreciate that you calmly speak to me about some of these difficult ideas and explain them.
Lex Fridman (2:47:48.400)
And that you've sat down with me and have this amazing conversation. Thank you so much.
Lex Fridman (2:47:52.400)
It was an amazing conversation. Thank you.
Chris Blattman (2:47:54.400)
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Chris Blackman. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
Lex Fridman (2:48:00.400)
And now, let me leave you with some well known, simple words from Albert Einstein. I know not with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
Chris Blattman (2:48:14.400)
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Lex Fridman (30:04.800)
is not that it helps us make sense of the world.
Chris Blattman (30:08.400)
It projects a simple model of the world
Lex Fridman (30:11.200)
that brings us comfort in thinking we understand.
Lex Fridman (30:15.240)
And sometimes that simplification is actually getting
Lex Fridman (30:19.260)
at the core first principles on understanding of something.
Lex Fridman (30:23.440)
And sometimes it fools us into thinking we understand.
Lex Fridman (30:27.000)
So for example, I mean, mutually shared destruction
Chris Blattman (30:30.640)
is a very simple model and people argue all the time
Lex Fridman (30:33.720)
whether that's actually a good model or not,
Lex Fridman (30:35.840)
but there's empirical fact that we're still alive
Lex Fridman (30:38.720)
as a human civilization.
Lex Fridman (30:40.240)
And also in the game theoretic sense,
Lex Fridman (30:43.080)
do we model individual leaders and their relationships?
Chris Blattman (30:47.160)
Do we, the staff, the generals,
Lex Fridman (30:51.180)
or do we also have to model the culture, the people,
Chris Blattman (30:57.200)
the suffering of the people, the economic frustration
Lex Fridman (31:00.420)
or the anger or the distrust?
Lex Fridman (31:02.560)
Do you have to model all those things?
Lex Fridman (31:04.140)
Do they come into play?
Lex Fridman (31:06.080)
And sometimes, I mean, again, we could be romanticizing
Lex Fridman (31:09.800)
those things from a historical perspective,
Lex Fridman (31:12.040)
but when you look at history
Lex Fridman (31:13.240)
and you look at the way wars start,
Chris Blattman (31:15.760)
it sometimes feels like a little bit of a misunderstanding
Lex Fridman (31:20.200)
escalates, escalates, escalates,
Lex Fridman (31:23.960)
and just builds on top of itself
Lex Fridman (31:28.240)
and all of a sudden it's an all out war.
Chris Blattman (31:30.320)
It's the escalation with nobody hitting the brakes.
Lex Fridman (31:35.200)
So, I mean, you're absolutely right in the sense
Chris Blattman (31:38.960)
that it's totally possible to oversimplify these things
Lex Fridman (31:42.040)
and take the game theory too seriously.
Lex Fridman (31:44.160)
And some, and people who study those things
Lex Fridman (31:49.240)
and write those models and people like me who use them
Chris Blattman (31:52.320)
can sometimes make that mistake.
Lex Fridman (31:54.200)
I think that's not the mistake
Chris Blattman (31:55.440)
that most people make most often.
Lex Fridman (31:58.360)
And what's actually true is I think most people,
Chris Blattman (32:00.480)
we're actually really quick,
Lex Fridman (32:01.680)
whether it's the US invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq,
Chris Blattman (32:05.040)
we're really quick to blame that
Lex Fridman (32:07.040)
on the humanness and the culture.
Lex Fridman (32:10.260)
So we're really quick to say,
Lex Fridman (32:11.280)
oh, this was George W. Bush's
Chris Blattman (32:14.840)
either desire for revenge and vengeance
Lex Fridman (32:17.160)
or some private agenda or blood for oil.
Lex Fridman (32:20.760)
So we're really quick to blame it on these things.
Lex Fridman (32:23.560)
And then we're really,
Chris Blattman (32:25.560)
we tend to overlook the strategic incentives to attack,
Lex Fridman (32:30.240)
which I think were probably dominant.
Chris Blattman (32:31.600)
I think those things might've been true to a degree,
Lex Fridman (32:33.840)
but I don't think they were enough to ever
Chris Blattman (32:36.400)
bring those wars about.
Lex Fridman (32:37.520)
Just like, I think people are very quick to sort of,
Chris Blattman (32:40.240)
in this current invasion to sort of talk about
Lex Fridman (32:44.240)
Putin's grand visions of being the next Catherine the Great
Chris Blattman (32:50.280)
or nationalist ideals and the mistakes
Lex Fridman (32:55.280)
and the miscalculations are really quick to sort of say,
Chris Blattman (32:57.440)
oh, that must be, and then kind of pause or not pause,
Lex Fridman (33:00.000)
but maybe even stop there
Lex Fridman (33:01.440)
and not see some of the strategic incentives.
Lex Fridman (33:05.080)
And so, I guess we have to do both,
Lex Fridman (33:08.960)
but the strategic, I guess I would say like the war
Lex Fridman (33:12.120)
is just such a big problem.
Chris Blattman (33:13.680)
It's just so costly that the strategic incentives
Lex Fridman (33:18.600)
and the things that game theory has given us
Chris Blattman (33:21.200)
are like really important in understanding
Lex Fridman (33:23.720)
why there was so little room for negotiation and a bargain
Chris Blattman (33:27.480)
that things like a leader's mistakes start to matter
Lex Fridman (33:31.280)
or a leader's nationalist ideals or delusions
Chris Blattman (33:35.360)
or vengeance actually matters.
Lex Fridman (33:37.120)
Cause those do matter, but they only matter
Chris Blattman (33:39.640)
when the capacity to find a deal is so narrow
Lex Fridman (33:43.880)
because of the circumstances.
Lex Fridman (33:45.160)
And so let's not, it's sort of like saying
Lex Fridman (33:48.640)
like an elderly person who dies of pneumonia, right?
Chris Blattman (33:52.880)
Pneumonia killed them, obviously,
Lex Fridman (33:55.600)
but that's not the reason pneumonia was able to kill them.
Chris Blattman (33:58.760)
All of the fundamentals and the circumstances
Lex Fridman (34:01.280)
were like made them very fragile.
Lex Fridman (34:02.840)
And that's how I think all the strategic forces
Lex Fridman (34:05.340)
make that situation fragile.
Lex Fridman (34:07.980)
And then the miscalculations
Lex Fridman (34:09.880)
and all of these things you just said,
Chris Blattman (34:11.560)
which are so important are kind of like the pneumonia.
Lex Fridman (34:13.760)
And let's sort of, let's pay attention to both.
Lex Fridman (34:16.400)
And you're saying that people don't disproportionately
Lex Fridman (34:19.000)
pay attention to the leaders.
Chris Blattman (34:20.440)
It's hard.
Lex Fridman (34:21.280)
I mean, it wasn't,
Chris Blattman (34:22.640)
it took me a long time to learn to recognize them.
Lex Fridman (34:26.760)
And it takes many people, you know,
Chris Blattman (34:28.640)
it took and it took generations of social scientists
Lex Fridman (34:33.040)
years and years to figure some of this out
Lex Fridman (34:35.760)
and to sort of help people understand it
Lex Fridman (34:37.600)
and clarify concepts.
Lex Fridman (34:38.960)
So it's not, it's just not that easy.
Lex Fridman (34:41.240)
No, it's not hard.
Chris Blattman (34:42.080)
I think it's possible to,
Lex Fridman (34:43.320)
just as I was taught a lot of the stuff I write in the book
Chris Blattman (34:45.600)
in graduate school or from reading
Lex Fridman (34:47.280)
and it's possible to communicate and learn this stuff,
Lex Fridman (34:49.800)
but it's still really hard.
Lex Fridman (34:50.960)
And so that's kind of what I was trying to do
Chris Blattman (34:55.160)
is like close that gap and just make it,
Lex Fridman (34:57.480)
help people recognize these things in the wild.
Chris Blattman (35:02.040)
Before we zoom back out,
Lex Fridman (35:03.440)
let me at a high level first ask,
Lex Fridman (35:06.520)
what are your thoughts on the ongoing war in Ukraine?
Lex Fridman (35:09.480)
How do you analyze it within your framework about war?
Chris Blattman (35:12.600)
A Russian colleague of mine,
Lex Fridman (35:14.040)
Konstantin Sonin tells this story
Chris Blattman (35:15.560)
about a visiting Ukrainian professor
Lex Fridman (35:18.240)
who's at the university.
Lex Fridman (35:19.080)
And one night he's walking down the street
Lex Fridman (35:21.280)
and he's talking on two cell phones at once for some reason
Lex Fridman (35:25.040)
and a mugger stops him and demands the phones.
Lex Fridman (35:29.280)
And it's sort of like dead pan way, Konstantin says,
Lex Fridman (35:32.200)
and because he was Ukrainian, he decided to fight.
Lex Fridman (35:35.840)
And I think that's a little bit like what happened.
Chris Blattman (35:39.800)
Most of us in that situation would hand over cell phones.
Lex Fridman (35:43.200)
And so in this situation, Putin's like the mugger
Lex Fridman (35:47.200)
and the Ukrainian people are being asked
Lex Fridman (35:49.680)
to hand over this thing and they're saying,
Chris Blattman (35:51.880)
no, we're not gonna hand this over.
Lex Fridman (35:54.120)
And the fact is most people do.
Chris Blattman (35:59.320)
Most people faced with a superpower or a tyrant
Lex Fridman (36:02.720)
or an autocrat or a murderous warlord who says,
Chris Blattman (36:07.560)
hand this over, they hand it over.
Lex Fridman (36:09.360)
And that's why there are so many unequal
Chris Blattman (36:14.360)
imperial relationships in the world.
Lex Fridman (36:16.120)
That's what empire is.
Chris Blattman (36:17.040)
Empire is success of people saying,
Lex Fridman (36:19.840)
fine, we'll give up our some degree of freedom
Chris Blattman (36:22.480)
or sovereignty because you're too powerful.
Lex Fridman (36:24.360)
And the Ukrainian said, no way, this is just too precious.
Lex Fridman (36:27.880)
And so I said, one of those buckets were that
Lex Fridman (36:30.480)
there's a set of values.
Chris Blattman (36:32.240)
There's sometimes there's something that we value
Lex Fridman (36:35.240)
that is so valuable to us and important.
Chris Blattman (36:37.280)
Sometimes it's terrible, sometimes it's the extermination
Lex Fridman (36:40.360)
of another people, but sometimes it's something noble
Chris Blattman (36:43.620)
like liberty or refusal to part with sovereignty.
Lex Fridman (36:46.840)
And in those circumstances, people will decide
Chris Blattman (36:49.960)
I will endure the costs.
Lex Fridman (36:52.280)
They probably, I mean, I think they knew
Lex Fridman (36:55.400)
what they were probably risking.
Lex Fridman (36:58.000)
And so to me, that's not to blame the Ukrainians
Chris Blattman (37:00.740)
any more than I would blame Americans
Lex Fridman (37:03.240)
for the American Revolution.
Chris Blattman (37:04.240)
It's actually a very similar story.
Lex Fridman (37:05.920)
You had a tyrannical, militarily superior,
Chris Blattman (37:11.840)
pretty non democratic entity come and say,
Lex Fridman (37:15.560)
you're gonna have partial sovereignty.
Lex Fridman (37:18.400)
And Americans for ideological reasons said, no way.
Lex Fridman (37:23.120)
And that people like Bernard Bailyn and other historians,
Chris Blattman (37:25.500)
that's like the dominant story of the American Revolution.
Lex Fridman (37:27.520)
It was the ideological origins,
Chris Blattman (37:29.160)
this attachment, this idea of liberty.
Lex Fridman (37:30.600)
And so I start, now there's lots of other reasons
Chris Blattman (37:33.160)
I think why this happened, but I think for me,
Lex Fridman (37:36.640)
it starts with Ukrainians failing to make that sensible
Chris Blattman (37:40.960)
quote unquote rational deal that says we should relinquish
Lex Fridman (37:46.080)
some of our sovereignty because Russia
Chris Blattman (37:47.720)
is more powerful than we are.
Lex Fridman (37:50.880)
So there's a very clinical look at the war.
Chris Blattman (37:56.840)
Meaning there is a man and a country,
Lex Fridman (38:01.000)
Vladimir Putin, that makes a claim on a land,
Chris Blattman (38:06.000)
builds up troops and invades.
Lex Fridman (38:10.080)
The way to avoid suffering there and the way to avoid death
Lex Fridman (38:17.040)
and a way to avoid war is to back down
Lex Fridman (38:23.080)
and basically let, there's a list of interests he provides
Lex Fridman (38:28.320)
and you go along with that.
Lex Fridman (38:30.120)
So that's when the goal is to avoid war.
Chris Blattman (38:37.720)
Let's do some other calculus.
Lex Fridman (38:41.360)
Let's think about Britain.
Lex Fridman (38:43.140)
So France fought Hitler but did not fight very hard.
Lex Fridman (38:48.640)
Portugal, there's a lot of stories of countries like this.
Lex Fridman (38:52.280)
And there is Winston motherfucking Churchill.
Lex Fridman (38:57.280)
He's one of the rare humans in history
Chris Blattman (39:00.760)
who had that we shall fight on the beaches.
Lex Fridman (39:03.920)
It made no sense.
Chris Blattman (39:05.840)
Hitler did not say he's going to destroy Britain.
Lex Fridman (39:08.560)
He seemed to show respect for Britain.
Chris Blattman (39:10.800)
He wanted to keep the British Empire.
Lex Fridman (39:14.880)
It made total sense.
Chris Blattman (39:16.560)
It was obvious that Britain was going to lose
Lex Fridman (39:18.560)
if Hitler goes all in on Britain
Chris Blattman (39:20.160)
as it seemed like he was going to.
Lex Fridman (39:22.080)
And yet Winston Churchill said a big F you.
Chris Blattman (39:26.100)
Yeah, similar thing, Zelensky and the Ukrainian people
Lex Fridman (39:31.140)
said F you in that same kind of way.
Lex Fridman (39:33.660)
So I think we're saying the same things.
Lex Fridman (39:36.000)
I'm being more clinical about it.
Chris Blattman (39:38.640)
Well, I'm trying to understand and we won't know this
Lex Fridman (39:43.900)
but which path minimizes human suffering in the long term?
Chris Blattman (39:49.840)
Well, on the eve of the war,
Lex Fridman (39:51.680)
Ukraine was poorer in the per person terms
Chris Blattman (39:54.040)
than it was in 1990.
Lex Fridman (39:55.440)
The economy is just completely stagnated.
Lex Fridman (39:58.320)
And Russia, meanwhile, like many other parts of the region,
Lex Fridman (40:00.960)
sort of has boomed to a degree.
Chris Blattman (40:03.240)
I mean, certainly because of oil and gas
Lex Fridman (40:04.700)
but also for a variety of other reasons
Lex Fridman (40:07.460)
and Putin's consolidated political control.
Lex Fridman (40:10.560)
And from a very cold blooded and calculated point of view,
Chris Blattman (40:14.680)
I think one way Putin and Russia could look at this is says,
Lex Fridman (40:18.120)
look, we were temporarily weak
Chris Blattman (40:19.480)
after the fall of the Iron Curtain
Lex Fridman (40:22.600)
and the rest in the West basically took advantage
Chris Blattman (40:25.360)
of that like Bravo, you pulled it off,
Lex Fridman (40:27.620)
you basically crept democracy and capitalism,
Chris Blattman (40:30.120)
all these things right up to our border.
Lex Fridman (40:32.560)
And now we have regained some of our strength.
Chris Blattman (40:35.480)
We've consolidated political control,
Lex Fridman (40:37.260)
we've count our people, we have a stronger economy
Lex Fridman (40:40.920)
and we somehow got Germany and other European nations
Lex Fridman (40:44.460)
to give up energy independence and actually just,
Chris Blattman (40:47.000)
we've got an enormous amount of leverage over you.
Lex Fridman (40:49.080)
And now we wanna roll back some of your success
Chris Blattman (40:52.600)
because we were powerful enough to demand it.
Lex Fridman (40:55.800)
And you've been taking advantage of the situation
Chris Blattman (40:59.400)
which is maybe a fair impartial analysis.
Lex Fridman (41:04.120)
And in the West, but more specifically Ukraine said,
Lex Fridman (41:08.320)
but that's a price too high, which I totally respect.
Lex Fridman (41:11.720)
Maybe I'd like to think I'd make that same decision
Lex Fridman (41:15.360)
but that's the answer.
Lex Fridman (41:17.600)
If the answer is why would they fight if it's so costly?
Lex Fridman (41:20.200)
Why not find a deal?
Lex Fridman (41:21.400)
It's because they weren't willing to give Russia the thing
Chris Blattman (41:24.840)
that their power said they quote unquote deserve.
Lex Fridman (41:28.300)
Just like Americans said to the Britain,
Chris Blattman (41:30.440)
yeah, of course we ought to accept semi sovereignty
Lex Fridman (41:35.960)
but we refuse and we'd rather endure a bloody fight
Chris Blattman (41:42.040)
that we might lose than take this.
Lex Fridman (41:45.080)
And so you need some of these other five buckets,
Chris Blattman (41:49.080)
you need them to understand the situation,
Lex Fridman (41:50.840)
you need to sort of, there are other things going on
Lex Fridman (41:54.060)
but I do think it's fundamental
Lex Fridman (41:55.800)
that this noble intransigence is a big part of it.
Chris Blattman (42:03.680)
Well, let me just say a few things if it's okay.
Lex Fridman (42:06.320)
So your analysis is clear and objective.
Chris Blattman (42:12.840)
My analysis is neither clear nor objective.
Lex Fridman (42:16.960)
First, I've been going through a lot.
Chris Blattman (42:22.620)
I'm a different man over the past four or five weeks
Lex Fridman (42:25.740)
than I was before.
Chris Blattman (42:27.760)
I in general have come to, there's anger.
Lex Fridman (42:34.820)
I've come to despise leaders in general
Chris Blattman (42:38.980)
because leaders wage war
Lex Fridman (42:40.580)
and the people pay the price for that war.
Chris Blattman (42:42.640)
Let me just say on this point of standing up to an invader
Lex Fridman (42:49.560)
that I am half Ukrainian, half Russian,
Chris Blattman (42:52.800)
that I'm proud of the Ukrainian people.
Lex Fridman (42:56.720)
Whatever the sacrifice is, whatever the scale of pain,
Chris Blattman (43:00.320)
standing up, there's something in me that's proud.
Lex Fridman (43:03.680)
Maybe that's whatever the fuck that is.
Chris Blattman (43:08.800)
Maybe that blood runs in me.
Lex Fridman (43:10.660)
I love the Ukrainian people, I love the Russian people.
Lex Fridman (43:15.620)
And whatever that fight is, whatever that suffering is,
Lex Fridman (43:18.740)
the millions of refugees, whatever this war is,
Chris Blattman (43:22.100)
the dictators come to power and their power falls.
Lex Fridman (43:28.100)
I just love that that spirit burns bright still.
Lex Fridman (43:31.700)
And I do, maybe I'm wrong in this,
Lex Fridman (43:34.140)
do see Ukrainian and Russian people as one people
Chris Blattman (43:37.820)
in a way that's not just cultural, geopolitical,
Lex Fridman (43:41.340)
but just given the history.
Chris Blattman (43:43.220)
I think about the same kind of fighting when Hitler
Lex Fridman (43:48.020)
with all of his forces chose to invade the Soviet Union,
Chris Blattman (43:52.260)
Operation Barbarossa, when he went in that Russian winter.
Lex Fridman (43:58.500)
And a lot of people, and that pisses me off
Chris Blattman (44:02.180)
because if you know your history,
Lex Fridman (44:05.060)
it's not the winter that stopped Hitler,
Chris Blattman (44:08.060)
it's the Red Army, it's the people that refused
Lex Fridman (44:11.700)
to back down, they fought proudly.
Chris Blattman (44:14.800)
That pride, that's something.
Lex Fridman (44:18.060)
That's the human spirit.
Chris Blattman (44:20.140)
That's in war, you know, war is hell,
Lex Fridman (44:23.580)
but it really pushes people to stand
Chris Blattman (44:28.380)
for the things they believe in.
Lex Fridman (44:30.220)
It's the William Wallace speech from Braveheart.
Chris Blattman (44:33.240)
I think about this a lot.
Lex Fridman (44:35.020)
That does not fit into your framework.
Chris Blattman (44:37.020)
No, no, no, I'm gonna disagree.
Lex Fridman (44:38.540)
I think it totally fits in and it's this,
Chris Blattman (44:41.660)
there's nothing irrational about what we believe,
Lex Fridman (44:45.140)
especially those principles which we hold the most dear.
Chris Blattman (44:50.420)
I'm merely trying to say that there's a calculus,
Lex Fridman (44:53.540)
there's one calculus over here that says
Chris Blattman (44:56.780)
Russia's more powerful than it was 20 years ago
Lex Fridman (45:00.060)
and even 10 years ago and Ukraine is not.
Lex Fridman (45:02.960)
And it's asking for something
Lex Fridman (45:05.240)
and there's an incentive to give that up.
Chris Blattman (45:08.060)
That's obvious, like there's an incentive to comply.
Lex Fridman (45:10.700)
But my understanding is many of these post Soviet republics
Chris Blattman (45:14.740)
have appeased, right, which is what we call compromise
Lex Fridman (45:17.700)
when we disagree with it.
Chris Blattman (45:19.140)
They've, all of these other peoples
Lex Fridman (45:21.860)
in the Russians here of influence have not stood up.
Lex Fridman (45:26.900)
And Russians, many Russians have tried to stand up
Lex Fridman (45:29.800)
and they've been beaten down.
Lex Fridman (45:31.300)
And now people have, we'll see,
Lex Fridman (45:35.360)
but people have not been standing up very much.
Lex Fridman (45:38.040)
And so lots of people are cowed
Lex Fridman (45:40.520)
and lots of people have appeased
Lex Fridman (45:41.880)
and lots of people hear that speech
Lex Fridman (45:43.960)
and think I would like to do that, but don't.
Lex Fridman (45:47.300)
And so, and my point is that sadly we live in a world
Lex Fridman (45:51.780)
where a lot of people get stepped on
Chris Blattman (45:54.960)
by tyrants and empire and whatnot and don't rise up.
Lex Fridman (45:59.280)
And so I think we could admire,
Chris Blattman (46:01.680)
especially when they stand up for these reasons.
Lex Fridman (46:04.800)
And I think we can admire Churchill for that reason.
Chris Blattman (46:06.720)
I think we could, that's why we admire
Lex Fridman (46:08.760)
the leaders of the American Revolution and so on,
Lex Fridman (46:11.040)
but it doesn't always happen.
Lex Fridman (46:12.160)
And I don't actually know why,
Lex Fridman (46:13.880)
but I don't think it's irrational.
Lex Fridman (46:15.120)
I think it's just, it's something,
Chris Blattman (46:16.880)
it's about a set of values and it's hard to predict.
Lex Fridman (46:20.120)
And it was hard for,
Chris Blattman (46:23.080)
Putin might not have been out of line
Lex Fridman (46:24.980)
in thinking just like everybody else
Chris Blattman (46:27.360)
in my sphere of influence, they're gonna roll over too.
Lex Fridman (46:31.360)
And I should mention because we haven't,
Chris Blattman (46:34.680)
that a lot of this calculation
Lex Fridman (46:37.520)
from an objective point of view,
Chris Blattman (46:39.560)
you have to include United States and NATO
Lex Fridman (46:42.960)
into the pressure they apply into the region.
Chris Blattman (46:45.280)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (46:46.400)
That said, I care little about leaders
Chris Blattman (46:50.500)
that do cruel things onto the world.
Lex Fridman (46:54.060)
They lead to a lot of suffering,
Lex Fridman (46:55.580)
but I still believe that the Russian people
Lex Fridman (46:57.800)
and the Ukrainian people are great people that stand up
Lex Fridman (47:00.720)
and I admire people that stand up
Lex Fridman (47:03.140)
and are willing to give their life.
Lex Fridman (47:05.380)
And I think Russian people are very much that too,
Lex Fridman (47:11.600)
especially when the enemy is coming
Chris Blattman (47:15.520)
for your home over the hill.
Lex Fridman (47:17.680)
Sometimes standing up to an authoritarian regime
Chris Blattman (47:21.440)
is difficult because you don't know.
Lex Fridman (47:24.180)
It's not a monster that's attacking your home directly.
Chris Blattman (47:30.740)
It's kind of like the boiling of a lobster
Lex Fridman (47:33.100)
or something like that.
Chris Blattman (47:34.500)
It's a slow control of your mind and the population.
Lex Fridman (47:39.220)
And our minds get controlled even in the West
Chris Blattman (47:42.180)
by the media, by the narratives.
Lex Fridman (47:44.500)
It's very difficult to wake up one day
Lex Fridman (47:47.140)
and to realize sort of what people call red pilled,
Lex Fridman (47:52.140)
is to see that maybe the thing I've been told
Chris Blattman (47:56.460)
all my life is not true at every level.
Lex Fridman (47:58.940)
That's a thing very difficult to do in North Korea.
Chris Blattman (48:01.660)
The more authoritarian the regime,
Lex Fridman (48:04.040)
the more difficult it is to see.
Chris Blattman (48:06.420)
Maybe this idea that I believe
Lex Fridman (48:09.420)
that I was willing to die for is actually evil.
Chris Blattman (48:11.540)
It's very difficult to do for Americans,
Lex Fridman (48:14.220)
for Russians, for Ukrainians, for Chinese,
Chris Blattman (48:16.980)
for Indians, for Pakistanis, for everybody.
Lex Fridman (48:20.500)
I think thinking about this Ukrainian,
Chris Blattman (48:23.260)
whether you want to call it nobility or intransigence
Lex Fridman (48:25.180)
or whatever is key.
Chris Blattman (48:27.440)
I think the authoritarianness of Russia
Lex Fridman (48:32.260)
and Putin's control or the control of his cabal
Chris Blattman (48:34.500)
is the other thing I would really point to
Lex Fridman (48:37.300)
is what's going on here.
Lex Fridman (48:38.440)
And if you asked me like big picture,
Lex Fridman (48:41.220)
what do I think is the fundamental cause
Lex Fridman (48:42.700)
of most violence in the world?
Lex Fridman (48:43.860)
I think it's unaccountable power.
Chris Blattman (48:45.540)
I think, in fact, for me an unaccountable power
Lex Fridman (48:47.920)
is the source of underdevelopment.
Chris Blattman (48:49.300)
It's the source of pain and suffering.
Lex Fridman (48:51.860)
It's the source of warfare.
Chris Blattman (48:53.980)
It's basically the root source of most of our problems.
Lex Fridman (48:57.220)
And in this particular case,
Chris Blattman (48:59.660)
it's also one of our buckets in the sense that like why,
Lex Fridman (49:03.100)
what is it that, why did Russia ask these things?
Chris Blattman (49:07.200)
Like, well, was democracy in Ukraine
Lex Fridman (49:11.820)
a threat to an average Russian?
Chris Blattman (49:13.700)
No, was capitalism, is NATO, is whatever,
Lex Fridman (49:17.900)
is this a threat to average Russians?
Chris Blattman (49:19.660)
No, it's a threat to the apparatus of political control
Lex Fridman (49:25.060)
and economic control that Putin and cronies
Lex Fridman (49:27.620)
and this sort of group of people that rule,
Lex Fridman (49:30.300)
this elite in Russia, it was a threat to them.
Lex Fridman (49:34.660)
And so they had to ask the Ukraine to be neutral
Lex Fridman (49:38.340)
or to give up NATO or to have a puppet government
Chris Blattman (49:41.600)
or whatever they were seeking to achieve
Lex Fridman (49:43.820)
and have been trying to achieve through other means
Lex Fridman (49:45.740)
for decades, right?
Lex Fridman (49:47.300)
They've been trying to undermine these things
Chris Blattman (49:49.660)
without invasion.
Lex Fridman (49:52.620)
And they've been doing that
Chris Blattman (49:53.900)
because it threatens their interests.
Lex Fridman (49:55.500)
And that's like one of these other logics of war.
Chris Blattman (49:57.300)
It's not just that there's something that I value so much
Lex Fridman (49:59.260)
that I'm willing to endure the cost.
Chris Blattman (50:00.580)
It's that there are people not only do,
Lex Fridman (50:03.980)
does this oligarchy or whatever elite group
Chris Blattman (50:06.060)
that you wanna talk about in Russia,
Lex Fridman (50:07.820)
not, first of all, they're not bearing,
Lex Fridman (50:10.060)
they're bearing some costs of war, right?
Lex Fridman (50:11.420)
They're very, and they're certainly bearing
Chris Blattman (50:12.980)
the cost of sanctions, but they are, they don't bear
Lex Fridman (50:17.220)
all the costs of war, obviously.
Lex Fridman (50:18.580)
And so they're more, they're quick to use it.
Lex Fridman (50:20.280)
But more importantly, like in some sense,
Chris Blattman (50:24.020)
I think there's a strong argument
Lex Fridman (50:25.620)
that they had a political incentive to invade
Chris Blattman (50:28.380)
and, or at least to ask Ukraine,
Lex Fridman (50:30.420)
this sort of impossible to give up thing,
Lex Fridman (50:32.540)
and then invade despite Ukrainian nobility and transigence
Lex Fridman (50:38.260)
because they were threatened.
Lex Fridman (50:39.780)
And so that's extremely important, I think.
Lex Fridman (50:45.100)
And so that's, those two things in concert
Chris Blattman (50:48.940)
make this a very fragile situation.
Lex Fridman (50:50.780)
That's, I think, why we ended up is,
Chris Blattman (50:53.860)
go not all the way, but a long way to understanding.
Lex Fridman (50:57.020)
Now you could layer onto that these intangible incentives,
Chris Blattman (51:00.300)
these other things that are valued,
Lex Fridman (51:01.780)
that are valued on Putin's side.
Chris Blattman (51:03.280)
Maybe there's a nationalist ideal.
Lex Fridman (51:04.820)
Maybe he seeks status and glory.
Chris Blattman (51:08.180)
Like maybe those things are all true.
Lex Fridman (51:09.300)
And I'm sure they're true to an extent.
Lex Fridman (51:11.900)
And that'll weigh against his cost of war as well.
Lex Fridman (51:14.560)
But fundamentally, I think he just saw
Chris Blattman (51:16.660)
his regime as threatened.
Lex Fridman (51:18.560)
That's what he cares about.
Lex Fridman (51:20.140)
And so he asked, he made this cruelest of demands.
Lex Fridman (51:25.560)
I mean, I would say I'm just one human, who the hell am I?
Lex Fridman (51:28.660)
But I just have a lot of anger towards the elites in general,
Lex Fridman (51:34.520)
towards leaders in general that fail the people.
Chris Blattman (51:38.820)
I would love to hear and to celebrate
Lex Fridman (51:44.100)
the beautiful Russian people, the Ukrainian people,
Lex Fridman (51:47.780)
and anyone who silences that beautiful voice of the people,
Lex Fridman (51:52.420)
anywhere in the world, is destroying the thing
Chris Blattman (51:55.940)
that I value most about humanity.
Lex Fridman (51:59.020)
Leaders don't matter.
Chris Blattman (52:00.060)
They're supposed to serve the people.
Lex Fridman (52:02.480)
This nationalist idea of a people, of a country,
Chris Blattman (52:07.060)
is only makes any sense when you celebrate,
Lex Fridman (52:10.260)
when you give people the freedom to show themselves,
Chris Blattman (52:16.580)
to celebrate themselves.
Lex Fridman (52:18.380)
The thing I care most about is science
Lex Fridman (52:21.740)
and the silencing of voices in the scientific community,
Lex Fridman (52:26.900)
the silencing of voices, period.
Lex Fridman (52:28.840)
And fuck any leader that silences that human spirit.
Lex Fridman (52:37.760)
There's something about this.
Chris Blattman (52:39.800)
Like, whenever I look at World War II,
Lex Fridman (52:42.160)
whenever I look at wars,
Chris Blattman (52:44.280)
it does seem very irrational to fight.
Lex Fridman (52:47.400)
But man, does it seem somehow deeply human
Chris Blattman (52:52.660)
when the people stand up and fight.
Lex Fridman (52:54.920)
There's something, you know, we talked about progress.
Chris Blattman (53:00.800)
That feels like how progress is made,
Lex Fridman (53:03.880)
the people that stand and fight.
Lex Fridman (53:05.560)
But let me read the Churchill speech.
Lex Fridman (53:08.560)
It's such, I'm so proud that we humans
Chris Blattman (53:12.320)
can stand up to evil when the time is right.
Lex Fridman (53:14.880)
I guess here's the thing, though.
Chris Blattman (53:16.680)
Think of what's happening in Xinjiang in China.
Lex Fridman (53:18.480)
We have appeased China.
Chris Blattman (53:21.520)
We've basically said, you can just do really, really,
Lex Fridman (53:25.920)
really horrible things in this region,
Lex Fridman (53:27.880)
and you're too powerful for us to do anything about it,
Lex Fridman (53:30.440)
and it's not worth it.
Lex Fridman (53:32.040)
And there's nobody standing up and making a Churchill speech
Lex Fridman (53:35.760)
or the Braveheart speech about standing up
Chris Blattman (53:38.180)
for people of Xinjiang when what's happening is,
Lex Fridman (53:42.720)
you know, in that realm of what was happening in Europe.
Lex Fridman (53:47.480)
And that's happening in a lot of places.
Lex Fridman (53:50.640)
And then when there is a willingness to stand up,
Chris Blattman (53:55.560)
people, there's a lot of opposition to those, you know.
Lex Fridman (53:58.960)
So there were a lot of reasons for the invasion of Iraq.
Chris Blattman (54:02.680)
For some, it was a humanitarian thing,
Lex Fridman (54:04.360)
like Saddam Hussein was one of the worst tyrants
Chris Blattman (54:08.480)
of the 20th century.
Lex Fridman (54:10.600)
He was just doing some really horrible things.
Chris Blattman (54:14.240)
You know, he'd invaded Kuwait.
Lex Fridman (54:15.880)
He'd, you know, attempted domestic genocide
Lex Fridman (54:20.260)
and all sorts of repression,
Lex Fridman (54:21.880)
and it was probably a mistake to invade in spite.
Lex Fridman (54:25.000)
So it's important not just to select on the cases
Lex Fridman (54:27.360)
where we stood up and to select on the cases
Chris Blattman (54:29.640)
where that ended up working out in the sense of victory.
Lex Fridman (54:35.440)
Right, it's important to sort of try to judge,
Chris Blattman (54:38.480)
not judge, but just try to understand these things
Lex Fridman (54:40.700)
in the context of all the times we didn't give that speech
Chris Blattman (54:45.160)
or when we did, and then it just went sideways.
Lex Fridman (54:48.080)
Well, that's why it's powerful
Chris Blattman (54:50.520)
when you're willing to give your life for your principles
Lex Fridman (54:52.880)
because most of the time,
Chris Blattman (54:54.600)
you get neither the principles nor the life.
Lex Fridman (54:58.400)
You get, you die.
Chris Blattman (54:59.720)
That's what, but that's why it's powerful.
Lex Fridman (55:02.320)
We shall go on to the end.
Chris Blattman (55:04.560)
We shall fight in France.
Lex Fridman (55:06.360)
We shall fight on the seas and the oceans.
Chris Blattman (55:08.840)
We shall fight with growing confidence
Lex Fridman (55:10.800)
and growing strength in the air.
Chris Blattman (55:12.600)
We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.
Lex Fridman (55:16.160)
We shall fight on the beaches.
Chris Blattman (55:18.020)
We shall fight on the landing grounds.
Lex Fridman (55:20.320)
We shall fight in the fields and in the streets.
Chris Blattman (55:23.480)
We shall fight in the hills.
Lex Fridman (55:25.320)
We shall never surrender.
Chris Blattman (55:27.200)
This is before Hitler had any major loss to anybody.
Lex Fridman (55:33.060)
That was a terrifying armada coming your way.
Chris Blattman (55:36.260)
We shall never surrender.
Lex Fridman (55:37.880)
I just wanna give props.
Chris Blattman (55:40.320)
I wanna give my respect as a human being to Churchill,
Lex Fridman (55:44.680)
to the British people for standing up,
Chris Blattman (55:48.120)
to the Ukrainian people for standing up,
Lex Fridman (55:51.120)
and to the Russian people.
Chris Blattman (55:53.920)
These are great people that throughout history
Lex Fridman (55:57.680)
have stood up to evil.
Chris Blattman (56:00.960)
Let me ask you this because you quote Sun Tzu
Lex Fridman (56:03.640)
in The Art of War.
Chris Blattman (56:05.480)
There's no instance of a country
Lex Fridman (56:06.960)
having benefited from prolonged warfare.
Chris Blattman (56:09.500)
This is the main thesis.
Lex Fridman (56:11.840)
Can we just linger on this?
Chris Blattman (56:14.840)
Since leaders wage war and people pay the price,
Lex Fridman (56:18.320)
when we say that there's no reason to do prolonged war,
Chris Blattman (56:22.700)
is it possible to have a reason for the leaders
Lex Fridman (56:25.040)
if they disregard the price?
Chris Blattman (56:26.980)
Sort of like if they have a different objective function
Lex Fridman (56:32.040)
or utility function that measures the price
Chris Blattman (56:34.020)
that's paid for war.
Lex Fridman (56:35.360)
Is that one explanation of why war happens?
Chris Blattman (56:39.500)
Is the leaders just have a different calculus
Lex Fridman (56:41.460)
than other humans?
Chris Blattman (56:43.020)
I mean, I think this links us back
Lex Fridman (56:44.260)
to what we were talking about earlier about just war.
Chris Blattman (56:46.260)
Is in some sense, just war is saying
Lex Fridman (56:49.540)
that in spite of the costs,
Chris Blattman (56:51.540)
that our enemy has done something,
Lex Fridman (56:54.700)
our opponent has refused to compromise
Chris Blattman (56:58.020)
on something that we find essential
Lex Fridman (57:00.540)
and is demanding that we compromise
Chris Blattman (57:03.300)
in a way that's completely repugnant.
Lex Fridman (57:06.540)
And therefore, we're going to go to war
Chris Blattman (57:09.220)
despite these material costs and these human costs.
Lex Fridman (57:13.340)
So that, and that's, and then that principle
Chris Blattman (57:16.780)
that you go to war on is in the eye of the beholder.
Lex Fridman (57:18.820)
And I mean, I think liberty and sovereignty,
Chris Blattman (57:21.960)
I think we can understand and sympathize with,
Lex Fridman (57:23.740)
and maybe that's just a universal,
Chris Blattman (57:25.460)
maybe that's the greatest cause of just war,
Lex Fridman (57:27.480)
but other people make that, could go to war
Chris Blattman (57:30.760)
for something considerably less,
Lex Fridman (57:32.100)
a principle that's considerably less noble, right?
Chris Blattman (57:34.580)
Which is what Hitler was doing.
Lex Fridman (57:36.140)
So that's an explanation.
Lex Fridman (57:39.380)
So that's a whole class of explanations
Lex Fridman (57:41.760)
that helps us understand that the compromise
Chris Blattman (57:44.000)
that was on the table, given the relative balance of power,
Lex Fridman (57:46.300)
was just repugnant at least to one side, if not the other.
Chris Blattman (57:49.060)
There's something they're unwilling to part with.
Lex Fridman (57:51.140)
And then you get to the leaders.
Chris Blattman (57:53.220)
Well, what happens when what the leaders want,
Lex Fridman (57:57.460)
what happens when the leaders are detached
Chris Blattman (57:58.980)
from the interests of their groups,
Lex Fridman (58:00.200)
which has been true for basically most of human history.
Chris Blattman (58:02.300)
There's a narrow slice of societies
Lex Fridman (58:04.620)
in the big scheme of things
Chris Blattman (58:06.540)
that have been accountable to their people.
Lex Fridman (58:07.900)
A lot of them exist today,
Chris Blattman (58:11.680)
where to some degree,
Lex Fridman (58:12.620)
they're channeling the interests of their group, right?
Lex Fridman (58:15.500)
So the Ukrainian politicians didn't concede
Lex Fridman (58:18.880)
to these cruel Russian demands,
Chris Blattman (58:21.020)
because even if they had,
Lex Fridman (58:22.100)
it would have been political suicide,
Chris Blattman (58:23.380)
because it seemed, or I think,
Lex Fridman (58:25.260)
it seems that the Ukrainians
Chris Blattman (58:26.520)
would have just rejected this.
Lex Fridman (58:28.180)
So they were in some sense channeling the values
Chris Blattman (58:31.180)
of the broader population, even if they,
Lex Fridman (58:34.380)
I don't know what was going,
Lex Fridman (58:35.460)
and if they didn't share those principles,
Lex Fridman (58:38.260)
they self interestedly followed them.
Chris Blattman (58:40.880)
Probably they shared them,
Lex Fridman (58:41.860)
but I'm just saying that even if they didn't,
Chris Blattman (58:43.860)
they wouldn't compromise.
Lex Fridman (58:46.580)
Occasionally you get the reverse,
Chris Blattman (58:47.740)
which is where the leaders are not accountable.
Lex Fridman (58:51.380)
And now they have some value, which could be glory.
Chris Blattman (58:55.220)
I mean, this is the story of the kings,
Lex Fridman (58:56.660)
and to some lesser extent, the queens of Europe,
Chris Blattman (58:59.220)
for hundreds of years, was it was basically a contest,
Lex Fridman (59:02.220)
and it was, war was the sport of kings,
Lex Fridman (59:04.180)
and to some extent, they were just seeking status
Lex Fridman (59:06.500)
through violent competition,
Lex Fridman (59:08.620)
and they paid a lot, a big price out of the royal purse,
Lex Fridman (59:11.540)
but they didn't bear most of the suffering.
Lex Fridman (59:17.180)
And so they were too quick to go to war.
Lex Fridman (59:19.780)
And so that's, I think that detachment of leaders,
Chris Blattman (59:26.480)
combined with, you mingle it with this,
Lex Fridman (59:29.180)
that one bucket, that uncheckedness,
Lex Fridman (59:32.220)
and you mingle that with the fact
Lex Fridman (59:33.500)
that leaders might have one of these values,
Chris Blattman (59:36.100)
noble or otherwise, that carry them to war,
Lex Fridman (59:39.180)
combined to explain a good number of conflicts as well.
Lex Fridman (59:43.540)
And that's a good illustration of why I think autocracy
Lex Fridman (59:47.260)
and unaccountable power is,
Chris Blattman (59:51.360)
I could make that story for all of the things,
Lex Fridman (59:53.380)
all five buckets, they're all,
Chris Blattman (59:54.840)
we're all more susceptible to these things,
Lex Fridman (59:56.940)
to all five of these things,
Chris Blattman (59:58.100)
when leaders are not accountable to the people
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