November 6, 2020

Dan Carlin: Hardcore History (#136) | on Lex Fridman Podcast

Check out the Lex Fridman Podcast Page & Episode Notes

Key Takeaways

• What’s interesting is that Germany might have been stronger in WWII without anti-semitism
  • Albert Einstein, along with other scientists and other valuable people would have been fighting on Germany’s side
    • The Holocaust might have prevented Germany from getting the nuclear bomb first
  • Germany used many resources in the Holocaust that could have been allocated to war efforts
• Defining evil is difficult
  – “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” – Dan Carlin
• Climate Change is a clear example of the flaws of our collective decision making
  – Too many things have to go right to prevent us from destroying the Planet
  – People around the World have to get onboard together
  – Nations would have to put aside their interests in favor of the collective ones
  – For this reason, Dan sees this as the most likely way we’ll destroy ourselves
• Despite the impressive progress, Elon made with SpaceX, Dan is most impressed with Tesla
  • Consumers who don’t care about the environment still want Tesla
    • Elon has aligned the incentives of individuals with those of the Planet

Key Products Mentioned

• Dan mentioned From Here to Eternity by James Jones as they were talking about how being a soldier changes you
• While discussing the history of Nazi Germany, Lex mentioned The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer

Intro

• Dan Carlin (@dccommonsense) is a historian, political thinker, and the host of the Hardcore History Podcast and the Common Sense Podcast
  • Check out Dan’s website
  • Check out these podcasts notes from Dan’s Hardcore History Addendum and from the Common Sense Podcast
• Host: Lex Fridman (@lexfridman)
• In this chat, Dan Carlin and Lex Fridman discuss a variety of topics: from the nature of evil and Hitler to Elon Musk and the future of humanity

Nature of Evil

• Is inflicting suffering always evil?
  • Motivations matter too
    • You could inflict suffering on a small group of people to prevent suffering on a larger group
      • Would that be evil?
    • Stalin created tremendous suffering, while honestly believing that he was doing good for the World
    • Alexander the Great was mostly killing to glorify his own name, does that make him worse than Hitler and Stalin?
  • It’d be important to consider if the people inflicting suffering were mentally sane
  • The perspective we look from also matters
    • How would we have seen Hitler if the Nazis had won the war?

Is Violence Inherent in the Human Condition?

• What’s the difference between violence and “force”?
  • “Force” as a way to create a change when things are going wrong
  • Dan thinks that force may be inevitable for a civilization to exist
    • Is non-violent force enough?
    • Often force spills over into violence

Will We Always Have War?

• How can a nation prevent another one from creating harm in the World?
  • We’d need to have a Global Entity that alleviates the need for a violent counter-force
    • Such a central entity would also be vulnerable to the corruption of power
• Does the existence of armies create an incentive to use them?
  • War becomes a justification for the existence of the army
  • Yet armies are necessary for a nation to defend itself
• There’s a big difference between soldiers and the Military-Industrial Complex
  • Soldiers could be any of us, and in history lay citizens were often forced to go to war
    • Dan sees their actions as heroic when they are fighting to protect others
    • But soldiers are often also victims of the situation
  • We need to be suspicious about the Military making the decision to go to war
    • Is it really necessary?
    • Patriotism is often used to manipulate people into going to war
      • It is very strong in the US
      • Lex remembers it being a lot stronger in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Ideological Societies and Government Skepticism

• Both US and the Soviet Union are (were) both ideology-based societies
  • The whole society stands on a few, very strong ideologies
    • Members of each society are conditioned to regard their ideology as superior
  • These countries tend to spread their ideology across the World
    • They don’t really know if that’s what other countries want or need
  • Other countries are not as united by a specific ideology, rather by their nationality
• Having a strong belief in your nation’s ideal can be beautiful
  • You believe in something bigger than yourself
  • Dan tends to be very suspicious of government
    • Propaganda and manipulation are a large portion of government
    • He thinks that healthy skepticism of government is in line with American ideals

On Putin

• Dan, aware of his American biases, thinks that as long as the Russian people freely voted and elected him, that is fine
  • If elections are taken away, it becomes a different story, as it removes individual freedom
  • Putin managed to maintain his power by tightly controlling the media, thus limiting freedom of speech
• In Lex’s experience, as a Russian, most people in Russia still love Putin
  • They see Putin as a strong force that prevents the corruption of the system to take over
    • They are also afraid of another collapse of the country
    • This looks similar to the problem faced by many monarchs, who were succeeded by less capable man, leading to collapse
      • In these situations, it’s important to set up a system that can outlive the leader
• Lex sees a huge change in Putin from the day he first took power
  • “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”

Journalism Is Broken

• From Putin’s perspective, journalists can be seen as the enemy of the state
  • They take things out of context, makeup stuff, make shallow critiques
  • But once you try to limit those kinds of journalists, you can easily start limiting all those who oppose you
    • If the government is the only approved outlet for truth, any American would see it as a tyranny
• You could say that the American press system is also broken
  • The idea of a universal truth that we can all agree on doesn’t exist anymore
    • Different groups of people have totally different views of what’s true
  • Let’s not pretend that there was a great time, even in the US, of truthful journalism
    • Even in the past, journalists had to carry forward the interests of the government and of the newspapers’ owners

Genghis Khan and the Mongols

• The Mongol empire is sometimes portrayed as a liberal one
  • For example, they allowed anyone who was conquered to practice their own religion
    • This was more likely a way to maintain order than to preserve individual freedoms (similar to what the Roman Empire did)
      • There’s a line about the Romans “they created a wasteland and called it peace”
• Differently from the Romans, the Mongols were a nomadic society
  • Growing as nomads, they were better than anyone to ride horses and use them to their advantage
    • Their skill could not be copied
    • They were often hired as mercenaries
  • Their military advantage ended in the 17th and 18th century when the Chinese and Russians started using firearms

What Makes a Great Leader (Whether Good or Evil)?

• Taking Alexander The Great as an example
  • He inherited the greatest army of his day
    • Perhaps his dad, who built the army was greater than him
  • Self-made men who rose to power from nothing may be considered better leaders
• Interesting to wonder what was Hitler’s defining moment
  • He was a common soldier in the First World War
    • He didn’t show such strong anti-semitism until the end of WWI
  • How did he change so drastically? What happened to him?
    • “The time molded the man, versus Gengis Khan where it feels that the man molded his time” – Lex Fridman
• “Great men are almost always bad men” – Lord Acton
  • In order to be great, you’d have to discard moral qualities that we’d attribute to good men

Heroism in Nazi Germany

• What does heroic action look like in Germany in 1930s?
  • One needed to act against his own government, in an “unpatriotic” way
• In the 1940s, movements such as The White Rose openly worked against the Nazi
  • The power was already consolidated
  • These people knew they’d be killed but did it anyway
  • People within the army who were secretly trying to undermine Hitler did not put their life on the line in the same way
• There’s a difference between heroes who sacrifice but do not achieve their goal and heroes who do
• How could Hitler have been stopped?
  • To answer this question we really have to understand the political situation in Germany after WWI
    • The great dissatisfaction with the Weimar Republic
    • The only other alternative to Nazis at the time were communist agitators
  • In this context, Hitler’s message of restoring German’s greatness was very appealing
    • At such a time of suffering, any message of peace and brotherhood could not gain traction
  • The most obvious way Hitler could have been stopped earlier has nothing to do with Germans
    • When he re-militarized the Rhineland, the French army could have stopped him if they contested him
• Hitler was a product of his time
  • Even if he was taken out, we cannot know what could have happened
    • Somebody else could have stepped in and done the same, or even worse

Hitler’s Anti-Semitism

• Could Hitler have risen to power without anti-semitism?
  • Anti-semitism was not an integral part of fascism
    • Mussolini did it to please Hitler
• Hitler was obsessed with this conspiracy against Jews
  • He surrounded himself with people who would reinforce it
• What’s interesting is that Germany might have been stronger in WWII without anti-semitism
  • Albert Einstein, along with other scientists and other valuable people would have been fighting on Germany’s side
    • The Holocaust might have prevented Germany from getting the nuclear bomb first
  • Germany used many resources in the Holocaust that could have been allocated to war efforts

Evil and Incompetence

• “Evil contains that kind of incompetence” – Lex Fridman
  • People driven by pure hatred are usually not that competent
    • That explains why terrorists today still haven’t been able to use atomic bombs
• Dan disagrees with this view
  • In the timeline of history, it’s still been a few years since the nuclear weapon has been discovered
    • It is still possible that terrorists will get weapons of mass destruction
      • Or they may still do incredible harm without nuclear weapons
  • Defining evil is difficult
    • “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” – Dan Carlin

Will Human Civilization Destroy Itself?

• The Cuban missile crisis in 1962 was the closest event in which we saw the potential of nuclear war
  • The odds seemed to suggest there would be a nuclear war
    • John F. Kennedy’s decisions may have saved more than a hundred million lives
      • Everyone around him disagreed with the decisions he made
• Dan is more pessimistic about the decisions that humans have to make collectively
  • Climate Change is a clear example of the flaws of our collective decision making
    • Too many things have to go right to prevent us from destroying the Planet
      • People around the World have to get on board together
      • Nations would have to put aside their interests in favor of the collective ones
    • For this reason, Dan sees this as the most likely way we’ll destroy ourselves
• Could we get inspiring leaders around the world to save us?
  • We’d need too many leaders at the same time in all countries to be making the right decisions
• More than good vs. evil, Dan looks at self-interest as a way to gauge whether we’ll avoid self-destruction
  • Can we get all individuals to align their interests?

Can the US Avoid a Civil War?

• There are large differences among the American people, and these are exacerbated by the media
  • Seeking the highest engagement, media tends to be extreme and divide us further
  • Dan wonders whether another uniting even such as Pearl Harbor would re-unite the American people
• It’s difficult to think about a civil war in the traditional sense today, as there’s no geographic division
  • Today there would likely be domestic terrorist attacks
    • Only a few people would need to misbehave to create chaos
      • For every action there is an equal opposite reaction
      • You only need one person to start, and the situation would quickly escalate
    • The way to create stability then, would be a dictatorial government
      • Similarly to what happened in Germany

Elon Musk and Tesla

• Despite the impressive progress, Elon made with SpaceX, Dan is most impressed with Tesla
  • Consumers who don’t care about the environment still want Tesla
    • Elon has aligned the incentives of individuals with those of the Planet
• Elon also empowers us to think that each of us can have a strong impact on the World

Can a Few Individuals Unite us and Help us Avoid Radical Escalation?

• Lex is thinking about podcasters like Dan and Joe Rogan with huge audiences
• Throughout history, people spreading messages of love and peace (Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King) were all killed
  • They were all seen as dangerous to the system in which they lived
  • They were killed because they were effective, charismatic leaders who don’t come around often
    • Killing them was an effective strategy to limit their effectiveness
    • At the same time, we still feel the ripples of their actions

Podcasting, Joe Rogan and Spotify

• Nowadays it takes a lot of resources and effort to monetize a podcast
• Dan would prefer to be able to focus only on the content
  • That’s what Spotify offered to Joe Rogan
    • The idea to partner with an outside firm that enhances his ability to focus on the art is enticing
  • At the same time, Dan is skeptical of big companies, as they may try to steer the content in certain directions
    • In Joe Rogan’s case, they specified in the contract that Spotify has no control over the content
• Now it’s in Spotify’s interest to grow Joe’s podcast
  – Even if Joe decides to leave in a few years, he may walk away with a larger audience
• Dan keeps his mind open to the possibility and is watching Joe to see how it goes for him

Hardcore History’s Evergreen Content

• Dan feels pressure from his audience to release podcast episodes as quickly as possible
  • He tries to not give in to that pressure and to never compromise on quality
  • People may listen to HH episodes years after they were released
    • They won’t care how long it took to produce
  • Dan knows that his audience will forgive him, if he takes a bit longer to put it out, as long as the quality is good
    • “The only thing that gives you longevity is how good it is (your content)” – Dan Carlin
• In the future, Dan is planning to make a new podcast on Alexander The Great

Lex Fridman Podcast : climate change, elon musk, history
Notes By Giorgio Parlato