Name: TEDx】天堂裡的香蕉｜尤瓦爾-諾亞-哈拉里｜TEDx雅法 (【TEDx】Bananas in heaven | Yuval Noah Harari | TEDxJaffa)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T06:47:59.000Z
Duration: 15 min 19 s
Description: 【看影片學英語】數萬部 YouTube 影片，搭配英漢字典即點即查，輕鬆掌握單字發音與用法，長久累積看電影不必再看字幕。

70,000 years ago, humans were insignificant animals.

The most important thing you need to know about our prehistoric ancestors

Their impact on the world was not greater than that of fireflies,

Today, on the other hand, we control this planet.

And what I would like to talk about today is how exactly

How did we turn ourselves from insignificant apes

minding their own business in a corner of Africa,

Well usually, when we try to answer this question,

we look for the answer on the individual level.

that there is something special about me,

that there is something special about my body, about my brain,

But the fact is that on the individual level,

I'm embarrassingly similar to a chimpanzee.

If you put me and a chimpanzee together on a lone island,

I would definitely place my bets on the chimpanzee, not on myself.

And it is not something wrong with me personally.

that if they took anyone of you, almost anyone,

and placed you on a lone island with the chimpanzee,

The real advantage of humans is in their unique ability

to cooperate flexibly in very large numbers.

They are the only animals that can do that.

like the social insects, the bees, and the ants

that can cooperate also in quite large numbers,

They're inflexible in the way that they cooperate.

If there is a new opportunity, or a new danger,

the beehive cannot change overnight its social system,

"Execute the Queen, and let's have a Republic of bees."

They can't do it, they're rigid in the way that they function,

though other social animals like wolves, like dolphins, like chimpanzees,

are much more flexible in the way that they cooperate,

but they can do so only in very small numbers.

Because corporation among wolves or among chimpanzees,

depends on intimate and personal knowledge, acquaintance, one of the other.

If I'm a chimpanzee, and you're a chimpanzee,

and I want to cooperate with you, I need to know who you are.

Are you a good chimpanzee? Are you an evil chimpanzee?

If I don't know you, how can I cooperate with you?

Humans are the only ones that can combine the two abilities together,

cooperate very flexibly, much more than chimps,

but in very large numbers, especially with large numbers of strangers.

One versus one, we may not be superior to chimpanzees,

But if you place 1,000 humans and 1,000 chimps together on a lone island

and they have to struggle, then the humans will definitely win

that 1,000 chimpanzees cannot cooperate at all.

and cram these 100,000 chimpanzees into Yankee Stadium, or Wall Street,

and cram them together into Wall Street, or into Yankee Stadium,

you get amazingly sophisticated networks of cooperation

that are the real basis for human dominion on planet Earth.

Take even this talk that I'm now giving in front of you.

There are about 200 people now in the auditorium.

I know maybe two or three of them really well,

all the others are basically strangers to me.

I don't really know the people who organized this event.

Yes, I've met them once or twice, for rehearsals and so forth,

but I can't say I really know them intimately.

I certainly don't know the people who invented this microphone,

and this computer, and this camera which we are using.

I don't know the persons behind the cameras

who are now taking footage of what I say.

And I don't know the people who might be watching this talk over the Internet,

somewhere maybe in New Guinea, New Delhi, Buenos Aires or New York.

Yet, all of us strangers cooperate together

to create this global exchange of knowledge.

standing in front of an audience of 200 other chimps

and giving a talk about bananas, or about humans, or something.

that chimps not only don't give talks to strangers

but also don't have prisons, they don't have concentration camps,

they don't have slaughterhouses, they don't have arms factories.

Often when we think about cooperation, we think about Sesame Street

and teaching children to cooperate together,

but all the terrible things that humans have been doing,

of this ability to cooperate flexibly in very, very large numbers.

Now, suppose I've managed to convince you