The Big Think Interview with Yuval Noah Harari
- What happens when intelligence outgrows its creators
- We built genius machines, and gave them our blind spots.
Big Think
Dec 13, 2025
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If you consider, for instance, a dollar bill, it has no objective value whatsoever, at least not for human beings. Maybe termites can eat it, but humans can’t eat dollars, they can’t drink them. There is nothing useful you can do with them. They nevertheless have value because the greatest storytellers in the world, the finance ministers, the bankers, the investors, they tell us a story that this piece of paper is has value. I can use it to buy bread or potatoes or bananas or anything else.
As long as millions of people believe in this story, they are willing to work, for instance, on constructing and nuclear reactor because at the end of the month, they get these few colorful pieces of paper. Today, of course, it’s not even paper. Most of the money in the world today is not paper notes and metal coins. It’s just digital information moving between computers. But as long as people still have trust in the story about these digital information, it works.
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As the tin foil hat survivalists preach, at some point in time, “We, The Sheeple” will recognize that:
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“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” — Milton Friedman
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“Inflation is theft, you’re stealing value from people who save money.”-Ron Paul
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“The gold standard did not collapse. Governments abolished it in order to pave the way for inflation. The whole grim apparatus of oppression and coercion — policemen, customs guards, penal courts, prisons, in some countries even executioners — had to be put into action in order to destroy the gold standard. Solemn pledges were broken, retroactive laws were promulgated, provisions of constitutions and bills of rights were openly defied. And hosts of servile writers praised what the governments had done and hailed the dawn of the fiat-money millennium.” — Ludwig von Mises
And, when the SHTF, people will seek band aids, beans, bullets, and bullion. The farmer, the carpenter, the electrician, and the plumber will thrive. The politicians, bureaucrats, celebrities, and influencers will starve.
Hope I never have to life thru it.
But it seems unavoidable.
— 30 —
Reinke Faces Life 