I was there at Christmas and and they
had opened the Brandenburg Gate, but only
for German citizens. But the lines where
people were crossing, it was
amazing. I saw an elderly man, elderly
Jewish man with two grandchildren, and the
grandchildren were tapping on the wall
and he was just standing there and you
could see he was really like trying to
hold it together and the little boy, one
of the little boys came up and handed
him the chisel and the man just started
to weep. Just started weeping. And I'm
sure there were tears both of some loss
that had happened, but also tears of joy
watching his grandchildren. That was
amazing. And I think it's really important in the world and in the field
that I work in, which is a field that
deals with existential risks -- I work on
the question of governance of new
technologies, that's what I deal with,
existential risk -- that you remember to have hope. I think
that's critical. I think it's critical to
portray that hope. I get concerned when
our narratives all seem to be dystopia.
The first thing you hear is if you want
peace you prepare for war. And the first
thing I say is, since when have we
prepared for peace? We don't. We don't
spend money on peace. We spend money on
technical solutions around the edges of
some of these problems we don't spend
money trying to change the zeitgeist.
It's important that when we're working
on these issues we don't simply scare
everybody to death, that we actually
provide them with hope and we let them
know that they are empowered, that they
have power to change the world.
People always have the power. They forget that a lot
but the there is power in the mass, in the masses, and having a voice and
giving voice to issues, to the things
that you care about is really important.
