What If We Stopped Believing We Already Know the Truth? | Mohamed Nabil

Hello everyone, welcome back to the show, it's an absolute pleasure to have you all once again. So this guest is Mohammed Nabil, he's an author, social thinker and creator of AI DOP, Artificial Intelligence Debates on Once Publications, a project that invites AI to openly critique his own ideas and publishes, and publishes those conversations on edit it across his books and public work, Mohammed explores philosophy, politics, technology, economics and the future of democracy. Rather than asking people to accept conclusions, he argues that we should examine the reasoning behind them, question our assumptions and motivate what he calls enlightening populism, and approach that evaluate the values, curiosity, over ideology and investigation, over certainty. His work raises fundamental questions about truth, governance, artificial intelligence and what a more thoughtful society might look like. Mohammed, welcome to Thought Atlas, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. It's an absolute pleasure to join you here tonight and thank you for having me and thank you for the warm introduction. Of course, Mohammed. Mohammed, before we continue, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? One, I have a lecture as a degree in mass communication, so I formally started a bit of politics, philosophy and economics, macro economics, after graduation and within the use of college, I wrote a freelance marketing consultant, and I started writing books in 2017. I started developing my own philosophical framework ever since. I have some experiences, as an activist, I used to be, I was one of the founders of the Harass, the Harassah campaign. We used to catch those committing sexual harassment and play on their backs, I'm a harasser, to send a message to the overall community that sexual harassment shouldn't be acceptable by society. I'm currently working as a freelance marketing consultant, philosopher, author, that's mainly it. Well, absolutely wonderful, Mohammed. Thank you so much. Let's just get to know you. Thank you for telling us your story and your journey and most of all, once again, welcome to the show. Yes, please, Mohammed, go ahead. No, I was just thanking you for having me tonight. Of course, you're welcome. Now, most of your work revolves around questioning assumptions. Why do you think human beings become so attached to their beliefs, even when evidence challenges them? Well, that's the thing, we're basically, as human beings, we're basically striving for consistency. We need a consistent toward view to feel safe and to feel motivated to go on with our daily lives. So my own proposal is, when we all strive for consistency, we may find the consistency we are seeking within the boundaries of uncertainty, by embracing the fact that opinions attitude and beliefs are changeable over time. Yes, absolutely. I also love that very wonderful response, Mohammed. Sorry, Mohammed. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Okay. Okay. Okay, I'll just say that. I thought maybe I lost you for a second. So I love that and very wonderful response. I also think one of the reasons why, you know, human beings have this tendency to be so become so attached to their beliefs, even when in the presence of evidence, there's you don't want to drop that belief is because of the fact that the majority of the times you find out most people have their identity attached to their belief or basically their belief is essentially their identity. So whenever their belief is challenged, it's almost as if you are challenging their identity and they feel it's an attack on their self essentially and go on the different mood. So thank you very much. You'll have a very wonderful response. Now, I mean, you describe the idea of enlightened populism as an alternative to both blind elitism and uninformed populism. Why do you think, what do you think rather prevents people from genuinely investigating ideas before adopting them? It's the cognitive energy required to practice enlightened populism, that's the main barrier. Enlightened populism involves listening to multiple experts trying to understand how they reach certain conclusions and investigate the information to the current that truth. So this process, these three steps require cognitive energy, cognitive effort and not all of us are willing to exert that effort. It's often easier to fall for blind elitism, blindly following an expert or an elite on any issue without investigation or ignorant populism, which also involves the absence of an investigation while relying on feelings or trends. So enlightened populism is challenging, but it's necessary for us to evolve as a global society. Wow. That was a very, very wonderful point. And he just reminded me of the conversation I once had with a guest on my show, who's kind of an expert on the brain. He said the brain is the most efficient machine in the universe. And he then went and said, "This isn't of itself a good thing and also a bad thing." Because it's easier for you to do on Instagram because you don't have to retain the information from the last maybe three years. But if you are going to sit down for a three hour lecture, you have to make sure you remember what happened in the first 30 minutes because it could become relevant to how you're going to understand what is going to happen in the last 30 minutes during the course of the lecture. So yes, the brain being efficient, it's innovative, it doesn't want to waste energy or has to actually burn energy to understand certain topics. I think it's one of the reasons I could contribute to why we are so lazy when it comes to carrying out that cognitive work involved in, I think you called it enlightened populism. So thank you so much for that response, Mohamed. Now Mohamed, AI/DOP invites AI to publicly criticize your own work. That's on a usual level of intellectual openness. It inspired you to treat criticism as something to be welcomed rather than avoided. And first I started doing this for personal reasons, books are typically dead and ideas are typically dead if they are not debated on this cost. So I started doing this just for the sake of openly discussing my own views on ideas. And over time I realized it's important for humanity. It's a content creation framework by which a content creator prompts an AI tool to criticize their own content, engages in back and forth argumentation with the tool and publishes the entire and adds transcript within 24 hours of the exchange. So the main, it mainly supports radical transparency and intellectual humility. And it encourages enlightened populism so it keeps me evolving around the same set of ideas. Wow, that is absolutely wonderful. I think I'm going to adopt this, that call is framework. I think that's that that is what it is, it's a framework, right? I guess truly it's content creation framework, I, I, I, I'd be happy if you adopt it. Oh, yes, definitely because there are some times where I could come up with an idea of how I think something in the society or in the world is happening. And the numerous times are that way I've turned out to be wrong because why I did do my research. I think I would also take this step further and basically start doing the AADOP framework or method. Thank you for that response, Mohammed. Now Mohammed, we often think of truth as something we possess, rather than something we pursue. Do you believe certainty is sometimes the greatest obstacle to wisdom? Yeah, truly, that's that's the sharp observation on your side, it's, it's, it's truly difficult to call yourself wise if you're certain about everything you need to embrace uncertainty because we can't monopolize the truth. The best thing we can do is to invent truth-seeking mechanisms like Kutukama for some like enlightened populism or come up with something and a concentration framework like AI DUP or aid up. This is the best thing we can do. We can seek the truth but we can't ultimately tell everyone that we possess 100% of the truth on all issues. It's not practical and it's impossible. Absolutely. Absolutely. Very wonderful response from Ahmed. Now, Mohammed artificial intelligence is changing how knowledge is created, shared and challenged. How do you think AI should influence human thinking without necessarily replacing it? Well, let's start with social media. Social media relies on personalization, showing each person content based on their historical interactions within the platform. This ultimately creates a situation in which a person's use of social media is an endless state of bias confirmation even if a person doesn't suffer from confirmation bias. So instead of social media pushing news agendas or any kind of agenda, at us we need to rely more on the pool agenda. We need to rely more on search engines and alarm amps. But even search engines and alarm amps can turn into echo chambers if not used wisely. As they both rely on historical data of interaction using private or incognito mode occasionally while submitting multiple queries through multiple search engines and digging deep for multiple sources is advisable. Same goes for alarm amps with the additional feature of intentionally getting into a debate with alarm by prompting it to take a position to go through. Thank you so much for that very wonderful response, Mohammed. Mohammed, many of your ideas challenge existing political and economic systems. When you imagine the better society, what qualities do you think matter more than any particular system of government? What qualities do I think matter more? Yes, then matter more than any particular system of government. Well, I believe we need to embrace enlightened populism as a behavioural pattern of communication across fields. That's the key, the main entry point to my own philosophy. We need to listen to multiple experts on all issues. Try to understand how they reach certain conclusions and investigate the information to the current truth. As for the system, I believe in establishing a global government with equal rights for all to be ruled by hyper-local citizens assemblies. I believe that's a step further for humanity. That's a step toward evolution. For its own. Thank you for that. Mohammed, throughout history, technological progress has often outpaced morale progress. Do you think humanity's greatest challenge today is technological, political, or philosophical? technological, or philosophical? Well, I believe that being challenges we're facing today are technological, philosophical and political at the same time. The main challenges of today and the future are climate change, billionaire's greed and recurring pandemics. These can't be solved with local or national governments alone. They need coordinated strategies through a global government to be ruled by hyper-local citizens assemblies. These are the main challenges that we're facing. They have a technological side, like AI replacing human beings at work, and we can dig deeper into that together if you'd like. We have the political side, like the legislation associated with such problems, and we have the philosophical side, how we view things and how we interpret or communicate the information. Wow, I was very wonderful response. Now, this question, I'm about to ask, isn't it even among the questions I prepared? It's just a question that popped in my head right now, Mohammed. Now, from your perspective, and giving more to you've observed and noticed around the world, and around the world, if I were to ask you to kind of project into the future, do you think it's possible that in the coming years, decades, maybe even centuries, that human beings will get to a point where we would actually put aside our differences and walk together for the betterment of our race in general? Yes, I do believe so, and I believe it's a matter of evolution. As time passes by, we will all realize that there are simple facts. We don't need to spend trillions of dollars on weapons and ore trying to beat each other and trying to take over some resources from other countries. We can unify our system of governance, and we can all share the resources of the planet for the betterment of humanity. We can establish basic human rights such as access to clean water and food, shelter, education, healthcare, freedom of movement, freedom of expression, and even stable speed internet connections. Thank you, Snorch, for that very wonderful response, Mohammed. Now, Mohammed, your work suggests that meaningful dialogue requires intellectual humility. What does it take for two people who fundamentally disagree to genuinely lend from one another? Well, they need that basic level of intellectual humility, as you said. They need to be open to accepting criticism, and more importantly, after accepting criticism, they need to re-structure their own thoughts based on the received criticism. They need to embrace the fact that opinions, attitudes, and beliefs are changeable over time. That's the crux of the matter. Wonderful response, Mohammed. Now, looking beyond AI and politics, what do you think education should ultimately teach us? Is this about accumulating knowledge? Or learning how to think? Yes, it's about learning, I would think. We can take it a step back before education, we can talk about parenting. Kids tend to copy the attitudes of their parents and siblings, if present, and parents tend to teach them their own opinions and beliefs as parts. To truly embrace truth-seeking, kids should be taught that these are the set of opinions and beliefs of their parents, while being taught that they can develop their own over time. In a perfect world, the parents will teach their kids about their own religious beliefs, while demonstrating why they hold these specific beliefs, allow the kids to get exposed to multiple religions, and explain to the state that they have the freedom of choice. We can move forward toward education, but I'd like to demonstrate a few points on parenting first. Is that okay? Yes, of course, yes. So, parents should teach the kids that credibility through repetitive interaction is only established in terms of raw data, not the insights and opinions established based on this data. Parents must teach their kids that assessing ideas is superior to assessing human beings. Parents need to foster a culture of self-learning at home. For instance, assign the kids with a controversial topic to research and formulate an opinion within a week and then openly discuss the findings. This is how I think we can truly embrace truth-seeking. My latest book is titled Truth is Sexy. It's about influencing the whole political management process. It's about influencing the overall socialization process with aspects starting from home and then moving to education, media, government, workplace, and all of the agents of socialization, how they need to be changed so we can, as a society, produce more truth seekers. I'll say the name of that book is absolutely wonderful. I love it so much. Truth is actually sexy. If you actually take a very good look at it, it says, and I think the framework that giving parents is very, very, very sound. I think it's some of that that actually develops. The culture students develop into very sound, intelligent, and pragmatic individuals, honestly. Thank you so much for that. response. That was absolutely wonderful, my hand. Now, Mohammed, you know, this is those at less, and if every listener wants to leave this conversation questioning, one deeply held assumption about themselves or the world, what would you hope that assumption would be? If I'd like to pick an assumption for the listeners to challenge. Yes. Yes. I'd like to challenge patriotism or nationalism. I believe nationalism is absurd, and I believe patriotism or nationalism or whatever you may call it. Some authors like George Orwell tried to differentiate between both nationalism and patriotism, but I view them both as the same thing. It's, I have essays called the absurdity of, the absurdity of nationalism. I would like the listeners to check this essay out or check other essays by other people and question this belief. Because I believe that nationalism or patriotism is a structural barrier to facing the global issues we need to face today. Thank you. It's not very, very wonderful response. Actually, I think that's a fruitful thought, honestly. The concept of nationalism and patriotism, you know, itself, if you look at it from the perspective of a citizen in the country, it sounds very sound. It sounds very astute. It sounds very okay, but from a global perspective, it's because your government, your country could be going around the world, you know, looting, stealing, harming, and destroying lives and what of you. And you being a patriotic citizen, I'm in support of this. From a moral standpoint, and the global perspective, it's very, very bad. From a national perspective, it seems okay. Thank you so much to that very wonderful response. That's actually something that the listeners can go point down and debate on. For probably for a very long time, until we decide to, you know, do it with borders and understand that we are all the same. We are taking together the human race, the concept of different races of human beings is a social construct. It has no basis in biology. It's not as I'm concerned. I believe I'm correct because I've done the research on this. I meant, I must say, this has been an absolutely wonderful conversation. I want to say very big thank you for taking the time out of your very busy schedule to come on the show to enlighten I and my listeners. It has honestly been a pleasure. So how can my listeners, you know, learn more about you, learn more about your work, connect with you, and of course, get copies of your books. So my books are available, mostly available through Amazon and Google Play and they can check out my website, www.mahmahmahmahmahmah.org.org, which would be helpful if you can drop the website's link in the description and people can check out my writings and my overall philosophy through the link. Thank you very much for having me here tonight and I really appreciate the deep insights you provided. Of course, Mohammed. Thank you for being such an absolutely wonderful guest. Thank you for giving my listeners something to point down, something to think about, and thank you for your very wonderful and amazing responses. For the listeners, if you know you enjoy this conversation, please do not hesitate to drop a like. Give a follow, subscribe with the usual, and of course you can share this recording this episode with a friend or two so I can learn anything or two. And Mohammed, before we finally say goodbye once again, I want you to leave just another thing for my listeners to ponder on to think about, even if it's in the word, in the form of a word or a phrase or maybe a sentence, something they can continue thinking about after we've stopped recording. Think about replacing representative democracy with direct democratic participation through hyper-local citizen assemblies in a global government. How we can vote on every single issue and take matters into our hands as citizens of the world. Instead of simply passing our voting rights to representatives in various governments that got vote by billionaires or got influenced by anyone with enough power to influence them. An amazing response, Mohammed. For listeners, thank you once again. Thank you everyone for tuning into Thoughts Atlas. Stay tuned for the next episode as long as have a good one.