Judea Pearl: Daniel Pearl | AI Podcast Clips
00:00:00.000 | - If you think we can, can we talk about your son?
00:00:05.000 | - Yes, yes.
00:00:07.640 | - Can you tell his story?
00:00:09.480 | - His story?
00:00:10.320 | - Daniel.
00:00:12.420 | - His story is known, he was abducted in Pakistan
00:00:17.420 | by Al-Qaeda driven sect and under various pretenses.
00:00:22.880 | I don't even pay attention to what the pretense was.
00:00:29.600 | Originally they wanted to have the United States
00:00:34.240 | deliver some promised airplanes.
00:00:40.480 | It was all made up, all these demands were bogus.
00:00:46.360 | I don't know really, but eventually he was executed
00:00:52.680 | in front of a camera.
00:00:58.080 | - At the core of that is hate and intolerance.
00:01:01.800 | - At the core, yes, absolutely, yes.
00:01:04.440 | We don't really appreciate the depth of the hate
00:01:09.440 | at which billions of peoples are educated.
00:01:15.720 | We don't understand it.
00:01:21.920 | I just listened recently to what they teach
00:01:25.680 | in Mogadishu. (laughs)
00:01:28.280 | When the water stopped in the tap,
00:01:38.200 | we knew exactly who did it, the Jews.
00:01:43.760 | - The Jews.
00:01:45.000 | - We didn't know how, but we knew who did it.
00:01:48.400 | We don't appreciate what it means to us.
00:01:52.480 | The depth is unbelievable profound.
00:01:55.480 | - Do you think all of us are capable of evil?
00:01:59.080 | And the education, the indoctrination
00:02:04.240 | is really what creates evil.
00:02:05.080 | - Absolutely we are capable of evil.
00:02:06.640 | If you are indoctrinated sufficiently long and in depth,
00:02:11.640 | we are capable of ISIS, we are capable of Nazism.
00:02:18.200 | Yes, we are, but the question is whether we,
00:02:22.800 | after we have gone through some Western education
00:02:27.240 | and we learn that everything is really relative,
00:02:30.080 | that there's no absolute God, there's only a belief in God,
00:02:34.520 | whether we are capable now of being transformed
00:02:37.920 | under certain circumstances to become brutal.
00:02:42.920 | That is a question, I'm worried about it
00:02:47.400 | because some people say yes, given the right circumstances,
00:02:51.760 | given the bad economical crisis,
00:02:56.760 | you are capable of doing it too.
00:03:00.560 | That worries me.
00:03:01.640 | I want to believe it, I'm not capable.
00:03:04.920 | - So seven years after Daniel's death,
00:03:08.960 | he wrote an article at the Wall Street Journal
00:03:11.200 | titled Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil.
00:03:14.560 | What was your message back then
00:03:17.480 | and how did it change today over the years?
00:03:21.960 | - I lost.
00:03:23.240 | - What was the message?
00:03:26.240 | - The message was that we are not treating terrorism
00:03:30.920 | as a taboo.
00:03:35.200 | We are treating it as a bargaining device that is accepted.
00:03:41.240 | People have grievance and they go and bomb restaurants.
00:03:47.520 | It's normal.
00:03:49.640 | Look, you're even not surprised when I tell you that.
00:03:52.560 | 20 years ago you say what?
00:03:56.040 | For grievance you go and blow a restaurant?
00:03:58.440 | Today it's becoming normalized, the banalization of evil.
00:04:04.200 | And we have created that to ourselves by normalizing,
00:04:10.480 | by making it part of a normality
00:04:16.440 | of political life.
00:04:18.360 | It's a political debate.
00:04:21.200 | Every terrorist yesterday becomes a freedom fighter today
00:04:27.160 | and tomorrow it becomes a terrorist again.
00:04:31.000 | It's switchable.
00:04:31.840 | - And so we should call out evil when there's evil.
00:04:36.640 | - If we don't want to be part of it.
00:04:41.240 | - Become it.
00:04:43.440 | - Yeah, if we want to separate good from evil.
00:04:46.680 | That's one of the first things that,
00:04:48.480 | what was it, in the Garden of Eden,
00:04:51.880 | remember the first thing that God tells him
00:04:56.880 | was hey, you want some knowledge?
00:04:59.480 | Here's a tree of good and evil.
00:05:01.760 | - So this evil touched your life personally.
00:05:06.660 | Does your heart have anger, sadness, or is it hope?
00:05:12.460 | - I see some beautiful people coming from Pakistan.
00:05:17.460 | I see beautiful people everywhere.
00:05:23.820 | But I see horrible propagation of evil in this country too.
00:05:28.820 | It shows you how populistic slogans
00:05:37.180 | can catch the mind of the best intellectuals.
00:05:41.660 | - Today is Father's Day.
00:05:44.500 | - I didn't know that.
00:05:45.460 | - Yeah.
00:05:46.300 | - I heard it.
00:05:47.140 | - What's a fond memory you have of Daniel?
00:05:51.560 | - Oh, many good memories.
00:05:54.220 | Immense.
00:05:56.980 | He was my mentor.
00:05:58.300 | He had a sense of balance that I didn't have.
00:06:06.820 | (laughing)
00:06:08.260 | - Yeah.
00:06:09.740 | - He saw the beauty in every person.
00:06:11.940 | He was not as emotional as I am,
00:06:16.420 | more looking at things in perspective.
00:06:20.620 | He really liked every person.
00:06:23.740 | He really grew up with the idea that a foreigner
00:06:27.820 | is a reason for curiosity, not for fear.
00:06:34.940 | At one time we went to Berkeley
00:06:39.700 | and a homeless came out from some dark alley
00:06:43.620 | and said, "Hey man, can you spare a dime?"
00:06:45.580 | I retreated back, two feet back,
00:06:49.020 | and then I just hugged him and said,
00:06:50.540 | "Here's a dime, enjoy yourself.
00:06:52.780 | "Maybe you want some money to take a bus or whatever."
00:06:57.780 | Where did he get it?
00:07:00.980 | Not from me.
00:07:01.980 | (laughing)
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