Are You a Skeptic or a Political Party Person?

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"I was willing to pay the small tax of being cheated never and now and then in exchange for the huge benefit of people giving me their best because I trusted them," he says. "The default for human behavior is that we are trinsically selfless and altruistic, which is the default." He adds: "Even the Bernie Madoff, you know, I mean, those types, they have to go through quite a bit to pull off their scams,. right? Right?"

On his 68th birthday, Kevin Kelly began to write down for his young adult children some things he had learned about life that he wished he had known earlier. To his surprise, Kelly had more to say than he thought, and kept adding to the advice over the years, compiling a life’s wisdom into the pages of his book: Excellent Advice for Living.

Shermer and Kelly discuss: protopian progress • ChatGPT • artificial intelligence; an existential threat? • evolution • cultural progress • self-driving cars • innovation • social media • putting an end to war • compound interest and the long term effect of small changes • why you don’t want to be a billionaire • beliefs and reason • setting unreasonable goals • persistence as key to success • probabilities and statistics, not algebra and calculus • investing: buy and hold • how to fully become yourself.

Kevin Kelly helped launch and edit Wired magazine. He has written for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, among many other publications. His previous books include What Technology Wants, and The Inevitable, a New York Times bestseller. He is known for his technological optimism. Currently he is a Senior Maverick at Wired and lives in Pacifica, California.