The Exchanges

Q of doing things. Part of the contestability and skepticism is about Criticizing and not taking what's given as a given, but there is also an element when you're building a company or if you're pushing forward an idea back then to now where there's also a collaborative element where there's trust that goes with that skepticism. So what is the role of trust in pushing forward this engine of creativity?

A That's a really good question. We should realize that much of the knowledge created at that time is created by single individuals. There's not that much Collaboration, you know, co-authorship, and these are multiple names on papers and books that we see today, that wasn't very much, that was quite uncommon in those days. But what happens is that, you know, knowledge has to be circulated, it has to be distributed, and what is created in Europe is a virtual network, and that plays a very important role in this book, which is known as the Republic of Letters. The Respublica Literaria, as they call it in Latin. And what it is, it's a sort of a virtual network. It's not a formal organization. There is no bricks and mortar institutions involved, but it's based on a network of people who write letters to each other, who correspond. They publish books and they read each other's books. And the reason that trust emerges is because that everybody knows that if you publish something or you, some discovery, some, Mathematical theorem that you have proven, or some planet you've discovered, or some new species that you found, that others will take, will look at it, because they know that other, this has been vetted by other experts, and so if it survives, that means you must got it right. Trust is created By the fact that experts and specialists and learned people talk to each other, communic…

AI assessment note: “Trust is created By the fact that experts and specialists and learned people talk”

Q And by this kind of pattern you mean the focus on intellectual activity?

A The focus of intellectual activity, the best minds in the world. I mean, look, look what happens with polio or with AIDS. Uh, same thing, you know, a disease pops up, and everybody goes, oh my god, you know, this disease becomes a threat to us, and so we put our best minds to it, we took our best tools. It's not always within people's capability, so when the Black Death occurs in Europe in the 14th century, you know, they had no clue what it was that hit them, they had no tools, they had no idea what was causing this, and so instead of preventing the problem, they executed, they killed the Jews, because that's how the Jews were poisoning the wells. So, you know, that's, we should hope that that does not happen, uh, finding a scapegoat instead of a solution.

AI assessment note: “The focus of intellectual activity, the best minds in the world.”

Q I totally buy that. So one question I have for you, so far we've been talking a lot about knowledge and production at sort of a more individual level in this marketplace of ideas. What's the role of institutions in this, like both then and now, and how do you see that evolution happening?

A Well, so we, the way we think about institutions today, Is that we don't really think about them as the state or any sort of formal organization. Institutions are ways in which we set the rules of behavior that individuals observe when they're active in the marketplace, but also when, you know, when they're playing basketball or something. The institution that I am interested in here are the institutions that govern the markets for ideas. And you know, you get two kinds of institutions. You get national institutions. And you get transnational institutions, and my way of thinking about it is that the national institutions probably play a relatively secondary role. Quite frankly, you know, if you put a gun to my head, I would say what happened, happened despite the best efforts of these states, not thanks to them. What is far more interesting, I think, is this spontaneous emergent body of the Republic of Letters, which is An institution, even though it doesn't have a headquarters, and it doesn't have a CEO, and nobody designed it, and nobody founded it, it's, it's a result, it's one of those spontaneous virtual networks, a little bit, if you want, like, you know, like our virtual communities today.

AI assessment note: “What is far more interesting, I think, is this spontaneous emergent body of the Republic of Letters”

Q of doing things. Part of the contestability and skepticism is about Criticizing and not taking what's given as a given, but there is also an element when you're building a company or if you're pushing forward an idea back then to now where there's also a collaborative element where there's trust that goes with that skepticism. So what is the role of trust in pushing forward this engine of creativity?

A That's a really good question. We should realize that much of the knowledge created at that time is created by single individuals. There's not that much Collaboration, you know, co-authorship, and these are multiple names on papers and books that we see today, that wasn't very much, that was quite uncommon in those days. But what happens is that, you know, knowledge has to be circulated, it has to be distributed, and what is created in Europe is a virtual network, and that plays a very important role in this book, which is known as the Republic of Letters. The Respublica Literaria, as they call it in Latin. And what it is, it's a sort of a virtual network. It's not a formal organization. There is no bricks and mortar institutions involved, but it's based on a network of people who write letters to each other, who correspond. They publish books and they read each other's books. And the reason that trust emerges is because that everybody knows that if you publish something or you, some discovery, some, Mathematical theorem that you have proven, or some planet you've discovered, or some new species that you found, that others will take, will look at it, because they know that other, this has been vetted by other experts, and so if it survives, that means you must got it right. Trust is created By the fact that experts and specialists and learned people talk to each other, communic…

AI assessment note: “Trust is created By the fact that experts and specialists and learned people talk”

Q I totally buy that. So one question I have for you, so far we've been talking a lot about knowledge and production at sort of a more individual level in this marketplace of ideas. What's the role of institutions in this, like both then and now, and how do you see that evolution happening?

A Well, so we, the way we think about institutions today, Is that we don't really think about them as the state or any sort of formal organization. Institutions are ways in which we set the rules of behavior that individuals observe when they're active in the marketplace, but also when, you know, when they're playing basketball or something. The institution that I am interested in here are the institutions that govern the markets for ideas. And you know, you get two kinds of institutions. You get national institutions. And you get transnational institutions, and my way of thinking about it is that the national institutions probably play a relatively secondary role. Quite frankly, you know, if you put a gun to my head, I would say what happened, happened despite the best efforts of these states, not thanks to them. What is far more interesting, I think, is this spontaneous emergent body of the Republic of Letters, which is An institution, even though it doesn't have a headquarters, and it doesn't have a CEO, and nobody designed it, and nobody founded it, it's, it's a result, it's one of those spontaneous virtual networks, a little bit, if you want, like, you know, like our virtual communities today.

AI assessment note: “national institutions probably play a relatively secondary role”