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Hayek's last bullet

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was aimed at smart people

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in nineteen eighty eight

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this old man was eighty nine

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his body was already failing

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his memory was starting to slip

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but he insisted on writing one more book

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this was not some new idea

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it was an old account he had kept for forty years

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forty years earlier he wanted to make one thing clear

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and he never quite got it fully said

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the road to serfdom was about where a road paved with good intentions leads

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this last book goes back upstream

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to see what kind of thought that road actually started from

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he lived for nearly a century

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and watched the biggest belief of the twentieth century grow from a seed to its peak

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human reason can take over everything

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science was advancing

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technology was accelerating

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and smart people had more and more reason to believe

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that with enough data and enough power

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you could take civilization apart like a machine and rebuild it

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Hayek watched this flood

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and shook his head his whole life

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this last book

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is a man who shook his head his whole life

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making his final complete argument

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the title is the fatal conceit

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the subtitle is blunt

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the errors of socialism

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but do not let the subtitle mislead you

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the real target of this book is not some ism

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it is a state of mind

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the most respectable and most dangerous confidence humans have

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my reason

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is enough to design civilization

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hello

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everyone

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I am Leo Wang

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we once used a Buddhist lens

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to take apart Hayek's the road to serfdom

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and saw the structure of clinging to goodness

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good intentions draw a master blueprint

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and step by step move toward control

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today's book the fatal conceit

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is Hayek asking one layer deeper

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why does a person feel capable of drawing that blueprint

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behind that question hides a single word

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Buddhism has been talking about it for twenty five hundred years

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Hayek spent a lifetime on it

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they point at the same thing

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I will hold that word for now

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in nineteen seventy four he won the Nobel prize in economics

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and the title of his lecture is worth chewing on

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the pretence of knowledge

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pretence here means overstepping

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managing what was never yours to manage

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he said in front of the whole world

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that we people in economics

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many of us have made a fatal mistake

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pretending to possess knowledge that nobody actually possesses

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and then giving advice on top of that pretence

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and making policy

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notice

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he did not say some economists

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he said we

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a man who had just won the Nobel prize

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walks on stage and first tells the whole room

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myself included

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we may all be making this mistake

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Hayek did not fight this battle alone

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before him

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his teacher Mises fired the first shot back in nineteen twenty

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Mises wrote a paper

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and the point was almost brutally simple

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without market prices

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you cannot even calculate how many shoes to produce

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because a price is not a label

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it is a signal

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the needs preferences and situations of millions of people

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all compressed into one number

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when you abolish prices

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what you abolish is not a number

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it is the channel through which millions of people speak

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Hayek took this gun from his teacher

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and fought from the thirties all the way into the eighties

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from a young man into an old one

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counting from that Nobel lecture

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fourteen years later

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this last book

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is the final bullet in that gun

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the core argument compresses into two sentences

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first

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the most important orders in human civilization

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morality law markets language

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not one of them was designed by anyone

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they all grew out of a long evolution

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second

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the fatal conceit

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is believing that reason can replace that evolutionary process

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believing that if smart people sit down and think

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they can come up with something better than thousands of years of trial and error

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he called this mindset rational constructivism

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it is the belief

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that every good institution and every good rule

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must have come from some smart person or a group of smart people

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sitting down and designing it with reason

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if you accept that premise

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the next step follows naturally

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since good things are designed

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let us design a better one

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the step after that

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since we can design something better

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the old one should be replaced

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and the step after that

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whoever opposes the replacement

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is backward

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no malice is needed

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only a starting point

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an excessive trust in reason

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and the whole chain unfolds by itself

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okay

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now we can push in the Buddhist lens

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the word I held back earlier

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I can say it now

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what Hayek was describing

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in Buddhism is called conceit

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not the crude conceit that just means arrogance

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Buddhism puts it among the deepest afflictions of the mind

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it is far subtler than arrogance

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arrogance is thinking I am better than you

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easy to spot

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the core of conceit is not I am better than you

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it is I know

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just those two words

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I know what is right

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I know how to do it better

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I know what you need

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it does not need to look down on anyone

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it only needs a certainty about its own judgment

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a certainty that is never examined

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you may think this is a problem only philosophers have

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but look down at your own life

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and it is everywhere

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you have worked at a company for ten years

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a young newcomer arrives

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and uses a method you have never seen

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what is your first reaction

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it is not to check whether the method works

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it is a small jolt inside

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I have done this for ten years

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do I not know how to do it

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that jolt right there is conceit

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you are not evaluating a method

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you are defending an identity

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I am the one who knows

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do you notice

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that this and the fatal conceit Hayek describes

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are almost the same thing

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the fatal conceit

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is fatal conceit in the Buddhist sense

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rational constructivism

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is the conceit of thinking

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your thoughts think they are the boss

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but they are only the press secretary

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what is actually running things

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is an order far larger than any individual

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you can call it tradition

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you can call it evolution

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in Buddhism

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you can call it dependent origination

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nobody designed it

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it flows on its own

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think about how a tree grows

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nobody designed the arrangement of the leaves

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yet every leaf catches just enough sunlight

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where the roots reach

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is nobody's plan

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they go wherever the water is

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if you draw a growth blueprint for a tree

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and build strictly to spec

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what you grow will be a plastic flower

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civilization is the same

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morality is the same

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what they need is not a designer

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it is soil and time

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and then thinking jumps out and says

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let me arrange it for you

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that is conceit

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which leads to the most interesting insight in Hayek's book

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he said

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human society works

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not because reason understood the rules

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but because people followed rules they did not fully understand

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morality was not thought up

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it was tried out

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what to do and what not to do

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is not the result of some philosopher's deduction

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it is countless generations who lived and died

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and left this behind

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you follow it

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not because you understand why it is right

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but because the groups that followed it survived

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Buddhism has a concept

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that catches this precisely

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the obstruction of the known

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obstruction as in something that blocks you

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the known as in what you already know

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and what it blocks is nothing else

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than your ability to see

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and what blocks that ability most often

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is precisely what you already know

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it sounds strange at first

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ignorance is an obstruction

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that part is easy to understand

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not knowing will of course make you wrong

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but Buddhism says

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knowing is an obstruction too

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and it is the deeper layer

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why

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because the moment you feel you know

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you stop

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you stop looking

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you cover the unknown with the known

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and plug the question with an answer

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you collect a hundred truths

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and every one of them is correct

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but stacked on top of each other

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those hundred truths become a wall

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and whatever is behind that wall

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you can never see again

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what Hayek spent a lifetime arguing inside economics

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Buddhism says in one phrase the obstruction of the known

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the more you know

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the more you think you can design

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and the blinder you are to what you do not know

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the fatal conceit

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is a fatal obstruction of the known

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knowledge is not a lamp lighting the road ahead

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knowledge is what happens when you think the road ahead is already lit

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a wall quietly growing under your feet

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okay

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turn the camera around

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and point it at yourself

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have you ever had this moment

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you read a lot of books

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you heard a lot of wisdom

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and suddenly felt you had figured it out

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and what did you do after that

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you started planning

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you took that conclusion you figured out

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and used it to plan your life

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what should be finished by what age

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what kind of relationship is the right one

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what state finally counts as living wisely

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Hayek gave this mindset the academic name rational constructivism

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I translate it into a plain everyday version

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figure it out first then live

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sit with those few words for a second

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they sound light when you say them

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but count for yourself

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how many decisions in your life have been blocked by them

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what it means is

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that living requires getting the right answer first

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and then executing that answer

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your life is no longer a road you are walking

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it is a blueprint you are supposed to copy

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you turned your life into an engineering problem

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and every day into construction progress

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where there is progress there is falling behind

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where there is falling behind there is anxiety

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and the anxiety is not because you are living badly

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it is because you are living differently from the blueprint

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now look around you

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is there a friend

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thirty five and still not married

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not because they do not want to

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but because they feel they are not ready yet

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they want to think it through a little more

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is there someone

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who wrote fifty items on a list before quitting to start a business

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and needed every box ticked before daring to step

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and the list only kept getting longer

284
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while that step was never taken

285
00:09:30,521 --> 00:09:31,231
they are not lazy

286
00:09:31,641 --> 00:09:32,490
and they are not afraid

287
00:09:32,841 --> 00:09:34,081
they simply believe

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that there is a finish line called having figured it out

289
00:09:36,322 --> 00:09:38,851
and once they reach it everything will go smoothly

290
00:09:39,442 --> 00:09:41,051
but that finish line does not exist

291
00:09:41,721 --> 00:09:44,370
a road is never something you walk only after figuring it out

292
00:09:44,601 --> 00:09:46,081
the road becomes clear

293
00:09:46,082 --> 00:09:47,571
slowly as you walk it

294
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have you noticed

295
00:09:49,864 --> 00:09:53,293
that this has exactly the same structure as Hayek's fatal conceit

296
00:09:53,904 --> 00:09:54,732
the large version is

297
00:09:55,063 --> 00:09:57,393
reason can design a better civilization

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the small version is

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reason can design a better me

300
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the large one

301
00:10:02,264 --> 00:10:04,913
tests its cost with the freedom of tens of millions

302
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the small one

303
00:10:06,183 --> 00:10:08,643
tests its cost with your daily anxiety

304
00:10:09,114 --> 00:10:11,122
people on a spiritual path fall into this too

305
00:10:11,713 --> 00:10:12,663
you have memorized plenty of sutras

306
00:10:13,114 --> 00:10:13,823
you have read the commentaries

307
00:10:14,154 --> 00:10:15,202
you know emptiness

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00:10:15,313 --> 00:10:16,222
you know dependent origination

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00:10:16,514 --> 00:10:17,643
you know non self

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and then what

311
00:10:19,514 --> 00:10:21,043
and then you take all that knowing

312
00:10:21,274 --> 00:10:23,403
and measure which stage of practice you have reached

313
00:10:23,833 --> 00:10:25,992
you think you should not get upset anymore

314
00:10:25,994 --> 00:10:27,513
and you still get angry

315
00:10:27,514 --> 00:10:28,362
so you get anxious

316
00:10:28,713 --> 00:10:30,513
you think you should have let go by now

317
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and you still feel sad

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so you blame yourself

319
00:10:33,313 --> 00:10:34,982
this is exactly how the obstruction of the known works

320
00:10:35,353 --> 00:10:36,962
what you learned is not wrong

321
00:10:37,073 --> 00:10:39,043
but you turned it into a ruler

322
00:10:39,073 --> 00:10:40,323
and measure yourself with it every day

323
00:10:40,593 --> 00:10:41,943
and what it measures is not wisdom

324
00:10:42,193 --> 00:10:43,163
it is the gap

325
00:10:44,137 --> 00:10:45,006
if you have ever sat in meditation

326
00:10:45,257 --> 00:10:46,666
you know this even more directly

327
00:10:46,897 --> 00:10:49,246
many people do homework before their first sit

328
00:10:49,737 --> 00:10:50,467
reading books

329
00:10:50,538 --> 00:10:51,166
looking up methods

330
00:10:51,497 --> 00:10:53,546
wanting the theory clear before they sit down

331
00:10:53,818 --> 00:10:54,607
and once they sit

332
00:10:54,938 --> 00:10:56,416
part of the mind is quieting down

333
00:10:56,418 --> 00:10:57,947
while part of it is grading them

334
00:10:58,458 --> 00:10:59,847
those five minutes without wandering

335
00:11:00,097 --> 00:11:00,746
not bad

336
00:11:01,017 --> 00:11:01,207
oh no

337
00:11:01,578 --> 00:11:02,286
wandered off again

338
00:11:02,538 --> 00:11:03,266
bad score

339
00:11:03,617 --> 00:11:05,587
you turned meditation into an exam

340
00:11:05,658 --> 00:11:07,987
and turned awareness into the proctor

341
00:11:08,257 --> 00:11:09,207
the more you know

342
00:11:09,497 --> 00:11:11,256
the harder the exam you write for yourself

343
00:11:11,257 --> 00:11:12,707
and you never pass

344
00:11:13,097 --> 00:11:14,827
some old practitioners have said

345
00:11:14,897 --> 00:11:16,707
that beginners make the fastest progress

346
00:11:16,818 --> 00:11:18,786
and later on they get stuck instead

347
00:11:18,818 --> 00:11:19,847
it is not that the practice went backwards

348
00:11:20,058 --> 00:11:21,626
it is that they know too much

349
00:11:22,218 --> 00:11:22,926
all that knowing

350
00:11:23,218 --> 00:11:24,817
stacks up layer by layer

351
00:11:24,818 --> 00:11:25,727
and becomes a wall

352
00:11:26,178 --> 00:11:28,462
that closes you inside

353
00:11:28,812 --> 00:11:29,613
at this point

354
00:11:29,614 --> 00:11:31,982
I want to talk about where Hayek stopped

355
00:11:32,374 --> 00:11:34,222
he saw the ceiling of reason

356
00:11:34,453 --> 00:11:36,302
he spent a lifetime telling the world

357
00:11:36,413 --> 00:11:39,822
that evolved order is more reliable than designed order

358
00:11:40,053 --> 00:11:42,342
that tradition deserves more trust than a blueprint

359
00:11:42,573 --> 00:11:44,102
and that is a remarkable insight

360
00:11:44,413 --> 00:11:46,982
but into the judging mind itself

361
00:11:47,053 --> 00:11:48,342
he never looked any further

362
00:11:48,614 --> 00:11:49,003
he said

363
00:11:49,293 --> 00:11:50,623
we should be humble

364
00:11:50,653 --> 00:11:53,302
we should admit that what we do not know is greater than what we know

365
00:11:53,897 --> 00:11:54,527
but think about it

366
00:11:54,858 --> 00:11:56,226
this humility itself

367
00:11:56,338 --> 00:11:57,627
is still a kind of knowing

368
00:11:58,018 --> 00:12:00,066
I know that I do not know

369
00:12:00,458 --> 00:12:01,846
how many knowings are in that sentence

370
00:12:02,417 --> 00:12:03,226
two

371
00:12:03,858 --> 00:12:05,926
and that is how thorough the obstruction of the known is

372
00:12:06,378 --> 00:12:08,336
even feeling that you have become humble

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00:12:08,338 --> 00:12:10,808
can turn into a new round of certainty

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00:12:11,079 --> 00:12:12,399
he saw that wall

375
00:12:12,399 --> 00:12:13,958
but he stood on this side of it

376
00:12:13,960 --> 00:12:15,889
describing it in the language of reason

377
00:12:16,159 --> 00:12:18,848
Buddhism is not standing on the other side calling you over

378
00:12:19,039 --> 00:12:20,509
Buddhism lets you see

379
00:12:20,840 --> 00:12:22,249
that you and that wall

380
00:12:22,319 --> 00:12:23,609
are the same thing

381
00:12:24,120 --> 00:12:26,169
the discriminating mind built that wall

382
00:12:26,279 --> 00:12:30,289
and it also built the you who thinks it is looking at the wall

383
00:12:30,600 --> 00:12:31,068
this step

384
00:12:31,399 --> 00:12:33,088
is not a failure of Hayek

385
00:12:33,120 --> 00:12:34,328
it is his boundary

386
00:12:34,760 --> 00:12:36,688
he did everything he could do

387
00:12:36,960 --> 00:12:37,828
and the step that remains

388
00:12:38,079 --> 00:12:39,529
belongs to another road

389
00:12:40,013 --> 00:12:40,762
in nineteen ninety two

390
00:12:41,013 --> 00:12:41,882
Hayek died

391
00:12:42,172 --> 00:12:43,181
at ninety two

392
00:12:43,493 --> 00:12:45,622
he was alone in academia for decades

393
00:12:45,812 --> 00:12:47,981
and the Nobel prize came almost thirty years late

394
00:12:48,212 --> 00:12:49,581
by the end of the eighties

395
00:12:49,613 --> 00:12:51,382
history finally spoke for him

396
00:12:51,572 --> 00:12:53,461
the world opened his books again

397
00:12:53,572 --> 00:12:57,262
and found every line this old man wrote decades earlier coming true

398
00:12:57,733 --> 00:13:00,422
but he never wrote in order to be proven right

399
00:13:00,773 --> 00:13:02,181
he never once changed his position

400
00:13:02,452 --> 00:13:05,461
for a man in an age when the whole world was drawing blueprints

401
00:13:05,493 --> 00:13:06,802
to keep saying the blueprints were flawed

402
00:13:07,373 --> 00:13:08,772
whatever you want to call it

403
00:13:08,773 --> 00:13:11,607
there is something real inside that steadiness

404
00:13:11,878 --> 00:13:13,487
one last question for you

405
00:13:13,797 --> 00:13:17,107
is there a figure it out first then live sitting inside you

406
00:13:17,637 --> 00:13:20,326
how many truths and how many plans have you piled up

407
00:13:20,358 --> 00:13:22,676
waiting for the day when it all comes clear

408
00:13:22,677 --> 00:13:24,426
before you let yourself really start living

409
00:13:25,358 --> 00:13:26,027
are those truths

410
00:13:26,277 --> 00:13:27,566
lighting up your road

411
00:13:27,598 --> 00:13:29,066
or have they already become your wall

412
00:13:30,617 --> 00:13:31,286
I am Leo Wang

413
00:13:31,617 --> 00:13:32,707
see you next time