On Freedom / Davos 2025

Summary

This discussion features historian Timothy Snyder presenting his views on freedom as outlined in his book “On Freedom.” Snyder argues that freedom is the most important value because it allows for the realization of other values that may conflict. He emphasizes that freedom should be understood as positive (“freedom to”) rather than just negative (“freedom from”), and that it requires empathy and engagement with others to truly know oneself.

Snyder proposes five “forms of freedom” that humans need throughout life: sovereignty (childhood development), unpredictability (ability to mix values), mobility, factuality, and solidarity. He contends that freedom and government are not opposed, but rather that good government creates the conditions for freedom. This challenges both American libertarian and European social democratic approaches.

The discussion touches on resistance to authoritarianism, with Snyder advising small-scale collective action and persistence. He also addresses the relationship between freedom and responsibility, arguing that true freedom involves making moral choices that shape one’s character.

In response to a question about AI and automated systems, Snyder expresses concern about centralized power and emphasizes the importance of considering values when developing new technologies. He warns that avoiding discussions of values in AI development risks empowering a few at the expense of many.

Throughout, Snyder stresses the need to address “why” questions about human values, not just “how” questions about efficiency and technology. He concludes by emphasizing the importance of human-to-human interaction in discussions about freedom and societal issues.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– Freedom as a positive concept (“freedom to”) rather than just negative (“freedom from”)

– The importance of empathy and understanding others in order to be truly free

– Freedom and government as mutually reinforcing rather than opposed

– The “forms of freedom” needed throughout life: sovereignty, unpredictability, mobility, factuality, solidarity

– Challenges to freedom in the digital age and with AI/automated systems

Overall purpose:

The main goal was to present a new philosophical framework for understanding freedom as a positive concept that requires empathy, values, and supportive conditions created by government. The speaker aimed to challenge common notions of freedom and argue for its importance as the highest value.

Tone:

The tone was primarily intellectual and philosophical, but with an engaging and sometimes humorous delivery. The speaker used anecdotes and relatable examples to make abstract concepts more accessible. The tone became more serious when discussing challenges to freedom, but remained optimistic overall about the possibility of achieving true freedom.

Speakers

– Timothy Snyder: Historian, Professor

Additional speakers:

– Audience members: Various unnamed audience members who asked questions, including:

– A social innovator from Brazil

– Someone who lived in Holland and the Soviet Union

– Ken Jun: Works on AI

Expanded Summary of Timothy Snyder’s Discussion on Freedom

Introduction

This discussion featured historian and professor Timothy Snyder presenting his views on freedom as outlined in his book “On Freedom”. The overall purpose was to present a new philosophical framework for understanding freedom as a positive concept that requires empathy, values, and supportive conditions created by government.

Key Concepts of Freedom

Snyder argued that freedom is the highest value because it allows for the realization of other competing values. He emphasized that freedom should be understood as positive (“freedom to”) rather than just negative (“freedom from”), and that it requires empathy and engagement with others to truly know oneself.

Central to Snyder’s argument was that freedom and government are not opposed, but rather that good government creates the conditions for freedom. This challenges both American libertarian and European social democratic approaches.

Snyder introduced the concept of “Leib” (German for “lived body”) as a body in contact with the world, contrasting it with the idea of the body as just a physical object (“Körper”). This distinction underscores the importance of embodied experience in understanding freedom.

Critique of Post-1989 Views

Snyder criticized the post-1989 view that “history brings freedom automatically,” describing it as an authoritarian position. He argued that this perspective has led to complacency and a failure to actively work towards maintaining and expanding freedom.

Freedom and Responsibility

Snyder contended that true freedom involves making moral choices that shape one’s character. He argued that “running away from responsibility doesn’t make you free” and that freedom requires acknowledging one’s place in the world and engaging with things that matter. This perspective connects freedom to responsibility and active engagement, countering notions of freedom as merely the absence of constraints.

Snyder also emphasized the importance of childhood development in discussions of freedom, suggesting that early experiences shape our capacity for freedom later in life.

Challenges to Freedom in the Digital Age

The discussion touched on the challenges to freedom posed by digital technology and artificial intelligence. Snyder expressed concern that digital technology and social media can make people more predictable and less free. He emphasized the importance of considering values when developing new technologies and warned that avoiding discussions of values in AI development risks empowering a few at the expense of many.

Snyder drew an analogy to the printing press, noting how society adapted to it over time, suggesting a similar process may be necessary for current technological changes.

Resistance to Authoritarianism

Snyder addressed the topic of resistance to authoritarianism, advising small-scale collective action and persistence. He argued that resistance movements need to be for something positive, not just against authoritarianism. Snyder noted that successful protest movements often face many defeats before succeeding, emphasizing the importance of perseverance.

Audience Engagement and Questions

The audience engagement revealed several key concerns, including lessons from historical resistance movements, differences between European and American approaches to freedom, and the challenges posed by AI and automated systems to individual freedom.

Thought-Provoking Comments

Several of Snyder’s statements stood out as particularly thought-provoking:

1. “How questions are ultimately completely meaningless unless you have an answer to why questions.” This challenged the common focus on efficiency and technical solutions, arguing for the primacy of examining underlying values and motivations.

2. “If we dehumanise other people we make ourselves unfree.” This connected freedom to empathy and understanding others in a counterintuitive way, challenging individualistic notions of freedom.

3. “Freedom and government actually reinforce one another. Freedom justifies government. And government, rightly understood, creates the conditions in which we can be free.” This statement challenged both libertarian and social democratic views by arguing for a symbiotic relationship between freedom and government.

Conclusion

Throughout the discussion, Snyder stressed the need to address “why” questions about human values, not just “how” questions about efficiency and technology. He concluded by emphasizing the importance of human-to-human interaction in discussions about freedom and societal issues, expressing skepticism towards over-reliance on technologies like PowerPoint presentations.

The discussion provided a nuanced exploration of freedom, challenging conventional notions and connecting abstract philosophical concepts to concrete societal and technological issues. It prompted participants to reconsider their assumptions about freedom and its role in society, leading to a more interconnected understanding of the concept.

Timothy Snyder: intro music so greetings everybody who’s here and who’s online i’m timothy snyder i’m a historian which means that i’m one of the very few humanities people at this particular endeavor i always feel like we few humanities people are invited here a bit in the role of court jesters to to create a contrast to all of the other very serious things that are happening but my my central point here will be that all of these very serious things that are happening kind of beg the question if we go to the world economic forum year after year or similar gatherings around the world we’re confronted constantly with questions of how how to be more efficient how to be more interconnected how to communicate better how to confront problems but how questions are ultimately completely i’m just going to come out and say it meaningless unless you have an answer to why questions so much of the our civilization so much of what troubled us i think about where we are has to do with the fact that we’re constantly chasing our tails with how questions getting ever better getting ever faster at doing things the point of which we ultimately do not know right so what i’m trying to do in this book on freedom and i’m very happy to have the chance to speak to you and talk to you about it is to try to give a big answer to why and my big answer is is freedom a word that is used an awful lot to the point of being spoiled i think especially by speakers of my version of english but i think which nevertheless is the is the most important of values and let me try to make a case for that i think freedom is the most important of values because it is the state or condition in which we can realize all the other values about which we must disagree and among which there are inherent contradictions so one of the reasons we have to be free is that there is no one good thing which actually includes all the other things or resolves all the other contradictions you can be loyal and that’s good you can be honest that’s also good but it’s very hard to be both sometimes at the same time if you say afterwards hey professor snyder you’re looking great maybe you’re being loyal maybe you’re being honest mercy is a good thing consistency is a good thing but mercy is inherently inconsistent it’s making an exception the good things don’t all go together either among us or within us and therefore freedom i think is the value of values but for freedom to make sense freedom has to be positive in the in the way that i’ve been talking about it i think that values are real in the world there is real as the rocks or the trees or the traffic jams on the promenade they’re not real in the same way but they’re real and part of our problem is that we dodge them we’re uncomfortable with them we don’t know how to talk about them and then somebody comes with a really strong values claim and suddenly they win in politics there are many values they’re real they’re they conflict and therefore freedom has to be positive it has to be a kind of quest towards finding and realizing the things that you think are good which which raises the question of what politics are for right so if if freedom is what i think it is what is the job of government the job of government would then be to create the conditions under which people can be free and here we come to what i think is kind of the key axial distinction which helps us to show where the discussion of freedom goes off in the wrong way the way i’m talking about freedom is freedom to freedom to become yourself which of course you cannot do on your own that’s the trick the the main way people talk about freedom especially in english is freedom from and that’s a trap that’s a dead end it’s a dead end that almost everybody talking about freedom is on but it’s a dead end and let me try to explain why of course it’s important to be free from oppression that’s true but the reason why it’s important to be free from oppression is because you’re a human being the wall isn’t the problem the problem is the wall constrains a human being and once you realize that you realize that knocking down the wall isn’t enough after you knock down the wall there’s still a person and that person needs care and education and many other things if that person is going to become free right freedom from isn’t just wrong though philosophically it’s also wrong politically because if we think freedom from is the only kind of freedom and again that’s the dominant narrative i would say probably at this conference generally in the world certainly in the united states if you think it’s just freedom from things then immediately you say okay then the only problem is the government and if the only problem is the government then we have to make the government as small as possible and of course if you make the government as small as possible then it’s weaker than the oligarchs and you haven’t solved any problems you’ve just replaced one form of power with another form of power so that’s one political problem another political problem is that if you think that freedom is just freedom from it’s very easy to say well the problem is the government but the problem is also other people and that’s the that’s the leap from libertarianism to fascism which on the surface is seems so surprising but which people make all the time if you think freedom is just negative it’s very easy to shift from oh the the bureaucrats are the problem to well all those immigrants that the bureaucrats let in they’re the problem right and so then you get this toggle from libertarianism to fascism which is one way of describing where we are in the world in 2025 which reveals the ultimate human problem about this which is that if i think that freedom is just freedom from i have passed the buck if i say freedom is just freedom from what i’m saying is i’m great i’m fine there’s nothing wrong with me only the government is the problem and of course once you say that you’re not a free person because you haven’t addressed the basic issue of what you actually value and what you actually want to do in the world right and so if you think about freedom this way freedom isn’t just positive politically i’m trying to say it’s positive politically because freedom means a justification for government a justification being that government exists in order to create the conditions in which we can be free. But it’s also positive in the sense that it requires us to engage one with the other. And here I’m going to mount a defense of empathy. So if you say empathy in like a tough situation like the World Economic Forum or the Munich Security Conference or just in you know in politics in general people think oh that’s like nicey-nice it doesn’t really matter why should be empathetic. And the answer is that empathy isn’t just I mean it’s nice to be a good person but in order to be free, in order to be free you actually do have to understand other people. And here’s why. If we all go through life with big metaphysical clumps of spinach stuck between our teeth, we all go through life with big metaphysical bits of shaving cream on our face. There are things about ourselves which we do not see but which are true. And the key to freedom of course is knowing yourself, knowing what you care about. You literally cannot do that without the help of other people. And you will not accept the help of other people unless you see them as human. And you will not see them as human unless you’re capable of empathizing with them. Unless you in fact have empathy with them. And so the beautiful people who made these beautiful slides also did this beautiful thing of like beautifully putting in huge letters one of the deep philosophical arguments of my book which is about Koeper and Leib. Yes it’s beautiful, take photos. This is a little philosophical detour that I make in the book where I try to explain how one way to think about the body is just one object among other objects. And if we think about it that way then we can say sure freedom is negative, we’re just like physical objects, we just bounce around the world, all we need is no barriers. Very attractive, elegant, parsimonious, totally fallacious, seductive but completely untrue. Or we can say that the body is like a Leib. And if there are any like archaic German speakers out there, thank you, I’m glad to have your support. But a Leib is a word which is disappeared from, largely disappearing from German, which is sad. It’s the word used for body in Luther’s translation of the Bible for example. A Leib is a body in contact with the world. Not just a physical object but a living object which takes things in and which pushes things out. And it’s that it’s a concept like that which we have to have for freedom. Because if we think of ourselves as just objects like other objects we will find ourselves in a kind of classical physics, billiard balls bouncing off barriers or not. But if we think of ourselves as bodies who need the empathy of other bodies to be free, we’ll actually be in a much more solid place. And so this leads to one of the nice conclusions in the book, I hope there are many others, but if we dehumanize other people we make ourselves unfree. And oh that attracted a lot of photos, that’s nice. And this is like, this sounds just like one of these nice things, but it’s not just a nice thing. It’s literally true. Word for word, syllable for syllable, this is literally true. I can only be free as an American if I have some sense, some sense, I can’t get all the way to the bottom of it, but if I don’t have some sense of what African-Americans have gone through in my country, I cannot be free as an American. I cannot be free as a person unless I can try to have some sense of what other people are going through, because if I don’t do that, I can’t see myself in the world. And if I can’t see myself in the world, I don’t actually know the things about myself that I need to know. And so there’s a there’s a strong impulse for people to say, I’m free, therefore I can hate you. And my freedom actually means that I hate you. It’s the same thing, but that’s not actually freedom. That’s the use of the word, but in fact that’s a trap. So the way that I then try to proceed after making this kind of argument is to bring together the the philosophy and the politics. If I think that freedom is positive in this philosophical sense, that it involves values and it involves one another, it involves empathy in ourselves, if I think that freedom is positive in a political sense, in the sense that the government has to be there to create the conditions for people to be free, how does that work? And so the middle part of the book is where I develop these things which I call the forms of freedom. And there are five of them. And the idea is to imagine the humans going through life and what they need along the way to become free. And the going through life part, I just want to say this, sorry it’s gonna sound a little bit like bragging, so please forgive me in advance, but generally when we talk about freedom, we’re imagining an adult person who already has property and is completely rational and is just out there making decisions. What I’m concerned about is how we actually create such a person. Because it’s actually hard to become that rational person who’s out there making decisions. It takes a lot of human work and cooperation to get there. And so in a discussion about freedom, if you just assume that there’s already an adult person who is individual and makes their own decisions, has their own values, you’re really just begging the question of how you got there in the first place. Or often it’s worse, that the paradigmatic person in discussion of freedom is a, you know, slave owner in the early 19th century or a Roman or someone, or someone who is free because precisely they’re at the pyramid of control and there are slaves and women, right, at their beck and call. And that notion of freedom where you just assume, you kind of just make everything in the background go away, obviously isn’t going to be helpful for us. So how do you get to a situation where people can be free? What I mean by sovereignty is, I’m changing the meaning of this word a lot. I don’t mean the sovereign state. I mean babies. I mean babies. So if we’re going to have a serious discussion about freedom, we can’t start with imaginary middle-aged men. Although I like to hope that a real middle-aged man could lead the discussion. We have to start with actually existing babies and what it takes in child development to create young people who can be free. That’s what I mean by sovereignty. And we know a lot about childhood development. And for me, childhood development and birth is right at the center of freedom. The next stage, in the next stage of life, let’s say teenage years, do you become predictable or unpredictable? And you know, those of you who are perhaps struggling with the phenomenon of brain-rotted, meme-repeating teenagers will have some idea of what I’m talking about. I’m looking for confessions on the faces of people. There are actually quite a few, for those of you who are watching on the internet. So unpredictability is the core of freedom. Because if you have values, like I mentioned a few, but like if you’re grace or beauty or loyalty or integrity, when you mix those values together, you become unpredictable. You’re not like a billiard ball. It’s not classical physics anymore. If you care about values, you are different in the universe than a pebble. Congratulations. You’re not just an object. You are injecting into the whole universe unpredictability that wasn’t there before. And that’s amazing and beautiful and unique. And as far as we know, we’re the only ones in the universe who can do it. Except maybe the octopi, because they’re smart too. But as far as we know, we’re the only ones in the universe who can do this. On the other hand, if you are predictable, then you are very easily ruled. And grosso modo, that is why the digital world is set up to make you more predictable, as it does, right? Okay. The next form of freedom is mobility. You grow up, you want to go out into the world, you want to physically move, you want to rebel against the very values you were raised again within. That’s good. In order to be mobile though, there have to be roads and schools and universities and other things that we do collectively. The final forms of freedom, factuality and solidarity, are more like looking back. In order for us to be free, we have to live in a world where things are true. If things are not true, there’s no traction for us to resist. If things are not true, it’s very hard to find ways to cooperate. And if we’re going to live in a world where we’re free, solidarity is also very important. As I tried to explain, freedom doesn’t actually make sense as me against you. It doesn’t even make sense as me against the world. Freedom only makes sense as all of us here together. And so the political argument I’ve been trying to make is that freedom and government actually go together. And this is kind of a challenge both to the way that, let’s say, Americans talk about freedom, but also other people. assume that freedom is against government. And as I tried to explain, that’s a trap. It’s literally a trap. You end up in a situation, not an entirely hypothetical situation, where the oligarchs come to power. But the Europeans, or people who believe in social democracy or a welfare state, will often say, well, that doesn’t have anything to do with freedom. In my view, it does. In my view, the welfare state actually should be primarily justified as liberating people. I think that’s the main thing that it, in fact, does. But my larger point is that wherever you’re starting, freedom and government actually reinforce one another. Freedom justifies government. And government, rightly understood, creates the conditions in which we can be free. So I have almost kept to my 15 minutes, which means that we have almost 15 minutes to have a little discussion, which I’m very much looking forward to. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. So we have a microphone, so if you could raise your hands, the microphone will come to you. If you don’t raise your hands, I will just call on you, because I’m a professor, and that’s how I roll. Thank you, Professor.

Audience: In your view, what we can modern social movements learn from historical examples of resistance against authoritarian regimes? And how can we, as individuals, contribute meaningfully without feeling powerless against the system, which is how I feel right now? Can I ask you where you’re coming from? I’m from Brazil. I’m a social innovator. Yeah, thank you.

Timothy Snyder: That’s a wonderful question. And it moves me a little bit out of my on freedom role into my on tyranny role. So for those of you who don’t know, I wrote a little book called On Tyranny, which was mainly about how to resist and how to form opposition. And this book is kind of my answer to myself, because people quite rightly asked, if we’re trying to defend something, what is the thing that we should be defending? Which is actually a hard question, and so I spent seven years trying to think about it and get to here. But the two things go together, and in a way, it’s part of the answer to your question. We can’t only be against things. We have to be for things. That’s really important, morally and practically. The bad guys have succeeded largely by stripping the future out of our imaginations and making it seem like there are no alternatives. So then you think, even if these guys left, well, we can’t imagine anything much better. And so therefore, why protest? So part of it is being able to imagine good things, which is what I was struggling with in this. And I think it’s an important part of resistance, because I think resistance has to have a positive sign and not a minus sign. It’s resistance in the name of something or opposition in the name of something. The loneliness is really important. Aspiring and real authoritarians want us to be lonely, and so action always has to be with other people. And you know this better than I, but if you have no other recourse, you just find somebody who’s doing something you think is important, and you just do it with them. And it could and probably should be on a very small scale. So one of the ways you feel lonely is you think, well, they control the government, and I’m just me. But the fallacy there is the idea that you have to do it on your own, but you don’t. What you have to do is do one little thing with some other people. And then historically, to answer your question, there’s a practice makes perfect question to resistance. All, and somebody will correct me, but I think it’s right to say all protest movements which eventually succeeded failed multiple times along the way. And so if you look at any important social movement against apartheid, civil rights in the United States, there’s defeat after defeat after defeat after defeat. And so you have to realize, OK, I might be in that trough, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not going to come up again. Thank you. You talked a little bit about the fact that freedom and government go together and that maybe this isn’t so popular these days in the US. I would love to hear if you think there’s a meaningful difference on what’s often called the European approach to freedom and the American approach to freedom, or is that just a misconception? Tell me more about the European approach to freedom.

Audience: I don’t know. It sounds like what you’re describing. So are we seeking to differentiate artificially? Is there, in fact, one collective approach to freedom? What do you make of the fact that people want at least to see a distinction? OK, I’ll tell you what I think. I’m not sure I can quite answer the question. So the question had to do with, if you

Timothy Snyder: couldn’t hear, between European and American definitions of freedom. So I’m trying to do something here which is incredibly immodest. I’m not discussing existing definitions of freedom. I’m very happy to do that. But I’m doing the immodest philosophical thing of saying there’s a right answer to this question, and I believe this is the right answer. I believe that, in fact, freedom is the highest value because values are real in the world, and they compete. And therefore, freedom is the value of values because it’s the condition in which we as human beings can allow values to flow through us, and we can learn from them, and have moral character. So I think there’s a correct answer. I just want to make that clear before I start refereeing Americans and Europeans. My basic sense is that Americans with freedom talk themselves into a wall. We talk, and talk, and talk about freedom without saying what it actually means, ever. And the default meaning is government is bad. And so then that recommends a certain set of policies, which you then justify as freedom. And somehow, that seems coherent. And the libertarian position, it’s coherent. But coherence isn’t the only thing in the world. Many things are coherent, but that doesn’t mean that they’re true. Just because something rhymes doesn’t make it a fact, basically. But it’s like saying government bad, shrink government good, because it’s freedom, is easy to say. And I think some people actually believe it and aren’t just cynical. But that’s the American approach. The European approach, again, I want to be corrected by actual living Europeans, but the European approach is actually to dodge talking about freedom and to justify government policy in other terms, like solidarity or justice. And in my view, solidarity and justice are real things in the world, and they’re important. But they’re not the fundamental justification for making sure that every child is educated. For me, the fundamental justification would be freedom. So I’m kind of arguing with both an American libertarian and a European social democratic position, where I think the Americans have the right word, very, very roughly here. The Americans have the right word, but they don’t understand it. And the Europeans have the right policies, but they don’t understand them. Great. OK. That’s the answer. OK. We had a question up here. Hello. I lived half of my life in Holland. My first half of my life, I lived in Soviet Union. My own thoughts about freedom is that people mostly are afraid of that if they exchange it for responsibility. So not having responsibility is sometimes a choice of a whole population. I want your thoughts about that. Yeah, I thank you for that. That is a very, very East European remark. And the word responsibility is incredibly important. So I want to take the point that freedom is not natural, because I think that is a very seductive. It’s very seductive to think, well, whatever I’m doing, it must show I’m a free person. Whatever I’m doing, however self-destructive or however destructive of others or however nonsensical or inconsistent, it must be freedom because I’m doing it. That’s very easy, very elegant, very parsimonious, but I think not true. Because in order to be a free person, you have to have a sense of what you actually care about. And I mean, there’s a paradox I start with in the book, where I think being a free person sometimes means that your range of choice is actually limited. Because if you’re free, that means you’ve made over time in your life a series of moral choices. And those moral choices have made you, in turn. And so sometimes you face. a situation where you don’t say, oh, I’ve got 1,000 things I can do here. You face a situation where you say, because I’m me, there’s really only one thing I can do. And that’s not because you’re unfree. It’s because you’re free, precisely. Like I think unfree people can always run away. But free people sometimes can’t. And that’s the difference. And so your invocation of the word responsibility is very important here. Running away from responsibility doesn’t make you free. Because the only way to be free is to say, I am, in fact, alive. I am in the world. There are things that matter. There are other people who also have values. And I’m going to engage in that moral world and that political world and that social world. I think running away from that is the decision of an unfree person. And of course, you’re right that people do that. And of course, you’re also right that that’s a governing strategy. I can say, I’ll make all the decisions for you. And there’ll be plenty of candy in the stores. And the trains will run on time. And you can say, hooray, I love trains and candy. That’s a governing strategy. And it can work. What I’m saying is that that’s not freedom. That’s not freedom. But I want to take your point and agree with it completely. Freedom is a challenge. When I say it’s the value of values, I am not saying that history brings it automatically. On the contrary, the moment you say history brings freedom automatically, you’re taking an authoritarian position. And I want to say this as sharply and as hard as I can. The thing that people said after 1989, that history is over, that freedom is going to come automatically, that was an authoritarian position. The moment you say that freedom is brought from the outside, you’re saying you don’t believe in freedom. Freedom can’t be brought from the outside. I can create conditions in which people are more likely to become free. But if I say that history is bringing freedom, if I take a deterministic position, I’m saying everybody’s unfree. I’m not talking about freedom at that point. And that’s a big mistake that a lot of folks made after 1989. Okay. We had some questions in the back, maybe, before we come up. Yeah. Hey.

Audience: My name is Ken Jun. And I work on AI. And something I’ve been thinking a lot about and our team has been thinking a lot about is automated systems in the context of freedom, or freedom in the context of automated systems. I think by your definition, maybe we can still be free even when automated systems are making a lot of decisions on our behalf. But something that we are feeling a bit concerned about is this kind of like centralization of power and how that like how the future is going to have a lot more automated systems making decisions for us. And so, a question I have is how do you think about freedom in the context of the system that you exist in? And if that system is not necessarily serving you, it’s like serving someone else’s interests. That’s what, you know, other people built these automated systems. We already experienced this on the internet today. Like, how can we be free? And is there a notion of resistance that is possible? Or like, who’s responsible for that, for changing that?

Timothy Snyder: Thank you. I mean, so let me start with a little anecdote. These beautiful graphics that we have here are a result of a little compromise. Because it’s my view that when people come to conferences, they shouldn’t use visuals. So I’m just telling you where I’m coming from, okay? My view is that when people, when there’s a conversation, it should be between humans. And actually, we shouldn’t use technology at all. So like, I’m against PowerPoint. Like I’m against PowerPoint. I’m against dimming the lights, going to sleep, and pretending to pay attention to slides. I’m against that. I’m in favor of humans. I’m in favor of you talking to me and me talking to you. And I think that’s where freedom starts. And so, a big part of where we are today in terms of, in my view, in terms of our unfreedom, is that we are always already, as you say, living inside systems where there are algorithmically determined probabilities. We’re being guided without knowing how we’re guided and by whom. And that is already, for me, a very high degree of unfreedom in a lot of ways. One, because it doesn’t involve another body. It involves our bodies being made sedentary and controlled, and movement is part of freedom for me. It involves not knowing who the other person you are engaged with. It involves being treated as an object by people who are doing the programming, rather than as a subject. So the situation, I think, is very problematic, and I really appreciate the question. And in the book, I actually, there is like a bunch about AI, which maybe will be helpful or maybe will just make you scratch your head at my ignorance, who knows. But my big take on AI is roughly the same as my take on social media. It is that when we dodge the question on values, all we end up doing is giving power to people whose value is, hey, I want to make a lot of money. And so there’s a whole lot of stuff which passes for neutrality in conversations in places like this, which isn’t neutral at all. So if we say AI is going to be designed with, we’re not going to try to answer questions about what’s good and bad. It just kind of is what it is, and let’s see, hey, it’s going to be a bright new tomorrow. If we do that, if we don’t try to build the values in from the beginning, we know where that’s going to lead. We know it’s going to lead to a few people actually making decisions invisibly for everybody else. So I appreciate the question, because I think at the beginning of the stage of each new technology, you have to think about values being built in. And this has always been true, right? When the printing press was invented, the result was religious war that killed one-third of the population of Europe. And then we decided, hmm, let’s have copyright. Let’s have books. Like, let’s find a way to make this information technology which is ravaging everybody’s life, let’s try to find ways to make it function in a way which allows us to live and get on. And the problem with the internet and AI and so on is that these technologies move fast, and therefore, like, getting to that social consensus is a little bit harder. But I really appreciate the question. I don’t know how to answer it technically, but my basic answer is, if you try to dodge the values at the beginning, all you end up doing is injecting the selfishness of the powerful few, which isn’t the value that you necessarily want. And so what I worry about about our historical moment in AI is that, as I started out, like, we’re in such a how moment, how, how, how, how, how. And answering the how questions with AI is going to make AI go faster, faster, faster without us getting to the why questions. And I’m just going to end on this note that I began. No amount of how questions ever gets you to a why question. You can do an infinity of how questions, it’ll never get you to a why question. And you have to have the why questions. Why are we doing this? Why does it matter? How is it good for humans? Okay. I think I’m afraid that I spent a lot of time on the AI engaging with the invisible algorithms. But I want to thank all of you for being here. I want to thank all of you for watching. I want to thank the organizers for giving me a chance to talk about these ideas, which are really important for me. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Agreement Points

Freedom requires engagement with others and empathy

speakers

– Timothy Snyder

arguments

Freedom as a positive value involving empathy and engagement with others

Freedom requires understanding oneself and others, not just absence of constraints

summary

Snyder emphasizes that true freedom involves positive engagement with others, empathy, and self-understanding, rather than just the absence of constraints.

Resistance movements need positive goals

speakers

– Timothy Snyder

arguments

Resistance movements need to be for something positive, not just against authoritarianism

Successful protest movements often face many defeats before succeeding

summary

Snyder argues that effective resistance movements should have positive visions and persist through setbacks.

Similar Viewpoints

Both Snyder and an audience member recognize that freedom involves responsibility, which some people may try to avoid.

speakers

– Timothy Snyder
– Audience

arguments

Freedom requires taking responsibility and engaging with moral choices

People may choose to avoid responsibility rather than embrace freedom

Unexpected Consensus

Concerns about automated systems and freedom

speakers

– Timothy Snyder
– Audience

arguments

Digital technology and social media can make people more predictable and less free

Automated systems and AI raise concerns about centralization of power and decision-making

explanation

Both Snyder and an audience member express concerns about how digital technologies and automated systems can limit freedom, showing an unexpected alignment between academic and practical perspectives.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement revolve around the nature of freedom as involving responsibility and engagement with others, the importance of positive goals in resistance movements, and concerns about the impact of digital technologies on freedom.

Consensus level

There is a moderate level of consensus between Snyder’s academic perspective and the audience’s practical concerns. This alignment suggests that the theoretical understanding of freedom presented by Snyder resonates with real-world experiences and concerns, potentially providing a foundation for addressing contemporary challenges to freedom.

Different Viewpoints

Unexpected Differences

Overall Assessment

summary

The discussion was primarily a presentation of Snyder’s views on freedom with supportive audience engagement.

difference_level

Low level of disagreement, as the format was more of a lecture and Q&A rather than a debate.

Partial Agreements

Similar Viewpoints

Both Snyder and an audience member recognize that freedom involves responsibility, which some people may try to avoid.

speakers

– Timothy Snyder
– Audience

arguments

Freedom requires taking responsibility and engaging with moral choices

People may choose to avoid responsibility rather than embrace freedom

Key Takeaways

Freedom is a positive value involving empathy and engagement with others, not just absence of constraints

Freedom and government can reinforce each other rather than being opposed

Digital technology and AI raise concerns about centralization of power and reduced individual freedom

Resistance movements need to be for something positive, not just against authoritarianism

Freedom requires taking responsibility and engaging with moral choices

Resolutions and Action Items

None identified

Unresolved Issues

How to balance freedom with the increasing role of automated systems and AI in decision-making

How to effectively resist authoritarian trends while feeling powerless as an individual

How to reconcile different conceptions of freedom (e.g. American vs European approaches)

Suggested Compromises

Finding ways to build values and ethical considerations into AI and new technologies from the beginning, rather than treating them as value-neutral

How questions are ultimately completely meaningless unless you have an answer to why questions.

speaker

Timothy Snyder

reason

This challenges the common focus on efficiency and technical solutions, arguing that we need to first address fundamental questions of purpose and values.

impact

Set the tone for the entire discussion by emphasizing the importance of examining underlying values and motivations rather than just practical implementation.

Freedom is the most important of values because it is the state or condition in which we can realize all the other values about which we must disagree and among which there are inherent contradictions.

speaker

Timothy Snyder

reason

Provides a novel philosophical justification for freedom as the highest value, framing it as necessary for navigating competing values.

impact

Reframed the concept of freedom from a negative (‘freedom from’) to a positive framing, shifting the discussion towards how freedom enables the realization of other values.

If we dehumanize other people we make ourselves unfree.

speaker

Timothy Snyder

reason

Connects freedom to empathy and understanding others in a counterintuitive way, challenging individualistic notions of freedom.

impact

Expanded the conversation to consider how our treatment of others impacts our own freedom, introducing a more interconnected view of society and freedom.

Freedom and government actually reinforce one another. Freedom justifies government. And government, rightly understood, creates the conditions in which we can be free.

speaker

Timothy Snyder

reason

Challenges both libertarian and social democratic views by arguing for a symbiotic relationship between freedom and government.

impact

Prompted discussion on the role of government in enabling freedom, contrasting American and European approaches.

Running away from responsibility doesn’t make you free. Because the only way to be free is to say, I am, in fact, alive. I am in the world. There are things that matter.

speaker

Timothy Snyder

reason

Connects freedom to responsibility and engagement with the world, countering notions of freedom as absence of constraints.

impact

Deepened the discussion on the nature of freedom by introducing the concept of responsibility and active engagement as essential components.

If we say AI is going to be designed with, we’re not going to try to answer questions about what’s good and bad. It just kind of is what it is, and let’s see, hey, it’s going to be a bright new tomorrow. If we do that, if we don’t try to build the values in from the beginning, we know where that’s going to lead.

speaker

Timothy Snyder

reason

Applies the discussion of values and freedom to the pressing issue of AI development, arguing for the importance of embedding values from the start.

impact

Extended the philosophical discussion to a concrete contemporary issue, prompting consideration of how to apply these ideas to technological development.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by consistently challenging conventional notions of freedom, emphasizing the importance of values and purpose, and connecting abstract philosophical concepts to concrete societal and technological issues. The discussion evolved from a critique of how-focused thinking to a deep exploration of the nature of freedom, its relationship to government and responsibility, and its relevance to contemporary challenges like AI development. Throughout, Snyder’s comments pushed participants to reconsider their assumptions about freedom and its role in society, leading to a more nuanced and interconnected understanding of the concept.

How can modern social movements learn from historical examples of resistance against authoritarian regimes?

speaker

Audience member from Brazil

explanation

This question seeks to apply historical lessons to current challenges in resisting authoritarianism, which is relevant given the global rise of authoritarian tendencies.

How can individuals contribute meaningfully to resistance without feeling powerless against the system?

speaker

Audience member from Brazil

explanation

This question addresses the practical challenges of individual action in the face of systemic issues, which is crucial for encouraging civic engagement.

Is there a meaningful difference between the European approach to freedom and the American approach to freedom?

speaker

Audience member

explanation

This question explores potential cultural differences in conceptualizing freedom, which could impact policy approaches and international relations.

How do you think about freedom in the context of automated systems that are making decisions for us?

speaker

Ken Jun (audience member working on AI)

explanation

This question addresses the intersection of freedom and technology, particularly AI, which is increasingly relevant as automated systems become more prevalent in society.

In the context of AI and automated systems, is there a notion of resistance that is possible? Who’s responsible for changing systems that may not serve individual interests?

speaker

Ken Jun (audience member working on AI)

explanation

This question explores the potential for maintaining individual freedom in the face of increasingly powerful technological systems, and seeks to identify who bears responsibility for ensuring these systems serve human interests.