George Soros Lecture Series: General Theory of Reflexivity Q&A

a few weeks ago mr. Soros asked me as a preparation for this job I'm doing at the moment to research the intellectual antecedents if any of the notion of reflectivity which was thought about for so many years and is explaining to you today so I said okay I can do that so my first recourse was to go to Wikipedia and well-known resource and I typed in self-fulfilling prophecy first and page came up and I started to read it and the first thing that's noted in the in that entry was that the man called Robert K Merton a sociologist invented the phrase self-fulfilling prophecy which apparently derives from the Thomas theorem which states that quote if men define situations as real they are real in their consequences so a reading through this entry first of all I came across the quote from Robert Merton himself and he was discussing the case of a bank run caused by a crisis of confidence in the solvency of the bank so Merton concludes the example by saying quote the parable tells us that public definitions of a situation prophecies or predictions become an integral part of the situation and thus affect subsequent developments this is peculiar to human affairs it is not found in the world of nature untouched by human hands predictions of the return of Halley's Comet not influence its orbit but the rumored insolvency of milling wheels Bank did affect the actual outcome the prophecy of collapse led to its own fulfillment that's mertens explanation of his concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy as I read through very soon we have a quote preceded by philosopher Karl Popper called the self-fulfilling prophecy the Oedipus effect this is a quote from poppers autobiography unending quest he says one of the ideas I discussed in the poverty of historicism was the influence of a prediction upon the event predicted I called this the heed abyss effect because the Oracle play the most important role in the sequence of events which led to the fulfillment of its prophecy for a time I thought that the existence of the Oedipus effect distinguished the social from the natural sciences as to say the influence of a prediction upon the event predicted but in biology too he goes on even in molecular biology expectations often play a role in bringing about what has been expected he doesn't actually explain why he thinks that in molecular biology and on the face of it it sounds implausible in any case that's what he says so having read Wikipedia then I had a look at the poverty of historicism I obtained the book and looked up the Oedipus effect in the index so I'm going to read you a few passages from the crucial four or five pages so you will have an idea pointers so as to lay mr. cirrhosis idea of leisure activity out in somebody else's words and then I'm going to invite him to comment on how he sees the notion which he has developed in relation to these earlier ideas of what sound to be similar ideas and I must say I was quite struck by a Papa's formulation of the idea so here's what popper says in poverty of historicism which I think came out sometime in the 1940s so quite a long time ago and Robert Merton was writing around the same time I so page 11 underneath under the heading inexactitude of prediction the idea that the prediction may have influence upon the predicted event is a very old one he posted in the legend killed his father whom he had never seen before this was the direct result of the prophecy which had caused his father to abandon him this is why I call I suggest the name Oedipus effect the influence of the prediction upon the predicted event or more generally for the influence of an item of information from the situation to which the information refers whether this influence tends to bring about the predicted event or whether it tends to prevent it he calls it the intimus effect I think it might be more aptly called the Macbeth effect because of course as you remember in that play the witch's prediction of Macbeth's murder of the king is partly at least what brings about the murder of the king and many other things happening in that story so we have a case of the prediction influencing the course of events so that's the first formulation a little bit further at page 12 he says we a fit is under the heading object objectivity and valuation we are faced with we are faced in the social sciences with a full and complicated interaction between observer and observed between subject and object the awareness of the existence of tendencies which might produce a future event and furthermore the awareness that the prediction might itself and exert an influence on events predicted it likely to have repercussions on the content of the prediction and the repercussions might be of such a kind of gravely to impair the objectivity of the predictions and the weather results of research in the social sciences a prediction is a social happening which may interact with other social happenings and among them with the one which it predicts it may as we have seen helped to precipitate this event but it's easy to see that it may also influence it it in other ways it may in an extreme case even coarsely happening it predicts the happening might not have occurred at all if it had not been predicted at the other extreme the prediction of an impending event may lead to its prevention so that by deliberately or negligently abstaining from predicting it the social scientist it may be said could bring it about of course it to happen there will clearly be many intermediate cases between these two extremes the action of predicting something and that of abstaining from prediction might both have all sorts of consequences final brief quote the interaction pronouncements and the sort and social life almost invariably creates situations which we have not only to consider the truth of such pronouncements but also their actual influence developments the social scientist may be striving to find the truth but at the same time he must always be exerting a definite influence upon society the very fact that his pronouncements do exert an influence destroys their objectivity so these ideas certainly sounds very much in the same and same ballpark as we say as mr. Soros his ideas so the first thing I'll do before we turn to questions from the audience is him invite terms to saw us to to comment on on this and how he sees the concept of reflectivity that he's explained today in relation to these earlier ideas again first of all I think popper spoke mainly reflexivity of social theories whereas I emphasize the reflectivity of the subject matter recognizers of course also the reflectivity of social theories but more important is that the participants are engaged in reflexive phenomena and of course sociology has recognized reflexivity as a social phenomenon and Merton was definitely the path breaker with the bandwagon effect and Andy and self-fulfilling prophecies but economics has gone out of its way to eliminate the reflectivity from the subject matter and we have paid a very heavy price account you know amounting to trillions of dollars for that little mistake so that's I would say is the different the other thing that I would point out that this reflectivity as a phenomenon hasn't been analyzed the way for instance self-reference with Bertrand Russell and Freya and so on then I got onto reflectivity by reading about self reference and apparent paradox of the liar that's what led beyond but then I discovered that it is really a much more pervasive phenomenon so I would say that's those are the major differences and and you know I I then broke down reflexivity into the cognitive and manipulative functions and argued that the two functions interfere with each other creating an element of uncertainty which is a characteristic of human affairs of course it's not the only one and when it comes to uncertainty again economic theory has gone overboard trying to eliminate uncertainty but there are of course very valuable antecedents that I would quote particularly night ninety and uncertainty which is basically what I am harping on also I mean one thing you didn't mention there worth mentioning I think is now the popper no Merton saw the application of reflexivity to the behavior of financial markets since you were a participant in financial markets you applied it to there to that area where it of course applies particularly was spectacularly well right now there which enables you to to understand okay only know the particular irony is that Robert Merton son got a Nobel price for devising formula which ignored reflexive okay now my my job is to throw the the floor open to our ensign was supposed to take questions first from the remote audience at the London School of Economics first like three questions from them before we move to people here and let me say before getting questions from the LSE that I would implore questioners to first of all identify themselves by name and affiliation then to make their questions concise and to speak as clearly as possible cuz we're hearing them here and to make their questions questions not speeches so a question to mr. Soros concisely stated and clearly articulated would be greatly appreciated with that I open the floor to the élysée now we wait for moderator in London - can you hear us yes hello George we very much enjoyed your lecture and we have actually three I hope for questions if we can fit it in in ten minutes so I'm going to hand it over to the first path we hello my name is Zachary myself we leave but a master student and international political economy Jared Elysee I was interested in how a third party could become aware of a reflexive relationship and how they could sort of interact in order to gain from the information they learn about the existence of that relationship and an applied example of that with our applied question would be how would a government become aware of a positive reflexive relationship and intervene in financial markets in order to dampen the boom-bust cycle that results as a consequence of reflexivity okay I have some fortunately difficulty hearing it can't can Mary perhaps you could just repeat the question because I have difficulty hearing it I could hear it yeah what could you repeat a mission in a reflexive relationship and in particular the role of a government could the government identify a reflexive participation a reflexive relationship that in fact be reflexive itself in order to dampen down boom-bust cycles did you hear that Daniel can you hear me only just nothing I'm making it simpler and simpler he put it very well how can a third party influence a two-party reflexive relation and how can a government intervene using your theory to stop a boom-bust cycle did you hear that how can government agency industry well of course this question leads up to tomorrow's lecture that's exactly what I will discuss tomorrow but let me just preface it perhaps but by saying that regulators and government and financial authorities also are subject to the same limits of phal ability as market participants so you have a constant interplay between regulators and market participants but both sides operate with imperfect understanding and that's what makes the process is so interesting but I will deal with that more tomorrow fortunately we're not going to hear you tomorrow but perhaps we can tell us when you next come to Elysee I'm handing over to the next question hi thank you for sharing your insights today my name is jawad katya and i am a part-time finance student masters and a full-time proprietary trader and my question to you is you talked a little bit about how your general theory relates to trend following and charting in general and how much you may have or may not have used these sorts of strategies in their own trading thank you well again obviously being at the School of Economics you are particularly interested in financial markets and and that's again ten following I could answer in general terms that actually trends tend to validate themselves - for an extended period and therefore trend following is very often a valid strategy which contradicts let's say the the prevailing paradigm of efficient market and rational expectations however reality may not fulfill the expectations that are involved in that trend and then you you you reach a point where the trend is reversed and you don't want to be a trend follower at that time third question hi I'm corner hi Johnny and I'm an undergraduate student studying social policy my question to you is how do you feel about the fact that Adam Smith is known to be the father of economics for his theories on the invisible hand when market fundamentalism is an economic policy you criticize the most thank you again I didn't understand that passion I think the question was how do you feel about Adam Smith as the father of economics and the inventor of the invisible hand in light of your theory of reflexivity well you know Adam Smith wrote two books I haven't read either of them and I am a critical of the invisible hand actually it it markers actually perform a very valuable function but they only are designed to allow individuals to fulfill their individual needs and there are social issues like for instance a regulation of markets that markets are not designed to to solve or to deal with so behind the invisible hand of the market there is hidden the visible hand of politics and that visible hand is deliberately obscured by market fundamentalists who extol the virtues of the markets forgetting or of obfuscating the fact that behind the market mechanism there are political decisions that are then determining how markets function I will again you are anticipating actually this happens to be the fourth lecture where I will talk about market values and and social values and the conflict between capitalism and open society but I'm happy to anticipate that that subject I'm surprised that nobody from the LSE wants to ask a question of mr. Soros about Papa's philosophy versus his philosophy because after all this is where Karl Popper was a professor but there are no questions about the philosophical content of what mr. Soros said in relation to to Papa but maybe later we can come back to LSE but I think now I will throw the questions open to the audience present before us so anybody with hands up and then we proceed yes and I think you need to get a microphone from somebody unless I don't know was be happy I would like to know what's the effect the role of an educator in society as in the perfect CVT effect for one side a high educated a society each person has a bigger effect but another side and educated the society is more rational and perhaps a more rational society the reflexivity effect is is more anyway what's the role of education of a society to have a bigger or smaller detractor well Christopher market is is from Brazil and he was Minister of Education and he introduced he introduced ball sized koala which is actually a payment to poor families to allow their children to attend school and I think it was it's a wonderful scheme and has made it big difference in Brazil and it has been imitated in other countries not notably Mexico and I'm actually a great supporter of that scheme we introduced a variant of it in New York about which I am not so not so entirely happy but I'm supporting it also and obviously education is a most important for for an open society and the altogether I think that if people citizens would understand the limitations of our ability to deal with social problems if they understood refractivity actually we could deal with our social problems better so most of my philosophy has a kind of a negative thing or to it namely imperfect understanding and and and fallibilities there's all sound very bad but in effect if you if you understand it and and if you are in a better position to improve your policies perfection it can be the bane of of social reform in the French Revolution people believing in reason engaged in terror the various ideologies which claim to be in possession of the ultimate truth it could be only imposed by force so I think if we understand our limitations and you return it around and and what is imperfect can be improved so we are in a way fortunate at that with our fail ability because that leaves infinite scope for for improvement we won't solve all our problems we leave some for the next generations to come so some education should teach uncertainty of the dogma right and I've been arguing also that we ought to pass from the age of reason to the age of faith ability that it's a less a an achievement of reason to understand fail ability okay who's next yes gentlemen middle level better wait for ya thank you hello I'm Robert Oracle from Mexico I studied MBA in the CEO Business School my question is well it's been said that the 20th century was the physics century and what and well this century will be the biology century will be the biology biology and biology and there is a hypothesis that telling us that all the sciences will come closer together do you think this threatened threatens your your own hypothesis or your own proposal that we should separate the social sciences from the Natural Sciences well I think this question is if you didn't say much about biology did allude to it at one point because you have the separation between the social sciences and the Natural Sciences is bringing up the point that biology is becoming central and so he was wondering where the biology threatens the dichotomy that you have because it seems to involve Sasa studying the social insects for example to write that kind of issue I think that's what it was yeah no actually one of the one of the questions that I struggle with is how does reflectivity relate to complexity because that's it evolutionary Systems Theory has great similarities with reflectivity in the sense that it does not have a determinate outcome and it evolves and I think that the the two are in a way quite close to each other in the sense that systems evolutionary Systems Theory network theory has relevance to human society which is also a kind of network so that's a general rules about network theory apply to actually to financial markets to banks because banks were networks and you had contagion destroying the financial system similar to to a viral attack so let's say epidemiology has a relevance and which we ignored and which which people are now aware of and we are now looking at the at at those issues so there are things to be learnt from biology and and and other networks however I think reflexivity which has which has to do with the specific relationship between thinking and reality that's a specifically human characteristic there is it applies to human societies it may apply to whales because whales seem to be able to communicate and there are some evidence that actually pretty pretty elaborate societies but so I'm not I don't want to delimit it purely to human society but even there we probably more and more relevant the content of our thinking is probably more relevant to our problems that the thinking of Wales is is to our problems so that's why I think reflexivity throws light on the human condition and that's how I see the the to relate to each other and presumably our primate ancestors will have reflexive relations well they've won one of the things another is about to take over their place as the other if I described if I described marriage as a reflexive relationship then certainly monkeys would qualify for okay thank you very much my name is Fernando shmita and ambassador of Chile I see a lot of South American people here well my question is very simple can you elaborate a little bit more on reflexivity reflexivity and emotions well certainly first of all reason and emotion are in act inescapably connected that's one of the discoveries of brain science which confirms humans contention so so this concept of the disembodied intellect was a I think is currently superseded but it isn't purely emotion that kind of interferes with reason they're on our rational problems in reflexive situations so for instance because of this force dichotomy between reason and emotion and his concept of disembodied intellect and rational behavior Alan Greenspan described bubbles the specifically the the IT of all the the technology bubble as irrational exuberance his famous words that he applied in 1996 well it missed describes bubbles because if I as a market participant see a bubble coming I buy because that's the profitable thing the rational thing to do and that creates bubbles so you can't rely on markets to prevent asset bubbles from forming and therefore he was wrong to describe it as irrational and in fact you can't account on rational behavior preventing bubbles so that's a problem that needs to be solved and actually requires the regulators to accept responsibility for preventing asset bubbles from growing too large so a misinterpretation of what bubbles are or how financial markets operate lead to the wrong policies so emotions may be involved in the Flexi situation but it's not necessarily it's not emotion it's not because it's fear and greed it's in the nature as I will try to explain tomorrow why and how it is in the nature of financial markets that they are bubble prone not equilibrium bound okay who's next gentleman front row oh I miss you student and a mistress today what is the secret of your financial success in reflect of your family story thank you sorry goodnight bit what is my to come up and maybe can you say it again what is the secret of your financial success in reflect of your family story thank you I would say that recognizing that I may be wrong as simple as that shall we move to the gentleman here yes delighted to see you I speak into this should we conclude that there are no real lessons from history but only subjective interpretations no I know I don't know how you reach that conclusion from what I said because it cannot be tested about but about I was arguing that the methods of natural science as described so elegantly by offer to not apply to the study of history it doesn't mean that we cannot study history that you cannot learn lessons that we can't make reasonable contingent predictions but not by this methods which produce timelessly valid universally valid laws history is one direction it's not timeless it's time bound and when you start with that then you need different methods for studying historical processes and I will argue in subsequent lectures that economic theory as such takes the wrong approach because it looks for these universally valid laws like if you have in physics whereas you really need to study markets in the financial markets and financial processes in a context and you have to recognize that conditions change and and actually don't repeat themselves maybe in the middle there I need a good way for the mic my name is catalina akash and i'm a professor of philosophy here at the Central European University my question is related exactly to this last point that you made as you emphasize that poppers theory of falsification was an explanation of how science can be both empirical and rational because we have the universal laws we create a test situation and if there is a falsifying instance we can give up the law and they on the basis of what you said we cannot apply the same apparatus in these social sciences because we cannot aim to have universal laws so I was wondering how do you think we can hold up social sciences to the requirements of being rational and empirical you see I think that social science can produce universally valid laws but those laws don't determine the course of events so for instance I think I put forward the human uncertainty principle as a universally valid hypothesis and I believe it is actually universally valid but by its very nature it doesn't determine it cannot determine how markets whether that's if financial markets or or or history is going to evolve in other words human behavior is unpredictable and that's the law yes yes yes but there are actually some for instance statistical generalizations I mean I I will distinguish between near equilibrium conditions and far from equilibrium conditions and it is in the nature near equilibrium conditions that you can make statistical generalizations and you can calculate risk on that basis however in far from equilibrium conditions that particular method is going to and lend you in difficulties because those things that apply in near equilibrium don't apply and far from equilibrium condition that's another generalization here is the question from this side even microphone over here yeah no that's okay there's a yeah Julia sort of our Economics Department see you first question mr. surage is your opinion or understanding of popper changing as time goes by are you more critical or more supportive now as you were let's say in the 50s you mentioned during your student years and second question is that let me answer that because I forget advocated by my opinion of popper is evolving I have become more critical of him as time went on and of course he's not around to defend himself which is but also actually in preparing these lectures I went a little too far in criticizing popper and then I had to revise it because because he actually for instance and did recognize reflexivity he only applied it to social sciences but if pressed he would he would certainly agree that it also applies even with greater force to two participants so but as you will hear in subsequent lectures he took it for granted that the purpose of thinking of discourse is to get closer to the truth and that's a false assumption it's a it's what I call the Enlightenment fallacy and and I of course he was a critic of many of the excessive claims for reason and nevertheless he and me too fell into that trap and it has forced me to modify my concept of open society which I had adopted from him these the second question oh we understand that your critical position towards the mainstream which basically rules maybe from the from the late seventies or this time period but the question would be if it is relevant which economic school you feel close to because there is a you know a huge number of schools not only what you call you know know this this fundamental is market fundamentalism you feel closer to Schumpeter higher Keynes night you mentioned thank you I was definitely very much influenced by Keynes and and I think that of course he'd lived at a particular moment in history where he had to deal with incipient with the problems of depression and therefore he neglected the problems of inflation but had he lived at a different time I'm sure that he would have been also his analysis would have extended also to analysis of inflation because of them because of that he became discredited in the 70s when inflation was the dominant problem of of the time so I would say that I was I would consider myself a follower of games the same way as I'm a follower of popper without necessarily agreeing with everything they said that let me add to what you were saying implies the first question there of course poppers name for reflectivity the oedipus effect only tells you he would have agreed that it can occur between individuals because that was one prediction about a particular man's future action wasn't a social science theory influencing rings so he obviously would have agreed with the general notion I think he was discussing he doesn't he I think his if he was going to give a name to I think he would have called it interactivity not reflectivity I think an element that you've emphasized that he doesn't emphasize is a positive feedback aspect he doesn't ever make the point there that I make the prediction of the event I change the event that I predict and then that must change the way I see the world he doesn't see that with that circular causation that you emphasize that's the thing he doesn't he doesn't pick up I think on that point yeah who's like I can't see everybody so clearly the su4 yes microphones coming from I'm Rahman Friedman professor of economics at New York University I have a couple of questions that limit myself to two the first one is that I think what gives reflects I just want to comment on it you emphasize reflexivity and there's a certain tension in your writing and even in this speech about the status of fallibility I wanted to ask you where the fallibility in your mind is necessary for objectivity to have the force availability fallibility being absolutely central and I wanted to up Kent there's a the chairman's of the spirit clearly indicated no speeches I will give no speech I just want to signal what I mean is that if there was a mechanical connection between reality and thinking and back to reality that's reflexive that certainly would not be something that would yield to the kind of conclusions that you draw in the real world context and that's where that flexibility is actually quite different from popper from from from from Merton it's very different than a self-fulfilling prophecy that has a vague notion but that suggests such a mechanical connection first I will want to give a comment on the second question that is directly in my mind related to this which was us actually a phenomenal question about educational reflexivity by the gentleman from Brazil because that question suggests one one wonders whether it is complexity that underpins reflexivity my conjecture here I have some thoughts on that is that it is exactly the way Colleen just said that the very this change and it's actually a non routine change that is crucial for reflexivity to have this force and you can yes when you have education as Kane said we can do more in understanding things but at some point we're going to reach the limit for it because there is a question of non routine change that will also that will always prevent a complete understanding and therefore reflectivities and is a is a property of social systems to me and infallible 'ti that are properties in principle these are not properties that could be eliminated with tank that can only be eliminated if change in the world sees which of course you have understood in your understanding of the social systems closed versus open that's why reflexivity to me so that this is basically a set of issues is that flexibility really delay the complexity rather than change and and things that relate professor of course tell ability is absolutely essential it's a universal human condition and the reflexivity is a two-way connection between a biased / misconceptions and say the objective reality and there are ways in which misconceptions can actually change the objective conditions that's reflectivity but in order to have life activity you must have the misconceptions or the bias view to start with otherwise you wouldn't have the two-way connection so it replaces this strange concoction of perfect knowledge that is characteristic of the prevailing dogma in in in economics so that's in complexity yeah Roman was asking about well you see this is this is a issue that as I say I only have a tentative answer at the moment actually reflexivity doesn't need to be complex you see and therefore you can't say that it's the same thing because actually that flexibility can be something very very simple like an enmity between people where one person says to the other you are my enemy and lo and behold he is your enemy that's not that's not complex I think what what other lives reflexivity is awareness that i can be aware of your attitudes towards me and that can change myself but of course when you're looking at the natural world it's not aware of your your attitudes or predictions about it Halley's Comet or the motions of the planets so they can't be influenced by our beliefs about them but as humans we can be aware of other people's beliefs about us as they express them in statements and then that can change us as a result of it and it's so that I think is what new facility comes from consciousness awareness yes of others there's one other point with regard to education you see while education is a wonderful thing it doesn't necessarily give you very good results because reality can be manipulated and and if you are good at manipulating reality you can get better results but how you manipulate what your objectives are depend on your values and values are particularly how shall I say questionable in others there is no one set of values that you can say that's good so so we have done a lot as a foundation in the way of Education and and sometimes we have educated very clever manipulators of public opinion who then used it to for very different purposes for which I would have liked them to use it I was a lady in the third world a as a margaret de heinrich and the one word that keeps popping up in my mind from the very beginning of your talk is instinct and professors what you were talking about alluding to awareness and of course that's the same thing and you're someone mr. Soros has been enormous ly successful and I imagine in some part because of your natural instinct and the question is if you're sharing the concept of reflexivity with so many people if they don't possess that natural god-given gift of instinct how can they truly take reflexivity and use it to its full power I don't get the question do well like I think the question is you you have this conceptual idea of reflexivity which you've applied in your business life and could other people have had the same success just by taking over the idea or was it more to do with factors about you than just having that theory I think that was the fourth question well I mean we all we all have the theory now we're not all successfully yep well look it's it's obviously it's not sufficient really it's it's it's been useful but it didn't determine the outcome and but the fact is that at the time when I first started using those ideas they did give me a leg up in the financial markets because people were most other players in the market were guided by other ideas so however people did read my book so I've lost that that that that edge that I had yeah yeah it enables you to predict bubbles movie it enables you to predict bubbles more easily but you know they're they're saying that economists have predicted eight of the last three recessions well I predicted eight of the next three bubbles about Howard Robinson in there in front he needs a microphone I think any microphone nearby okay this would be a philosophical question I'm sure I was going to say I'm glasses you're straight philosophical question I'm afraid what do you think the connection of your doctrine of reflexivity is this old-fashioned chestnut of free will does it follow from what you said that there could not be a deterministic account of human behavior because in some sense or other there are no definite facts about human psychology or what people are going to do these are not the kind of things that we put into the natural laws and therefore they determinism must be false and got a libertarian free will must be right or don't you want to go in and down that road well we had a very interesting discussion last night about determinism and in free will and I would take the position that that both are half right and if you put them together you actually get the reality to to think of of free will as being absolutely free is to me even more distorted than to claim that human affairs are determined by universally valid laws I mean there are of course not not all of reality can be manipulated there is you know there are the laws of physics that that prevail so you may be extremely good at turning reality manipulating reality but Indian reality has the last word and you want to be dead now that's something for instance you cannot manipulate a way even though we have developed all kinds of myths to deal with this rather unpalatable prospect hmm well no deterministic laws are psychology itself well I mean I would say that that Freud identified maybe certain people who are a bear sick in the sense that they their actions are determined by their in a fix their their their preconceived ideas but a well functioning human being has to be influenced by his by reality yes and I think your position is that the world is half determined and the will is half free hmm the world is half determined and the human will is half free okay she said it was half to each of them was half true who's next something something more philosophical would be welcome if there was something yes go to the back iron you want to go back one page okay he's got the microphone of the Lancer right he's got a microphone there hello thank you I am Rodrigo from Mexico I am a student of public policy at CU and first just to say that I'm very grateful it's being a very enriching experience being in in this University in this environment and I would like to ask you Plato another philosopher had a negative vision of time or an idea that time had the generative effect over things of reality on the other hand the paradigm of modernity presents more of a faith in progress conviction that the future will be better than than the present what do you think is this a Byzantine discussion a pointless discussion or you have understanding point what's the time what's the effect of time over things from your perspective thank you you know I'm sorry about not fully understanding the question should I repeat it very briefly yeah I I mean my attitude to to Plato has been greatly influenced by Karl Popper although perhaps he has been a little too harsh on tato I think he's asking about progress whether you believe in progress progress I think so what what do you think yes I certainly have do believe in progress and definitely think that that we can improve our understanding and certainly I would argue that let's say understanding reflexivity makes dealing with human problems political problems much more difficult and some of our preconceived ideas have to go out of the window but it is progress because I think we then understand the difficulties involved in human affairs and you usually misconceptions get particularly wide and far-fetched when you are confronted with insoluble problems we don't like to tolerate insoluble problems and therefore we tend to design device force solutions again I come back to the death which is an insoluble problem in the it's most likely to occur and we have then developed all kinds of ways of and myths to to do away with that prospect and there are many other to grow from the soup sublime to the ridiculous the drop problem it's an insoluble problem the drug addiction is in the in is innate in in in human nature some people get addicted and it is a threat to society and society then do usually did and the way did we deals it it makes it a much worse problem and then then then the drug addiction itself and and the way for instance American society has dealt it with death has made dying much harder and much more painful not to mention more expensive then then then it need to be and actually the two first projects of my foundation in in in America one was the project on death in America and the other one was the drug policy initiative and I arrived at it from this rather abstract philosophical argument about insoluble problems in Toledo da ting remedies which make the problems worse does that answer anywhere near your question enlighten me in other issues but yeah basically I wanted to ask you what do you think time the time time goes by right and time has any kind of effect over things over a political regime Plato would say that time has a negative effect and the effect of time over things a turn turn it the generative as opposed to that conception modernity says that the effect of time over things is positive and says the future will be better now as against to the conception of Plato do what do you think what's the effect of that is if any at all or okay it's maybe a bit like me I have to interpret with which goes to wind up at this point I'm told that it's the end of the time and if you should do it I know today's wonderful two hours has only whetted your appetite for the remainder of the week this has been an extraordinary moment and I want to thank our audiences here in Budapest at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Central European University and also in London at the London School of Economics but of course above all to thank George Soros for sharing his thoughts his experience his philosophy and launching us on an extraordinary journey that will all be going with him and also to call him again so much for thank you for all you've done to facilitate today thank you very much

Channel: Open Society Foundations

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Keywords: george, soros, financial crisis, open society, lecture, central european university

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Length: 64min 47sec (3887 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 11 2010