Latest / Giant Ideas / “I’m a Pathological Optimist” - Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales' Life Lessons

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“I’m a Pathological Optimist” - Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales' Life Lessons · Giant Ideas

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's our core purpose.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good purpose.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: It inspires people, it motivates people, but also it helps us to make decisions in a way that is trustworthy.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's true of all kinds of organizations.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't have to be a charitable purpose.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: Jimmy, welcome back to Giant Ideas.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: Last week we talked a lot about Wikipedia, trust in the AI era.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: We'll talk this week more about you, but also trust more generally for our listeners and what people can learn.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: We asked every Giant Ideas guest the same question in part two, which is if you had to say there were three snapshots, photographs that would define your life and the wisdom you've accumulated, what would those photographs be?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, this is a that's a fantastic and uh mind-boggling question.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I mean the one that that immediately pops to mind, I'm not sure what any big, deep philosophical lessons there are, but I just remembered there was a time, it was several years ago now, uh probably nearly 20 years ago, and my my mom came to visit and she brought a bunch of photos uh that she gathered from home.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, oh, here's some photos of you as a kid that I thought you might want to have.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I looked at one of them and and there I was in a I had a gray t-shirt on and sort of uh plaid or not uh you know, like checked shorts.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm like, okay, great.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then I looked down at myself, I'm I was wearing exactly the same outfit in my 40s, you know.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh wow.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh so then since then now I wear like one point shirts have changed.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, maybe I better not dress like a four-year-old anymore, you know.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: So uh that's a photo that had some impact on me in a positive way, I suppose.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's all half a joke.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's a true story though.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would say, you know, uh other uh photos, um, you know, I I I um I think about a lot of the, you know, every year we have our uh our annual conference called Wikimania.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um we do it in a different city every year, and there's a whole community process where different communities bid for it, like the Olympics or whatever.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm not really involved, I just sort of stay out of it all, but I they tell me where it's gonna be.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And um next year's in Paris.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the uh last year was, or I mean this year, uh 2026, we'll be in Paris, and last year we were in Nairobi.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And every year we do uh photo, like a massive group photo with everyone who's there.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And they always make me go right in the front just because I'm the I'm the mascot, you know.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I think those photos are are meaningful because these are the people, right, that make my life possible, that make Wikipedia possible, all of those things.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's sort of fun because as we do it in a different place every year, we get an international crowd who come from all over, but always no matter where you are, of course, you get more people from that local area.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so, you know, when we were in Taipei, uh, you saw a lot of Taiwanese people in uh Nairobi.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: We said a lot more African people.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure there'll be lots of Europeans in Paris and so on.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so that global nature of Wikipedia.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that's multiple photos, but it's not counted as one.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: 25 years of 25 years, yeah.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh we didn't we didn't do the annual conference in the early days.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've had about 21, though.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: 2021.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: What would your final photograph be?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then the final photograph, like that's a really that's a really tough one.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, I mean, I think I I live uh in the in the countryside, and uh, you know, like for me, like I and we I live next to the River Thames and we kayak on the river, and there's some pictures of me, and I think of one in particular, kayaking on the River Thames.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and that is also kind of defining for me about I love technology and I'm online way too much and so on.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: But like one of my favorite things is to be out there on on the river uh with my phone nowhere near me.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's usually in my pocket because of if if my kayak sinks, I want to be able to call and get some help.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: But uh yeah, so like that for me is uh it is representative of something that I definitely believe in, you know, touch grass, that that sort of thing.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's really important to balance in life.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Dilly English countryside fantastic, yeah.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: I have a quite I have a uh maybe a slightly left-field one, but what is the reaction you get when you go to a dinner party and you say you're the founder of Wikipedia?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Curious.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's great.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm I'm kind of a shy person, uh, but I it helps a lot with that because I if I go to introduce myself and I just say, Oh, hi, I'm Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, and generally the reaction is wow.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like people are like, oh, amazing.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's what uh Kate Middleton said to me when I met her.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um you've written a very timely book about trust.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what are the seven lessons of trust that you outline in the book?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: And what do you think is the most important one for our listeners to learn from?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I always kind of refuse to answer all seven because I'm afraid I'm gonna miss one or memorize them in order to do that.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: We can do the one then.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we can do a few.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, I I think you know, uh, you know, a lot of it uh, you know, I already talked about transparency, be transparent, uh, especially when you have something to hide is kind of the tagline there.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would say uh have a good purpose is really important.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: So in in terms of building trust, having a purpose that defines what you do makes it easier for people to trust you because you are more predictable and people know what you're gonna do.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so with Wikipedia, this, you know, imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's our core purpose.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good purpose.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: It inspires people, it motivates people, but also uh it helps us to make decisions in a way that is trustworthy.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So you sort of know like, is Wikipedia likely to uh decide next week to put ads on the site?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, like that's not our purpose.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's no reason that we would do that.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like our purpose is not to raise as much money as possible.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think that's true of all kinds of organizations, and it doesn't have to be a charitable purpose, right?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: But it has to be a good something useful, something that is meaningful to people that they want to do and participate in and so forth.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh, you know, that that one's quite good.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's quite important.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be believers in the in the power of purpose at giant ventures.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but so I mean you could say it's sort of having a set of values or principles that you're uh transparent about and then abiding by them.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they find the and abiding by them, actually, there's a hidden eighth rule in the book.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because we uh we struggled with exactly how many rules seven just sounded so much better.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: But we also realized the eighth one wasn't actually a rule, but more of a like a meta rule, which is you actually have to do all the things, right?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so just saying a lot of lip service and putting a mission statement on the wall means nothing if you're not actually walking the walk.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I think that's really, really important.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: What makes certain people, not I'm not talking about companies here, human beings, more trustworthy and certain other ones less trustworthy?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, a lot of it's pretty obvious, right?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: We know in our personal lives, um, you know, um, if if someone uh we we put trust in someone and they violate the trust, they lie to us or whatever, then we trust them less going forward.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, some of it uh has to do with like people are very forgiving of mistakes.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you own up to them and if you take responsibility, people will be like, yeah, okay, that wasn't great.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but yeah, here we are, let's sort it out.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas, you know, dithering and and shifting and and kind of trying to hide your tracks and all of that, yeah, it's not good.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in fact, that's one of the personality traits of some of the AI models that's really problematic.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like they never quite want to, you know, own up to the error they made.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: They just gonna keep talking and and get talk their way around it and um or they apologize too quickly and they don't seem to mean it.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they can't really mean anything, I don't think.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: But uh so I think that, you know, some of those elements we definitely know um really intuitively.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, one of the you know, the things about trust is a lot of it isn't really sort of a mysterious science, right?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty straightforward.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um the there's a framework that we use in the book, uh authenticity, empathy, logic.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that when you dig into it, it's like, oh, okay, yeah, like all of those are pretty straightforward, right?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: But that's like academic research to to sort of work out that framework.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh, you know, so like empathy, like that.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: So one example that might be a little less intuitive to people is give trust to get trust.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like with Wikipedia, I mean, way before I was thinking about writing a book on trust, I would say sometime in the first year or two, I put on my user page in Wikipedia, you can edit this page, my user page in Wikipedia.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: I trust you to do something useful.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, people when you give that expression of trust, people do live up to that.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, oh, okay, like that's great, right?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, as a parent of teenagers, I think this is really important.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Parenting is just like you have to you, if you extend trust to your teen and also do it in an explicit way, to say, look, okay, you've you've asked to do this thing.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm gonna trust you, right?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: But here's what I expect you to do.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and in fact, if you deceive me or lie, you're gonna lose these privileges.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I I do trust you and I want you to live up to that.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I was gonna that that sound that that description of Wikipedia sounds like uh parenting on a metascale with you as the granddaddy or something.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: I I think that concept of of of give trust to get trust is so important.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's my biggest lesson about trust.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: I used to work with someone who has a kind of had a very techno economic approach to life, and he would say, I trust, then verify.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I just thought it's just the worst approach, and he didn't basically didn't trust anyone, and therefore no one trusted him.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: You have to be open and vulnerable, basically, don't you?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I I do think there's a there is an impression that I I think a lot of people have um about business that to be successful in business, you have to be a ruthless backstabbing bastard.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And in my experience, people are ruthless backstabbing bastards basically end up like sad and lonely and not successful.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and if young people go in thinking, oh, I've got to be a hard ass uh schemer, scammer, whatever, yeah, people are gonna be onto you pretty quickly, and that's the end of that, right?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And again, it's like, you know, one of the things uh, you know, in the Silicon Valley culture is that uh like failure doesn't end your career.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, I've talked to entrepreneurs, for example, in Korea, uh, young entrepreneurs in Korea who were just like really saying it was emotionally very hard to be an entrepreneur, uh, because basically family members thought, why aren't you getting a job at a big company?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like this is embarrassing, and like why would you do that?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so risky.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if you fail, no one's ever gonna hire you, and so on.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And they may have had actually legitimate reasons to fear that if that was the culture.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know enough about how you know business culture in Korea is.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas in Silicon Valley, it's like, okay, somebody comes in for a job interview.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, what have you been doing the last five years?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I I worked in a bank and I did this and that.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, fine, like not that interesting.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I I was at a startup and basically it spectacularly failed.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what happened, here's what I learned.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: People are like, yeah, great, that's fine.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, actually, that's much better, right?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: You've you've been in the wars and that's a good thing.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so that um uh you know, that element of things that is it's just hugely important.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: I I'd argue that trust is one of the main things that made Silicon Valley what it was.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's such a high trust, it was, and maybe unless it's such a high trust culture and the pay it forward mentality is just a lot of it.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I think maintaining that is hugely important.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think you know there is a reason why uh you know the term friendy what is it?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um friend NDA.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, friend NDA, friend NDA.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh just like it's like a non-disclosure agreement that just basically says, like, you're my friend, I'm gonna trust you.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna tell you what we're working on.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: It is private, even though you might be in a position to use it in some way, I trust you not to do that.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like that would not have come from a sort of top three law firm.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: They don't they don't have that culture, uh, and for good reason in that context.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that sort of thing where you just say, actually, expect people to be honorable, uh, expect them to do the right thing.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, that's this is one of the things that I do think a lot of young entrepreneurs um need to absorb and to learn.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't know how many people um, you know, they've got some idea and they're like, well, I can't tell anybody this idea because they'll steal it.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, well, then you're never gonna do anything, right?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: You you can sit in the corner and think about your idea, but basically you need to start talking about your idea.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, nobody's gonna steal it because probably your idea isn't that amazing.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's just an idea.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's actually the execution and the and the real doing is what might makes things happen.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, so I mean, I always talk about like the before Wikipedia I had newpedia.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: So newpedia was a predecessor, same vision, free encyclopedia, and all of that.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't know about Wiki and I didn't really know how to build an online community and so forth.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so we set up this seven-stage review process to get anything published, which somebody pointed out to me recently.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, oh, it was the seven rules of mistrust.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh wow, that's actually that is right, because you had to fax in your CV to prove you were qualified, and everything you wrote was going to be triple checked by all other, you know, before it would be published.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was sort of like, we don't trust you, we don't trust you.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's the whole feel of it.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Very different from Wikipedia of like, oh, come and write, you know, like great, let's get started, let's do something together.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: But also, had I thought, and I did think this, I mean, I was in a real panic the first two years with newpedia because I thought this is so obvious to have a free encyclopedia, like open source software, gather people to write it because it's just like software, like you can work together on it, collaborate.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be so many people trying to do this.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so I got started, and fortunately I didn't keep it quiet, right?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: I just tried to find people to help me, you know.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but then two years later, like literally nobody was doing it, right?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And switched to Wikipedia because it wasn't working and so on.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's sort of like we if you have an idea and you think, oh my God, like if I tell anybody they're gonna steal my idea and start doing it, yeah, probably they're not.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're probably just too busy doing their own thing or doesn't sound that great to them, or whatever it might be.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that you know, trusting people is hugely important.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: You've you've created one of the biggest systems of decentralized trust, and you wrote in your book that you think it's human nature uh to trust.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: What did you were you did did were you born with that view?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Did what what one in your life gave you that um that I think I agree with it, but that optimistic view on human nature?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, well, I always say I'm a pathological optimist, so I always think everything's great.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: So there is that.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I I the reason I talk about that is because I know it's not completely realistic.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and we do have to think about, you know, not everybody is trustworthy, and some sometimes you're gonna get burned, but you know, on the whole, it's a good bet.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like by and large, if you trust people, they will they will behave in a trustworthy manner.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it's good to talk to people about trust.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna trust you and please do the right thing, and so on.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so yeah, part of it is just my upbringing and my family and all of that.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, actually, it's one of the things when we when we turn to that more personal element, you know, obviously there are people who have a really hard time with trust because they've been raised in an abusive environment and and that sort of thing.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And like people do get that, right?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: But they also get like, okay, if that's where you are in life, that's something you have to work on, right?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually very unhealthy.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: It actually isn't rational, it isn't doing you any favors.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you would be well served to get some therapy and to really think about it and to sort of do things to build trust because uh the cost of not trusting people is so high that you you you you end up missing out on all kinds of amazing, sort of great opportunities.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I mean, part of the reason uh that I have this attitude is that it's very practical.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, you know, when we look at social media, look at politics, you know, it's sort of very toxic out there.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I would say worse than normal in the last few years.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if you spend too much time there, you will just think, wow, most people are horrible and it's just like the whole world is toxic and humans are terrible.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then you think, no, actually, you know what?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: You go around town, you see people doing stuff, basically nobody's stabbing each other.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, when you get in an elevator, you don't think, okay, which one's gonna come at me first, right?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trapped in this little box with eight strangers.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be blood, you know.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now you think, yeah, we're in the elevator, it's fine.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the elevator's stuck.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we're stuck in the elevator, it's annoying, you know.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so we do get like that generally most everybody is perfectly trustworthy and nice and uh, you know, happy to help and all of that.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that optimistic vision, I think, neatly kind of encapsulates a lot about Wikipedia.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it's one of, I think, the microcosm of just the best of humanity.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so thank you for creating it.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, thanks.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Jimmy.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's been good fun.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: And thanks so much for joining us on Giant Ideas, it's been awesome.