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Language: en
we are being naive not at least publicly
entertaining the possibility that our
antagonists abroad would take advantage
of our famous lack of security and
you're going to see why we have to talk
about genocide somebody has to open
these topics if we are to get past them
and not have them haunt our
future why has it become a meme to say
that America is collapsing like the
Roman Empire growth is petered out we
borrowed from the future we can't do
that anymore uh and now we're getting
tribal yes but I don't believe that it
is
hopeless if I'm honest I believe we will
probably screw it up and it will become
inevitable lovely yeah um but there's a
reason that I'm taking the risks that I
am to talk about these things in public
which is I believe we still have um the
potential to rescue Western ization and
probably if I'm honest about it to
present a 2.0 version that is capable of
dealing with the uh the novelty that the
1.0 version is straining under the the
key thing is human beings
detect the failure of growth because the
failure of growth is not an economic
fact it's a fact of resource scar
scarcity and it has applied to all of
our ancestors for 3 and a half billion
years so it's not that you know growth
didn't get
invented uh in a modern economic
context economics formalized an
understanding of something that is as
Primal as anything
else what must be true in order for us
not to descend into this other phase the
phase where musical chairs the Music
Stops and there are way too few chairs
in which blood is thicker than water and
that's the rule that governs the day the
way to avoid that
fate is to a recognize that it predicts
a great deal about the noises people
will make as it's happening so I'm
watching
the shocking rise in
anti-Semitism and I'm
thinking it's right on time why because
when I did my work back in college about
Hitler as a rational
monster I understood that the targeting
of Jews was a predictable phenomenon
that Jews because they live as a
diaspora are and because they succeed as
a diaspora are a a an obvious Target
When the Music
Stops you get very concrete about that
why does being in diaspora which for
people that aren't familiar with that uh
you're an outside group living in
another country so um people often refer
to the Chinese as being part of a
diaspora because they have a strong
sense of the Homeland but yet they may
live somewhere else yep so let's say
you've got a population and it's
industrious and capable for whatever
reason I would argue that those reasons
are largely cultural maybe entirely so
um but it accumulates some wealth it
achieves some position in
society and
then uh the
racist impulses return and one way that
you can generate growth for a
population is to come up with an excuse
to transfer the wealth of another
population
so the obvious thing to do is to say
well you know geez the reason that
Germany Lost World War I was a Jewish
fifth column and the sorry state of
Germany today is the result of being
stabbed in the back by these people I
mean maybe they shouldn't even be called
people maybe they're Vermin they're
diseased they're disgusting right you
start making those noises and you
justify a significant transfer of wealth
from one population to another but and
this goes back to the question about the
founding fathers obviously the time
period is different but if you imagine
that Germany prior to the Holocaust was
a place that involved a few
lineages and then one lineage starts
playing against the
others right well you create growth for
the one lineage without having to invent
a new tech technology or discover some
more efficient way of accomplishing
something it's phony growth what is it
made of it's made of the stuff that the
people you're killing are leaving behind
it's made of their homes right you're
creating something that feels like
growth for one population by targeting
another population and when that happens
inside of a land mass we call it
genocide and when it happens across a
border we call it War but they're the
same process right you come with an
excuse to attack some population that
can't defend itself and you create the
appearance of growth through
theft right I mean if you had a company
and it could steal from some other
company it would feel like oh well the
value of this company just Rose and the
point is yes you took stuff from
somebody else so I knew that at the
point that the growth ran out you were
going to get rabid anti-Semitism and
frankly it precedes other form forms of
virulent racism but you're going to see
those too and I know where this heads
you're going to come up with excuses for
doing away with people who aren't
entitled to what they have and that does
end in genocide so um you know I think
the bad news is this is where we are in
history the good news is we actually
have much better tools than we did when
this happened previously to understand
what's taking place and to
course but the way you would have to do
that is you would have to create a
mechanism whereby the population was
immunized from the immediate sense of
peril that comes when you run out of new
ways to generate
well-being right when growth is not a
sustainable process and the fact that
our institutions pretend like all you've
got to do you know is keep the thing
pointed in the right Direction and there
will always be plenty of growth that's
not true growth comes from somewhere and
it does not come from that somewhere
regularly you cannot just create a
system that hums along and is always
making new stuff there's boom and
there's bust and you can't afford to
have the bust triggering these genocidal
impulses which is what they will do if
you don't figure out how to address the
question okay uh so right now we have
two Wars going on one in Ukraine and
Russ Russia one in Israel
Gaza uh are they both the genocidal
impulse this is tricky I will say
something is going on in Ukraine and if
there's one thing I know it's that I
don't know enough to understand it okay
there's the obvious part of it right
there's Russia having attacked a
Sovereign Nation and now a generation of
young men have been sacrificed to this
battle so I have nothing but compassion
for the Ukrainian people in that
circumstance but I also know that there
was a question about NATO expansion and
NATO behaved in a way that did not elay
Russia's
fears and more to the point I know that
my own government is in the hands of
people who had their hands on stuff
inside of Ukraine utterly
mysteriously before this war broke out
why is the son of the president involved
as some kind of energy expert inside of
Ukraine this is a story about things I
don't know right so I don't I can't say
how genocide maps onto the conflict in
Ukraine I can say it's a complicated
puzzle Israel and Gaza
the Unspeakable
truth is that you
have innocent people trapped on both
sides of that conflict and you have a
genocidal influence on both sides of
that
conflict it's something I have
not I don't think I've said that
publicly I've implied it and I've hoped
that people would get it and I've been
told by both sides that I'm a terrible
person
but what I said at the beginning of the
conflict was that it was threatening to
drag the entire world back into lineage
against lineage
violence that if we want to save the
west and save the world we have to
rescue the Middle East from this
predicament because I don't think either
side is being irrational
I think they both understand that they
are in a fight to the death and in a
fight to the death the rules are quite
different than you would expect so there
there are
clearly a majority in Israel who wish to
be part of the modern world would like
to get along with their neighbors I
believe that is clear I cannot say the
same thing about the leadership and I am
particularly troubled by the fact that
Netanyahu himself who um I must say
engaged in absolutely alarming behavior
during the pandemic also appears to have
been a facilitator of Hamas in advance
of October 7th in what way what I've
seen is video that appears to be
Netanyahu advocating for the cynical
fueling of Hamas for the purpose of
dividing the Palestinians now my feeling
is whatever that
was
everybody who participated in any way in
making October 7th occur has no business
anywhere near any kind of power this is
the last person that should be in charge
of a military engagement in Gaza
and I don't know what his motives are I
I honestly can't say all I can say is
that he appears to be a madman and
Netanyahu
yes do you think that Netanyahu is
responsible for October
7th if what I have seen that I believe
to be credible evidence of his arguing
to fund Hamas if that is accurate then
he is responsible in some way in like a
conspiratorial hey guys here's the money
I know you're going to to do it kind of
way if we believe in the consent of the
Govern MH and somebody else from outside
the
governed acts to choose your leaders and
those leaders behave badly and you
suffer mightily because of the bad
behavior of leaders that somebody else
chose for you you're
responsible do I know what he was really
thinking how would I know I couldn't
possibly be more of an outsider to this
is this a hypothesis or a
thesis no it's an
extrapolation I don't know how it could
be any
clearer
Palestinians are
people I believe that the right that
allows
me the as a governed person consent over
that process of governance extends to
all people or it should do you think it
matters where we Define a people is that
a relevant part of this or it just it's
a practical question but I you know this
is this is going to drag us cuz I don't
know if you're saying that based on the
UN Charter which talks about a people
and there are certain protections
afforded to them or if you just mean
look any group of people whether it's
somebody in a city or whatever look if
you're going to be
governed you have a a right to consent
in the consent of the Govern sense of
that term I believe people have a right
to self-determination I am not an expert
on Palestinians or the Palestinian
mindset I do not
know what the people of Gaza would have
done without netanyahu's meddling maybe
it would have been the same
thing I don't know what Israel is
supposed to do in light
of this
absolutely barbaric
attack but I do know that whatever
engaged in that attack
put Israel in a
bind there was no way for Israel not to
respond to that attack the brutality was
calculated to make it impossible for
Israel to choose it was calculated to
bring about
a response that would be
overwhelming because somebody thought
that was a good idea presumably Hamas
thought that would be a good idea now
Hamas should be wiped from the Earth
Earth there's no question about that
these are terrible people whatever they
were thinking these are terrible people
and eliminating them would make the
world a better place that's obviously
not the same thing as the Palestinian
people and given the way Hamas embeds
itself what Israel is supposed to do is
not obvious but if there's one thing
that is obvious Netanyahu shouldn't be
in charge of it okay um so that was born
of the question as to whether or not
there is a genocidal impulse that we can
actually put to bed through conversation
by getting people to understand what it
is pulling it into the public
Consciousness and by doing so eradicate
this kind of thing well let let me let
me add one thing just so it's
clear we are all the product
of
genocides that does not track for me
human history is long yep people killing
their competitors is common MH in
history most of it has been lost it
wasn't recorded you're just saying we
are the we're the ones that
won yeah we're here and we are also it
is fair to say all the product of
multiple rapes human history is very
long give me give me a percentage what
percentage of people do you have are
Downstream of a rape oh I think all of
us literally 100% yeah I think you as
soon as you realize how long a period of
ancestry we're talking about the chances
that there's not a rape somewhere in
each of our backgrounds is approaching
zero um that's dark it's dark but it's
also yeah it's dark look at it but once
you have looked at it realize what that
means the potential for rape and
genocide side is something we all carry
we are also capable of getting past it
there is so much hope in that
recognition once you realize that you
are not condemned to live this reality
just because it had a significance in
ancestral
times that's where Liberation comes from
we don't have to live that way we can
actually sit and write down our values
and we can say what is the system that
actually makes us realize those values
at the highest level
right what would we like to happen with
rape well we would like it to go to zero
likewise genocide that's what it means
when we say never again so when I say
that there is a genocidal impulse on
both sides we are seeing the predictable
outcome of a zero sum game in the Middle
East that is
triggering potentials that we all carry
right we can see
exactly why we have to take these
potentials seriously in this
configration and the right thing to do
is actually not beat each beat each
other over the head each side accusing
the other side of genocide the correct
thing to do is to recognize this was
predictable
and we have the power if we'll stop
[ __ ] around with nonsense we have the
power to make the future better than the
past man I'm with you and look um this
this has just become an interview where
throwing out a platitude of I hope
everything's going to be okay it just
does not feel right uh so I will ask the
the more revealing question um it is not
agreed upon as to whether what's
happening right now is genocide and this
is um there are several things you feel
like nobody's listening to you you're
screaming from the rooftops and people
just aren't getting it I have a very
similar sense when I talk to people
people about somebody's frame of
reference the the whole life beer
goggles that will control how they
interpret what people are calling facts
and people of quote um Ben Shapiro and
say facts don't care about your feelings
bro we we cannot agree on what the facts
are or certainly We can't agree on what
the facts mean and I actually don't
think people are playing a game I think
people don't understand
how distorted all of our World Views are
that we actually see only the
distortions and to us you're going to
get people that look at this and go
obviously what's happening in Gaza is a
genocide obviously and you're going to
get people that obviously that's not
genocide this is crazy I can't even
believe we're having this conversation
and each side thinks the other's trying
to play a linguistic game or something
like that and they're missing what I
think is the real truth which is they
they see the world so ferociously in one
way there is literally nothing that you
could show them and I mean nothing that
would make them go oh I see your point
and because there is literally nothing
that you could show them like let's set
the the Jews aside for a second because
this just gets so weird so fast
especially right now uh in Rwanda like
almost a million people were hacked to
death with machetes in like six weeks so
that's
insane
and it keeps happening now I've not
researched the Rwanda in genocide so for
all I know they were both like yeah this
genocide and it's completely Justified
which then just enters another problem
which is yes genocide what's the
problem people really become convinced I
am doing God's bidding I I am doing the
just and right thing in what I'm doing
and the only way that I see getting to
the other side of that is everybody has
to wake up to one simple fact ideas
control everything and what I mean by
that are you believe certain things to
be true you confuse it for objective
reality which is physics but you believe
certain things are true call it is then
you have a set of things your values
that you believe ought to be true and so
now you have is which they confuse for
objective reality and a which they often
confuse with just self-evident or Divine
whatever and like this is
non-negotiable and both of those things
will be ferociously debated by the other
side who sees the truth of neither they
have their own is and their own ought
and so until we all go huh I know I'm in
the grips of a delusion I cannot see
things clearly and so we all have to
come to some set of shared values and
then you build up from that if we can't
share values I don't no matter how much
you talk about genocide you will death
Loop because people just sidestep it by
saying but this isn't genocide or
genocide is right yeah it is genocide
but hey it's what we have to do that was
a very good summation uh it overlaps
many things that I also believe I think
distinguishing between uh beliefs and
values is crucial um what you're what
you're saying uh with respect to we are
all suffering a delusion I agree is
correct I call this the carian crisis
and I think we are kneed deep in it and
it is if you understand its implications
it's
terrifying um the cartisian crisis I I
named it that after dick Hart Who became
spooked when he realized that all of the
things that he thought were facts what
you say you think it's physics but it's
beliefs he had not established himself
self and therefore was taking it on some
kind of
authority um the problem is that the
systematically induced blindness that is
being inflicted on the public is
creating a scenario in which we really
can't establish much of anything and
that does leave us vulnerable to being
sold a narrative right it just fills the
vacuum of what you might actually
believe in common the obvious right
thing for us to
want is an agreement on Basics that
Enlightenment is better than deciding
what you're allowed to believe for
example let's pursue Enlightenment let
us agree to share facts we can differ
over values we should talk about which
values should govern how we are to live
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gifts using the one tool that actually
allows us to establish those facts in a
way that is utterly
nonpartisan science works because it is
built to tell you what you do not
believe it corrects for biases if it
were not for this one value it wouldn't
be worth doing it's too cumbersome and
slow but because it is the only system
that allows you to see exact exactly the
thing that you do not
expect it has the capability of telling
us what is true and to know that it is
true on the basis that it predicts
things better than some other idea so
that's the tool it belongs to no one or
it belongs to us all equally and those
who politicize it are putting us all in
Jeopardy this is really this is why I
I'm trying to bring this tool to people
in this way and show them that it
applies to the things that they're
battling over and that the
only uh the only way out is through we
have to learn to wield this tool to
figure out where we even are in an era
where all of the institutions that
should be doing that job are failing at
once we're going to have to build
institutions that work some people think
we can rescue the institutions we have
I'm less and less convinced of that but
I know that we can build something that
does the job and we have to stop
bludgeoning each other over over the
product of scientific inquiry you know
the facts are what they are and then the
values tell you what to think about them
and if you divide things in that way so
that we're not battling over the facts
based on the the idea that they are
somehow themselves immoral then there's
there's
hope can I try an idea out on you please
all right I think that the way the human
animal is designed that there is no way
for us to come to a cons ensus the only
way to get us to operate in mutually
beneficial ways is to tap into other
base [ __ ] which I will just round to
Greed but I don't mean in a bad way I
think the only way out for something
like Israel Hamas is to get people
obsessed with the future of their
children if you believe that the
brightest future for your your kids
could be um getting killed uh being
martyred going to heaven
then that idea traps you now violence is
rad like that's a great way to ensure
that your child has a wonderful future
if on the other hand you believe my
child's future can be full of education
and I guess I'll say terrestrial love
here on this planet for at least this
period of time and tomorrow is going to
be better than today and that they're
going to make progress and it's going to
be wonderful and they're going to grow
up and they're going to fall in love and
they're going to have kids and you know
this is going to go on forever that
feels like when I Look Backwards to
identify how to move forwards I go yes
you want
progress health and
safety love for one's kin to see them
grow up etc
etc uh I think you're right on the
question of Islam I will just simply
point out that there are numerous
examples in the Middle East in
which Islamic
States attempted to modernize were
embracing values that were not exactly
Western but we moving in that direction
and I believe that
unfortunately for reasons that in the
end were profoundly economic we have
disrupted
this process we in the west have
disrupted this process and it has
created a a conflagration that did not
need to happen how did we disrupt it
well uh the Sha of Iran was
installed uh
to basically facilitate
uh uh transfer of economic resources we
overrode a democratic impulse in
Iran and it has resulted in a
Theocratic Rebellion so what would have
happened uh
if we had not meddled in Iran would Iran
today be where it is or is that entirely
the result of
resentment against the West that has
left a vacuum that has been filled uh by
a
a um well to connect it to an earlier
part of the
conversation you have these two bases
for cooperation you have reciprocity
which I would argue is the way the
modern world should be structured and
there is lineage against lineage
violence and I believe that our meddling
in the Middle East
has set the course to lineage against
lineage violence which we now
largely wrongly blame on the content of
the religious
Doctrine right the religious Doctrine
does
contain this violence but the question
is exactly as is the
case uh with Israel right the Old
Testament contains some really toxic
stuff but most Israelis want to be part
of the modern world right the fact that
there's this bad stuff uh in the
founding documents is not fate um
so I'm not sure what to do with that and
I've I've gotten
detained um trying to trying to explain
this connection but the right thing to
do is to recognize that we are all
better off all of humanity is better off
if we do Embrace you're calling it greed
I wouldn't use that term but if we
recognize that humanity is
improved when human beings are enabled
to compete in a way that uh ecologically
we would call exploitation competition
there's two kinds of competition you've
got exploitation competition and
interference competition right if I bomb
your Factor so you can't make stuff I am
arguably competing with you but it's a
destructive kind of competition if I try
to make better stuff than you in order
to out compete you in the market and you
try to make better stuff than me because
you want to succeed then the point is
what we get is an improvement in the
quality of the things we have access to
so what you really want at the end of
the day and I'm not telling you I know
how to instantiate this but you what you
really want at the end of the day is for
people to profit when they bring things
to the table that improve the
quality the length of human
life um the way to do that to the extent
that there's a something we can
describe is to
internalize all of the costs of our
activities and let the market solve the
problem if you let the market solve the
problem and if somehow and I'm not
claiming I know how to do it because it
may just simply not be possible but if
you did internalize all of the costs of
every product and every
process so that at the end of the day
the only people who profited were people
who made things that actually made us
better off you don't need to do anything
else that solves the entire problem
right there then you get people spending
their time trying to figure out how to
improve the standing of humanity and
when they succeed the quality of their
personal life gets enhanced that's what
you want that that allows the market to
do what it's good at without interfering
with our values and um it
minimally facilitates or it it prevents
the outbreak of tyrannical impulses the
market simply tells us uh what things
should be augmented and which things
should be abandoned based on whether or
not their impact on Humanity was
positive yeah why has it become a meme
to say that America is collapsing like
the Roman Empire what are people trying
to deal with when they say that I think
there is a palpable Sensation
that the system is coming apart so I
think it's not incorrect to think of
collapse occurring I think of it as a
slow motion collapse I don't think of
the Roman Empire very frequently other
than just the simple fact that something
that seemed as robust as it must have
can also come apart I also remember from
childhood the surprise collapse of the
Soviet Union but once you recognize that
things that seem like they are forever
still end uh it's not hard to recognize
the signs in in where we are now I guess
I'm glad we're finally having that
discussion because the risk that that
the Republic was going to come apart
was there and has been for decades and
uh if if we are going to get through
this phase either by rescuing the
republic or figuring out how to walk
away from a a crash landing it's going
to be because we understand what the
implications are I've heard you say that
the rational Optimist position isn't
wrong we can get there but we're not
going to get there by accident so what
is it that is being chipped away at now
that's stop stopping us from naturally
ending up on the optimistic path I think
we have antagonists to our ability to
understand where we are and in fact um
I've grown tired of the idea of sense
making you know that that concept became
Hackney but there is some need to
Grapple with the evidence around you and
to put it together into some kind of
model and uh
we have some force that is opposed to
our ability to do that well it is
denying us basic information on readily
answerable questions that would allow us
to navigate the most basic issues of of
life well and so we keep injuring
ourselves because something
is is acting to keep us in the dark what
are some of the things that it's
stopping us from seeing
well let's take an obvious question from
the covid
crisis we were told that the MRNA shots
were safe and
effective they have now been given to
literally billions of people we have
highly credible claims of certain
patterns of pathology that have Arisen
Downstream and we have a
mind-numbing set of denials over the
connection between for
example
tumors uh various kinds of cardiac
issues
and anybody who has gone through the
process of studying science knows that
these are not difficult questions there
are difficult questions but the
simple are people who took these shots
more prone to X Y or Z condition than
people who didn't take them that is not
a hard thing to ascertain and yet we are
just simply going to battle over it till
the end of time because it is somehow
become important that we not be able to
reach a scientifically robust conclusion
about it that's what I want to better
understand so uh as a student of History
I am growing more and more concerned
just about a slide towards
totalitarianism for a desire for
authoritarian control being a good thing
seeping into the public Consciousness I
look at the world as a battle of ideas
and when the wrong ideas become
celebrated you get really deep problems
so what I'm trying to map is okay uh we
have this thing you'll often refer to it
as Goliath but whatever an entity the
elites the whatever whatever uh
government whatever we want to label
that thing as is trying to Blind us but
I don't think that they care
about the efficacy of the V like that
doesn't feel that feels like it's the
symptom not the thing they really care
about what they really care about I
think is they want to make sure that you
comply and compliance is the game and if
you can see that they're fallible and
talk about it then it's much harder to
get compliance um does that feel right
an element of it feels very right but
they left us with a
mystery they had a technology on which
to build something that they called a
vaccine very deceptively but they used
that term to place it in our blind spot
because most people myself included had
the sense that vaccines um were
tremendously well tested that the the
risks that come along with them tend to
be small Co has forced a a rethink of
that but if the entire Point had been
compliance they would have been smart
enough to recognize that that the
technology that they were using to make
these shots
was extremely risky and that it could
well backfire because the range of
pathologies that you could in principle
trigger with such a shot was
huge so the question is if the real
point was can we can we make you take a
shot the smart thing to do would have
been to give a shot that was
effectively uh neutral that was a
placebo you know maybe you could have
such low concentrations of the active
ingredient that it wouldn't have had any
impact and if they had done that I think
they'd be in a lot better position today
because people would not in general have
a list of friends who had some severe
negative reaction to these things and
they would be able to play the same
games they play with Statistics to claim
that they had been effective and if they
had done that and there wasn't a pattern
of pathology then all of those of us who
were worried about what we were told
these these things were going to do to
the body uh would look foolish and their
ability to get people to comply in the
future would be that much greater so I
don't have the sense that a simple game
of forcing people to comply could
possibly explain the shots for some
reason they wanted people to take
them okay so I want to start teasing two
ideas apart so one I want to figure
figure out why they want to Blind us
while I think it's overblown to say that
America is declining like the Roman
Empire when if you're thinking the Roman
Empire declined quickly when in reality
I think it's probably a very slow
process uh that we may or may not be in
we may get better over the next 10 years
and and then collapse who who knows or
drag it out forever whatever um so I
think it is important for people to
understand when they're talking about
you or anybody else in that group that I
see sort of being attacked now in a way
that they weren't five or six years ago
to understand when you're saying I think
this is worthy of exploration and when
you're saying I've explored a lot of
stuff and this one I'm really going to
plant a stake in the ground uh because I
have a feeling we're going to touch on
both in the conversation today okay so
uh going back to the question I really
want to pin down which is why blind us
what's the point let's talk about the
issue of blinding and I'll just tell you
my own thought process I come from a
background studying complex systems I'm
a biologist I'm an evolutionary
biologist and I'm very interested in
levels of analysis so I I I come to
questions of uh how human societies
function through that lens and a
hypothesis in such a case tends to be
actually a nested series of
subhypotheses and you build them out and
the more that they stand up to new
observations the more truth they are
likely to contain so I build up a model
and if I see something next week that's
inconsistent with it my point is well my
confidence in that model is pretty low
but if I have a model and it goes a year
or two years and all I see are things
that actually fit with it I tend to get
the sense maybe it's it's right or it's
analogous to something that's right so
the question of why they are blinding us
here is what I have become increasingly
confident of again is a hypothesis but
uh it's amazing how well it
predicts events and phenomena going
forward we are locked in competitive
struggles all the time inherently and
that's not a bad thing in fact it's the
engine that makes Western Civilization
work it just needs to be placed in I
used to think of it as like the
explosive energy in an internal
combustion engine cylinder
right an explosion isn't a productive
thing but in that context it can be very
very productive but when you are in a
competitive system there is a an
advantage that acrs to anybody who has
Superior
information
and what I I mean this almost feels too
obvious to me at this point for it not
to be on everybody's mind but we proceed
by imagining that there is a level of
patriotism that we share with other
people in our system that surely they
have the same sense of America or the
West being this marvelous structure in
which to accomplish new things to
innovate and they must therefore want to
protect it as well and we have a harder
time
grappling with well what if they don't
see it in those terms and what if
actually
there's a group of folks who's very
powerful
who views
democracy as a frightening mechanism
that can upend whatever it is you're
attempting to accomplish based on the
whim of a public that may not know what
it's doing I mean I actually I
understand that concern democracy can do
things that are destructive and so if
you had a position of power you might
view the fact that the public can throw
out leadership and install somebody
who's saying things that resonate with
them with a certain amount of
trepidation so if you didn't have the
sense that the west and its its uh
obligation to the consent of the Govern
was a positive thing you might start
playing against people that we would
tend to think they would be playing uh
alongside they would be building
up a whole range of topics in which they
Superior information allowed them to get
ahead at the expense of others I mean
this is if we think about a financial
Market economists talk about the greater
fool how do you make money you find
somebody who understands less than you
do and you trade things and basically
you take advantage of what they don't
understand and their wealth is
transferred to you in so doing and that
actually can be a positive force if what
you understand is something about the
future that is not clear to others if
you're really insightful then you can
get Wealthy by seeing the future with
greater Clarity but you can also do the
same trick by blinding your competitors
by making it so that the information
that they would use to figure out what's
coming is not available to them and what
would that look like well this is where
the rubber meets the road with this idea
it would look like an attack on all of
the things that allow us to navigate all
of the sources of public truth seeking
it would look like an attack on all
newspapers it would look like an attack
on universities and science it would
look like an attack on journals it would
ultimately look like an attack on the
courts and that just simply matches the
evidence that we have all of these
public truth seeking mechanisms are
becoming Dumber by the hour and what
that is doing is it is putting people
in people who who see this problem are
correctly recognizing that they are much
better off to unplug from those
institutions and attempt to figure out
what's going on outside of them but what
many of them do not realize is what a
poor substitute for public truth seeking
that actually is you know I mean might
be good for people like you and me it
brings an audience that wants to hear a
conversation that hasn't been sanctioned
by one of these lobotomized institutions
but from the point of view of the
average person trying to figure out what
to make of the advice that their doctor
is giving them or the FDA is telling
them about nutrition uh it's a poor
substitute and it is the reason that I
fear collapse is that I don't you know
you can put on a blindfold and you can
keep driving down the road for a time
but at some point there's going to be a
curve and we can't we can't can't drive
like this we we have to rescue ourselves
from whatever it is whatever Force
whether I'm right about its nature or
not that is keeping us from establishing
the basic facts of Our Lives okay do you
see this as a WF super conspiracy or is
this just emergent behavior of um people
who get into positions of power whether
economically like somebody running a big
company or politically uh and they think
huh I like what I'm able ble to do
better in this position and so there's
you know whatever 50,000 people that
just have that slight inclination of oo
this would be a little better for me if
I had a little bit more control and then
the emerging Behavior starts to look
like a coordinated attack but in reality
it's just a lot of little people um
trying to make their own lives a little
bit richer more
controlled uh I have substantial
confidence that it is going to be a
combination of both things now I look at
the we F and there's a part of me that
thinks that's too dumb and too obvious
to actually be the entity that maybe it
stands as a a front for whatever
actual thing is colluding behind the
scenes but I do I do think that there is
a component that is quite obviously
colluding against public understanding
but there are also numerous mechanisms
that will cause people to innovate in
the direction of that Force without ever
being contacted without being paid by it
they will simply do it because a system
of incentives causes them to uh to to
move in the same direction and we see
this on topic after topic if we try to
establish the basic facts for example
of climate
change what we find is Fields full of
people presumably most of them are
well-intentioned
concerned about what they see as a real
emergency and doing their best to
elucidate it so the rest of us can see
it but if you if you've lived inside the
academy you know also
that a field like climate science at the
moment will not welcome counterveiling
evidence and what that means is that the
evidence you see doesn't have the
implication that you think it has even
if the studies you see are
accurate you're not seeing the studies
that weren't done that would have
provided a different View and
across all of these
questions our ability to have an open
Frank conversation in which all of the
evidence is aired is
fundamental it occurred to me the other
day that this really is the reason that
free speech and the free exchange of
ideas is so tightly bound with the other
rights of the West is that the consent
of the Govern means nothing if the
Govern can't have a discussion that
would allow them to vote in the
direction of reason so you can you can
wreck a democracy by Wrecking speech
even if people are perfectly free to
vote for whatever they want you don't
need to game the election itself if the
public mind is confused by being starved
of actual information so that's what I'm
seeing uh both in the informal sphere
and very much in the institutional
formal sphere it is uh it's
hallucinating is what we're seeing the
hallucinations that will cause a person
with suspicions to see them rendered in
elaborate
form um I don't know if I fully answered
your question about emergence versus
collusion well so you did in the sense
that you said it's going to be a
combination of all of them what I want
to do is start pursuing what exactly
that looks like in reality um because I
we may be saying exactly the same thing
or we may be saying something different
but my take goes something like this
um you well know what I'm about to say
because you're the one that taught it to
me but the Earth uh its rotation it
changes its tilt changes there's like
these three different things that add up
slight variations over different time
scales um that caused the Earth to cool
and warm and so we have long before
humans were here Ice Age no Ice Age Ice
Age no ice age and it went back and
forth back and forth because of these
slight pertubations that change that
determine how much cooler things get in
the summer how much snow then
accumulates over years which then turns
into an ice age and then it wobbles back
the other way and a little bit of snow
melts and a little more and a little
more until um you warm back up okay so
it's it's these huge huge macro trends
that are basically colliding waves and
every now and then they hit it just the
right way and you get a rogue wave and
that's what I think is happening right
now I yeah there's probably a little bit
of collusion yes there's probably just
the authoritarian desire for power um
yes some people probably just aren't
intellectually powerful enough to hold
really nuanced ideas in their head and
so when you're dealing with social media
and there's just a massive velocity and
volume of information
H I just need something so I'm team blue
I'm team red nice simplistic just tell
me what to do and I'm going to do it
just so that I don't have to think
through all these
problems and what this moment feels like
is a rogue wave I have no sense of how
big the Rogue Wave is I just know it's
the biggest wave in my lifetime uh so
certainly possible that now compared to
the Civil War this is nothing and we're
super safe and all is going to be well
but what I want to begin teasing out are
what are those elements that are coming
together now so we've talked about
whether it's the WF but just like Elites
actually colluding and I will say um the
fed the way that banking is run all of
that guaranteed even if they're just out
in the open it is a group of people that
have an agenda and they very much
control what you know what you
understand what they tell you when they
tell you uh they want to make sure that
you understand as little about printing
money as possible so on and so forth so
you definitely have the what I'll call
official collusion maybe with the best
of intentions maybe not but nonetheless
um then you get things happening at the
local level where at the Schoolboard
level there's movements there that are
taking over where they're trying to ice
out parents and they've got the FBI
investigating parents as terrorists and
so you've got some weird sort of local
thing happening then you've got what's
going on at the uh social media level
where people the platforms are being
pressured on what to show what not to
show on and on and on we go but each of
those feel to me that they are driven by
the same sort of it's all humans but
slightly different things like the FED
to me is not the same thing that's going
on at the local school
board two things and I'm I I don't want
us to get lost but your your example the
milankovich cycles that cause the
oscillation between ice ages and
interglacials
uh is well Chosen and it it it
illuminates actually the way to
reconcile your presentation and
mine but I think your audience is going
to have to indulge me in order to make
it clear
why so we have these three orbital
oscillations we have uh the obliquity of
the orbit we have the procession of the
axis of the uh Earth and we have the
degree Dee of tilt these things are
independent of each other and they
oscillate on separate time scales we
have 100,000 year cycle a 41,000 year
cycle and a 21,000 year cycle each of
them has a very tiny influence on the
amount of solar radiation that actually
reaches the Earth even together they
have a small impact so if I was to push
a button and cause them all to go into
the phase where they cool the Earth for
one year you wouldn't be able to tell
that year from any other it might be
slightly cool but it would not be
decidedly cool what happens though is
that when these patterns align such that
they cause the amount of ice that
remains in the northern hemisphere over
the summer to be slightly larger they
turn the Earth slightly whiter because
ice happens to be white and white
surfaces reflect energy back into space
which causes the following year to be
slightly cooler when the following year
is slightly cooler slightly more ice
sticks around through the northern
summer the year after that is slightly
cooler so almost all of what causes
glaciation to happen is the result of
this amplifier it is not the result of
the milankovich Cycles which set it in
motion it is the amplifier that does the
work right it's like if you imagine uh
you know MC Jagger in the Rose Bowl
singing his heart out nobody in the back
row would be able to hear very much
right it's the mechanisms that amplify
his voice but they're not adjusting the
content of his voice he's still mcjagger
he's just having a huge impact based on
all of the things that amplify his voice
and then project it to all of the people
at home who weren't there that is likely
where we are the actual collusion maybe
a tiny fraction of what's going on but
it's like a navigational fraction it's
setting our Direction and then these
organic emergent processes are causing
it to become a terrifying Force rather
than you know a joke where 10 Apes
gathered in a room and decided to steer
the world in some direction that sounds
Preposterous but given the capacity
for markets and Fields of study to
amplify thinking to amplify motivated
reasoning we we get the same kind of
puzzle so I don't disagree with you that
the majority of it may be emergent but I
don't think that's the that's the place
to concentrate if we want to fight back
but the the way to understand where
we're headed is to focus on the part
that is doing the steering and um that's
not so easy to do because of course
we're not invited we have to we have to
extrapolate from the pattern on the
outside
yes but I think we'll be able to
describe the um the phenomena of okay
we're being blinded we're being censored
there are things the the just massive
attempt to shrink the Overton window so
that so many things were not allowed to
be spoken about um which again from
where I'm sitting that feels like the um
the emergent phenomenon more than just
just overlords cuz this really gets
complicated I've been over here trying
trying to like write down all the things
that I think um create this so the
current variations of uh the movich
minkovich cycle uh but so you've got
growth has stopped which we probably
need to talk about uh you've got just
the internet and social media again
going back to the idea of velocity and
volume of information you've got the
nanny state which I guess Jonathan
height wrote a new book about not read
it yet but I'm super eager to see uh the
consequences of that you've also got uh
I forget who wrote the book but about um
therapists now just affirm affirm affirm
and how that's creating additional
spiral of this like sense of I need to
be protected uh and then you've also got
just the um
postmodernist thinking that has swept
through the institutions that now is as
we have a generation of people that have
been taught that they all have Tik Tok
and Instagram accounts and they're just
like blasting this stuff out there as
fast as so you can and now as from my
Thinking Beyond the collusion those are
the things that are creating this moment
do you think I missed anything well you
you mentioned it in that last
piece um but I'm not sure I'm not sure
it's highlighted well enough yet there
is an aspect of social media that causes
a totally unnatural amp simplification
of very natural human
Tendencies and I've been thinking more
about the Overton window and the fact
that it
has um it has an
analytical uh connotation to it right
what are the ideas that are beyond the
ones we're ready to to
contemplate but then I started to notice
uh I've I've become increasingly Su uh
suspicious of what I call polite society
and more what does that mean well polite
Society uh at the risk of causing your
audience to think me crazy I I took up I
accepted uh Alex Jones offer to come on
his
program and that caused an interesting
freakout most of what most of which was
not actually about what I said on Alex
Jones program but it caused what I said
on Joe Rogan's program to be scrutinized
in a way way that was uh new and I think
quite
mean-spirited um and because people
think Alex Jones is off his rocker if
you've gone on his show you must be off
your rocker let me go look at what you
said and prove it yes but I also think
there is a
[Music]
concern I think going on Alex Jones
program would have made less sense
before Tucker Carlson had interviewed
him that that actually brought Alex
Jones
into a discussion where it had formally
been possible formerly been possible
just to Simply dismiss him out of hand
and the problem with Alex Jones from the
point of view of polite Society is that
he's not just simply wrong about
everything that would be easy to deal
with but he's often right and so uh what
does one do with somebody who has simply
given up up
on uh staying within any bounds is
willing to explore any idea that's very
dangerous to certain folks so my going
there you know I'm a I'm a PhD in
biology I've made a couple contributions
to my field and if I'm talking to Alex
Jones it creates a question it it it
causes a
reexploration of the question of whether
or not one has to actually take him
seriously so that became the moment at
which it was important to come up with
reasons not to make take me seriously
right so that that question could again
uh be
sidelined
and what I realized was that I was
getting a lot of push
back um from people who were driving up
the cost
for me doing what I did right that I
there was content in what they were
saying but the real message was actually
you shouldn't have done that it was a
don't go there girlfriend kind of a
moment right and so I started to think
about what that was made of and I
realized that polite society which to me
takes the form of um you know like a
fractal set of of cocktail parties
the people that you want to like you
that they have the ability to steer You
by threatening not to invite you to the
next one and my feeling is I no longer
care because these folks have gotten so
much so wrong that um it's not obvious
why uh their sanction should have value
and the more I thought about that
question the more I realized that polite
Society exists in every era and I leave
open the possibility that it might have
a positive amplifying effect in a good
ERA right that it might spur people to
accomplish great things so that they
could you know be heralded at the next
cocktail party for their their insights
but I realized you've seen there are
some photographs that were discovered
somewhere in the last couple decades uh
a Nazi photo album that had been
languishing in somebody's
attic um and it
revealed not the stuff that we're so
familiar with from the Holocaust but it
it revealed
the the private recreational lives of
Nazis outside of aitz you know the I
heard something about this but no it's
remarkable and there there are a couple
photographs that I find just absolutely
chilling
where there are these you know
well-dressed Nazi girls one of them
they're enjoying blueberries right bowls
of blueberries like right outside of
aitz um woof yeah it's it's it's wild
and I I guess my feeling is look
actually no I want to turn the spotlight
back on polite society and I want to ask
the question which is why should we care
what you think at this moment when you
you know okay polite Society is very
committed to the idea that we have no
choice but to vote for Joe Biden because
of the you know the terrifying Prospect
of Donald Trump being elected again well
if polite Society was making any sense
it wouldn't be running Joe Biden as a
hedge against the reelection of Donald
Trump it would offer up somebody serious
it would in fact
sideline its influence pedaling racket
so that that was not an important
argument against in blue in this
election if it cared about us that's
what it would
do and the fact that it doesn't do that
suggests that actually it's as cynical
as it ever was but it wants the little
people to jump based on a fear of Donald
Trump that is irrational in my opinion
right
so when that's the game of foot when
polite Society wants to turn you know
its Gaze on me and say you're out of
line but it's not looking at the DNC and
saying what the hell are you people
doing Do you realize what you're playing
with Joe Biden shouldn't have been
elected in the last election the idea of
running him again at this even more
advanced state of decrepitude is insane
and yet doesn't cause the the Democratic
machine to Blink so anyway my point
again I think I think this is important
to say clearly I'm not accusing anybody
of nazil likee
defects that's not my point about the
Nazi girls and their blueberries my
point is polite Society existed right
outside of aitz it exists in every era
the fact that it does or doesn't invite
you to its cocktail party has to be
evaluated the meaning of that has to be
evaluated in the context of whether or
not polite Society is doing its job of
amplifying the good things about
civilization or if it's doing the exact
opposite and actually making us worse
making us Petty and superstitious and
that is exactly what I think it's doing
at the moment so uh I guess I'm I'm I'm
gladder to be outside of it and not
welcome at those parties um than I would
be continuing to attend them okay so um
again this is something that I
concretized after listening to you but
the idea that shame has its place uh
you've said you don't want to throw that
out you have to understand it you use
pain often times as the example if you
go to a doctor and they think that pain
is in and of itself a malady that is to
be gotten rid of you've got a problem
because pain is signifying there's an
issue that you need to address and it is
adaptive not maladaptive I would say the
same thing about polite Society though I
will agree with you that you you don't
want to blindly accept polite Society so
I'm going to take that as the shame
mechanism and I'm going to say okay I
don't I'm not going to discard this
lightly but the thing that I disagree
with with and what you just said is that
I don't think polite Society will ever
be its own policeman and so this is why
we need the you call yourself I think a
reluctant radical so it's like we need
we need reluctant or otherwise we need
the people that sit outside of polite
Society to also work their thing and so
while there's always going to be
friction between polite society and the
radicals my whole mission in life is to
get people to understand that you need
to exist in Dynamic tension like you you
don't want those two things to informed
to each other I would not want poite
Society to give up their sense of like
this is how things should be and I would
not want the radicals to conform to
polite Society so they're there you need
both of those things they they serve
well only when they're in Ju position
now getting specific about Alex
Jones Okay so one thing that as I watch
you you are very much a part of my
sensemaking apparatus people can take
that how they want but you Sam Harris is
a part of my continued sensemaking
apparatus and I know people have beef
with him and my thing is like I'm not
going to believe everything you say or
he says or anybody says I think
everybody's job is to take the best
information they can get discard the
stuff that they think whatever for
whatever reason isn't bang on and then
synthesize their own thing and if you
can't think for yourself you already
have a problem so when I think about
okay for you is there knowing that you
use this hypothesis thesis dichotomy is
there a limit to what you think is a
hypothesis that you will put out there
do you have a
governing Matrix Paradigm in your own
thinking that says this hypothesis I
will present publicly this one I won't
which will then tie into whether going
on Alex Jones may have been I haven't
seen it so I have no idea if you were
like the voice of reason in the room I
think of him as somebody who has
absolutely no Overton window he will
talk about literally anything and so I
would not want to see him censored
because hey better let me sort the wheat
from the CHF rather than that be a top-
down
decision however I put him in a very
specific box because he has no seemingly
no self-governance around what he will
talk about so do you have a thing that
governs what hypothesis you will and
won't publicly explore that's a great
question um and it's odd I don't exactly
know the answer to it um let me tell you
how I think about it
though there are
certain
properties that have a paradoxical
nature free speech is one of them we
could waste the rest of both of our
Lives parsing the various examples of
where speech has had some implication
and whether or not the effect
was negative or positive at a net level
but at the end of the day the right
answer is speech needs to be essentially
perfectly free and the net outcome of
that is positive likewise I would say i'
I've been engaged reluctantly in a
battle with uh a person on Twitter who
has been a very strong and I think uh
not forthright advocate for the standard
narrative on things like covid vaccines
he wishes continued engagement I don't
want to further engage him because I
don't believe that he is actually
working forward from evidence to a
conclusion I believe he's working
backwards from a conclusion and so I
don't think it's an honest debate but my
point would be this in an honest
debate let's say that we have an honest
debate over something that matters a
great deal like whether or not these
shots are safe enough to give to a human
being do I say well either the shots are
going to kill more people or not taking
them is going to kill more people and if
I have an argument with somebody about
it and I'm I'm saying hey I think the
shots are going to kill more people and
it turns out that the shots save more
people then we killed am I then
responsible for those
deaths absolutely not the way this works
is anybody on either side of an honest
exploration ation is contributing to us
knowing more about where the dangers are
and where the values are both sides get
credit as long as they're doing it in
good faith as soon as somebody steps out
of the realm of good faith they no
longer are in that uh that position they
actually own the downsides of their
argument if you're going to argue that
I'm responsible for the deaths if I
misunderstand something then the point
is well if it turns out you're wrong
you're responsible for those deaths
because you chose that argument but if
if you're willing to participate with me
in exploring this and we can take up
contrary positions and at the end of the
day we both get credit for making the
question clearer that's a world I'm I'm
happy with so
again is there a limit to what I will
present well if there is a limit it
is uh a threshold very different from
most people and it has
been I can trace it back at least to
college in college taking an
evolutionary biology course my final
paper the course was taught by Bob
drivers very famous and influential
evolutionary biologist my final paper
for the course was an exploration of the
question of whether or
not Hitler was in fact an insane Maniac
or whether what he did could be
understood in it's obviously as IM moral
as you get but could it be understood in
rational terms from an evolutionary
perspective now that is something I've
been told is a question we must not
explore and worse I've been told that it
can't possibly be true right people
don't want it explored and they wish to
Lodge an answer to the question without
exploring it which I I can't respect but
the fact that you know since I was in
college in would have been
1991 I guess
um I've been exploring questions like
that tells you that I'm willing to go
places others won't now I do
so knowing that I do so carefully that I
bring tools to the table and that
I I have an obligation not to say things
I believe are
untrue and I am trusting in some sense
that the reality that I will end up
unearthing
is a valuable thing to have awareness of
if it is worth
exploring the possibility that genocide
is a
rational objective immoral but a
rational objective my belief is the
likelihood that we will actually be able
to prevent future genocides is increased
if we understand that connection could I
be wrong about that I could be
but I'm a scientist to the core I
believe that unearthing the truth is
valuable in the end even if you know
even if I die believing something that
turns out to be reversed later on the
process gets us there over time and it
is uh it is it it does
embolden uh our best values all right
this is really interesting um I firmly
believe that everybody has a world view
it's What I Call Whole Life beer goggles
so everyone sees the world through a
distorted lens and we all get to distort
that lens in whatever way we choose most
people don't realize that so they're
born with something they live in a value
system they just adhere to whatever they
grow up with uh but that the warping of
that lens is a combination of what you
believe your values and your genetics
what I'm hearing is a mapped value
system from you you uh that makes a
prediction so you're willing to explore
whether hit Hitler or anybody else that
commits a genocide is acting rationally
immorally you were very clear about that
but rationally some people as you said
are going to say that's beyond the pale
because if you find out that the answer
is yes the world gets a little worse
because now I can't just Lop him off at
the knees and say completely Beyond The
Pale uh it's all bad it's only evil the
second you see it evil react go crazy so
the value that I think what you just
said predicts is that truth and
understanding Trump even grotesque
detrimental results well it depends if I
understand what You' just said um I am
not saying that the value of knowing the
truth is inherently greater than
whatever
harm uh might come of it but how will
you know until you explore it I won't I
could try to parse every instance of
speech and figure out which can I do
obviously the right to say anything is
not the same thing as believing that you
should say everything but the
exploration of
studable-winter but if I go wrong let me
know okay this all started CU I'm trying
to map the way that you think and uh
what you said about Hitler exploring
genocide as a potentially rational
immoral but rational act uh was to I
think explain the underlying value
system that you make these decisions on
because we were trying to figure out
what hypotheses would you or would you
not explore um okay so I said that truth
and understanding Trump grotesque and
detrimental results you said no that's
not quite right because you said that
exploring that thing does not outweigh
the potential damaging effects of
knowing said thing so if that's true
then in the uh Hitler as potentially
rational example you don't think that
the knowledge of that um will create a
negative outcome that is worth shutting
down the exploration
for okay I think I now am seeing this
more clearly do you have further you
wanted to go if I've already gone off
track no you should bring no you haven't
gone off track I have just completed
Bobby Kennedy's new book on it's called
the Wuhan
coverup it is just like his last book uh
the real Anthony fouchy it is
mindblowing it's really shocking uh it's
an encyclopedic exploration of
a quest for bioweapons that I had almost
no understanding of before reading this
book the bioweapons
question uh allows us to see the answer
you're looking for
because I would not argue that the
simple fact that there
are viruses in nature that could be
enhanced in ways that might tell us
something
about possible human impacts on health
from future uh
pandemics um or that might be enhanced
in ways that would tell us something
about weapons we cannot continue down
this road right the degree to which our
expl exploration of those questions in
the lab will result in massive human
harm what if you never made the virus
but you just explored gain a function
theoretically well that's the question
is my sense is a there is
no mechanism by which you can prevent
people from thinking about these
questions nor should you because if you
open the door to telling people what
they can and cannot contemplate
analytically open
baby okay but my point is no
analytically we have to be able to talk
about these things just as I have to be
able to talk about the actual
evolutionary meaning of rape and
genocide right doesn't make those
conversations fun it doesn't mean you
know could somebody hear a discussion of
that and be inspired to go spread his
genes I suppose but the value of
understanding that pattern the value
frankly for women understanding the
pattern the degree to which it empowers
them to make themselves safer from this
Hazard is significant enough that one
can't parse if you focus too much on the
possible harms you will miss the fact
that there is effectively a related
rates problem that makes the benefit of
understanding these things exceed the
cost but I would not take that to the
level of experiment right the level of
experiment has all kinds of perils that
we should not engage but the level of
abstraction I believe we are simply
better off becoming as informed as we
possibly can on every topic that has
implication for human
well-being have you looked at the IQ
literature uh a little what do you think
about that that's another hyper fra
purely ideological it's just a thought
just an idea but man does it freak
people out but here's okay but I wish I
had a better example for this but when I
was a kid there was a uh a children's
book uh that we read in my family it was
called The Monster at the End of This
Book do you know the Monster at the End
of This Book I don't but I can make a
lot of guesses based on the title The
the monster on at the End of This Book
is a book in which Rover becomes afraid
because the cover of the book tells you
that there is a monster at the end of
the book and he attempts to prevent the
Turning of the pages because every page
you turn brings you closer to what at
the end of the book is going to be a
monster and of course you turn all the
pages of the book and the monster at the
end of the book is Grover nothing to be
worried about right now my point
is we can look at all of these topics
and we can spook ourselves about the
danger that one of these topics is going
to put us in some terrible circumstance
we can't get out of and that we should
try to imagine in advance without
knowing what is at the end of the book
we should try to imagine in advance
which of these topics should be taboo
because you don't want to go there but
in so doing you are more or less saying
oh I know what's probably there and we
can't afford to know that in any factual
way so that can't possibly be right
because how do you know if you haven't
gone down that road so here's the thing
I'm not afraid of this IQ discussion I
think I know about where it lands it
could it could have been far worse than
I believe the evidence actually
suggests um and I'll tell you where I
think it goes and uh there is a bitter
pill but what is the net impact of
understanding the implications of the IQ
literature I believe it is actually
liberating for all of us humans it is
not going to be um the thing that people
fear interesting um I don't know the
lature so I can't speak to it but I know
people well enough to know it will be a
mixed bag and so it will be weaponized
by some so the real foundational
question though is what you're asking
are some ideas too taboo to discuss I
was explaining to somebody why I find
you interesting even as you grow more
and more controversial and you give you
are giving the world even in this
conversation more and more threads to
pull on if they have a bone to pick with
you however the way I would invite
everybody to see everybody else self
included anybody that's popping off and
putting ideas out into the world uh dip
in see what they have to say on a
particular topic by all means if you
think that they're a lunatic on
something ignore that one and move on to
the next you have to be able to
synthesize your own ideas you have to be
able to think for yourself and no one
has gotten very far if all they're doing
is following somebody Jordan Peterson
had a riff on this years ago that I
thought was brilliant and has really
kept me in check as a podcaster and he
said uh if you read a book and you
memorize the things that person said in
the book those ideas aren't yours yet
you don't understand it all you can do
is follow and repeat you have to go
learn the literature you have to
understand the thought process driving
all of this and then you can begin to
master the literature think for yourself
come up with hypotheses that make
predictions test those predictions so on
and so forth and I thought woo it's a
tall bar but that is the right way to
approach it and so I like that I don't
put you in the uh Alex Jones Camp you
guys feel like very different flavors to
me uh I like that you exist I like that
you're out there looking at things that
other people I I think I understand why
you're tripping so many people um but I
like that you exist and you're not
afraid to do these things to look at
these ideas and so when I want a well
one wellth thought out look at this
thing however crazy or Untouchable it
may be I like that you will have
explored some of those ideas whether
again I agree or not now the thing that
I think you're doing that trips people
is I think we have a uh moralistic in
our brain that says this thing is bad
don't it's like a disgust mechanism and
if you trip it then people just
inherently push back they may not even
know why they're pushing back they may
even be able to give you very in fact
I'd love to see you and um Coleman
Hughes debate the IQ thing I don't know
if his thinking has evolved but I heard
him talk about it at one point I I
thought his take was really brilliant
and it was um I don't see a world in
which the answer to these questions
makes the world better and I was like
yeah word like I get it I'm with you so
now I don't believe in top down
authoritarian rule so if people want to
explore it I think they should be able
to but um I'm with him on I don't see
how it makes a world a better place I
know you have an angle on it um but so
yeah I think you're tripping this
disgust mechanism that people have and
they just they're not it's no longer a
rational feeling it's a purely emotive
one yeah um I think I think part of the
problem is I don't think I make a great
villain and there's lots look I get it
because I've accidentally found myself
on the other side of this thing when
Bobby Kennedy Jr emerged back into the
public
Consciousness I believed him to be a
dangerous person because I thought I
understood what his perspective was on
vaccines and it was diametrically
opposed to my position I could not see
how a an intelligent reasonable person
could possibly be saying the
irresponsible things that I believed him
to be saying what would have made them
irresponsible with your value system
that they were unlikely to be true and
were almost certain to influence people
in a direction that would harm them got
it okay so the going back to your
definition of a hypothesis is something
that is
plausible uh and you thought his were
just outright manipulations or did you
think him too dumb to understand the
truth um I didn't have a detailed
understanding because if I had if I had
spent enough time to just know the style
of his thinking and his presentation
style none of it was consistent with
what I thought I knew about
him so I then fell down the same rabbit
hole that he fell down and so now people
think of me what I thought of him and
I'm capable of seeing this as somebody
who has woken up to the uh despicable
destruction of his
reputation
um and I'm I can now watch it happening
to me and I can think well I know how to
prevent that but I wouldn't think very
much of myself if I did Silence sure oh
absolutely yeah just keep it to yourself
keep it you're allowed to think what you
want polite Society will tell you that
you're allowed to think what you want
but be careful what you
say in any case um but I think the
problem the reason that that I keep
getting this message it is that disgust
that you're talking about um is that
humans are very sensitive to being
ostracized they're very sensitive to
being ostracized for a powerful reason
that is no
longer um consistent with the way we
live but it wasn't terribly long ago
that being ostracized from your lineage
was a death
sentence and so we have a sensitivity
when other Apes start making no noises
that suggest that we're about to be
shoved out we Panic like a drowning
person panics that they're not going to
be able to take their next
breath and that has made us manipulable
in a terrible way and it is part of the
amplifying force that you were talking
about on social media you know as the
group starts to make noises and those
noises may not be organic to begin with
they may be seeded into that millu by
something that doesn't want certain
things discussed right the idea of
antivaxer for example what does that
even mean given what we've just been
through right we were told that the
people who didn't think that these shots
were reasonable were antivaxers and that
means that they're either stupid or
selfish or both right that's what that
term meant to me I now know
better
but the drive to get certain ideas not
discussed because the conventional
narrative will not withstand that
discussion is very powerful and so I see
it as actually my obligation to go where
others
can't that does not mean that every
place is fruitful but to the extent that
I discover that there is something we
need to be talking about that we can't
talk about because it's not allowed I do
see it is my obligation to figure out
how to talk about it and I'm ready to go
and talk about IQ if you want and then
you're going to see why we have to talk
about genocide and the fact is do I do I
want topics like that to dominate my
life absolutely not I'm like everybody
else I don't I don't want to be obsessed
with these things but somebody has to
open these topics if we are to get past
them and not have them haunt our future
which is what they're going to do okay
uh I have a feeling that some some
people are running an algorithm that
says thinkers are obligated in the same
way that doctors are obligated to First
Do no
harm do you think that thinkers ought to
be held to the standard of Do no harm
it's a great question and it's a
fascinating moment to ask it I I you
know once a week I think about the
question of what the hell happened to
our doctors right this is one of the few
professions where you actually have an
oath an
oath and the medical profession just
violated that oath on
mass it's in constant violation of the
obligation to provide informed consent a
principle so important that the Allies
literally hung seven doctors in the
aftermath of World War II for violating
informed consent even though that
requirement had not yet been
formalized so where are we so yes there
is a question about first Do no harm but
I would point out if you think carefully
about what that
means it doesn't mean what we think it
means right you can't tell a surgeon
first Do no harm and then micromanage
each move right the first thing the
surgeon has to do in order to save you
from the tumor is to harm you right they
have to cut you open and they have to do
so in a way that your body can repair
that that damage over time we need them
to harm you in order not to net harm you
so first Do no harm is not a principle
that is designed to to micromanage each
move it is a general overarching
principle and I've already told you I
think what how this sits in my mind
which is the exploration of of reality
with robust tools with epistemic
humility that
exploration is what say aves Us in the
end right what I need to be true in
order to be morally comfortable with
myself is to have contributed to that
process in a way that moved it forward
and what I've just told you does not
require me to be right about
anything it requires me to forthrightly
participate in a process that advances
the human ball now I do believe I've
been right about a tremendous amount of
stuff and that anybody who's looking at
the things that I say that cause to
think whoa that one can't be right
should go back to that track record they
should recognize that I'm I'm not
telling stories there's lots of stuff
I've gotten wrong but what I do what I
do very well is I track my own
predictive power and where I'm wrong I
correct it I am not kept by
embarrassment from correcting my errors
I correct them they go away my model
gets better over time if we all did that
we'd be in a whole different place so I
think I am living up to the
principle as I would apply it to a
doctor the first Do no harm I am I am
engaged in something that does the
opposite of harm it does not mean no
harm will be done along the way it will
be but the net impact is positive would
you rather be known for constantly
updating your positions when you get
something wrong yep I got that wrong
here's my updated thinking or would you
rather be known for getting a lot of
stuff
right depends what you mean I I think
the way that you do get things right is
you update your positions and the real
question that I think you're asking is
publicly right you could do all of that
work privately and then it creates a
very wrong impression about how we get
smarter and this is one of my complaints
about the The Narrative that we deliver
students when we try to teach them how
to do great science is we give them a
narrative that is overly focused on the
things that worked out
so they don't have any realistic sense
of the process that causes those things
to happen right my favorite process is
prototyping right I know your first
prototype may it may waste aund times as
much effort as it saves but it's a proof
of concept it tells you that you can
save effort if you can refine this thing
and get it to work well right that may
be 10 Pro 10 prototypes down the road
I mean look you're you're asking me a
lot of questions that are causing me to
say a lot of stuff about how I view
myself and uh I do think I'm My Own
Worst critic but that that's part of how
you clear that stuff away right you
can't stand certain evaluations of
yourself and so you stop doing the stuff
that forces you to make them and what
I'm telling you is that the result of
that process is not what people
imagine right it it's a person I I don't
I don't care really how wrong you start
out if your process
actually takes things that you had that
were
incorrect flips them so that they are
correct and moves forward on that basis
if that's all you do it almost doesn't
matter how wrong you start out you will
end up lapping other people who don't
have that process running even if they
start out far rer so you know I'm
advocating for it I'm using it I'm also
trying to model it
and
um there
is every great idea starts with a
minority of
one that implies something a lot of
people can see the logic of that it kind
of logically has to be true but what
that means is that when you have a great
idea the first thing you will hear is
that nobody agrees with it right you
have to be able to get through that
phase and not think oh well God if
nobody agrees it can't be right right if
you do that then you're you're you're
setting your own limit as to how much
you can accomplish if you say actually
doesn't mean anything right if plate
tectonics was a a batshit crazy idea
before it became you know textbook
gospel then a batched the fact that an
idea is batched crazy is not an argument
against it in and of itself the question
is does it provide you predictive power
that's always the question yeah that
that is what I'm trying to get people
obsessed with you know your closest to
the truth when your mental model of the
world makes accurate predictions if it
doesn't make accurate predictions then
you have a problem which is just
something I got from business um but
yeah it's distressing how rare people
apply that to the world going back to um
nesting this in people can feel
something is wrong uh they meme it as
America's collapsing what are
what are the elements of the western
value set enlightened value set however
you want to Enlighten mint value set
however you want to think about it that
are being chipped away um and I'm
assuming they're doing it by closing the
Overton window by censoring people um by
having that de discussed reflex and
pushing back people shouldn't even be
talking about that icing people out um
what are they what are they actually
chipping away at ever wonder how much of
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I've done a lot of thinking about the
west and I think of myself as a patriot
of the United States but even more so a
patriot of the West and I believe that
although the antecedence of the West can
be traced back all the way to ancient
Greece that the West was really founded
by the American founding fathers and it
was founded almost by accident that in
order to get the colonies to
Confederate they built a system that
leveled playing fields in a way that
hadn't been done before and I don't
think they knew what problem they
actually solved and I don't mean to take
anything away from them I'm I'm a huge
fan of the founding fathers and I think
they did as well as they could possibly
have done from their place in history
what did they think they were doing and
what did they actually do well I mean
consent of the governed is a radical
idea and you know there are again
antecedents of it but the idea that
you're going to have uh broadscale
voting to figure out the direction of a
society is a radical
departure but once you decide that that
may be a better way of navigating
getting people to agree to it because
they do not see the fix as being in
that's the
trick the idea of the West is that we
shouldn't you know it's basically
uh a an application of the rosian veil
of ignorance before it
existed
so you should want to make rules that
you'd be as happy to live on the other
side of right the your desire for a rule
should not be contingent on your
position in society we should want
courts that can
adjudicate questions of fact and
questions of law without asking who that
law is being applied to it shouldn't
matter that's what they did and in
building that system they actually
solved an evolutionary puzzle before
anybody knew what an evolutionary puzzle
was
so we evolutionists have done a poor job
of exploring what I call
lineage we have proper language and have
since mid 20th century for understanding
how kin relationships affect Behavior
right we understand why uh a mother may
run into a burning building to save her
Offspring because that Offspring is the
conduit through which her genes will
reach the future but we evolutionists
lost track of the fact that the logic
that explains that when it's your
Offspring or your cousin continues to
explain that at much larger scales for
which we don't have precise terminology
that says exactly how many genes are
shared a lineage is an evolutionary
entity lineages carry our genes through
time and by acting in ways that benefit
our lineage at the expense of other
lineages we can advance our genetic
interests why do you avoid the word
race for a very particular reason um
lineage is the responsible version of
the concept race is a racist
bastardization of the legitimate concept
right the idea that you switch C
categories based on one drop of blood
from some other
group that is a self-serving racist
notion and so by saying lineage I'm
telling you what level of rigor I'm
demanding from the concept is America
one lineage no absolutely not in fact
that's the amazing thing about it okay
so where if it
isn't um I mean the one drop thing just
feels like gray area to an otherwise
serviceable concept of race but uh if it
isn't breaking a long race and it isn't
breaking a long Nation what is a lineage
well no no um lineages are the rigorous
version of what we sloppily call Race
now I can Define it precisely and you
can extrapolate from it a lineage is any
individual and all of their descendants
okay okay
now what will not be immediately obvious
is that that becomes an absolute power
tool of a concept because it is scale
independent if you have no children you
are a
lineage you and all of your children and
grandchildren if you have them are a
lineage but so too is
is your species a lineage there was a
most recent common ancestor and all of
its descendants that's a
lineage Melia is a
lineage the idea that these things are
in play
evolutionarily is very important it has
profound
implications the idea that the way the
Dynamics in a room play out based on the
lineage relationships that are
represented there is only something you
can comprehend if you've looked at that
fractal and you realize that the
Frenchmen and the Irishmen May view each
other as uh competing
lineages um until the Japanese person
walks through the door right that the
these these Dynamics play out in ways
we're all familiar with and we don't
understand that we're looking at an
evolutionary story but back to the
founders in order to Federate the states
the founders built a crude set of Level
Playing Fields now they weren't
perfectly level and there were some
major flaws in those formulations but
nonetheless what they had to do to get
the signatories to agree was figure out
how to level them enough that people's
fears were put to
rest but here's where the rubber meets
the road on this one there are two
evolutionary bases for cooperation one
of them is genes shared genes
that's what is flowing through lineages
and that is why lineages more naturally
collaborate against other lineages than
at random but there's another basis
which is reciprocal
altruism reciprocity can take two
individuals that look very different and
cause them to collaborate because it's
profitable to do so and this is if you
squinted it correctly the reason that uh
an orchid flower and a hummingbird
collaborate
right those are very distinct lineages I
mean one's an animal and one's a plant
that's pretty widely separated they
collaborate not because of their shared
genes of which they do have some they
collaborate because it is profitable for
each of them to do
so now in leveling the playing fields
the founders created an environment in
which people who did come from many
different lineages had a basy
for collaborating with other individuals
irrespective of their lineage background
irrespective of
race now that is lightning in a bottle
and the reason that it's lightning in a
bottle is that if you imagine that
there's a lot of productivity to to be
uh discovered through collaboration well
if you decide only to collaborate with
people who look like you how far you're
going to get is going to be limited
because some of the best people to
collaborate probably don't look like you
so to the extent that you build a system
in which people collaborate with whoever
else brings the right stuff to the table
you do a lot better and all of the
amazing list of innovations that are
American in
origin I believe is Downstream of this
very thing that the founders created an
environment in which people collaborated
with others now did they tell you know
racial jokes behind each other's backs
yeah they did they mocked each other and
mimicked each other's accents and all
that stuff but the point is at the end
of the day there was an awful lot of
collaboration that was indifferent to
what you look like and who your
ancestors were and once other population
saw how productive that was they wanted
in so it was a contagious idea this is
why the West is bigger than the United
States is that there's just no argument
for behaving in another way once you've
seen how good this is in good
times but the problem is it only works
when you are in a period of growth and
we have been in an amazing period of
growth when the growth runs out blood is
thicker than water and what happens is
we go back to our corners and that's
what's happening now that's why the West
is collapsing that's why our blindness
to where we are is going to result in a
massive loss for all of humanity is that
it is not going to allow us to avoid
that Pitfall we're going to go back to
doing what we have done genocide is
going to become more common and more
unavoidable and anybody who sees that
connection would do virtually anything
to prevent it from happening because
it's such a terrible loss to
humanity we seem to be doing the exact
opposite though it's very much under
attack like even if you widen that
definition out and say that part of the
way that we collaborate Beyond lineage
is through specialization so you're good
at a thing and we're both going to use
um reason in order to get us where we
want to go so the scientific method uh
you've talked really interestingly about
people need to deal with the physical
world you can't do everything at a
social intellectual level uh go make a
car run like you know nobody has to tell
you whether it worked or not either the
car turned on and it runs or it didn't
and having that kind of very tactile
relationship with something either works
or it doesn't becomes really really
important um so we are living in a time
where that very process of rationality
is being handwaved away as somehow white
supremacist or whatever uh which is
crazy town to me
um so how do we protect this little
Ember so if we're right now
um stopping people from talking about
things uh censoring people to death in
fact one thing I'd love to hear you talk
about is um Don Lemon and Elon Musk and
Elon saying you want censorship so badly
you can taste it uh I thought that was a
great line and really endemic of
something far more than just Don Lemon I
think a lot of people uh want to
moderate uh and and make sure that some
things just can't be talked about so
anyway how do we protect that little
flame when it is under assault from so
many different directions I mean it's a
great question and I think it's it's
what we've been getting at for this
whole discussion
I may be wrong about how we protect it
but in my
opinion the thing to do is to understand
it to understand what it's doing for us
to understand what the likelihood is of
whatever replaces the system exceeding
it in this capability I think the
chances are almost nil if you destroyed
this system what will replace it it will
look a lot like history and it will be a
lot worse which is not to say that we
should ignore any of the glaring defects
of our system but we should at least
compare it to uh to something other than
uh phony utopian Alternatives that have
never been established to be
possible um so anyway I'm I'm trying to
do it I'm trying to
explain why we've got it pretty good why
addressing the flaws of our system will
always be better than scrapping it in
favor of some system that hasn't shown
any promise and accomplishment in what
we've got and I think also exploring you
know why history looked the way it did
right there is a reason to talk about
Hitler and my term for Hitler is
rational
monster right I don't diminish the
horror of what he did obviously in fact
I'm more familiar with it than
most but understanding why that would
have happen if you
imagine the the reason I engaged in that
uh exploration when I was a college
student
was I was afraid that it was just too
easy to dismiss them as nuts if you
dismiss Hitler as nuts well then there
is nothing to be done to prevent the
next one right you can't prevent radical
dysfunction somebody's going to be
radically dysfunctional if that's it
it's just there's nothing to be said on
the other hand a rational monster can be
disincentivized from doing what they do
you can prevent Hitler from emerging by
making it irrational to do what he did
how do we decide who's an irrational
monster we don't have
to we don't have to okay so this is
actually bringing back a bunch of
threads let's take the case of rape
right and let's remember that the reason
that rape is on the table here as a
topic is that it's the the shallow end
of the pool with respect to how
knowledge helps us prevent something
that we that all reasonable people agree
is is terrible mhm a rapist can pass
their genes into the future by
raping civilization can prevent men from
doing this by driving the cost up so
high that it's not worth it that the
profit that can be made by doing this uh
is uh small or or negative but even more
importantly let's just notice that rape
is
essentially impossible for many men to
commit and the reason is because it's
not a turn
on right in order to rape you have to be
turned on by the
process so why is it that so many men
are really incapable of it is that
genetic
difference no it's a developmental
difference we have the power to make
rape disgusting and if we do rape make
rape disgusting then it becomes
vanishingly
rare by virtue of the fact that it's
just off the table for most of the
people who are physically equipped to do
it that is an important leverage point
we as a society ought to hold values
that cause us to raise Boys in such a
way that rape is disgusting to them by
the time they become adults and that's
readily
possible
so if you didn't have the discussion if
you said well look I don't want to hear
any discussion of why rape happens
because you're going to legitimize it
then you never get to the point of
realizing oh well actually we have a
tool at our disposal it's not a simple
one it's not you can't snap your fingers
and make it go away but you can say well
three generations from now would we like
rape to be a historical consideration
and not a modern consideration of course
you would right The Leverage Point
exists in understanding it but you have
to have the courage to get to the end of
the book before you realize that you
have that tool at your disposal now the
question
is rape is Loosely analogous to genocide
rape is the individual version genocide
is the lineage level
version do we have a tool that takes
genocide off the table if we are capable
of understanding why the idea keeps
reemerging right we said never again
after the Holocaust but how many
genocides have we seen sense never again
didn't work so if you really believe in
never again then the question is well
what tool gets us to never again and I
would argue I don't know what the tool
is but I will uh tell you the most
likely place to find it is with an
unflinching
investigation of genocides their causes
and any instances in which they've been
averted through wisdom or the altering
of incentives or whatever it may be so
why am I going down that road is it
because there's something perverse about
me am I fascinated by Despicable
historical patterns um no I'm I'm
terrified by them and that's why I I
really think the the route to preventing
them comes and understanding
them uh interesting that we have to so
it you're spreading the meme through the
layer of culture you're saying uh we
have to bake into culture that this is
just absolutely abor I think what people
are going to well people may or may not
hear but as you were saying it this was
the first thing that I thought is that
this idea ends up becoming so identified
with being disgusting that it trips the
disgust filter which then makes people
want you to stop talking about it and so
there's a potential fascinating
oscillating Loop of um people Force
other people to stop talking about it so
much that it becomes so taboo that
suddenly it has to be
reinforced uh it's possible that we're
living through a moment like that with
certain things though I would I'm either
old school but rape is still pretty uh
disgust triggering for me yeah um does
not feel like that needs
reinforcing wait wait wait wait wait yep
I think we're missing something though
because I mean I'm not into porn I I
think porn is a uh a terrible error I'm
not against erotica it's not that erotic
content throws me me but interesting you
have a line though erotica fine porn bad
yes porn apocalyptically bad can you
draw a line I can I can't operationalize
the line but I can tell you exactly
where the line is okay the line is was
the motivation for the production of the
content
profit
interesting okay you could make great
art and get paid for it in fact I think
you aspire to this yes um so the fact
that you get paid for it the fact that
you did profit doesn't tell us whether
that's what drove you to make it but if
the thing that drove you to make it is
profit and it's erotic in nature that's
pornography interesting which isn't to
say that every item in porn is harmful
hold on yeah if I make
hardcore
bondage super dominant aggressive almost
rap likee porn but I'm not doing for
money I just think it's beautiful art
sincerely yep no I get it that would be
okay well it's okay the line I'm drawing
I my feeling is a wise person and
unfortunately young people are never
wise they can be wise beyond their years
but they're not wise because there's no
way for them to be that but uh for a
young person I would say you draw this
line in an absolute fashion you do not
let anything that is likely to be
pornography right you maybe you don't
know for sure why they made it but if
you think that somebody made that thing
for profit you do not let that into your
sexual mind it's terrible for you and
it's terrible for your future partner
that seems like a really weird line to
draw with a profit thing I would so just
as one guy speaking from experience uh
the loop I would worry about is volume
initial age of contact given how brains
develop and then um the type so if it
were like super vanilla it's um you know
like wedding night missionary like
really simple loving
awkward I'm less concerned if it's an
Ever escalating Loop of like freak show
that starts at age 11 uh now I'm very
worried about what they will imbue but
even if that [ __ ] was art from top to
bottom and the person making it was just
like I just want to give to the world
I'd still be like don't do it well look
I'm not arguing that everything that
would fall under the category of erotica
is inherently defensible just as I
believe in free speech but I don't
believe that you should say everything I
believe you know you should choose very
carefully what to say and most speech is
probably bad even though you should be
entitled to or make any argument you
want um but let's look at the case you
you know you've you've drawn a
Continuum between plain vanilla stuff
that's erotic for the most basic human
reasons uh up through super extreme
stuff here here's my point about the
profit
motive the profit motive inherently
drives you towards the end of the
Continuum that you ex that you
instinctively are repelled by and the
reason for that is because all
pornographers are selling the same thing
sex so how do you compete in a world
where all of your competitors have the
same thing for sale and the answer is
through an escalating battle over
extremeness that inevitably eventually
goes to Taboo now I believe that those
taboos presumably all of them evolved
for a reason those reasons may not be
think that we understand or in some
cases we might understand them but the
idea that you because you can sell
people something because they haven't
seen it before because it's taboo that
you should do that that's insane right
those taboos this is a chesterton's
fence issue you don't know why something
is has been off
limits but the fact that the market will
drive people to explore it tells you
that that motive is
suspect and so anyway again I'm not
telling you I know how to to
operationalize the line between uh porn
for profit and erotica that's made for
other reasons and I'm not telling you
that all erotica is good but I am
telling you there's no defense necessary
for human beings producing sexual
content or gravitating to it I mean I do
look at you know
marvelous sculptures of naked women and
I wonder you know is is that the porn of
the day right and is it is the fact that
I'm looking at such a sculpture in a
museum and that I appear to be you know
uh engaged in an elevated activity
rather than you know a base activity is
that the Distortion of history and the
fact that our civilization has grown so
crass that uh we we miss what's going on
and I don't know the answer to the
question but human beings make erotica
they always have and there's nothing
wrong wrong with it and I would argue
against anybody who uh said that we
shouldn't because I don't know what role
it has played but pornography for profit
is dangerous precisely because it leads
in the direction of uh exploring Realms
that are bad most especially
violence this is one of the things that
I again I don't think this is an
abstract discuss discussion at
all the if you want to see rape
eliminated then the one thing we mustn't
do is eroticize
it which is what we're doing because the
market can't help but explore that Niche
so I mean I think this is a great test
case right does it make sense to explore
all of these things that people don't
want talked about well I don't know I
feel like I just presented
I'm not saying that we will embrace it
but I feel like I've just presented a
map for how if Society decided it was
serious about eliminating the scourge of
rape it would go about doing it not
eroticizing rape would be a great start
because to the extent that rape is not
erotic it becomes uh near
impossible um and I believe the same
thing is true for genocide it's just a
more complicated puzzle so
and to go back to an earlier point I
don't think anybody out there has a
valid argument that says you will not
find the solution to those puzzles by
understanding them I think that argument
is suspect on its face I think we we are
likely to find the solutions to these
puzzles by understanding the puzzles and
if we don't the likelihood that we will
make them worse I think is vanishingly
small Elon Musk has said uh multiple
times and I actually think he's right if
you want racism to go away you have to
stop talking about it all the time that
flies in the face of what you're saying
right now which is we need to talk about
it make it taboo keep it in a certain
box no no no no I I would I would
instantiate the principle that I'm uh
elucidating differently and in fact this
is why uh I thought the question of
IQ is is another good test case what do
we find if we actually go down that road
well I don't think most people are ready
for it but I think if we did go down
that road what we would find actually uh
it didn't have to be a good answer but I
believe it is a good
answer when you say it's a good answer
so here's what I uh imagine happens and
I do want to get back to the context we
started this in which is what is
happening to Western civilization but
just to take the IQ thing so it doesn't
keep coming back up uh I think there are
two hyper dangerous things that
if solidified can create real problems
um whatever is true is true I think the
truth is an absolute defense I am not
saying people should not look at this
I'm just saying I get why you're not
going to find me running to have this
conversation uh if you find that Jews
really do have a higher IQ that's not
going to go good like people are going
to have a real [ __ ] hard time with
that that that is going to be weaponized
yep and if you find that uh black people
have a slightly lower IQ then that is is
going to be weaponized and both of those
things are horrific and they will
there's no good that comes out of it now
again the truth is an absolute defense
whatever is true is true um but godamn
like those are the landmines that people
are trying to avoid and given that I
think ideas really do run the things uh
they run the cultural
currents that there are some ideas I
just don't want to spend a lot of time
with um I get it but I think uh I get it
really well because I do think that if
the truth were as simple as what you
just outlined and the implication were
the one that you didn't state but was
carried in what you said um that would
be a disaster for Humanity and it's
possible I'm not interested in that
answer I'm relieved that I don't believe
it's true but here's the thing that was
missing from your description your
hypothetical description of a bad answer
that would do harm to humans to explore
it to say that IQs differ between
populations is almost certainly true and
substantially so true that is not what
most people hear when they hear a claim
like that is that that must mean that
the genes produce those
differences it's not what it
means and the difference
between distinctions in cognitive
capacity that are the result of genetic
differences between
populations
and the significant distinctions in
cognitive capacity that are the result
of things that are developmental is all
the difference in the world right if you
knew knew that there were important
distinctions between
populations but that those distinctions
were not based in genes then the answer
is oh well can we level everybody up is
part of the game the reason that people
are blinding each other about keeping
your competitors in the dark this is
obviously an undercurrent for um the
cryptic Warfare between populations and
so my feeling is look I don't believe
here's what I think people imagine and
here's what I think uh underlies the the
hypothetical you put on the table people
look at
sport and
they they think they know what must be
going on with the brain right because it
seems like it should be analogous right
we all understand that the capacity to
engage in different sports is not evenly
distributed between populations it's
radically unevenly
distributed and somebody who hasn't
thought deeply about this may say well
seems like there should be every analogy
between cognitive
capacity and physical capacity and so I
think we know the truth about the
differences between races because we've
seen it you know on the basketball court
and the hockey rank and the long jump
pit and all of
that it's a bad analogy the reason it's
a bad analogy is that there's a very
good reason that human populations
radically differ in their athletic
capability across different sports
there's a very good reason and it's
because they came from different
habitats
so you find Ethiopians are absolutely
dominant in Marathon
running
why oh because Ethiopia is really
freaking hot and the key skill if you're
an Ethiopian at a physiological level is
the shedding of excess heat right the
ability to build up too much heat is
lethal and so they become lanky and lean
right they they are shaped in such a way
that maximizes their surface area to
volume ratio so they can shed
heat it's the exact inverse of what an
innuit has why are Inuits round well
Inuits are round because it's freaking
cold and you want to shed as little heat
as possible so you you want to minimize
the surface to volume ratio if you're an
Inuit and so why are the Inuits not
dominating Marathon running because they
come from the Arctic so the reason that
humans differ across all of these
physical
capabilities is that different habitats
select for different things you would
expect them to differ because is it
better to be round or lanky well tell me
where where we're going to compete and
I'll tell you which right there is no
better it's all about without adaptation
to particular
habitats this is not true cognitively
there's no habitat that selects for
stupidity what's more the ability for
genes to alter your physical structure
right the ratio of one bone to another
is tremendous but that's not how the
mind forms there aren't enough genes to
build a mind by blueprint the mind is
the result of a very very basic process
that is set in motion that then is
exposed to all of these developmental
influences so here's the bitter pill of
IQ populations differ in their cognitive
capacity as
adults that does not say that those
differences came from the genome and
here's another bitter
pill there have to have been in
evolutionary history significant
differences in cognitive capacity
between populations that did come from
the genome in order for our brains to
have gotten as large as they did those
with more capacity had to have
outcompeted those with less capacity so
that did happen it is possible but the
question that we are left with the one
the one that we are avoiding because of
what we see on the basketball court and
because of what we see you know on the
soccer field the question that we are
avoiding uh
is what would you have to do to
democratize the things that make us
smarter my feeling is every population
is under shooting the mark substantially
right we have not properly studied the
question of what development
developmental environment actually makes
you smarter right and we are not doing
well I think it could be done much
better and you would find every single
population on Earth would rise radically
if we actually put kids in an
environment that that uh brought the
best out of their
capabilities but what I don't see is a
substantial reason to think that within
a species with lots of interbreeding
that we have these genetically based
cognitive differences that reside in one
population and not another it doesn't
make sense that they would so what was
that 8
minutes 8 minutes and what I've said is
there is a very strong chance that by
avoiding the question of of how
cognitive capacity is distributed by
lineage that you are avoiding the remedy
that might make us all radically smarter
and neutralize the differences do we
really want to avoid that question I
think the solution lies down the road of
understanding what the distinctions are
and
frankly I think we all believe in the
distinctions why would anybody fight for
better schools if how the quality of
your developmental environment didn't
have an influence on how smart you ended
up
I think there's a lot of assumptions in
the things that you're saying I'm not
familiar with the literature I have
certainly heard that um intelligence is
inheritable to a hyper distressing
degree um now a across lineages I have
no idea I think I made my reasons for
not even wanting to look at it pretty
clear so I'll leave that alone but yeah
I think you've explained it perfectly it
unfortunately brings me back full circle
to but the moment we're in now in the
west is despite all the incredible
things that it has rained upon us the
absolute just embarrassment of riches
that it is to be born into the Western
Democratic world uh now people are
tearing it apart I saw a video the other
day where that the guy was like uh oh
I'm at this March because I want to end
America he was like all of us do and I
was like what so you've got at the
ground level people are trying to tear
the West apart you've got just absolute
weird things happening at the government
level clearly power grabs you've got
censorship going on left right and
Center
um given how much ground we've just
traversed can you put a button on
um why blind us why are they so worried
about what we see and
say yeah let me flesh out the concept I
started with and then let me uh as long
as the punchline is why they are doing
this I'm here for it yeah well I mean
the problem is who are they and how
specific can we be about why they're
doing it um but if we put those uh
nuances
aside and then I will return to the
question of where there might be hope
given all of the reasons that you've
just outlined for
despair I've come up with a concept
called the time traveling money printer
the time traveling money printer is
based on the idea that we all been
through the thought exercise of what
would you do if you had a time machine
right well if you had a time machine
that could go forward in time you could
go figure out what's going to happen and
you could come back to the present and
place your bets in the market and make
tons of money right if you had a time
machine that went backwards you could go
back and you could buy apple and
Microsoft and Amazon make tons of money
so we all get that a time machine is a
money
maker but there are no time machines as
far as we
know I'm concerned that some rent
seeking
Elites have rent seeking for those that
don't know because I always have to look
this up is people that manipulate the
political system to their personal gain
I would describe it differently I would
say it's people who uh make a profit
through activity that is not productive
the dictionary disagrees with you oh God
yes well uh I'd be willing to Hash this
out in a fight to the death with a
dictionary but um but in any case uh
let's imagine that we have some folks
who have got some uh some unearned power
who wish to have more power and control
and don't wish to be upended by
competitors who are more clever than
they are something like that well they
don't have a time machine but what they
do have is enough control to
render the truth seeking capability of
humanity lame they have the ability to
pollute what we are able to deduce and
therefore if they can privatize the
knowledge of what is coming it is like
they have a time machine right let's
take an
example strong evidence suggests
that the covid pandemic whatever its
nature was already happening in China in
September October of
2019 and that Elites knew this did they
immediately run to the public and tell
us or did they make some phone calls and
say Here's what's coming down the pike
um cruise ships are a bad bet you should
short you know the cruise ship industry
Airlines uh I would go big on uh home
deliveries of this that and the other so
you can just imagine it's as good as a
time machine if you privately hold the
information about what history is about
to do and the public is unaware of it
the opportunity to make money is
Limitless so that's a why somebody would
have engaged in blinding us because the
Blinder we are the more powerful their
money printer is and I believe that this
happen and actually there's a tremendous
amount of evidence much of it is uh laid
out in Bobby Kennedy's
book on
Wuhan um that uh there were incredibly
precient Investments made by Bill Gates
and others in companies that you would
have no reason to think were about to
have a spectacular rise that just so
happen to have the the goods for
producing mRNA vaccines that would just
so happen to take over the world this
sort of thing so anyway I don't know
exactly who we know some of the players
Gates appears to be an important player
who seems to know what's going to happen
in the future before the rest of us do
um and why is obvious because for the
same reason that people rob a bank you
know this is safer and uh much more uh
lucrative to place bets in the world
based on private information it's uh
it's a good gig um and so anyway that's
what I that's what I think is happening
we're being systematically blinded
because there are some people who are
sophisticated in their own diabolical
way who think well why the hell would I
share useful information about reality
if I could use it to my own Advantage
instead what do you think about somebody
like Don Lemon who really does seem to
want to censor he's not I really don't
think he's doing it because he's going
to make some pre bets and he wants to
keep everybody dumb I think he
represents the person who's like yeah
you've tripped a moral thing in him uh
that probably plays out something like
somebody needs to be the adult in the
room um the thing that he kept saying in
the interview with Elon Musk was um you
you need to moderate this hate speech
like hate speech has gone up what are
you doing you need to take this stuff
off your platform and no matter how many
times Elon said uh if it doesn't violate
the law or our policies we don't take it
down uh we just don't promote it and he
just kept going you need to moderate
this stuff um what do you think about
that is is moderation propaganda for
censorship as Elon says or um is it the
flagrant um Embrace of hate speech that
Don Lemon sees it as well I know very
little about Don Lemon except that the
six times he has risen to my awareness
uh he's been impressively foolish um so
I don't know what that is I don't know
that he's organic or not organic I don't
know I don't know what his role in the
universe is um
but let's put it this way you've got a
vacuum of comprehension based on the
sabotage of our educational institutions
so people are Dum intentional sabotage I
don't know I assume I
assume uh the same think about it this
way an institution that makes other
people's kids smarter would be viewed
hostile by ruthless players who wished
to take every Advantage they have and
parlay it into wealth and power so I
don't think it's an accident that our
universities
are uh completely incapable of figuring
out whether 2 plus 2 equals 4 whether
men can become
women uh that confusion is serving
somebody at what level was this a bunch
of industries that decided that they
needed
to uh disrupt the discovery of
inconvenient things uh was it more
systematic than that I can't say I think
they're probably is a certain amount of
systematic sabotage but I how would I
know
um but in any case in a world where you
just don't have those truth seeking
mechanisms they don't work in fact they
are more likely to spit out the inverse
of the truth than than the truth
itself um there's an awful lot of room
for various bad thought processes to
take over and one of the things that you
should absolutely expect is that where
our forefathers have discovered a
counterintuitive truth it's going to get
uninvented free speech it's not obvious
most speech is probably pointless
and of the speech that has an impact a
huge fraction of it is just
bad so of course somebody with a
childlike view of the universe would
think well why don't we just get rid of
the bad speech and certainly there are
some things that are so obviously bad
speech let's just start with that right
but as soon as you get there you realize
oh somebody's going to have to draw a
line and they're going to come up with
all kinds of utilitarian reasons that
they have to draw the line farther and
farther and farther and so the point is
no actually you can't do any of that
don't do any of that because it's if you
step on that slippery slope it's a
disaster so it's counterintuitive
likewise the
um
standard and burden of proof in a court
is also counterintuitive most of the
people that we charge with a crime are
probably guilty so why would we force
the state to prove that Beyond A
Reasonable Doubt why wouldn't we just
say well if the evidence suggests that
the person committed the crime they
probably did and you know how often is
that going to go wrong no Founders they
had a
counterintuitive understanding which is
the power of the state is too ferocious
and that you have to hobble the state in
order to give a person a Fighting Chance
because even if on the average day a
person where the evidence points to
their having committed the crime
probably did if anything causes the
government to take a dim view of
political compass s or whatever the
government needs to be hobbled in its
capacity to rob you of your freedoms
right that's counterintuitive so anyway
my point would be we have lost sight of
all of the things that we used to
understand right there are men and there
are women we used to understand that now
it's that's some crazy battle right 2
plus 2 equals 4 yep the symbols are
arbitrary but the concept is not the
least bit arbitrary it's doesn't need
discussion right but it's now up for
discussion you know is pedophilia bad
yeah we used to know that pedophilia was
really bad there was no reason to you
know play Devil's Advocate over this and
yet suddenly this topic is back on the
table so we are losing sight of all the
things that we understood all of the
Bedrock that Civilization is built on um
that's in part because the vacuum of
understanding and the sabotage of
education is uh opening the door to us
just simply uh dusting off Concepts that
we had gotten past but it you know the
other thing is that when somebody is
advocating for
censorship what probably
happened is they find themselves in a
temporarily advantaged position and they
would like somebody
to hardcode the biases that favor them
in the moment so that they continue to
and they don't understand that they are
very likely to end up on the wrong end
of those very same principles and
therefore the wise position is no we
don't do that we don't do that it means
you're going to have to tolerate some
bad
speech yeah yeah I think that's exactly
what that boils down to is people not
being able to project out where that
ends up how that comes back to bite them
in the ass and one thing that we haven't
talked about um is that being able to
talk is the same as being able to think
and so if you really want to Hopple
people and keep them dumb and keep them
under your thumb uh just make it hard
for them to clarify their own thoughts
and to put ideas out into the
marketplace and see what comes back it's
very
interesting uh we've got
the people trying to Grapple with the
current situation which isn't just we're
being blinded that's certainly part of
it but part of the milu is just all the
foundations are gone and that unored Us
in ways that nii warned us about and now
that those chickens are actually coming
to roost quite some time later but it's
really playing out people are trying to
re-embrace the traditional okay and now
broader thing you've got all this crazy
[ __ ] going on in the government
including uh whatever the hell the
migration crisis is feels like we're
being bombarded from every angle and oh
just in time we've got AI to uh confuse
things to make us not be able to even
trust our own eyes to uh I just don't
even want to think about what it's going
to do in the 2024 election but it feels
like that while I'm very optimistic
about where AI takes us I worry about
this Valley that we're going to have to
cross in order to get to the other side
and it feels like it's just like another
one of these things that gets lumped on
top of us do you have like a family rule
about AI is it embrace it as fast as you
can is it be wary of it what do you how
do you think about it uh we have been
avoiding it and I I think this is an
open question because avoiding it is um
concerning you don't want to get left
behind if the if the skill of the future
is wielding that tool better than others
you don't want to be left behind but I'm
concerned about contacting it I I
believe what we are doing here what we
do on
Darkhorse the the world of people
hashing these questions out is
not
entertainment I believe we're hashing
this stuff out for for a reason and
whether we think of it in these terms or
not we are attempting to build up a
toolkit in a population of people that
maybe they participate in some podcasts
maybe they watch podcasts whatever they
do but if you and I are having a
conversation we stand in for an audience
that is in some way involved in this
conversation maybe it's we imagine them
listening and try to phrase things so
that they follow it but we're advocating
for a set of values we're advocating for
some beliefs things that seem certain
enough that you could put your weight on
the ice um and I think we
are building up
capacity for an increase in the dosage
of the hallucinogen that is effectively
in our water right and I will say there
there's a part of
me I've done some hallucinogens didn't
do a ton of them but enough to have
really thought carefully about what the
impact
was and one of the things that I am
grateful
for is to have
experienced those states of mind and
then returned to a normal State of
Mind allows you to be skeptical of your
own thought process at a high level
right you see things that aren't
true and then while you're hallucinating
or you're saying when you come back well
presumably both that's what you realize
yeah but but here's the thing as Society
has gone nuts and it's advocating for a
bizarre U portrayal of the facts and I
have a sense of what I think is true
there is a part of me that knows what it
is like to believe false
things as if they are transparent
realities in front of your eyes and so I
think that would be a useful experience
for people to have so that at the point
that they are
arguing uh vociferously for some
perspective some part of them is aware
that they could be convinced of this and
it be absolutely
false that is a uh an experience that we
all need to have had given what we are
living now and what is certain to get
worse in the near future it's
interesting I've not looked at this
closely enough to know how people
respond but from the little bit that
I've seen it seems most people take away
the exact opposite which is oh my God
there's a door and you just open it now
I'm in this totally real thing that
shows me that there's more to life that
God is real and dimensions and aliens
and uh cue the comments people will say
Tom's never done DMT so he doesn't
understand that of course we all visit
the same alien or whatever the thing is
uh which I agree I have not and so it is
entirely possible that I walk away from
that but I have a worldview that tells
me I will walk away saying it felt like
right I encountered an alien but what I
know about my mind is that uh it works
in a certain way that it has an Essence
and if all human Minds have the same
Essence and that thing unlocks this
sense of presence or whatever that it
probably has a lot more to do with that
than it does that I actually ended up
meeting
something totally agree with you um
totally agree with you which is part of
the the and I will tell you I uh in an
effort to become the world's biggest
buzz kill I have uh taken up arms
against the idea of entertainment or
Recreation both of them um full stop
kind of tell it's a it's a lot um it's a
lot like my position about pornography
versus erotica interesting what do you
worried it's doing to your mind
uh wasting it really yeah but look
here's my
point if if hallucinogens aren't your
thing if it's not something you should
be doing don't do them if it is
something you should be doing don't do
them recreationally now what I'm saying
is not don't enjoy yourself I hope you
have I hope you laugh the whole time
because of all of the insights that you
take away from it and then I hope you
reflect on what those insights were and
how they looked from that state and how
they look from back down here on Earth
right what I don't think you should do
is be casual about it it's such a
powerful
tool that to squander it on something
foolish doesn't make any sense make use
of it and I believe this about I believe
this about sex frankly this is a power
tool it's very important right if
somebody gave you a
Ferrari going in doing donuts in the
parking lot is probably not the way to
treat it right every now and then well
sure I mean on a snowy day
but but the point is look there are all
of these things that create this
tremendous
reward and that reward is built into
them for a reason an evolutionary reason
to use them just to trigger the reward
without accomplishing whatever it is
that's supposed to make you feel good is
is like well I mean there are a lot of
drugs that I don't think are interesting
drugs that can trigger a sense of uh
overwhelming
excitement without having done anything
well you are supposed to experience
overwhelming excitement in life when
you've accomplished something great if
you can chemically trigger it what have
you just done to your motivational
structure right so what I'm saying is
not don't enjoy these things
but enjoy them at their full depth
right it's not entertainment it's not
Recreation right read a great story not
because it entertains you it passes the
time but because it enriches you because
it makes you into something you weren't
before you started the story it's that
good it Alters your values or your
understanding of yourself or the
universe or something right I don't see
that as
entertainment um all right well speaking
of something that uh one should take it
its full depth that is definitely not
entertainment but makes me feel like I'm
on hallucinogens talk to me about what's
going on at the
border that is uh that one's out of left
field it's pretty wild it's pretty wild
and the fact that it is simultaneously
an undeniable fact I mean you could go
visit it right and you could see it and
it's a m it's a
mystery why would
anybody allow this to happen it it it
violates all sorts of things that we all
thought were Beyond even needing to be
discussed right the nation has to
control its borders that's part
of anyway you asked what's taking place
you want me just to describe what I saw
so um my son and I Zach went uh to
Panama and we traveled to the province
of Darion to the edge of the Darian Gap
actually we went into the Darian Gap um
but we traveled by car to the edge
it uh the Darian Gap is a broken it's a
section of the Pan-American Highway that
has never been built the Pan-American
Highway runs from prudo Bay Alaska to
the southern tip of South America whoa
you can drive the whole way except for
the 60- Mile Stretch at the border
between Colombia and
Panama um what is there is a
Wilderness um there's a national park
and it is a extremely a famously
difficult stretch of land to
cross there are currently thousands of
people thousands a day being beckoned
across the Daran Gap largely by the
International Community which is
facilitating this massive migration MH
um some of the people who are migrating
are South Americans there's a lot of
people from Venezuela a fleeing uh
economic collapse there um but there are
a lot of people coming from around the
world they fly into keto Ecuador the
reason they fly into Ecuador is that
there's no Visa requirement so they can
land in Ecuador without a Visa they can
move Overland uh into Colombia and they
can cross the Daran Gap into Panama so
what we saw was on the Panama side we
saw what I came to understand as two
distinct phenomena there's one won
massive migration lots of South
Americans lots of people from elsewhere
in the world from the Middle
East uh
Yemen um people from
Haiti uh the they are housed in
encampments that
are um built in settlements that exist
in Darian already so people are walking
out of the Jungle they are walking into
these little towns that exist on the
edge of the Jungle these towns have had
refugee camps built up by the
International Community so the
panamanians aren't happy to have this
massive migration moving through uh
their habitat but they have no control
over it how's that possible well the
Panamanian border is supposed to be
controlled by the ca front which is the
Panamanian border Authority it's a is it
a separate entity yeah it's
a military police entity that is charged
with controlling the frontier and they
don't answer to the paninian government
no they do oh they absolutely do they're
part of the Panamanian government got it
so then Panama could stop this well see
this is the thing we as little people
don't understand international relations
could Panama technically stop it yes
they could technically stop it but what
would happen to Panama if they did
presumably explains why they don't so
the panamanians are not in a position to
override whatever it is that wants this
migration to happen how much of Panama's
stance is public or and how are you
inferring um that is a good
question let us put it this way the
discussion of the migration is not
nearly as uh substantial as you would
expect
and in large measure what is happening
is the migrants are being shunted North
as quickly as possible that from
Panama's perspective the best thing to
do is to get these people on their way
where they don't become a burden to
Panama and so they are being they are
being shuttled through Panama into Costa
Rica and through all of the countries up
into North America all of the Central
American countries are participating in
facilitating this migration for reasons
that are not not clear
um but I said that I come to understand
this as two separate phenomena one of
them is this migration of people who
when you talk to them and we found many
migrants were forthcoming about both the
trials that they had suffered in the
jungle uh which are terrifying almost
all of them had been robbed uh young
women
were uh routinely raped um people walk
out of the Jungle without their children
children walk out of the Jungle without
their parents oh it's a humanitarian
disaster yeah the Daran Gap is um a very
difficult piece of habitat to Traverse
if you know what you're
doing these people do not they've been
induced to try to cross uh the Gap with
no understanding of how to equip
themselves or what they're actually
going to space there and uh you know
it's the kind of habitat where you can
slide down a muddy Hill and break your
leg and that can kill you because it
prevents you from getting out um so it
it takes accidents and greatly enhances
their
lethality um but you've got this
migration all of the migrants who will
speak to us are economic migrants
they're all very clear about this which
means they're not eligible for political
asylum in the us though that is uh the
basis on which they are crossing our
Southern border but there is another
migration which is housed separately
which I found very
surprising um it is a migration that is
almost entirely
Chinese is
predominantly young men whether the fact
that they are of military age is
Meaningful or not is impossible to say
but what I can say is that unlike all of
the other migrants that we encountered
who were surprisingly open about talking
about what they were doing and where
they were headed and what had motivated
them to go the Chinese migrants who were
housed separately by the panamanians
they're housed in places that are not
towns interestingly they're housed
there's a camp called s vente which
secretary my orcus visited when he was
in Panama right before it was expanded
greatly um but the Chinese who are
moving through the San vente Camp
are unwilling to
talk they give off a hostile
air and it's not clear to me why this
should be the case if they were for
example fleeing oppression at the hands
of the Chinese Communist party you would
expect them to be at least curious about
citizens of of this country that they
were apparently going to start a new
life in that would be a natural thing
and even if they were afraid to talk
because they were afraid of what might
happen uh if word got back you would not
get a hostile sense you would get a
sense that they were uh conflicted or
trapped and couldn't couldn't talk but
that was not at all the impression they
left the impression they left was one of
hostility and
mockery and it was
was decidedly
disturbing so I began to think of this
as an invasion moving in parallel and
being cloaked by a migration the
migration is real the migration is
alarming in its own right it is a
humanitarian disaster at the level of
what is happening to the people doing
the migrating and it is very definitely
being encouraged and facilitated by the
international Community which appears to
have the idea that migration is
inherently a good thing now I don't know
how anyone could possibly be that
confused but this is visible if you look
at the web pages of the organizations
that are doing the facilitating they say
this that Migra it is their mission to
induce migration they believe that
migration is
positive but that migration is cloaking
something else I can't say exactly what
that something else is but it would be
irresponsible not to consider the
possibility that it is um an
international
competitor taking advantage of our open
border uh
to arrange some kind of harm that will
be more easily orchestrated that way
than it would be on a battlefield okay I
know you tell your kids that um when
they have a hypothesis they need to
assign a percentage likelihood that it's
accurate M what percentage likelihood of
accuracy do you give the invasion
hypothesis so let's be clear on what
that hypothesis is if that hypothesis is
that the Chinese Communist party is
sending people across our Southern
border with the intent to do harm to the
United States I would say
60%
whoa okay um now there are lots of other
possibilities uh you know
does
spying fall under that hypothesis no I
don't think that is specifically to do
harm so so you think it's more than
spying so there's the 60% is like
proper harm
you know here's the thing I know how
crazy that sounds and my my final
question will be around that like so one
of the early questions I asked you was
is there ever hypothesis so far out that
it's better not to even floated out
we've already had that
conversation um the what I want to
understand though with this is what
happened that gave you that much
confidence because I agree with you that
this is on the table as one of the
things that it very well could be and I
don't think you just said this but I've
heard you say this before which is
really powerful if you believe that
there is some element of financial
corruption in our system which I think
everybody agrees there's a lot of money
in our system whether we call it
corruption or not is almost a moot point
that there's a ton of money in our
politics money moves the needle here if
people know that from the outside would
they not leverage that to get what they
want so that could be paying a ton of
money to ensure that the migrants are
allowed in the country um but what I
want to know is this is such a high
degree of certainty from somebody I
consider so cautious in their thinking
um but this falls into that bucket that
you're playing with more and more as you
got battered through the covid situation
it felt to me like you got I don't know
if frustrated or angry but you started
like making Bolder claims Bolder claims
and this one is the one help me
understand what are the building blocks
that make it up so we know they had
their own migration going in they didn't
act in the way that you expected them to
act they were hostile well first of all
let me say this is part of why I decided
I had to go in
person because had you already been
hearing this before yeah the the folks
who um who showed Zach and me this
migration had been sending material s
for better part of a year so I was quite
aware of what I was likely to see but it
made no sense and frankly I talked
almost not at all about it because I did
not want to find
myself broadcasting things that turned
out not to be what had been represented
to me I was very cautious about it and I
you know it was hard to justify going
it's not an especially safe place to go
um what was I going to see that I
couldn't deduce from a video but I was
very glad that I did go because the
physical relationship between these two
different
migrations and most
importantly
the
the approach that the migrants in the
Chinese C uh Camp had to us was
unmistakable it was hostile now why was
it hostile it's hard to so part of the
reason that you find that number as high
as you find it is that given what I saw
it is hard to come up with other
explanations for it right were these
people
fleeing
oppression that was inconsistent with
the way they dealt with us it did not
feel right now can I I convey that to
you in a way that you would
have uh a degree of certainty about it
not really you know I don't think you
know me well enough to know what it
would take to trigger that circuit for
me um but here's the other
question we have a southern border that
is effectively open yep we are not doing
even the most basic due diligence with
respect to establishing who is crossing
that border and why
given that do you believe that our
antagonists abroad will take advantage
of that fact I find that almost
certain yes so um I find the hypothesis
compelling but I thought you were going
to say like 7 to 10% um so let me lay
out the part where you and I agree and
then as the person that's just armchair
quarterbacking it I'll give you sort of
my take knowing I haven't been there and
so I really I'm just pulling the [ __ ]
out of my ass but uh
so I have heard from enough analysts of
China that the Chinese diaspora is a
very meaningful thing and that some
percentage of the people in the Chinese
diaspora really view themselves still as
Chinese regardless of where they live
now this is just analysts that I've
heard speak this is not me forming a
firsthand account so I know that this is
part of my distortion on my lenses this
is not I don't trust this but in terms
of hypothesis being very unsure but it's
an interesting guess that warrants
exploration so to your point uh
governments are going to do what they
can to get a leg up we are in a pure
competitor relationship with China uh
China has every reason to want to know
more about what we're doing as we have
every reason to want to know what
China's doing
now breaking from that I will say it is
very possible that China is in a pretty
rough economic situation
right now if the housing issue there is
as big as some pundits are making it out
to be again no firstand knowledge don't
know but certainly interesting I could
see not being of that culture missing
cues misreading cues so that they seem
hostile or whatever again they could be
throwing things you spitting I don't
know but uh that'd be pretty tough to
misread but if it were more of just a a
body language refusal to interact
scowling that kind of thing um then well
well beyond that okay okay um give me
the craziest thing they did well I don't
know that any of it was crazy but uh we
attempted to interact with several
different groups at the San vente
Camp uh one
gentleman attempted to mislead us into
believing that he was
Korean
and uh Mike Leon who took to
Daran who has spent time in China um
tripped him up and revealed that this
was a deception at which point there was
laughter amongst the group
who uh had witnessed this attempted
deception and then following that there
was no willingness to talk about the
reality it wasn't that this had been a
practical joke on you know some naive
Foreigner and that that broke the ice
right this was a deception that was
exposed and it led nowhere I also
believe that we
were um monitored in the camp so there
was a particular guy I was watching who
repositioned himself as we moved to
different places in order to witness
what was taking place there and I
believe he was keeping tabs on us I
don't know why that would be
didn't strike me
as uh a normal behavior for somebody who
is you know involved in a major
migration to a new Homeland it still
feels qualitative though so we have
qualitative feedback because I can so
you don't know this about me but my
background is actually writing so I
often ask myself If This Were a
character and I were writing them what
would have to be true for them to act
this way one could be I'm here as a spy
for sure or I'm here to do harm but
honestly if I'm coming to [ __ ] you up
the last thing I'm going to do is be
openly antagonistic I'm going to be
super friendly cuz I do not want you to
be queued into what I'm really doing but
if I have a dim view of Americans and
I've got some sense of I'm going to
America because I want
to bring my culture to another great
place and I want to spread the Chinese
diaspora and I have no idea what uh
inside of China they say about America
they could say lovely things I have no
idea but I know that like across Europe
it hasn't been a I came to England
because I want to embrace English values
it is in many cases I've come to England
and I plan to stake my values and I'm
trying to bring as many people over as I
can so that we can really have our own
at least Pockets where our culture is
the culture and given that America
hopefully still has that Vibe of like
yeah we want diaspora people we want
people to come here and make this a
cooler place now I think that we have to
reckon with that because I don't think
you can bring this many people over over
at once I think we're going to have
problems but like I still like the vibe
of the Statue of Liberty give me your
tired we huddled masses like I [ __ ]
love that Vibe anyway uh I can write a
bunch of backstories for these guys
where yes they're clowning on the idiot
Americans even though they're trying to
get to America now whether they're
fleeing China because China with my
archetype is not the kind of place I
would want to be or they're coming over
as an invasion I don't know the only
thing I would say is I can paint a lot
of scenarios where they
are probably still problematic from a
whole host of very nons Sinister nons
spyy reasons but it could also be
exactly what you're saying I just would
have again I have not been there so I've
not seen the things that you see so I'm
in the DMT position again of I haven't
met the little guy uh but it feels to me
with qualitative data that it w
orence a more cautious percentage well
the question is what would you think if
you had been there and I might be way
more hardcore than you I might be 90%
don't know nobody has any trouble
accepting
that uh China's building
weaponry and so the point is it's not
beyond our thought process to imagine
that somebody might be preparing for war
with us
but for some reason this bargain hey
their southern border is open can we do
anything with that is it worth sending
in you know maybe maybe the decision to
utilize them hasn't been made but the
ideas it would be a shame not to take
advantage of that open border while it's
still open and who knows how long it
will be do you have an estimate of how
many Chinese have crossed I believe it's
tens of thousands whoa It's a lot okay
for a second let's just pretend that the
dark scenario is the true scenario which
you've 60% I'm like 7% but whatever do
you think that we're going to have a
reckoning like if you send tens of
thousands of people that still have
allegiance to the Homeland and the
Homeland wants to do you dirty I don't
even like thinking like this this is
interesting this is triggering some
World War II Vibes in me uh which I'm
not loving but let's finish the thought
experiment I get your friend hates that
but uh do you think we have a reckoning
coming with a
potential problem where the call came
from inside the
house I don't understand why this is
even tough because it seems self-evident
that an enemy would want to do this
given a manifestly open Southern
border you don't think anybody's going
to notice that they can send people over
it and utilize I mean how many years did
we spend taking off our shoes in
airports right I mean and the the the
absurdity of you know if you come across
the border if you come home from Central
America you will be monitored they will
know exactly who's crossing the border
at exactly what moment you're doing it
right it's a whole different situation
you will have scrutiny exerted in your
case and in another case there's no
scrutiny that that is a mystery to me
how did that happen when I ask obvious
questions
like we have a corrupt political system
it's pay for
playay what is to have stopped our
antagonists abroad from having purchased
influence with which to get us to harm
ourselves isn't that the obvious
bargain if they can do it well
in a way where I don't realize that's
what the money's
for I think it's something
good yeah I could for sure I see a lot
of really bad ideas get a lot of energy
not saying I think this has happened but
I it certainly fits the incentive model
I I think the the thing that I don't
understand is that we apparently
spend I don't know how many hundreds of
billions of dollars on
the intelligence Community to think way
outside of the box and figure out how a
very clever enemy could possibly get
inside our system and compromise us and
we've left the most obvious mechanisms
wide open and to talk about the what my
assessment is that the most obvious
loopholes are being
utilized you know is like well do you
have the evidence for that
the evidence that we have antagonists
abroad and that we have people who never
sleep because they're concerned that
those enemies might get the jump on
us that evidence
exists I don't know what the reason is
that the southern border is as open as
it is I don't know why the International
Community is encouraging migrants into
the Darion I don't know why the Chinese
are housed separate I don't know why the
Chinese appear to be facilitated in
their Migration by their government oh
but there there's one other thing I
wanted to mention to you and again this
goes back quite a number of years in
fact this is goes back enough years that
I had in fact forgotten it and it did
not come back up as I was looking at
this Chinese migration phenomenon in
Darion when the Chinese one child
policy was in full force I wrote a an
essay I was not a public figure I don't
know that anybody read the essay
but I wrote an essay about a
paradox there is a principle in
evolutionary biology that goes back to
Ronald fiser Ronald fiser realized
something important about sex ratios he
wasn't thinking about
humans and what he realized was that
although males and females differ
tremendously in how many offspring they
can produce in a lifetime that on
average given uh some very basic
assumptions on average they produce the
same number of Offspring and there is
therefore no advantage to producing
males over females or vice versa that is
to say a male might produce a thousand
times as many offspring as a female in a
given case but on average they produce
the same number so if there are too many
males you should produce females and if
there are too many females you should
produce males because you tend to
succeed better evolutionarily if you
produce the rare
sex now that logic should apply to
people and it should have applied to
China if you were a Chinese person and
you were going to only be able to have
one child and they were going to grow up
in a nation with an abundance of males
you should want to produce a female a
male might well not find a mate a female
would not only be all but certain to
find a mate but she would have her
choice because females would be in high
demand so why I wondered all of these
years ago did that not cause the Embrace
of the production of females why did the
Chinese continue to produce excess males
and what I came up with was the sobering
realization that there was another
evolutionary force that might well be in
play which is that in a world of lineage
versus lineage
competition that there might be a reason
to produce a generation with excess
males if you were preparing for
war that excess males actually are the
perfect substrate for lineage against
lineage violence because men who have no
reproductive prospects at home who are
sexually frustrated can be armed and
sent abroad with a desire to come back a
hero and that that would be a very
effective mechanism for picking up
territory the same process I described
you when we were talking about genocide
that if you want doesn't that seem
though like it would be a it's the thing
you do when you find yourself a surplus
males it isn't the thing you set set out
to do well I don't see I agree with you
that it would be a natural if you happen
to end up with Surplus males but I don't
see any reason that you wouldn't have an
evolutionary tendency to especially in a
culture that is as farsighted as the
Chinese have been it's interesting I
will say that there might be
other hypotheses that don't require them
to be
so calculated which seems tough to get
your whole culture like all you're doing
is applying the pressure you can only
have one child and the nation Builds an
army for you strikes me as well not
impossible strikes me as very unlikely I
also have a base assumption that could
be wrong but it's a base assumption in
my operating system that China is not
very imperialist so I think that people
will confuse their desire to get Taiwan
back with a and we want to go get more
like they're pretty like let the world
do what the world's going to do like yes
we want to be fin finially invested so
that everybody owes us one but we don't
want to take them over we don't want to
run their countries um but they they
want Taiwan back because that's part of
the original Vision so anyway if you've
got a nation that is not Imperial in
nature and they were literally worried
about people starving to death which is
why they said ah you can only have one
kid and so then you'll get a brief burst
of we want a male because the that's how
you pass the lineage on that's how you
pass the cash on like just give me a boy
that's all I want I have a feeling that
if it had kept going on they would have
gone oh that was a really dumb strategy
I now I want to have girls because this
balance is all out of whack but because
they end up nipping that in the butt I
think in the 90s so it only runs for
like 20 years so you really only have
like one generation to be like oh
terrible idea now so if it had gone on
longer and they kept like making sure
that they were only having guys then I
might be a little bit more like okay
maybe but yeah I mean I hear what you're
saying um
and the problem is that the current
governance of China is a departure from
the historical true uh so anyway I find
it interesting that you have a violation
of a known evolutionary principle The
Balancing of sex ratios seems to me that
this would have been obvious to an
individual um that even if the society
viewed uh male children in a particular
way that you could calculate that your
own lineage the chances of your child
finding a mate uh suggested that
actually it would be clever to have
girls so I don't know to me it's an open
question and the fact that we have uh
what looks like an
invasion uh from what looks like one of
our principal I I don't like the term
enemy but looks like competitor
competitor antagonist abroad well one
thing that could be interesting again
hypothesis that I have no real reason to
believe is actually happening but is
worthy of exploration would be that this
is more of a Viking model where oh I
find myself with excess males
intentionally or otherwise and oh my
primary rival has an open Southern
border and uh the Chinese diaspora is
real so I know they will still feel a
pretty strong allegiance to the Homeland
let me send them over which probably
isn't a hateful idea oh man I can't
remember there was a guy that was made a
spy and uh he from Russia uh he was
actually East German but anyway gets um
recruited to be a spy in the west and he
was like oh the thought of like living
in America he's like they didn't have to
convince me I was totally here for it um
so I could see them being like no
authoritarian rule no uh social credit
score I'm here for it let's go well I
will say the scenario you laid out does
fit uh if if the scenario you laid out
was right then my
60% uh estimate is includes it right an
opportunistic invasion that does fit um
but I also wanted to point out that the
Chinese as much as they have a multi-
millennium history of effectively being
insular uh is engaged in what is called
the belt and Road initiative which is uh
and
expansive plan that uh looks you know
like a modern
Imperial you think that looks Imperial I
think it looks like I want you to owe me
one I don't want to be Imperial I do not
want to have to rule over you guys
because that [ __ ] is messy but boy oh
boy do I want to control your
infrastructure do I want you to have
relationships with me trade deals want
to control the flow of resources and
labor to facilitate a Soo Centric future
I'm not faulting all the good without
Chinese having to govern you right I'm
not faulting the Chinese for advocating
for their own wellbeing I do view much
as I view our government as not
synonymous with our population I see our
government is in large measure hostile
to the well-being of the citizens and I
feel the same way about the relationship
of the Chinese government the Chinese
people but nonetheless if there is any
I don't fault the Chinese for uh viewing
the world in competitive terms that's
that's the adult way to to recognize how
things work um but I do think we are
being naive not at least publicly
entertaining the possibility that our
antagonists abroad would take advantage
of our uh lack of
security our famous lack of security uh
on our Southern border and the
international community's facilitation
of
massive migration would be the perfect
cover for something that was not
collaborative all right I have a nasty
question I want to ask about the 2024
election many people think Trump is the
rational monster is he I don't think
so I I don't I don't want him to be
president because I don't think he has
the uh the time the temperament or the
team building skills to do the job that
is necessary but I do believe he is at
least a departure from the ruling cabal
which is clearly hostile to the
well-being of average people um that
said I believe there is only one
rational choice left to us in this
election and it is Bobby Kennedy Jr you
don't think that'll split the vote
I don't even know what to think about
that
question the Democratic party appears to
be Fielding a candidate who was
too mentally decrepit four years ago to
be
elected to the
presidency running him again is so
Preposterous that it's not obvious to me
how any American can in good conscience
vote for Biden it is inconsistent with
our constitutional republic that we have
a decrepit figurehead who is standing in
for a cabal whose names we don't know
people who are unelected cannot be
called in front of Congress and
questioned if we are attacked in the
night who takes the phone call and
decides whether we launch the nukes you
cannot have a person as far gone as Joe
Biden in that office that is a different
country so my feeling
is the Democratic party has an
obligation to field a reasonable
candidate before there is
any vote to split in the absence of that
every single rational American should be
fleeing the Democratic party in favor of
whatever makes the most sense and again
in my opinion there's really only
one plausible candidate for the job
running for the office how the one
plausible candidate running for the
office is a long shot I have not figured
out but here you have a guy
who
has an encyclopedic knowledge of what
has just happened to us over the course
of the covid crisis he's the one guy
who's in a position to sort out the
implications of what took place so that
we can get a proper Reckoning and make
sure that doesn't happen again what's
more you have a guy who has a deep
understanding of the deep State and is
obviously willing to risk his life over
the question of how
to uh disengage it from governance so
that we can go back to being a
Democratic
Republic I also I personally know him I
like him a great deal I trust him and I
believe that um
his legal
knowledge and his
uh his wisdom the fact that this is
somebody I mean his personal familial
story is tied up in the exact trauma
that our nation has lived under since
1963 right to have the possibility of
putting him in that office to finally
move us past that chapter into
some uh renewed phase of American
strength to restore the consent of the
Govern seems to me like the OB vious
thing to do we are lucky that we have
that option on the table and I can't
believe that we would in the face of
that be embracing tired tropes like
spoiler and the lesser of two evils
right you those tropes make no sense in
an era where the DNC is Fielding Joe
Biden in his state of of uh disrepair it
just it's incon consistent with it we
this is an emergency and we we have
somebody that we can vote for who makes
perfect sense could inhabit the office
has the skills has the temperament would
likely have eight years in which to get
the job done all of those things are
powerful arguments in favor of this
person and um I really hope people will
rethink their reflexive Embrace of what
amounts to a a jersey color over reason
it's a great place to end Brett work can
people follow you they can come find us
at the Darkhorse podcast look for us on
Rumble they can find us on locals uh I'm
on Twitter Brett Weinstein Brett has one
te there is a Brett Weinstein with two
T's and he gets way too much of my
correspondence um you can check out uh
hunter gatherers Guide to the 21st
century it's awesome I've read it uh
it's a good book and highly gerine to
many of the topics we've talked
about um maybe that's it I like it all
right everybody if you haven't already
be sure to subscribe and until next time
my friends be legendary take care peace
if you like this conversation check out
this episode to learn more war is a test
a Wills Israel is very determined to
completely eradicate Hamas it's going to
cause years and years of strategic
problems people are going to seek
revenge on them if I was an enemy