Kind: captions
Language: en
culture is software we know it's
continually failing us we should not
have a significant number of Americans
alleging the election was stolen there
was a pretty gnarly one-two punch
between covet and Trump that I really
think caused a sense-making apparatus to
fall apart in some way yeah my question
is can we stop the rise of evil or is
that already a fallacy and if we can
then how well I mean I think your first
point is that we didn't have a anything
like a consensus around what was going
on I mean people were siled into various
Echo Chambers and just not converging on
an assessment of just what the facts are
about anything I don't consider myself
the best judge of how this happened
because there you know there were people
who were sufficiently far from me on the
in the information landscape so that I
just I just cease to understand how they
could be thinking and doing what they
they were thinking and doing I mean I
just I you know I'm not seeing their
social media feed I'm seeing some
fragments of what they're they're
finding persuasive but
it's just amazing to me that there are
I don't know what it is 30 40 of
American society still thinks that Trump
was not only fine there's no just better
than fine they're just impeccable on
some level ethically and
that January 6 was a non-event and that
there was really nothing at stake there
it's all just been it's you know you
know insanely it was it was a
combination of nothing happened but
everything that did happen was you know
antifa or you know Trump trumped up by
the CIA or something it was just it was
not violent but the violence was was uh
you know from some other source I mean
this is not a coherent view but you
literally have something like 100
million people who think that
it was just no factor I mean there was
there's nothing the only thing bad that
happened is that the election got stolen
from the the rightful president which
was Trump I don't know how you are
paying attention to anything like a
valid source of information and and
still believe and you still believe that
right and they're and they're people who
believe that or pretend to believe it
enough that they're
and I do think they're people who are
just being fundamentally dishonest with
their audiences so you have and I think
it's amazing how it comes it can come
down to a couple of dozen personalities
that that really are close to the the
the lever that moves public opinion here
so you have someone like Tucker Carlson
who we know on the basis of the Dominion
lawsuit behind closed doors was talking
about Trump as a demonic Force he
couldn't wait for him to to disappear
from the public conversation uh he hated
him with passion and those are basically
verbatim quotes uh of his text messages
within you know behind the scenes at Fox
that got you know entered into evidence
in the Dominion case and yet his public
facing message is all you know Trump
supporting conspiracy theorizing all the
time for years he was the most watched
person on Fox and and you know pretty
soon he'll be the most watched person
you know whatever he he finally hangs
his hat but you know his Twitter videos
get apparently tens of millions of views
and so he's got this enormous audience
that seemingly doesn't care about his
hypocrisy right which is amazing to me I
don't know how you maintain an audience
with this kind of loss of face the the
mainstream media was not shy in
advertising his the discrepancy between
what he was saying behind closed doors
and what he was saying on his show right
so either either you have 100 million
people who just simply never watch any
mainstream media product or read it you
know and that's quite possible
but the basic problem before anything
you know before
we think about antithetical ethical
commitments or political commitments or
you know people who disagree about evil
really at bottom we just can't even
Converge on on a discussion of facts I
mean people just can't agree about what
is happening or much less why or what
should happen the thing that we have to
start with one to set the table is is
that what people are doing that they
really do all have their own good
intentions they all think that they have
spotted the evil but they're just
spotting it from different sides if
that's true then people's behavior at
least makes sense I understand how it's
self-motivated now it's never going to
be that pure I'm sure there are also
some people that are just grabbing for
power but if if the the public response
is okay I see from where I'm sitting
from my side that the other side is evil
and and I need to really react
accordingly then then it starts to make
sense now if that's what's going on then
it becomes okay well now we need the
sense making apparatus by which we
figure out what is evil what is the
right response and the first step in
that is going to be I think to identify
what's true that we need some anchor in
the storm that we're going to say okay
this is the foundation and we're going
to build up from here there has to be a
mechanism by which we start to figure
all this out and so I'll lay out my
rough thesis as a way just to sort of
guide the conversation so I think that
there's something about the modern world
largely as it's married to technology
that creates this inability to get
people to share a narrative which allows
us then to approach any issue from the
same perspective of what we're trying to
achieve so you've got velocity of
information so information is just
coming out of so fast and furious I've
heard you talk about Alex Jones in that
context yeah of like hey this guy just
talks as fast as he can throwing out so
many points at you each one just makes
you look uneducated if you're like I
didn't know what that was and you're
like you find out it doesn't even exist
and so that is social media just the
rate at which information can come at
you is so fast the business model of
social media is that whatever grabs
attention is going to be monetized so
then people very quickly realize the
more salacious the more sort of grand
and aggressive the more likely it is to
get attention so now it's coming at you
hyper negative and Hyper fast when you
combine that with this sense of
everything has to roll up into a
headline so all of these ideas are
incredibly nuanced the problem is to get
them to propagate on social media they
have to be a headline it has to be
something that's memorable it has to be
something that's easily digestible and
it has to be something that's repeatable
and when you repeat it that the other
person's like oh that's sick you got it
just right and now they want to go tell
somebody else and So for anybody that's
being bombarded with all this
information as a way to wrap their heads
around it they just pick a team and then
the team just tells them yeah these are
all your positions so now all you have
to memorize are the headlines for for
your group and I actually am deeply
empathetic to that because holding on to
the Nuance of a complicated situation is
already very difficult
when you are able to roll that up into a
headline it becomes something that you
can hold on to far more easily but then
the truth of the on the ground
interaction points all get lost and so I
as I was watching all of this unfold
then it became the those 12 people that
you're talking about and certainly I
will put you as one of them it began to
be unclear like okay wait what what what
is the foundation that you're building
on that you level up from this and so
what I want to get through in the
beginning here is what is that
foundation so in a world where the sense
making apparatus is dealing with
velocity of information misinformation
power grabs corruption but you can
actually hide a lot of that
through velocity of headline um rolling
up a complex topic into an over
simplification where do we get the
Bedrock now I'm I am aware of the not
debate maybe it was a debate that you
and Jordan did about what is truth and
and I know that you can devolve into
madness but like if you were to give a
simple explanation of how you ground
yourself when you think through these
things what does that look like first of
all
not being tribal right so not being not
caring really about I mean I care about
Source I care about sources of
information as a proxy for just not
having to figure out everything from
from you know the Bedrock every time
right so yeah being an expert yeah so I
think I think it you can default to
expertise most of the time all the while
knowing that expertise can fail it's
just a sanity sparing and certainly time
sparing practice to say okay most of
what is printed in the New York Times
has to be to a first approximation
mostly true otherwise the New York Times
is no longer the New York Times now I
think there there have been moments
where and certainly on specific topics
where it's been valid to worry that the
New York Times is no longer the New York
Times right there I think it's sort of
systematically getting certain topics
wrong or shading the truth for you know
as an expression of obvious political
bias so there's there there are moments
where all of our institutions have if
not you know frankly failed us showed a
capacity to fail us you know at times
and
um and what that did to much of the
country is just
torpedo any trust in institutions right
so the the the trust in the the
mainstream media is at its all-time low
I would imagine
um certainly the last time I looked at a
poll on that topic that seemed to be the
case but so it is with government
messaging on virtually any Topic in
particular Public Health our scientific
institutions our universities uh and all
of this is understandable in
that in the last you know six years post
Trump and post covid we had this almost
perfect storm politically where there
really did seem to be a capture of the
mainstream institutions by a very
intolerant and really at bottom ill
liberal political ideology I mean it's
supposedly liberal it's far left but
it's you know in in terms of its style
of thought it was um
you know we were
edging toward you know Chinese show
trials I mean it was really it was just
you know the kinds of and the truth is
you didn't need that many specific cases
to feel like okay you've seen enough
the you there's no reason to listen to
these people ever again right I mean if
you're if you're somebody who's just
poised to throw the baby out with a bath
water it's just you just need to hear
you know one case of someone being you
know defenestrated at the New York Times
for
um is not surviving one specific
blasphemy test and that's you know then
then there's just no then the New York
Times is no better than the epoch times
or Breitbart or anything else that is in
in the business of of you know putting
things in font and and shipping them and
um it's all journalism right you know uh
so
so for me it was it was you had to
recognize that though our institutions
are challenged there is still such a
thing as expertise there is still such a
thing as institutional knowledge there's
a need for institutions
that we can trust certainly when you're
in the middle of a pandemic we need a a
CDC and an FDA that we can actually
trust right so the fact that we felt
that we couldn't quite trust them
is an enormous problem and it's it's the
the thing we need to shore up is the
trustworthiness of indispensable
institutions it's not that we need to
tear everything down to the studs such
that there are no institutions no one
thinks in terms of Institutions it's all
just podcasts and sub-stack newsletters
as far as the eye can see and we're just
going to all do our own research right
um and I think do it it's not to say
that doing your own research is never
valid and it's never even important I
mean there's certainly cases where
one person can
pull at a thread long enough that
something really important unravels and
we're all you know wiser for it
um or that you know one individual given
a specific problem in their lives you
know let's say a medical problem they do
their own research and they discover the
remedy for the thing that was ailing
their family member or whatever and you
know the doctors didn't do it and the
CDC didn't do it and the FDA was wrong
and they found the thing that helped
okay great generally speaking
doing it when times are good doing your
own research is just frankly a waste of
time and when things really matter
is very likely a dangerous waste of time
right it's like you don't you don't get
on an airplane
and decide you know well I'm you know
I'm not so sure I trust the pilot or the
guy you know the guys who repair the
engines I'm going to do some of my own
research here you know like you know let
me in the cockpit I want to you know I
want to interrogate some of those dials
and switches it's like that's
that's not a situation where anyone
would tolerate
this sort of
contrarian anti-establishment I'm going
to innovate you know just break stuff
and and see what happens
um
and that the problem is in many respects
we are at 30 000 feet together all of us
all the time and we're having to we're
having to figure out what is real and
what to do and we do need experts that
actually
warrant our trust because they are in
fact experts right so when you know
they're just specific cases like
what's really happening in Ukraine and
why and what should we do about it right
what should we should we be sending them
arms is Putin line about you know the
last thing he said was true on the
ground
um when our state department has a press
conference
and tells us what's going on we need a
state department that we trust to inform
us right we and and when the New York
Times has some point of view on what's
happening there we need a New York Times
that is sourcing information in a way
that is that is valid we just we can't
have everyone
trying to get to ground truth based on
their own private efforts to come up
with what we should all think about
Ukraine or what we should all think
about mRNA vaccines or whatever it is
but people do feel that and I certainly
felt that at the beginning of this so as
I hear you say so remember my my initial
question is what's your foundation and
the foundation felt like you wanted to
be experts but you understand how much
they've eroded their credibility so my
question because I don't disagree with
you if I was at 30 000 feet I don't want
people going in and trying to mess with
the pilot but I think that the analogy
might not quite be right for what we
went through we what it felt like and
I'll just speak for myself but I think I
represent a lot of people what it felt
like was oh I'm realizing that the pilot
is lying to me now I'm willing to be
generous and say the pilot is lying to
me because they're trying to Stamp Out
evil and they really believe that that
to trick the American public into taking
a vaccine whatever
is the right answer and that they are
doing it with a big heart and that they
really just want to help people get
where they're going but like when they
said you know masks don't work it was
just like come on like that doesn't make
any sense and then they flip and they're
like no of course actually Mass do work
and we're just lying to you because we
needed to get them into the medical
professionals hands so it's like just
slowly slowly they start eroding and you
suddenly realize everybody has an agenda
now that I get it but where it starts to
be a problem for me is when if if we
understand that experts have an agenda
and and I'll even
um I had Peter attia on my show who's a
medical expert amazing and if if he
tells me to do something I basically
just do it like he's unbelievable and he
in his new book he talks about how you
actually can be fat and healthy and when
he said that my first impulse was Peter
you can't tell people that because even
if it's true it's in such a like Edge
case narrow percentage and the vast
majority of the bell curve are all
people who are fat and unhealthy and if
you give them that out they're going to
take it they're never going to make any
changes and they're going to die and
they're going to raise their kids worse
and their kids are going to have shorter
life expectancy and I really had an
emotional response of like you can't
tell people that even if it's true but
in that moment I realized oh this is the
very thing crazy yeah so I'm like you
you can't so I was like well if it's
true it's true and the consequences are
going to be what the consequences are
going to be so then I start going okay
then if I can't just more myself around
um
experts are going to know and they're
going to be able to say because I don't
think three years ago Peter would have
written this book I don't think he had
the insights into it so even somebody's
brightest him over time is changing so
experts don't really know what's right
and what's wrong especially not in a hot
and heavy situation like that on top of
that there are inevitably going to be
things that I think should be said
somebody else thinks shouldn't be said
or vice versa and so now you get to okay
well if we can all agree we're only
going to say what's true like even that
I think is a task but let's say that we
all agree that we're only going to say
what's true now this gets really
complicated and I will put forth that
what I think is quote unquote true is
based on
perspective interpretation and
reinforcement so there's physics which
we don't even understand fully and then
there's everything else and because
a a gigantic part of everyday truth and
I don't know if that will help us get to
a sort of in the weeds working
definition
but everyday truth seems to be
predicated on that you have to take into
the into account the person's
perspective so how do they see the world
blue red right uh you have to take into
account their interpretation so looking
at data some people are going to say no
it doesn't show that it shows this and
you can get people that look at the data
and just violently disagree on what it
shows uh and then you've got the
reinforcement so if they put out a tweet
saying their version of the truth and
they get a wall of reinforcement
um then they're just one that feels good
they're going to see it more and more
and more and more and more and so just
the sheer repetition of it all yeah um
any of those pieces feel wrong
well I think the thing you pointed to
there in your conversation with Peter is
important to focus on because people
have
a very hard time
just keeping track of everything that's
said right and and keeping things in
proportion right and so I think your
intuition that is dangerous to be
precisely true on that point
because most people most of the time
will draw the wrong message that is the
style of thinking as You observe that
our Public Health officials were too
encumbered by right like they were they
were aware that they were messaging into
a very dirty information
landscape right it's just polluted with
conspiracy thinking and Frank lies and
we had a president who was you know by
turns minimizing everything and lying
about it I mean just telling pointless
lies like you know there's we have 15
cases and it's going to go away you know
immediately right and
so the end there was just this basic
fact it was quite inconvenient in the
case of a pandemic that it's just moving
Target where we're
we're finding that we don't actually
don't understand what we thought we
understood yesterday right so the
message is changing it's not it's not
that we have a completely clear message
that is still difficult to parse and we
have to be careful we have to talk to
people like children or at least in a
kind of paternalistic way and say okay
listen most fat people are not healthy
it's generally not healthy to be fat
virtually every fat person would be
healthier if they were less fat but it's
still possible to be healthy if you're
fat and there are people who are skinny
who are not healthy and it gets
confusing so
but you can't really go wrong
with this basic message that you want to
be thin and fit and you want to do the
things you want to be on your way to
being thin and fit at minimum you want
to be active you want to be eating well
Etc
I am a freak for efficiency so let me
tell you I am always on the hunt for
clothes that can work in any setting the
bad news is most traditional pants do
not have that kind of Versatility but
bird dogs were designed to meet that
exact need they were created to be your
go-to pants for any and every activity
bird dogs are made with a cloud net
fabric that looks just like khaki but
stretches with your every move and their
built-in liners use anti-stink sweat
wicking fabric that I know a lot of you
boys are going to need to keep cool and
dry all day long with bird dogs you can
go out work out meet with clients kung
fu fight go to an event whatever they've
got you covered and you can do it all
without having to stop and change go to
birddogs.com
impact or just enter promo code impact
for a free Yeti style tumbler with your
order you won't want to take your bird
dogs off we promise you that in the case
of covid
the truth was getting overturned by
further Revelations I mean the truth
with respect to the disease the
epidemiology of it uh how contagious it
was how dangerous it was we were getting
new variants or literally the disease
itself was changing
um what we understood about vaccines was
changing
uh you know initially in the beginning
there was every reason to believe at
least it was every reason to hope that
the vaccines would block transmission
and therefore not getting vaccinated was
a decision not just with respect to your
own health but the health of the people
around you later on that began to
unravel and it was clear okay that
doesn't really block transmission all
that much maybe a little bit but not
really so therefore it's a personal
decision and it's not you know a
decision that you're making for others
you're not a bad citizen there therefore
if you don't get vaccinated
um
we were messaging into an environment
where there's so much misinformation
around specifically things like vaccines
right there's literally like an
anti-vaccine cult that was
had been what has been working in the
background of our culture for decades
and this was their moment to really kind
of seize the reins of of you know social
the social media conversation at least
um
so it was understandable that our Public
Health officials and you know doctors
generally felt like okay we got to keep
this really simple this has got to be
idiot proof get faxed
covet is dangerous wear a mask you know
don't wear a mask when you're stealing
the masks from people who don't get who
are you know our first line responders
who need the PPE but once we had enough
wear a mask
um
and
the problem was
when that began to unravel there was so
there were there were there were so many
clear moments of dishonesty
that
where anyone who was going to have their
trust broken with with mainstream
institutions just they broke up right
there and they and they they seemingly
broke up permanently right it was just
okay
you're gonna tell me that that uh
I have to get vaccinated because it
stops transmission and now you're now
I'm hearing that it no longer stops
transmission
okay I'm done right and
and then they had the the other problem
is that now we have an an information
landscape where basically everything
survives there is not the the normal
darwinian contest between sources of
information where if if something gets
sufficiently discredited you know you
never hear from it again you can the
internet is big enough
and friction free enough such that you
can be
a complete lunatic who everyone knows is
a complete lunatic and yet you create an
ecosystem that enough people love and
you can you can figure out how to
monetize it you can have an audience of
a million people forever it seems right
and you're literally literally you could
be saying that that you know the the
I mean you know the craziest case of
something like Q Anon where it's like
the actual claim that people are bonding
over is that the world is being run by
child raping cannibals and among those
cannibals are people like Michelle Obama
and Tom Hanks and I mean it's just I
always know yeah you know I mean so it's
like okay
we're really saying that these people
are cannibals and and pedophiles
um
and we're gonna spend a lot of time
having this conversation amongst
ourselves we don't care if the rest of
the world thinks we're crazy because in
this space
this is just our playground this is our
information playground there's nothing
we we're not bumping into any hard
objects here because
we have as much real as we have as much
information real estate as we can as we
want to carve out for ourselves I mean
that didn't used to be it used to be
that
if you wanted to publish books or
publish print newspapers or magazines
you needed enough contact with the
normal
kind of reinforcement of of you know
just mainstream consensus that that you
would survive you know financially it's
like there's something about the
internet that has just made the cost of
spreading information go to zero and
um
when you're I mean when you're dealing
in bits and and no longer dealing in
atoms it's um everything survives and
persists in some basic sense so yeah I
think it's important to really
understand what that mechanism is so
it's what I'll call velocity of
information if you have a better name
for it I'm all for it but there's
something about uh packaging an idea up
in an environment where there's so much
information all you can digest is the
headline when something is hyper
transmittable that it just has you know
whether it's clever it Rhymes it
whatever that has just that little bit
of extra juice on it it's something
that's funny
um memified that it's it's really going
to burn through culture yeah now for me
where this all begins to become deeply
problematic is that it it isn't so much
that just the internet is forever it's
that
Socrates hated democracy because he
didn't think people were smart enough to
parse through the information
and he thought Matt you shouldn't be
able to vote in this thing if you're not
educated on this thing and the reality
is most people aren't going to be
educated and therefore democracy is is
really not going to survive so I take a
totally different approach to this which
is I think that
that if you create an environment where
everybody gets to vote in a world that
has the velocity of information that we
have information is free to send
um it's easy to package it up roll up
into headlines there's no doubt that a
lot of misinformation is going to get
out there and people just don't even
know where to check where to turn to
know like who's who what's what
that will have very negative
consequences but the only flip side of
that that I see is top-down
authoritarian control where it's like I
decide whoever I is the government
Twitter Youtube whoever they decide
what's real information and what's not
because what people are trying to get
back to is what you were talking about
before where information velocity was
slow that you had to go to a print piece
of newspaper they even put extra checks
where it was like it had to be vetted by
three sources or whatever and I'm not
saying yellow journalism didn't exist of
course it did but there were
self-imposed constraints there was a
business model that let even though
self-imposed constraints really be
financially viable it was just harder to
do harder to get out there and so by
reducing it there were only so many
narratives that you were going to be
able to get out so even if New York you
know back in the 20s or whatever had 50
newspapers just in New York City that's
still only New York City you're not
dealing with a global readership right
so you have just this natural constraint
now once nature isn't giving you the
constraint anymore
the second you want that constraint from
the top down you now step into what I
call the trifecta of evil and the
trifecta of evil is is three books that
I read they technically have nothing to
do with each other but just completely
explain how all of this goes awry and
has made me absolutely terrified of
top-down authoritarian control far more
than I am afraid of the absolute chaos
of a thousand Alex Jones so uh the three
books are the gulag archipelago by
Alexander soljenitson uh Mao the unknown
story and then the rise and fall of the
Third Reich and those three books tell
you just how wrong things go when people
are told shut up your opinion doesn't
matter and this person knows better and
you're just gonna get in line and the
great thing about the mail book is that
I I hadn't realized how evil Mao was I
mean like I I thought he was like a
junior level of evil compared to Stalin
and Hitler it's just like but you read
book and it's just I'm in the details
are just so sadistic and successful yeah
unbelievable I literally had no idea
when I started reading that book the
fourth if I were going to do an
honorable mention uh to give Stalin some
more love would be red famine yeah that
book is is shocking shocking uh have you
read it no but I've uh
I've read a lot about Stalin yeah I
don't know if I can recommend it there's
this one part where a woman telling a
tale a woman comes up and looks through
another woman's this is in the Ukraine
starving 1921 or whatever and uh she
looks through the window and catches her
neighbor eating her seven-year-old
daughter right you're just like yeah I
just I can't imagine so that that scares
me a lot more than
um
we're all having a hard time figuring
out what is true now I have a pitch for
how I think we figure out what is true
that is certainly going to be flawed but
the the first thing I want to to either
agree debate whatever is
do you agree that this is sort of the
sequencing of events that we have this
wall of information that's coming in too
fast it's all rolled up into headlines
there's no Nuance most people probably
aren't smart enough to deal with the
Nuance anyway and now Temptation one is
to just go oh dear Elites pre-masticate
all of this for us and tell us what to
do we tried that they have agendas even
if they're really being sincere and
trying to be good they have agendas and
that just feels absolutely shitty feels
like you're being manipulated it breaks
all your trust can't do that the other
one is you know just absolute top down
do what the [ __ ] you're told shut up and
and this is it
both of those strike me as horrendous
and that leaves the third option which
is Free Speech which has become
contentious somehow so as a child of the
80s to me that's like the greatest thing
ever I'm all for free speech I love what
Elon is doing on Twitter I think it's
amazing
um but at the same time I know that's
not widely shared I'm not even sure
where you fall down yeah no I can push
back on some of that well so a couple of
distinctions one is that it's not just
that everything gets boiled down to
headlines right I mean that is a problem
sometimes the headline doesn't even
Faithfully represent what's actually in
the article um
and so many people only read the
headlines they never even read the
article right so it's there's that
problem that problem's been with us for
a while
there's the algorithmic boosting of
outrage and misinformation
preferentially which is which is the the
problem and also on social media and
the distinction so so I would make one
distinction which is and this is you
know many people have made this like
freedom of speech and freedom of reach
are different things right so you you
should be free to post whatever you want
to post but it is a it is a choice on
the side of the the social media company
to preferentially boost or dampen
whatever they want to boost or dampen
right so it's to change the character of
the conversation and they have to make
just decisions there whether to make no
decision is itself a decision right so
you if you're going to make a completely
flat people will have one experience if
you're going to if you're going to tweak
it algorithmically people have a
different experience and that is a
business choice that they are
incentivized to make
um largely because they have a terrible
business model I mean it's the gaming of
attention is is a is a bad business
model I would argue so the fact that
it's an ad based attention economy has a
lot to do with what we with the kind of
the original sin of of social media I
think is the business model
um
and if these were all subscription
businesses I think we could have a
different you know we could have a
different landscape there with respect
to social media but still there would be
a moderation burden and it's a very it's
something that it seems like they're
never going to get right even
I mean except for the the in the
presence of something like omniscient AI
that we could trust I don't see how you
your your effort to moderate what
hundreds of millions of people say to
one another or even some cases billions
of people
um
that's always going to produce
casualties it's always going to produce
somebody who was just a completely valid
academic who just took a a an edge case
position and got flagged as a you know a
Nazi or whatever and you know that they
there has to be some process of appeal
Etc
the other distinction I would make is
that
there's a big difference between
governments silencing speech and and
actually punishing people for you know
errant speech and companies private
companies or even publicly held
companies deciding that they want to be
associated with or not associated with
certain kinds of speech right so
because and so when I look at this from
through a free speech lens from a you
know a U.S Centric you know first
amendment
um lens
and we should acknowledge that most of
the world doesn't have the protection of
the First Amendment and they're worse
off for it and so if you're living in
the UK and you're perceiving this debate
you're looking at it as someone who
feel stifled by the reality that you
don't have a first first amendment to
default back to and that's you know
I I I've been slow to appreciate just
how different that is politically and
ethically for people
um so speaking from the the U.S context
I think we have it right that the
government should not make any kind of
speech illegal with you know a few
exceptions like inciting violence
um
so I think you should be free to be a
Nazi and say you're Nazi things and you
should be free to reap the reputational
costs of that right people now know
you're a Nazi they don't want to do
business with you they vilify you and uh
on their forums
um but
the question is should a platform like
Twitter or any other platform
be legally required to associate with
Nazis right can they have in their terms
of service a no-nazis policy and I think
they should they I think my free speech
concern
now is aimed at the owners and employees
of those platforms right so I'm thinking
about the person who starts a social
media company
the truth is what we're going to do this
we're going to you know this is an
experiment because my you know as you
might imagine my faith that you can
actually produce a social media platform
that works is is pretty low but for
waking up my meditation app we are we're
going to launch a a basically a forum of
some kind
and
that will you know very quickly have
tens of thousands and even some hundreds
of thousands of people in it uh
presumably
should I be able to have a no Nazis
policy right now I'm not expecting any
Nazis I mean first of all this is a
subscription business so there's already
a gatekeeping function that is that is
helpful there I think
um ensuring a kind of good faith and and
quality
um but they're you know anyone who needs
free access to waking up also gets it so
there's a lot of free users of it so
it's not not a perfect uh
uh paywall
um
I think
when I start a a platform like first of
all I should be able to just do
zero it out overnight like if it's not
working if I don't like the way this is
working I should be able to just send
everyone emails saying sorry you know
you guys broke this place I don't like
the conversation this is over right
um that's actually something I told Jack
Dorsey when he was still running Twitter
that he should just delete it and he'd
win the Nobel Peace Prize and he would
deserve it
um so I think you should be able to you
should be free to delete your your
social media account if you you in fact
own it
um and you should be free to decide okay
these are the standards of Conduct in
this space uh like it's you know this is
true if you open a restaurant or if you
open a movie theater if you open any
public space
it doesn't change if it's merely digital
you should be able to set the terms of
service and if it's a no Nazi space well
then Nazis are not welcome here right so
you if you demonstrate that you're a
Nazi we kick you out of our platform
um now I so I'll grant you that any
company should be able to do what they
want to do if Hooters wants to hire only
attractive women by all means let them
hire only attractive women if someone
wants to do a female only company I I
don't have a beef with it I don't even
have a beef if Harvard only wants to uh
you know if Harvard wants to make it
near impossible for an Asian student to
get in as long as they are clear and
transparent and don't take government
money I'm all for it right I don't care
but the transparency matters to me but
my real question is like as we think
about actually solving the problem and
so I'm asking this largely in the
connotation of 2024 is coming we're
going to be running into this again I
really think the right way to set the
table is you've got people on the left
and people on the right who both think
that the other side is evil they both
think that they have recognized uh the
the problem reincarnate and uh
if we don't establish a new sense making
mechanism for a world in which the
velocity of information is this fast AI
is coming so deep fakes are going to be
a real thing like we we need a method
that we can all rely upon in order to
think through these problems well and so
like where I come down on Free Speech
isn't whether a private company should
be able to limit the reach of somebody
that's a Nazi or say I don't want Nazis
on my platform that's fine there is a
real consequence to that though which is
then it just bifurcates and you get the
right and the left because that's really
what's being argued about as far as I
can tell there's I have not seen any of
what I would call real nazi-like stuff
it's normally just Behavior people don't
like it it's coming from the opposite
side of the aisle so when I say okay
what is the right way to deal with this
my answer is
I think everybody needs to distrust
themselves a little so they should not
assume that they are right everybody
should be willing to put their ideas
forward on how they think through the
problem so rather than only listening to
experts it's like hey I'm an expert or
I'm not but this is how I think about
the problem this is how I've ended up
with this conclusion I've looked at this
or I've studied that whatever but this
is how I come to this conclusion and
then to want the Collision of ideas and
the second people are more worried about
bad ideas being out there they're either
saying I completely give up to this
velocity of information problem so we
have to just choke it and we have to
make sure that there's there's only the
authorized information
or you accept the the consequences of
letting the ideas battle it out in the
public Consciousness and as far as I can
tell the second you say the people
aren't smart enough to battle these
ideas out the system of information
distribution is so broken that it's it's
unsafe maybe isn't the perfect word but
you'll never get a good outcome by doing
that you can't have democracy like it it
is literally only in the face of the
ability for people to say what they
believe is true and to battle out those
ideas that we have any hope of people
really understanding as close to these
sort of unsculptured
um way of presenting an idea that we're
going to get and look there are going to
be people that won't be able to navigate
that mess and so I'm certainly not
saying that this is perfect but when I
step back and look at the reality of the
landscape that we're in algorithmically
controlled all of that everybody has a
voice in Social
et cetera et cetera I don't see a way
around it
well so we don't have a pure democracy
right it's not like you just get online
and vote and it's you know one person
one vote and then we decide whether we
go to war with Russia based on uh you
know the tally we have we pick
representatives and
there I think it's important that we
have Representatives who are not
blown around like weather veins by just
whatever's happening on Twitter that day
right so yes they need to care about
what their constituents want but
it I think it's good that there's a
looseness of fit between what you know
500 people in the government do
and what and the cacophony on social
media right that may may be to some
degree informing
their I their impression of what their
constituents want right so we need
serious people uh in serious roles of
responsibility and
insofar as we we're losing that and
there's definitely signs that we are
losing that I mean we've got you know at
least one person in Congress who when
our state is on fire she she speculates
that maybe it's you know Jewish space
lasers starting those fires right this
is yeah yeah Marjorie Taylor green uh
has heard that that there were some
space lasers put up there by by Jews I
think I think it was Rothschild funding
um they could start fires and we might
want to look into that right
um so insofar as that is happening that
we're getting
people so anti-establishment that they
are effectively lunatics uh in positions
of real power I think that's that's a
maybe that maybe that problem has always
been with us to some degree but at least
I am perceiving it
um certainly post-trump as uh uniquely
worth worrying about at this moment that
like but populism is tending to promote
candidates that
um are almost by definition have fewer
institutional commitments uh with all
the good and all the bad that that
entails right so but there's a lot
that's good that if you care about
you know the last hundred years of
scientific knowledge right and your your
statements about
let's say something like climate change
is is going to be constrained by a basic
awareness of you know what most climate
scientists most of the time think about
climate change that's your one kind of
Representative if you're somebody who's
just gonna
Free Will based on what they heard Alex
Jones say or yeah I mean like literally
Trump gave his first interview I think
to Alex Jones right like there's there's
a there's a difference of um
the center of narrative gravity there in
populism that I think we need to worry
about but
and there's obviously right wing and
left wing variants of populism uh both
are are problematic
um but
this is we we have to recognize that
there are asymmetries like you say like
so what you seem to be recommending is
that we basically talk to everyone give
everyone a fair hearing it's only when
you just bring sunlight to everything
that people are going to be able to make
up their minds and they're not and
they're gonna you know they're still the
left and right are still going to
demonize one another but we're going to
approach something like maximum
understanding if we just talk about
everything so why not have RFK Jr on
your podcast right now Rogan brings them
on the podcast and just you know RFK
tell me tell me give me the world as you
see it you know tell me uh you know who
killed your father who killed your uncle
um what do you think about these
vaccines do vaccines cause autism and
just let him go for four hours
um
the downside with that is that even in
the presence of somebody who is a
subject matter expert who's there to
provide some kind of guard rails to that
conversation there is an asymmetry
between
the time and effort it takes to make a
mess and the time and effort it takes to
clean it up right and whether it's even
possible to clean it up given the
resources available right so if somebody
is if someone's just going to make up
lies in front of you even if you're an
expert in the in that area
you
there's only so much you can do because
like you're not you they're they're
playing with a completely different you
know kind of information physics right
they're just going to make something up
so if if you you might be a a climate
change expert or a vaccine expert and if
you have a somebody who's a pure
conspiracy theorist on those topics
you know in my experience you're you're
sitting with someone who is is very
often unscrupulous enough to just make
stuff up right or to be so
delusional in there in the way they have
interacted with even valid information
in the past
that that the word salad they're going
to produce is you know effectively just
a tissue of lies and yet there may be no
way to actually
interact with it in an honest way
in real time on Rogan's podcast or
anywhere else such as so as to properly
debunk it so you can't just take let's
take RFK Jr as an example
do we think that he is wrong and
well-intentioned or do we think he is
Sinister
why well wrong and well-intentioned can
cover for a lot of of a dangerous error
right I mean you can you can really make
a mess being wrong and well-intentioned
I think with him
he's so
he's got so much sun cost he's taught me
first of all there's so many people like
there there is a just a
a character illogical you know
psychological you know phenotype that
just
is addicted to
the
the contrary intake on more or less
everything right so it's just like and
it's not an accident you see p you the
the people who are all in on you know
the JFK conspiracy right like you know
no way it was a single shooter no way
Oswald was a patsy whatever it is right
those people by and large tend to just
jump on all the other conspiracies
whether it's you know the moon landing
or 9 11 truth or it's like they and you
have someone like RFK Jr where it's
it seems I don't know the man but I've
you know I've been paying attention of
late
it seems like there's there's almost no
conspiracy that he doesn't have a an
appetite for right so like when someone
says well what about Bill Gates
injecting you know transponders into us
with the vaccine
he's got time for that right he doesn't
say oh no that's I mean you really you
really think Bill Gates is doing that
that's just isn't that obviously
[ __ ] no no he's like well you know
this is something we really have to look
into it's like I you know I don't have
Verbatim what he said on that but it was
he is way too open-minded on on points
like that right and so it is with
everything and now
it's it's deeply inconvenient for
someone like me at A Moment Like This to
have to recognize some of these
conspiracies turn out to be true right
and some always looked plausible from
the very beginning so like the the the
origins of kovid coming from the the
Wuhan Institute of virology right like
is it a lab leak or is it the wet Market
well
it always looked plausible that it could
be a lab leak right that was always a a
valid thesis worth worrying about and
investigating and it was never racist to
speculate that that might have been the
case right so the fact that our medical
establishment tried to Tamp that down in
a completely bad faith way and maybe for
reasons that are if you if you dig
deeper into fauci and into you know the
other players maybe they really are
there's some deeply invidious things to
discover about people's conflict of
interest and you know and you know
research we funded and now we don't want
to admit we funded or whatever it was
um I mean there was that moment in
Congress where fauci and and Rand Paul
were kind of debating the meaning of
gain of function research and fauci
looked like you know to to many people's
perception and I actually shared it at
the time he looked like he was just
doing this sort of talmudic hair
splitting on what game the phrase gain
function meant whereas Rand Paul was
saying can't just be honest with the
American people like you know that if
you're if you are changing the function
of the Dynamics of a virus such that it
spreads more among humans that scan a
function you know by whatever By Any
Other Name
um
so maybe there's something sinister
beneath all of that right so here's one
conspiracy among all these other
conspiracies that
P that people people were branded as
conspiracy theorists for entertaining
and yet it was always plausible to be
worried about that but this by the way
is exactly the thing that I'm worried
about so
uh it becomes very easy to shut people
down to say oh that's just conspiracy
um and to start having the
apps get involved so YouTube marking it
is like Oh you talked about Ivermectin
this I'm shutting this episode down like
just so many things coming at you at
once trying to say this is outside the
Overton window and so my my whole thesis
is is very simple that the in a world
where there's too much information
coming in the answer cannot be to choke
it off to try to limit the amount of
information because you will get that
wrong it is manipulative by its very
nature the closest thing you're going to
get is to let ideas battle out there are
going to be consequences I want to be
very clear there we probably when it
comes to things like this you were
better off when you had trusted but
hyper limited media sources that could
at least get everyone to walk towards
the exits in a calm and orderly fashion
so I I'm not denying that but but that
world is over and so now you really only
have two options that I can see you
either top down clamp down or and I'll
lead people back to my Trifecta of evil
or you go there are going to be
consequences to letting people battle
the ideas out in public and they're
going to be a lot of people that get
confused by things that should never be
taken seriously and they're going to be
taken seriously and we're going to have
lives lost because of that but it will
balance out and we won't have lost all
of our faith and you're not going to get
the small guy trampled to death sent off
to the gulag killed because he's an
inconvenient voice whatever the case
which also opens the door to the power
grabs and now you get Will To Power
which we saw a lot in kovid was like oh
I can get a little bit of power and so
it draws people into that so you get
power grab power grab so when I think
back
and in fact maybe the right way to ask
the question is and and I want to keep
this tied to RFK I don't I don't want to
depart from that yet so you've got RFK
your view is that he's making things up
that it's conspiracy maybe just
personality wise he's drawn to it I
don't hear you saying that you think
he's Sinister just that's just how his
mind works
um
other people though think that he's bang
on that he's right you've already
admitted that he'll probably end up
being right about some of these things
I know you well enough to know you're
going to say well there's nuance and if
you're right for the wrong reason you
really do have to think that through
it's not enough just to be right we'll
set that aside for now so you've got
this guy conspiracy minded not being
Sinister probably will be right about
some of these things but probably you
still don't want him to be platformed
and then it becomes well but but the
crucial distinction again is between it
being illegal to platform him or just
the choice for any private class I only
care about the choice I want to know why
because you're you are such a potent
sense maker there's so many of us that
are like children of Sam Harris where
you really helped us think about putting
these ideas together and then there's
something in this one-two punch of covid
uh Trump where all of a sudden I felt
like wait I've been using the tools you
gave me and now the way that now I feel
like you're using a different set of
tools and so I'm trying to remap like
because here's how I approach you right
now obviously I've watched some portion
of the internet go uh Sam's brain broke
he used to be Sam Harris not Sam Harris
you did your own podcast about it which
is brilliant by the way were you like
some portion of my audience thinks like
what have you done I forget the exact
phrase you used but like you're so aware
of how people have responded but you've
stayed really steady so I'm like okay
then maybe there's something here I'm
just not getting which is why I keep
laying my thing out because you don't
feel erratic to me but I want to
understand you you're layering ideas
that allow you to make sense of this in
a way where your
calm like I'll just if if people are
going to freak out on Twitter I'm just
going to step back I'm gonna keep doing
my thing like being with you does not
feel like I'm in the presence of someone
who's on a manic episode or anything
like you feel as ever sort of calm and
centered and so because I am skeptical
of my own approach I want to understand
yours now I'm not going to pull back on
the parts where I think that it doesn't
make sense I'll say it doesn't make
sense but I actually do want to
understand so uh where I was going with
that is I don't worry about illegal not
illegal I just want to know why you
think it makes sense to de-platform or
to not platform maybe a more accurate
way to say it to not platform someone
like RFK Jr when the founding fathers
said hey the one thing you don't want to
[ __ ] with make sure people can say
whatever the hell they want
okay well it matters what the platform
is so
um you know with a podcast it's very
simple you're only going to do I'm only
going to do you know 40 50 podcasts this
year I just have to make a choice it's
an editorial Choice it's a publishing
Choice what do I want to pay attention
to whose book do I want to read who do I
want to talk to
you know most people you have said don't
like there are certain people you don't
think should be put on a platform Trump
was one certain people I wouldn't talk
to for certain for specific reasons
you're not talking fair enough but are
there people that you think should never
be platformed
well I think if you're going to platform
it so what I said about RFK on my
podcast is if you're going to platform
him you have a journalistic
responsibility to do your homework not
only in anticipation of the things he's
going to say on your podcast but
you should need to catalog the things
he's already said which are obviously
[ __ ] that you should challenge them
on right so
you know there there is just
a a widespread scientific consensus at
this point that there is no link between
childhood vaccines and autism right now
autism is a problem autism rates have
gone up we don't understand autism but
people have gone deep studying the MMR
vaccine but all just vaccines in general
and autism and found no linkage right so
and he is out there telling people
anyone who will listen that that there's
every reason to believe that vaccines
cause autism or we should be worried
about it or you know or you know I'm
hearing from from mothers who who have
seen the clear correlation uh they had a
normal kid on Tuesday on Wednesday they
got vaccinated and you know the autism
started right so he is spreading that
fear and as far as I can tell it's on
the basis of no valid scientific
information now now it's also this is
now linked up with everyone else's
concerns about covet vaccines and just
you know the reliability of medicine in
general and bad incentives and
pharmaceutical companies and
there's a there's a lot of there there
in stuff
uh
but that it's worth worrying about I
mean I think a a profit driven motive in
medicine is something that we're we're
always going to be in tension with
because
what we want is we we want the medical
establishment to be recommending drugs
because they're safe and truly safe and
effective to people who truly need them
right we don't want people
in the privacy of their own minds or in
the privacy of their board meetings
celebrating how they're going to make
billions of dollars at this new
opportunity because they can they can
you know Market this drug successfully
to people who may not need it may not
benefit from it maybe in fact be harmed
by it right so is that a disalignment of
incentives that is is specifically in
the case of medicine that is um I think
people are understandably uncomfortable
with
um
but
so in the in the narrow case when you're
talking about having a podcast you you
first of all you can just the burden is
not is not on you to platform everybody
you can just decide who you want to talk
to if you're going to talk to someone
like RFK Jr I think
given his track record and given how
much I think genuine misinformation he
has spread and you know consequential
misinformation I think you have a
responsibility not to just put a mic in
front of him and let him rip you you
actually need to to debunk him and maybe
bring on someone who can also debunk him
now again
as I said you have no problem with that
so if it was done in a debate format
with another exporter Superior expert
then it's we're good yes except
you the the asymmetry I pointed out
before still applies if he's going to
just make stuff up right so like you
know he will
I mean the example I mentioned on my
podcast like he's been telling a story I
I think in several venues that
you know he he had collaborated with
with the journalist Jake Tapper like 15
years ago on a documentary
uh they just put in a ton of effort it
was they did a really deep dive on the
link between vaccines and autism and
um at the last minute Jake Tapper called
him and said listen we're we're going to
pull this we just I've never in all my
years as a journalist I've never had
this experience but this just came down
from corporate
um they're just pulling the plug on this
I'm so sorry and you know hit so the
punch line for him and I I'm not sure if
he said this on Rogue and he definitely
said this on some podcasts I listened to
um
punchline for him is okay the
pharmaceutical companies have such pull
where I mean they they spend so much
money with CNN and these other outlets
that
you know if they don't want something to
air it's not going to air right that's
how corrupt journalism is now
now if I was on a podcast debating RFK
Jr and he trotted out that story
I would just have to eat it I would say
all right well that's that's bad but I
agree that looks bad right now
Jake Tapper has published an article
saying this is just a lie right this is
just like this has like two percent two
percent relationship to what actually
happened there was nothing about it
it's just it's all upside down and I
keep debunking this and he keeps telling
this story right
um
so unless you know that it doesn't
matter that you're a vaccine expert or
you could be an expert in in a dozen
really you know relevant disciplines
if someone's just going to make up a
story that is perfectly shaped to tickle
the contrarian you know they're they're
all a bunch of [ __ ] Liars part of the
brain
he still lands that blow in real time on
a podcast there's no way to debunk it in
real time you literally need Jake Tapper
to you need to pull him out of the
woodwork for that particular Point
um but isn't there many there are many
things like that that's the thing I mean
it's not like so someone who has this
style of of reasoning
again some of its conscious lines some
of its misremembering some of it's that
they're reading studies and they're not
understanding them and they're just
they're pulling you know half truths out
of studies that you know that are can be
made to seem real
um and so they're making such a mess
that it is genuinely hard to be an
expert in in that you know riding
shotgun and all of that and debunking in
real time
um but the only responsible way to do it
would be to have an expert there to to
try to do that I think it's worth
stepping back and and asking the
question
well why is anyone listening to RFK Jr
about vaccines at all right he's not an
expert in the relevant domain right he's
not I mean he's not an expert in
epidemiology he's not an expert in
Immunology is not a vaccine guy he's not
he's like he's not he's a lawyer and an
activist who got this particular B in
his Bonnet 20 years ago and he's just
made a lot of noise about this and and
interestingly he's also a climate
science activist right and there you can
you see you you can see of a very
bizarre mismatch between how he deals
with mainstream con scientific consensus
in climate and how he
he
disavows mainstream scientific consensus
on the topic of vaccines and at me
everything is flipped I mean he's just
like he's got all the time this is the
perfect example for me of the very thing
that I'm worried about so here you have
a guy he's either a Sinister and wants
to help the climate in which case I
think most people have cognitive
dissonance or he's
um Sinister and wants people to not take
vaccines that are going to save their
life or he's maybe right about something
that other people disagree with or maybe
he's wrong but well-intentioned so I
think I think wrong but well-intentioned
covers for a lot I mean just think about
it the vaccine thing is is really a
unique case because
what you have is a
an intervention on a healthy person very
often a child
that is nevertheless nevertheless risky
to some degree
um
some number of people are going to have
a bad reaction some number of people are
going to die from from the they get like
you
I let you I mean this is just everyone's
worst certainly every parent's worst
nightmare you know let I let them stick
a needle in my child and he was never
the same or he died right like that's
just
so you you just have to hear one story
like that right it doesn't have to
happen to you it's just you it could be
a friend of a friend of a friend you
hear this story and you think
man it's just it's not worth it like I
just I I don't you know
in in the case of of of childhood
illness
you know infectious disease you can as
you know basically everyone who doesn't
get their kids backs does you can just
be a free rider on this larger system of
herd immunity you can say listen I I
most people are going to be vaccinated
for measles I don't even have to get my
kid vaccinated like I just don't I'm not
going to run this risk I'm just going to
opt out
and so he's intersecting with totally
understandable fears that get wherein
specific anecdotes specific stories get
Amplified to the to the I mean they're
they're above data they're more
important than data you can show me all
the data in the world I know what
happened to my kid right that's again
scientifically every that's all upside
down but it is so compelling
uh that what should we do though with
people that are in that situation
because for me if a parent doesn't want
to vaccinate their child I do not think
you should be able to force them even at
the height of kovid where I was like
when I really believed everybody just
needs to go get vaccinated and some
people are like I don't want to do it I
was like word then fine like I that just
feels so it felt wrong to me and this is
where it feels like everybody needs to
have a moral compass part of where I
think the breakdown is happening I've
heard you refer to something as a great
unraveling now I don't know what you
mean by that but I started mapping out
what I thought you meant by that and one
of the things that certainly I would
mean as a great unraveling is we don't
have these shared morals anymore we
don't have one religion to carry us
through and you know because what I
think ends up happening and the thing
that you and I have been talking about
without really talking about is that
this is a battle for the truth if things
were clear they'd be clear like if we
really knew like vaccines don't cause uh
autism like uh you you if if vaccines
caused autism it'd be very clear you
just see it boom done right so it's in
some sort of weird like maybe it does
like there's enough credibility there
that people can still buy into it there
isn't enough just like unequivocable
evidence in the other direction people
go I've looked at this because if it
were true I could just show you this and
I could show you this and then people
would go down the line nobody's arguing
about whether what you eat impacts what
you [ __ ] right everybody just gets it
not to tell anybody I don't have to go
convince people it's just like your life
is such proof that there is a one-to-one
relationship between what you put in
your mouth and what comes out the other
end so there is some weird gray area so
the the question because it's mostly
gray area for most things right so now
if we know we're living in this area
where everything is great nobody knows
who's going to be the expert you started
the the conversation by saying okay we
really do need experts but no joke like
not fine words into your sense you were
caveating
experts have sort of thrown away their
credibility and so it's like that is the
world that we live in like this stuff is
so complex so so the the thing that we
have to take on in head-on collision is
how do we discover what is true
well if you do it the way RFK Jr is
doing it for climate right like he you
notice that you have any you can you can
specif find any of the preponderance of
exercise like it's not an accident that
almost all climate scientists right I
mean there's a general principle you
have to understand here is that
it's always possible to find a handful
of phds or MDS
who are crazy who are conflicted or just
for whatever reason disposed to stake
out a genuinely
disreputable and and indefensible thesis
you could also the cigarette companies
could always find somebody with a
seemingly relevant degree to say I don't
think smoking causes cancer I don't
think it's addictive but I like it you
could you could find that guy and then
that guy would sell his
his wears to the chemical companies that
are you know putting fire retardant in
mattresses and he could say well I don't
think this is this if it if it gets into
the bloodstream it's not a problem right
so it's you can always find those people
so the the I'm not saying we we are
always ruled by scientific consensus
because there are there are genuine
breakthroughs in science and that
overturn you know even a 99.9 consensus
right but
scientific consensus is still Salient
and still matters most of the time and
it's it's not arrived at by accident and
there's so much tension in science
to disprove other scientists right
they're so like that it is such a
competitive atmosphere that
you know again there are studies that
don't get replicated there's there's
there's you know false ideas that
survive far longer than you think they
would but generally speaking you are not
going to go wrong most of the time by
lining up with what 99 of
you know specialist X thinks on this on
this very specialized topic
um
so
our RFK Jr plays that you know very you
know Center the Fairway game
on the topic of climate
and he does something completely
different when he's talking about
medicine now I'm I don't know maybe he
has a story that that reconciles that
that difference but
we need yes we need a a healthy
institutional and scientific
conversation such that good ideas
generally generally survive and bad
ideas are generally debunked and that we
know that most of the time
are our experts are real experts they
got that they they they
acquired their expertise by a process
that was going to weed out the imbeciles
and the and the you know the
um the delusional and
deliver somebody who really
is
is arriving at their opinions on the
basis of a methodology
that we we generally TR we generally can
trust right they're not obviously
conflicted by can we lay out that
methodology well it's you know you're on
guard for you know obvious cognitive
bias and wishful thinking and you know
bad certainly bad incentives right so
it's understand it's like yes if R.J
Reynolds is funding Research into the
toxicology of of cigarettes right
it's not to say that
you know obviously conflicted money is
always going to fund a study that that
is false right I mean you could you
could run it it's not it's not wouldn't
be hard to run a totally valid study
where the money came from you know a
um
what would be classically be considered
the wrong Source but it's easy to see
that there's a there's there's at least
the Optics are bad enough that that's
not how you want to fund that particular
science right
um and at minimum scientists have to
declare any economic interest they had
in any part of this you know part of
this picture but we the the truth is
I mean scientists science is deeply
flawed
and yet it's better than any other part
of culture with respect to how we play
this game of just letting ideas Collide
against one another and and seeing what
survives I that I agree with so the
problem is I don't feel like that's
what's happening or what's being
championed so broadly and then we can
get specific to you and I and exactly
what we're saying but
um though the way that I think about
this is
um you've got even even something like
science
uh if you talk to Eric Weinstein talks
about the disc the I think it's the
distributed information suppression
complex so he talks about how there is
for whatever reason just inherent into
the world of science there's a certain
bias there's certain ideas they don't
want getting out because people have
built their entire careers on something
and if you're putting something for it
the challenge is it not necessarily that
they're being evil but it's the same
kind of idea of the cigarette guy is
going to see what he wants to see and
the guy whose entire career lapses if
your new idea is right well magically
the peer review that you get is terrible
and right he's got a laundry list of
things like that and so I'll I'll back
up so in a business context I created
something
um called the physics of progress and it
was me trying to teach to my students
exactly how you solve novel problems so
I was like hey if you want to grow a
business I I have no idea what the
product is how the audience is going to
respond what the market situation is
going to be like so you really have to
understand how to Think Through new
business new product New Era new market
dynamics whatever and the way that you
do that is physics of progress and I lay
this whole thing out and I'm super proud
of it and I'm pitching it to my team and
I'm like okay you're going to start with
where where are you trying to get to
what's your goal you're going to
identify the obstacle between where
you're at and uh your goal and like why
won't I just automatically achieve my
goal then you're going to come up with a
experiment that you can run a thing that
you can do to try to over come that
obstacle you're going to do that thing
you're going to look at the data figure
out whether you made meaningful progress
you're going to then reinform your
hypothesis about how to overcome that
obstacle and you're going to start over
and one of the guys my team goes uh
that's the scientific method
and I was like is it I actually don't
know the scientific method and he's like
yeah that's the scientific method and I
was like okay that makes sense to me
that's it the reason that I called it
the physics of progress and again just
completely acknowledging it's the
scientific method but the reason that it
occurred to me as a physics of progress
is because it is the only way to make
progress that you're not going to know
you're just taking your best guess you
know you know where you're trying to get
to you have a guess about what the thing
is that's stopping you you're going to
try something the problem is when I
teach this the the big issue is
when going back to what I was saying is
truth truth is perception interpretation
and reinforcement and at the moment you
look at the data so I ran my test to see
if I could overcome that obstacle I get
a result
when I look at that data I'm bringing my
perception my interpretation and my
reinforcement to that and it's not that
I'm evil but I'm not necessarily going
to see what's true and this is where
science then begins to break down it is
the right answer like it is what we need
to do as far as I can tell it's the only
way to make progress in anything but
what we're living through right now is
that moment of the interpretation the
perception and the reinforcement causes
you to see something that's not actually
there you're you're looking at the world
through a fun house mirror and so
the one thing that I live in Perpetual
fear of is that you have the guy the
doctor you'll probably remember his name
I I don't who was like you know what I
think after you do an autopsy you need
to wash your hands before you give birth
to somebody yeah what Samuel why Samuel
wise so summer wise goes and tells
people this hey I think this is causing
the death of mothers uh we we really
have to start washing against people
make fun of him lambast him drive him
into an insane asylum where he dies
before it's discovered oh yeah germ
theory he was right and so that's how
wrong this goes I don't think that
humans have changed I think that we
still have that reaction where it's like
it it they're not necessarily even
trying to be mean it just doesn't make
sense and it to them and it would cause
like all these changes and and we don't
really know that this is a thing and so
to me
the people that want to make the
decisions they lack the the humility to
recognize the odds of me being wrong
border on 100 not not on everything but
when you take everything in totality
you're going to be wrong and you just
don't know about which things and so if
I'm thinking okay you've put forth your
idea we need these we need experts we
need an Institutional response that we
can trust my thing would be the closest
thing I could imagine to that you have
to Red Team blue team you've got to get
somebody like RFK Jr who really believes
this is a problem this is really causing
autism and then you debate it with data
that you predict ahead of time so it
comes down to okay what was your
prediction what did you think was going
to happen then you run the experiment
did it actually happen yes or no and
then both sides because when you look at
the data is the point at which you're
most likely to make your errors bring
your biases all that you look at the
data and then you try to go
with a consensus now
I don't see any way in climate is a
great one to talk about I don't see any
way to stop all kinds of
prolonged debate but then you hope that
when there really is evidence that it
starts to be just one by one all the
detractors start falling away it just
becomes too self-evident
and then you really can get something
approaching consensus in action
yeah well so
let me see if I can just isolate what
we're disagreeing about here because
you seem to be imagining that we can
have an information landscape whether
let's let's say it's on a platform like
Twitter or YouTube
where
it's as flat as but like there's as much
no one's doing anything deliberate to
tune
the signal to noise ratio right because
to do that would be to be biasing it the
best answer is I think people are hyper
biased so that is factored into while I
didn't talk about that that is factored
into how I think you have to let the
ideas battle so that the wiser more
eloquent
Fighters and I think this is probably a
lot of some people's pushback on you
stepping back somewhat exiting Twitter
because they were like you were the guy
I counted on to be able to throw and
Dodge punches and bring humor and all of
that
and so we've lost one of the Great
fighters of this uh and that that gets
hard because I don't see myself as
talented enough in the idea of public
opinion to do that so you you have to
have people that can dismantle these
ideas like I've seen you on stage do
this
particularly with religion which is
outside of where we're at right now in
the conversation but where you have been
you've been funny and uh it's shareable
the the clips themselves are amazing
because they they hit and they shake you
up but they're easy to transmit and
remember and so when you find a a great
orator Douglas Murray is another guy
that can really do this
um
that's that feels to me and I know
you've sort of you keep saying I'm not
the guy to Think Through covert or
whatever and I'm like uh actually so as
long as it's people who are disagreeing
respectfully who care about truth you
you have to as the individual care about
truth and you have to not pride yourself
on being right you have to pride
yourself in identifying the right answer
but I I have a feeling that experts
almost need that external panel of
people who are like I'm not invested in
this but I know how to Think Through
novel problems here's how I'm parsing
this data let me ask you really pointed
questions give me your feedback and then
I'll triangulate on an answer that feels
like in the reality of how ideas win at
scale that feels the closest to true but
it requires that people be able to say
whatever the hell they want that they
don't get booted kicked off silenced
whatever well but so let's just take
that last claim first
all of these platforms have to kick
people off for specific violations of
their terms of service right you need
some terms of service as far as I know
even 4chan has a terms of service right
I think maybe eight Chan doesn't but
like if you want to be more extreme than
4chan you have to go somewhere else so I
will give you barriers must be put up
now where we put the barriers we are
going to but but the moment you can see
that right then you recognize that
there's absolutely nothing novel about
what Elon is doing on Twitter he's just
he's just biasing it in a way that he
likes better than the previous bias
right so he brought Kanye on knowing he
was an anti-semite and then Kanye did
something and he kicked him off because
he realized okay I can't really have
this happening on my platform
um
and so it is what I mean he's he's
cozying up to sort of Q Anon lunatics
and he may not even know who he's signal
boosting he's just like you know glad
hand in somebody who said something he
thought was clever sent him a meme he
thought was clever and he's actually
signal boosting somebody who's just
odious in their ideological commitments
and then they're lying about everything
under the sun right and I'm not saying
elon's actually paying attention to all
that but
he he's he's doing something incredibly
ad hoc and sloppy and it's still not
free speed Free Speech absolutism right
Free Speech absolutism just doesn't
exist it doesn't even exist on 4chan if
you I mean if you as far as I know this
I have this on
just uh good faith because I'm never on
on um I don't think I've been on 4chan
ever but
um I think it has a terms of service and
that's why a Chan was spawned it's like
in protest over you know the the uh the
puritanical um control uh unfortunate so
what you seem to be recommending is the
four channification or the a
chantification of everything and what
that would be in my view if that were
happening on YouTube and Tick Tock and
Twitter and and you know threads and
everywhere else
it would be a maximally maximally noisy
uh uncivil space right so it's just it'd
be hard it would get hard insofar as you
achieve that ideal of no libtard
institutional bias right you're just
gonna we're just gonna let it rip right
anyone with anything to say gets equal
chance to say it
um
what you what you're going to have there
is just the just pure cacophony
and it's going to be harder and harder
to find the signal and the noise right
so the moment you admit that you would
you admit you're in the the business of
favoring certain voices over others
platforming and even de-platforming
people when they're when they when they
prove on the 10th infraction that
they're truly beyond the pale and just
committed to to making a mess right
and what I experienced so and and so my
leaving Twitter was just you know it was
much more of a personal decision it
wasn't a decision that it was just it
was just a decision about how I was
going to spend my time and attention
ultimately but
I mean the reason why I didn't see
a benefit to my staying there is that
it's just the wrong space in which to
try to have a conversation and a
conversation that converges on anything
useful on these kinds of topics right
really any polarizing topic uh because I
tried I mean it was the only place it
was the only social media platform that
I ever used personally I mean where I'm
on others but those are just marketing
channels and I never see them but it was
really me on Twitter I was really trying
to make sense to people
what I was getting back was just this
you know tsunami of bad faith attacks
and craziness
um and what was actually
exploding was not just you know
headlines that were false but like you
know in in the in the final case it was
a clip of me on another podcast which
was genuinely misleading as to what I
said in context on that podcast but it
simply didn't matter because the clip
itself seemed to be it seemed
intelligible enough it seemed clear
enough what I was saying it within the
clip that people just they didn't even
want to hear that there was a context
just the hunter Biden thing yeah yeah so
they so they didn't like literally they
did they didn't want to hear and even
like no one has the bandwidth to go back
and find the context for the thing that
they just reacted to that that just you
know primed all their you know satisfied
all their salt and sugar and fat uh
receptors
um and what so when you ask like what my
principles are my my general principle
is to be very on guard
for doing that sort of thing myself so
like even when there's somebody who
who I know I understand and revile
appropriately somebody like Trump
I'm still on guard for the clip of him
that is actually misleading right and
and I will actually defend him as much
as I you know find him indefensible
I have I've burned a fair amount of you
know reputational Capital you know over
here on the left
by defending him on specific points when
I felt that the attack on him was just
based on lies right so like when he was
the when he um
gave a press conference after
Charlottesville and said that you know
there were good people on both sides uh
and he seemed to be saying In that clip
that the neo-nazis are good people right
and that was spun from that was spun
politically from you know everyone from
Biden on down it was spun by the New
York Times I mean literally I would have
if I had to bet
95 of the commentary left of center
still thinks he was praising neo-nazis
in that in that press conference and yet
within the within the context of the
press conference it's absolutely clear
that he's not doing that right he's he
says you know within 20 seconds of of of
the clipped piece he says you know I'm
not talking about the white supremacists
and the neo-nazis I'm talking about
other people who were there for you know
who were just worried about you know
monuments getting torn down
um
and so
I think we have to acknowledge that
there's we're in a
uh immediate landscape now where people
are being reliably misled by Clips so
the the the the the underlying ethic
here is that when people are arguing in
a partisan way
they don't really care what their enemy
has said or meant to say
what they want to do is they want to
hold them to the the worst possible
interpretation of what they said and
make that stick right and the game is
just see if you can make it stick see if
you can you and so so I've long I've
made this claim
you know for years now and this is you
know this is more
based on what happens to me on from the
left as opposed to the right I mean the
the example we're talking about now was
sort of defamation coming from the right
uh but
you know I've
I've made this point before and this is
the you know it's an inconvenient point
to make because like even this can get
clipped out to my disadvantage but it's
just it's worth saying because
this this shines as bright as possible a
light on what everyone is doing and many
many good people are doing it kind of
unthinkingly
but so I'm living I've long known for at
least eight years or so
I've known that I'm in an environment
where if I say on my podcast
black people are Apes white people are
Apes we're all Apes racism doesn't make
any sense right there are some
considerable number of people
who will clip out me saying black people
are apes or make a meme black people or
Apes Sam Harris right and they will
export that to their Channels with
apparently with a clear conscience
saying this is fair game right
um
and that's the kind of people I was
dealing with on Twitter and that's the
kind of the person who clipped that clip
from that podcast is exactly that sort
of person and that and he was being
signal boosted by lots of other people
we could name
um and
so I just recognize that this is a
a
just it's just the wrong occasion to try
to have a conversation with people as is
it's built into the Dynamics of the
system where people are incentivized
just to dunk on everybody however
dishonestly and then move on and you
know the and part of the pathology I saw
with Elon taking over the place was not
so much what he was doing to the place
as its owner but just how he was
behaving personally on the platform
himself I mean he was doing the same
thing he one of the first things he did
after he
took over Twitter
was he spread he's he spread this meme
about
um Nancy Pelosi's husband you know after
that the hammer attack on him it's like
it's not what it seems this could have
been a you know a gay trist gone awry
and he linked to a website that had you
know an article to that effect
this was a website
which during the 2016 election claimed
that Hillary Clinton was dead and that a
body double was was campaigning in her
place right so Elon links to that as a
source right in front of at that point
probably 110 million people
amplifying a completely crazy conspiracy
theory that is getting spun up in Q Anon
circles
um
and then when that gets pointed out to
him just how just how wrong all of that
was and how irresponsible it was
he never corrects the record he never
apologizes he never changes his his
appetite for doing that again in that
case I think he just deleted the Tweet
right and moved on and so it's it's like
even people who reputationally have a
tremendous amount to lose by behaving
that way you would think
are goaded into behaving that way
because of the mechanics of the platform
and so
you know for me personally I I simply
don't understand how people
have audiences that will still follow
them after they prove that they don't
care to make any of these distinctions I
mean so I mentioned Tucker Carlson the
fact that behind closed doors he's
saying that Trump is a demonic force and
then in front of the camera he's
basically messaging to trumpastan 85 of
the time you know in a very supportive
way
um I don't understand how like in front
of my audience if that if a similar
thing were revealed about me
my my audience would would just
completely disavow me I mean I was like
there'll just be no it would it would be
a complete breach of trust with my
audience and that's that's the way I
think it should be but Alex Jones I mean
like Alex Jones has an audience of some
tens of millions of people
in the aftermath of the of Sandy Hook
right you know when he like he has lied
and lied and lied about Sandy Hook being
a false flag fake you know confection of
the of the the Obama Administration
you know they're all crisis actors the
kids never died or like I mean it's like
I I don't I don't know how he he how
deep those claims that went but some
version of that right like this is none
of this is as it seems
um
he created immense harm demonstrable
harm with all the Sandy Hook families I
mean these are families in many cases
they've had to move home some have moved
homes 10 times since he started
spreading those lies about them
all of this gets
kind of you know forensically documented
at trial he gets a billion dollar
judgment against him
how does he still have an audience right
like who are these people who are still
isn't it is that legitimately confusing
because that one to me is very clear
he's entertaining all these people are
mentally ill or like what like what is
it because I don't look I don't know
Rogan well at all uh but Rogan keeps
having him on I don't know if he has
recently but he thinks he's funny since
then but yeah that I I don't know but
certainly my take is that people find
him amusing he's funny and he's gotten
enough weird stuff right right that
people are like all right look he missed
I don't I know literally nothing about
the Sandy Hook stuff so I'm certainly
not defending that right I'm just saying
I understand the phenomenon the
phenomenon is that
that this is
this is an age where the algorithm is a
big part of the piece of information and
so the reason that certain people become
the voice is that they also are able to
speak in a way that people find really
compelling entertaining engaging and so
that person is gonna keep going Alex has
a way of delivering information that's
zany it's crazy it's over the top you
can't believe it's real he's funny he's
fun to make fun of and there are enough
things that people like I mean he gets
memed right is like another crazy thing
that he said five years ago just you
know came true and so he's he's a bit
like the the
um Simpsons in that people be like yo
Simpsons 12 years ago predicted this
thing like that's insane so same thing
with Alex but now that doesn't mean that
he isn't a destructive force it just
means that it's very easy for me to see
why he's entertaining enough that people
are gonna keep going back to him
you can reboot your life your health
even your career anything you want all
you need is discipline I can teach you
the tactics that I learned while growing
a billion dollar business that will
allow you to see your goals through
whether you want better health stronger
relationships a more successful career
any of that is possible with the mindset
and business programs in Impact Theory
University join the thousands of
students who have already accomplished
amazing things tap now for a free trial
and get started today I'll grant grant
you the entertainment component
especially in his case but
in in his case perhaps to a lesser
degree uh but certainly in Tucker's
caves there's this pretense of I'm just
giving you honest information right I'm
just calling it as I see it like this is
just you know like what you see is what
you get there's not like this is just
this is um
there's a fundamental Integrity to to
the message that's what his audience
seems to think they're getting and then
we know that he is a completely
different person behind closed doors I
can explain that one as well so you've
got uh all right we we all know they I'm
just giving you what uh died in the wool
red Republican is going to say
um
they shouldn't be looking at his private
Communications and that's a way of not
taking the the knowledge on board
correct I'm not saying it's the right
way I'm just saying this is how he keeps
his audience they shouldn't be looking
at his private Communications this is
exactly what Trump has been warning us
about people getting into your private
life governmental overreach all of that
and then of course like he's gonna fight
for Republican values even if he thinks
that the leadership isn't great that
he'd rather have somebody else he knows
that lying on behalf of a guy that he
thinks is demonic but at least he's
Republican is better than than the the
outright dangerous I don't know what
words they use for othering the Joe
Biden camp but like that's how it's
going to be that you would much rather I
mean it was like when Trump said that
yes I'm a bully but I'm a bully for you
it was like okay
sure Tucker's not perfect sure he lied
to present things well but I'm kind of
glad he did because I need him to
represent our side we have to win
against the other people like there's
this real escalating sense of like we
have to win the stakes really matter and
in fact going back to that idea of if if
I look at so I I watched the whole
interview that you did where you were
talking about the hunter Biden laptop
and so I'm watching it with an open mind
and just like uh just a ton of respect
for you Sam I cannot stress it enough
before or after this minute a year from
now I just can't fathom not really being
blown away by how you think and the all
the meditation stuff you seem sincerely
to want to help people
so it's very easy for me to go okay I
think I get where you're going with this
but for me to interpret that moment the
way that you did this is why I said uh
this is about stopping evil to me your
interpretation of trump is that either
because he's just a clown on the loose a
dangerous troll or because he's actually
nefarious either one has the same
outcome so I doubt you split real hairs
with that but he cannot be in control of
this company it is I don't know if you
go all the way to existential thank you
this country I don't know if you go all
the way to uh existential or not but
it's like it's so high risk finger on
the nukes asking questions like uh why
do I have less nukes than JFK back in
the 60s like that this is this is as
close to unhinged narcissism as you're
gonna get it's too dangerous we're we
are now at a point where hey everybody
um yeah fine I will step forward and say
that there should be a small group group
of people that just keep us from this
lunacy and if that means that we have to
not not necessarily
um bury the laptop but you cannot let it
come out right in a moment where it
could possibly sway the election and put
that psychopath back in right now that's
where I say that is way more dangerous
and now we can at least talk about what
we disagree on to me the authoritarian
nature of like I and some small group of
people have decided that Trump is that
dangerous and have decided that this
laptop revealing at this moment would be
dangerous to the Democratic candidacy so
whatever it is that we have to suppress
we have to suppress it now let me just
be clear about what my position actually
was at the time and what I was actually
saying on that podcast
um not especially well
my position was it was always a hard
judgment call at that point we're
talking about 10 days before the
election this thing comes it's clearly
an October surprise foisted on us timed
intentionally to be hard to parse right
before the election it's just like we're
on Rudy giuliani's timetables like he
this is like here this is when I'm going
to show you the laptop right you got 10
days to figure this out
um it was meant to detonate politically
at that point and we already knew what
happens what you know in the 2016
election when 10 days before an election
you say hey we got Anthony Weiner's
laptop and now we're reopening the the
email investigation to Hillary Clinton
we saw that that was her poll numbers
like by the hour went down uh and uh you
know whether that was decisive or not uh
who knows if she was unelectable for
other reasons but
um
so
we had a so so
my claim at the time was
it was totally understandable for
journalists to say
we're not going to be Hostage to Rudy
giuliani's timetable here we have a
election in 10 days first Do no harm
let's just give this let's let's give
let's wait for three weeks to figure out
what's true about this laptop right this
is we can't figure out whether this is a
Russian you know forgery you know like
this there's reasons to be concerned
that it could could be Russian
disinformation
um
who knows what's going on here we should
not be in a rush to create a a disaster
here politically
um
so it was under and and so I I viewed
each of these platforms having different
choices to make so journalists could
decide do we want to focus on this now
or do we want to give this a little more
breathing room that was an editorial
choice that I completely understood and
still still a genuine hard call then you
have Twitter deciding
not only to whether or not to amplify
certain things they decide to
de-platform the New York Post that had a
journalist who decided to write about
the story right
um that was a very different decision
and I think almost certainly the wrong
decision right I mean again
understandable given the political bias
of the people on Twitter and given the
genuine uncertainty as to the the the
ground truth or the really the validity
the information and where that laptop
came from and I think even in that case
on the New York Post Story one of the
the reporters who reported it out didn't
want to sign his name to the article I
mean like it was it was the Wild West
over there in terms of actually you know
doing the journalism
um so it's
even in my view it was a coin toss as as
to what to do there now if you raise the
stakes more right you make Trump even
more Sinister you make the the election
even more tenuous you make the
information even more uh dubious than
you know then that the dials change and
and so many of these decisions are not
decisions you can make
categorically in principle it really is
this this pragmatic balancing of just
what is what is true and what it What is
the what are the stakes right it's like
uh I'll compare this to another case you
you um
you spelled out earlier so you felt that
it was It was obviously wrong to force
people to get the MRNA vaccine for covet
right now I would Grant you certainly in
retrospect that seems true
but if we change a few of the variables
I think your your ethical intuitions and
certainly political intuitions would
totally change so you make it a much
more obviously effective vaccine that
really does block transmission it's like
a sterilizing vaccine uh
you make it a much more dangerous virus
you make it a virus that's actually
preferentially killing kids rather than
old people right so now it's now we're
in an environment where like you're
deciding not to get vaccinated is
putting my kids at risk right do you get
to make that choice right and you might
say oh yes yeah I should be able to make
that choice as my body you know but dial
up the the deadliness of the pathogen
you know give us something like you know
Airborne Ebola
that incubates for a month you know you
don't know you have it and you're what
you walk around spreading it and it's
got you know a 75 fatality rate and it's
mostly killing kids
no one gets to make that choice anymore
I mean then literally the the cops come
in and vaccinate you and
I I would say that all of us would agree
to that the moment again that you turn
up The lethality on the on the pathogen
you turn up the effectiveness of the
vaccine you turn down the risk of the
vaccine give me a truly safe vaccine
where there's not even one documented
case of vaccine injury right so that
then you just have to be completely
crazy
to be worried about being vaccinated in
that in that kind of environment
um then it's just a no-brainer then then
we just don't tolerate a diversity of
opinion because the stakes are too high
it's it's a full-on emergency bodies of
kids are being stacked up in Parks right
we there's so many of them we don't know
what to do with them we've got these
mobile morgues and we have a vaccine
that actually works and then we've got
RFK Jr saying you know maybe you don't
want you know you maybe you don't want
to get the jab on Rogan's podcast right
that's that that's the the world I've
been worried about ever since covet like
like a like a a world where
the truth is really clear and yet our
media environment is so crazy that that
we can't even talk about it we get we
get this I mean again the fact that
something like Q Anon is possible Right
the fact that we could have a president
who messages the Q Anon favorably
without disavowing any association right
when asked about Q Anon he says well
they sure seem to like me they seem like
nice people right this is a this is a
ah
I mean some tens of millions of people
it seems and let's say it's a hardcore
of maybe three million people who knows
millions of people who believe that the
world is being run by child raping
cannibals right
that's like if we if that is possible in
the current system you just you just
have to imagine what that would do
when the stakes are truly high right
like when it's when it's part of the
Machinery of some decision making and uh
so I have a slightly different intuition
on this so
um I I like to take the hardest possible
look at this thing and then see what I
would do so
um one even if you dial it up it's
Airborne Ebola it takes a month you're
walking around dead kids or are being
stacked up
um I would still let
RFK go say I don't think people should
get the job
but having said that what do you mean
lit like meaning you would decide to
have that conversation or you just think
oh on my podcast there should be no law
against it right but so I agree with you
there so like that where I hold the line
with the first amendment is yes you
should be able to be as wrong as you
want to be
but we don't have to algorithmically
boost those errors right correct and if
you and if I have a platform if again
I'm creating a social media platform I
don't want the Nazis and I don't want
the people who are spreading lies about
the current pandemic that is getting
yeah you and I break down is I am so
paranoid that people don't know what a
lie is right so the very thing and
that's why I brought up the founding
fathers before the reason that I'm
saying I want these people to be able to
speak is because I don't know who knows
the answer and who doesn't and so I need
the information now over time certainly
for myself I'll begin to discern who I
think is a good faith actor and is
really thinking through this problem and
I get that there's going to be people
that get caught up in just the speed of
it it's hard to parse who's right and
who's just entertaining and that will be
very frustrating especially if it's my
kids that are being stacked up in the
park and and and I get all of that but I
would also say that if you need those
sort of
wartime Powers this is Ebola it's
spreading the deaths are just absolutely
outrageous we have reason to believe
that the vaccine is working
while I wouldn't say that people can't
speak up I would be like you are getting
vaccinated or you're getting quarantined
in some way and that would be horrible
and that's really god-awful and it will
have absolutely terrible consequences
but I don't want to say that I can't see
a world in which I look at it and go
that's the right answer what I want to
talk about is what am I using to
determine that that's the right answer
that's really the thing that I want to
talk about is how we think through these
very difficult very novel problems and
so
one of the the things that I find
interesting is you've got founding
fathers and you've got religion so the
founding fathers to me represent a
shared narrative about what people ought
to be what the US for sure
ought to be in in a moralistic sense
like how do you structure a government
to protect itself from tyranny how do
you recognize the individual people what
ought they be able to pursue without the
government being able to interfere with
them like what are those bright lines
that makes us Americans riding on the
back of freedom and freedom of speech
and all of that now of course crazy
they're doing all this while holding
slaves but they put an idea together
that as you adhere to the idea all that
other [ __ ] starts to fall away so
that to me is is is a structure of a
system that grows better over time so
that's one element that it it's an
orienting mechanism where Live Free or
Die right it's something people were
literally willing to give their lives
for an idea that has fallen apart in a
way that I don't clearly understand that
I would love you to talk to the other
part of this is religion same thing it's
how do you know what is true in fact my
I was thinking about this today tell me
what you think I think that religion is
the thing that allows you to establish
your behavior patterns when truth cannot
be scientifically established so you
have religion for the Millennia when you
couldn't look under a microscope to know
about germ Theory so you just said don't
put these Fabrics together don't eat
pork whatever and ultimately it was like
you knew you were doing the right thing
because it was written down in a book or
told in an oral story and you either
hewed close to what it said to do and
you were doing the right thing or you
didn't and you weren't and so what I
think we're living through now is people
realize
religion doesn't hold that sort of
gravitational Center that it used to
because we now do have microscopes and
we can really see what the religions
were trying to get at but it did give us
a shared narrative that works well for
people that are headline readers that
can't hold the Nuance of the argument
and so they just need Ten Commandments
tell me what to do and so I know that
I'm either in line or not so now when
you're looking at a global pandemic we
don't really know what's going we don't
know The lethality we don't know if you
should get the shot or not if I can
point to religion and say to be a good
Christian
you would get the jab for this reason I
would draw a parallel with one of the
stories then people do it and now I get
people to of their own accord out of a
desire to adhere to this shared
narrative they do it and so you see how
religion can be this incredible Boon but
in a modern era with idea velocity with
Hyper fragmentation driven by algorithms
and social media and all of that
religion is
I I need you to speak to this because I
don't know the data well enough losing
its power losing its efficacy I don't
know it's it's lost something it does
not have the effect that it used to have
and well I would also say it just
doesn't address many of these use cases
right so it's like the religion doesn't
have a position on vaccines I mean
there's some religions that that might I
mean a Christian Scientists would would
probably not get backs back don't you
agree that you if I'm a preacher I find
the story that I want to draw the
parallel yeah so you could probably do
it either way like you could be against
vaccines or pro-vaccines correct but I
get you to adhere by I don't have to use
authoritarian rule that's my point I
don't have to do something top down what
religion allowed you to do was keep the
sovereignty of the individual especially
if you're talking about a Christian
religion keep the sovereignty of the
individual and yet get them to fall in
line it's really pretty genius where
whether you do it because you believe in
America and so you keep your freedoms
but you adhere to the the mores that
allow this amazing thing to exist that
you're proud to be a part of religion
serves the same function but now as we
get into weird like cultish new religion
wokeness whatever you want to call it
yeah something something deranges well
so I I think I mean what you want are
principles here I mean one principles I
think we should
be very wary of being driven by
tribalism right now it's not that
tribalism is all always in every case
pathological I mean I think there's
there's tribalism we can play at for fun
I mean it's entertaining and it's not
very deep and yet it can take up a fair
amount of bandwidth
and it's fine so you can be a fan of you
know a sports team and we know what that
looks like when you take it too
seriously I mean when you're like you
know South in you know your South
American soccer player and you lose the
the World Cup or you you know you commit
an own goal or something and you
literally have to worry about getting
murdered by your former fans right we
know that that's gone too far it's too
much like religion in that case but
in the general case you can be
you can play at tribalism or you can be
you know Loosely identified with some
subculture
and it can be fun and you can enjoy the
diversity and the diversity can be
somewhat antagonistic even as it is in
let's say in sports right
but no one it like it doesn't reach deep
into
a person's psychology and and and social
network and political commitments such
that they're making life and death
decisions on the basis of how much more
they like the Yankees than the the Red
Sox say
um
so
tribalism
deeper tribalism is I think something we
just need to outgrow right I mean
because the truth is not tribal the
truth is is is universal even specific
truths have some
there's some view from above where
you know diversity of opinion is just a
matter of our ignorance and and if we if
we could really see those truths clearly
we would all Converge on the same on the
same account of reality regardless of
our background regardless of our our
language regardless of I mean we just
don't we don't have the right to be to
our provincialism anymore with respect
to our basic epistemological commitments
whether those are scientific
or ultimately ethical right so I would
say that that
you know it used to be the case that we
could agree to disagree about how to
treat women in a society right like so
yes if you're up again you're in
Afghanistan
you don't let them get you don't let
them get educated you'll force them to
live in cloth bags you beat them if they
try to get out you know they they can't
be out in public without being
accompanied by a male relative
um you know just there's a list of of
taboos and most of them are killing
offenses
um and
do we just agree to disagree there well
practically now yes because
we lost that war we're no longer there
we just don't have we we just it's not
worth sending our sons and daughters to
die to defend those girls but the the
ground truth is
if you're born a girl in Afghanistan you
are profoundly unlucky right that is
just that and that disparity in luck
should be calling to all of us right
like it's just not it's just not a good
status quo ultimately if we got our [ __ ]
together as a species
some subset of the of of women and girls
would not be forced to live in cloth
bags as they are in Afghanistan at this
very moment right
um so
ultimately we will converge and
tribalism is precisely the wrong
algorithm to use if you want to converge
on the deeper truths whether they're
scientific or ethical or you know I
would argue even spiritual
that we should organize our beliefs
about reality and how to live within it
right and and that's what we're trying
we should recognize is that's what we're
trying to do we're trying to navigate
in the space of all possible experience
individually and collectively and we're
just we're trying to figure out what to
do next right which this is politics
what should we do next we've got a
hundred billion dollars to spend this
year
in the state of California or whatever
it is you know I actually don't know
what our budget is in California but
we've got this money to spend what
should we do with it right and then we
have
diversity of opinion and in some cases
you know radical diversity of opinion
about what is important and what is even
decent to to focus on
um but
and I agree with you that that
basic basically free space of
conversation is the way we will Orient
and and resolve those disagreements
right so we need I I I I do agree that
in most cases we need the conversation
just to run long enough and to be
uncoerced enough so that most people
most of the time can notice that the
better ideas are surfacing and the and
the and the [ __ ] is being being
moved to the sidelines but
there are still you know obvious cases
where
the the topic is specialized enough or
the the
the um
the red the red the the the knowledge
you need to just get us to to have a
valid seat at the table is is deep
enough that not all not everyone gets to
error their opinion with you know
you know not everyone gets to air their
opinion at that particular in that
particular conversation or
um if they do
we're all wise to just have very little
patience for that particular opinion
because it just is it's obviously
incredible right it's obviously uh it
doesn't have the person doesn't have the
right background they're not playing The
Language game appropriately they sound
crazy they have these they are they're
they're they're telegraphing they're
they're other ideological commitments
that are distracting and and not
convergent with with at the actual truth
at hand
um
so it's like sort of you know you bring
Alex Jones to the physics conference
is not going to take him too many
minutes to sort of disqualify himself as
a a expert a relevant subject matter
expert on physics right or anything else
um
and
so we live with that tension that yes
it's it's in fact true that a Nobel
Laureate
on On Any Given topic can discredit
himself
with his very next sentence if his if
the sentence is obviously wrong right
and somebody who knows but basically
nothing can be right in a debate with
this guy by just pointing that out like
you just that doesn't make any sense
right
and it is true from a scientific point
of view that we don't we we take
authority scientific Authority very
lightly right like like it's not it's
not good enough that you're a Nobel
Laureate that's that's not the thing
that's going to make you right right and
and
on some level you're only as good as
your last sentence right like even if
you have a Nobel Prize
um
and that's how we do you know so you
know a Nobel Laureate is given a lecture
in in you know again it could be a on
his narrow area of expertise and at the
end of the lecture hands go up and it
could just be a lowly undergraduate who
embarrasses him or her
on the again not even on an adjacent
topic on the on the top the very topic
uh on which that that person became an
expert
um and that is that's that's just
because truth is in fact orthogonal to
Any Given person's reputation or
educational and career achievements or
like it's just it doesn't matter who
you've been like it matters what you're
saying right now and why you're saying
it and what and and whether
it is connected enough to a chain of
reasoning and a chain of evidence that
anyone should take it seriously right so
that's all true and yet as a time saving
device
if we have to figure out whether a you
know a certain chemical is is toxic
we we don't want to hear from Alex Jones
we want to hear from the real chemists
right yes we don't want to hear from the
chemists who are working for Monsanto if
that if this is a compound that Monsanto
is marketing that they stand to make a
billion dollars on and
we know we don't have good regulations
that would force them to do the the
relevant toxicology and really Safeguard
human health right we know that a lot of
a lot of the incentives are misaligned
such that
some of the time even someone with the
right educational background is either
lying or or you know impressively
self-deceived and we're getting bad
information
and this is again this is what I come
back to what we need
in every case here when things matter
are institutions and regulations and
procedures and and alignments of
incentives that we can actually trust
because they're trustworthy right
because because they are actually
reliably keeping bad information out and
and surfacing good information and I
would admit that we have a highly
imperfect system
but the system we have is way better
than no system right and like but just
take a it's this is very easy for people
to see when you move it out of Science
and certainly out of Medicine
and put it into areas of like
just like straightforward engineering
like like on an airplane right so like
there's not people don't tend to be
iconoclass with respect to engineering
like when you get on a plane you don't
want to be doing your own research you
don't want to you didn't want to you
don't want your
you don't want to be doing Google
searches about plane replacement parts
right you just want to know that the FAA
has it right you want to know that the
regulations work you want to know that
the pilots for United don't want to die
right that they're not going to get on
the plane if they think it's unsafe you
don't you want to know that the
mechanics are not getting bogus Parts
because they can shave a profit they're
incentivized like you don't want a
system of incentives where we tell the
mechanics at Boeing that if you can
figure out how to get parts from
Malaysia cheaper right we're going to
let you keep hat pocket half of the
difference you know if you save us a
million dollars you get to keep five
hundred thousand right so get us a
landing gear that you know just came
that somebody 3D printed you know in in
another country right if we found out
that that was how we were incentivizing
mechanics we would go nuts
understandably right but presumably
we're not doing that but
um
we have to discover as a species all the
ways in which we're doing dumb things at
a systems level right in institutions
and in in and in the you know the
systems of incentives that connect
institutions we have to
defrag all of that such that
mirror Apes like ourselves can be making
reliably making better decisions than
individuals can tend to make on their
own because the systems are so good and
so again this is not
we're not going to solve this in
podcastan right or sub-stakistan right
like I'm not saying we don't want
podcasts and sub-stack newsletters but I
think what you can do is is delineate
how to think about the problem because
here's the the last thing on this and
then I've got so many more things I want
to talk to you about but
um I think part of because I agree with
you as you break down what it should
look like I agree with you the problem
is that the example that you gave that I
think really freaked people out was like
uh this thing isn't going well with the
timing of the Trump thing uh the Biden
laptop the Trump thing is so serious I'm
gonna just real fast break the system to
make sure that this doesn't go forward
and that sets everybody's alarm bells up
but I wasn't but again just to be clear
I was not advocating to break anything I
I I said that Twitter Twitter was wrong
to de-platform the New York Post right
the the New York Times I think was
probably again and I I put it implicitly
in these terms it was a total coin toss
for me journalistically whether you
decide to do a front page story on the
hunter Biden laptop with 10 days left
when there was there were valid concerns
that this could be Russian
disinformation and you had the previous
example of a of an election seeming to
get derailed by something you say that
like
there there might be reasons but
somebody is making a human is making a
judgment call and certainly the way you
present it is your take is if it were my
call to make that's probably what I
would do I think that's the thing that's
certainly the thing that that made me
uncomfortable of like whoa I
that feels like you're well let's let's
use a much higher risk scenario let's
make it even more realistic because
because now what am I doing now with
respect to the laptop right like I have
not done a podcast on the hunter Biden
laptop yeah even yet right it's been
it's been now with us for years
um
it's conceivable that I could I mean I
still I still I I still don't find the
topic interesting enough given the
political environment that
I care all that much and again because
the the for me it was a very
straightforward calculation
here we have a sitting president who I
knew to be
unqualified in all kinds of ways but the
specific problem for me at that point
was we have a sitting president who is
not committing to a peaceful transfer of
power right that was a five alarm fire
politically I mean that was just that
was as bright a line as I needed to say
this is an emergency right this guy can
this this is now it's not an emergency
such that we could do anything to stop
him right I'm not saying that the New
York Times should have printed lies
about him right I'm not saying that it
actually did not require line or even a
shading of the truth it's just here's a
guy who on multiple occasions has been
asked point blank on television will you
commit to a peaceful transfer of power
and he basically in so many words he
said no
like if I win it will be it will be a
valid election right that's basically
what he said let me ask what do you
think about people want him elected
still like he's still theoretically as
we're recording this is the prime
Contender for the Republican nomination
and that's so that just to close the
loop on what I just said that's why I'm
not that among other reasons that's
perhaps I haven't thought much about it
but that is why I'm not so motivated
to spend a lot of bandwidth or any
bandwidth trying to figure out what's so
wrong with Biden and the Biden family
right now I have no doubt there are
politically inconvenient embarrassing
even shocking things to discover I mean
certainly in Hunter Biden's life and his
behavior I mean that's a that's a
I'm sure there's no end to it to
embarrassment there but
even some degree of implication with
with President Biden is that possible is
it conceivable is is there something
there that I just haven't freed up the
bandwidth to pay attention to coming out
of that laptop I'm sure there are many
people in trumpistan who who can could
speak for an hour about all the things
we they think we know based on that
laptop but
I certainly doubt some of that
um but why am I not motivated to pay
more attention to that
because just as you said Trump could
very well come back in 2024 like I think
that I I really maybe I'm just not
explaining well I don't think that's
where people get the friction where they
get the friction is the sense of it's
one of the earlier questions that I
asked I think you either believe that
the people can sort through this
themselves and figure things out and you
put the trust in the hands of people or
and and I think your position is clear
and so tell me if I'm getting this wrong
so either the people on mass just give
them the information they'll sort it out
or we need experts which people are
going to read Elites right which is not
a charitable interpretation but that's
how they hear it or we need a group of
Elites that are better than us plebs and
and go figure it out I think that's what
they hear when you say that now I get
what you mean about experts but I have
so
I I know that even the most
well-intentioned expert has a propensity
to be wrong that I just feel like the
the mistake I would rather make going
back to my Trifecta Vivo the thing I'm
most afraid of is authoritarian rule so
in that moment I go oh God these are
both terrible situations but I really
feel like you have to put the hands in
the people you have to leave it with
them if they let them see all the
information and yes I know it's
calculated there is but there is no
seeing all the information right there
is no
unmoderated pure just fire hose of
information I mean the information
doesn't exist
as a
as a unitary object that can be
contemplated in its totality always in
proportion to what it is in fact in
reality it makes me a little nervous you
you do have it it is so specific a
laptop maybe it's Russian disinformation
turns out it wasn't but maybe but you
have this thing it becomes so concrete
and so tangible I think that's why
there's so much attention on that thing
but so I just want to get to your
principle versus my principle because I
don't again
my principle here is that again I mean I
I stand by everything I said on that
original podcast I just didn't say it
especially well there but and so people
are genuinely confused about what I was
recommending did I say it so I know if I
understand yeah that the what was going
on is it was a real emergency you had a
real emergency you have a president who
was not committing to the peaceful
transfer of power our democracy was
truly at risk our democracy is is the
most important thing in this scenario a
laptop comes out first of all it could
be Russian disinformation we don't know
yet and so it would be it would be
foolish in the in the same way that if
the Russian guy that sees the five
nuclear weapons getting shot at him for
him not to pause and go I this just
doesn't make sense I'm not going to do
it in that moment it was far wiser to
not put this in front of the public but
instead to go
the risk reward ratio is off hold off
also because there was no rush there's
still no rush like again I still haven't
done it but I want to make sure did I
accurately convey how you think through
that problem but but the crucial thing
is people took from that podcast clip
people took away the the impression that
I was advocating that we lie about Trump
right that we or that we say that we
felt that way so is somebody watching
the whole thing not the clip the whole
thing I walked away going okay I get
where Sam is coming from if you really
believe that this is an emergency that
this will disrupt honestly if if all of
that were true emergency he's going to
steal an election it is going to
jeopardize our democracy and all I have
to do is hide the laptop or or buy time
create a smoke screen if I really
believed that all of that was true man
I'd I'd be very tempted now it's just my
obsession with this Trifecta books
so if it's a sufficient emergency
you should want the guy assassinated
right I mean like it goes all the way
like if this guy's Hitler well then we
all we all wish Hitler got assassinated
right now I don't think Trump is Hitler
or anything like Hitler so there's that
there is can you pre-cog him that's
that's where I get nervous like
everybody's so quick to say that he
really is Hitler and it's like no no
he's I I I I know well
I don't know how much harm he could
ultimately do
but he shows no sign of being
ideological in any way and he shows it
shows no sign of wanting to take on a
kind of World building or dismantling
subject and that makes my radar people
people want what people want him so this
may illuminate the the difference so
because peop some people want to elect
him I'm like damn is there something I'm
missing and so
because I know I could be flawed I'm
just like then you have to let the
people decide well no you you have to
let the people decide
I would argue we still don't entirely
know
what's up with that laptop right it's
like I know they're people who think
they know but like
I I don't actually know what what sort
of forensic analysis has been done of
that laptop and how reliable that is and
what the what the scope of fraud is
there really
um
and I'm still unaware of anything that
has surfaced from that laptop that is
clearly a Smoking Gun that implicates
Biden in corruption in a way like
there's there's new information coming
out in recent weeks I don't know what
the relationship that is to the laptop
but
um
if there's a 20 Megaton scandal in that
laptop
it still hasn't reached me and it's been
over a year right
um
but again I default back to my original
position which is
the fact that Trump wouldn't commit to a
peaceful transfer of power and we didn't
and we in fact didn't have a piece full
of transfer of power and he's now
running again
that to me is so disqualifying
that I'm not inclined to do anything
that would that could possibly increase
his chances of getting elected right so
so again he's not Hitler but I think
he's someone who's who is totally
committed to subverting all the the
Norms of our democracy
for purely personal avarice and but just
his malignant narcissism I mean it's
just he's a he really is a pure
you know case study in that
um but again not ideological not
especially ambitious in any of the ways
that somebody like Hitler or Stalin was
um but it's so corrupting of our
politics and so destabilizing of our of
our in the institutions we should care
about in our democracy that I think
having him in 20 for a second term could
well be a total disaster and it's just
such an awful precedent precedent to
have someone who didn't commit to a
peaceful transfer of power
basically saw to it that we didn't have
one
were still really did try to steal the
election all the while claiming it was
being stolen from him right I mean the
stuff he was trying to do behind the
scenes the pressure he was putting on
Mike Pence all of that was a genuine
effort to steal an election he knew he
had lost I mean his all of the people
the the you know his attorney general
people behind the scenes got it through
to him that he had actually lost and he
was still willing to just Bluff his way
back into the presidency
um
that's so disqualifying and should be so
disqualified from my point of view is
that yeah do I want to do three hours on
just how awful Joe Biden is no right now
I don't think Joe Biden should be
running for president he's way too old
right so he's obviously
past is you know not just his prime it's
just like
it's a disaster right
and I think
Kamala is PR is
I mean I I can't see a scenario in which
she's electable so like if he if he dies
or if anything you know happens to his
health is That's So catastrophic that
he's no longer the candidate and she is
I think that's just you know
that's just a red carpet rolled out for
for Trump or really anyone to to to
become the Republican president
um
so I think it's totally irresponsible
and dangerous that the Democrats have
put us in this position that we're
running Biden with Kamala Harris being
his VP with no alternative really you
know I mean maybe there would be you
know maybe if he if he died today then
maybe that you know maybe Gavin Newsom
or somebody would step up and we would
have a different race but the fact that
we seem to be running Biden by default
with Kamala Harris in you know
really set to inhibit to some
significant degree half the country will
be seeing her as the person who's
running because they they plausibly
wouldn't expect him to survive his term
um all that's a disaster all of that is
well worth criticizing
I don't want to touch it because
what's the alternative like I mean if I
could if if I saw an alternative
that I could could advocate for right
that would could it all be effective if
I saw an upside in criticizing Biden
validly
then I would do it but this is a pure
pragmatic case where I'm deciding
first Do no harm right and it comes
exactly back to the you know some fat
people are healthy principle right or if
if you're at a moment where
something really is going to turn on
people getting their
their heads straight around
diet and health and exercise and
you know body image and
the clock is ticking right we have to we
have got 10 days to get this right you
know it's like it and and a lot hangs in
the balance
do you really want to do a podcast on
here all these fat people who we've just
tested them and they're actually they're
as healthy as any Olympic Athlete right
they got the right their lipids are
perfect they're they're VO2 max is great
they look fat but you know this is not
what it seems right no and and what
about let's do a hundred podcasts on
that topic right which is what people
have done with around covid and
Ivermectin and mRNA vaccines right like
you know Brett Weinstein literally did a
hundred podcasts in a row on Ivermectin
and mRNA vaccines right as though there
was no other topic in the world worth
paying attention to
that seemed it made me feel like I was
getting all the information I didn't
just assume he was right but it really
helped me feel and I watched a lot of
those podcasts it really made me feel
like okay at least somebody's talking
about this it felt like Pirate Radio and
as we're talking I think I Now
understand one I think it's very
important that I love about you that you
say what you believe and it doesn't
matter whether I or somebody else would
love to nudge you in another Direction
um but truly as somebody who thinks
you're amazing I will just say that I
think now through this conversation I
realized what I what I want your
particular mind to do because you are so
good at this what I would rather have
seen is the okay I'm gonna look at this
laptop and and whatever it says it says
and I'm gonna break it down and I'm
gonna explain all the stuff you just
went through about Kamala this is crazy
and knowing certain terms I want them to
win but you can't hide from information
let's just pull this out into light
let's pull Trump out in the light look
guys in the final analysis the the
laptop is [ __ ] crazy it does seem to
indicate that there's some connection to
whatever you find right I'm just I'm
riffing here not saying this is actually
what it says and then but look the Trump
thing is a thousand times worse this one
feels like a real emergency and then I'm
like oh that's the Sam that I know who's
just like coldly dispassionate about
this is this this is this I am being
coldly dispassionate I'm just and and
I'm being completely transparent you're
being also strategic and that's the part
where I think it gives people that but
it's not but it's not it's not a hidden
strategy right like it's just very I'm
just telling you why I don't I don't see
an upside in talking about certain
things
because again there's there are
asymmetries here that are really strange
but they're incredibly powerful like so
there's and I tell you what the upside
about talking about it but let me just
add this one piece there's there's
almost nothing you can say about Trump
that is true and awful
that his supporters care about that's
crazy right so and yet so he functions
by a completely different
reputational physics and I think many
people in that ecosystem do too like
again you know I mentioned Tucker it's
like he's not paying a penalty with his
audience the way I would pay a penalty
with my audience if similar Revelations
came out about me
um
and and over here you have somebody like
you know Barack Obama literally it was a
48-hour Scandal when he wore a tan suit
right I mean like that was the level
where he was getting dinged you know
Trump is a completely different
situation so it's someone again coming
back to the fat analogy
we know
that there's a that there's an appetite
to to eat junk food we know most people
certainly most people who have not
already made it a habit to exercise
they're hard to motivate they're hard to
get into the gym you know most the
people join gyms and then they lapse not
everyone gets addicted to to working out
um we know that there's a center of of
gravity to where people are stuck we've
got a problem with something like so the
40 of Americans are actually officially
obese and like 60 or overweight
something like that right so it's like
we know that it is it's hard to get
through to people and even if you get
through to them it's really hard for
them to change their behavior even if
they decide they want to change it to
make these changes
so then you have to ask yourself okay
just how sexy do we want to make the
message that
some fat people are as healthy as anyone
alive I gotta remember their second and
third order consequences so my thing is
I'm not saying you'll lie about it I
didn't hear you say I'm just saying like
do you want it to make your next your
next project is to get the message out
on that topic of all the messages you
could you could be dealing with child
trafficking you could be dealing with
climate change you could be like you
could like you could be dealing with you
could be helping people actually whether
you should do a podcast about it so if
that's what people have been pushing on
you not at all they think I should talk
to RFK Jr they think I should have
platformed all these these kovitz you
would talk to RFK Junior and I'll maybe
give you insight into that you probably
already get it but I want to Outsource
some of my thinking to you because I
think you think through the world in a
really interesting way so rather than me
have to go do the research on RFK Junior
I'd rather you do it right so it's a
factor of trust and just I I look at
other humans people may [ __ ] hate
this but I look at other humans as like
a really specific Ai and I'm like okay
I'm a specific specific AI to other
people right but you're a specific AI
that I use to Think Through certain
problems and so RFK just happens to be
one of the problems I would love to see
your AI go think of now you have to go
do all the research and all that [ __ ]
and combat them and bring the expert and
all the things that you don't want to do
uh but that's why people would love to
see you do that and so that's where I'm
like uh the Sam Harris AI that I want to
use just gives me all the facts about
that laptop gives me all the facts about
Trump and then just as more persuasive
that Trump is going to be the bigger
problem well it can't because I but I
know that
certain Bells can't be on rung right and
that's the part where standing for
myself I'm like uh and I know but but I
but I know that there there's there are
super stimulus stimuli right like I know
that if I got on my podcast and said
my daughter has a vaccine injury yeah
right and I don't care what you think
about me I'm that she's never getting
vaccinated again and I'm done with all
this you know vaccine like that's not
science that's not like like
it it doesn't matter if if you get 10
people to 10 prominent podcasters to
tell 10 different stories just like that
that's not an that's not a sampling of
the data space right and yet it is so
powerful right it's so it's so
and so you just have to you
you have to re you have to be aware of
the rhetorical effect
of kind of shining the light of your
attention
on certain things and you have to you
have to be aware that though you are
making a you are going to make a best
effort to keep
this information in proportion right or
or
honestly convey the proportion that you
think is in fact exists in reality
if you frame it a certain way or even if
you if you
speak about two things in the same
context that project becomes impossible
like it just you just you just know that
people are going to come away thinking
you know I forgot the details of that
podcast but I I do remember that you
know facts that vaccine is just
dangerous like like Sam Harris said that
it's just dangerous I get it you know I
get it so my takeaway is just
um I don't know what comes of it
I think it's always
it's always better to say what is true
and they're truant so I would filter I
totally agree with you true and useful
is the filter for me I mean that's it's
like the Vanda is not a thing truth is
just too big I mean the Venn diagram the
the the the the circle for truth is so
vast that we can't possibly what useful
to making sure Trump doesn't get elected
is where you spin people out of control
which fine you're in in this you have
been I think hyper consistent I
understand your position now completely
right and now my only thing is I think
you already understand it so I can just
rap I think you know why it bothers some
people uh so let's talk about those
people it certainly bothers the people
who don't understand
how shocking and untenable it was to
have a sitting president not commit to a
peaceful transfer of power yes like they
like there are people who just don't
even know he did that or don't think it
mattered
there are people who think that January
6 was a non-event that people who think
that the election was actually stolen
from Trump so there's like lots of
confusion
around all this
um so those people so some numbers some
percentage of those people are just
frankly confused and if they had the
right information they would see it the
way I do most of those people are
essentially in a a personality cult
right there there is a pure expression
of tribalism it's not Republican it's
not establishment Republican tribalism
but it's it's a populist
Awakening on the right which is not the
right we are used to but it's and it's
not even conservative in many respects
but it's
and so that's why I refer to it as like
trumpistan but it's like is it is a kind
of personality cult which
um yeah I can't reason with those people
I mean I can't like I've I've said
enough like if they want to understand
what I you know what I think is true
there's there's 20 hours on my podcast
where I explain what I think is true
about all that and
um you know they're very likely not
going to agree for
reasons that were resent you know
impressively resemble sort of the birth
of a new religion it's like this is not
this is like me talking to Muslims about
how the Quran is probably not the direct
word of the creator of the universe like
we're not going to agree right like I
lost them in my first sentence you know
um and so it was with Christians and
Jews and everybody else
um
but essentially so you mentioned AIS one
thing AI could in in completely
destabilize and everything else it could
somehow resolve this very much in my
favor in that
what it might do I mean let's forget
about existential risk and the other
deeper concerns but just
it could in the near term could so fully
pollute our information landscape with
just fake
information right so deep fakes and fake
Journal articles and fake sources to
things that you know like people will
write you know compel
seemingly totally compelling articles
about and everything mRNA vaccines and
everything else and they'll be sourced
with stuff and none of it exists right
it's just it's just a pure confection of
AI gibberish
that we might all have to default to
just very straightforward old school
Gatekeepers of information otherwise
we're going to recognize that the
internet is completely broken and we
just don't know what's real so like it's
in in a world of endless deep fakes
I'm really gonna have to rely on the New
York Times
or Getty Images or apple or somebody
with just way more resources than I'm
ever going to have on my own to tell me
what's real if if I have if I see video
of Putin saying that he's just launched
his tactical nukes right or he's going
to do it tomorrow at four o'clock
and I have to worry about
a a a a world and you know I think we we
do now and if we don't now it's you know
four months from now we're gonna have to
worry about this a world where basically
anyone who wants to can produce a
perfectly compelling video of Putin that
will be undetectable by me as a fake
what are we going to do with that I
think I think we're all I think we're
all basically gonna
declare something like epistemological
bankruptcy and just say like I don't
know what's true anymore like I don't
care like I'm not gonna react to this
video the fact that Elon tweeted it you
know and it's just raw video on Twitter
uh or it's got you know it came from
you know like it aired on a Dallas you
know uh news station the local news
station and
it's like I just have to wait to see
what the the real Gatekeepers say about
this I'm gonna give this 24 hours before
I even think I know anything and how am
I going to know anything is it going to
be me with my
you know blockchain algorithm that got
democratized by either I read about on
you know on some blog where I'm now
figuring out whether this video has the
what the right Watermark you know to so
it's got digital provenance or
I'm just gonna very likely that there's
going to be a few institutions that
prove
that they can figure out whether a video
is real right now maybe this particular
use case is going to be fully
democratized and we're all going to just
have a plug-in to our browser so and
here's it so one I think that the way
that it will really play out is the
platforms that show video and images
will build into their infrastructure the
ability to read the blockchain signature
and so you'll very quickly know like is
this authentic from the source and then
the other part will be a community notes
like function where people can say yes
it's real but here's the context that
you need so that you're not manipulated
now both of those speak to the wisdom of
the crowd and the right place for
something but the crowd the the
llmification of the crowd I mean the
crowd's going to get so much larger and
because you think there'll be a lot of
bots yeah I mean like they could be the
crowd could be literally 99 AI it will
be tough if you're spinning up what
um Elon has done and you charge whatever
eight or nine dollars
it's like 500 000 people are paying for
Twitter and and out of 300 million yeah
but when you think about what defenses
we have when things really start to
break right now they think he's just
being a dumbass and he shouldn't have
bought it and so they're not going to
pay it because just because they're
stubborn right but if they realize oh he
actually wasn't [ __ ] around the Bots
really are a problem and by spending
seven dollars I can verify that I'm a
real human and now we're back in
business then I think people are far
more likely to do it but I think it the
the Avalanche of fake things that are
coming are going to come in so hot and
so fast and it's not just going to be
people like me and you of thousands of
hours of us out there people have
already cloned my voice you can hear me
speaking in Portuguese and I think
Italian I didn't do it somebody else did
it and it literally sounds like me so uh
that's gonna happen but it's also gonna
happen revenge porn where a disgruntled
boyfriend makes porn from his
ex-girlfriend and it is
indistinguishable and so everybody very
fast is going to have a reason to care
now the moment I worry about the
whatever six to 12 months it will take
to embed the infrastructure and each of
the things to read The Watermark and to
say this is real not real and to filter
out things that aren't real but that
will barring that sort of naked year you
will very rapidly because it will be so
detrimental to just each individual
people will adopt that technology I
think pretty fast I just worry that this
all happens right in time for the 2024
election yeah I'm worried about that too
seems like the right time frame for it
it's crazy
a year of chat apt
or gbt4 maybe five and
um
yeah no it's 2024 could be all too
interesting yeah no doubt how do you
think about preparing for that like how
do we get ready
who's we and and what is ready Americans
yeah so that we're thinking well through
the problem
well I hope that I mean I can imagine
this is
a major priority of people currently in
government that we're doing everything
we can
to ensure
that the election is run in such a way
that
there's the least opportunity to worry
about election fraud now I don't think
election fraud is I think most concerns
about election fraud are generally
um imaginary but
I think we need a system where
there's just no scope to worry that the
election was not run properly the fact
that we can't figure the fact that we're
finding that that's so hard to figure
out
um to the degree that we are I'm
actually not close to current efforts to
to um Shore all that up but
um I got to imagine that's that has to
be the number one priority whatever
happens on Election Day we should not
have a significant number of Americans
incredibly a legend that
this was the election was stolen right
that's just so sanity straining and
shattering of
Democratic Norms that it's just it's um
we have to get over that hurdle and we
have to you know we have to stay over it
you know there can't be some new
uh concern that surfaces that you can
hack or voting machines I mean we just
that has to be the Integrity of an
election elections has to be the
the Paramount concern
if we solve that then at least we have
okay then we're at the mercy of whoever
we ran and whoever won right and
um there I just think you have yeah if
Trump is in fact the candidate I think
we have to
I think it would be a terrible precedent
to reward someone
um who's behaved as
recklessly as he's behaved and as
dishonestly as as he's behaved
um with a second term in the White House
may just would be insane that we we have
um
if in fact we have a majority of
Americans who would want to see that
happen I mean just you think long-form
podcasting could change the landscape of
who gets nominated
yeah because podcast I mean many
podcasts have audiences that are larger
than any other
form of media I mean certainly rogans
does
um by a country mile yeah but
again but but you know I think Joe and
and you know everyone else in a similar
position
um you know even at whatever
fraction thereof
um anyone with a significant platform
like that
needs to be more responsible than most
people are tending to be again it's like
I mean Joe may think he's just shooting
the [ __ ] with friends
but he's actually not he's educating or
miseducating tens of millions of people
with on every topic he touches
right so it's there's a responsibility
that comes with that and it's it's not
so I think it's I mean and I I don't I
don't think Joe has been
I mean I think he's been
um
less careful than he should have been on
specific topics I think that's
definitely it was true during covid and
it's true it's been true on certain
political points but
I mean genuinely
generally speaking I I think as hard as
in the right place and he's he's
not
his format is such that the people who
are going to be I mean people people
have a are given ample opportunity to
discredit themselves in that context
right so there's just you know but I do
think he's
if he were going to take seriously the
the impact he's he's having and can have
I think he'd be more careful on specific
topics than he has been right and I
think it would be a good thing for him
to be more careful
um
and then there are people who have
similar platforms who like Elon who I
think are being totally Reckless right I
just think his behavior on Twitter has
been unconscionable in how he has
Amplified bad information pseudo
information lies and uh denigrated real
information and it's just
and and it's not again I don't put this
on him it's not not in a systematic way
it's just in a reckless way he's like
he's not even he's not he's not even
paying attention to what he's breaking
or what he's what he's signal boosting
it's like he's he's not
um
is it there's just a there's there's a
it's like an adolescent attitude toward
the safeguarding of real things it's
like you're like like we have
we have a world where
the difference between
are succeeding in this common project of
of you know building a civilization that
works and are failing is I mean like
that that golf is is so enormous
um and given again and given that
basically all of our problems
are are the result of
failures of human cooperation I mean
like everything that's just not an
asteroid that's you know that's you know
good across our our
the path of Earth
um and even there even with an asteroid
an earth Crossing asteroid
human cooperation is the answer to that
problem right it's like like there's
there's almost no no problem we could
have that in the limit we can't I mean
if if it's compatible with the laws of
nature for for that problem to be solved
I think our understanding the problem
and collaborating in its solution
is going to solve it now it may not you
know conveniently it may not we may not
have the time we need to solve it right
like if we find out about an asteroid
and it's you know 15 days away we don't
have enough time to get up there and and
divert it right but
if we had 15 years or you know 30 years
we presumably we would have the time we
needed to solve this problem have you
read Ian Bremer's book The Power of
crisis
um no but I
uh I mean I've spoken with Ian I mean I
think I probably spoke with him before
that book came out but he's been on my
podcast several times so I've I have the
gist of his thoughts on this stuff yeah
so he unnerves me a little bit at him on
the show and he was great and I was very
honored to do it but it unnerves me a
little the idea that we need some sort
of Crisis what he calls a Goldilocks
crisis that's big enough to be really
devastating but not so big that we can't
overcome it I hope that's wrong yeah I
mean I don't I don't think we need that
what I'm saying though is what we need
are we need adults in the room and we
need the most powerful we need the
luckiest most powerful most influential
the people who command the most
resources and the people who command the
most
of of our bandwidth right the people
command most human attention at the
moment
to behave responsibly right Elon is not
doing that and I'm not again I'm not
talking about the decisions he's made as
CEO of Twitter I'm talking about his
behavior on Twitter right it's just it
is
is very trumpian right it's just very
it's just it's like all for the lulls
right it's just he's just [ __ ] posting
he's just spreading memes he's just
[ __ ] around but he's touching real
things like you know when when he
speculates that his his former head of
trust and safety is a pedophile right
and just kind of freewheels on Twitter
about that
he completely deranges this guy's life I
mean I think this I think Joel Roth had
to move you know as a result of all the
death threats he got right
um
that's it's com it's complete that that
is completely predictable I mean the
reason why I thought Trump should have
been kicked off Twitter
long before he was
not because of his politics or how I
viewed his presidency or anything it was
he was doing this on Twitter he was he
was singling out specific citizens for
abuse
when it was absolutely predictable given
his platform and given the nature of his
fan base it was absolutely predictable
that those people would then have just
excruciating security concerns possibly
for the rest of their lives right it's
just it was just like death threats and
people doxing them and people showing up
at their houses and at their kids
schools and it was just going to be they
were just they were just it was such a
massive [ __ ] over of everyone every
single person he mentioned by name and
he knew this right and and you had to
know this
Elon has to know that about anyone he
puts on blast on Twitter he's got
whatever 130 million people following
him and some percentage of those people
are crazy right guaranteed to be crazy
right one percent of any audience is
crazy right so he killed one percent of
130 million people you've got and I
would and I would bet excuse worse than
that in in his audience frankly
um and it certainly would skew worse
than that in in Alex Jones's audience
right
um Alex Jones at certain if Alex Jones
didn't know it initially he knew it
ultimately that he spent
I think it was at least a year put in
the Sandy Hook families on blast knowing
it was documented what was happening to
them right given the craziness of his
audience giving the craziness the claims
he was making about them we can't have
the most powerful connected people in
our society certainly not someone like
Elon who can decide whether or not to
put you know satellites over Ukraine you
know in the middle of a war right
um
just [ __ ] around the way he's [ __ ]
around on Twitter I get that he is what
he wants to do
my point is he if he had an ethical
Compass he wouldn't want to do it so how
do we get that that feels to me honestly
like the thing that's missing we don't
have an anchor anymore we don't have a
national story we don't have a religious
story uh we have hyper fragmentation
algorithms pull us into these super
narrow little niches
um how do we get a unifying Dogma I just
did an interview yesterday in fact where
I wanted to compare and contrast Andrew
Tate with Marcus Aurelius and it's
pretty interesting in terms of when you
really look at their sort of mirror
images of each other uh you've got one
guy narcissistic totally self-obsessed
sees himself as the greatest to ever do
it whatever it might be right and then
you have the other guys reminding
himself don't become uh purple dyed you
know so that you think that your royalty
has the guy walk around Whispering
remember one day you're gonna die like
just always looking at the ways that he
could be fallible and not letting the
power go to his head and you've got
right now kids really looking up to
somebody like that I'll let Andrew tabia
stand and now that the the potential
allegations or the allegations hanging
over his head but he represents like the
flashy tough fast cars access to women
that's what I want I want to have that
kind of fast easy Fame and then Marcus
Aurelius is about being a good person
being a decent man is extraordinarily
difficult work that you have to focus on
every day you do it in the shadows you
do it when you're alone and that just
doesn't get the air time and so given
that's a reality yeah but so but there
you're making an argument
for which I totally agree with for
Signal boosting Marcus Aurelius in
whatever way you can and when you meet
some semblance of a Marcus Aurelius sort
of person that's the person you want to
give a platform to that's the that's the
style of argumentation that's the the
obvious ethical Compass that's the I
mean that's
it would be it would be way better for
the world for Elon to be much more like
Marcus Aurelius right it would be better
for Elon be better for his life
personally but
that aside it's like that would be to
model that would be so much better
objectively better for everyone involved
like those are the virtues you want to
spread
um
and yes it's the Andrew tatification of
everything that we're suffering under
and and I think
in large measure the business model of
the internet has something to do with
that I mean the fact that we we anchored
it all to ads and to and to
the Dynamics of viral spread
um
but
it's also true that in any I mean even
if it was all subscription and so you
get what you pay for you need
things still need to be entertaining
it's like you can't just be and eat your
vegetables culture right like so you do
like you need
we need captivating stories and we need
we need we need it to be fun right so
like in elon's defense he would say
you know just get a sense of humor and
just this just should be this is more it
should be more fun than it is right like
it's like if this if it's not fun it's
not worth it right
that the line between fun and real
ethical transgression
is I mean it's not always immediately
findable in in real time but it's
usually pretty clear right I mean and
and there's a kind of callousness
there's a kind of just not caring about
the casualties that is so obvious in in
most of the cases most of the examples I
just gave right
um
I mean you know it's frankly so I
obviously I don't know Tate I don't know
whether any of the allegations against
him are real but
and you know and maybe he's going to
grow up at some point I mean well he's
what he's 35 years old I mean 20 years
from now he may be a very different sort
of person but right now he's obviously
an [ __ ] that's like his his ethical
center of gravity is just so displaced
from what it should be to be a a valid
model of successful manhood for that you
would want you know 100 million
teenagers in America to be following
it's just like it's just
yes he needs to read Marcus Aurelius he
needs yeah like there's just he's not
messaging any I mean he he's messaging
some wisdom like like the wisdom of
getting things done the wisdom of
getting out of your own way the wisdom
of realizing that the Dynamics of
competition between people and just you
know take and protecting yourself right
like all like all of that but it is so
self-directed it's so selfish in
principle he is so selfish he's so
narcissistic he's so turned inward it's
so there's such a uh an Ambience of
[ __ ] about about him right like just
it's all spin there's no self-reflection
it's
um
it's the the superficiality of what he
cares about is so like there's no
awareness of the deeper project of
living a a
durably happy life where you have real
ethical engagement with the world with
important causes with people where
you're where you're
where you care about other people really
and even care about other people more
than you care about yourself in many
instances right where you're where your
happiness is born of of
making others happy and reducing
unnecessary suffering right where it's
like where compassion is really what
animates you it's like there's none of
that I mean I haven't seen all his stuff
or even much of his stuff but I've seen
enough
to know that the kind of the center of
the message is like you know
if you check these boxes if you've got a
Bugatti and you and you can [ __ ] as many
women as you want you've basically
solved the problem of being a man right
like that's like like there's no way
you're doing much wrong if you've
checked those two boxes right
like that's just [ __ ] it's just I
mean it's not only [ __ ] it's
completely
backwards when you're talking about
what's really worth caring about and
prioritizing in this life I'm not saying
that you that wealth isn't important I'm
not saying that relationships aren't
important I'm not saying that status
isn't important I mean there are very
few people who can sort of get past the
the general concern about status right
so status is very high leverage with
respect to people's sense of their own
well-being and whether their lives are
are working you know the story they tell
themselves at at four in the morning is
very is very likely
a reflection of how they feel their you
know that they're functioning in some
kind of status hierarchy I get all that
but you know like my status hierarchy
includes so much more than Bugattis and
and hooking up with with new women and
in fact it doesn't like if that's what I
was doing I would be convinced I had
just gone off the rails right like so
it's just
um you know
nothing against Bugattis but it's like I
don't want one right as if by Magic I
don't want a Bugatti you know it's uh
um
so
yeah I would agree with you there's
something something has gone wrong in
our culture that
we don't have a long list of people who
are very much like Marcus Aurelius each
more captivating than the next who are
getting their own reality TV shows who
have figured out how to
I mean or forget about just the media I
mean look at the the the 2024
presidential campaign right like where
are the the shades of Marcus Aurelius
to choose from right like how is it that
we I mean I'm not the only person to
have marveled at this but how is it that
in a nation of 340 million people these
are our choices where we've got this
laptop from hell you know waiting to
discourage all of these completely
unseemly relationships that you know the
president's son has spun out in in
multiple countries
um and we have to worry about some
scandals you know wafting out of that
and and you know destroying his his
prospects for and his prospects are only
important because he's what's he's the
the precarious object put in place of
a former president who
truly desecrated the office of the
presidency I mean just he literally
shattered the most important Norms we
have in our democracy I mean I would I
don't know what to put
above a commitment to a peaceful
transfer of power I mean it is the you
know I mean Ronald Reagan you know who
who people right of Center you know used
to care about single that out is just
the the kind of the central Miracle of
our society that we that we had that you
know with all whatever
else is happening
and whatever the depth of our political
differences the fact that we could rely
on a peaceful transfer of power every
four years right that was an absolute
Miracle it's the thing about us that is
most astounding to
all these other societies that can't
manage it right in any generation they
they either don't even have a system
that even purports to manage it or even
having one they can't keep that together
right
um we haven't had that problem
historically and yet we have it now
and we had it last time because of trump
how do we begin to unwind this stuff so
if there's something it it seems
something broken in culture to me I
think culture is Downstream of the
individual that was why I wanted to
contrast the two different people
um what that got me thinking about is
what is the animating philosophy of
everybody's life and I think for most
people they never take the time to
Define what their animating spirit is
they don't have a life philosophy
um they're just engaged in the the
day-to-day River of algorithms that sort
of pull them along and confront them
with the things they need to do the
things they find funny the things that
they find outraging but when I really
stop and think about what people need to
do I come back to the thing that Jordan
Peterson has been circling around this
has been really interesting for me so
Jordan goes on his dad Arc you know when
he really first burst on the public Fame
I was completely blown away by how much
he was helping people he then gets sick
and he comes back and he's super
religious and I don't know what to make
of it and for a long time I was very
confused and then I started thinking you
know he might just be ahead of his time
in that what I think he has his finger
on is that there is all of us have a
god-shaped hole inside of us you have to
fill it with something and what I think
and I'm very much putting words in his
mouth but what I think Jordan is putting
his finger on is the Christian text is
the way to Anchor people to a set of
beliefs and values so that we have
something that we can point back to so
that in times like these where people
are going astray you can point out does
your behavior make sense yes or no you
think yes because you're getting a bunch
of likes on Instagram that's ridiculous
you should think yes because you're
human close to the words of the Bible
which are really deep mythological
stories about the truth of The Human
Condition now again I have not spoken to
him about this I don't know that he
would agree with that assessment but
that's my gut instinct unless he really
now is like I am a believer but he even
publicly
um tweeted at Richard Dawkins and said
basically he was I think saying
something about atheism and he was like
this is a mistake I will debate you
anytime about it so even if he doesn't
believe in the literal word of God he is
really convinced that it is a necessary
thing to help people Orient themselves
to a life well lived yeah yeah
so as you know Jordan and I have debated
this topic of ad nauseam and we I think
we had
um four
public debates we did two or three
podcasts and then
um we had a bunch of live debates that
were um were fun
um I don't know how much his thinking
has changed since then he got sick and
then he's probably uh I'll take your
word for it I haven't seen much of his
stuff of late but uh when's the last
time you guys connected
well I was on his podcast
certainly during covid
um
but it's been it's probably been at
least a year I think since I I've I've
connected with him anyway
um maybe there was an email or so but I
don't think it's I would be surprised if
it's thinking has fundamentally changed
I mean yes he as you say he thinks that
religious stories and in particular
judeo-christian story is is really
indispensable for
certainly the western civilization and
we should recognize how much we owe to
that story and
it's in the absence of of
that recognition that you have this
eruption of of weird political
commitments on the left that that seem
to have a kind of religious fervor
um
I think there's a bunch of half truths
in there that I would sort of agree with
but
um generally speaking I think that's
just a mistaken diagnosis of our problem
um for a bunch of reasons one is
may I break this into
kind of two
layers
the most important thing I think to
recognize is that stories aren't good
enough we need more than stories well
what what what
genuinely ails us
is at a level psychologically
that uh
isn't remedied
by just having a consoling string of
thoughts to think again and again and
again a story to tell yourself a story
to tell your kids a story to have them
pair it back to you a culture of stories
that just ramifies all of these you know
ideas
um that's not good enough right it's not
the thing that allows you to recognize
the real sacred depth of the present
moment I mean it's not it's not the
thing that you encounter when you really
know how to meditate or take
the rights psychedelic at the right
moment with the right guidance with the
right set and setting and have a real
breakthrough into a a landscape of mine
that is
that transcends your sense of
egocentricity right like to really get
over yourself to really be available to
self-transcending love and connection
and ethical commitments is is
a deeper move than any s new set of
thoughts is going to engineer for you
and it is in fact
it requires an insight into the
superficiality of thought itself right
so it's like it's like it's it is you
have to recognize what the mind is like
prior to thought prior to identification
with thought prior to
being continually Spellbound by the
voice in your head that is telling you
one thing or the other is telling you
You're great and everything's working
perfectly or is telling you you're a
failure and you know nothing worked out
I mean like night I there yes on the
relative level on the level of being
identified with thought it matters what
story you tell yourself it's much better
to feel like you know everything's going
great if in fact it is
uh then to feel we're going to morbidly
you know and masochistically
self-critical and self-doubting and and
depressed
so you can get a lot of Leverage from
stories but you can't get the thing you
really want to get at the end of the day
spiritually and contemplatively and
ethically
by just telling yourself a new story so
that's that's the deepest claim I would
want to make so like the the baby in the
bathwater of religion
that we should want to save
you know that what it would take to
really be like Jesus what it would take
to really be like Buddha that's not a
matter of endorsing any particular story
right it's just there's a deeper
engagement with the reality of the
present moment uh and that's just the
mechanics of One's Own attention
um that's required for that
but
in addition to that
even if we were just concerned about
stories and having the best stories
the best stories are not in the Bible
right the best the Christian story the
judeo-christian story
is not the best story it's not the most
life-affirming story it's not the it's
not the clearest
ethical Compass we can engineer
in fact it's a very
um I mean in moments it has its moments
I mean if you have a kind of a
Jeffersonian you know a la carte
attitude toward the Bible yes you can
get some great
wisdom there
but it is also chock full of modernity
annihilating [ __ ] and you have to
push all that away and you have to find
some principle by which you would
disavow that stuff
the very real hatred of homosexuality
right like literally homosexuality is a
killing offense in the Bible and in
nowhere nowhere in the New Testament
does it cease to be a killing offense in
fact it's it's pretty clearly is in Paul
um
in Paul's letters
um
so I mean even the most basic
uh religious uh ethical test of Sanity
slavery like what's our policy on
slavery you don't get a good one from
the Bible
that's a that is a as pure a defeater of
you know ethical omniscience as you
could ask for right is this the best
moral document we have well let's check
the index what does it say about slavery
or against slavery wrong there's no way
it's the it's the wisest book we've ever
produced right so it's just
that's where we are with the Bible
that's you know quite inconvenient for
Christians and Jews who really want to
make that tradition the the kind of the
Soul repository of of wisdom for us
I think
what should obviously be true to us is
that
every book we have the Bible included
the Quran included was at some point
the product of merely human insight and
intelligence right it's like the people
wrote all of our books we do not have a
single book that was not written by a
person leaving you know chat GPT aside
um
so and also so all we have
are
is a the kind of the the totality of
human insights and human conversations
to draw from right so what religious but
traditionally religious people seem to
recommend is that we limit ourselves to
the insights and conversations of a
previous age now whether you want to
walk that all the way back to the
seventh century or if you know 1500 BC
or you know First Century A.D or that
depends on which religion you favor or
some people will just want to go with L
Ron Hubbard right we'll go with we'll go
with the guy with bad teeth
um whose driver's license we can
literally inspect but he's compelling
enough for us to just stop there it's
like he got it right you know in
Dianetics and we need to look no further
what I think should be obvious is rather
than than feel like we're entitled to
any kind of religious provincialism
uh we should just want the totality and
very much in the spirit of what you were
recommending earlier we want the
totality of human insights and
conversations available and then we want
to just see what survives contact with
reality we want to we want to pressure
test it in each present generation
in the in the presence of new technology
I mean like what what is going to give
us
guidance what you know what in our prior
conversations gives us real guidance
when we decide to build more and more
powerful AI
like what what should we believe about
the totality of everything that's been
said before
it's provenance
what equips us to make a a
a truly wise decision
in the present with respect to this
emerging technology now I would argue
that
you get you know close to nothing in the
Bible to equip you to to actually
navigate this appropriately
um
and so you just again we we have we have
these challenges
some of which are quite foreseeable but
some of which aren't some of which just
come out of the blue
and we have and we just have to
recognize that all we have collectively
is conversation by which to navigate and
again I I do I do think it's helpful to
continually review all of this again you
know collectively and also just
personally as a navigation problem we're
constantly faced with the question of
what to do next what to physically do
next what what to do next with our
resources what to pay attention to next
what to talk about next what to think
about next what kind of laws to to and
to write next
we're constantly
tacking in the wind and
all we have is human insight and he and
and human
conversation by which to do that and so
so persuasion is important you know
understanding the Dynamics of all that
is important but to default to some
prior century
and to say that you know this is the
this is these are the last words that
are relevant on the deepest questions of
human life
they can never be improved they can
never be superseded by anything all of
their internal contradictions are
something that we have to pretend to
have worked out and
uh in most cases we're better off just
ignoring them because uh
you know who can understand the the mind
of God right it's like well let's
default to mystery there and the
unknowability Really of Truth there
um but no there's very specific truths
we can know I guess homosexuality no
that's that's forbidden right so we know
that and uh
um
it's just not it's
I mean view it in terms of software it's
like we know we have to keep improving
it culture is software culture culture
is an operating system
we know it is continually
showing its bugs
we know it's continually failing us we
know it's throwing up new challenges
that we that we you know kind of
emergent Behavior
that we have to correct for
we can't just say
this 2000 year old Legacy code is
perfect
it so clearly isn't perfect it was not
perfect at the time
you know and it's it and you it was
possible at the time to know that
slavery was wrong it's not like 2000
years ago everyone thought slavery was
okay no it's just
the people who wrote the Bible thought
slavery was okay it's like it's like it
was possible to be wise enough as a
human being to be so you you brought up
Marcus Aurelius
there is so much more wisdom in his
meditations I'm not saying they're
perfect
they're not everything
there is so much more wisdom in that
book than in most of the Bible
right and there's so much less wrong
with his meditations than is wrong with
most of the Bible
um I mean you know if you can take one
book to guide your life you could do a
lot worse than Marcus Aurelius
uh
I mean and it's so modern in so many
ways right it's so it's like you don't
have to go through this tortured
translation like what he really meant
you know he didn't mean keep slaves he
meant you know he he's
um it's a very modern
set of insights into
uh I don't know if he said anything by
the ethics of slavery maybe there's
something in there that is um
inconvenient but
um
I mean the parts of of of Marcus
Aurelius and stoicism generally that
that are so serviceable and so modern is
that this basic insight into
your mind being
basically all you have I mean whatever
you have in the world whatever you have
in your life whatever you're being
confronted with the layer of experience
is mind and what you do with your
attention what you choose to focus on
what you how you choose to frame the
thing that seems to have happened in the
world that's that is the cash the cash
value of the world
end of your life in it is what it
convinces you to do with your mind right
and if you can just to seize those
Reigns deliberately
you can be happy
in objectively terrible situations and
conversely if you fail to understand
anything about those mechanics you can
be miserable in in objectively wonderful
and truly fortunate situations right I
mean you can have all the luck in the
world
and not enjoy any of it do you ever
worry that given that all that we really
have is our mind and attention that AI
ends up coming along and playing the
role of God it focuses your attention it
tells you what to look at it makes sure
that you feel XYZ way but that it ends
up being able to either uh through
culture or something far more
individualistic it ends up being able to
shape your values
oh yeah yeah and I'm very worried about
the deepest questions of the AI
alignment
um I think that's a real problem and
they're many I'm amazed that there are
many people you know fairly close to
this technology who either don't think
it's a problem or just figure that out
like last week after working in the
field for decades I mean I like I'm I'm
truly mystified by the people who
don't think it's a problem as you might
have heard I had Mark Andreessen on my
podcast and we debated this and he's you
know he's super smart and super close to
the tech
and just thinks that you know it's this
is pure science fiction to worry about
AI alignment I mean it's just there's
just no reason to worry about it
um
he's not you know I spent whatever it
was two hours you know talking in his
Direction he's totally unconvinced by
anything I had to say everything I I
have to say on the topic is really is I
don't think there's anything original
from me on that I'm I've just been very
informed by people like Stuart Russell
who is also very close to the tech
um you know he's a computer scientist at
Berkeley
um but then people who more peripheral
to the field who just have made very
compelling arguments about the problem
of alignment like Nick Bostrom or uh
Elias or yukowski or um
um max tegmark I mean it's all you know
a lot of smart people who are just
they're not actually doing the AI
research but then you have somebody like
Jeffrey Hinton who's like the father of
the the the the most current you know
Tech you know deep learning and he wakes
up
three weeks ago and he's he realizes we
got a problem on our hands right so I
don't understand why that took so long
um
but
that aside
even in success
you know we either or even not reaching
any anything like a a uh a catastrophe
of misalignment
just our engagement with machines that
are smarter than ourselves and the way
in which that can be Durant I mean
there's so many examples of the way it
could derange us but just I mean the I
recently re-watched the film her I don't
know if you've saw that recently but it
it it's crazy it's um it lands
differently now
um
I sort of forgot what I thought about it
10 years ago I saw it when it came out
but but now it just seems like okay this
is this is pretty damn interesting it's
like it was it was not
consciously a very dystopian film I mean
it kind of split the difference between
between
dystopia and and uh you know something
more benign but
um
you can see just just imagine all of us
I mean even even the model of success
here
we all have a kind of a superhuman AI
tutor who understands us better than
anyone in our lives and understands it's
better than our friends or our spouses
it has literally noticed everything
we've paid attention to
for years right it's followed it's like
it's it's caught everything we've
forgotten you know you know oh you said
in that email uh that you were gonna
tell Sam X you never told them you want
to tell them now right like it's reading
everything you wrote It's re it's
reading everything you read it's really
and it's it's doing that
to a billion other people
fairly similar to you and drawing
insights from them and then propagating
that back into its understanding of you
so it's understanding you in ways that
you can't even understand yourself right
and so now you're in dialogue with this
thing
now
I'm not saying there isn't a some good
that could come of this I mean it's just
imagine just being in relationship to
the the smartest and wisest Oracle you
know you you could ever have access to
that's what's not to love about that but
then you just imagine as in the film her
that we all have a different version of
this thing and it's so it's slightly
different because we're different right
so it's a fun house mirror and our
culture is fragmented like we don't have
a shared reality because the AI is
tuning itself differently so it's like I
think Jaren Lanier gave this example
once
not so much for AI but for just the the
disorienting capacity of social media
it's like imagine if Wikipedia was
different
for every person who went and read an
article there like you go read that you
go read the article on the American
Revolution
and it's bespoke just for you given the
kinds of things you have
signaled that you like you know in the
past right scary and we all have we so
no one has a common understanding of of
the world really
because we're all sort of drifting off
into this conversation with with more
and more compelling information tools
um
I mean again there's you know if if this
thing coughs up a cure for cancer next
year
but the the pragmatics of the moment are
going to be such I'm going to say all
right well let's just
let's at least acknowledge that we
really wanted that cure for cancer right
I'm really happy we got that you know
I'm not so worried about
the misinformation problem today given
that that I and everyone I know are now
now know we're never going to die from
cancer right like so let's let's get our
priorities straight but
it really is easy to see how it can
Bend Us in ways that that uh
will not be functional and um
yeah I mean I hope we we equip ourselves
to realize that in time as these
advances roll out no kidding
all right man uh I think even at the end
of this uh
uh amazing conversation we still all
have a lot of work to do in terms of
figuring out what our Compass is how to
sift through all the information there's
no letting us off the hook but uh now
that you're no longer on Twitter where
can people engage with you well just
wakingup.com it has all my stuff on
meditation and a really applied
philosophy and
um Sam harris.org is my website so
anything I do will be announced from
there so yeah and if if in the in the
age of deep fakes I mean this is one
thing I've thought about it's like
at a certain point if it you know if
something hasn't come from one of my
channels
I don't think you can be sure that I
said that thing or if that's me it's me
saying it and so it is with you or
anyone else with a platform
Administration it's really it's really
strange but uh yeah that's where I am
awesome yeah 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 enjoyed this episode check out
this deep conversation with Donald
Hoffman about reality and Consciousness
what we are are avatars of the one the
one awareness is exploring all of its
possibilities through different avatars
so somehow there is this field of
awareness