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Language: en
the following is a conversation with Sam
Harris his second time in the podcast as
I said two years ago when I first met
and spoke with Sam he's one of the most
influential pioneering thinkers of our
time as the host of The Making Sense
podcast creator of the waking up app and
the author of many seminal books on
human nature and the human mind
including the end of Faith the moral
landscape lying Free Will and waking up
in this conversation besides our mutual
fascination with AGI and free will we do
also go deep into controversial
challenging topics of Donald Trump
Hunter Biden January 6th vaccines lab
leak Kanye West and several key figures
at the center of public discourse
including Joe Rogan and Elon Musk both
of whom have been friends of Sam and
have become friends of mine somehow in
an amazing life trajectory that I do not
deserve in any way and in fact believe
is probably a figment of my
imagination and if it's all right please
allow me to say a few words about this
personal aspect of the conversation of
discussing Joe Elon and others what's
been weighing heavy on my heart since
the beginning of the pandemic now 3
years ago is that many people I Look to
for wisdom in public discourse stopped
talking to each other as often with
respect humility and love when the world
needed those kinds of conversations the
most My Hope Is that they start talking
again they start being friends again
they start noticing the humanity that
connects them that is much deeper than
the disagreements that divide them so
let me take this moment to say with
humility and honesty why I look up to
and inspired by Joe Elon and Sam I think
Joe Rogan is important to the world as a
voice of compassionate curiosity and
open-mindedness to ideas both radical
and mainstream sometimes with humor
sometimes with brutal honesty always
pushing for more kindness in the
world I think Elon Musk is important to
the world as an engineer leader
entrepreneur and human being who takes
on the hardest problems that face
humanity and refuses to accept the
constraints of conventional thinking
that made the solutions to these
problems seem
impossible I think Sam Harris is
important to the world as a Fearless
Voice who fights for the pursuit of
Truth against growing forces of echo
Chambers and audience capture taking
unpopular perspectives and defending
them with rigor and
resilience I both celebrate and
criticize all three privately and they
criticize me usually more effectively
from which I always learn a lot and
always appreciate most importantly there
is respect and love for each other as
human beings the very thing that I think
the world needs most now in a time of
division and Chaos I will continue to
try to menend divisions to try to
understand not toide to turn the other
cheek if needed to return hate With
Love sometimes people criticize me for
being naive cheesy simplistic all of
that I know I agree but I really am
speaking from the heart and I'm trying
this world is too fucking beautiful not
to try in whatever way I know how I love
you
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description and now dear friends here's
Sam
Harris what is more effective at making
a net positive impact on the world
empathy or reason it depends on what you
mean by empathy there are two at least
two kinds of empathy there's the the
cognitive form which is you know I would
argue even a species of of reason it's
it's just understanding another person's
point of view you know you understand
why they're suffering or why they're
happy or what you know just you have a
theory of mind about another human being
that is is accurate and so you can you
can navigate uh in relationship to them
more effectively um and then there's
another layer entirely not incompatible
with that but just distinct which is
what people often mean by empathy which
is
more a kind of emotional contagion right
like you feel depressed and I begin to
feel depressed along with you because
you know it's just it's contagious right
I I you know we're so close and I'm I'm
so concerned about you and your problems
become my problems and it bleeds through
right now I think both of those
capacities are very important but um the
emotional contagion
piece uh and this is not really my
thesis this is something I I have more
or less learned from from Paul Bloom um
the psychologist uh who wrote a book on
this topic titled against empathy um the
emotional social contagion piece is a
bad guide rather often for ethical
behavior and E ethical intuitions oh boy
and I I'll give you the clear example of
this which
is uh we
find stories with a single identifiable
protagonist who we can effortlessly
empathize with far more compelling than
data right so if I tell you you know
this is the classic case of of the
little girl who who falls down a well
right you know this is some Somebody's
Daughter you see the parents uh
distraught on television uh you hear her
Cries From the Bottom of the well the
whole country stops I mean this there
was an example of this you know 20 25
years ago I think where it was just wall
to- wall on CNN this is just the perfect
use of CNN it was you know 72 hours
whatever it was of continuous coverage
of just extracting this girl from a well
so we effortlessly pay attention to that
we care about it we will donate money
toward it I mean it's just it Marshals
100% of our compassion and altruistic
impulse um whereas if you hear that
there's a genocide raging in some
country you've never been to and never
attended to go to and the number don't
make a dent and the and we we find the
story boring right we'll change the
channel in the face of a genocide right
it doesn't matter and it literally
perversely it could be 500,000 little
girls have fallen down wells in that
country and we still don't care right so
um it's uh you know many of us have come
to believe that this is a bug rather
than a feature of our moral psychology
and so the empathy plays an unhelpful
role there so ultimately I think when
we're making big decisions about what we
should do and how to mitigate human
suffering and and what's worth Val
valuing and how we should protect those
values um I think reason is the better
tool but it's not that I would want to
dispense with any part of empathy either
well there's a lot of changes to go on
there but briefly to mention you've
recently talked about effective altruism
on your podcast I think you mentioned
some interesting statement I'm going to
horribly misquote you but that you'd
rather live in a world like it doesn't
really make sense but you'd rather live
in a world where you care about maybe
your daughter and son more than a 100
people that live across the world
something like this like where the
calculus is not always perfect but
somehow it makes sense to live in a
world where it's irrational in this way
and yet empathetic in the way you've
been discussing right I'm not sure what
the right answer is there or even
whether there is one right answer that
could be multiple you know Peaks on on
this part of the moral landscape but so
the the opposition is between an ethic
that's articulated by you someone like
the Dal Lama right you really any
exponent of of um you know classic
Buddhism would say that so the ultimate
enlightened ethic is true dispassion
with respect to friends and strangers
right so that you would the you know the
the mind of the Buddha would be truly
dispassionate you would love and and
care about all people
equally um and by that light it seems
some kind of ethical failing or at least
you know failure of of to fully
actualize compassion in the limit or you
know enlightened wisdom in the limit um
to care more or even and much more about
your kids than the kids of other people
or and and to prioritize your your
energy in that way right so you spend
all this time trying to figure out how
to keep your kids healthy and happy and
you'll attend to their minutest concerns
and however superficial and and again
there's a genocide raging in Sudan or
wherever and it it takes up less than 1%
of your bandwidth I'm not sure it would
be a better world if everyone was
running the the doy Lama program there I
think some prioritization of of one's
nearest and dearest uh
ethically might be optimal because we
we'll all be doing that and we'll all be
doing that in a circumstance where we
have certain norms and and laws and and
other structures that Force us to be
dispassionate where that matters right
so like when I go to when my daughter
gets sick and I have to take her to to a
hospital you know I really want her to
get attention right and I'm worried
about her more than I'm worried about
everyone else in the lobby but the truth
is I actually don't want a totally
corrupt hospital I don't want a hospital
that treats my daughter better than
anyone else in the lobby because she's
my daughter and I've you know bribed the
guy at the door or whatever you know the
guy's a fan of my podcast or whatever
the thing is you don't want starkly
corrupt unfair
situations and when you're when you sort
of get pressed down the hierarchy of
masso's needs you know individually and
and and
societally a bunch of th bunch of those
very variables change and they change
for the worse understandably but yeah
when things are when everyone's corrupt
and it's you're you're in a in a state
of of collective emergency you know
you've got a Lifeboat problem you're
scrambling to get into the Lifeboat yeah
then then fairness and norms and and um
the you know the the other vestages of
civilization begin to get stripped off
we can't reason from those emergencies
to normal life I mean in normal life we
want Justice we want fairness we want
we're all better off for it even when
the spotlight of our concern is focused
on the people we know the people who are
friends the people who are family people
we we we have good reason to care about
we still by default want a system that
protects the the interest of strangers
too and and we know that generally
speaking just in game theoretic terms
we're all going to tend to be better off
in a fair system than a corrupt one one
of the failure modes of empathy
is our susceptibility to anotal data
just a good story will get us to not
think clearly but what about empathy in
the context of just discussing ideas
with other people and then there's a
large number of people like in this
country you know red and blue half the
population believes certain things on
immigration or on the response to the
pandemic or any kind of controversial
issue even if if the election was fairly
executed having an empathy for their
world view trying to understand where
they're coming from not just in the
explicit statement of their idea but the
entirety of like the roots from which
their idea stems that kind of empathy
while you're discussing ideas what is in
your Pursuit Of Truth having empathy for
the perspective of a large number of
other people
versus Raw mathematical reason I think
it's important but I just it only takes
you so far right it doesn't it doesn't
get you to truth right it's not truth is
not a it's not decided by you know
Democratic principles and um certain
people believe things for understandable
reasons but those reasons are
nonetheless bad reasons right they don't
scale they don't generalize they're not
reasons anyone should adopt for eles or
or respect you know
epistemologically and yet their their
circumstances understandable and it's
something you can care about right and
so yeah like I mean just take I think
there's many examples of this you might
be thinking of but I mean one one that
comes to mind is I've been super
critical of trump obviously and um I've
been super critical of certain people
for endorsing him or not criticizing him
when he
really made it you know patently obvious
who he was you know if if there had been
any doubt initially there was no doubt
when we have a sitting president who's
not not um agreeing to a a peaceful
transfer of power right so
um I'm I'm critical of all of that and
yet the fact that many millions of
Americans didn't see what was wrong with
Trump or bought into
the um didn't see through his con right
I mean they bought into the idea that he
was a a brilliant businessman who could
might just be able to change things
because he's so unconventional and so
you know his heart is in the right place
you know he's really a man of the people
even though he's a you know goldplated
everything in his life um they bought
the myth somehow uh of you know largely
because they had seen him on television
for almost a decade and a half uh
pretending to this genius businessman
who could get things done um it's
understandable to me that many very
frustrated people who have not had their
hopes and dreams
actualized uh who have been the victims
of globalism and and um many other you
know current trends uh it's
understandable that they
would be confused and and and not see
the liability of electing a grossly
incompetent morbidly narcissistic person
into the into the the presidency um so I
don't so which is to say that I don't
blame there are many many millions of
people who I don't necessarily blame for
the Trump phenomenon I but I can
nonetheless bemoon the phenomenon as as
indicative of you know very bad uh State
of Affairs in our society right so it's
it's there's two levels to it I mean one
is I think you have to call a spade a
spade when you're talking about how
things actually work and what things are
are likely to happen or not but then you
can recognize that people are have very
different life experiences and and yeah
I I think empathy and you know probably
the better word for what I would hope to
embody there is compassion right like
really you
know to really wish people well you know
and really wish you know strangers well
effortlessly wish them well I me to
realize that you there is no opposition
between in the at bottom there's no real
opposition between selfishness and
selflessness because why selfishness
really takes into account other people's
happiness I mean you what you know which
do you do you want to live in a society
where you have everything but most other
people have nothing uh or do you want to
live in a society where you're
surrounded by happy creative
self-actualized people who are having
their hopes and dreams realized I think
it's obvious that the the the second
Society is much better however much you
can guard your good
luck but what about having empathy for
certain principles that people believe
for
example the the push back the other
perspective on this because you said
bought the myth of trump as a great
businessman there could be a lot of
people that are supporters of trump who
could say that Sam Harris bought the
myth that we have this government
of the People by the people that
actually represents the people as
opposed to a bunch of Elites who are
running a giant bureaucracy that is
corrupt that is feeding themselves and
they're actually not representing the
people and then here's this Chaos Agent
Trump who speaks off the top of his head
yeah he's flawed in all this number of
ways he's a more comedian than he is a
presidential type of figure and he's
actually creating the kind of chaos
that's going to shake up this
bureaucracy
shake up the elites that are so
uncomfortable because they don't want
the world to know about the game that
got running on everybody else so that's
that's the kind of perspective that they
would take and say yeah there's these
flaws that Trump has but this is
necessary I agree with the first part so
I haven't bought the myth that it's uh
you know a truly representative
democracy in the way that we would might
idealize um and
and you know on some level I mean this
is a different conversation but some
level I'm not even sure how much I think
it should be right like I I'm not
sure uh we want in the end everyone's
opinion given equal weight about you
know just what we should do about
anything and I include myself in that I
mean there are many topics around which
I don't deserve to have a strong opinion
because I don't know what I'm talking
about right or what I would be talking
about if I had a strong opinion so uh
um and I think we'll probably get to
that to some of those topics because
I've declined to have certain
conversations on my podcast just because
I think I'm the wrong person to have
that conversation right be and and it's
um and I think it's important to see
those bright lines in in one's life and
in in the moment politically uh and
ethically um so yeah I think um so leave
aside the the the viability of democracy
uh I'm I'm under No Illusion
that all of our
institutions are you know worth
preserving precisely as they have been
up until the moment this great orange
wrecking ball came swinging through our
lives but I just It Was a Very Bad Bet
to elect someone who is grossly
incompetent and um wor worse than
incompetent um genuinely malevolent in
his selfishness right I and this is
something we know based on literally
Decades of him being in the public eye
right he's not as he's not a public
servant in any normal sense of that
term and he couldn't possibly give an
honest or sane answer to the question
the question you asked me about empathy
and reason and and like how should we
you know what should guide us
um I genuinely think he is missing some
necessary moral and and psychological
tools right and and this this is I can
feel compassion for him as a human being
because I think having those things is
incredibly important and genuinely
loving other people is incredibly
important and and knowing what all
that's about is is is that's really the
good stuff in life and I I um I think
he's missing a lot of that but I think
we we don't want to promote people to to
the highest positions of power in our
society who are far outliers
in in
pathological terms right we want them to
be far outliers in in if if in the best
case in wisdom and compassion and some
of the things you've some of the topics
you've brought up I mean we want someone
to be deeply informed we want someone to
be um uh unusually curious unusually
alert to how they may be wrong or
getting things wrong consequentially um
he's none of those things and if in so
far as we're going to get normal
mediocrities in that role which I think
you know is often the best we could
expect let's get normal mediocrities in
that role not uh you know once in a
generation uh narcissists and
um uh frauds I mean it's like the me
just take honesty as a single variable
right I think you want yes it's possible
that most politicians lie at least some
of the time I don't think that's a good
thing um I think people should be gen
you know generally honest um even to a
fault um yes there are certain
circumstances where lying I think is
necessary it's kind of on a Continuum of
self-defense and and violence so it's
like if you're going to you know if the
Nazis come to your door and ask you if
you've got an Frank in the attic I think
it's okay to lie to them um but uh you
know Trump there's I I arguably there's
never been a person in that anyone could
name in in human history who's lied with
with that kind of velocity um I mean
it's just it was he was a just a
blizzard of Lies Great and Small you
know to to pointless and and to and
effective but it it's
just
it it says
something uh fairly alarming about our
society that a person of that character
got promoted and so uh yes I have
compassion and concern for for half of
the society who didn't see it that way
and that's going to sound elitist and
and uh and smug or something for anyone
who's who's on that side listening to me
but um it's genuine I mean I'm I I
understand that like like I barely have
the I'm like one of the luckiest people
in the world and I barely have the
bandwidth to pay attention to half the
things I should pay attention to in
order to have an opinion about half the
things we're going to talk about right
so how much less bandwidth is somebody
who's working two jobs or you know a
single mom who's who's you know raising
you
know multiple kids you know even a
single kid it's just it's unimaginable
to me that people have the bandwidth to
to Really track this stuff and so then
they jump on social media and they they
see they get inundated by misinformation
and they see what their favorite
influencer just said um and now they're
worried about vaccines and they're it's
just it's we're living in an environment
where our our the information space
become so corre corupted uh and we've
built machines to to further corrupt it
you know we've built a business model
for the internet that it further
corrupts it uh so it's it is just um
it's chaos in informational terms and I
don't fault people for being confused
and impatient and uh at the at their
wit's end and um yes Trump was a an
enormous fuck you to The Establishment
and that and that's that was
understandable for many reasons to me
Sam Harris the great Sam Harris is
somebody I've looked up to for a long
time as a beacon of voice of reason and
there's this meme on the internet and I
would love you to steal me on the case
for it and against that Trump broke Sam
Harris's brain that there's something is
disproportionately to the actual impact
that Trump had on our society he
had um an impact on the div on the
ability of balanced calm rational Minds
to see the world clearly to think
clearly you being one of the beacons of
that is there is there a degree to which
he broke your
brain uh Otherwise Known As Trump
derangement syndrome medical medical
condition yeah I think Trump derangement
syndrome is a is a very clever meme
because it it just uh throws the you
know the problem back on the person
who's criticizing Trump but in truth the
the true Trump derangement syndrome was
not to have seen how dangerous and
divisive it would be to promote someone
like Trump to that position of power and
to not and in the in the final moment
not to see how uh untenable it was to
still support someone who you know a
sitting president who was not committing
to a peaceful transfer of power I mean
that was if if if that wasn't a bright
line for you you have been deranged by
something uh because that was you know
the that was one minute to midnight for
our democracy as as far as I I'm
concerned and I think it really was but
for the the Integrity of uh a few people
that we didn't suffer some real
constitutional crisis and and real
emergency you know after January 6 I
mean if if Mike Pence had caved in and
decided to not certify the election
right uh if literally you can count on
two hands the number of people who held
things together at that moment and so it
was so it wasn't for want of trying on
Trump's part that we we um didn't
succumb to some you know real truly
Uncharted uh uh catastrophe with our
democracy so the fact that that didn't
happen is not a sign that those of us
who were worried it was so close to
happening were exaggerating the problem
I mean it's like you know you almost got
run over by a car but you didn't and so
you know you're the fact that you're
adrenalized and you're thinking you know
but boy that was dangerous I probably
shouldn't you know you know wander in
the middle of the street uh with my eyes
closed um you weren't wrong to feel that
you really had a problem right um and
came very close to something truly uh
terrible so I think that's where we were
and I think we shouldn't do that again
right so the fact that he's he's still
he's coming back around as potentially a
viable candidate you know I'm not
spending much time thinking about it
frankly because it's you know I'm I'm
waiting for the moment where it it it
requires some thought um I mean they it
did it took
up uh I I don't know how many podcasts I
devoted to the topic it wasn't that I
mean wasn't that many in the end you
know against the the number of podcasts
I I devoted to other topics but there
are people who look at Trump and just
find him funny
entertaining not especially threatening
it's like not a you know just it's just
good fun to see somebody who's like
who's just not taking anything seriously
and it's just just putting a you know a
stick in the wheel of of business as
usual again and again and again and
again
um and they don't really see anything
much at stake right it doesn't really it
doesn't really matter if we don't
support NATO doesn't really matter if he
says he trusts Putin more than our
intelligence Services uh Ian none of
this is it doesn't matter if he's on the
one hand saying that he
loves uh the leader of North Korea and
on the other threatening threatens to to
you know bomb them back to the Stone Age
right on Twitter it's all it all can be
taken in the spirit of kind of reality
television like this is just this is the
part of the movie that's just fun to
watch right
and I understand that I can even inhabit
that space for a few minutes at a time
but there's a deeper concern that we're
in the process of entertaining ourselves
to death right that we're just not
taking things seriously and this is it's
a problem I've had with several other
people we might name who just who just
appear to me to be goofing around at
scale and they lack a kind of moral
seriousness I mean they're touching big
problems where lives hang in the balance
but they're just in around and I think
there are really important problems that
we have to get our head straight around
and we need you know it's not to say
that that institutions don't become
corrupt I think they do and I think and
I'm quite worried that you know both
about the the the loss of trust in our
institutions and the the fact that trust
has eroded for good reason right that
they have become less trustworthy I I I
you know they become infected by you
know political ideologies that are not
truth tracking I me I I worry about all
of that um but I just think the we need
institutions we need to rebuild them we
need we need experts who are real
experts we need to Value expertise over
you know amateurish speculation and
conspiracy thinking and just you know
and bullshit the kind of amateur
speculation we're doing on this very
podcast I'm usually alert to the moments
where I'm just guessing or where I
actually feel like I'm talking from
within my wheelhouse and I try to
Telegraph that a fair amount with people
um so yeah I mean but it's it's not it's
different like I mean you you can invite
someone onto your podcast who's an
expert about something that you're you
you're not an expert about and then you
you in the process of getting more
informed yourself your your audience is
getting more informed so you're asking
smart questions and you might be pushing
back at the margins but you know that
when push comes to shove on that topic
you really don't have a basis to have a
a strong opinion and if you were going
to form a a a a a strong opinion that
was this counter to the expert you have
in front of you is going to be by
deference to some other expert who
you've brought in or who you've heard
about or who's work you've you've read
or whatever but there there's a paradox
to how we value Authority in science
that most people don't understand and I
think we should at some point unravel
that because it's it's the
basis for a lot of public confusion and
and frankly it's a basis for a lot of
you know criticism I've received on
these topics where it's you know people
think that I'm
a you know I I'm against Free Speech or
I'm an establishment shill or it's it's
like I just think I'm a cred
credentialist I just think people with
phds from I IV league universities
should you know run everything
it's not true but there's a ton of conf
there's a lot to cut through to get to
Daylight there because people are um
very confused about how we value
Authority in the service of rationality
generally you've talked about it but
it's it's just interesting the intensity
of feeling you have you've you've had
this famous phrase about Hunter Biden
and children in the basement can you
just revisit this case so let me let me
give another perspective on the
situation of January 6th and Trump in
general it's possible that January 6th
and things of that nature revealed that
our democracy is actually pretty fragile
and that Trump is not a mevolent and
Ultra competent malevolent figure but is
simply a
jokester and he just by creating the
chaos revealed that it's all pretty
fragile because you're a student of
history and there's a lot of people like
lennin Hitler who are exceptionally
competent at controlling power at being
Executives and taking that power
controlling the generals controlling all
the figures involved and certainly not
tweeting but working in the shadows
behind the scenes to gain power and they
did so extremely confidently and that is
how they were able to gain power the the
push back with Trump he was doing none
of that he was creating he's very good
good at creating
drama sometimes for humor's sake
sometimes for drama's sake and simply
reveal that our democracy is fragile and
so he's not this uh once in a generation
horrible figure once in a generation
narcissist no I I don't think he's he's
a a truly scary
Sinister you know Putin like or you know
hit much less hitler-like figure not at
all I he's not ideological he doesn't
care about any Beyond himself so it's
not
um no no he's much less scary than any
really scary you know totalitarian right
I mean and he's he's more Brave in new
world than 1984 this is what you know
Eric Weinstein never stops um badgering
me about but you know he's still wrong
Eric um you know I I can you know my
analogy for Trump was that he an evil
Chanty Garder I don't know if you
remember that the the um the the book or
the film being there uh with with Peter
sers um but you know Peter sers is this
Gardener who really doesn't know
anything um but he gets recognized as
this wise man and gets promoted to
immense power in Washington because he's
speaking in these kind of in in a
semblance of wisdom he's got these very
simple aphorisms what seem to be
aphorisms he's just talk all he cares
about his gardening he's just talking
about his garden all the time but you
know he'll say something but yeah you
know in the spring you know the new
shoots will will Bloom and people read
into that some kind of Genius you know
Insight politically and so he gets
promoted and so that's that's the joke
of the film for me Trump has always been
someone like an evil chony Garder he's
he's it's not to say he's totally in yes
he has a certain kind of Genius he's got
a genius for creating a spectacle around
himself right he's got a genius for
getting the the eye of the media always
coming back to him um
but it it's only it's a kind of it's a
kind of you know self-promotion that
only works if you actually are truly
Shameless and don't care about having a
reputation for anything that that that I
or you would want to have a reputation
for right it's like it's pure the pure
pornography of attention right he and he
just wants more of it um I think the
truly depressing and genuinely scary
thing was
that we have a country that at least
half of the country given
how broken our society is in many ways
we have a country that didn't see
anything wrong with that bringing
someone who's who obviously doesn't know
what he should know to be president and
who's obviously not a good person right
obviously doesn't care about people
can't even pretend to care about people
really right in a credible way um and so
I mean this if there's a silver line
into this it it's it's along the lines
you just sketched it shows us how
vulnerable our system is to a truly
brilliant and Sinister figure right I
mean like I I think we are um we really
dodged a bullet yes someone far more
competent and conniving and ideological
could have exploited our system in a way
that Trump didn't and and that's um yeah
so if if we plug those holes eventually
um that would be a good thing and he
would have done a good thing for our
society right I mean one of the things
we
realized and I think nobody knew I I
certainly didn't know it and I didn't
hear anyone talk about it is how much
our system relies on Norms rather than
laws yeah civility almost yeah it's just
like it's it's quite possible that he
never did anything illegal you know
truly truly illegal I may I think he
probably did a few illegal things but
like illegal such that he really should
be thrown in jail for it you know um at
least that remains to be
seen so all of the chaos all of the you
know all of the diminishment of our
stature in the world all of the Just the
the opportunity costs of spending years
focused on
nonsense um all of that was just Norm
violations all that was just that was
just all a matter of not saying the
thing you should say but that doesn't
mean they're insignificant right it's
not that it's like it's not illegal for
a sitting president to
say no I'm not going to commit to a
peaceful transfer of power right we'll
wait and see whether I win if I
win it's it was the election was was was
valid if I lose it was fraudulent right
but aren't
those humorous perturbations to our
system of Civility such that we know
what the limits are and now we start to
think that and have these kinds of
discussions but that wasn't a humorous
perturbation because he did everything
he could granted he's wasn't very
competent but he did everything he could
to try to steal the election I mean the
irony is he claimed to have an election
stolen from him all the while doing
everything he could to steal it
declaring it fraudulent in advance
trying to get the votes to to to to not
be counted as the evening wore on
knowing that they were going to be
disproportionately Democrat Democrat
votes um because of the the you because
of the position he took on mailin
ballots I mean all of it was fairly
calculated um the whole circus of of of
you know the clown car that crashed into
you know Four Seasons Landscaping right
and and you got Rudy Giuliani with his
hair dye and you got Sydney Powell and
all all these grossly incompetent people
lying
as freely as they could breathe about
election fraud right and all these
things are getting thrown out by you
know Republican largely Republican
election officials and Republican judges
um it wasn't wasn't for want of trying
that he didn't maintain his power in
this country he really tried to steal
the presidency he just was not competent
and the people around him weren't
competent so that's a good thing and
it's worth not letting that happen again
but he wasn't competent so he didn't do
everything he could well no he did
everything he could he didn't do
everything that could have been done by
someone more
competent right but the the tools you
have as a president you could do a lot
of things you can declare emergencies
especially during covid you could
postpone the election you can create
military conflict that you know any kind
of reason to postpone the election
there's there's a lot of but he tried to
do things and he would have to have done
those things through other people and
they're people who refuse to do those
things they're people who said they
would quit they they would quit publicly
right I mean this you you start again
there are multiple books written
about the last hours of of this
presidency and the details are shocking
in what he tried to do and tried to get
others to do and it's awful right I mean
it's it's just awful that we were that
close to
something
um to to a true unraveling of our
political process I it's the the only
time in our lifetime that anything like
this has happened and um it deeply
embarrassing right for you know on the
world stage it's just like we we looked
like a Banana Republic there for a while
and we're the lone superpower it's a b
it's it's not good right and so we
shouldn't like there's no there's no the
the people who thought well we just need
to shake things up and this is a great
in great way to shake things up and
having people you know storm our capital
and you smear shit on the walls that's
just more shaking things up right it's
all just for the lulls um there's a
nihilism and cynicism to all of that
which again in certain people it's
understandable you know frankly it's not
understandable if you've got a billion
dollars and you're you you know have a
compound in Meno Park or whatever it's
like there are people who are
cheerleading this stuff who shouldn't be
cheerleading this stuff and who know
that they can get on their Gulf Stream
and fly to their compound New Zealand if
everything goes to shit right so there
there's a cynicism to all of that that I
think we should be deeply critical of
but what I'm trying to understand is not
and analyze is not the behavior of this
particular human being but the effect it
had in part on the division between
people it's to me the degree the meme of
Sam Harris's brain being broken by Trump
represents you're like the person I
would look to to bridge the division
well I don't think there
is something profitably to be said to
someone who's
truly captivated by the the the
personality Cult of trumpism right like
there's nothing that I'm going to say to
there's no conversation I'm gonna have
with Candace Owens say about Trump
that's going to converge on something
reasonable right you don't think so no I
mean I've tried I haven't tried with
Candace I've tried with you know many
people who are in that particular orbit
I mean I I've I've had conversations
with people
who won't admit that there's anything
wrong with Trump anything so I'd like to
push for the empathy versus reason
because when you operate in the space of
Reason yes but I think there's a lot of
power in you showing in you Sam Harris
showing that you're willing to see the
good qualities of trump publicly showing
that I think that's the way to win over
few of them he has fewer good qualities
than any virtually anyone I can name
right so he he's funny he I I'll grant
you that he's funny he's he's a he's a
good Entertainer there's others look at
just policies and actual impacts he had
i' I've admitted that no no so like so
I've admitted that many of his policies
I agree with many many of hisl I mean
so probably more often than not I at
least on balance I agreed I I agreed
with his policy that you know we should
take China seriously as an adversary
right we're and um I think I mean again
you have to there's a a lot of fine
print to a lot of this because the way
he talks about these things and and many
of his motives that are obvious are
things that I um don't support but we
take immigration I think there's it's
obvious that we should have control of
our borders right like I I don't see the
argument for not having control of our
borders we should let in who we want to
let in and we should keep out who we
want to keep out and we should have a
sane immigration policy so um I don't I
didn't necessarily think it was a
priority to build the wall but I didn't
I never criticize the impulse to build
the wall because if you know tens of
thousands hundreds of thousands of
people are coming across that border and
we are not in a position to know who's
coming that seems untenable to me so um
and I can recognize that many people in
our
society are on balance the victims of
immigration be and and there is a in in
in many cases a zero some contest
between the interests of actual citizens
and the interests of immigrants right so
I think we should have a we should have
control of our borders we should have a
sane and compassionate immigration
policy we should have we should let in
refugees right so I you know Trump on
refugees was terrible um but no like I
would say 80% of the policy concerns
people uh celebrate ated in him are
concerns that I either share entirely or
certainly sympathize with right so like
that's not that's not the issue the
issue is a thread to democracy in some
fundament way the issue is largely what
you said it was it's not so much the
person it's the effect on everything he
touches right he just he has this this
superpower
of deranging and destabilizing
uh almost everything he touches and
suing the and compromising the Integrity
of almost anyone who comes into his
orbit I mean so you looked at these
people who served you know as his chief
of staff or you know in various cabinet
positions people who had real
reputations you know for for probity and
and level-headedness uh you know whether
you share their politics or not I mean
these were real people these were not
you know some of them were goofballs but
um uh
you know many people who who just got
totally trashed by proximity to him and
then Trashed by him when they finally
parted company with him
um yeah I mean there just people bent
over backwards to accommodate his Norm
violations and it it was um it was bad
for them and it was bad for our our our
system um
and but that but none of that discounts
the fact that we have um a system that
really needs a proper house cleaning yes
there are bad incentives and um
entrenched interests and I'm not a fan
of the concept of of the deep State uh
but because it you know it's been so
propagandized but yes there's there's
something like that you know that is uh
not
um flexible enough to re to respond
intelligently to the needs of the moment
right so there's a lot of rethinking of
government and of institutions in
general that I
think we should do but we need smart
well-informed well-intentioned people to
do that job and the well-intentioned
part is is hugely important right it's
just give me someone who is not the
most selfish person anyone has ever
heard about in their lifetime right and
what we got with Trump was that like the
literally the one most selfish person I
think anyone could name I mean and you
and again you there's so much known
about this man that's the thing it's
like it predates his presidency we knew
this guy 30 years
ago and and this and this is what to
come back to the those inflammatory
comments about Hunter Biden's laptop the
reason why I can say with confidence
that I don't care what was on his his
laptop is that there is and and that
includes any evidence of corruption on
on the part of his father right now
there's been precious little of that
that's actually emerged so it's like
there is no as far as I can tell there's
not a big story associated with that
laptop as much as people bang on about a
few emails but even if there were just
obvious corruption right like Joe Biden
was at this meeting and he took you know
this amount of money from this Shady guy
uh for bad reasons right
given how visible the lives of these two
men have been right I me given how much
we know about Joe Biden and how much we
know about Donald Trump and how they
have lived in public for almost as long
as I've been alive both of them the the
the the scale of corruption can't
possibly balance out between the two of
them right we I if if you show me that
Joe Biden has the secret life where he's
driving a Bugatti and he's living like
Andrew Tate right and he's do he's doing
all these things I didn't know about
okay then I'm going to start getting a
sense that all right maybe this guy is
way more corrupt than I realized maybe
there is some deal in Ukraine or with
China that it's just like this guy's not
who he seems he's not the public servant
he's been pretending to be he's been on
the take for decades and decades and
he's just he's as dirty as can be's he's
all mobbed up and it's a nightmare um
and he can't be trusted right that's
possible if you show me that his life is
not at all what it seems but on the
assumption that I having looked at this
guy for literally decades right and H
and knowing that every journalist has
looked at him for decades just how many
Affairs is he having just how much you
know uh how many drugs is he doing how
many houses does he have where you know
what what what is what are the obvious
conflicts of interest you know you hold
that against what we know about Trump
right and I mean the Litany of
indiscretions you can put on Trump's
side that that testify to his cor
personal corruption to testify the fact
that he has no ethical Compass there's
simply no comparison right so that's why
I don't care about what's on the laptop
when now if you tell me Trump is no
longer running for president in 2024 and
we can put trumpism behind us and now
you're saying listen there's a lot of
stuff on that laptop that makes Joe
Biden look like a total asshole okay I'm
all ears right I mean it was a forc in
2020 it was a forc choice between a
sitting president who wouldn't commit to
a peaceful transfer of power and a guy
who's obviously too old to be president
who has a crack addicted son who who had
you know who lost his laptop and I just
knew that I was going to take Biden in
spite of whatever Litany of horror was
going to come tumbling out of that
laptop and that might involve sort of so
that actual quote is Hunter Biden
literally could have had the corpses of
children in the basement there's a dark
humor to it right which is I think you
speak to I would not have cared there's
nothing it's Hunter Biden it's not Joe
Biden whatever the scope of Joe Biden's
corruption is it is infinately compared
to the corruption we know Trump was
involved in it's like a firefly to the
sun is what you're speaking to but let
me make the case that you're really
focused on the surface stuff that it's
possible to have coruption that
masquerades in the thing we mentioned
which is civility you can me you can
spend hundreds of billions of dollars or
trillions towards the War uh in the
Middle East for example something that
you've changed your mind on in terms of
the negative impact it has on the world
and that you know the military
industrial complex it's everybody's very
nice everybody's very civil there very
upfront here's how we're spending the
money yeah sometimes somehow disappears
in different plac but that's the way you
know war is complicated and it's
everyone is very polite there's no uh
Coke and strippers or whatever is on the
laptop um it's very nice and polite in
the meanwhile hundreds of thousands of
civilians die uh hate it just an
incredible amount of hate is created
because people lose their family members
all that kind of stuff but there's no
strippers and coke on on a laptop so
yeah but but it's not just superficial
it is when you when someone only wants
wealth and power and fame and that is
their their objective function right
they're like a a robot that is
calibrated just to those variables right
uh and they don't care about the risks
we run on any other front they don't
care about I
mean environmental risk pandemic risk
nuclear proliferation risk none of it
right they just they're just tracking
Fame and money and and whatever can can
personally uh redown to their
self-interest along those lines and
they're not informed about the other
risk we're running really I mean in
Trump you you had a president who was
repeatedly asking his generals why
couldn't we use our nuclear weapons why
can't we have more of them why do I have
fewer nuclear weapons than JFK right as
though that were a sign of of of
anything other than progress right um
and this is the guy who's got the the
the button right I mean he got
somebody's following him around with a
bag waiting to take his order to to
launch right um that is
a it's just it's a it's a a risk we
should never run one thing Trump has
going for him I think is that he he
doesn't drink or do drugs right although
there's you know people allege that he
does speed but um you know let's take
him at his word he's he's uh not
deranging him himself with with
Pharmaceuticals at least but um apart
from diet coke
uh but there's nothing wrong just for
the record let me push back on that
there's nothing wrong with yeah very
large amount I occasionally have some
myself there's no medical there's no
scientific evidence that I observed the
negatives of you know all those studies
about aspartame and all that this um no
I don't know I like I I hope I hope
you're right um yeah I mean everything
you said about the military industrial
complex is true right and and it's been
we've been worrying about that on both
sides of the aisle for a very long time
I mean that's just that phrase came from
from
Eisenhower
um it's
uh I mean so much of what ails us is a
story of bad incentives right and bad
incentives are so powerful that they
corrupt even good people right how much
more they corrupt bad people right like
so it's like you want at minimum you
want reasonably good people at least
non-pathological people in a in the
system trying to navigate against the
grain of bad incentives and better still
all of us can get together and and try
to diagnose those incentives and change
them right and and and we will really
succeed when we have a system of
incentives
where the the good incentives are so
strong that even bad people are
effortlessly behaving as though they're
good people because they're so
successfully incentivized to behave that
way right that's you and so so it's
almost the inversion of our current
situation so yes and you say I changed
my mind about the War uh I not quite I
mean I I was never a supporter of the
war in Iraq I was always worried that it
was a a distraction from the war in
Afghanistan was a supporter of the war
in Afghanistan and I will admit in
hindsight that looks like
a you know at best a highly ambiguous
and painful exercise you know Pro more
likely a Fool's errand right I like that
would you know it did not turn out well
it's it's it wasn't for want of trying I
I don't you know I have not done a deep
dive on on all of the failures there and
maybe all of these failures are failures
in principle I mean maybe it's just
maybe that's not the kind of thing that
can be done well by anybody whatever our
intentions um but yeah the the move to
Iraq always seemed questionable to me
and um when we knew the problem the
immediate problem at that mom