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to find the five most impactful episodes.

1:17

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1:20

I am really excited for this conversation today

1:22

with Tim Urban, the man that

1:24

turned his blog into a global movement according

1:27

to Forbes magazine. And it draws

1:29

millions of people looking for high-quality

1:32

writing about complex ideas. And

1:34

that is Tim's specialty. In

1:36

part one of this two-part conversation, we

1:38

are thinking through the primitive mind and

1:41

its nature, the tug-of-war between your individuality

1:44

and society, and the crisis of courage

1:46

and woke ideology that's weaponizing

1:48

words against all of us. Now,

1:50

did you know impact theory is now available

1:52

on Amazon Music? Head over to Amazon

1:54

Music right now to hear more impact theory episodes

1:57

just like this and catch part two

1:59

of this

1:59

mind-opening conversation with Tim

2:02

Urban. Do not wait, my friends. Subscribe

2:04

to Impact Theory now on Amazon Music and

2:07

Ecom Legendary. I'm

2:09

Tom Billiam, and welcome to Impact Theory.

2:12

When things go bad, if we sink

2:14

to bad times on that merry-go-round in the 21st century,

2:17

with all the power we have and all the many different

2:19

kinds of existential risks we have, nukes is

2:21

just

2:22

one of them now. It could be the worst

2:24

ever.

2:27

There's something going on in culture right now that

2:30

is driving us into what you call

2:32

the primitive mind, which

2:34

is not necessarily an ideal place to be thinking

2:36

from.

2:37

What is the primitive mind, and why

2:40

in this unique moment do people find themselves

2:42

there? I use the example of

2:44

like skittles or brownies or, you know, these

2:46

things are hard to resist, even though a huge

2:49

part of your brain is saying like, no, no, no, no,

2:51

no, no, this is just like trashed sugar.

2:53

It's gonna make you feel bad, and you're gonna gain weight.

2:56

Like it's bad across the board, except it

2:58

tastes good for one second.

3:00

The primate doesn't understand that, and it's thinking we just

3:02

found dense, you

3:04

know, high calorie food.

3:07

This is precious. Eat as much as you can,

3:10

because you don't know where we're gonna get it next, right? So it's this, we're

3:12

crazy people. We're crazy, and we have this, we

3:14

live in this advanced civilization where so

3:16

many of our natural programming, you

3:18

know, tendencies actually hurt

3:21

us and misfire, so we're constantly in this kind

3:23

of tug of war. And

3:25

so that's the kind of general situation that

3:27

applies to, I think, most problems in humanity

3:30

and most personal struggles we have. You can

3:32

kind of boil it down to, there's this tug

3:34

of war going on, because we've been kidnapped out of

3:36

our home forest somewhere, and we've been dropped into an

3:38

advanced civilization, and we're trying to do our best. So

3:41

I like to think about how this applies to,

3:44

when I look at like political tribalism, or

3:47

something like that, which is very prevalent today.

3:50

And something in the environment

3:52

has, the environment's been changing super

3:54

quickly. Social

3:57

media just started, and it's like completely changed

3:59

the world. And the internet.

3:59

internet is pretty new, and

4:02

mobile phones, and there's just, that's

4:04

all these giant, seismic environmental

4:06

changes, which

4:09

throw off the balance in these tug of war we've

4:11

got, both individually and society,

4:13

we have kind of a grand tug of war going on.

4:16

And so I start,

4:19

you know, that's what I've been doing a lot of thinking about,

4:21

is okay, I see a lot of kind of

4:23

things that are the political version

4:25

of eating Skittles and Brownies, which is, you know,

4:28

hating half the country, and feeling like

4:30

you're perfect and righteous, and the us group is

4:32

great, and the them group is awful. Like that's just junk

4:35

food of a different kind, right? It's just, that's base

4:37

primal behavior that doesn't naturally make sense,

4:40

and it's not good for us, it's not good for others. And

4:43

it's on the rise, clearly, right? You see it around

4:45

you, and you also see it in plenty of surveys and polls, and

4:47

so,

4:50

that's what I've been thinking a lot about, why, right? You

4:52

know, what are the environmental changes,

4:56

and why are they stoking

4:58

this kind of decline in the national,

5:00

the US, at least, in the national tug of war, and

5:04

a lot of us as people?

5:07

If we look at the primitive mind as us 50,000 years

5:09

ago, and we

5:12

think about the baser instincts,

5:14

why do those base instincts feel good?

5:16

Why is the righteous indignation

5:19

such a,

5:22

it feels so awesome. Why would

5:24

that be from an evolutionary standpoint?

5:27

The program is very simple,

5:29

and this developed over not just 50,000 years, but

5:32

this is billions

5:34

of years going back, right? Through our whole evolution,

5:36

the program is very simple in terms of its

5:38

goal.

5:40

The genes that you carry,

5:44

they're still around right now, because

5:46

they happen to be unbelievable at survival,

5:49

right? They've survived through fish, through

5:51

reptiles, and rodents, and other

5:53

primates, and great apes, and now they're

5:55

in you. You know, most of the genes

5:57

didn't make it this far. So everyone today,

6:00

their genes are amazing at survival. And so the

6:02

goal of your programming is

6:04

to, you're the animal that is surrounding

6:07

these genes. You're just kind of, you're developed

6:09

in the way you are. You are physically and

6:11

mentally who you are

6:14

because every little part

6:16

of you is good at serving

6:18

the core purpose, which is keeping

6:21

those genes immortal, passing them on, passing them on,

6:23

right? You're gonna die, but your genes can stay immortal if you

6:25

pass them on. How dare you, Tim Urban? You know

6:27

what, maybe also with the crazy

6:29

future maybe we can upload our consciousness. I certainly hope

6:31

so. But the point is that

6:34

it just is so simple in so many ways. Something

6:37

that helps you pass your genes along

6:39

is going to, because of so

6:41

much evolution, make the animal feel good. It's gonna reward

6:43

the animal with dopamine and other kinds

6:46

of happy chemicals because

6:48

that's what the programming does. It

6:50

basically, if you want your dog to do

6:53

something, or you give it a treat,

6:55

but that's just what you're really doing is the

6:57

dog doesn't care about the treat. When they eat the

6:59

treat, they get the dopamine hit.

7:01

The dog cares about the dopamine hit and is addicted, right,

7:03

like all of us. And so you give the dog a treat, it

7:05

hits the dopamine hit. So that's like really the dog's brain

7:07

is the one giving it the real treat, right? And you're triggering

7:10

something that gives the secondary

7:12

treat. And so it's a similar

7:15

idea with us is that the

7:17

things your brain naturally rewards you for

7:19

are going to be things that

7:21

helped you to pass on your

7:23

genes. So what does that mean? To pass on your genes, you

7:25

have

7:26

to survive. Right, you can't die, especially

7:29

at a young age. You have to survive, which

7:31

means you need calories,

7:33

you need to stay safe. And then

7:35

of course you need to reproduce, which is why humans are all

7:37

maniacally obsessed with sex. And

7:39

then now the genes are in your kids.

7:42

So suddenly you'll

7:43

throw yourself off a cliff before you'll throw your kid

7:45

off a cliff, which makes no sense, except

7:47

it does, if you're thinking about the fact that

7:51

the genes are in the younger, healthier container

7:54

now. So the genes are telling you,

7:56

protect that thing over yourself, right?

7:58

So I guess- So crazy. It's all very obvious.

8:01

It's just that if you think about why does

8:04

Skittles taste good? Because back then

8:06

something that tasted dense and sweet

8:08

like that was probably a really high calorie food

8:10

which was critical to eat because you didn't know when you were gonna get food.

8:13

Now your question, why does political

8:15

tribalism feel good in the same kind

8:17

of primitive, blissful kind

8:20

of way?

8:21

And it's because the tribes that,

8:24

to survive, for your genes to pass on, the best

8:26

thing you really needed, you couldn't survive alone.

8:28

Humans alone would just, would

8:30

be in big trouble. You needed to have a village and

8:32

a tribe around you.

8:34

And so we

8:37

are desperate to be, to

8:39

seek out connection

8:42

and community and to

8:44

be in the good graces of the

8:46

people closest to us. And if there's a group of cool

8:48

kids and they're ostracizing

8:50

the uncool kids, you really wanna be in the cool kid group.

8:52

That's just our DNA. We wanna be included

8:56

in our nightmares to be ostracized, to be the one

8:58

that everyone's talking shit about behind your back. We

9:00

hate that. And again, that doesn't make sense. Who cares? It's

9:02

just, we're all gonna die. Who cares what they're saying? Because our

9:05

dumb primitive brains are horrified

9:08

because they think we are now gonna get cut out

9:10

of the life raft, which is this

9:12

support group, this community,

9:14

and we're cut out of that. We're gonna die. And

9:17

if you get rejected by a girl

9:19

when you go up to her, it's horrifying because

9:22

all the

9:24

other girls now in the tribe are

9:26

gonna laugh at you and you're never gonna mate. You're never gonna

9:29

pass on your hands. Of course, and today that doesn't make sense. You can get

9:31

rejected and it doesn't matter, but our brains continually

9:33

are misinterpreting the world around us. The

9:36

way you describe that A, it seems really, really

9:38

true, but also begs the question, then

9:40

how on earth did we get to the point

9:42

where the enlightenment is real,

9:44

that we have the scientific method and we've

9:47

created all this amazing stuff. We

9:49

at some point, somehow, some way

9:51

began to elevate above that.

9:54

And I don't know how kids today will

9:56

take the following statement, but as a child of the

9:58

80s,

9:59

It feels like we were doing really well for

10:02

a while, at least in the US. Freedom

10:04

of speech was like a core tenet, individuality

10:06

being able to think for yourself, being celebrated for that.

10:09

Now it feels like we're going in the wrong direction.

10:14

How did we get escape

10:16

velocity at first, even before we talk

10:18

about how we're getting pulled back down? If you think

10:20

about how much self-help

10:23

books and people who give advice

10:25

on the internet and people who give medical

10:28

and nutrition are fitness advice or

10:30

productivity advice, and people

10:32

build these systems, what's

10:35

happening is that basically all of this is this struggle

10:38

to, okay, let's make

10:39

systems and

10:41

habits and routines that

10:44

can protect us from our

10:46

own worst desires. So a simple

10:48

one is don't buy unhealthy food for your house if you want

10:50

to eat more healthy.

10:53

Commit to a gym routine

10:56

and form a habit. And

10:58

so people are constantly in their own lives forming these

11:01

systems, which are like these structures that

11:03

you can build, these artificial structures that

11:05

you can build that can kind of support you

11:07

and keep you afloat so you don't drift down into kind

11:09

of your worst instincts and your most

11:12

nonsensical instincts. They're not evil, they're just, they don't

11:14

make sense for your life. They're gonna

11:16

push your life in the wrong direction. So we build all these systems,

11:19

you have diets, right? A diet is just a system

11:22

and you're gonna maybe do it with a group of people.

11:25

These are all ways to

11:28

kind of outsmart our primitive

11:30

instincts and try to kind of build

11:33

structure. So

11:35

the Enlightenment

11:36

is just that

11:39

on a massive scale. Well,

11:42

the Enlightenment itself is kind of, is

11:45

a ton of philosophy about the

11:47

best

11:48

systems that groups can use, that

11:50

countries can use. To use

11:52

to what end? So if a

11:55

human is just following their basic instincts, they're

11:59

just... you know, scarfing down

12:01

junk food, right?

12:03

If a group of people is following

12:05

their base instincts, you've got

12:08

warlords and dictators and slaves

12:10

and super oppression and no

12:13

upward mobility and no justice,

12:15

right? That's the state of nature. We've done this

12:17

so many times. You know, look

12:19

at history. There is so, it just like, it's like,

12:21

you can have this moment when, you know, things seem

12:23

better and then they, and then there's civilization

12:26

collapses and you end up with, again, you have these

12:28

warlords and you've got

12:31

dictatorships. And this is so, so humans

12:34

have suffered so much by kind

12:37

of falling into, think about, you know, the hierarchy

12:40

is something that is kind

12:43

of a natural thing for us to fall into

12:45

this thing, which is why we all want to kind of please the scary

12:47

authorities. And so

12:50

the enlightenment is trying to say, what

12:52

is a better way here? What is the

12:54

true human nature that produces that?

12:57

Is it that you need a brutal dictator

12:59

in order to control humans? Because

13:01

otherwise they will just get out of hand and start murdering

13:04

each other? Or, and this is more

13:06

what the enlightenment thinkers thought is actually human

13:08

nature isn't necessarily that bad. It just needs

13:12

some basic laws and structures

13:14

that can prevent people

13:17

from, prevent the worst actors

13:19

among them from taking over

13:20

and from overpowering each other and from harming each

13:22

other. And at that point,

13:25

actually, humans function can function very

13:27

well together. So it's kind of this

13:29

nuanced thing between, you know, you

13:31

have

13:32

tyranny and anarchy, right?

13:35

Which often anarchy often then melts

13:37

away into tyranny. And- Doesn't it always?

13:40

Yeah.

13:40

And so this is saying, what if we do something in the middle where instead

13:43

of saying there's these rigid ironclad laws

13:45

and every single person is under the control of the king,

13:48

you say, actually, there's going to be freedom and the government's

13:50

going to have a very limited ability to do

13:52

anything, but there's going to be this big wide

13:54

fence with ironclad walls on

13:56

the wide fence, which is that you can't harm someone

13:59

else.

13:59

You know physically you can't steal

14:02

their property. No things like that equal

14:05

equal justice under the Under

14:07

the law you're gonna have you know equal rights

14:09

you're gonna have Very

14:12

you know when you basically you're gonna be totally

14:14

free, but if you start

14:16

harassing people and punching

14:18

people and stealing their things Very quickly you're

14:20

ending you're gonna end up in jail, so there is an iron

14:22

fist there, but it's very light touch It

14:24

only applies to very specific

14:27

things So they basically that if an

14:29

anarchy everyone's a hundred percent free which turns

14:31

into a bunch of bullies and warlords

14:33

and now no one's free The Enlightenment

14:35

was like okay, if we have everyone be 80% free, but that last 20%

14:37

no one can do

14:40

Then then

14:42

we think that not only will people be

14:45

able to now live freely and

14:47

safely But also it'll foster all this productivity

14:49

all this natural competition with rules The

14:52

competition will flourish and this to

14:54

me is no different than a human's human

14:57

creating a little group to do a diet with right This

14:59

is a mass scale structure.

15:02

That is basically that that the rational

15:05

parts of our brain that can create that

15:07

Can say if we if

15:09

we just live within this structure

15:11

our worst instincts can't take over

15:15

Okay, this is a this is really

15:18

complex and very nuanced But I think incredibly

15:21

important and the reason that I wanted

15:23

to talk to you and that I found your book so compelling

15:25

is All of this stuff really matters.

15:28

So I came to Studying

15:31

history very late But

15:33

the more I study history the more I realize

15:36

that the way that the society functions

15:38

matters a lot And if you meaning

15:40

life and death quality of life Being

15:43

just tormented endlessly

15:45

or having something that is a

15:48

pretty amazing place to be so There

15:51

are three books that I would encourage people to read

15:53

if they really want to get a sense what humans

15:55

are capable of in In the wrong

15:57

direction And that would be mouse

15:59

the unknown story, The

16:02

Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and

16:05

The Gulag Archipelago. Those

16:07

are very terrifying books about what

16:09

happens when the base or instincts go

16:12

awry. And so when I think about, okay, how does this

16:15

end up happening? Let me know

16:17

what you think about this thesis. Hypothesis

16:19

may be more accurate. So you

16:22

have humans have just a

16:24

need for certainty. And

16:27

when I'm teaching entrepreneurs, one of the things I

16:29

teach them is you have to be able to intoxicate

16:31

your team with certainty. And if you

16:33

say, hey, this is the way forward, of course

16:35

you're never gonna know for sure, but like you

16:37

have to put out,

16:39

this is what I think we have to do to accomplish this

16:41

goal. You've got to tell them, this is it. We're

16:43

gonna go do this thing. Now privately you can have all the doubt in

16:45

the world, but you need to have certainty to

16:47

get them marching in a direction, which is why

16:50

going back to your idea of why this feels so good

16:52

is that for humans have an innate desire

16:55

for progress. I think that's just in terms

16:57

of the primitive mind, which is hardwired into

16:59

us, which is what keeps us out there foraging and hunting

17:01

and pushing. And if that didn't feel good,

17:03

to your point about the dog's brain

17:06

is actually what's giving it the treat, the dopamine

17:08

reward.

17:09

If doing hard things in the pursuit of progress

17:11

didn't feel awesome, then we would never

17:14

have become the most dominant apex predator

17:16

the world has ever seen. So you have this innate

17:18

push for progress and

17:20

you have this crushing need for

17:22

certainty. And so you have people

17:25

that can rise up by giving

17:27

you that certainty. And being

17:29

nuanced is incredibly

17:32

difficult. It takes, as somebody who

17:34

often struggles to hold very nuanced

17:36

ideas,

17:39

I think one of the markers of a high

17:41

level of intelligence is that

17:43

ability to really find

17:46

a nuanced path through something. Now,

17:49

having grown up in America,

17:52

I'm immersed in this American experiment. So

17:54

I never really realized that it was

17:56

an experiment, that it's fragile

17:59

and that. that it could

18:02

be lost. And that when you look

18:04

at a tyrannical government where certainty

18:07

is ruling the day, one person is

18:09

just telling you, you're gonna go do this and people

18:11

can get behind it because they just, hey,

18:13

I follow the rules and that's that, even though

18:16

it can be horrendous tyranny.

18:18

And that when I think of things like the

18:21

woke mind virus,

18:23

which seems to be really capturing

18:26

people today, part of it is it

18:29

sounds great, even

18:32

though it may not be working. Part

18:34

of it is that it gives people certainty on

18:36

how to move. And then part of it is that

18:38

finding the nuance of, even though

18:40

it sounds good, it's not working, they're

18:43

using names that

18:45

you never wanna push back against,

18:47

but

18:48

the underlying idea may not be quite aligned.

18:51

All of that gets very murky and very

18:53

hard to navigate through.

18:56

And so people end up getting

18:58

pressured to be silent.

19:00

They don't understand their own view

19:02

because they're not able to talk out loud

19:05

about it. They're not able to clarify

19:07

their own view. And so they're never

19:09

able to think through the problem well

19:11

to define that nuance

19:14

view and then to move forward with certainty

19:16

and nuance.

19:20

So it feels like a system

19:23

that is very easy to get wrong

19:26

and very difficult to get right. And

19:29

so as when you were writing the book

19:31

and you called it a self-help book for

19:34

societies, talk us through

19:36

this idea of the latter

19:38

so that people can understand how

19:40

to think through these nuanced positions

19:43

in a way without

19:45

falling prey to just whatever's the

19:48

popular narrative. Well,

19:51

so we talk a lot about horizontal

19:55

spectrums. We've got political, you got

19:57

the left, the far left and the

19:59

left and the...

19:59

the center and the right and the far right. So

20:02

it's this one dimensional horizontal axis. We

20:04

have a lot of those on any spectrum of opinion, you

20:07

could just lay out the opinion of the, this extreme,

20:09

that extreme, and then the things in the middle. And

20:11

that's all what you think,

20:12

right? Which is great, but I was like, well, let's

20:15

build another axis, a vertical one, that

20:17

can be a how you think axis.

20:19

So we can just talk about it. It's just

20:22

an important concept that people know,

20:24

but let's give it an axis. So I call it the ladder.

20:27

And when it comes to thinking,

20:29

it's just defined

20:31

pretty simply where at the top, you

20:33

care about truth. That's what you're acting

20:36

the way someone acts when they care most about

20:38

truth. And at the very bottom,

20:40

what you care, so only care about is

20:42

confirming your existing beliefs. And

20:46

then of course, it's a spectrum. So you can have like, multiple

20:49

rungs on that ladder. And it's not that some

20:51

people are the low rung people, it's that we all

20:53

have the tendencies, the tendency to kind

20:55

of go up and down on this ladder, depending

20:58

on the day, on our mood, on the stage

21:00

in our life, on the topic.

21:01

But once you're

21:03

thinking about this as an

21:06

actual axis that you can be on a ladder,

21:08

then I think it helps you realize, okay, wait, I'm

21:11

doing that thing where I'm trying to

21:13

confirm my beliefs and I'm actually not

21:15

going for truth deep down. And you can be

21:17

more self aware. So

21:20

what does someone act like when truth

21:22

is their motive, truly, right? I

21:24

mean, if you think about this, you just take it out of like the realm

21:27

of politics or religion or one

21:29

of these really

21:30

sensitive topics and you

21:32

just, you're trying

21:34

to figure out how to fix

21:37

something. There's a, you have a bunch

21:39

of tools and you're trying to fix a machine that's

21:41

not working and you have people around. If

21:44

you're saying, I have a theory here that actually

21:46

what we need is we need to cut the red wire and

21:48

we need to like, whatever, put

21:51

another metal plate here.

21:53

And someone else says, no, no, no,

21:56

no, no, no, no, you gotta

21:58

leave the red wire and cut the green wire. You're

22:01

not gonna say, you're an awful person because

22:03

you're the kind of person who thinks the green wire type

22:06

people. Why would you ever, that's crazy.

22:09

What you'd be doing is

22:11

you try to assess, well, just

22:13

fully without any bias. You're

22:17

trying to assess, does this person know what they're talking about?

22:19

Is this person just someone who just out of nowhere says, I

22:21

don't like the green wire, or you'd ask

22:23

their background and they'd say, oh, and you'd hear them talk and

22:26

you'd say, oh, this person actually seems like they

22:28

have a lot more experience here than I do they understand

22:30

this kind of machine better. Okay,

22:32

so I'm gonna listen to them and I'm gonna update my beliefs.

22:34

Maybe I was so certain about the red wire

22:37

and the

22:39

fact that they think it's the green wire makes me reconsider

22:41

whether I know. This is just normal human thinking

22:43

because all you care about is which wire should I actually

22:45

be cutting on this thing? So

22:48

when it comes to,

22:49

if you truly, or

22:52

if you're on that kind of top rung

22:54

thinking, if you're thinking that way with your political

22:56

beliefs or any other belief, you'd

22:59

have this belief and you

23:01

would be so open to dissent and to

23:03

challenge. You'd seek out articles that are disagreeing

23:06

with you because you're thinking that, you think

23:08

of your belief as a little machine and you're trying to see

23:10

if it's as strong as a machine as possible. You collected

23:12

all these little information puzzle pieces and you've assembled

23:15

them together into a hypothesis and

23:18

you know that

23:19

people have blind spots and people

23:21

are biased and people make mistakes and so this

23:24

machine probably has some flaws. How am I gonna

23:26

find out what they are? I'm

23:28

gonna go out and test it. I'm gonna find people who

23:30

disagree with it and say kick the machine, see if

23:32

you can break it. Which of course is a debate

23:35

or an argument and you're gonna go read things that disagree

23:37

with you. You're gonna read people that say, you

23:39

know, this is built wrong.

23:41

And if someone makes a good point

23:43

and you say, oh you know what,

23:45

the machine's not standing up well to your dissent,

23:49

you're not gonna be offended or

23:52

angry at that person or cut them out of your life.

23:54

You're gonna say, great, I need to update

23:56

or I need to reconsider that. Okay, so this

23:58

is obviously like ideal thing. And if we always

24:01

thought this way, when you're thinking that way, you are

24:04

a hyper-efficient learner. You are, if

24:06

your motive is truth and you act that way, you

24:09

behave that way, you're going to be

24:10

the best at finding the truth eventually. You're gonna really,

24:13

and you're gonna have a natural humility, and you're

24:15

also gonna end up with a lot of nuance because the truth is

24:17

so often nuanced. So you're gonna be open

24:19

to that, and you're gonna end up

24:21

refining your belief, and now your machine gets a little

24:23

bit sharper, and a little of your idea

24:26

gets a little bit better, and now you get

24:28

more information, you read more, you test your idea more,

24:30

and the machine gets a little bit better, and eventually you're gonna have this

24:32

very complex and nuanced point of view

24:35

that is you worked really hard for, and it's gonna

24:38

be nuanced, and it's gonna be

24:40

the best chance you have of being accurate. Now,

24:42

that would be nice if we all thought that way, but of course there's

24:44

this primitive mind

24:46

that we talked about, which is this part

24:48

of your brain that is not

24:51

wired for truth, it's wired for survival in 50,000 BC, and

24:54

what that often meant was agreeing with

24:56

the sacred beliefs of your tribe and believing

24:59

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29:23

This other part of our brain very much identifies

29:26

with certain ideas, and when you identify

29:28

with an idea, your brain

29:31

has a tough time telling the difference between a

29:33

sacred belief and your identity and

29:35

your identity and your body. And so it's

29:38

actually a lot of research where in

29:40

fMRI experiments, people's fight-or-flight

29:42

parts of their brain light up when certain

29:45

beliefs, like political, are challenged. It

29:47

actually lights those things up, and

29:49

when people have those parts of their brain being

29:52

lit up by this challenge, they are extremely

29:54

unlikely to change their mind. Because

29:57

they feel attacked? Yeah, it's

29:59

literally lighting up a different part of your brain

30:02

when political beliefs are challenged than,

30:04

so this is a specific study I'm thinking of from 2016, and

30:09

there were like 10 non-political

30:11

beliefs that were challenged, and then 10

30:14

of the participants' political

30:16

beliefs. And the non-political beliefs were

30:18

much more likely to light up kind of the prefrontal

30:21

cortex, like rational

30:24

centers of the brain, and the

30:26

political beliefs were much more, when

30:28

those were challenged, the limbic system,

30:30

the more primitive emotional parts,

30:32

the amygdala, the fear centers, the fight

30:35

or flight parts of our brain lit up, and the default

30:37

mode network, which is a set of brain regions

30:39

that are associated with internal introspection

30:41

and reflecting inwardly,

30:46

as opposed to listening to what someone's saying on the outside.

30:48

And so when the political beliefs were challenged,

30:52

minds didn't change. And when the non-political

30:54

beliefs were challenged, there was much more movement

30:57

in the person saying, oh, I guess I was wrong. So

31:00

it's that the natural,

31:02

or the logical

31:04

kind of way to think would be, as

31:06

I said, obviously, why would you not want truth? Everyone

31:09

should want that. Why would you want to be delusional? And

31:11

that is what we're like most of the time, but then

31:13

these certain areas, like politics,

31:16

will

31:17

trigger a crazy part of our brain

31:19

that treats ideas and

31:22

people as one and the same. It feels- It's

31:24

my identity. Yeah, it feels angry and hurt and offended

31:27

when someone disagrees with them, and gets really riled up and

31:29

gets, you feel that emotion, you're really

31:31

hyped up, and you kind of hate

31:33

that person, maybe. And maybe even you cut

31:36

them out of your life, and I can only be friends with people who agree

31:38

with me on these topics. And that is madness. That is a totally

31:40

weird thing going on in the brain. And

31:43

so that, to me, is what I would call low-rung thinking,

31:46

is when, and so when someone's,

31:48

if someone's motivated by truth, we said what they did. They'll

31:50

seek out dissent, they'll change their mind, right? They want more

31:52

information, they're humble. When they're

31:55

on the low-rungs, and you're thinking a whole

31:57

different way, you're deep down, even if

31:59

you don't-

31:59

Know it at that moment, your deep down motivation

32:02

is to confirm what you believe, to continue

32:04

to feel strongly about it, and to talk

32:06

about how right I am, and how wrong and bad

32:09

those other people are who disagree with me, you're

32:12

gonna behave in a way that serves that motivation.

32:14

So that's confirmation bias, and cherry

32:16

picking evidence that fits in all these cognitive

32:19

fallacies that come up, and these biases,

32:21

those are all ways that your

32:23

brain can make sure you continue

32:26

to believe the things that you believe in the face

32:28

of information that might be compelling,

32:31

that says you're wrong, doesn't matter, you'll become a brick

32:34

wall when it comes to those

32:36

beliefs. And we all do this, and

32:38

it's good to note, when I'm, you know, if you can't, the

32:41

good litmus test is,

32:43

if you believe something really strongly,

32:46

ask yourself, is there anything

32:48

someone could present me right now? Is there, in this argument,

32:50

is there anything this person could say that would

32:52

make me say, you know what, I think I'm wrong, I need

32:54

to rethink that. And if the answer is no, of course

32:56

not. Every time they're talking, I'm just waiting, so I can, then

32:59

you know you're down in the low rungs. And

33:02

that's okay, we all do it, but it's like, it's a reminder.

33:05

Calm down,

33:06

remember that you and your ideas are not the same,

33:08

be humble, accept that you might be wrong, and like, listen,

33:11

and maybe you'll learn something, and remember, truth

33:13

matters more than being right. You have to continually

33:16

remind yourself of this. Why does truth matter?

33:19

Because

33:21

when we have

33:23

a more accurate picture of the world,

33:26

we can do more for the world. When we have

33:28

a more accurate picture of reality, we live

33:30

better lives, we end up with fewer regrets.

33:33

When you're, also, when you're thinking that way, you

33:35

tend not to be in a tribal mindset, you

33:38

feel love for all humans, you

33:40

don't feel this weird

33:42

difference in empathy between the us group and the them

33:44

group. You're your best self when you're

33:47

in that mode, when you're, you

33:49

know, if you're seeking truth, and you're remembering

33:51

the truth is hard, it's gonna bring this humility in, and

33:54

you're gonna end up with a clearer

33:56

view of the world, but you're also gonna learn a lot more.

33:58

Think of, what is learning?

33:59

Learning is getting your

34:01

perception closer to reality,

34:03

right? And so you're going to do

34:05

that and you're gonna learn. And so you're gonna end up,

34:08

you're gonna end up knowing a lot more, you can make better decisions,

34:11

you're gonna end up with more wisdom down the road, you

34:13

can be, you can, you're, I think, morally

34:15

kind of a better person, you know, you're,

34:18

and yeah, and the

34:20

alternative is delusion.

34:22

Delusion that feels good in the moment, just like eating

34:25

Skittles feels good in the moment, but

34:27

actually makes you, you're

34:31

not in touch with reality. And I think

34:35

over the long run, I don't think that's

34:37

good for, I

34:38

mean, you know, maybe you could argue that some

34:40

people are happy not knowing the truth and

34:42

maybe it's better that way, but I don't think

34:44

most people would say that about themselves. And if someone

34:46

wants to say, you know what, I don't want to know the truth, then okay, you

34:48

know, I would say then, but I think, you know,

34:51

99 out of 100 people would say, I want the

34:53

truth and I know the truth and they think they know the truth. So it's

34:55

not that they actively are saying, I don't care

34:57

about the truth.

34:58

You sure about that? So this,

35:01

I've even heard you talk about this. So I

35:03

guess one, let me acknowledge the

35:05

only part of your answer that surprised

35:07

me was the moral thing. So I'll follow up on that

35:10

in a minute. But

35:12

I think you're bang on, especially

35:14

with the idea of identity, people end up getting

35:17

tied up in that. But

35:18

I've heard you say that when

35:21

it comes to being right, when

35:24

it comes to people trying

35:26

to get to the truth that some people are

35:29

saying, no, no, no, like truth is just a power

35:31

game. And even this

35:33

idea that there is something right or something

35:36

better than another thing is just a

35:38

structure in

35:40

essence of oppression.

35:42

So when you said

35:44

that I think everybody wants the truth, is

35:47

that true? Well, you're talking about,

35:49

I was probably referring to a very specific ideology,

35:52

kind of this postmodern line of thought, which says

35:54

there is no such thing as objective truth.

35:57

And that everyone has their truth.

36:00

So that's a very specific

36:02

kind of very kind of far left

36:05

kind of radical line of thought, which

36:07

I think is actually. Do you think this is, sorry finish that because

36:09

that sounds very interesting. Oh, I was saying, I

36:11

think it's

36:12

perfectly interesting. The concept that, you

36:15

know, when you have, when you live a life as

36:17

person A versus person B, you

36:21

have total different subjective experiences.

36:23

Yeah. I think that's

36:25

interesting.

36:26

Interesting. But I

36:29

fully believe in an objective truth. It doesn't

36:31

mean there's, just because there's subjective experience, doesn't

36:34

mean there's not also objective

36:36

truth. It doesn't mean that we're always good at finding it, but the whole

36:39

birth of

36:40

the scientific method, right? What is

36:43

science is it's just a, it's a

36:45

process that anyone in the world, from

36:47

any country, any language, any age, any

36:49

religion or race can participate in

36:51

together. It's this giant global project

36:55

that is just a method.

36:57

It's a way of thinking and it's a method for

36:59

getting closer to the objective truth. So

37:03

I'm not a postmodernist. So I

37:06

know that some people, so as far as whether

37:08

they'd say we don't care about truth, I don't think that's

37:10

what they think. They think that each

37:12

person kind of has their own truth. But

37:15

doesn't that mean by definition that there is no

37:17

objective truth? And we're getting now to where I

37:19

think this starts to derange. And again,

37:22

for anybody listening, I just want to remind you, I worry

37:24

about this going off the rails, totalitarianism,

37:28

genocide, like it gets scary fast. Just

37:30

I'll re point out the three books I mentioned

37:32

at the top, like humans

37:33

have a long history of killing a lot

37:35

of people in the name of ideology. So

37:38

this really feels like

37:39

it's important to get right. It

37:42

does seem like by definition, people

37:44

that say that there is no objective

37:46

truth and that's just a big part of the power

37:49

game that

37:50

they are actively rejecting that idea. It's

37:54

yeah, and I think they're wrong. I think that they,

37:57

but they're not saying we want to be delusional. They're saying.

37:59

that, you know, in

38:02

this case when you're talking about, you know, kind

38:04

of the woke movement, what they're saying is that

38:07

privileged people don't

38:09

have access to the full truth, but oppressed

38:11

people do. Because oppressed

38:14

people know the dominant narrative, which is the privileged

38:16

narrative, because everyone knows that, but

38:18

they also know the oppressed

38:20

experience, which only they have

38:23

access to. To me, this is, that's,

38:25

it doesn't, that's not true. I think that

38:28

if you, of course, oppressed people have access to information

38:30

that, but everyone is an individual and everyone has a

38:32

ton of access to specific life experiences

38:34

and this kind of binary people with that

38:36

skin color don't have the full truth, but people, that

38:39

to me is just, it's not, it's rigid

38:41

and childish kind of. What

38:43

do they mean when they say truth? That

38:45

I, I actually don't understand. And

38:47

you threw out a definition

38:50

earlier that I think is pretty close to

38:52

mine, but before I

38:54

offer mine, what,

38:56

when people say the truth, what do

38:58

they, when postmodernists say the truth,

39:00

what do they mean?

39:02

Well, I would say,

39:04

I don't want to speak for people who I, I'm

39:06

not one of them, so I'll do the best I can, but

39:08

you know, there's this thing called standpoint theory, right?

39:11

Which is the idea that I was

39:14

just kind of referring to, which is that people

39:17

are positioned in the matrix of oppression

39:19

and that there's a kind of a current going

39:22

on, like we're all in a river together and that's

39:24

the dominant narrative

39:26

and that's the, that's kind of the forces of

39:28

oppression and people who are,

39:30

who benefit from that, which they would say in, in, you

39:32

know, in other Marxist places they might say

39:34

they're the ruling class.

39:37

In the US, in

39:39

today's kind of vote movement they would say the straight

39:42

white men. They are always

39:44

swimming with the current and

39:46

so everyone knows what

39:48

the current is like because we're all stuck in

39:51

it, but they don't have any

39:53

idea of what it's like to go against the current and

39:55

so people who are not

39:59

straight white men,

40:00

they have a totally different experience

40:02

of reality. They actually have

40:05

more information. And what they say

40:07

counts more because they actually have access

40:09

to it. What they say about what?

40:11

What they say about their

40:14

worldview.

40:15

It doesn't, so you know, to me

40:18

what this actually is is a way that when there's a

40:20

statistic or a set of data or an argument

40:22

that comes out that disagrees with this ideology,

40:25

to me it's a convenient way to

40:27

say

40:28

that's all a part of the dominant narrative. In fact,

40:30

science itself, the scientific method, was

40:32

invented by white men, which by the way is not true.

40:34

It's like, that's part of my, you know, it's like,

40:37

it's such a, it gives no credence to

40:39

cultures all around the world who created

40:43

the scientific method together and have,

40:45

you know, they get all this credit

40:48

for something like science to white

40:50

Western men by saying that

40:52

this is a tool created by white

40:54

Western men to entrench

40:57

kind of their own power. And

41:00

again, I'm saying what I, I'm trying

41:02

to steal, man, what I think they would say. I

41:04

completely disagree with this entirely.

41:06

I think that science is not,

41:08

does not have a color or I think

41:10

science is a way of thinking

41:13

and it is the best known method in my

41:15

view of finding the truth of getting

41:17

closer to it. Now you can ask what is truth? It's just that

41:19

there is,

41:21

the

41:24

fact that there is also subjective experience,

41:26

which each person kind of has their own, that

41:29

doesn't mean there's, to me that's part of objective

41:31

truth. Objective truth is just reality.

41:35

So,

41:35

you know, the earth is weighs

41:38

this many kilograms and

41:41

the gravity here is this strong and it's going

41:43

around the sun and it's been doing that for this long

41:46

and humans evolved this way and

41:49

we are now, our brain works this way

41:51

because of it. These are really hard questions but

41:53

to me there is an answer here. It's just that humans

41:56

takes a long time for us to get closer to it. Some of the

41:58

things like the di-

41:59

diameter of the earth, we got that one. For a long

42:02

time, they had no idea and there were different theories.

42:04

Now we know it. It's a clear answer, we have

42:06

the answer. We know the mass of the earth. We

42:08

understand some of how gravity works,

42:11

but when it comes to evolution and

42:13

why, where our memories are

42:15

in our brains, and we don't know, but

42:17

it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It

42:20

does exist. So to me, I think, look,

42:23

if you go to, you talk about Mao,

42:25

one of the things that in the Maoist revolutions, they

42:28

were very hostile, the radicals, to science,

42:29

to they would say, the

42:33

intellectuals and the scientists, they are a

42:35

part of our oppression, right? To me, you

42:38

show me a movement that is

42:40

hostile to science and the notion of objective

42:42

truth that is also humane and productive

42:45

over the long period of time, and I will

42:48

be surprised because I've never seen one. To me, when

42:51

a movement is hostile to the idea of objective

42:53

truth and science, and

42:55

almost always goes along with the good

42:58

people, the good oppressed people and the bad

43:01

privileged people, right, or whatever,

43:03

maybe it's the other way around. Maybe it's like Hitler, it's

43:05

the good upper inner people and the bad outsider

43:07

scum, whatever it is. Anytime someone's

43:10

doing this moral dualism and they're anti-science,

43:12

to me, that is just human primitive

43:14

minds have ganged up together

43:17

into kind of a religious movement that is

43:19

masked in a certain kind of righteous politics,

43:22

and that it's actually almost always gonna lead to

43:26

really, really bad things, destruction

43:28

and suffering, and it almost never ends up

43:30

serving the people. The movement supposedly is supposed to,

43:33

the Nazis were supposed to serve the patriotic

43:36

German, and the Maoists were supposed to serve

43:39

the people, right, and give

43:41

people a better life, and what movement

43:44

is supposed to serve, black Americans and women,

43:46

and to me, in all these cases, I feel like those are some

43:48

of the people that are hurt most by these movements, so

43:51

yeah. Dude, so

43:54

this is really, really important.

43:59

So I'm gonna...

43:59

define what I think truth is

44:02

and then answer why I think

44:05

you, if you want to be a good totalitarian

44:08

top-down movement, you have to find

44:11

a way to bury science. So

44:14

the truth is,

44:16

from where I'm sitting,

44:18

the human mind is a prediction machine and

44:20

the truth is the thing that

44:22

as you get closer to it allows you to better predict the

44:24

outcome of your behaviors. So take

44:29

Newtonian physics. So Newtonian

44:31

physics got us a lot closer to the truth

44:33

and we were able to realize, oh wait, the

44:35

earth is revolving around the sun, this is roughly

44:37

how gravity works, we were able to predict the motion

44:40

of large bodies. Very, very

44:42

helpful. And I think we could land on the

44:45

moon without Einsteinian physics.

44:47

I'm almost certain that's

44:48

true. So it's like, hey, pretty impressive.

44:51

But then without

44:53

general relativity and special relativity,

44:55

we would not be able to do things like GPS.

44:58

We certainly wouldn't be able to do nuclear physics.

45:01

And so as we got closer to the truth there, we were

45:03

able to unleash the power of the atom. And

45:05

so it's like, hey, we got closer to that. We're

45:07

better able to predict the outcome of our behaviors

45:10

and thusly unleash tremendous

45:13

power, tremendous progress. And so

45:15

truth in that sense becomes

45:18

very useful.

45:20

So even when you think about things

45:22

like the social

45:25

sciences, okay, you make a prediction,

45:27

we're going to put in this,

45:30

this new law, whatever, and we expect

45:33

X outcome. Now, if we get a different

45:36

outcome than that, then there was something flawed in

45:38

our thinking. We were farther from the truth than we thought

45:40

we were. But if we're willing to look at the results,

45:42

we can actually get closer to the truth, we

45:44

can structure something even better. And now next time

45:46

when we run a new experiment, it's going to be hopefully

45:49

getting us closer to the result that we wanted.

45:52

So

45:52

the reason that I think that in a

45:55

totalitarian movement,

45:58

which I will say that there are some, I think, that there are some,

45:59

or shades of that, any time

46:02

where you don't allow a dissenting voice,

46:04

you're headed down the path of totalitarianism. And

46:06

I see that very much with woke thinking. So

46:09

the reason that you would have to

46:11

eschew science or anything

46:14

else is you

46:15

need a narrative to

46:17

give people the certainty

46:20

to move forward and to take action. The

46:23

problem with science, that pesky

46:25

pesky thing, is it tells you

46:27

whether you're close to the truth or not because you

46:29

can accurately predict the outcome

46:32

of your behaviors. So if you're telling people, hey,

46:34

here's the narrative, do these things and life will

46:36

be better for everybody. And then you do those

46:38

things and life isn't better for people or

46:40

it isn't better for the people that you said it was going to be better

46:42

for, it breaks the narrative.

46:45

Yeah, so now it's like, oh,

46:47

the very thing that I'm using to intoxicate

46:50

people with certainty falls apart under

46:52

the scrutiny of reality. But

46:55

if I can say, oh, that

46:58

test that you're gonna use to see

47:00

if this

47:01

was effective or not, that is so

47:03

flawed. You can't even do that, shaming

47:05

you for even bringing it up and

47:07

that's bad, racist, whatever.

47:10

Now you can keep the narrative intact. Now

47:12

you can maintain power. And that's

47:15

where this starts to break down for me. I cannot,

47:18

until I started reading Nietzsche

47:22

and the idea

47:24

of the will to power, I could not

47:26

understand why people would want

47:28

a worldview that was obviously

47:31

broken. Like what are you getting out of it?

47:33

You're not making progress, you're not getting

47:35

anything better. Like I like refrigerators

47:37

and air conditioning and the internet,

47:40

like these are amazing things and

47:43

none of them are possible when you start saying,

47:45

no, no, no, two plus two isn't really four. Like

47:47

what is happening? Yeah,

47:49

I think of it as,

47:53

why do people do what they do? Because

47:56

they have a worldview where they

47:58

believe that. The rewards

48:00

are here and the penalties are here and this

48:02

is what's good and this is what bad people

48:04

do and bad people do and I wanna be good. And

48:07

so then behavior gets driven,

48:09

right? They shake the same human nature and

48:11

you give it a. Do you think

48:13

that's where it starts? That doesn't feel like

48:15

the first moment. That feels like how you

48:18

get the second person into this, but

48:20

it doesn't feel like the first person. Well, no, but

48:22

yes, but that's what I'm saying is if you

48:25

can author the story that people believe, you're

48:28

all powerful, you can play God. If

48:31

I can convince a

48:33

ton of people that I speak

48:35

to God, so

48:38

I know, no one else, but

48:41

I know what's gonna get you into heaven, which is the ultimate

48:44

primal incentive.

48:46

And by the way, you might have a lot of sex with virgins

48:48

there,

48:50

which is another huge primal incentive and everything

48:52

you could ever want and eternal life and everything

48:54

you're primarily scared of, heaven solves it.

48:57

I know how to get you there. And by the way, I also know

48:59

what's gonna get you sent to hell.

49:02

And now, if they

49:04

can believe that, that I

49:06

know, I had the answer, now I can start saying, okay,

49:10

here's what gets you into heaven,

49:12

all the things that I want you to do. And you can drive

49:15

the populace like a remote control car. And

49:18

so if you take

49:20

any kind of tyrant,

49:21

they're always doing some version of that where they

49:23

have a story. And if they can

49:26

make that the story people believe, look at North Korea,

49:28

right? I went to North Korea for five days. And 2013.

49:32

Why?

49:34

It's fascinating. Am I not afraid?

49:37

No, I was with the, I mean, I probably should have been more afraid

49:39

given that now they've started arresting some of the people

49:41

on this same tour guide. No, thanks. But

49:45

it was so interesting, because what I was immersed

49:47

in for five days was the

49:49

North Korean story. And it goes like

49:52

this. The Korean War, which we think

49:54

of as something that was from 1950 to 1953 and is over.

49:59

And in South Korea, I think they would say the same

50:02

thing that happened and now we're

50:04

the 15th biggest economy, you know,

50:06

one of the big boys in the world.

50:08

In North Korea, the story is that that

50:10

war is ongoing, still going, that

50:13

the South, the poor are poor cousins

50:15

in the South. They don't hate South Koreans. Our

50:17

poor cousins down there are being occupied

50:20

currently by the evil imperialist Americans.

50:22

They use that term a lot of times, the imperialist Americans.

50:26

They are occupying

50:29

half our country and the South

50:31

wishes they could be free.

50:33

And the only reason that we're free is because

50:36

our great leaders, our brave leaders in

50:38

our military, are so powerful

50:40

that the US can't get here. They want to take

50:42

over here too, but they can't and they're scared

50:44

of us. And that's why we get to

50:46

be free people. And the people down

50:49

in the South, they're not free.

50:50

That is a story that is very

50:53

far from the truth. So what happened? What was, what

50:55

we told, you know, we were told

50:57

before we went in,

50:58

I had nothing to envy, which is a book about, you know, a

51:00

North Korean defector. You cannot

51:02

bring that into the country, they said. And the, they

51:04

were saying the worst thing you could ever bring was like a

51:06

radio that had South Korean stations.

51:09

Because if people

51:11

there knew that Seoul was not an

51:13

oppressed place, but actually a thriving

51:16

metropolis with people who

51:18

are well fed and free

51:21

and living their best lives,

51:24

it would be a disaster, right? And

51:26

so they have this story and

51:29

some people believe it in the country, a lot of people do. And

51:31

the people who don't know to keep quiet.

51:33

And so if you can control speech,

51:35

you can control what people believe. And if you control what people

51:38

believe, you can keep them acting the way

51:40

you want, which is subservient to the dear leaders and

51:42

worshiping the leaders and being conforming

51:45

to all of that. If, so you

51:47

are incredibly hostile to truth because you want to

51:50

empower people and

51:52

you want to basically have people like Marianettes and

51:55

doing what you want. And so you can't, the

51:57

truth would never work if that were the, so.

51:59

So every single measure in that country

52:02

is, of course there's no internet, right? There's so, so,

52:04

so much effort put towards

52:07

suppressing the truth. And that's always the case

52:09

because if you can, if you can write the story,

52:11

the people believe you drive their behavior, if you stop

52:14

being able to do that, you can. Now, if that's,

52:16

now what science is, the reason science

52:18

is great is because what science says is, put away all

52:20

the stories. We're, there's

52:23

a, there isn't a big story, a real story

52:25

called objective truth. And we don't, we

52:27

don't claim to know it. Science never has even, science

52:29

has theories. They max out theory, because they

52:31

say science is skeptical of its own conclusions.

52:34

And it assumes, you know, no scientist

52:36

said, oh my God, science is broken because Newton's

52:38

laws weren't the complete thing. They say, great, right?

52:41

Science says, yes, let's be less wrong

52:43

every year. Let's be a little less wrong. So science

52:45

is saying there is a, there is a story that's real. And

52:47

we're just working together humbly,

52:50

collaboratively, on trying to get closer

52:52

to it, which is so different. So again,

52:54

and when something's hostile to science, they're almost always hostile

52:56

to free speech as well. And they almost always

52:59

are the kind of people that can't stand up in a real debate.

53:01

They don't actually have real, the actual, you know, evidence

53:03

on their side. So if you can't hang in a debate,

53:06

what you do is you say debate is evil. And these are

53:08

dangerous ideas that cannot be platformed.

53:10

And if you platform them, we're going to punish you because

53:12

you're allowing

53:13

dangerous harmful ideas to spread, which

53:15

is harming marginalized people, right? It's

53:17

just the oldest trick in the book. There's a hundred versions of

53:19

this, and it's always the same thing. It's just authoritarianism

53:24

for the sake of controlling people. Yeah. Okay.

53:26

So we still have the will

53:28

to power sort of hanging out there, but

53:30

for a second, I want to go back to identity.

53:34

This idea that people end up tying their

53:36

identity to a set of ideas. And when

53:39

that gets attacked, the regions of the brain light

53:41

up that have to do with, whoa, you're attacking

53:43

me. It seems

53:46

to me that the only way out of this trap,

53:49

and that you can literally draw a line

53:51

in the sand in my life of before this realization

53:53

and

53:54

after. So I used to value myself for being

53:56

smart. That was leading me down very weird paths,

53:58

because I would say I'm sort of...

53:59

I'm fine, I can get by, but I'm not going to be celebrated

54:05

necessarily for one of the great intellects

54:07

of all time. And

54:10

so I realized that by valuing

54:12

myself for being smart, anything

54:15

that attacked that notion was just, I could

54:17

not have it. And

54:19

so I had to switch what I built my

54:22

identity around to being that

54:24

of the learner.

54:25

And once I switched my identity to,

54:28

oh, I don't mind being told that I'm wrong.

54:30

Oh, I don't mind realizing that I don't have the right answer.

54:32

Oh, I don't mind, whatever. Just like, hey, if

54:35

it's true, meaning it, if I

54:38

act as if that thing is true, I can better predict

54:40

the outcome of my behaviors, I'm going to adopt

54:42

that. And so it became about building

54:44

my ego around my willingness to

54:46

stare nakedly at my inadequacies. And

54:49

so that

54:50

like just radically changed

54:52

my life. I don't see another way

54:54

out of this. I think everybody, like

54:56

if you want to make your life better, that's the only

54:59

answer. The only answer, like

55:01

you need an ego, you need self-esteem, you need

55:03

to feel good about who you are, you need a sense of identity,

55:05

you need to be able to say who you are and like what

55:08

value system you live by.

55:10

Is there another way or is that the

55:13

one? Well,

55:17

what you're really talking about is you're

55:20

taking a backpack that is heavy

55:23

with rock size,

55:26

with rocks that are these

55:31

description of your identity

55:34

and these characteristics you pride

55:36

yourself on and the things

55:39

you feel certain about and that you need to make

55:41

sure everyone knows you're so smart about. And

55:44

all these labels you put on yourself, right? Those are

55:46

all rocks that weigh down the backpack, it's heavy.

55:49

What you're talking about is the magical

55:51

hack of putting down the backpack and saying,

55:54

actually I'm just

55:56

a learner, like you said, or some humble thing, I'm just

55:58

an individual.

55:59

who's complicated, who evolves,

56:02

and I'm just that awareness inside of the individual, and

56:05

I'm gonna try to get less wrong throughout my life, and

56:08

I'm gonna be wrong a lot though, and I'm gonna evolve, and

56:10

I might be into this kind of stuff this

56:13

year, and then I'll change my mind next year, and

56:16

I'm

56:17

not part of any tribe or group

56:19

necessarily, unless it's in kind of a fun

56:21

way where I'm not taking it very seriously. It's

56:24

liberating, right? And you're light suddenly, and now

56:26

you're free to, you can start skipping around learning

56:29

stuff and exploring stuff and trying things,

56:32

and people will

56:34

also like you more, because you just come off more humble,

56:36

and it makes you seem wiser, and your

56:39

ego is not getting threatened when so

56:41

many different things happen, right? You're not a little petty

56:43

person. So yes, but

56:45

this is very hard, and you

56:47

talked about meaning and identity and purpose

56:49

and connection, and all these things that we need, and

56:52

one of my main problems with movements,

56:54

a lot of certain political movements,

56:57

is the ones that, and this is no different than

57:00

cults and other things, when they tell

57:02

you

57:03

all your answers are here,

57:04

you come and join our thing, and you have meaning, and

57:06

you have purpose, and you have identity, and

57:09

you have righteousness, and you have connection,

57:11

and you have a community, and you know who you

57:13

are now,

57:14

because now you're a blank-ist,

57:16

you know? Whatever it is. And

57:21

when you come here, all of those holes that

57:23

are so painful and so hard to fill, it's

57:25

like a get-rich-quick scheme. Come here,

57:28

and you got it, and you have all

57:30

those things. Just join our army. Of course,

57:33

it's snake oil, it's a trap, because

57:35

those things are hard, and they actually, they

57:38

emerge from deep, unique individualism

57:41

that happens over long periods of time. You

57:44

start to figure out meaning for yourself. You

57:46

start to figure out your purpose and

57:50

what you really care about, and what

57:52

you really believe, right? One of the things these movements

57:54

promise you is a full set

57:55

of ready-to-go, one-stop-shop-for-all-strong

57:58

opinions. Now you know what every political... political issue you

58:00

have, every moral thing, you

58:02

know,

58:03

it's easy now, you have your answer, this is what the good

58:05

people think, this is what the bad people think, memorize the checklist

58:07

and you're good to go, read these core

58:10

op-eds that we all pass around and

58:12

you know how to say all the right arguments. And

58:15

so to me, what those things are doing is they're not

58:17

actually filling any of those holes, they're

58:19

just kind of a sleazy, get-rich-quick scheme

58:22

that lures in vulnerable people, these are

58:24

almost, it's never bad people joining these

58:26

things or believing these things, all

58:28

often these things prey on people's empathy or their desire

58:30

for connection or these human things. But

58:33

to me,

58:33

it's no different than kind

58:35

of an abusive cult in a lot of ways. And

58:39

I think that what the wise thing to teach

58:41

people, especially vulnerable people is, is

58:44

that you feel so bad about yourself for not

58:46

having knowing your meaning and not having strong

58:48

opinions and not knowing what you think about all this. But

58:50

actually, that's

58:51

okay, no one really, most

58:53

people don't know and that's okay and none

58:56

of that is who you are. You're really this internal

58:58

awareness and you're free to be any of these things.

59:00

That's what I would wanna tell people as opposed to saying,

59:03

you know,

59:03

in a certain mentality,

59:06

if you don't have strong opinions on everything, you sound

59:08

like an idiot, right? And I would say, no, no, no, that

59:10

is not correct, right? It's

59:13

that the people who have unearned conviction about everything, they're

59:15

blowhards and they don't actually, you know, their egos

59:17

are just going buck wild. So

59:19

I feel like it's the exact opposite advice and I feel like somewhere

59:22

along the way, you got a

59:24

much better message or you learned a much better

59:26

message and I can say it's

59:28

better because it's just, I think

59:30

it's more realistic and it is,

59:32

as I said, it's liberating.

59:35

Yeah, it's interesting. For me, it was

59:38

getting kicked in the face by

59:41

some things I did worked and other things I

59:44

didn't, and I realized that

59:46

I was arguing for ideas that made me feel

59:48

the way I wanted to feel, but I knew

59:50

that they weren't going to work in a business

59:53

context. And I don't know if without

59:55

the marketplace saying, hey,

59:58

we actually will buy this, pay money

1:00:00

for this thing, we're not gonna pay money for that thing. If

1:00:03

I didn't have that just brutal objective

1:00:05

clarity of, ooh, one course of action,

1:00:08

I go out of business, the other course of action, I

1:00:10

thrive, is very sobering.

1:00:13

And that forced me to realize,

1:00:15

okay, if I argue

1:00:18

for this idea because it makes me feel smart, or you're gonna

1:00:20

think I'm smart if I can convince you, but

1:00:23

the market won't be swayed, I don't know if I ever

1:00:25

would have gotten there. And so I see, I mean,

1:00:28

this goes back to something I already said, but I see really

1:00:30

well-intentioned people get lost

1:00:33

in the sequence of

1:00:35

every answer is gonna be nuanced. Nuance

1:00:38

is very hard if you can't talk out loud. If

1:00:40

there are certain ideas that are just off the

1:00:42

table and you're not allowed to have them, then you're not

1:00:44

going to talk out loud, which means that you're never gonna

1:00:46

go from wrong to right. And so you're just

1:00:49

gonna run down the checklist of I

1:00:51

wanna please my tribe and fit

1:00:53

in and not be ostracized, which is leveraging

1:00:55

the primitive mind against me. And this

1:00:57

is where we end up. And

1:01:00

so

1:01:00

I'm really unnerved.

1:01:03

I'm worried about the idea

1:01:05

that you put it in your

1:01:08

book, but you use different words, the

1:01:10

classic being hard

1:01:12

times, make strong men, strong

1:01:14

men make good times, good times

1:01:17

make weak men, weak men make hard

1:01:19

times. And so you go in this

1:01:21

loop

1:01:22

and in the book you say, can we

1:01:24

not just skip the hard times

1:01:26

part? I

1:01:29

worry that we can't. Yeah, and

1:01:31

one that's especially

1:01:32

scary because it's why I reframed it

1:01:34

just because it's

1:01:36

not quite, I

1:01:38

just don't think that

1:01:40

what is a hard man, a weak man

1:01:42

or whatever, sorry, it's strong. To

1:01:44

me, it was like what it really is to me is it's wise

1:01:46

people create good times. Wise meaning

1:01:49

people who see how bad things

1:01:51

can get,

1:01:52

usually because they've experienced it

1:01:54

themselves and they

1:01:57

don't take anything for granted and they work really

1:01:59

hard.

1:01:59

with humility and collaboration to,

1:02:03

because they know how important it is to build

1:02:05

systems that create good times. When

1:02:07

people have lived in good times for a few generations,

1:02:11

they don't find them precious, and

1:02:13

they don't think

1:02:15

they're stars every morning for, oh my God,

1:02:17

I get to wake up in good times. They just think this is how things are.

1:02:19

In fact, actually things suck, and they

1:02:21

start to, you know, you calibrate.

1:02:24

This is no different than a human. A human is X

1:02:26

amount of money, and they just dream of having 10X, and

1:02:28

they get 10X, all of a sudden they have all these complaints

1:02:30

about not having 100X, right? So it's the same thing. You

1:02:32

get good times for too long, you stop appreciating

1:02:35

it, and

1:02:36

instead of all the kids learning civics and saying, well,

1:02:39

could we have to all work together to keep good times? They

1:02:41

say good times are just how things are,

1:02:42

or whatever these times are, this is just how things are,

1:02:45

and they stop teaching kids civics, and people

1:02:47

start doing all the things that actually

1:02:50

create bad times, and loosening

1:02:52

all of this really well thought out

1:02:54

structure starts, all the different support beams start

1:02:56

to weaken, and so that's why I go from, you

1:02:59

know,

1:03:00

wise people create good times, good

1:03:02

times for too long creates foolish people, and

1:03:05

foolish people eventually will drive

1:03:08

you right into bad times, and you know, bad times

1:03:10

is, you know, whatever, civilization will collapse. It's

1:03:12

happened many, many, many times before, or

1:03:15

just some awful, unwise

1:03:17

war, whatever it is, and

1:03:20

then

1:03:20

hundreds of millions

1:03:22

of people die, so

1:03:25

for those people, that's the end of the cycle, but in

1:03:27

the rubble, you know, a

1:03:30

couple decades later,

1:03:31

wise people emerge,

1:03:33

and an excruciating

1:03:35

process that usually the people who experience bad

1:03:37

times aren't even around anymore, their

1:03:39

grandkids can be back in good times, right? So this is

1:03:41

the cycle, and the reason that it's so scary

1:03:44

right now is, you know,

1:03:46

bad times, if you read history,

1:03:48

it's, wow, it's a lot of bad times,

1:03:50

and I just, they'll say things, and I'm like, that

1:03:52

sounds

1:03:53

awful, like, it's terrifying. Like, there's

1:03:55

a lot of actual King Joffrey's out there,

1:03:58

and like, slavery, like.

1:04:00

rampant slavery all over the place

1:04:02

for thousands of years. And it's like, imagine how awful

1:04:04

that is. And like, rape and just complete

1:04:08

massive injustice and

1:04:10

crushing poverty, right? And so you

1:04:12

think about how awful this is, but in some ways,

1:04:14

what's weird is that the 20th century was the best

1:04:16

yet in so many metrics. You

1:04:19

have the best GDP per capita, life

1:04:21

expectancy, it just skyrockets around

1:04:23

the world. Medical technology, extreme

1:04:27

poverty is at its lowest ever. And

1:04:30

so you have this incredible prosperity in

1:04:33

that same century,

1:04:35

when things did go badly, they went really

1:04:37

badly. You had the biggest genocides

1:04:39

ever. You had the biggest wars ever.

1:04:42

You had suddenly a new thing, which is complete

1:04:45

existential threats, existential risks

1:04:47

like nukes, right? You didn't have

1:04:49

an existential threat in the 1700s. There was

1:04:51

nothing that might have killed all of humanity that we

1:04:53

made, that we did with our own foolishness, right?

1:04:56

You just didn't have that much power as a species. So

1:04:58

suddenly in the 20th century, we're developing these giant

1:05:00

magic wands that we can suddenly shoot at things and

1:05:02

we might just kill ourselves. So the

1:05:04

20th century was the

1:05:05

best ever, and also in some ways the

1:05:07

most vulnerable and scariest ever with the biggest

1:05:10

tragedies. So now apply that to

1:05:12

the next century. It's just even more,

1:05:14

we're gonna have even better prosperity. Life expectancy

1:05:17

is continuing to go up. You're gonna completely

1:05:19

eradicate disease and poverty.

1:05:21

And it's gonna be amazing. Genuinely amazing,

1:05:24

except if this goes wrong, when

1:05:26

things go bad, when if we sink to

1:05:28

bad times on that merry-go-round in the 21st

1:05:30

century, you know, with

1:05:33

all the power we have and all the many different

1:05:35

kinds of existential risks we have, nukes is

1:05:37

just one of them now.

1:05:39

It could be the worst ever. We should be

1:05:42

really scared. The stakes get higher as tech

1:05:44

gets more exponential. The

1:05:46

good times get better, but the bad times get worse. And right now,

1:05:49

since we're just living in objectively pretty

1:05:51

overall good times,

1:05:53

people are not scared enough of

1:05:55

bad times. They just take it for granted. It's just human

1:05:57

nature. I do it as soon as I finish this conversation.

1:05:59

I'll go back on with my life and stop feeling scared

1:06:02

because we just, I grew up this way

1:06:04

and my parents grew up this way. And like, we

1:06:06

just, we have good life and that life is good and everything

1:06:08

ends up fine. And that's wrong. We should not be

1:06:10

thinking that way. We should be scared and we should be working

1:06:12

really hard to teach kids civics and to say,

1:06:15

you know, how can we be wise together and uphold

1:06:17

this kind of liberal democracy?

1:06:19

So what are the things

1:06:22

that lead to bad times? Can

1:06:25

they be described? Like I would

1:06:27

say the second you talk about

1:06:29

ending freedom of speech, you're on a one

1:06:31

way street to bad times. So

1:06:34

what make bad times? And then we'll get to what make good

1:06:37

times. Yeah, well, this,

1:06:40

you know, the enlightenment was- Can

1:06:42

you define them what the enlightenment was? Yeah, exactly.

1:06:45

And the enlightenment was a period

1:06:48

of intense, I mean, it's funny because people,

1:06:49

one of the theories is that, that

1:06:53

coffee, coffee shops started sprouting

1:06:55

up and all these smart people who would normally

1:06:58

have been in saloons singing songs and

1:07:00

punching each other and playing games were

1:07:03

suddenly in coffee shops, dead sober,

1:07:05

caffeinated and debating. And

1:07:07

then they were going to write books about their debates. And there

1:07:10

was, you know, and so it was actually like

1:07:12

a time when all of this philosophy blossomed

1:07:15

and people would going back to Greek

1:07:17

philosophy and saying, what have we learned? And what's

1:07:19

the, you know, this has been so much trial and

1:07:21

error with Christianity and with democracy

1:07:23

and all these things that had gone on. So what did we learn?

1:07:25

What, you know, how should people live? It's

1:07:28

kind of the latest crack that at least

1:07:30

the Western world came up with on

1:07:34

what's right and wrong for how people should live. What's the

1:07:36

most effective and practical but also the moral

1:07:38

way that governments should, you

1:07:41

know, how governments should work.

1:07:43

And so the, and then the

1:07:45

application of that was, you know, the US was kind

1:07:47

of the first one. And now of course, hundreds

1:07:50

of, you know,

1:07:51

over a hundred countries have

1:07:53

now put that into practice, which is building

1:07:55

actual countries based

1:07:58

on that philosophy. So it was a lot of talk.

1:07:59

And suddenly it was being put into use. And the US

1:08:02

had a unique opportunity because they

1:08:05

didn't have the baggage. It was a blank slate. They could say, we

1:08:07

can start from scratch. It was much harder to do that in Europe

1:08:09

and other places. And so

1:08:13

there were things like free speech, which

1:08:15

was one of the major insights of this, which

1:08:17

is that free speech

1:08:20

is basically the foundational right on

1:08:22

which every other right is based. Now, if you think about what's

1:08:24

the alternative to free speech, it's always the same.

1:08:27

The people with the most power, whether it's cultural

1:08:29

or government or physical, violence,

1:08:33

the people with the most power

1:08:35

decide what's offensive,

1:08:38

what's OK to say, what's not.

1:08:39

And almost always, if it's a king,

1:08:42

there's a lot of dictators out

1:08:44

there right now who are imposing censorship.

1:08:46

And none of them are saying, I impose censorship.

1:08:49

They're saying, I'm against hate speech.

1:08:51

I'm against,

1:08:55

we are against blasphemy. Everyone

1:08:58

frames it nicely. But what do you think then hate

1:09:01

speech and blasphemy are a part of what leads to

1:09:03

good times?

1:09:05

Well, I think free

1:09:08

speech is what leads to good times. And 100

1:09:12

people have defined hate speech and blasphemy 100 different

1:09:14

ways. I think things

1:09:17

being said in a free speech environment, which

1:09:19

some people will find to be hateful or blasphemic,

1:09:23

is inevitable.

1:09:24

So the alternative is you say,

1:09:26

OK, actually, hate speech is banned. Again, 100 people

1:09:29

have 100 different definitions of hate speech. So

1:09:31

what's actually banned? It's that the powerful

1:09:33

people determine to be hate speech. In the case

1:09:35

of a dictator, it almost always happens

1:09:38

to be criticism of the government,

1:09:40

non-patriotic speech. Or if it's

1:09:42

a religious dictatorship, blasphemy

1:09:46

against God or whatever, it

1:09:48

is almost always, if

1:09:51

the alternative to free speech sucks in a lot

1:09:53

of ways, you're going to have a lot of shitty people saying shitty

1:09:55

things. And some of those things are going to hurt

1:09:57

when they're said. And some of those things are going to cause harm.

1:09:59

But the alternative is

1:10:02

authoritarianism because someone has

1:10:04

to lay down the law of what constitutes hate

1:10:06

speech and it's always the powerful people deciding

1:10:08

what is inconvenient to their goals

1:10:11

is what this becomes not allowed. So it's

1:10:13

when you think about it that way you realize that free speech is the

1:10:15

only thing that you can have or otherwise you're just

1:10:17

back in your back in tyranny. And

1:10:20

so then another huge one, of course, was the voting

1:10:22

system. And it's been democracy forever, but

1:10:25

specific

1:10:26

modern version of this very complex big country,

1:10:28

you know, republic democracy.

1:10:32

That is an insight that is a built

1:10:34

on centuries of trial and error experiments

1:10:37

still. And

1:10:40

it's incredibly flawed. Right. And who

1:10:42

thinks the U.S. government system is great?

1:10:44

I mean, it's awful in so many ways and it

1:10:47

often doesn't represent the will of the people and

1:10:49

it's open to corruption and it's like everything else. But

1:10:52

what's the alternative? I mean, it's

1:10:54

you just have to always think like this is the

1:10:57

kind of the theme with enlightenment governments

1:10:59

is it's the less it's the least

1:11:01

bad

1:11:02

outcome. So what's a threat to

1:11:04

this? What creates bad times? If I consider

1:11:06

the liberalism like a house that we live

1:11:08

in, lower lowercase L

1:11:11

liberalism, right? Like enlightenment style,

1:11:13

like classic liberalism. I

1:11:15

consider it a house that we all in the U.S. are

1:11:17

living inside of. Whether you're

1:11:20

left, right or center politically, we are

1:11:22

all

1:11:23

in the liberal house living

1:11:26

under its rules and benefiting from its

1:11:28

benefits. And and

1:11:31

it has just values the individual. And

1:11:33

it says that, you know, everyone is life,

1:11:36

liberty and property or pursuit of happiness

1:11:39

and that equality of opportunity is at least the goal.

1:11:41

You know, of course, we can argue about how well it's being achieved,

1:11:44

but it's kind of it's a set of ideas

1:11:46

that most Americans left, right and center say, yeah,

1:11:48

well, that's good. We just need to achieve it better. So

1:11:52

to me,

1:11:52

that house is one of the main things

1:11:55

that creates good times and that has that has created

1:11:57

modern good times. It is we can always we can.

1:11:59

We owe our good times to that house. That house

1:12:02

has kept people,

1:12:03

most of the time, most people

1:12:05

reasonably free, has engendered

1:12:08

prosperity,

1:12:09

and has, again, fostered

1:12:12

at least the best crack at fairness that

1:12:14

probably we've seen. Of course, there's

1:12:16

been lots of unfair things. Jim Crow, I mean, we failed

1:12:19

at the liberal house a few times, but the

1:12:21

liberal house itself is mostly

1:12:23

made good times. Now, what

1:12:26

creates bad times is

1:12:28

the house, the support beams starting to

1:12:31

decay and crack, right?

1:12:33

And so an example of that, this is why,

1:12:35

I mean, we talk a lot about, you know, wokeness, but the

1:12:38

MAGA movement, I mean, what

1:12:41

I see with Trump, you know, there's

1:12:43

a lot of things you could criticize Trump for, but like the election

1:12:45

stuff is, to

1:12:47

me, if you're thinking about it, this is a liberal house, when

1:12:49

he said before, both people forget, before

1:12:52

the 2016 and 2020 election, before them, he

1:12:55

declared, I will accept the results if I

1:12:57

win.

1:12:59

Then this person wins and then doesn't win.

1:13:02

And when the person doesn't win, literally

1:13:04

tries to say the election is rigged. That is a mind

1:13:06

virus of its own.

1:13:07

Talk about the woke environment. That is a mind virus. It's

1:13:09

a mind virus which says, whenever my candidate

1:13:12

doesn't win, it must be rigged. And

1:13:15

that is a support beam. That

1:13:17

is right there in front of you, the decay of a support beam,

1:13:19

because what is this? What would you call that support beam?

1:13:21

The support beam is, so

1:13:23

it's not just the system of

1:13:26

kind of democratically elected

1:13:28

leaders, because Russia claims to have

1:13:30

that.

1:13:31

It's the widespread

1:13:33

trust that we actually have democratic

1:13:36

leaders. It's trust in the system

1:13:39

so that we all can agree, my candidate

1:13:41

lost,

1:13:42

but it was still correct.

1:13:43

It was still the right thing. That is magic.

1:13:46

And then the peaceful transition of power, where

1:13:48

the losing candidate, Reagan, when he

1:13:50

went out as the winner, but Hillary

1:13:52

when she lost, they're making almost the word for word,

1:13:54

the same speech. They would say, which is what,

1:13:57

you should want kids in America to learn that this

1:13:59

is.

1:13:59

what separates America from so many countries

1:14:02

of the past and so many others today is this moment,

1:14:04

the peaceful transition of power. And when Hillary

1:14:06

lost, she said, I lost. And

1:14:09

I'm stepping down as a proud American

1:14:11

stepping down.

1:14:13

That is the boat that it's kind of an ethos.

1:14:15

It's a religion in a lot of ways. It's an ethos

1:14:17

that when your candidate loses gets

1:14:19

fewer votes, you accept it. And

1:14:22

that is your president. That is

1:14:24

a support beam. And so what Trump is doing is

1:14:26

sending out a mine virus into a huge swath

1:14:29

of America, which says, actually,

1:14:31

the

1:14:32

elect, the numbers say this, but

1:14:34

don't believe it.

1:14:36

And, you know,

1:14:37

corruption happened. So the question, I think the fair question

1:14:40

is, is he is partially right? Is

1:14:42

there so, but he made so many claims

1:14:44

and there's a, you know, I've gone

1:14:46

into every, you know, all the major claims.

1:14:49

And I linked to a page in the book that

1:14:51

I think is really useful, which is just going

1:14:54

through all the claims and showing wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong,

1:14:56

wrong, wrong. So this was not based in some

1:14:58

actual corruption that was happening. This was a mine

1:15:00

virus for selfish reasons. That

1:15:03

is, there's a lot of mine viruses for selfish reasons.

1:15:05

This is one, if you care about the liberal house, you have to be like, this

1:15:08

is the public, that's like the big support beam in the

1:15:10

middle of the house is the trust in free

1:15:12

elections. That is what separates. I mean, look how many countries

1:15:14

struggle with just having a fair election. When you

1:15:17

can't trust that now, you don't believe that's your leader. Now you

1:15:19

know, now there's suddenly, you know, you want insurrection.

1:15:22

Now you shouldn't, we shouldn't even follow the laws of this

1:15:24

government. We shouldn't trust their CDC. We shouldn't, shouldn't trust

1:15:26

their whatever.

1:15:28

And so it's that that's, that's, I'm watching

1:15:31

something decay. And then I think wokeness is another

1:15:33

one that is, to me, that that MAGA

1:15:36

concept and wokeness specifically,

1:15:38

not social justice, because liberal social justice

1:15:41

of Martin Luther King style is very much inside

1:15:43

the house, very proud of the house and saying, we need to make

1:15:45

this house, do what it promised

1:15:48

and support all Americans and actually be fair

1:15:50

and just, that's a proud liberal

1:15:52

saying that inside the house.

1:15:55

Wokeness is very specifically saying that liberalism

1:15:58

itself is bad and exploitative and that

1:15:59

speech is bad, right? That it's dangerous

1:16:02

to platform ideas that we don't like, etc.

1:16:05

And so that's a wrecking ball outside the house.

1:16:08

And the MAGA movement is a wrecking

1:16:10

ball outside the house. And

1:16:12

if you're in the house and you're

1:16:14

squabbling with each other about specific debates

1:16:17

left, right and center, I think you have to pause

1:16:20

and say, well, get back to these, the

1:16:22

wrecking balls, we all need to not

1:16:24

allow the wrecking balls. And if you're on the left, you especially

1:16:27

have to worry about you're in charge of

1:16:29

the woke wrecking ball and making it stop

1:16:31

being so powerful, standing up to it. And if you're

1:16:33

on the right, you're in charge

1:16:35

because someone on the right yelling about wokeness

1:16:38

only makes wokeness seem justified. And someone on the left

1:16:40

yelling about MAGA just makes them seem, you know,

1:16:43

so

1:16:43

it's, it's, the

1:16:45

first question is, are you pro house or anti house? And

1:16:48

I am very much pro house because I believe

1:16:51

that the house is what gives us good times and the decay

1:16:53

of the house is what will lead us to the bad

1:16:55

times that so many people in history have gone through.

1:16:57

And if we had to put a super quick definition

1:17:00

of the house would be liberal values. Liberal

1:17:03

values, liberal laws and liberal. Yeah,

1:17:05

liberal.

1:17:06

It's two things. It's liberal

1:17:08

laws and rules.

1:17:11

So the electoral college and

1:17:13

the First Amendment and

1:17:16

the

1:17:17

justice system, right? The Supreme Court, all of

1:17:19

these, that's, that's, that's one part

1:17:21

half of the puzzle. And the other half is liberal

1:17:23

norms is the, the fervent

1:17:26

kind of almost religious defense of

1:17:29

liberal, the liberal spirit. So if

1:17:32

the government says anyone can

1:17:34

start a business, right,

1:17:35

free market, but you're

1:17:38

part of a cultural group that says anyone

1:17:40

who starts a business is an evil, bad person,

1:17:43

and all your friends are going to start stop talking to

1:17:45

you. And you're going to probably be fired from your job for trying

1:17:47

to start a business. And you're probably

1:17:49

going to be, it's going to be hard for you to ever

1:17:52

make money because everyone's going to think you're an awful person. No one's

1:17:54

going to start a business. So you can have that

1:17:56

law that says free market. But if the culture

1:17:58

is if the cultural

1:17:59

norm is saying business is evil,

1:18:02

you might as well not have free markets. So with free speech,

1:18:06

First Amendment isn't critical, right? You need it,

1:18:08

but if free speech will

1:18:10

get you destroyed socially and professionally, you

1:18:13

don't have free speech. You might as well not have the First Amendment. So

1:18:16

liberal rules and

1:18:18

liberal norms. And the

1:18:21

kind of the thing that glues it all together

1:18:23

is that trust in these core

1:18:25

liberal institutions like the justice

1:18:27

system,

1:18:28

like the financial

1:18:31

system and like

1:18:33

the political system and the

1:18:36

trust that things are fair. And

1:18:38

that's why actual corruption,

1:18:41

when the media actually becomes kind of corrupt,

1:18:43

when a

1:18:46

president is actually corrupt, when

1:18:49

that is so bad because

1:18:51

it really burns that trust. And

1:18:54

then people start violating the norms because well, they're

1:18:56

violating it, whatever. And so we kind of lose

1:18:58

that shared kind of commitment

1:19:01

and without the norms, then the house

1:19:03

is gonna eventually crumble.

1:19:05

Okay,

1:19:08

so now we have a much better understanding

1:19:11

of how the house ends up falling apart.

1:19:13

How do we stop it

1:19:15

before it's stopped

1:19:16

by a rebound born

1:19:21

of just unimaginable amounts of suffering?

1:19:24

So I'm telling a story here, which is

1:19:26

the pro house story, the pro liberalism

1:19:29

story. And if you

1:19:31

look at any polls or just have conversations, most

1:19:34

Americans agree with me on that.

1:19:36

Most again, left, right and center, most Americans are like

1:19:38

liberalism is good and the house is good and

1:19:41

that free speech is good and whatever, most Americans

1:19:43

think this. And

1:19:45

so

1:19:47

picture that's like a story and it is a story about,

1:19:50

it's a story that says liberalism is a good

1:19:52

thing and that we should defend it. And

1:19:55

that story is this big powerful story.

1:19:57

And there's competing stories like

1:19:59

the woke story.

1:19:59

which has liberalism is exploitative and

1:20:02

bad and oppressive and just

1:20:04

a cheap disguise for the same

1:20:07

exact kind of oppression that has always

1:20:09

occurred. And that we need

1:20:12

to be liberated from it, which is a term

1:20:14

that specifically means like, it's revolutionary.

1:20:16

We need to have eventually a

1:20:18

revolution that dissembles

1:20:21

the master's house. And you can't use the master's

1:20:23

tools to dissemble the master's house. No free

1:20:25

speech. You have to actually use repression

1:20:28

to, right? So

1:20:31

that's another story. How do people say that with a straight face? And

1:20:33

by the way, that's okay. That's what's cool about liberalism.

1:20:35

They say, sure, bring it in.

1:20:37

You wanna have a Marxist, write a

1:20:39

Marxist book in our country, bring it. Let's debate

1:20:41

it,

1:20:41

right? You wanna be a far right person, bring

1:20:44

it into the conversation, right? Let's have all

1:20:46

the ideas here. Liberalism is supple and big and

1:20:49

open. And it says, bring it all in and let the best ideas

1:20:51

win. Even criticism of itself. The

1:20:53

West is critical of itself, right? Which is

1:20:55

very, it's unusual. It's self-critical. And that's

1:20:57

one of the things that makes it amazing. It also kind of

1:21:00

puts it in danger in a lot of ways. But so liberalism

1:21:03

says, sure. This is the big pro-liberal

1:21:05

book, the story. I'm picturing it like a big book.

1:21:07

And here's these other competing books. Bring it in, let's all debate

1:21:10

it out. Now,

1:21:11

the liberalism book most people agree with,

1:21:14

and I think it stands on much sounder ground. I think history

1:21:16

backs it up. I think looking at history says

1:21:18

this book has been better. This story has

1:21:21

been correct, has led

1:21:23

to a better world, better good times than the

1:21:25

kind of us versus them Marxist ideas.

1:21:29

All right, so I think it stands up to scrutiny and most

1:21:31

people in the US believe it. So it should have no problem

1:21:33

standing up. And then what the story is that is

1:21:35

the most powerful, that's what's taught to kids. That

1:21:39

maintains the ethos, right?

1:21:41

What's happened in the last decade,

1:21:44

last five years especially, is because

1:21:46

of maybe it's because of social media, maybe it's because of some

1:21:48

other complex factors.

1:21:51

So many of the people that believe the big

1:21:54

liberalism story have

1:21:57

become scared to say it out loud

1:21:59

because.

1:22:00

the the woke story or

1:22:02

in a lot of cases the MAGA story if you're

1:22:04

on the right and

1:22:06

They try to be a Republican

1:22:08

politician right now and say the most basic Reagan

1:22:11

phrase which is that the election was fair and

1:22:13

Biden is the rightful president That's career

1:22:15

suicide in a lot of the parts of

1:22:17

the right So right now you've got these

1:22:19

wrecking ball movements that are

1:22:22

there's always wrecking ball Which is always movements

1:22:24

that hate liberalism and think it's but

1:22:26

something's going on now that it makes that much

1:22:28

more scary to defy them They actually can punish

1:22:31

Descent a lot more than they normally can again. Maybe

1:22:33

it's because everyone's scared of Twitter mobs who knows

1:22:36

but That's a little change

1:22:38

that has made all the people who believe this story go

1:22:40

silent what happens when everyone goes silent and mate So

1:22:42

they still believe it but it's in their heads that story

1:22:44

loses all of its power and now this other

1:22:46

story which should not be able to

1:22:48

start writing policy and entering companies and changing

1:22:52

the way companies work that to serve it and changing

1:22:55

government policies and Changing

1:22:58

curriculum and educate and teaching little

1:23:00

kids that this story is opposed

1:23:03

to saying it's one of the stories Which is totally fine saying

1:23:05

this is the correct thing and any kid any kid or

1:23:07

your parents they disagree with it They're bad people. They're bigots,

1:23:09

right?

1:23:11

That's been a lot They've been allowed to do that and

1:23:13

that's so dangerous So to me this

1:23:15

is a kind of a promising thing because it's that if

1:23:18

I thought that we needed a revolution That we needed,

1:23:20

you know to be liberated from this evil system.

1:23:22

I would think well, that's hard. It's a tall order I don't think

1:23:24

that I think we have a good house and most people like the

1:23:26

house and the house can stand up strong if

1:23:29

everyone just defends it and

1:23:31

They're just scared and the fear is not that they're

1:23:33

gonna get murdered. No one is hanging lynching People

1:23:36

who say the wrong thing right now what they're doing is

1:23:39

they're trying to get you fired. They're they're criticizing you They're

1:23:41

shaming you that's a soft cudgel. It's not a

1:23:43

hard cudgel So it's kind of a house

1:23:45

of cards a soft cudgel Everyone just stops being scared

1:23:47

and people start showing courage and then everyone starts copying each

1:23:49

other's courage this whole thing these are marginalized

1:23:52

back to the sidelines where they belong and They're

1:23:54

marginalized to the fringes until they can convince more people

1:23:56

because that's how you actually make progress in the liberal

1:23:58

democracies you have to persuade

1:23:59

and these aren't good at persuasion. So they go back to

1:24:02

the fringes where they belong

1:24:03

until they come up with better arguments and liberalism

1:24:05

is fine.

1:24:07

If we have a crisis of courage right now and

1:24:10

that's the, and again, I think that's a nice problem

1:24:12

to have because it means that we're so close. It's

1:24:14

all the ideas are there that people know and

1:24:16

they just need to start saying what they

1:24:18

think and that can start to happen like dominoes

1:24:21

when people start doing it. So that's what I'm

1:24:23

hoping for.

1:24:24

Whew, I hope you're right. I

1:24:26

do worry that Vladimir

1:24:29

Lenin

1:24:30

is correct. Give me one generation

1:24:32

of children and I will change the world. That's a paraphrase,

1:24:35

it was pretty close. First

1:24:37

thing Hitler did was get ahold of the

1:24:39

kids. You can get, oh God, there was one

1:24:42

kid that like ratted out his dad and his dad ended

1:24:44

up being killed and they had like statues of him. She

1:24:46

was, oh God. That's

1:24:50

terrifying to me. And I

1:24:52

do, one thing that I've been thinking more

1:24:54

and more is that every

1:24:57

generation, they get to have

1:24:59

the world they want. And if

1:25:02

you didn't

1:25:04

grow up with the liberal values, if

1:25:07

you weren't taught civics, which is something I wanna get back

1:25:09

to, like what exactly you want us to teach kids

1:25:12

when we're teaching them civics, but if you weren't

1:25:14

taught that, how much damage

1:25:17

will one generation do because

1:25:19

they're gonna get the world that they asked for,

1:25:21

good, bad or indifferent. And

1:25:24

at least for like you said, the last 10 years, there's

1:25:26

really been an erosion of two

1:25:29

of the two pillars that we've talked about so far anyway,

1:25:31

the trust in the

1:25:34

liberal

1:25:34

democracy and then free

1:25:37

speech just to sort of round it.

1:25:41

So I do worry about that quite a bit. What

1:25:45

do we need to teach people that

1:25:48

would get them back on the straight

1:25:50

and narrow, but

1:25:52

get them back to the things that lead

1:25:54

to the good life, which I will

1:25:57

round to.

1:26:01

being able to say what you think is true, being

1:26:03

able to explore ideas so that you can hold a nuanced

1:26:05

opinion and then having faith

1:26:07

in the system.

1:26:10

I think the, as I said, the

1:26:12

liberal house

1:26:15

is our best ticket to good times.

1:26:18

And our liberal house stands strong if

1:26:20

people believe in it and defend it

1:26:22

and understand how it works, understand what the alternative

1:26:24

outside is and they realize how important this is.

1:26:26

So teaching how the government is structured? And

1:26:29

so what I would want kids to learn is, so

1:26:31

then if the support beams are based on common

1:26:33

understanding of the values and defending them,

1:26:36

I'd want them to learn the

1:26:37

value of those support beams. So

1:26:39

free speech, I'd want kids to be taught

1:26:42

that words, the old

1:26:44

phrase, sticks and stones will hurt my bones, but words will never

1:26:46

hurt me because, you know,

1:26:50

have a thick skin towards words and

1:26:53

that if

1:26:55

you disagree with someone, you can either walk away,

1:26:57

that's a totally good option.

1:26:59

You can have a debate, but you don't

1:27:01

try to hurt them. How are you gonna switch

1:27:03

that? Because the, what was it? Jonathan

1:27:07

Haidt and what he wrote about, I

1:27:10

think it was 2014 is a year that he pegs, just

1:27:12

everything changed and people went from

1:27:14

believing in that to wanting to be

1:27:16

protected. They want safe space, they're

1:27:19

in a defense mode. How do

1:27:21

we begin to unwind that? Well, so that's

1:27:23

a specific ideology that has been trained,

1:27:26

teachers have been trained on that and

1:27:28

the MA programs, they are ideological factories and

1:27:30

they have been for a while.

1:27:31

So a lot of these teachers going to schools,

1:27:33

they've been indoctrinated, they indoctrinate kids

1:27:36

into a specific, again, it's, I don't mind,

1:27:39

is it liberal? I'm saying bring, if your

1:27:41

teacher wants to teach Marxism to kids, bring

1:27:43

it. Just say this is one point of view and a lot of

1:27:45

people disagree with it,

1:27:46

then it's fine. And by the way, here's what other

1:27:49

people think and here's what these people think and bring this,

1:27:51

then I have no problem. But how do we get back to that if people

1:27:53

are clamoring for safety? Okay, well.

1:27:56

And they believe that words are violence. Because

1:27:58

they believe that words are violence because they're being.

1:27:59

So they have to be. You think that's

1:28:02

it? Oh, of course. You don't think this has

1:28:04

anything to do with social media? No, I think that the reason I think that sticks

1:28:06

and stones will break my bones with words won't hurt me is because

1:28:08

I was taught that. That's a specific

1:28:11

thing. It's not necessarily intuitive. And

1:28:13

now I think that

1:28:15

woke ideology doesn't believe that. It believes

1:28:17

words are violence specifically. It says words are violence. And

1:28:20

so, you know, and it even goes farther. Silence

1:28:22

is violence, right? So you actually

1:28:24

have to, you have to not just not

1:28:27

disagree

1:28:28

with our ideology because that's violent, but you

1:28:30

have to actually be an outspoken proponent of

1:28:32

it because otherwise you're being violent. It's

1:28:34

a huge manipulation and it's the exact

1:28:36

opposite of what you would teach in a liberal

1:28:39

democracy if you wanted to uphold that democracy.

1:28:42

You brought up Hitler, right? And you

1:28:45

brought up Lenin, right? The Bolsheviks. And

1:28:47

you could say Mao as well. One of the indoctrinating

1:28:50

kids, one of the things that all of they had that

1:28:53

the current movement, that woke movement does not have

1:28:55

is the ability to murder your parents

1:28:57

if the parents were saying the wrong thing or if the kid speaks out in class,

1:28:59

they're gonna get sent to. Right now, they

1:29:01

actually, you know, there's a soft cudgel. And a lot

1:29:04

of kids,

1:29:05

I don't think, believe necessarily what they're being taught or they're

1:29:07

being taught something different at home. I don't think it's as easy as you

1:29:09

can really have it

1:29:11

with purity indoctrinated generation

1:29:13

today. It's much harder. There's the internet, there's chat rooms,

1:29:15

right? So I don't think, I'm

1:29:18

very concerned about what kids are being taught. I think it's also

1:29:20

just, it's

1:29:21

bad for the kids. It's really like, I'm sad

1:29:24

for kids that are learning that if someone disagreed

1:29:26

with you, they're being violent and that the right

1:29:28

way to handle disagreement is to punish

1:29:30

the person.

1:29:31

That is what they're being taught, that you go tell the teacher,

1:29:34

you know, you punish the person. Eventually, you go and tell

1:29:37

social media and you get them fired, right? So that translates

1:29:39

right to that. I think it's bad

1:29:41

for the kids. And of course, there's all these, you know, rising

1:29:44

anxiety and depression and all of this, you know, there's

1:29:46

correlation, causation there. But I don't think

1:29:48

that any of this is good for kids, but I also think it's awful

1:29:50

for the society. But I don't think they have the hard

1:29:52

cudgel. And I feel like they're, again, I feel some optimism

1:29:55

here because a lot of people- Do you see

1:29:57

the optimism in the data? Well,

1:29:59

when I say that,

1:29:59

I see is, for example, I'm talking

1:30:02

about this right now. If I were in Nazi

1:30:05

Germany, I'm going straight to the gulag

1:30:07

when I walk out of here because I'm sitting there and criticizing

1:30:10

the capital P party, right?

1:30:12

And so now you're gonna really indoctrinate kids because no one's gonna,

1:30:15

there are so many people saying what I'm saying on the internet right

1:30:17

now. There is a very strong

1:30:19

movement against this right now.

1:30:21

Parents are learning about this and it's

1:30:24

not easy to actually indoctrinate,

1:30:27

it's not to indoctrinate liberal democracy,

1:30:29

it's hard. That's why liberal democracy is cool because

1:30:31

it is, there's some robustness

1:30:34

there. It's hard

1:30:35

to really, you can get, it's vulnerable

1:30:37

to mobs and things like that

1:30:39

as we just saw because you don't have a dictatorship that

1:30:42

can say we have free speech. It is vulnerable,

1:30:44

but it bends but it doesn't break very

1:30:46

easily, bends easily but it doesn't break, right? Which

1:30:49

is the red scare, it bent, right? All

1:30:51

of our values are going out the window. We weren't acting like Americans,

1:30:53

all these liberal values, the house was, but

1:30:55

the house stood. So it's not that I, again,

1:30:57

I'm the person who just said we shouldn't get cocky, the house

1:30:59

can fall down. But I don't feel hopeless.

1:31:02

I feel like what needs to happen is people saying

1:31:04

what they think. So when it comes to kids

1:31:07

and curriculum,

1:31:08

yeah, I think there are a lot of, there's a lot

1:31:10

more awareness right now about this issue

1:31:13

in K through 12 schools that wasn't there

1:31:15

three years ago even, right? This is new.

1:31:18

Social media, you could say, is a big problem. Everyone

1:31:21

knows that now. Everyone talks about how social media is making us

1:31:23

tribal and bad and unhappy and depressed. 10 years

1:31:25

ago, everyone thought social media was great. That's when you're really vulnerable

1:31:28

to it. So I just see a lot of progress. I see

1:31:30

the country's wisdom starting to come along

1:31:32

and it looks to me a little, if I could zoom

1:31:34

out, if I could predict, I would say that we

1:31:36

look back on this time as, like

1:31:38

we look back on the wild west

1:31:40

and that it was kind of, social media sprung up. There

1:31:42

was like mob rule, it was kind of chaotic.

1:31:45

You know, this, the radical ideology

1:31:47

kind of like, you know, started changing curriculum

1:31:50

in schools and getting people fired and

1:31:52

this, you know, reactionary movement,

1:31:54

you know, was denying the election. It was kind of nuts and

1:31:56

that because we didn't,

1:31:58

we didn't have the, We

1:32:01

didn't, we got, you know, the primitive mind

1:32:03

won round one,

1:32:04

because I didn't, in the chaos. And

1:32:06

then wisdom started to prevail. We created better systems.

1:32:09

We created new kinds of social etiquette and, and

1:32:12

wisdom started to come to prevail and people

1:32:14

started to speak out just like after the Red Scare. At some point,

1:32:16

it would have been terrifying to say, I think

1:32:19

communists should get to live here and be free

1:32:21

and have the same rights we do. And they should be able to speak about

1:32:23

why communism is great. And that's what a good American,

1:32:26

I can say that now, I would have been terrified to say

1:32:28

that 1951 or whatever. So

1:32:30

we come out of these periods, too. And

1:32:34

so I don't know, I feel very

1:32:36

frustrated. But I also feel like

1:32:39

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com slash impact.

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