0:00

The following is a conversation with Sam Harris,

0:02

his second time in the podcast. As

0:04

I said two years ago, when I first

0:06

met and spoke with Sam, He's one of

0:08

the most influential pioneering thinkers

0:11

of our time as the host of the Making

0:13

Sense podcast, creator of the

0:15

waking up app, and the author

0:17

of many seminal books on human nature

0:20

and the human mind, including the

0:22

end of faith, the moral landscape,

0:24

lying free will and

0:26

waking up. In this

0:28

conversation, besides our mutual fascination

0:31

with AGI and free will, we

0:33

do also go deep into controversial

0:35

challenging topics of Donald Trump,

0:38

Hunter Biden, January sixth,

0:40

Vaccines, Lab Leak, Kanye West,

0:43

and several key figures at the

0:45

center of public discourse, including Joe

0:47

Rogan and Elon Musk. Both

0:50

of whom have been friends of Sam

0:52

and have become friends of mine. Somehow,

0:55

an amazing life trajectory that

0:57

I do not deserve in any way and

0:59

in fact believe is probably a figment

1:02

of my imagination. And

1:04

if it's alright, please allow me to say a few words

1:07

about this personal aspect of the conversation

1:09

of discussing Joe, Elon, and

1:11

others. What's been weighing heavy

1:13

on my heart since the beginning

1:16

of the pandemic now three years ago,

1:18

is that many people I look to for wisdom

1:20

in public discourse stop talking

1:22

to each other as often with respect,

1:25

humility, and love. When the world

1:27

needed those kinds of conversations the most.

1:30

My hope is that they start talking

1:32

again. They start being friends again.

1:34

They start noticing the humanity that connects

1:36

them that is much deeper than the disagreements

1:39

that divide them. So

1:41

Lex me take this moment to say with

1:43

humility and honesty, why

1:45

I look up to and I'm inspired by

1:48

Joe, Elon, and Sam. I

1:50

think Joe Rogen is important to

1:52

the world as a voice of compassionate curiosity

1:55

and open mindedness to ideas

1:57

both the radical and mainstream. Sometimes with

2:00

humor, sometimes with brutal honesty,

2:02

always pushing for more kindness in

2:04

the world. I think

2:06

Elon Musk is important to the world as

2:08

an engineer, leader, entrepreneur, and

2:11

human being who takes on the hardest problems

2:13

that face humanity. And refuses to

2:15

accept the constraints of conventional thinking

2:18

that made the solutions to these problems seem

2:20

impossible. IDW think

2:22

Sam Harris is important to the world

2:25

as a fearless voice who fights

2:27

for the pursuit of truth against growing

2:29

forces of echo chambers and

2:31

audience capture, taking unpopular

2:34

perspectives and defending them with

2:36

rigor and resilience. I

2:39

both celebrate and criticize all

2:41

three privately, and they criticized

2:43

me usually more 365, for

2:45

which I always learn a lot and always appreciate.

2:48

Most importantly, there is respect

2:50

and love for each other as human beings.

2:52

The very thing that I think world needs

2:55

most now in a time of division

2:57

and chaos. I will

2:59

continue to try to men divisions, to

3:01

try to understand not to ride,

3:03

to turn the other cheek if needed, to

3:06

return hate with love. Sometimes

3:09

people criticize me for being naive, cheesy,

3:12

simplistic, all that. I

3:15

know. I agree. But

3:17

I really am speaking from the heart

3:19

and I'm trying. This world is

3:21

too fucking beautiful not to try.

3:24

In whatever way I know how. I

3:27

love you

3:27

all.

3:29

And

3:29

now a quick 365 second mention of each sponsor

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9:05

And IDW, 365. Here's

9:07

Sam Harris. What

9:25

is more effective and making a net

9:27

positive impact on the world? Empathy

9:30

or reason? It depends

9:33

on what you mean by empathy. There are two at

9:35

least two kinds of empathy. There's the

9:38

the cognitive 365, which

9:40

is, you know, I would argue

9:42

even a species of of reason. It's

9:44

it's just understanding another

9:47

person's point of view. You know, you understand

9:50

why they're suffering or why they're happy or what,

9:52

you know, we just you have a theory of

9:54

mind about another human being

9:56

that is accurate. And so

9:59

you can you can navigate

10:01

in relationship to them more 365. And

10:06

then there's another layer entirely, not

10:08

incompatible with that, but just distinct, which

10:10

is what people often mean by empathy.

10:13

Which is more a

10:15

kind of emotional contagion. Right?

10:18

Like, you feel depressed and

10:21

I begin to feel depressed along

10:23

with you because, you know, it's just it's

10:25

contagious. Right? I I, you know, we're so

10:27

close and I'm so concerned about you and your

10:29

problems become my problems. And IDW

10:32

bleeds through right now. I

10:34

think both of those capacities are

10:37

very important, but the

10:41

emotional contagion piece. And

10:45

this is not really my thesis. This is

10:47

something have more or less learned from

10:49

from Paul Blum. The

10:52

psychologists who

10:54

wrote a book on this topic titled Against Empathy,

10:57

the emotional Social Contagion piece

11:00

is a bad IDW

11:02

rather often for ethical behavior

11:05

and ethical

11:06

intuitions. Holy boy. And

11:08

I will go so I'll give you the clear example

11:10

of this, which is we

11:16

find stories

11:18

with a single identifiable protagonist

11:21

who we can effortlessly empathize

11:23

with. Far more compelling than

11:26

data. Right? So if I tell you,

11:28

you know, this is the classic case of of

11:30

the little girl who who falls down a well

11:33

Right? You know, this is some somebody's

11:35

daughter. You see the parents distraught

11:38

on television. You hear

11:40

her cries from the bottom of the well. The

11:42

whole country stops. I mean, this there was an example

11:45

of this, you know, twenty twenty five years ago,

11:47

I think, where it was just wall to wall on CNN.

11:49

This is just the perfect use of CNN. It

11:51

was, you know, seventy two hours or whatever

11:54

was of continuous coverage of extracting

11:56

this girl from a well. So we

11:59

effortlessly pay attention to that. We care

12:01

about it. We'll donate money toward

12:03

it. I mean, it's just it marshals a hundred percent

12:06

of our compassion and altruistic impulse.

12:09

Whereas 365 you hear that there's a genocide

12:11

raging in some country you've never been to

12:14

and never attended to go to. And the numbers

12:16

don't make dent and the and we we

12:18

find the story

12:21

boring. Right? We'll change the channel in the

12:23

face of a genocide. Right? It doesn't matter. So the

12:25

and it literally and perversely, it

12:27

could be five hundred thousand little girls

12:30

have fallen down wells in that country, and

12:32

we still don't care. Right? So So

12:35

it's, you know, many of us

12:37

have come to believe that this is a bug rather

12:39

than a feature of our moral psychology And

12:42

so the empathy plays an unhelpful

12:44

role there. So ultimately, think

12:47

when we're making big decisions about what we

12:49

should do and how to mitigate

12:51

humans suffering and and what's worth val

12:53

valuing and how we should protect those values.

12:58

I think reason is the better tool.

13:00

But it's not that I would want dispense with any

13:02

part of empathy

13:03

either. Well, there's a lot of changes to go on there.

13:05

But briefly to mention, you've recently

13:07

talked about effective altruism

13:10

on your podcast. I think --

13:12

Mhmm. -- you mentioned some interesting statement.

13:15

I'm going to horribly misquote you. But

13:17

that you'd rather live in

13:19

a world, like it doesn't really make sense,

13:22

but you'd rather live in a world where you'd care

13:24

about maybe your daughter and son

13:26

more than a hundred people that live

13:29

across the world, something like this. Like

13:31

where the calculus is not always perfect,

13:33

but somehow it makes sense to live

13:35

in a world where it's irrational in

13:37

this way and yet empathetic

13:40

in the way you've been

13:40

discussing. Right. I'm not sure what the right

13:43

answer. Is there or even whether there is

13:45

one right answer, there could be multiple peaks

13:48

on on this part of the moral landscape. But So

13:51

the the opposition is between

13:53

an ethic that's articulated by

13:55

someone like the dalai lama. Right? You know, really

13:57

any exponent of of you

14:00

know, classic Buddhism would say

14:02

that sort of the ultimate enlightened

14:05

ethic is true dispatching

14:07

with respect to friends and strangers.

14:09

Right? So that you would the, you know, the

14:11

mind of the Buddha would be truly

14:14

dispassionate. You would love and

14:16

and care about all people equally. And

14:20

by that light, it seems some

14:22

kind of ethical failing or at least,

14:24

you know, failure of of to

14:26

365 actualize compassion

14:28

in the limit

14:29

or, you know, enlightened wisdom in the limit

14:32

to care more or even

14:34

and much more about your kids than

14:36

the kids of other people or and to and to

14:38

prioritize your your energy

14:41

in that way. Right? So you spend all this time trying to figure

14:43

out how to keep your kids healthy and happy. And

14:46

you'll attend to their minuteous concerns

14:48

and however 365. And

14:52

again, there's a genocide raging and

14:54

Sudan or wherever and

14:56

it takes up less than one percent of

14:58

your bandwidth. I'm not sure it would

15:00

be better world 365 everyone was running

15:03

the the dalai lama program there. I think some

15:05

prioritization of of one's

15:08

nearest and dearest ethically

15:13

might be optimal because

15:15

we'll we'll all be doing that and we'll all be doing

15:17

that in a circumstance

15:20

where we have certain

15:22

norms and laws

15:25

and and other structures that

15:28

force us to be dispassionate where

15:30

that matters. Right? So, like, when I go to when

15:33

my daughter gets sick, I have to take her

15:35

to a hospital, IDW

15:38

really want her to get attention. Right?

15:40

And I'm worried about her more than I'm worried about

15:42

everyone else in the lobby. But the truth

15:44

is IDW actually don't want a totally

15:46

corrupt hospital. Don't want hospital

15:49

that treats my daughter better

15:51

than anyone else in the lobby because she's my

15:53

daughter and I have, you know, bribed the

15:55

guy at the door whatever, you know, or the guy's a

15:57

fan of my podcast or whatever the thing is,

15:59

you don't want starkly corrupt,

16:02

unfair situations. And

16:05

when you sort of get pressed

16:08

down the hierarchy of Maslow's

16:10

needs, you know, individually and and and

16:12

societally, a bunch

16:14

of the bunch of those variables change

16:16

and they change for the worse, understandably.

16:19

But, yeah, when things are when everyone's

16:21

corrupt and it's you're you're in

16:23

a in a state of of collective

16:26

emergency. You know, you've got a lifeboat problem.

16:28

You're scrambling to get into the 365. Yeah,

16:31

then then fairness

16:33

and norms and and the,

16:37

you know, the the other vestiges of civilization.

16:40

Begin to get stripped 365. We

16:42

can't reason from those emergencies

16:46

to normal life. I mean, normal life

16:48

we want justice, we want fairness, we

16:50

want we're all better off for it even

16:53

when the spotlight of our

16:55

concern is focused on

16:57

the people we know, the people who are friends, the

16:59

people who are family, the people we we we have

17:01

good reason to care about. We

17:03

still by default want the system that

17:06

protects the interest of strangers too.

17:09

And we know that generally speaking interest

17:11

in game of theoretic

17:12

terms, we're all going to tend to be better

17:14

off in a fair system than a corrupt

17:16

one. One of the failure modes of

17:18

empathy is

17:21

our susceptibility to anecdotal

17:24

data. Just a good story

17:26

-- Yeah. -- will get us to not think

17:28

clearly. But what about empathy

17:31

in the context of just discussing ideas

17:33

with other people? And then there's a large

17:35

number of people, like in this country, you

17:38

know, red and blue, half the population

17:41

believes certain things on immigration or

17:43

on the response to the pandemic

17:46

or any kind of controversial issue, even

17:48

if if the election was fairly executed.

17:53

Having an empathy for their

17:55

worldview, trying to understand

17:57

where they're coming 365, not just in the explicit

18:00

statement of their IDW, but the entirety of,

18:02

like, the roots from which their IDW stems,

18:05

that kind of empathy at while you're discussing

18:08

IDW, what is in your pursuit

18:10

of truth, having empathy for the

18:13

perspective of a large number of other

18:15

people. Versus

18:18

raw mathematical reason? I

18:20

think it's important, but I just it only

18:22

takes you so 365. Right? It doesn't doesn't

18:25

get you to truth. Right? It's not

18:27

truth is not a it's

18:29

not decided by, you

18:31

know, democratic principles. And

18:35

Certain people believe things for understandable

18:38

reasons, but those reasons are nonetheless bad

18:40

reasons. Right?

18:41

They they don't scale, they don't generalize, they're not

18:43

reasons anyone should adopt

18:45

for themselves or respect,

18:47

you know, histologically. And

18:50

yet their their circumstance

18:52

is understandable and it's something you can care

18:54

about. Right? And so,

18:56

yeah, like, let me just take I think there's

18:59

many examples of this you might be thinking

19:01

of, but And the one one that

19:03

comes to mind is I've I've been super critical

19:05

of Trump, obviously. And

19:09

I've been super critical of certain people

19:12

for endorsing him

19:14

or not criticizing him when he

19:16

really made it, you know, painfully obvious who

19:19

he was, you know, if if there had been any

19:21

doubt initially, there was

19:23

no doubt when we have a sitting president who's

19:25

not not

19:27

agreeing to a 365 transfer

19:30

of power. Right? So IDW

19:34

critical of all of that and yet the

19:37

fact that many

19:39

millions of Americans didn't see

19:42

what was wrong with Trump or bought into

19:46

the didn't see through his con.

19:48

Right? I mean, they bought into the idea that he was a

19:50

Fridman businessman who who might just

19:52

be able to change things because he's so unconventional

19:55

and so you know, his heart is

19:57

in the right place. You know, he's really man of people

19:59

even though he's a, you know, gold plated everything

20:02

in his life. They

20:05

bought the myth somehow of,

20:08

you know, largely because they had seen him

20:10

on television for almost

20:13

deck eight and half pretending

20:15

to be this dangerous businessman who could

20:17

get things done. It's

20:20

understandable to me that many

20:22

very frustrated people who have

20:24

not had their hopes and dreams actualized,

20:28

who have been the victims

20:30

of globalism and and many

20:34

other, you know, current trends. It's

20:38

understandable that they would be

20:41

confused and and and

20:43

not see the liability of electing

20:46

a grossly incompetent morbidly

20:49

narcissistic person into

20:51

the into the in the presidency. So

20:54

I don't So which is to say that I

20:56

don't blame. There are many, many

20:58

millions of people who don't necessarily blame

21:00

for the Trump phenomenon. I but I

21:02

can nonetheless bimon the

21:04

phenomenon as as indicative of,

21:06

you know, very bad state

21:09

of affairs in our society. Right? So it's it's

21:11

there's two levels to it. I mean, one is I think you have

21:13

to call us spade a spade when you're talking

21:15

about how things actually work and

21:17

what things are are likely to happen

21:19

or not. But then you can recognize

21:23

that people are have very

21:25

different life experiences and and Yeah.

21:28

I mean, I think empathy and, you know, probably the

21:30

better word for what I would

21:32

hope to embody there is compassion.

21:34

Right? Like, really, you know, to

21:38

really wish people well, you know, and to

21:40

really wish, you know, strangers

21:42

well 365, wish them well. I mean,

21:44

to realize that there is no opposition

21:47

between in the at bottom, there's no real

21:49

opposition between selfishness and

21:51

selflessness because wise

21:54

selfishness really takes into

21:56

account other people's

21:58

happiness. I mean, you know, which do you do you wanna

22:00

live in a society where you have everything but

22:03

most other people have nothing or

22:06

do you wanna live in a society where you're surrounded

22:08

by happy, creative, self

22:10

actualized people who are having their

22:13

hopes and dreams realized. I think it's obvious

22:15

that the the second society is much

22:17

better. However, much you can guard

22:20

your good

22:21

luck. But what

22:23

about having empathy for

22:26

certain principles that people believe, for

22:28

example, the

22:30

the pushback, the other perspective on this,

22:32

because you said, bought the myth of Trump

22:34

as a great businessman. There could be

22:37

lot of people that are supporters of Trump

22:39

who could say that Sam

22:41

Harris bought the myth that we

22:43

have this government of

22:46

the people by the people that actually represents

22:48

the people as opposed to a bunch

22:50

of elites who are running a giant

22:52

bureaucracy that is corrupt that is feeding

22:55

themselves, and they're actually not representing

22:57

the people. And then here's this chaos

22:59

agent Trump who speaks off

23:01

the top of his head yeah, he's flawed

23:04

in all this number of ways. He's

23:06

more comedian than he is a

23:08

presidential type of 365. And

23:11

he's actually creating the kind of chaos that's going

23:13

to shake up this bureaucracy, shake

23:16

up the elites that are so uncomfortable because

23:18

they don't want the world to know about

23:21

the game they got running and everybody

23:22

else. So that's, you know, you

23:24

know, that's kind of perspective that they would take

23:27

and say, yeah, yeah, there's these flaws that

23:29

Trump has, but this is necessary.

23:32

I agree with the first part. So I I haven't

23:34

bought the myth that it's,

23:38

you know, a truly representative democracy

23:41

in in the way that we would it might idealize.

23:45

And, you know, on some

23:47

level means this is different conversation, but on some

23:49

level, I'm not even sure how much I think it

23:51

should be. Right? Like, I I'm not sure we

23:55

want in the end everyone's

23:58

opinion give an equal

24:00

weight about just we should

24:02

do about anything. And I include myself in that. I mean, there are

24:05

many topics around which don't

24:07

deserve to have a strong opinion because

24:09

I don't know what I'm talking about,

24:11

right, or what I would be talking about if I had a strong

24:13

opinion. So and

24:17

think we'll probably get to that to

24:20

some of those topics because I've declined to have

24:22

certain conversations on my podcast just because I think

24:24

I'm the wrong person to have that conversation. Right.

24:27

And and it's and I think it's important

24:29

to see those bright lines

24:32

in in one's life and in in the moment

24:34

politically. And ethically.

24:37

So, yeah, I think so

24:40

we've IDW the the viability of

24:42

democracy. I'm

24:44

I'm under no illusions that

24:47

all of our institutions are,

24:49

you know, worth preserving precisely

24:52

as they have been up until the moment. This

24:54

great orange wrecking ball came swinging

24:56

through her lives. But I

24:59

just it was a very bad bet to

25:01

elect someone who was grossly

25:04

incompetent. And worse

25:07

than incompetent, genuinely

25:11

malevolent in his selfishness. Right?

25:14

think and this is something we know based

25:16

on literally decades of him being

25:19

in the public eye. Right? He's not as he's

25:21

not a public servant in any

25:24

normal sense of that term. And

25:27

he couldn't possibly give an honest or

25:30

saying answer to the question the question you

25:32

asked me about empathy and reason and

25:34

and like how should we you know, what should guide

25:36

us. I

25:39

genuinely think he is missing some necessary

25:41

moral and and psychological tools.

25:45

Right? And and this this is I can feel

25:47

com compassion for him as a human being

25:49

because I think having those things

25:51

is incredibly important and genuinely loving

25:53

other people is incredibly important and and

25:56

knowing what all that's about is is is

25:58

that's really the good stuff in life. And III

26:01

think he's missing a lot of that. But

26:04

I think we we don't

26:06

wanna promote people to to the highest

26:08

positions of power in our society who

26:10

are far outliers

26:13

in in

26:15

pathological terms. Right? We want them

26:17

to be far outliers in in 365

26:20

in the best case, in wisdom and compassion,

26:22

and some of the things you've some

26:24

of the topics you brought

26:25

up. I mean, we want someone to be deeply informed.

26:27

We want someone to be

26:31

unusually curious, unusually alert

26:34

to how they may be wrong or getting

26:36

things wrong, consequently. He's

26:38

none of those things. And if and

26:40

365 far as we're gonna get normal mediocrities in

26:43

that role, which I think, you know, is

26:45

often the best we could expect, let's get

26:47

normal mediocrities in that role, not

26:51

once in a generation narcissists

26:53

and

26:57

frauds. I mean, it is like the let

26:59

me just take honesty as a single variable. Right?

27:02

I I think you want yeah. Yes. It's possible

27:04

that most

27:06

politicians lie at least some of the time.

27:09

don't think that's a good thing. I

27:11

think people should be gen you know, generally

27:13

honest even to

27:15

a fault. Yes,

27:18

there are certain circumstances where lying, I think,

27:20

is necessary. It's kind of on a continuum

27:22

of self defense and and violence. So

27:24

it's like 365 you're gonna you know, if the Nazis

27:27

come to your door and ask you if you've got Anne Frank

27:29

in the attic, I think it's okay to lie to them.

27:33

But, you

27:35

know, Trump, there's I I arguably,

27:38

there's never been a person in that

27:40

anyone could name in in human history

27:42

who's lied with with that kind of velocity.

27:45

I mean, it's just it was it was just

27:48

a blizzard of lies, great

27:50

and small, you know, to to

27:52

pointless and

27:54

and to and 365, but

27:57

it's just

27:59

it

28:01

it says something fairly

28:05

alarming about our society that a person

28:07

of that character got promoted.

28:10

And so yes, I have compassion

28:12

and concern for for half of the society

28:14

who didn't see it that way, and that's gonna sound

28:17

elitist and and and

28:19

smug or something 365 anyone who's

28:22

who's on that side listening to me. But it's

28:25

genuine. I mean, I'm I I understand that,

28:27

like, like, I barely have the I'm like one

28:29

of the luckiest people in the world, and I barely

28:31

have the bandwidth to pay attention

28:33

to half the things I should pay attention to in order

28:35

to have an opinion about half of things we're gonna

28:37

talk about. Right? So how much less

28:40

bandwidth to somebody who's working two jobs

28:42

or, you know, a single mom who's

28:45

who's, you know, raising, you

28:47

know, multiple

28:49

kids, you know, even a single IDW. It's

28:51

just it's unimaginable to me that people

28:53

have the the bandwidth to to

28:56

really track this stuff. And so then they jump

28:58

on social media and they they see they get

29:00

inundated by misinformation and

29:02

They see what their favorite influencer just said.

29:06

And now they're worried about vaccines and they're

29:08

it's just it's we're

29:10

living in an environment where our our in the

29:13

information space has become so corrupted.

29:16

And we've built machines to

29:18

to further corrupt it, you know? mean, we built a business

29:20

model for the Internet that it further corrupts it.

29:23

So it's it is just is

29:26

chaos in informational terms.

29:28

And I don't fault

29:31

people for being confused

29:33

and impatient and at

29:35

the at their wits end. And,

29:39

yes, Trump was a an

29:41

enormous fuck you to the establishment,

29:44

and that and that's that was understandable

29:46

for many reasons. To me, Sam

29:49

Harris, the great Sam Harris is somebody

29:51

I've looked up 365 for long time,

29:54

as a beacon of voice of reason,

29:56

and there's this meme on the Internet,

29:59

IDW would love you to steal man the case for

30:01

it and against that Trump broke

30:03

Sam Harris' brain. That

30:05

there's something IDW disproportionately

30:08

to the actual impact that Trump had on

30:10

our society. He had an

30:13

impact on the on the ability

30:16

of balanced calm

30:19

rational minds to see

30:21

the wall clearly, to think clearly.

30:24

You being one of the beacons of that.

30:26

Is there is there a degree to which you

30:29

broke your brain? Well,

30:32

otherwise known as Trump Derangements? J.

30:34

Yeah. Medical Well, sorry. Medical question.

30:36

Yeah. I mean, I think Trump Derangements syndrome

30:38

is a is a very clever meme because

30:40

it it just throws

30:43

the, you know, the the problem back on the person who's

30:45

criticizing Trump, but -- Sure. -- in truth,

30:47

the the true Trump's

30:50

arrangements syndrome was not to have seen

30:53

how dangerous and divisive it

30:55

would be to promote someone like Trump. To

30:57

that position of power. And to not and

30:59

in the in the 365 moment, not

31:02

to see how

31:05

untenable it was to

31:08

still support someone who, you know,

31:10

a sitting president who was not committing

31:12

to a peaceful transfer of power. I mean, that was 365

31:14

if if that wasn't a bright line for you,

31:17

you have been deranged by something because

31:20

that was, you know, the that

31:22

was one minute to midnight for our democracy

31:24

as as far as IDW concerned. And I think

31:27

it really was, but for the

31:31

integrity of a

31:33

few people, that we didn't

31:35

suffer some real constitutional crisis

31:38

and and real emergency 365

31:41

January I mean, if if Mike Pence

31:43

had caved in and decided

31:45

to not certify the election. Right?

31:48

365, you can count on two hands.

31:50

A number of people who help things

31:52

together at that moment. And

31:55

so it wasn't for want of trying

31:57

on Trump's part that we we

32:01

didn't succumb to some, you know, real

32:04

to truly uncharted catastrophe

32:07

with our democracy. So the fact that that didn't

32:10

happen is not a sign that

32:12

those of us who were worried

32:14

that it was So close to

32:16

happening, we're exaggerating the problem. I

32:18

mean, it's like, you know, you almost got run over

32:21

by a car, but you didn't And

32:23

so, you know, you're the fact that you're adrenalized and

32:26

you're thinking, you know, boy, that was dangerous. probably

32:28

shouldn't, you know, wander in the middle

32:30

of the street with my eyes closed.

32:33

You weren't wrong to feel that you really

32:35

had a problem. Right? And

32:39

came very close to something truly terrible

32:42

So IDW think that's where we were, and I think

32:44

we shouldn't do that again. Right? So the fact that

32:46

he's he's still he's coming back around as

32:48

potentially a viable candidate I'm

32:51

not spending much time thinking about it, frankly, because

32:53

it's, you know, I'm IDW waiting for the moment

32:55

where it it requires some thought.

32:58

I mean, they it did it

33:00

took up I

33:03

don't know how many podcasts I devoted to

33:05

the topic. It wasn't

33:07

that I mean, it wasn't that many

33:09

in the end, you know, against the the

33:11

number of podcasts I I devoted to other

33:14

topics, but there are people who

33:16

look at Trump and just find

33:18

him funny, entertaining,

33:21

not especially threatening. He's

33:23

like not a you know, it's just it's just good

33:25

fun to see somebody who's like who's just

33:28

not taking anything seriously. And

33:30

it's just just putting a, you know, a stick

33:32

in the wheel of of business as usual.

33:35

Again and again and again and again and

33:39

they don't really see anything much

33:41

at stake. Right? Doesn't really doesn't really

33:44

matter if we don't support NATO. Doesn't

33:46

really matter if he says he trusts Putin

33:48

more than our intelligence services. I

33:51

mean, none of this is it does matter if he's

33:53

on the one hand saying that he loves

33:58

the leader of North Korea and on the other

34:00

threatening it threatens to to,

34:02

you know, bomb them back to the stone age, right, on

34:04

Twitter. It's all it all can be

34:06

taken in the spirit of kind of reality television.

34:08

Like, this is just this is the part of the movie that's just fun

34:10

to watch. Right? And I

34:13

understand that. I can even inhabit

34:16

that space for a few minutes

34:18

at a time, but there's

34:21

a deeper concern that we're in process of

34:23

entertaining ourselves to death. Right?

34:25

That we're just not taking things seriously. And

34:28

this is it's problem I've had with several other

34:30

people. We might name who just

34:32

who just appeared to me to be

34:34

goofing around at scale. And

34:37

they lack a kind of moral seriousness. I

34:39

mean, they're they're touching big problems

34:42

where lives hang in the balance, but

34:44

they're just fucking around. And I

34:47

think there are really important problems that we have

34:49

to get our head straight around. And

34:51

we need, you know, it's not to

34:54

say that institutions don't become corrupt

34:56

I IDW think they do. And I IDW and I'm quite

34:58

worried that, you know, both about the

35:00

the loss of trust in our institutions and

35:03

the the

35:05

fact that trust has eroded for good reason.

35:07

Right? That they have become less trustworthy. III

35:10

you know, they've become infected by political

35:13

ideologies that are not truth tracking. I mean,

35:15

I worry about all of that. But I

35:19

just think the we need institutions. We

35:21

need to rebuild them. We need we

35:24

need experts who are real experts.

35:26

We need to value expertise over

35:29

you know, amateur speculation

35:31

and conspiracy thinking and

35:34

just, you know, and

35:35

bullshit. The kind of amateur speculation

35:37

we're doing on this very podcast.

35:41

IDW usually alert to the moments where

35:43

I'm just guessing

35:45

or where I actually feel like I'm just

35:47

talking from within my wheelhouse, and I try

35:49

to telegraph that a fair amount

35:52

with people. So

35:56

yeah. I mean, but it's it's not it's

35:58

different. Like, I mean, you you can invite

36:00

someone onto your podcast. Who's an expert

36:03

about something that you're you're

36:05

not an expert about. And

36:07

then you you in

36:09

the process of getting more informed yourself,

36:12

your your audience is getting more informed. So you're asking

36:14

smart questions. And you might be pushing

36:16

back at the margins But

36:19

you know that when push comes to shove, on

36:21

that topic, you really don't

36:23

have a basis to have a strong

36:25

opinion. And 365

36:28

you were going to form a strong

36:30

opinion that was this counter to the expert

36:32

you have in front of you, it's going to be

36:34

by deference to some other expert who you've

36:36

brought in or who you've heard about or whose

36:38

work you've read or whatever. But there

36:40

there's a paradox to how

36:43

we value authority. In science

36:45

that most people don't understand. And

36:47

I think we should, at some point, unravel

36:49

that because it's basis for

36:52

a lot of public 365. And and for frankly,

36:54

there's a basis for a lot of, you know, criticism

36:56

I've received on these topics, whereas, you know,

36:58

people think that I may you

37:01

know, I I'm against free speech

37:03

or I'm an establishment chill

37:06

or it's it's like IDW just think IDW

37:08

a credentialist. I just think people with

37:10

PhDs from IDW I believe university

37:13

should, you know, run everything. It's

37:15

not true, but there's a ton of there's

37:17

there's a lot to cut through to get to daylight

37:20

there because people are very

37:23

confused about how we value authority

37:26

in the surface of rationality generally. You've

37:28

talked about

37:29

it, but it's it's just interesting. The intensity

37:31

of feeling you have. You've you've had this

37:34

famous phrase about Hunter Biden

37:37

and children. In the basement.

37:39

Can you just revisit this case?

37:41

So Lex let me

37:43

give another perspective. On the situation

37:46

of January sixth and Trump in general.

37:49

It's possible that January

37:52

sixth and Things of

37:54

that nature revealed that our democracy

37:56

is actually pretty fragile. And

37:58

then Trump is not a malevolent and

38:01

ultra competent malevolent figure but

38:03

it's simply a jokester. And

38:07

he just by creating the chaos

38:09

revealed that it's all pretty 365. Because

38:11

you're a student in history and there's a lot of

38:13

people like Vladimir Lenin Hitler

38:16

who are exceptionally confident at

38:19

controlling power. At

38:21

being executives and taking that power

38:23

controlling the generals, controlling all the

38:25

figures involved, and certainly

38:28

not tweeting, but working in the shadows

38:30

behind the scenes to gain power.

38:32

And they did so extremely

38:35

365, and that is how they were able to gain

38:37

power. The the pushback with Trump, because

38:39

he was doing none of that. He was

38:42

creating which he's very good

38:44

at creating drama, sometimes

38:47

for human sake, sometimes for drama

38:49

sake, and simply reveal

38:51

that our democracy is fragile. And

38:53

so he's not this once

38:56

in a generation horrible figure, once

38:58

in a generation narcissist. No.

39:00

I I don't think he's he's a

39:03

a truly

39:05

scary sinister you

39:08

know, Putin like or, you know, Hitler, much

39:10

less Hitler like 365, not at all. I mean,

39:12

he's not ideological. He doesn't care about

39:14

anything beyond himself. So it's

39:16

not no.

39:19

No. He's much less scary than

39:22

any really scary you

39:24

know, totalitarian. Right? I mean, and

39:26

he's he's more brave new world than nineteen

39:28

eighty four. This is what, you know, Eric Weinstein

39:31

never stops battering

39:33

me about, but, you know, he's still wrong,

39:36

Eric. You know,

39:38

I I can you know, my my analogy for

39:40

Trump was that he's an evil chauncey gardener.

39:43

I don't know if you remember the the the

39:45

the book or the film being there with

39:48

with Peter Sellers. But, you

39:50

know, Peter Sellers is this Gardner who

39:52

really doesn't know anything, but

39:54

he gets recognized as this wise man and he

39:56

gets promoted to immense power in

39:58

in Washington. Because he's speaking

40:01

in these kinda in in assemblings

40:04

of wisdom. He's got these very simple 365 it

40:06

seemed to be 365. He's just talking oh, he cares

40:09

about his garden and he's just talking about his

40:11

garden all the time. Yeah. But, you know, he'll

40:13

say something. But, yeah, you know, in the spring, you know, the

40:15

new shoots will will bloom and

40:17

people read into that some kind of genius,

40:20

you know, insight politically. And so he gets

40:22

promoted and so that's that's the joker 365. For

40:24

me, Trump has always been someone

40:26

like an evil Chauncey Garden. I mean, he's

40:29

he's it's not to say he's

40:31

totally yes. He has certain kind

40:33

of genius. He's got a genius for

40:36

creating spectacle around himself. Right?

40:38

He's got a genius for getting the the eye

40:40

of the media always coming back

40:42

to him. But

40:45

it it's only it's a kind of

40:47

it's a kind of, you know, self promotion

40:49

only works if you actually are truly

40:52

shameless and don't care about

40:54

having a reputation for anything that that

40:56

that or you would wanna have a reputation

40:58

for. Right? It's like pure the

41:00

pure pornography of attention. Right?

41:02

He and he just wants more of it. I

41:05

think the truly depressing and genuinely

41:08

scary thing was that we

41:11

have a country that at

41:13

least half of the country given

41:15

how broken

41:18

our society is in many ways. We

41:20

have a country that didn't

41:23

see anything wrong with that. Bringing

41:25

someone who's who obviously

41:27

doesn't know what he should know to be president

41:30

and who's obviously not a good

41:32

person. Obviously doesn't care

41:35

about people, can't even pretend to

41:37

care about people really, right, in a credible

41:39

way. And

41:42

so, I mean, 365 there's a silver lining

41:44

to this, it it's it's

41:46

along the lines you just sketched. It

41:48

shows us how vulnerable our system

41:51

is. To a truly brilliant

41:53

and sinister figure. Right? I

41:55

mean, like, IDW think we are

41:59

we really dodged a bullet. Yes. Someone far

42:01

more competent and

42:05

archiving and ideological could

42:07

have exploited our system in

42:10

a way that Trump didn't. And and that's

42:13

yeah. So if if we plug

42:15

those holes eventually,

42:19

that would be a good thing and he would have done a good thing

42:21

for our society. Right? I mean, one of the things

42:23

we realized, and I IDW

42:25

think nobody knew. I mean, I certainly didn't know

42:27

it and IDW hear anyone talk about

42:29

it, is how much our

42:31

system relies on

42:33

norms rather than laws -- Yeah. -- as civility.

42:36

Right. Yeah, it's just like it's it's

42:39

quite possible that he never did anything

42:41

illegal. You know, truly, truly

42:44

illegal. I mean, I think he probably did

42:46

a few illegal things, but, like, illegal such

42:48

that he really should be thrown in jail for

42:50

it, you know. At

42:52

least that remains to be seen. So

42:56

all of the chaos, all of the,

42:59

you know, all of the diminishment

43:02

of our stature in the world, all of the just

43:04

the the opportunity costs of

43:06

spending years focused on

43:08

nonsense. All

43:11

of that was just norm violations. All

43:14

that was just that was just all a matter

43:16

of not saying the thing you should

43:18

say. But that doesn't mean they're insignificant.

43:20

Right? It's not that it's like it's not

43:23

illegal for a sitting president

43:25

to say, no, I'm

43:27

not gonna commit to peaceful transfer

43:29

of power. Right? We'll wait and see whether

43:31

I win. If I win, it it

43:33

it it it was the election

43:35

was was

43:37

was valid. If I lose, it was fraudulent. Right?

43:39

But aren't those humorous

43:42

perturbations to our system of

43:44

civility such that we know what the limits

43:46

are? And now we start to think that

43:49

and have these kinds of

43:50

discussion. But that that wasn't a humorous perturbation

43:52

because he did everything

43:54

he could granted he wasn't

43:56

very competent, but he did everything he could

43:59

to try to steal

44:02

the election. I mean, the irony is he claimed

44:04

to have an election stolen from him

44:06

all the while doing everything he could to steal

44:09

IDW, declaring it fraudulent in advance trying

44:11

to get the votes to to to

44:13

not be counted as the evening wore on

44:16

knowing that they were gonna be disproportionately democrat

44:19

Democrat votes. Because

44:21

of the the, you know, because of the position

44:23

he took on mail in ballots. I mean, all

44:25

of it was fairly calculated the

44:28

whole circus of of of,

44:30

you know, the clown car that

44:33

crashed into, you know, 365 seasons landscaping.

44:35

Right? And and You got Rudy Giuliani

44:38

with his hair dye and you got Sydney Powell and

44:40

all that all these grossly incompetent

44:42

people, lying as

44:44

freely as they could breathe. About

44:47

election fraud. Right? And all of these

44:49

things are getting thrown out by, you know, Republican,

44:51

largely Republican election officials and Republican

44:54

judges. It

44:56

wasn't wasn't 365 want of trying that

44:58

he didn't maintain his power

45:00

in this country. He really tried to

45:02

steal the presidency. He just was

45:04

not competent. And the people around him weren't

45:06

confident. So that's a good thing,

45:09

and it's worth not letting that

45:11

happen again. But he wasn't 365, so

45:13

he didn't do everything he could. When

45:15

he did everything he could, he didn't do everything

45:17

that could have been done by someone more competent.

45:21

Right. But the the tools you have

45:23

as a president. You could do a lot of things. You can

45:25

declare emergencies, especially during COVID.

45:27

You could postpone the election. You can

45:29

create military conflict. That,

45:32

you know, any kind of reason to postpone the

45:34

election. There's there's a lot of Well, he he tried

45:36

to do things and he would have to have done

45:38

those things through other people and there are people

45:40

who refused to do those things.

45:42

The people who said they would quit, they would they would

45:44

quit publicly. Right? I mean, this is you

45:46

start again, there are multiple

45:49

books written about in

45:51

the the last hours of of this presidency.

45:54

And the details are shocking

45:57

in what he tried to do and tried to get others

45:59

to do and it's awful.

46:01

Right? I mean, it's it's just awful that we

46:03

were that close. To

46:06

something

46:09

to to a true unraveling of

46:11

our political process. And

46:13

it's the only time in our lifetime that anything like

46:15

this has happened. And it's

46:19

deeply embarrassing. 365? to,

46:21

you know, on the world stage, it's just like we we looked

46:23

like a banana republic there for a while.

46:26

And we're

46:29

the the lone superpower. It's

46:32

a bet. It's it's not good. Right?

46:34

And so we shouldn't like, there's no

46:36

there's no the IDW people who thought,

46:38

well, we just need to shake things up and this is a

46:40

great and great way to shake things up

46:42

and having people, you know, storm our capital

46:45

and smear shit on the walls. That's just

46:47

more shaking things up. Right? It's

46:49

all just for the walls. There's

46:52

a nihilism and cynicism to

46:55

all of that, which, again, in certain people,

46:57

it's understandable. You know, frankly, it's

46:59

not understandable 365 you got a billion dollars

47:02

and you're you, you know, have a compound

47:04

in Menlo Park or wherever. It's like there

47:06

are people who are cheerleading this stuff who shouldn't

47:08

be cheerleading this stuff and who know that

47:10

they can get on their 365 stream

47:12

and fly to their compound IDW New Zealand

47:14

365 everything goes to shit. Right? So

47:17

there there's a cynicism to all of that that

47:19

I think we should be deeply critical

47:21

of.

47:21

What IDW trying to understand is

47:23

not and analyzed

47:26

is not the behavior of this particular human being,

47:28

but the effect IDW had in part

47:31

on the division between people.

47:34

To me, the degree, the

47:36

meme of Sam Harris'

47:38

brain being broken by Trump represents

47:42

You're like the person I would look to

47:44

to bridge the division. Well,

47:47

I don't think there is something

47:51

profitably to be said to

47:53

someone who's truly captivated

47:56

by the the the personality cult of

47:58

Trumpism. Right? Like, there's nothing that I'm

48:00

gonna say to there's no conversation

48:03

I'm gonna have with Candice Owens say about

48:05

Trump. That's gonna converge on something

48:07

reasonable. Right? You

48:08

don't think so? No. I mean, I've tried I haven't tried

48:10

with Candace, but tried with, you know, many people who

48:14

are into that particular orbit IDW I've

48:16

I've had conversations with people who

48:19

won't admit that there's anything

48:22

wrong with Trump. Anything. So

48:24

I'd like to push for the empathy versus

48:26

reason. Because when you operate in the space of

48:28

reason, yes. But

48:30

I think there's a lot of power and

48:33

you showing, and you somehow are showing

48:35

that you're willing to see the good

48:37

qualities of Trump publicly

48:40

showing

48:40

that. IDW think that's the way to

48:42

win over. But he has so few of them.

48:44

He has fewer good qualities than any virtually

48:47

anyone I can name. Right? But Lex

48:50

he's funny. He I'll I'll grant you that he's

48:52

funny. He's he's he's a good entertainer.

48:54

Does others look at just policies and

48:56

actual impacts at I've I've admitted that

48:59

No. No. So like so I've admitted that

49:01

many of his policies IDW agree with.

49:03

Many many of his I mean, so Probably

49:07

more often than not. mean, at least on balance,

49:09

I agreed I guess, I I agreed with his

49:11

policy that, you know, we should take China

49:14

seriously as an adversary. Right? And we're

49:16

and I

49:18

think mean, again, that

49:20

you have to there's a lot of fine print to a lot of this

49:22

because the way he talks about these things

49:25

and and many of his motives that

49:27

are obvious or or things that I 365

49:29

support, but we take immigration. I

49:31

think there's It's obvious

49:34

that we should have control of our borders.

49:36

Right? Like, I I don't see the argument for

49:39

not having control of our borders. We should let

49:41

in who we wanna let in and we should

49:43

keep out who we wanna keep out, and we should

49:45

have a sane immigration policy. So

49:48

I don't I didn't necessarily think it was a priority

49:50

to build the wall, but I didn't I never

49:54

criticized the impulse to build the wall because

49:56

if tens of thousands, hundreds of

49:58

thousands of people are coming across the border and we are

50:00

not in a position to know who's coming,

50:03

that seems untenable to me. So and

50:05

I can recognize that many people in

50:08

our society are

50:10

unbalance the victims of immigration

50:13

because and and there is a in in in

50:15

many cases, zero sum contest between the

50:17

interests of actual citizens and

50:19

the interests of immigrants. Right? So

50:21

I think we should have a we should have control

50:23

of our borders. We should have a sane and compassionate

50:26

immigration policy we should have. We should let in

50:29

refugees. Right? So I didn't you know,

50:31

Trump on refugees was terrible. But

50:35

no, like, I would say eighty

50:37

percent of the policy concerns

50:40

people celebrated

50:44

in him are

50:47

concerns that I either share entirely

50:50

or certainly sympathize with.

50:52

Right? So like, that's not That's

50:55

not the

50:55

issue. The issue is a

50:57

threat

50:57

to democracy and some 365. The

50:59

issue is largely what you said it was. It is

51:01

not so much the person. It's the effect

51:04

on everything he touches. Right?

51:06

He just he has this this

51:08

superpower of

51:11

deranging and destabilizing almost

51:15

everything he touches and selling the and

51:17

and compromising the integrity of almost anyone

51:19

who comes into his orbit. Mean, you looked at these people

51:22

who served as the chief of staff

51:24

or, you know, in various cabinet positions,

51:27

people had real reputations, you know, for

51:29

for probity and and the

51:31

level headedness, you know, whether

51:33

you share their politics or not. I mean, these

51:35

were real people. These were not you

51:38

know, some of them were 365,

51:40

but many

51:45

people who who just got

51:48

totally trashed by proximity

51:51

to him and then trashed by him when

51:53

they finally parted company with him.

51:57

Yeah. It's just people bent

52:00

over backwards to accommodate his

52:02

norm violations. And it

52:05

it was it was bad for them and it was

52:07

bad for our our our

52:09

system. And but

52:12

that but none of that discounts the

52:14

fact that we

52:16

have a

52:19

system that really needs proper

52:21

house cleaning. Yes, there are bad

52:23

incentives and entrenched

52:26

interests. And IDW not a fan

52:28

of the concept of of

52:30

the deep state, but because

52:32

it, you know, it's been so propagandized. But, yes,

52:34

there's there's something like

52:36

that, you know, that

52:40

is not flexible enough

52:44

to respond intelligently to the needs

52:46

of the

52:46

moment. Right? So there's a lot of rethinking of

52:48

government and of institutions in general that I

52:50

think we

52:53

should do, but we need

52:55

smart, well informed, well

52:57

intentioned people to do that job.

52:59

And the well intention part is

53:02

is hugely important. Right? It's just

53:05

give me someone who is

53:08

not the most selfish

53:11

person anyone has ever

53:14

heard about in their lifetime. Right?

53:16

And what we got with Trump was that, like, literally,

53:18

the one most selfish person IDW think

53:20

anyone could name. IDW mean, and you and

53:23

again, there's so much known about this

53:25

man. That's the thing. It was like, it

53:27

predates his presidency. We knew this

53:29

guy thirty years ago. And

53:32

and this is why to come back to those

53:34

inflammatory comments about a hundred bytes laptop.

53:37

The reason why I can say with

53:39

confidence that I don't care what was on

53:41

his his laptop is that there

53:43

is and and that includes any

53:46

evidence of corruption on the on the part of his

53:48

father. Right? Now there's been precious

53:50

little of that that's actually emerged.

53:52

So it's like there is no as far as I

53:54

can tell, there's not a big story associated

53:56

with that laptop as much as people bang on

53:58

about a 365 emails. But

54:02

even if there were just obvious

54:04

corruption, Right? Like, Joe Biden

54:07

was at this meeting and he took, you know, this

54:09

amount of money from this shady guy

54:11

for bad reasons. Right? Given

54:15

how visible the lives of these two men

54:18

have been, right? And given how much we know

54:20

about Joe Biden and how much we know about Donald Trump

54:22

and how they have lived in public for

54:24

almost as long as I've been alive, both of them.

54:27

The the the scale of

54:29

corruption can't possibly

54:32

balance out between the two of them. Right? We

54:34

IDW 365 if you show me that Joe

54:36

Biden has this secret life, where

54:38

he's driving a Bugatti and he's living

54:40

like Andrew Tate. Right? And he's he's

54:42

doing all these things I didn't know about.

54:45

Okay. Then I'm gonna start getting a

54:47

sense that Alright. Maybe this guy is

54:50

way more corrupt than I realized. Maybe there

54:52

is some deal in Ukraine or with China

54:54

that is just Like this guy is not who

54:56

he seems. He's not the public servant he's

54:58

been pretending to be. He's been on the

55:00

take for decades and decades, and he's

55:02

just He's as dirty as conveys. He's

55:05

all mobbed up and as a nightmare. And

55:08

he can't be trusted. Right? That's possible

55:11

365 you show me that his life is not at

55:13

all what it seems. But on the assumption that

55:16

I having looked at this guy for literally

55:18

decades, right, and

55:21

knowing that every journalist has looked at him

55:23

for decades. Just how many affairs

55:25

is he having? Just how much, you know,

55:28

how many drugs is he doing? How many

55:30

houses does he have? Where, you know, what

55:33

what is what are the obvious conflicts

55:35

of interests? You know? You hold that against

55:37

what we know about Trump. Right? And,

55:41

I mean, the litany of indiscretions

55:44

you can put on Trump's side that

55:46

that testified to his personal

55:48

corruption, to testify to the fact that he has

55:50

no ethical compass. There's

55:52

simply no comparison. Right? So that's why

55:54

I don't care about what's on the laptop

55:56

when now 365 you tell me

55:58

Trump is no longer running for president

56:01

in twenty twenty four, and we can put

56:03

Trumpism behind us. And

56:05

now you're saying, listen, there's a

56:07

lot of stuff on that laptop that makes Joe

56:09

Biden looked like a total asshole. Okay.

56:12

I'm all ears. Right? I mean, it was

56:14

a 365 in twenty twenty, it was a forced

56:16

choice between a sitting

56:18

president who wouldn't commit to a peaceful transfer of

56:20

power, and a guy who's obviously

56:23

too old to be president

56:25

who has a crack

56:27

addicted son who who, you

56:30

know, who lost his laptop. And

56:33

I just knew that

56:35

I was gonna take Biden in spite of

56:37

whatever litany of horrors was gonna come tumbling

56:40

out of that

56:40

laptop. And that might involve sort

56:42

of So the actual quote is, Hunter Biden literally

56:44

could have had the corpses of children --

56:47

Mhmm. -- in the basement. There's there's

56:49

a dark humor to it. Right? Which is, I think, you speak

56:51

to, I would not have cared. There's

56:53

nothing. It's Hunter Biden. It's not Joe Biden.

56:55

Whatever the scope of Joe Biden's corruption is,

56:57

it is infinitesimally compared to the

56:59

corruption. We know Trump is involved

57:01

in. It's like a firefly to the sun.

57:03

It's what you're speaking to. But let me make

57:06

the case that you're focused

57:08

on the surface stuff that

57:11

it's possible to have corruption

57:14

that masquerades in the thing we mentioned,

57:16

which is civility. You can spend

57:19

hundreds of billions of dollars or trillions of

57:21

stores of war in

57:23

the Middle East. For example, something that

57:25

you've changed your mind on in terms of

57:28

the negative impact it has on the world.

57:30

And that, you know, the military industrial

57:32

complex everybody

57:34

is very nice. Everybody is very civil.

57:37

There's very upfront. Here's how we're spending

57:39

the money. Yeah. Sometimes somehow

57:41

disappears in different places, but

57:43

that's the way, you know, worse complicated. And

57:46

as everyone is very polite, there's no coke

57:49

and strippers or whatever is on the laptop.

57:52

It's very nice and polite. In the meanwhile,

57:54

hundreds of thousands of civilians die of

57:57

hate just

58:00

an incredible amount of hate is created because

58:02

people lose their family members, all that kind of

58:04

stuff. But there's no strippers in Coconut on a laptop.

58:07

So -- Yeah. -- but but it's not just

58:09

superficial. It is

58:13

when you when someone only

58:15

wants wealth and power and

58:17

fame. That is

58:19

their their objective function.

58:21

Right? They're like a robot that

58:23

is calibrated just to those variables.

58:26

Right? And they don't

58:28

care about the risks

58:30

we run on any other front. They don't care

58:32

about, I mean, Environmental

58:35

risk, pandemic risk, nuclear

58:37

proliferation risk, none of

58:40

it. Right? They're just they're just tracking 365,

58:43

and money, and and

58:45

whatever can can personally redone

58:49

to their self interest along those lines. And

58:51

they're not informed about the other risks

58:53

we're running really. I mean, in Trump, you

58:55

you had a president who was repeatedly

58:58

asking his general Why couldn't we use

59:00

our nuclear weapons? Why can't we have

59:02

more of them? Why do I have fewer nuclear weapons

59:04

than JFK? Right? So that were

59:06

sign of of anything

59:08

other than progress. Right? And

59:13

this is the guy who's got then the

59:15

the button. Right? I mean, he's got somebody's

59:17

following him around with a bag waiting to

59:19

take his order to to launch. Right?

59:24

That is a it's

59:26

just it's a it's a a risk

59:29

we should never run. One thing

59:31

Trump has going for him, I think, is that he's he

59:33

doesn't drink or do drugs. Right? I don't

59:35

know. There's, you know, people allegedly does

59:38

speed, but let's take

59:40

him in his word. He's he's not

59:42

arranging himself with with

59:43

pharmaceuticals, at least. But

59:47

apart from diet coke.

59:51

But there's nothing wrong. Just for the record,

59:53

let me push back on that. There's nothing

59:54

wrong with diet coke. Yeah. Oh, I know. It's a very

59:57

your mouth. I occasionally have some myself. There's no

59:59

medical there's no scientific evidence that I

1:00:01

observed the negatives of, you know,

1:00:03

all those studies about aspartame and all of

1:00:05

that. It's I No. don't know.

1:00:07

If IDW hope I hope you're right. Yeah.

1:00:10

I mean, everything you said about the military industrial

1:00:13

complexes True. Right? And and

1:00:15

it's been we've been worrying about that on both

1:00:17

sides of the aisle for a very long

1:00:19

time. I mean, that's just that phrase

1:00:22

came from 365 Eisenhower. It's

1:00:29

I mean, so much of

1:00:31

what ails us is a story

1:00:33

of bad incentives. Right? And

1:00:36

bad incentives are so powerful that

1:00:39

they corrupt even good people. Right?

1:00:42

How much more do they corrupt bad people?

1:00:44

Right? Like, so it's like, you want

1:00:47

at minimum, you want reasonably

1:00:49

good people, at least non pathological people

1:00:52

in a in the system trying

1:00:55

to navigate against the grain of bad

1:00:57

incentives. And better

1:00:59

still, all of us can get

1:01:01

together and and try to diagnose those

1:01:03

incentives and change them.

1:01:06

Right? And and we will really

1:01:08

succeed when we have a system of incentives

1:01:10

where the

1:01:12

the good incentives are so strong that

1:01:16

even bad people are effortlessly

1:01:19

behaving as though they're good people because they're

1:01:21

so successfully incentivized to behave

1:01:23

that way. Right? That's you

1:01:25

know, so so it's almost the

1:01:27

inversion of our current situation. So yes,

1:01:30

And you say IDW my mind about the war.

1:01:33

I not quite. I mean, I I was never

1:01:37

a supporter of the war in Iraq. I

1:01:39

was always worried that it was a

1:01:41

a distraction from the war in Afghanistan. I was

1:01:43

a supporter of the war in 365, and

1:01:45

I will admit in hindsight that looks

1:01:47

like you

1:01:49

know, at best a highly ambiguous

1:01:52

and painful exercise, you know,

1:01:54

more likely a 365 fool's errand. Right?

1:01:56

It's like that would IDW did not turn

1:01:58

out well. It's it's it

1:02:01

wasn't for want of trying. I I don't, you

1:02:03

know, IDW have not done a deep dive on

1:02:05

on all of the failures there,

1:02:08

and maybe all of these failures or failures

1:02:10

in principle. I mean, maybe it's just maybe that's

1:02:12

not the kind of thing that can be done well

1:02:14

by anybody. Whatever our intentions.

1:02:18

But, yeah, the the move to Iraq always seemed

1:02:21

questionable to me. And when

1:02:24

we knew the problem, the immediate problem

1:02:27

at that moment, you know, Al Qaeda was

1:02:31

in Afghanistan and you know,

1:02:33

and then bounce into Pakistan. Anyway,

1:02:37

all you know, so yes. But my

1:02:40

my sense of the possibility of

1:02:43

nation building, my sense of

1:02:45

of, you know, and

1:02:47

so and so far as the the the

1:02:49

NeoCon spirit

1:02:53

of of, you

1:02:55

know, responsibility and idealism that, you know,

1:02:57

America was the kind of nation that

1:02:59

should be functioning in this way as

1:03:02

as the world's cop, and we got we have to get in there

1:03:04

and and untangle some of these

1:03:06

knots by 365. Rather

1:03:09

often because, you know, if

1:03:11

we don't do it over there, we're gonna have to do it over here

1:03:13

kind of thing. Yeah,

1:03:15

some of that has definitely changed.

1:03:17

For me, am I thinking? IDW mean,

1:03:20

there are obviously cultural reasons why

1:03:22

it failed in Afghanistan, and and if you can't change

1:03:24

the culture, it's

1:03:29

You're not going to force a change at gunpoint

1:03:31

in the culture or it certainly seems that

1:03:34

that's not going to happen. And it took

1:03:36

us you know, over twenty years

1:03:38

to, apparently, to realize

1:03:39

that. That's one of the things you realize with the wars.

1:03:42

There's not going to be a strong signal

1:03:44

that things are not

1:03:45

working. 365 can just keep pouring money

1:03:47

into

1:03:47

a thing,

1:03:48

a military effort. Well, also, there there are

1:03:50

signs of it working too. You have all the

1:03:52

stories of girls now

1:03:54

going to school. Right? You know, the girls are getting battery

1:03:56

assets thrown in their faces by religious

1:03:58

maniacs, and then we come in there and

1:04:00

we stop that. And now girls are getting

1:04:03

educated and there's a and that's all

1:04:05

good. And our intentions are good there. And I

1:04:07

mean, we're on the right side of history there.

1:04:09

Girls should be going to school. You know,

1:04:11

Malala Yosefai

1:04:13

should have the Nobel Prize, and she shouldn't

1:04:15

have been shot in the face by by the

1:04:17

Taliban. Right?

1:04:20

We know what the right answers are there. The question

1:04:23

is, what do you do when there are enough

1:04:25

in this particular case religious maniacs

1:04:28

who are willing to die and let their children

1:04:30

die in defense of crazy ideas

1:04:33

and moral norms that belong in the

1:04:35

seventh century.

1:04:38

And it's a problem we couldn't solve, and

1:04:40

we couldn't solve it even though we spent

1:04:43

trillions of dollars to solve it. Just

1:04:45

reminding me of the

1:04:47

thing that you and and Jack

1:04:49

Dorsey jokingly had

1:04:51

for Wiles the discussion about

1:04:53

banning Donald Trump from

1:04:56

Twitter. But does any of it

1:04:58

bother you? Now that Twitter files came out

1:05:01

that I mean, it has to

1:05:03

do with sort of the Hunter laptop

1:05:05

Hunter Biden laptop story. Does

1:05:07

it bother you that they're could

1:05:10

be a collection of people that make decisions

1:05:12

about who to ban or not. And that

1:05:16

that could be susceptible to bias and

1:05:18

to ideological influence? Well,

1:05:21

I I think it

1:05:23

always will be or, you know, in

1:05:25

the absence of perfect AI, it always

1:05:28

will be. And this becomes relevant with AI

1:05:30

as well. Yeah. Because, you know, you have some censorship

1:05:32

on AI

1:05:32

happening. Yeah. And it's an interesting question there

1:05:34

as well. I don't think Twitter is important as

1:05:36

people think it is. Right? And and I

1:05:39

I used to think it was more important when I was on it.

1:05:41

And now that I'm off of it, I think it's it's I

1:05:45

mean, 365, let me say it's

1:05:47

just an unambiguously

1:05:49

good thing in my experience to

1:05:52

to lease your Twitter account. Right? It's like it it

1:05:54

is just even the good parts

1:05:56

of Twitter that I miss were

1:05:59

bad in the aggregate. In

1:06:01

the the degree to which it

1:06:03

was fragmented my attention. That degree

1:06:06

to which my life was getting

1:06:08

doled out to me in periods

1:06:11

between those moments where I checked

1:06:13

Twitter, right, and had my attention diverted.

1:06:15

And I was, you know, I was not

1:06:18

a crazy Twitter addict. I mean, I

1:06:21

was probably a pretty normal user. I mean, was

1:06:23

not someone who was tweeting multiple

1:06:25

times a day or even every day. Right?

1:06:27

IDW I think probably

1:06:30

averaged something

1:06:32

like one tweet a day. I think I average.

1:06:34

But in reality, it was like, you know, there'd be, like, four tweets

1:06:37

one day, and then I wouldn't tweet for, you know, the better

1:06:39

part of the week. And but I was

1:06:41

looking lot because

1:06:44

it was my 365. I was just following, you

1:06:46

know, two hundred very smart people, and I just

1:06:48

wanted to see what they were paying attention to.

1:06:50

They would recommend articles, and I would read those articles.

1:06:53

And And then when I would read an article that then I would

1:06:55

that I would thought I should signal boost, I would tweet.

1:06:57

And so all of that seemed good and,

1:07:00

like, that's all separable from

1:07:02

all of the IDW bullshit that came back

1:07:04

at me in in response to this largely in

1:07:06

response to this hundred IDW thing. But

1:07:10

even the good stuff has

1:07:13

a IDW. And and

1:07:16

it comes at just this

1:07:18

point of your phone

1:07:20

is this perpetual stimulus

1:07:22

of which

1:07:26

is intrinsically fragmenting time and

1:07:28

attention. And now my phone is

1:07:30

is much less of a presence in my life.

1:07:32

And it's it's not that I don't check Slack

1:07:34

or check email, and I, you know, I

1:07:36

use it to work But my

1:07:41

sense of just what the world is and my

1:07:43

sense of my place in the world, the sense of

1:07:45

where I exist as a person, has

1:07:48

changed a lot by deleting my Twitter

1:07:50

account. I mean, I had a and it's just it's

1:07:54

and the and the things that I think mean, we

1:07:56

all know this 365. I mean, we we because we say

1:07:58

of someone who that person's too online. Right?

1:08:00

Like, what does it mean to be too online? And

1:08:03

where do you draw the that

1:08:06

that boundary? You know, where how do you know

1:08:08

what constitutes being to online? Well, In

1:08:12

some sense, just be I think being on on

1:08:14

social media at all is to be too online.

1:08:16

mean, given what it

1:08:18

does to given the kinds

1:08:21

of

1:08:21

information, it it

1:08:24

signal boosts. And

1:08:27

given the

1:08:29

given the impulse it kindles in

1:08:31

each of us to reach out

1:08:33

to our audience in at

1:08:36

in specific moments and in specific

1:08:38

ways. Right? It's like there

1:08:40

there are lots of moments now where I have an opinion

1:08:42

about something, but there's nothing for me

1:08:44

to do with that

1:08:45

opinion. Right? Like,

1:08:46

there's no Twitter. Right? So, like, there there are

1:08:48

lots of things that I would have tweeted -- Mhmm. --

1:08:50

in the last months. That

1:08:53

are not the kind of thing I'm gonna do a

1:08:55

podcast about. I'm not gonna roll

1:08:57

out ten minutes on that topic on my podcast.

1:08:59

I'm not gonna take the time to really think about it.

1:09:01

But had I been on Twitter, I would

1:09:03

have reacted to this thing in the

1:09:05

news or this thing that some somebody did.

1:09:07

Right? What do you do with that thought? No.

1:09:10

just let go of it. Like, chocolate

1:09:12

ice cream is the most delicious thing. Yeah. It's

1:09:14

it's usually not that sort of thing, but it's

1:09:16

it's just But then you look

1:09:18

at the kinds of problems people create for

1:09:20

themselves. You look at the 365,

1:09:22

deranging, and reputation, destroying

1:09:25

things that people And

1:09:28

and I look at the things that that have the

1:09:31

analogous things that have happened to me, I mean, the things

1:09:33

that have really bent my life around professionally.

1:09:36

Over the past, you know, decade. So

1:09:39

much of it is Twitter. I mean, honestly

1:09:42

in my case, almost a hundred percent

1:09:44

of it was Twitter. The the controversies I would

1:09:46

get into, the things I would IDW would

1:09:48

think I would have to respond to and a like, I would

1:09:50

release a podcast on a certain topic. I

1:09:52

would see some blowback on Twitter.

1:09:55

You know, it would give me the sense that

1:09:57

there was some signal that I really had to

1:09:59

respond to. Now that I'm off Twitter,

1:10:02

I I recognize that most of that was just it

1:10:05

was totally specious. Right? It was it was not something

1:10:08

I had to respond to. But yet, I would

1:10:10

then do a cycle of podcasts

1:10:12

responding to that thing that, like, taking

1:10:15

my foot out of my mouth or taking someone else's foot

1:10:17

out of my mouth, and it became

1:10:19

this this self perpetuating cycle,

1:10:24

which I

1:10:27

mean, it's you know, if you're having

1:10:29

fun, great. I mean, if it's if it's if it's

1:10:31

generative of useful information

1:10:35

and and engagement professionally and

1:10:38

and psychologically great.

1:10:40

But and and there, you

1:10:42

know, there was some of that on

1:10:44

Twitter. I mean, there were people who I've connected

1:10:46

with because IDW just you know,

1:10:49

one one of us ed the other on Twitter, and it

1:10:51

was hard to see how that was gonna happen. Otherwise.

1:10:53

But it

1:10:55

was largely just

1:10:58

a machine for

1:11:00

manufacturing

1:11:01

unnecessary controversy. Do you think it's possible

1:11:03

to avoid the drug of that? So now that

1:11:05

you've achieved this done state, is

1:11:07

it possible for somebody like you

1:11:10

to use it in a way that doesn't pull you into

1:11:12

the oil

1:11:12

pool. And so anytime there's

1:11:14

a Lex, you just I mean, that's how I IDW

1:11:17

to use it. Yeah. But it's it's not

1:11:19

the way I wanted to use it. It's not the way

1:11:21

it it it promises itself

1:11:23

as as wanted to have debate. I wanted

1:11:25

to actually communicate with people. IDW I

1:11:28

wanted to hear from the person because

1:11:31

again, it's it's like being an 365. Right?

1:11:33

It's like there there there are the the

1:11:35

potted cases where it's

1:11:37

obviously good. Right? So in Afghanistan,

1:11:40

the girl who's getting an education, that is just

1:11:43

here. That's why we're here. That's obviously

1:11:45

good. I've had those moments on Twitter

1:11:47

where it's okay. I'm hearing from a smart person

1:11:49

who's detected an error I made

1:11:51

in my podcast or in a book

1:11:53

or they've just got some great idea

1:11:56

about something that I should spend time

1:11:58

on. And I would never have heard from this

1:12:00

person in any other 365. And now

1:12:02

I'm actually in dialogue with them. And it's it's fantastic.

1:12:05

That's the promise of it to actually talk to

1:12:07

people. And so IDW I kept getting lured

1:12:09

back into that. No.

1:12:12

The the way the sane or,

1:12:14

you know, sanity preserving way of of using

1:12:16

it is is

1:12:19

just as a marketing channel. You just put your

1:12:21

stuff out there and you don't look at what's coming back

1:12:23

at you. And that's,

1:12:25

you know, for you know, I'm on other social media

1:12:27

365. That don't even touch. I

1:12:29

mean, my team put post stuff on

1:12:31

Facebook and on Instagram. I never even see

1:12:33

what's on there. So

1:12:34

you don't think it's possible to see something

1:12:37

and that'll let it affect your mind. Well, no. That

1:12:39

that's definitely possible. But the

1:12:41

question is and I did that for

1:12:44

vast stretches of time. Right? And

1:12:46

But then the the

1:12:49

promise of the platform is dialogue

1:12:52

and feedback. Right? So, like, so why am

1:12:54

I if I know 365

1:12:57

whatever reason, I'm gonna see,

1:12:59

like, ninety nine to one awful

1:13:02

feedback, you know, bad faith feedback.

1:13:04

Malicious feedback. Some of it's probably even

1:13:06

bots, and I'm not even aware of who's a person,

1:13:09

who's a bot. Right? But I'm just gonna stare

1:13:11

into this 365 house mirror of

1:13:14

acrimony and dishonesty that

1:13:17

is going I mean, the the reason why I got

1:13:19

off is not

1:13:21

because I couldn't recalibrate

1:13:24

and and and find equanimity again with

1:13:26

all the the nastiness

1:13:28

that was coming back at me. And not that I couldn't

1:13:30

ignore it for vast rest of time. But

1:13:34

IDW could see that I kept coming back to

1:13:36

it hoping that it

1:13:38

would be something that I could use a

1:13:40

real tool for communication. And I was

1:13:42

noticing that it was

1:13:45

insidiously changing the

1:13:47

way I felt about people. Yeah. Both

1:13:49

people I know and people I don't know. Right? Like,

1:13:52

people I you know, mutual friends of ours who

1:13:54

are behaving in certain ways on Twitter, which just

1:13:56

seemed insane to me. And

1:13:58

then that became a signal. I felt like

1:14:00

I had to take into account somehow. Right?

1:14:03

You're seeing people at their worst, both friends

1:14:05

and strangers. And

1:14:08

I 365 that it was as much as I could

1:14:10

sort of try to recalibrate for it, I

1:14:14

felt that I was losing touch with

1:14:16

what was real 365. Because

1:14:18

people are 365, people are faking,

1:14:20

people are not hurt themselves, or they're you're

1:14:23

just seeing people at their worst. And

1:14:25

so felt like Alright. Was

1:14:27

at was being advertised to me

1:14:30

here on a not just a daily basis,

1:14:32

I'm, you know, hourly basis

1:14:35

or, you know, increment sometimes of, you know,

1:14:37

multiple times an hour. I mean, I probably check

1:14:39

Twitter, you know,

1:14:42

at minimum ten times a day and maybe

1:14:44

I was checking it a hundred times a day

1:14:46

on some days, right, where things were really active

1:14:49

and I was really engaged with something. What

1:14:54

was being delivered into my brain there

1:14:56

was it was subtly

1:15:00

false information. About

1:15:02

how dishonest

1:15:04

and you

1:15:09

know, just generally unethical, totally

1:15:14

normal people are capable of being. Right?

1:15:16

It was like, it was it was a it is a fun house mirror.

1:15:18

It was it was I was seeing the most grotesque

1:15:21

versions of people who I know.

1:15:23

Right? People who I know I could sit down at

1:15:26

dinner with and they would never behave this way.

1:15:28

And yet they were they were coming at me on

1:15:30

Twitter, you know, I mean, essentially

1:15:34

turning ordinary people into

1:15:36

sociopaths. Right? It's like people are

1:15:38

just you

1:15:41

know, it's and there are analogies that many of

1:15:43

us have made it. It's like it's like one analogy

1:15:45

is road rage. Right? Like, people behave in the confines

1:15:48

of a car -- Mhmm. -- in ways that they never

1:15:50

would 365 they didn't have this metal box

1:15:52

around them, you know, and moving at speed. And it's

1:15:54

it's, you know, all that becomes quite hilarious

1:15:57

and and, you know,

1:16:00

obviously 365 when they're actually have to

1:16:02

stop at the light next to the person they just flipped 365.

1:16:04

And they realized they didn't didn't

1:16:06

understand that the person coming out of that car next

1:16:08

to them with cauliflower here is

1:16:10

someone who they never would have you

1:16:12

know, rolled their eyes at in public because they

1:16:14

they would have taken one look at this person realized this

1:16:16

this is the last person you wanna fight

1:16:18

with. That's one of the heartbreaking things is

1:16:20

to see See people who I

1:16:22

know who I admire, who I know

1:16:25

our friends be everything

1:16:27

from snarky to downright. Yeah.

1:16:31

Mean of derisive

1:16:34

towards each other. But it doesn't make any

1:16:36

sense like this. This is the only place

1:16:38

where I've seen people I really admire

1:16:41

who have had a calm head -- Yeah. -- but

1:16:43

most things, like, really be shitty

1:16:45

to other people. It's probably the only place

1:16:47

I've seen that. And I I don't I

1:16:50

tend I choose to maybe believe that that's

1:16:52

not really them. There's something about the

1:16:54

system. Like,

1:16:56

if you go paint balling, if you Jordan

1:16:58

Peterson and You're

1:17:00

gonna shoot up You're gonna shoot your friends. Yeah. Yeah. You're gonna

1:17:02

shoot your friends when you kind of accept it. That's kinda

1:17:04

what you're doing in this little game that you're

1:17:06

playing, but it's sometimes hard to

1:17:08

remind yourself of that. What and

1:17:10

I think was guilty of that

1:17:13

365. You

1:17:16

know, I I don't think there's nothing IDW don't think

1:17:18

I ever did anything that I really

1:17:21

feel bad about. But, yeah, it was always

1:17:23

pushing me to the edge of IDW

1:17:26

somehow. And It's

1:17:29

just not healthy. It's not it's not

1:17:33

IDW so so the so the reason why

1:17:35

I deleted my Twitter account in the end was

1:17:37

that It was obviously making me

1:17:39

a worse person. And

1:17:41

and so and, yeah, is

1:17:43

there some way to be on there where he's not making me

1:17:45

a worse person? IDW sure there is, but it's

1:17:48

given the nature of the platform and given

1:17:51

what was coming back at me on it,

1:17:54

the way to do that is just to basically users

1:17:57

a one way channel of of communication. Just

1:18:00

just just marketing. You know, it's like, here here's

1:18:02

what I what I'm paying attention to. Look

1:18:04

at it if you want

1:18:05

to. And just you just push it out and then you don't you

1:18:07

don't look at what's coming back at you. I put

1:18:09

out a call for questions on Twitter. And then,

1:18:11

actually, quite surprising, there's a lot of

1:18:14

Good. IDW they're they're

1:18:16

like even if they're critical, they're

1:18:18

like being thoughtful, which is

1:18:20

nice. I

1:18:20

used it that way too, and that was what kept me

1:18:23

hooked.

1:18:23

But then there's also touch

1:18:26

balls sixty nine, wrote a question -- Mhmm.

1:18:29

-- ask Can't IDW imagine. This

1:18:31

is part of it. But one way to solve this is, you

1:18:33

know, we've got to get rid of anonymity for

1:18:36

this. It's like

1:18:36

Let me ask the question. Ask Sam why

1:18:38

he sucks. Was the question. Yeah. That's that's

1:18:40

good. Well One one reason

1:18:42

why I sucked was Twitter. That was and

1:18:45

I I've since solved that problem. So a

1:18:47

much touch ball sixty nine sixty

1:18:49

nine. Yeah. Touch ball sixty nine should be happy

1:18:51

that III suck a little bit less

1:18:53

now that I'm off Twitter. Mean, the fact 365 you don't

1:18:55

have to hear from touch balls. Sixty nine on the

1:18:57

regular. The fact that you have

1:19:00

to have to see that

1:19:03

it probably can have a negative effect

1:19:05

just even a moderation

1:19:07

just to see that there is 365 for me,

1:19:09

the negative effect is slightly

1:19:12

losing faith

1:19:13

in the underlying kindness of humanity.

1:19:16

Yeah. But you That

1:19:16

was 365 me. Yeah.

1:19:17

You can also just reason your way out of it saying

1:19:19

that this is an amenity and this is kind of fun and

1:19:21

this kind of just the

1:19:23

the shit show of Twitter. It's okay, but

1:19:26

it does mentally affect you a little bit. Like,

1:19:28

I don't read too much into that

1:19:30

kind of comment. It's like that it's just

1:19:33

that's just trolling.

1:19:36

And it's, you know, I I get what's I

1:19:39

get I understand the fun the

1:19:41

person is having on the other side of that.

1:19:43

It's like, do you, though? I do. Well,

1:19:45

I do. I don't I mean, I don't behave that

1:19:47

way, but IDW

1:19:48

do. And 365 all I know that person

1:19:50

could be, you know, sixteen years old. Right? So it's

1:19:52

it's, like, it

1:19:53

could be all set to alter con for Elon. I don't

1:19:55

know. Well, yeah. That's right. Yeah.

1:19:57

Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm pretty

1:19:59

sure Elon would just tweet that. Yeah. It's totally

1:20:01

under his own name at this

1:20:02

point. But

1:20:04

you tell each other. Okay. So the

1:20:07

do you think so speaking of which, now that Elon

1:20:10

has has taken over Twitter,

1:20:13

Is there something that he could do to

1:20:15

make this platform better? This

1:20:17

Twitter and just social media in general, but

1:20:20

because of the aggressive nature of his

1:20:22

innovation that he's pushing. Is

1:20:24

there any way to make Twitter

1:20:26

a pleasant place for Sam Harris? Maybe.

1:20:31

Like, in the next slide I don't know. I'm I

1:20:33

think I'm agnostic as to whether or not he

1:20:35

or anyone could make a social media

1:20:37

platform that really was healthy. So

1:20:39

you were just observing yourself week

1:20:41

by week seeing the effect as in your

1:20:44

mind and on how much you're actually

1:20:46

learning growing as a person and it was

1:20:48

negative. Yeah, IDW seen the negativity in

1:20:50

other people's lives. I mean, it's obviously I

1:20:52

mean, he's not gonna he's not gonna admit

1:20:54

it, but I think it's obviously negative

1:20:56

for Elon. Right? And it's just not it's

1:21:01

and that was one of the things that, you know, you know,

1:21:03

when I was looking into the 365 house mirror,

1:21:05

I was also seeing the the 365 house mirror

1:21:07

on his side of Twitter, and it was just even

1:21:09

more exaggerated. It's like, when

1:21:11

I when I was asking myself, why is he spending

1:21:14

his time this way? I then

1:21:16

reflected on why why, you

1:21:18

know, why was I spending my time this way,

1:21:20

to a lesser degree. Right? And at

1:21:22

a lesser scale, and at lesser

1:21:24

risk, frankly. Right? And so

1:21:29

and it was just so It's

1:21:31

not just Twitter. I mean, it's it's this

1:21:33

is part an Internet phenomenon.

1:21:36

It's like the the the whole Hunter Biden mess

1:21:38

that you you Thanks.

1:21:41

Explorer. That was based

1:21:43

I mean, it was on I was on somebody's podcast, but

1:21:46

that was based on a clip taken from

1:21:48

that podcast, which was highly

1:21:50

misleading as to the the the general

1:21:52

shape of my remarks on that podcast. Even,

1:21:55

you know, I I had to then do my own

1:21:57

podcast untangling

1:21:59

all of that and admitting that

1:22:01

even IDW even in the full context was not

1:22:03

speaking especially well and didn't say exactly

1:22:06

what I thought in a way that was would have

1:22:08

been recognizable to anyone, you

1:22:10

know, even someone with not

1:22:13

functioning by a spirit of

1:22:15

charity, but but the clip was

1:22:17

quite distinct from the podcast itself.

1:22:20

The reality is is that we're living in an environment

1:22:22

now where the people are

1:22:25

so lazy and there's their

1:22:27

their attention is so 365, that

1:22:30

they they only have time for clips. But,

1:22:32

you know, ninety nine percent of people

1:22:34

will see a clip and will assume there's

1:22:37

no relevant context I need to understand

1:22:39

what happened in that clip. Right? And

1:22:42

obviously, the people who make those clips know that. Right?

1:22:45

And and they're doing IDW quite maliciously.

1:22:47

And in this case, the person who made that clip and

1:22:49

subsequent clips of other podcasts was

1:22:52

quite maliciously trying to engineer,

1:22:54

you know, some reputational

1:22:57

emulation for me. And

1:23:02

being signal boosted by Elon

1:23:04

and other prominent people who can't

1:23:07

take the time to watch anything

1:23:09

other than a clip even when

1:23:11

it's their friend or someone who's ostensibly

1:23:13

their friend in that clip. Right? So it's

1:23:15

a total failure and understandable failure

1:23:18

of ethics that everyone

1:23:20

is so short on time and they're so fucking

1:23:22

lazy that that

1:23:25

and and and that we now have these context in

1:23:27

which we react so quickly to things.

1:23:29

Right? Like, Twitter is inviting an

1:23:31

instantaneous reaction to this

1:23:34

clip that

1:23:37

It's it's just

1:23:39

too tempting to just say

1:23:42

something and not know what you're

1:23:44

even commenting And most of most of the people

1:23:46

who saw that clip don't

1:23:48

understand what

1:23:50

I actually think about any of these issues. And

1:23:53

the irony is People are gonna find

1:23:55

clips from this conversation that are

1:23:57

just as misleading. Mhmm. And they're gonna export

1:23:59

those, and then people are gonna be dunking on those clips.

1:24:01

And, you know, we're all living and dying by

1:24:03

clips

1:24:04

now. And it's it's

1:24:07

dysfunctional. See, I I think it's possible to

1:24:09

create platform. I

1:24:12

think we will keep living on clips.

1:24:14

But, you know, when I saw that clip of you talking

1:24:16

about children and so on, just knowing

1:24:18

that you have a sense of humor, you we just

1:24:20

went to a dark place in terms of humor.

1:24:22

Right. So, like, I didn't even bother.

1:24:24

And then IDW knew that the way clips work,

1:24:27

is that people will use it for virality

1:24:29

sake, but the giving

1:24:32

giving a person benefit of the doubt

1:24:34

That's not even the right term. sound like I was

1:24:37

just really, like, interpreting

1:24:39

it in the

1:24:41

context that Trump has passed. The

1:24:43

truth is you even need like, I even give

1:24:46

Trump the benefit

1:24:48

of the doubt when I see a clip. Of Trump.

1:24:50

And so because they're famous clips of Trump

1:24:52

that are very misleading as to what he was saying

1:24:54

in context. And I've been honest

1:24:57

about that. Like, the whole, you know, there

1:24:59

were good people on both sides scandal

1:25:01

around the char his remarks after Charlottesville,

1:25:04

that the clip that got exported and

1:25:07

got promoted by everyone,

1:25:09

you know, left of center.

1:25:12

From Biden on down, you know, the New York

1:25:14

Times CNN, there's nobody that

1:25:16

I'm aware of. Who has

1:25:19

honestly, you know, apologized

1:25:22

for what they did with that clip.

1:25:24

That clip, he did not say what he seemed to

1:25:26

be saying in that clip about the the Nazis

1:25:29

at Charlottesville. Right? And I've I've

1:25:31

always been very clear about that. So

1:25:34

it's just, you know, even

1:25:37

even people who I think should

1:25:40

be marginalized and people who

1:25:42

who who

1:25:46

should be 365 because they really are

1:25:48

terrible people who are doing dangerous things

1:25:50

and and 365 bad reasons, I

1:25:53

think we should be honest about what they actually

1:25:56

meant in context. Right? And

1:25:58

and this this goes to Anyone

1:26:00

else we might talk about, you know, who are who's more

1:26:03

where the where the case is much more 365. But

1:26:05

Mhmm. Yeah. So everyone's

1:26:09

it's just so and then IDW

1:26:12

sure we're gonna get to AI. But, you know,

1:26:14

the the prospect of being able to manufacture

1:26:16

clips with

1:26:18

AI and deep fakes and

1:26:21

that where it's gonna be hard for most people most

1:26:23

of the time to even figure out that whether

1:26:25

they're in the presence of something real, you

1:26:29

know, forget about being divorced from context.

1:26:31

There was no context. I

1:26:34

mean, that is a that's a 365

1:26:37

apocalypse that is we are right on

1:26:39

the cusp of

1:26:39

and, you know, it's It's

1:26:41

terrifying. Oh, it could be just a new world

1:26:43

like where Alice going to Wonderland,

1:26:46

where humor is the only thing we

1:26:47

have, and it will save us. Maybe

1:26:49

in the end, Trump's approach

1:26:51

to social media was the right one after

1:26:54

all. Nothing is true and everything is absurd.

1:26:57

We can't live that

1:26:58

way. People function on the base this of what

1:27:00

they assume is true. Right? They

1:27:02

think it will

1:27:03

have functioned. To do anything,

1:27:05

it's like, I mean, you have to you have to know what

1:27:07

you think is gonna happen. Or

1:27:10

you have to at least give a probabilistic weighting

1:27:13

over the 365. Otherwise, you're

1:27:15

you're gonna be incapacitated by

1:27:17

You're not gonna like, people want certain

1:27:20

things, and they have to have a rational plan to get

1:27:22

those desires gratified. And,

1:27:24

you know, they don't wanna die. They don't want their kids

1:27:26

to die. You tell them 365 there's a comment

1:27:28

hurtling toward Earth and they should get outside

1:27:31

and look up. Right? They're

1:27:33

gonna do it. And if it turns out it's misinformation,

1:27:35

you know,

1:27:39

it's gonna matter because it comes down to, like,

1:27:41

what medicines do you give your children?

1:27:44

Right? Like, we're gonna be manufacturing fake

1:27:47

journal articles. I mean, this is I'm

1:27:49

sure someone's using chatGPT for

1:27:52

for this read as we speak. Mhmm. And

1:27:55

365 it's not credible, if it's not persuasive

1:27:59

now to most people, I mean,

1:28:01

honestly, I don't think we're gonna is this

1:28:04

I'll be amazed if it's a year before.

1:28:07

We we can actually create journal

1:28:09

articles that would take, you know, AAA

1:28:12

PhD to debunk they're

1:28:15

completely 365. And

1:28:18

there are people who are celebrating this

1:28:20

kind of you

1:28:25

know, coming cataclysm. But I I just it's

1:28:27

it's just they're the people who don't

1:28:30

have anything to lose who were celebrating it or

1:28:32

just are so 365, so they just don't even know what's

1:28:34

at stake. And then they're the people who have met

1:28:36

the few people who we could count

1:28:38

on a few hands who have managed to insulate

1:28:40

themselves or at least imagine they've insulate insulated

1:28:43

themselves from the downside here enough that

1:28:46

they're not implicated in the great

1:28:48

unraveling. We are witnessing

1:28:50

or could could

1:28:51

witness. The shaking up of what is

1:28:53

true. So actually, that it returns us to

1:28:55

experts. Do you think experts can save

1:28:57

us? Is there such thing as expertise

1:29:00

experts of something? How do you know if you've achieved

1:29:02

it? think it's it's important to

1:29:04

acknowledge 365 that there's

1:29:07

something paradoxical about how

1:29:09

we relate to

1:29:11

authority, especially within

1:29:14

science. And I don't

1:29:16

think that paradox is going away, and it's just

1:29:18

it doesn't have to be confusing. It's just and it's

1:29:20

not, essentially, a paradox. just like there

1:29:22

are different moments in

1:29:23

time. So

1:29:26

it is true to say that

1:29:31

within science or within within

1:29:33

rationality, general I mean, we're just one whenever

1:29:35

you're making it having a fact based discussion

1:29:37

-- Mhmm. -- about anything. It

1:29:40

is true to say that the truth

1:29:42

or falsity of a statement does

1:29:45

not even slightly depend on

1:29:48

the credentials of the person

1:29:50

making the statement. Right? So

1:29:52

it doesn't matter if you're a Nobel laureate, you can

1:29:54

be wrong. Right? The thing you could either the

1:29:57

last sentence you spoke could be total bullshit.

1:29:59

Right? And it's also possible

1:30:01

for someone who's deeply uninformed to

1:30:04

be right about something. Or or to

1:30:06

be right for the wrong reasons. Right? Or or someone just

1:30:08

gets lucky, or somewhat or

1:30:10

or and they're they're middling cases where

1:30:12

you have like a a backyard

1:30:15

astronomer who's got no credentials.

1:30:17

But he just loves astronomy and he's got

1:30:19

a telescope and it's he's spent a lot

1:30:21

of time looking at the nice guy and

1:30:23

he discovers a comet that no one

1:30:26

else has seen, you know, not even the

1:30:28

professional expert astronomers.

1:30:31

And got to think that happens less

1:30:33

and less now, but but some version

1:30:35

of that keeps happening and it and it may

1:30:37

always keep happening in every area

1:30:39

of expertise. Right? So

1:30:45

It's true that truth

1:30:48

is orthogonal to the

1:30:50

reputational concerns we have among

1:30:52

apes who are talking about the truth.

1:30:56

But it is also true that most of the

1:30:58

time real

1:31:00

experts are much

1:31:02

more reliable than frauds

1:31:05

or people who are not experts.

1:31:07

Right? Are you so and Expertise

1:31:09

really is a thing. Right? And when you

1:31:11

know, when you're flying an airplane in a

1:31:14

in a storm, you don't want

1:31:16

just randos come into the cockpit

1:31:18

saying, listen, I've got a new idea about how to, you

1:31:20

know, how we should tweak these controls. Right?

1:31:23

You want someone who's a train pilot and

1:31:25

and and that training gave them something. Right?

1:31:27

It gave them a set of competences and

1:31:29

intuitions and they

1:31:32

they know what all those dials and switches

1:31:34

Right? And I don't. Right? I shouldn't

1:31:36

be flying that plane. So

1:31:40

when things really matter, you know,

1:31:43

and put in this at thirty thousand feet

1:31:45

and a storm sharpen this up,

1:31:49

we want real experts to be in

1:31:51

charge. Right? And we

1:31:54

are at thirty thousand feet a lot

1:31:56

of the time on a lot of issues. Right?

1:31:58

And whether they're public health issues,

1:32:00

whether it's issue, whether it's a geopolitical

1:32:03

emergency like Ukraine, I

1:32:05

mean, climate change. mean,

1:32:08

just pick your pick your topic.

1:32:12

There are real problems And

1:32:15

the clock is rather often ticking and

1:32:17

their solutions are non obvious. Right?

1:32:20

And and so expertise is

1:32:22

a thing and deferring to

1:32:24

experts much of the time

1:32:27

makes a lot of sense. It's at minimum,

1:32:30

it it prevents

1:32:33

spectacular errors of incompetence

1:32:36

and and just,

1:32:39

you know, 365. But

1:32:42

even in in the case of some where where you're talking

1:32:44

about someone, I mean, people like ourselves

1:32:47

who are like, we're well educated. We

1:32:49

we're not the the worst possible candidates

1:32:52

for, you know, the the Dunning Kroger 365. When

1:32:54

we're going into a new area where we're

1:32:56

not experts, we're fairly alert

1:32:58

to the possibility that we don't, you know, it's

1:33:00

not as simple as things seem at 365, and

1:33:02

we don't know how our tools

1:33:05

translate to this new area. We can

1:33:07

be fairly circumspect, but we're also

1:33:10

because we're well educated, we

1:33:12

can we're and we're pretty quick studies.

1:33:15

We can learn a lot of things pretty 365, and

1:33:18

we can begin to play a language game

1:33:20

that sounds fairly expert. Right?

1:33:23

And in

1:33:25

that case, The

1:33:28

the invitation to do your own research, right,

1:33:31

is in when when

1:33:33

times are good, I

1:33:35

view as an invitation to waste your

1:33:37

time pointlessly. Right?

1:33:39

When times are good. Now the truth

1:33:42

is times are not all that good. Right? And we

1:33:44

have the

1:33:47

ongoing public display of

1:33:49

failures of expertise. We have

1:33:51

experts who are obviously corrupted by bad incentives

1:33:53

we've got experts who, you

1:33:56

know, perversely won't admit they were wrong

1:33:58

when they, in fact, you know, are demonstrated to be

1:34:00

wrong. We've got institutions that have

1:34:02

been captured by a political

1:34:05

ideology that's not truth

1:34:06

tracking. I mean, this this this whole woke

1:34:11

encroachment into really every

1:34:13

place, you know, whether it's universities or

1:34:15

science journals or government or IDW

1:34:17

it's just like that is that has been

1:34:19

genuinely deranging. So

1:34:23

there's a lot going on that Lex

1:34:25

experts and and the very concept of

1:34:27

expertise has seemed to discredit itself.

1:34:29

But the reality is is that there is a massive

1:34:32

difference when anything matters, when there's anything

1:34:34

to know about anything, there is a massive

1:34:36

difference most of the time between

1:34:38

someone who has really done the work

1:34:41

to understand that domain. And someone

1:34:43

who hasn't. And

1:34:46

if I get sick or someone close

1:34:48

to me gets sick, you

1:34:51

know, I have a PhD in neuroscience,

1:34:53

right? So can read a medical journal article

1:34:56

and understand a lot of it. Right?

1:34:58

And IDW, know, so I'm just fairly conversant

1:35:01

with, you know, medical terminology. And

1:35:03

I understand these methods, and I I'm

1:35:05

alert to the different because I've, you know, because

1:35:08

in neuroscience, I've spent hours and hours

1:35:10

in journal clubs, you know, diagnosing you

1:35:12

know, analyzing the

1:35:14

difference between good and bad studies, and

1:35:17

I'm alert to the difference between good and bad

1:35:19

studies in in medical journals. Right? And understand

1:35:22

that bad studies can get published and, you

1:35:24

know, etcetera. And

1:35:27

experiments can be poorly designed. I'm

1:35:30

alert to all of those things, but when I get sick or

1:35:32

when someone close to me gets sick, I

1:35:34

don't pretend to be a doctor. Right?

1:35:36

I've got no clinical experience. I

1:35:39

don't go down the rabbit hole on Google

1:35:41

for days at a stretch trying

1:35:43

to become a doctor. Much less a

1:35:45

specialist in the domain of problem

1:35:48

that has been visited upon me or my

1:35:50

365. Right? So if someone close me gets

1:35:52

cancer, I don't pretend to be an oncologist.

1:35:55

I don't go ahead and start I don't start reading,

1:35:57

you know, in journals of

1:35:59

oncology and

1:36:01

try to really get up to speed as an

1:36:03

oncologist. Because it's it's not it's

1:36:08

one is a bad and

1:36:11

potent and very likely misleading

1:36:15

use of my time. Right? And

1:36:18

it's 365

1:36:20

I decide if I had 365 I had a lot of runway,

1:36:23

if I IDW, okay, it's really

1:36:25

important for me to know everything I can.

1:36:27

At this point, I wanna I know someone's gonna

1:36:29

get cancer. I may not go back to school

1:36:31

and become an oncologist, but what I

1:36:33

want to do is I want to know everything I can know

1:36:35

about cancer. Right? So I'm going to take the next

1:36:37

four years and spend most

1:36:39

of my time on cancer, okay, I

1:36:41

could do that. Right? I still think

1:36:43

that's waste of my time. Mhmm. I

1:36:46

still think at the end of even at the end

1:36:48

of those four years, I'm not going to be the best

1:36:50

person to 365 intuitions

1:36:52

about what to do in the face of the next

1:36:54

cancer that have to confront. I'm

1:36:58

still gonna want a better oncologist than

1:37:01

I've become to tell me what

1:37:03

he or she would do 365 they were in my shoes

1:37:05

or in the shoes of, you know, my family member.

1:37:08

I'm gonna you know, I'm what

1:37:10

I'm not advocating not advocating a

1:37:14

a blind trust in authority. Like, if you

1:37:16

get cancer, And you're

1:37:18

talking to one oncologist and they're recommending some

1:37:20

course of treatment. By all means, get a second

1:37:22

opinion. Get a third opinion. Right?

1:37:25

But it matters that those opinions

1:37:27

are coming from real experts and not from,

1:37:30

you know, Robert

1:37:32

Kennedy junior, you know, who's telling

1:37:35

you that, you know, you got it because you got a, you

1:37:37

know, a vaccine. Right? It's like it's it's just

1:37:39

it there's we're swimming

1:37:41

in a sea of misinformation where you've got people

1:37:44

who are moving the opinions of

1:37:46

millions of others who

1:37:49

who should not have an opinion

1:37:52

on these topics? Like, there's no

1:37:55

there is no scenario in

1:37:57

which you should be getting your opinion

1:37:59

about vaccine safety or or

1:38:01

climate change or the

1:38:04

war in Ukraine. Or anything

1:38:06

else that we might wanna talk about from

1:38:09

Candice Owens. Right? It's just like it like

1:38:11

the like she she's not

1:38:13

a relevant expert on any of those topics.

1:38:16

And what's more she doesn't seem to care?

1:38:18

Right? And and and she's living in a culture

1:38:21

that has that has amplify

1:38:24

that not carrying into a business model

1:38:27

and an effective business model. Right? So it's

1:38:29

just it's and that is something

1:38:31

very trumpian about all that. Or, like, that's that's

1:38:33

the problem is

1:38:35

the culture is not these specific

1:38:37

individuals. So

1:38:39

the paradox here is that expertise

1:38:43

is a real thing. And

1:38:45

we 365 to it a lot as

1:38:47

a as a labor saving device, and it's just as

1:38:49

and just based on the

1:38:53

the the reality that it's very hard

1:38:55

to be a polymath. Right? And specialization is

1:38:58

a thing. Right? And so that people who specialize in

1:39:00

a very narrow topic, they know more about that

1:39:02

topic than the next guy no matter how smart that

1:39:04

that guy or gal is. And

1:39:09

that those differences matter, but

1:39:11

it's also true that

1:39:13

when you're talking about 365, sometimes

1:39:19

the best experts are wrong. The

1:39:21

scientific consensus is wrong. You

1:39:23

get AAA sea change in the thinking

1:39:26

of a whole field because one person

1:39:28

who's an outlier 365 whatever reason decides,

1:39:31

okay, I'm you know,

1:39:33

I'm gonna prove this point and they

1:39:35

prove it. Right? So somebody like

1:39:38

the doctor who believe

1:39:41

that stomach ulcers were not due to stress,

1:39:43

but were due to to h pylori

1:39:46

365. Right? So he just drank a vial of h

1:39:48

pylori bacteria and and proved that

1:39:50

and then quickly got an ulcer and

1:39:52

convinced the field that that at

1:39:54

minimum h pylori was involved in

1:39:56

in that process. Okay. So,

1:39:59

yes, everyone was wrong. That

1:40:01

doesn't disprove the

1:40:04

reality of expertise. It doesn't

1:40:06

disprove the tillity of relying on

1:40:08

experts most of the time, especially

1:40:11

in an emergency, especially when the clock is

1:40:13

ticking, especially when you're, you

1:40:15

know, you're you're in this particular cockpit

1:40:17

and you only have one chance to land

1:40:19

this

1:40:20

plane. Right? You want the real

1:40:22

pilot at the controls.

1:40:24

But there's just few things to say.

1:40:28

So one, you mentioned this example

1:40:30

with cancer and doing your own research. There

1:40:32

there are several things that are different about

1:40:35

our particular time in history.

1:40:37

One, doing your own research has

1:40:39

become more and more 365. Because

1:40:42

you can read the Internet made

1:40:44

information a lot more accessible. So

1:40:46

you can read a lot of different meta

1:40:49

analysis You can read blog

1:40:51

posts that describe

1:40:53

you exactly the flaws IDW the different papers

1:40:56

that make up the meta analysis. They

1:40:59

and and you can read a lot of those blog posts that

1:41:01

are conflicting with each other, and you can take that

1:41:03

information in. And in a short amount of time,

1:41:05

you can start to make good

1:41:09

faith interpretation. For example, I don't

1:41:12

know. I don't wanna overstate things, but

1:41:15

365 you suffer from depression, for example,

1:41:18

then there you could go to

1:41:20

an expert and a doctor that prescribes you some

1:41:22

medication. But you

1:41:24

could also challenge some of those ideas and seeing,

1:41:26

like, what are the different medication? What are the different