Difference between revisions of "11: Sam Harris - Fighting with Friends"
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11: Sam Harris - Fighting with Friends (view source)
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'''Eric:''' Okay. | '''Eric:''' Okay. | ||
'''Sam:''' I often look to you for | '''Sam:''' I often look to you for... | ||
'''Eric:''' | '''Eric:''' Well, occasionally I get a call from you and you say, I'm thinking about getting all of the following form of trouble. Talk me out of it. Try and if I, if it happens that I'm not there for an hour and a half, I get another call saying "too late". | ||
'''Sam:''' Yeah. I remember one that, a vacation that was unraveling and I was calling you from literally from poolside | '''Sam:''' Yeah. I remember one that, a vacation that was unraveling and I was calling you from literally from poolside in Hawaii, yeah, the one vacation I'd taken with my family in a year and I was, I was poised to ruin it and ruin it I did. And I don't blame you for it, but whatever counsel you gave me did not, did not prevent the unraveling of a vacation. | ||
'''Eric:''' Well, I'm here to afford you the opportunity | '''Eric:''' Well, I'm here to afford you the opportunity to ruin a future vacation. But let's try to avoid it if we can. | ||
'''Sam:''' Okay. | '''Sam:''' Okay. | ||
'''Eric:''' I'm just curious for, so first of all, I've taken your advice and Tim Ferriss's and Joe Rogan's and started this podcast. You were actually the first person I sat down with, but I had so little idea what I was doing that we blocked out the windows | '''Eric:''' I'm just curious for, so first of all, I've taken your advice and Tim Ferriss's and Joe Rogan's and started this podcast. You were actually the first person I sat down with, but I had so little idea what I was doing that we blocked out the windows, we had an uncomfortable table in front, and the feng shui was completely off. | ||
'''Sam:''' We had an | '''Sam:''' We had an Addams family podcast. | ||
'''Eric:''' Exactly. so we're, we're trying things, I'm learning a little bit. But first of all any, anytime you want to flip the tables on me, I'm game to what is top of mind for you at the moment or should we, should, I can go into some topics that I'm curious about? | |||
''' | '''Sam:''' 00:01:42 Whatever you want to go. This is your show. | ||
'''Eric:''' Okay. So one of the things that I'm starting to think about is doing a little bit of retrospective work, trying to think about where our world, our country is, we're going into another electoral cycle. And I just think this is the most bizarre age imaginable. It doesn't behave like any previous time. And I hear that we're at peak this and peak that, but I don't see any signs of the, what I increasingly see is the incoherence slowing down. Are you also perceiving a world that is kind of intellectually unraveling or are you seeing new kinds of formations that give you the idea that something is actually filling the voids that have been opening up when it comes to coherence? | |||
'''Sam:''' | '''Sam:''' Well, I, I worry that this is a kind of cognitive delusion to think that the time you're in is always sort of newly chaotic or incoherent or you know, that civilization's on the brink in some new way in your time. But I, but I, I'm taken in by it in. | ||
'''Sam:''' 00:03:21 | '''Eric:'''You gotta be kidding! This-this has never happened. | ||
'''Sam:''' 00:03:00 Yeah, yeah, I mean no, no, this is, there's gotta be some name for this where it's just, you know, it's some kind of recency effect or, I mean, clearly there have been periods in history where things really have been on the brink in some new way. | |||
'''Eric:''' Oh, I don't mean to suggest that like this is, I mean in general... | |||
'''Sam:''' 00:03:21 No, I don't mean like World War II was about to happen, you know, or World War III is happening, but the, um, I do feel like we are witnessing several sea changes, which I couldn't have honestly said that, you know, 15 years ago or 20 years ago, I mean, something has changed and it's, some things have clearly changed, changed for the worse and you know, maybe, maybe there's a silver lining to this chaos, but I'd be hard pressed to find it at the moment. | |||
Well, so when I'm starting to think about what kind of chaos where we're we're in and using the fact that you and I agree on a lot, which I think makes our disagreements more interesting because I don't like the ground level. He said, she said kinds of disagreements. I don't think they're that interesting. For me, the big thing that's really new is that I can't think of a single institution I trust. There's no place that I can go to for ground truth. | |||
'''Sam:''' 00:04:09 This is an example. So you take the New York times and you and I whinge about the New York times a fair amount. What I've been watching you transition I've grown pretty dark about the, the paper records. Yeah. Yeah. No, I've, years ago you were somewhere else, but I guess I'm wondering whether the cohort before us 20 years ago had this same litany of complaints about the New York times or whether it's something fundamentally has shifted while I was on, I've been on the New York times since the 80s so you were early to this party. I was very early to this party. For, but something has changed. So it's this, is this worse than the 80s? It's a good question. Depends. Worst isn't the right word in my opinion. The way I would play with it is I'd say that it's, problem has always been the same, which is narrative-driven journalism. | '''Sam:''' 00:04:09 This is an example. So you take the New York times and you and I whinge about the New York times a fair amount. What I've been watching you transition I've grown pretty dark about the, the paper records. Yeah. Yeah. No, I've, years ago you were somewhere else, but I guess I'm wondering whether the cohort before us 20 years ago had this same litany of complaints about the New York times or whether it's something fundamentally has shifted while I was on, I've been on the New York times since the 80s so you were early to this party. I was very early to this party. For, but something has changed. So it's this, is this worse than the 80s? It's a good question. Depends. Worst isn't the right word in my opinion. The way I would play with it is I'd say that it's, problem has always been the same, which is narrative-driven journalism. | ||