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Difference between revisions of "11: Sam Harris - Fighting with Friends"
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11: Sam Harris - Fighting with Friends (view source)
Revision as of 02:26, 30 March 2020
, 02:26, 30 March 2020→Transcript
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'''Eric''' We should both apologize. Nothing happened. | '''Eric''' We should both apologize. Nothing happened. | ||
'''Sam''' I found myself at a lunch with him at the | '''Sam''' I found myself at a lunch with him at the TED conference and had no insight into him or what he was up to apart from the fact that he, you know, my sort of creep detector went off, | ||
Eric Mine spiked like crazy. | Eric Mine spiked like crazy. | ||
'''Sam:''' 00:53:03 Yeah. I mean, I just, he was someone who I didn't want to spend any more time with because he had this sort of schlocky rich guy. But within, well, no, no, I mentioned, but like when you see a, I guess he was probably, you know, close to 60 at this point and you know, he's with a 21 year old, you know, it's like a, it's like the optics of that are all the, I mean, obviously there are many rich guys who do that, you know, and there are many, certainly many people in Hollywood to do that. And you know, that's just the way people, some people roll when they have the opportunity to roll that way and that, okay, fine. But he, he was just a, I have a kind of a level of, you know, judgmentalism around that, you know, it's like, at minimum, that's a, a, an attractor on the, on the landscape of, of well-being that is | '''Sam:''' 00:53:03 Yeah. I mean, I just, he was someone who I didn't want to spend any more time with because he had this sort of schlocky rich guy. But within, well, no, no, I mentioned, but like when you see a, I guess he was probably, you know, close to 60 at this point and you know, he's with a 21 year old, you know, it's like a, it's like the optics of that are all the, I mean, obviously there are many rich guys who do that, you know, and there are many, certainly many people in Hollywood to do that. And you know, that's just the way people, some people roll when they have the opportunity to roll that way and that, okay, fine. But he, he was just a, I have a kind of a level of, you know, judgmentalism around that, you know, it's like, at minimum, that's a, a, an attractor on the, on the landscape of, of well-being that is | ||
not all that interesting to me. And so, when you see someone captivated by that, like this is like life is going great because I'm 60 and she's 20. Right? Like that's the one variable that... | |||
'''Eric:''' 00:54:08 We're talking about his Lamborghini, all the time. | '''Eric:''' 00:54:08 We're talking about his Lamborghini, all the time. | ||
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'''Eric''' You know, so mine was at his house, right. I'm ushered into a waiting room. He's got some super complicated electronical electronic art. I get up, I look at it and I say, wait, is that, is that a camera inside the art? I, the first thing, I'm a genius for finding the cameras. I inside, my next thought is I'm supposed to find the camera inside the art because the cam, the art is supposed to draw my attention and I'm supposed to see that I'm being recorded. | '''Eric''' You know, so mine was at his house, right. I'm ushered into a waiting room. He's got some super complicated electronical electronic art. I get up, I look at it and I say, wait, is that, is that a camera inside the art? I, the first thing, I'm a genius for finding the cameras. I inside, my next thought is I'm supposed to find the camera inside the art because the cam, the art is supposed to draw my attention and I'm supposed to see that I'm being recorded. | ||
I'm called out to a room | I'm called out to a room in back with a huge long, it's sort of exaggerated dining table with a giant American flag as its tablecloth, so that any food or drink that is served on it may spill onto an American flag. And I'm just in high alert, like, fuck you. Who, who, who are you? | ||
And he comes in and he's got this attractive, again over probably 22, 23-year-old woman. I think she's introduced as an heiress or something and he's bouncing her on his knee in order to get my attention. There's some other guy who says nothing during the meeting. I have no idea what he was doing there. | And he comes in and he's got this attractive, again over probably 22, 23-year-old woman. I think she's introduced as an heiress or something and he's bouncing her on his knee in order to get my attention. There's some other guy who says nothing during the meeting. I have no idea what he was doing there. | ||
'''Sam:''' 00:55:39 And I think I, one detail I'd like to add here, in defense of the many people and the many scientists who are in this guy's orbit and who didn't know how unseemly his life actually was some of these young women who you'd meet in his company were not just, you know, bimbos or strippers or that some of these people were going to medical school and there's like, these were like smart young women. | '''Sam:''' 00:55:39 And I think I, one detail I'd like to add here, in defense of the many people and the many scientists who are in this guy's orbit and who didn't know how unseemly his life actually was, some of these young women who you'd meet in his company were not just, you know, bimbos or strippers or that some of these people were going to medical school and there's like, these were like smart young women. | ||
'''Eric:''' 00:56:05 No, no, this is incredibly important distinction and I don't think that the news media has done a good job of teasing out. It's very attached to the idea of | '''Eric:''' 00:56:05 No, no, this is incredibly important distinction and I don't think that the news media has done a good job of teasing out. It's very attached to the idea of Pedophile Island and Lolita Express. And that lazy, sensationalist journalism is crowding something out, which is that in general from what I understand, so, I met him in 2000, I think 2004, maybe 2003 but before his Florida incarceration and charges, most people that I knew who met him met him with young adult women. And so, my theory is that he was constructed to be the sapiosexual Hugh Hefner. | ||
'''Sam''' Right. And that they stupidly hired probably, and I guess I don't know this Humbert Humbert for the role and that, that dichotomy explains at least a lot of the initial willingness of the science community to play with this person. That, I mean, I'll be honest, I'm not particularly judgmental about consenting adults, even if it's probably ill-advised. You know, to have a 50-year spread between two people. If somebody is 20 and somebody who's 80 ... | '''Sam''' Right. | ||
'''Eric''' And that they stupidly hired probably, and I guess I don't know this Humbert Humbert for the role and that, that dichotomy explains at least a lot of the initial willingness of the science community to play with this person. That, I mean, I'll be honest, I'm not particularly judgmental about consenting adults, even if it's probably ill-advised. You know, to have a 50-year spread between two people. If somebody is 20 and somebody who's 80 ... | |||
'''Sam:''' 00:57:15 There's just, it's a completely different thing is it's very easy to see that if you've seen this guy be sort of the womanizing schmuck, right within the bounds of, you know, total legality and he's surrounded by 20 year olds and you know, he's got a 40 year... | '''Sam:''' 00:57:15 There's just, it's a completely different thing is it's very easy to see that if you've seen this guy be sort of the womanizing schmuck, right within the bounds of, you know, total legality and he's surrounded by 20 year olds and you know, he's got a 40 year... | ||
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'''Sam''' Right. | '''Sam''' Right. | ||
'''Eric''' So, a lot of people continued to talk to him in part because, and I think this is something that hasn't been teased out, he was supporting an older style of science, which this is again, something that's gonna be super complicated, was much more disagreeable. Now the woke movement has seized on this as well, that's the cowboy oppressive science of male assholes. But he was supporting a network of people who might not have been supported otherwise to somewhat break out of the mold. And because the U S government had stepped away from that work in, in, in large measure, in my opinion, people were so dependent on him that they were eager to look the other way. And there was also the hint, I think that this wasn't really Jeffrey Epstein, that this was really something else funding. | '''Eric''' So, a lot of people continued to talk to him in part because, and I think this is something that hasn't been teased out, he was supporting an older style of science, which this is again, something that's gonna be super complicated, was much more disagreeable. Now the woke movement has seized on this as well, that's the cowboy oppressive science of male assholes. But he was supporting a network of people who might not have been supported otherwise to somewhat break out of the mold. And because the U.S. government had stepped away from that work in, in, in large measure, in my opinion, people were so dependent on him that they were eager to look the other way. And there was also the hint, I think that this wasn't really Jeffrey Epstein, that this was really something else funding. | ||
'''Sam:''' 00:58:48 Hmm. Well, I dunno about that. I mean, I, I think the, the relative penury of science is a corrupting variable and the fact that we, we underfund science and that it matters that when the rich guy comes into the room, right to, to scientists because they're so starved for money, that's just, that's just corrupting. | '''Sam:''' 00:58:48 Hmm. Well, I dunno about that. I mean, I, I think the, the relative penury of science is a corrupting variable and the fact that we, we underfund science and that it matters that when the rich guy comes into the room, right to, to scientists because they're so starved for money, that's just, that's just corrupting. | ||
'''Eric:''' 00:59:09 Look, this is, I, I've been on this, this is going to get us into the immigration question, which is that the in the mid-eighties, under Reagan, the science complex particularly the | '''Eric:''' 00:59:09 Look, this is, I, I've been on this, this is going to get us into the immigration question, which is that the in the mid-eighties, under Reagan, the science complex particularly the National Science Foundation under Eric Block through the National Academy of Sciences and a subdivision called the Government University Industry Research Round table, GUIRR, are conspired to destroy the bargaining power of American scientists by flooding the market. And what they did is they did an economic analysis with both supply and demand curves to say that the wages, which you can calculate when you have two intersecting curves, we're going to go above six figures for new PhDs. | ||
'''Sam''' And then let's get a lot in Indians in here? | |||
"Eric" And well, it's four, it was four countries. It was China, India, Taiwan and Korea. And China went from zero to 60 in like, no, they were sending us nobody | |||
01:00:05 and then I think there were like over 25% of all graduate students. And of course, graduate students aren't students, they're workers. So, there's a cryptic labor economy inside of the universities. And what the university system figured out was, is that in order to get this work done, we'd have to have this, these misclassified students who do the work. important. It is foreign workers. And what we would do is we would take the economic analysis, which they secretly did in 1986 and they'd subtract off the demand curve and they'd just do a supply analysis based on the demography of the baby boom going into the baby bust, which is our generation, Gen X. And that demographic alarm was sounded to get the immigration act of 1990 passed, which has like the H1B is one of its most famous features. So that's, that's a whole story about how the actual workings, I'm the guy who uncovered that and I chased that all the way down to the person who wrote that secret study that was never released, never dated, never authored. | |||
'''Sam''' Right. | |||
'''Eric''' That thing was the stepping away of the federal government from its con, its commitment through the Vandovar-Bush endless frontier agreement to fund the kickass blue-sky research that this country has done better than anyone else. | |||
'''Sam:''' 01:01:27 But how is that distinguishable from what on his face seems to me to be a rational policy, which is why not try to attract the world's best and brightest and incentivize them to start their businesses here, settle here, you know what, once you've gotten your PhD at Harvard, you know, you, you've got a green card and you know, here's your, here's the Silicon Valley's over there. You know what I mean? So why when ... | |||
'''Eric:''' 01:01:56 When you start speaking I feel like I'm hearing the Stars and Stripes Forever. I've got one hand over my heart and the Statue of Liberty is in the background with Ezra Lazarus' poem at the base. Do you actually believe that. | |||
'''Sam:''' 01:02:05 No, but no, but no, my, my point is that strikes me as a good policy, even though that would create more competition for, you know, so-called Americans, right? Because we're, we're now open for, for the world's business. But if you actually wanted to maximize, you know, creativity and, and industry here, you would want to import Indians and Chinese and Taiwanese and Koreans. | |||
'''Eric''' Well, I mean, look, I've married the maximum number of brilliant women from the developing world who came here to do STEM that the law will allow. So I'm absolutely guilty. | |||
'''Sam''' You got your wife and then you want to close the border? | |||
'''Eric''' What? Yeah. Well, first of all, that's how country clubs work, right? Right. So, the idea is that when you get country club, when you get into a country club, you don't instantly say, well, I don't understand. It would be immoral for me to close the country club. | |||
'''Eric:''' 01:03:01 I mean, so it's a very weird thing for me that people who are very steeped in what you were just talking about, which is this interesting mimetic complex that got pushed out don't tend to think critically about it. Of course, we want the best people in the world to come to the U S selfishly. | |||
'''Sam:''' I mean, you know, everyone doesn't, I mean, the person who has to compete with the best coming from India and Taiwan and China. Yeah. That person, let's say in, in a, you know, software engineering, that person has found, now suddenly on a much more competitive playing field. | |||
'''Eric''' And yeah, this is, this is... So what I was told about this, | |||
Sam but I'm just not, I'm not saying that it's not without cost to somebody. It's definitely costing somebody something. Right? | |||
Eric Like the bad people, the people. | |||
Sam No, no, no. Not the bad people, but just, it's, it's like | |||
Eric I don't even know how to go into all of the things that are like really funny and wrong about this. | |||
01:04:00 Like one of which is, well are you afraid to compete with somebody from India? Well, maybe I'm afraid to compete with a hundred people from India. You know, like the issue is what is your your price point... | |||
Sam You are though, on this podcast, you're competing with people from India. I mean you're competing with, you know, there are 800,000 podcasts. | |||
Eric No, no. | |||
'' | Sam You're, you're competing with, with 799 | ||
Eric Because it's not a uniform, because it's not a uniform product. Sam. | |||
Sam No, but you still | |||
Eric When you talked about software, right? Most of software is glorified foreign while loops. Let's not, you know, you, you, you, you invoke a library, you code up a class, you can outsource it. All right, well no, it's just, I'm just saying that most of what it is you're just writing code. It's got a kind of a mystique about it because a lot of people haven't done it and it's too symbolic, whatever. But it's plumbing and it's plumbing and a lot of science is plumbing. Yeah. And so, a lot of the stuff about the best is not very relevant. If you wanted to take the stuff that's really distinguished, you know, like you've got Rama NuGen coming from India, you know you've got you know, Ellis coming from South Africa who, whoever it is. That's really amazing. We have | |||
'''Eric:''' 01:05:18 Plenty of room for the tiny number of people who are absolutely nonhomogeneous super contributed. So, you're just saying you want to set the bar higher. I'm not saying that, I'm saying a lot of different things. One is that people in the country have rights and they have asymmetric rights to their own labor market. That's a large part of what it means to be a citizen of a country. If I start to talk about your rights that are perhaps your most valuable economic possession. If you really think about the American workers, most valuable economic possession is asymmetric as an access to the American labor market. If I say, you know, your right is not an asset, but is instead an impediment, it's a barrier. And what we need to do is get rid of the red tape and I'm not going to pay you for it because it's not an asset. | '''Eric:''' 01:05:18 Plenty of room for the tiny number of people who are absolutely nonhomogeneous super contributed. So, you're just saying you want to set the bar higher. I'm not saying that, I'm saying a lot of different things. One is that people in the country have rights and they have asymmetric rights to their own labor market. That's a large part of what it means to be a citizen of a country. If I start to talk about your rights that are perhaps your most valuable economic possession. If you really think about the American workers, most valuable economic possession is asymmetric as an access to the American labor market. If I say, you know, your right is not an asset, but is instead an impediment, it's a barrier. And what we need to do is get rid of the red tape and I'm not going to pay you for it because it's not an asset. | ||