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Difference between revisions of "11: Sam Harris - Fighting with Friends"
11: Sam Harris - Fighting with Friends (view source)
Revision as of 21:17, 24 March 2020
, 21:17, 24 March 2020→Transcript
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'''Sam:''' 00:12:50 Well, I would argue that, you know, I'm fairly forgiving on that point because I feel that Trump has made the hiding of one's so-called bias irresponsible, essentially, it's like you, you can't, you can't pretend that this is a normal president doing normal things and you're going to be a normal journalist without an opinion. | '''Sam:''' 00:12:50 Well, I would argue that, you know, I'm fairly forgiving on that point because I feel that Trump has made the hiding of one's so-called bias irresponsible, essentially, it's like you, you can't, you can't pretend that this is a normal president doing normal things and you're going to be a normal journalist without an opinion. | ||
'''Eric''' Well, I agree with that. Although I would say you and I are very split on this, so put a placeholder, maybe we'll get back to it | '''Eric''' Well, I agree with that. Although I would say you and I are very split on this, so put a placeholder, maybe we'll get back to it. | ||
'''Sam''' Sure | '''Sam''' Sure. | ||
'''Eric''' Maybe not. I'm more worried about the loss of things like Nature and Science than I am The New York Times. I'm now worried that there is nothing, and even in the hard sciences almost that can stand up to the onslaught of political pressure creeping in to everything that has to be able to say no, that we've lost the ability to tell people to screw off if they're wrong. | '''Eric''' Maybe not. I'm more worried about the loss of things like Nature and Science than I am The New York Times. I'm now worried that there is nothing, and even in the hard sciences almost that can stand up to the onslaught of political pressure creeping in to everything that has to be able to say no, that we've lost the ability to tell people to screw off if they're wrong. | ||
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'''Eric''' (laughter) "fifteen minutes"! | '''Eric''' (laughter) "fifteen minutes"! | ||
'''Sam''' And | '''Sam''' And it's, just before we started this podcast, we were joking that, you know, Justin Trudeau has yet another black face photo of himself apparently appearing online. And here's, you know, one of the most woke and sanctimonious enforcers of this new norm of just political correctness you know, stretching to infinity and he's, he's got not only (laughter) black face in his past, but a apparently a positive passion for blackface. | ||
'''Eric''' That's a recurring issue. | '''Eric''' That's a recurring issue. | ||
So it's, it's I mean the hypocrisy is, is so delicious, but it's just, it's just the yeah, the, these, these new norms of not being honest about facts just can't scale. I mean there, people will, people will be tripped up by them and so, and it's not, so you can, we can't do a lot of harm to ourselves in the meantime or in certain | '''Sam''' So it's, it's I mean the hypocrisy is, is so delicious, but it's just, it's just the yeah, the, these, these new norms of not being honest about facts just can't scale. I mean there, people will, people will be tripped up by them and so, and it's not, so you can, we can't do a lot of harm to ourselves in the meantime or in certain areas. | ||
'''Eric:''' 00:17:10 Well, I think we're trying to do harm to ourselves. | '''Eric:''' 00:17:10 Well, I think we're trying to do harm to ourselves. | ||
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'''Eric''' I think that the idea, yeah. Sometimes I think about Trump as the doctor who has to break a bone that has miss - has been mis-set in the hopes that it can finally heal properly. And this is one of the places where you are... | '''Eric''' I think that the idea, yeah. Sometimes I think about Trump as the doctor who has to break a bone that has miss - has been mis-set in the hopes that it can finally heal properly. And this is one of the places where you are... | ||
'''Sam:''' 00:17:28 Yeah except he's the doctor who doesn't know which bone he has in hand and, and a isn't actually intending to heal you. So it's the happy accident of the doctor who happens, the mad man who happens to have a hold of the right femur and a is breaking it for the wrong reasons, but to good effect. | '''Sam:''' 00:17:28 Yeah except he's the doctor who doesn't know which bone he has in hand and, and a isn't actually intending to heal you. | ||
'''Eric''' Well, and... | |||
So it's the happy accident of the doctor who happens, the mad man who happens to have a hold of the right femur and a is breaking it for the wrong reasons, but to good effect. | |||
'''Eric:''' 00:17:44 Right. Or you know, is it doctored in folklore and from some non-accredited... | '''Eric:''' 00:17:44 Right. Or you know, is it doctored in folklore and from some non-accredited... | ||
'''Sam''' I'm so sorry to keep segueing on you, but I know you have a passion for India. I remember once traveling in India and seeing somebody's - a doctor's - it was actually a dentist's shingle and it was saying you know "Western-trained Dentist" and in parentheses 'failed'. But, but having, just having just made the attempt was enough to put that on the, on the shingle. | '''Sam''' I'm so sorry to keep segueing on you, but I know you have a passion for India. I remember once traveling in India and seeing somebody's - a doctor's - it was actually a dentist's shingle and it was saying you know "Western-trained Dentist" and in parentheses 'failed'. But, but having, just having just made the attempt was enough to put that on the, on the shingle. | ||
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'''Eric''' (laughter) Oh, that's good. I mean, that does... | '''Eric''' (laughter) Oh, that's good. I mean, that does... | ||
'''Eric''' So I think you get Trump wrong | '''Eric''' So I think you get Trump wrong. | ||
'''Sam''' Right? | |||
'''Eric''' And it's not, I see what you see and it's maddening. It's driving me crazy. The idea of spending four more precious years of my dwindling life, talking about whatever Trump less said or tweeted or worried that I don't know what would happen if we actually had a five alarm fire in the U S that had to be handled. | |||
'''Sam:''' 00:18:45 Do you think my model of his mind is wrong or my model of the consequences of, of him being in office is wrong? | '''Sam:''' 00:18:45 Do you think my model of his mind is wrong or my model of the consequences of, of him being in office is wrong? | ||
'''Eric''' Well, I think that you were slow to give him his due. I mean, of course, as you know, I wrote this essay on kayfabe | '''Eric''' Well, I think that you were slow to give him his due. I mean, of course, as you know, I wrote this essay on kayfabe anticipating that professional wrestling was going to turn out to be incredibly important. And in fact, I thought it was going to determine the presidency - that was a, a belief I had that understanding how lies play within the mind and how hypocrisy works and then a concept called namespaces out of Python programming and the like, how we compartmentalize, led me to believe that in essence we were - I had seen these other candidacies in other countries in which people seem not to be able to distinguish an actor from the character that they played, you know, whatnot. And so I, I believed that the system of laws within professional wrestling told us what was possible. And Trump actually sort of came out of the WWE through his association with, with the McMahon family. | ||
'''Sam''' Yep | '''Sam''' Yep | ||
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'''Sam''' Yeah, well I guess... | '''Sam''' Yeah, well I guess... | ||
'''Eric''' | '''Eric''' Let me just... | ||
'''Sam''' I've suggested by analogy to the Chauncey Gardner effect, or the evil Chauncey Gardner effect. | '''Sam''' I've suggested by analogy to the Chauncey Gardner effect, or the evil Chauncey Gardner effect. | ||
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'''Sam''' Yeah, I think, I think, but it's hard to know that could happen. I mean, it's, it's definitely falsifiable. My theory is falsifiable. He could prove to me with a string of utterances that he's the evil genius that I haven't imagined him to be, but he hasn't done that. | '''Sam''' Yeah, I think, I think, but it's hard to know that could happen. I mean, it's, it's definitely falsifiable. My theory is falsifiable. He could prove to me with a string of utterances that he's the evil genius that I haven't imagined him to be, but he hasn't done that. | ||
'''Eric''' I bet if you and I had a couple of old-fashioneds between us and we sat down with | '''Eric''' I bet if you and I had a couple of old-fashioneds between us and we sat down with a thousand of his tweets, we could figure out that they're recurrent structures and we could write an Eliza program to generate them to, to tangle Democrats. I think that there's much more method to the madness. And I, I don't have to go full Scott Adams, ''Scott, I know you're out there somewhere,'' to, to say that everything is intentional and brilliant. I just think he's got a, you know, it was for years, I said that if you wanted to win an election against a Democrat, you just would talk about the nuclear family, let them correct you to nuclear, and then you'd win because you'd come across as an ass. | ||
'''Sam''' Right, exactly. | '''Sam''' Right, exactly. | ||
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'''Eric''' So I think that there is a certain amount of method that you were slow to give, give him credit for. But I think you're probably inching towards the idea that if he's not an evil genius, he has some evil genius. | '''Eric''' So I think that there is a certain amount of method that you were slow to give, give him credit for. But I think you're probably inching towards the idea that if he's not an evil genius, he has some evil genius. | ||
'''Sam''' I think it's just, again, I, I'm enamored of my Chauncey Gardner analogy. | '''Sam''' I think it's just, again, I, I'm enamored of my Chauncey-Gardner analogy. | ||
'''Eric''' All right. | '''Eric''' All right. | ||
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'''Sam''' Right. | '''Sam''' Right. | ||
'''Eric''' So he knows, he knows that the feedback that he's getting from the press, in general, has a constant distortion. And so by holding a rally, he can figure out to some ext..... I mean, it's like constant AB | '''Eric''' So he knows, he knows that the feedback that he's getting from the press, in general, has a constant distortion. And so by holding a rally, he can figure out to some ext..... I mean, it's like constant AB testing. | ||
'''Sam''' But it doesn't have the fact that he wasn't canceled for one of his sins... | '''Sam''' But it doesn't have the fact that he wasn't canceled for one of his sins... | ||
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'''Sam''' No, no. We have 40% of the American population that fundamentally does not care about any of the things I care about in him. | '''Sam''' No, no. We have 40% of the American population that fundamentally does not care about any of the things I care about in him. | ||
'''Eric''' I disagree with this, Sam. I think you're getting this wrong. This is what I think might be interesting. I'm happy to be. | '''Eric''' I disagree with this, Sam. I think you're getting this wrong. This is what I think might be interesting. I'm happy to be... | ||
'''Sam''' Okay. | '''Sam''' Okay. | ||
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'''Eric''' Believe me, I think about this. I don't know. I ha - I haven't followed all the details. It's possible he's compromised and under direct control. | '''Eric''' Believe me, I think about this. I don't know. I ha - I haven't followed all the details. It's possible he's compromised and under direct control. | ||
'''Sam''' Well let's just bracket that. We don't, let's say, we don't know. But when that begins to become a story, and a credible story the zero interest from the people who are worried about him being owned by the usual suspects. | '''Sam''' Well let's just bracket that. We don't, let's say, we don't know. But when that begins to become a story, and a credible story the zero interest from the people who are worried about him being owned by the usual suspects... | ||
'''Eric''' You see, you don't carry the same anger and passion that I do for getting rid of the rot that was the American center. In other words, I believe ... one of the things that I find very confusing is, is that you and I, I think would normally have been called | '''Eric''' You see, you don't carry the same anger and passion that I do for getting rid of the rot that was the American center. In other words, I believe ... one of the things that I find very confusing is, is that you and I, I think would normally have been called centerists, right? But we're not crypt... we're not klepto centrists. I mean, I've never been in a position to, you know, to loot the treasury from the position of being a centrist. | ||
'''Sam''' Right. | '''Sam''' Right. | ||
'''Eric''' So the interesting thing about the center is that the center produces the, the blank canvas of America on which we get to paint. So I'm not really super excited to get a politician that makes me swoon. I want somebody to | '''Eric''' So the interesting thing about the center is that the center produces the, the blank canvas of America on which we get to paint. So I'm not really super excited to get a politician that makes me swoon. I want somebody to just gesso a canvas so that we can build all of the, you know, companies and nonprofits and do all the beautiful work that makes this country amazing. I'm not trying to get my entertainment from government. | ||
I'm not trying to get my entertainment from government. The thing that crept into our system with Reagan and Bush giving way to the Clintons back to Bush | The thing that crept into our system with Reagan and Bush giving way to the Clintons back to Bush, and then bizarrely I thought Obama was going to be a break from this, that thing induces a passion in some of us to get rid of it. We hate it and I don't know that you carry that passion and so I think it's harder for you to understand it and I carry it not from a right wing perspective. I carry it from a progressive to center-left position. | ||
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'''Eric:''' 00:26:56 For example, I've recently realized I need to up my game for graphic design. However, I don't even know how to speak the language of graphic design, so when I want to interview somebody who might do work for me, I would really like to have some idea of what it is that they're doing so I'm not in a one down position. I think that in general, you'll find that Skillshare has something for you with respect to any practical need. Join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer. Just for our listeners, you can get two months of Skillshare for free. That's right. Skillshare is offering listeners to the portal two months of unlimited access to thousands of classes for free. How do you get it? You just go to skillshare.com/portal if you go to skillshare.com/portal you can start your two months right now and you can set an alert for 55 days in so that if you're not completely satisfied, you can cancel without any cost to you. It's a no lose proposition. That's skillshare.com/portal | '''Eric:''' 00:26:56 For example, I've recently realized I need to up my game for graphic design. However, I don't even know how to speak the language of graphic design, so when I want to interview somebody who might do work for me, I would really like to have some idea of what it is that they're doing so I'm not in a one down position. I think that in general, you'll find that Skillshare has something for you with respect to any practical need. Join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer. Just for our listeners, you can get two months of Skillshare for free. That's right. Skillshare is offering listeners to the portal two months of unlimited access to thousands of classes for free. How do you get it? You just go to skillshare.com/portal if you go to skillshare.com/portal you can start your two months right now and you can set an alert for 55 days in so that if you're not completely satisfied, you can cancel without any cost to you. It's a no lose proposition. That's skillshare.com/portal | ||
'''Sam:''' 00:27:51 Well, and some of this comes back to the hypocrisy point I was making before. So I, I have that | '''Sam:''' 00:27:51 Well, and some of this comes back to the hypocrisy point I was making before. So I, I have that Trumpian module in my brain that feels just the pure scheudefreude of seeing Justin Trudeau get wholly cloistered on his own petard right? So here's this sanctimonious enforcer of woke culture just pandering to the left, it's clearly unsustainable, it's clearly dishonest, it's, and unworkable. And, you know, offline we spoke about just that moment where he's, he's admonishing this, this elementary school-age girl when she says the word mankind, which is a, you know it's great to hear a sixth grader use a phrase, mankind. But he says: "No, we say people kind". Maybe they say people kind up in Canada, I haven't heard that. But, you know, even just saying humankind there and, and, and enforcing that, that taboo there was just, that's the elitism the goofy elitism that, that... | ||
''' | '''Eric''' Yeah but it's not the elitism. It's the fact that these people have been picking our pockets and they've been divorcing us from each other. | ||
''' | '''Sam''' I'm just saying, I get the, 'let's just watch these fuckers burn' stream of pleasure that you can get coursing in your brain. And that, that explains a lot of the Trump phenomenon where it's just, on some level, they don't care that he's the most odious liar we've ever seen. Are they being his, his fan base? They just love to see him wind up the libtards or they love to see... | ||
'''Eric''' It's not the libtards that they...Sam. I'm really trying to get at something. I may be wrong, so forgive me if I'm, if I'm going off on a tangent, but I really think that there was something much more evil. It wasn't just that people were sneering at us over crudite. You know, it's like, it's that they were picking our pockets. They were divorcing us from each other. They came up with a bullshit ideology, if you will, of the, of the Davos flavor that said, you know, we are the world and divorced us from each other in terms of our obligations to fellow countrymen above our obligations to people who, you know, live abroad. That was really a cover for figuring out how to make money when we were largely in many ways stagnant. And so you had a class of people who probably blew out the gini coefficient for the U S without getting to the real issues of the fact that we're a country, that we put people in uniform and you know, send them into harm's way, that we have a higher duty and care in most of our minds to each other than we do to equally deserving people overseas. | |||
'''Sam:''' 00: | '''Sam:''' 00:30:37 But for the most part that the left was the political party that, that, I mean everyone was part of that same extractive economy, but the left at least paid lip service to the virtue of spreading the wealth around. | ||
'''Eric:''' 00:30:54 Well, you know, there's this poem by Lewis Carroll about the walrus and the carpenter and in one of the Alice sagas, and they're both going to trick a bunch of oysters into following them and then eating the oysters. And one of them is quite clear about his desire to eat oysters. And the other one makes a big show of how sad it is that they played a little trick and all of them were eating. And the key question is, which of these two figures is more reprehensible. And I always disliked the one who was terribly sad about what they'd done. And I think that's the left. | |||
'''Sam:''' 00: | '''Sam:''' 00:31:30 Yeah, there's something to that. But I think there's also all too common phenomenon of people motivated by actually good intentions, even incredibly noble intentions, causing a lot of chaos that they didn't intend, right? So let me take... | ||
''' | '''Eric''' Is that, is that your model for what was going on? | ||
'''Sam | '''Sam''' Well, it's, it's, it's my model for part of it. So, I mean, take someone like, well, let me take Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, right? Well, I don't know Mark I don't know how mercenary he's been from the beginning or, and how out of touch with the possible harms he might cause, he's been. But I can, well imagine that here's somebody who could honestly say, you know, connecting people is an intrinsic good. I'm just going to do that better than anybody. And the, you know, the wealth will come and this is all good for everybody. Right? And then only at the 11th hour, you know, long after many of us have, have noticed a problem, he begins to play catch up with the problem. That's a, that's a fairly charitable view of, of what he was up to. Or the, you know, the Google guys, you know, "don't be evil". Like I, I don't think when they said "don't be evil", they were, you know, twirling their mustaches and, and winking at each other, knowing all the, while they were going to create a, a juggernaut of instability for... and also get fantastically wealthy and anchored to an extractive and ultimately unethical new kind of surveillance economy that you know, we're, we're going to be, you know, hard pressed to change. I don't think I, at what point did they grade into having consciously bad intentions or consciously intention intentions that were so mercenary as to be unethical? | ||
But a, but a pure case of this for me falls in another sector, not economy, but foreign policy. You look at somebody like Samantha Power, right? Who you know, who wrote this famous book on genocide, A Problem from Hell. She, you know, she drew lessons from our failure to intervene in a place like Rwanda, right? And that we were morally culpable in some basic sense for not having intervened, right. That we could have stopped the bloodshed. We didn't, and we even had, you know, Navy seal teams. | |||
I mean, Jocko was just on this podcast and Jocko I think was off shore, but you know, at the time and we, we, you know, he'd drawn the lesson from Somalia seeing our, you know, the, the Black Hawk down incident, seeing are our soldiers dragged through the streets that we just can't get involved. And what happens when you're the one superpower and decide you can't get involved? Well, then people, you know, butcher their neighbors and there's no way to stop them. So I think with the best of intentions, she and many others drew the lesson that we really do have to be the, the world's cop on some level and we have to get involved. And we're morally culpable for not stopping at a rape and progress or a murder in progress. And, but now we're on the other side of that you know,U shaped horror curve where we now know what it's like to get involved with however mixed intentions and we, and it's, it's a, a thankless job, right? Like a bill nation building is not a, it's not a job that we're going to want for, for a long time and for good reason. | |||
'''Eric:''' 00:35:07 I actually have some weird backstory on that one. So I knew Samantha power at the Kennedy school and she and I sat down, I mean, not, well I don't think. We sat down at a meal and we had friends that connected us. Right. And I asked what you were at, what are you interested in? And she said, well, I'm obsessed with the red Sox and genocide. Yeah. I said, what? That's a good icebreaker. And she said, well, you know, the rap on me is I'm all genocide all the time, but nobody cares. And I, you know, I've got book and I can't figure out the answer to the question, why is there not a resolution that we will never, why is it never again not a resolution? And every time I try to get a state to sign up for this or somebody to take this seriously, there's this weird wall that comes down. | '''Eric:''' 00:35:07 I actually have some weird backstory on that one. So I knew Samantha power at the Kennedy school and she and I sat down, I mean, not, well I don't think. We sat down at a meal and we had friends that connected us. Right. And I asked what you were at, what are you interested in? And she said, well, I'm obsessed with the red Sox and genocide. Yeah. I said, what? That's a good icebreaker. And she said, well, you know, the rap on me is I'm all genocide all the time, but nobody cares. And I, you know, I've got book and I can't figure out the answer to the question, why is there not a resolution that we will never, why is it never again not a resolution? And every time I try to get a state to sign up for this or somebody to take this seriously, there's this weird wall that comes down. | ||