Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Sam Harris: What The Hell Happened?

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Sam Harris: What The Hell Happened? · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Good day, humans. Welcome to one comfortable conversations. The safe space for dangerous ideas.
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  What a program today. I'll tell you, I'll tell you, you've got lots to look forward to today.
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  Ha ha, Nelly, I'm jealous of you that I've already had this conversation and you get to
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  enjoy it for the very first time. It's a conversation between myself and Sam Harris.
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  You can probably tell that because the title of the show is on comfortable conversations with
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  Josh Zeps and the title of the episode is Sam Harris. Therefore, through a process of deduction,
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  you might say you've probably concluded that this is Josh Zeps and Sam Harris. In conversation,
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  I give you an award and an applause for concluding that. Sam is a wonderful guy. He's been on the show
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  before. He's one of the few people to be invited on this August program more than once and I'm
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  honored that he's been willing to do it more than once. I see he's been causing some controversies
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  lately on your social medias. I'm not sure if this is intentional. I think he's just the type of
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  person who people like to misconstrue and misinterpret and he says things without fear or favor.
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  He is basically a philosopher's brain and a vat and he pays no heed to the possibility that he's
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  framing things in such a way that a person who wants to willfully misrepresent them can very effectively
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  willfully misrepresent them and I have seen many people doing just such a thing on social media.
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  I would ordinarily not be inclined to have a terribly uncomfortable conversation with Sam
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  because as the title of his podcast suggests, his podcast being called Making Sense, Sam frequently
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  makes a lot of sense. In fact, you might say it's what he prides himself on as a philosopher
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  and a neuroscientist. But I did want to push him on one thing that's been bugging me a little
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  about Sam, which is his association with this whole constellation of characters who
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  since he collaborated with them have spun off the rails and gone into Cloud Kuku land
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  and these are people I can't, I mean, I'm not blaming Sam for this in the sense that I also had
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  collaborations with these people who are alternative media people who are intellectual dark web
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  figures who as recently as maybe five years ago, you might have said, well, these are interesting
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  characters who are essentially bucking the media trend and questioning institutional narratives
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  and they're sick and tired of the conversation being so constrained by a conventional media
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  and mainstream outlets and institutions and bureaucracies and public health officials.
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  And they're doing the law's work by probing questions in bullshit free ways that defy
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  propriety and politeness and niceties and groupthink. They're independent thinkers.
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  These independent thinkers, many of them are just now bonkers,
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  ladies and gentlepersons. That's the only kind word for it and that's not a very kind word.
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  They're, they're batshit crazy. They're, how about that for a kind word. And so I wanted to talk to
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  Sam. See, Sam and I have a bit of a history in the sense that many of those people who I'm talking
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  about and we'll start naming some names. Don't you worry about that. If you're a little confused
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  and you're gone, but Josh, Josh old buddy old boy, who are you talking about exactly?
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  Then I say to you, firstly, don't call me old buddy old boy. Okay, this is not a 1920s sitcom.
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  Secondly, I'm going to get to all those names in the conversation with Sam. But I wanted to pull
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  him up on like, how does he feel about having had these relationships and associations with such
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  people? So that comprises a significant portion of the conversation today. And I think it's going
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  to be useful. I think it's going to be useful for you to hear. It was certainly useful for
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  me to flesh out. And I think it's going to be useful for Sam to have this opportunity to actually
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  in a deep and thoughtful and clear headed way articulate what happened and where the real
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  differences of opinion and strategy are and where there may still be some common ground.
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  getting your premium feed. However this episode is entirely free with the one and only Sam Harris
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  you don't know who he is he's a neuroscientist philosopher New York Times bestselling author he started
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  out as a bit of an anti-religion firebrand his first book The End of Faith which he wrote I think
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  while he was still in graduate school doing his PhD in neuroscience was a post 9-11 broadside
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  against well specifically Islam but basically religion in general and because he was then accused
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  of perhaps not because I mean he was subsequently accused of being an anti-Muslim bigot because he
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  had a problem with jihadism and Islamic terrorism. So he went on to write letter to a Christian nation
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  which is maybe the most succinct and beautiful little book to give to any Christians who you might
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  want to a disabuse of their faith. He's the author of seven books in total but really this latest
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  incarnation of his career as a coach of mindfulness and a student of consciousness is the most interesting
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  phase he's created an app called waking up to help people explore what it what it means to sort of
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  step away from the clutter of your own mind and to get present to your own conscious awareness
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  and his podcast as I mentioned is called Making Sense. I hope you enjoy this conversation with
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  the one and only sound out.
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  It's bizarre isn't it? I don't I'm a baffle and are you are you how do you feel about it? Are you
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  shell shocked by the extent to which the number of people who we had reasonably thought were worth
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  talking to are not really that worth talking to anymore? Yeah well again I don't know what
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  the ground truth is here because I feel like and this is perhaps you've heard about my leaving
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  Twitter and my reasons for leaving. Yeah but this was really at the center of it because I got
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  the sense that I was you know that Twitter was you know one making people fairly crazy and
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  and certainly pulling out the worst in them but then it was also and and and one of the reasons
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  why it was doing this is it was I think it was giving everyone a distorted picture of everyone
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  else and those pictures were sort of mutually amplifying so I you know personally I was just
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  getting the sense that I was seeing a misleadingly negative picture of everybody including people
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  I know right and I'm at I don't know I don't happen to know Lindsey well I think I've only met him
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  once but I mean Twitter was clearly not good for him and you know I mean clinically not good for him
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  I mean the weird thing is that part of his whole stick the last time we were talking
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  I don't call it a stick part of what he was saying the last time we were speaking was like the
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  left is way too up its own arse on Twitter and needs to go out and touch the grass I mean who
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  literally saying like humanity is not gonna survive unless we get offline and start touching the grass
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  and start looking at the sky and everything and I listen back to it and I was like
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  so you're not unaware of that problem and like I don't want to throw him under the bus because I
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  actually think he's like a genius like I think there's a class of people and I just had Eric
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  on the show again Weinstein who I hadn't spoken with in a while also clearly a genius
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  and I find myself halfway through the chat going like there are so many things that I'd have to
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  pedal back on in order for us to be actually bumping into anything interesting here that I don't
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  quite even know how to navigate this because there's so much of a gulf like every three seconds
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  there's something that's being dropped that requires an entire universe of kind of correction
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  from my perspective that we're on different we're on parallel train tracks there's just no intersection
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  yeah well we should talk about if we were going to talk about individual cases we should
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  differentiate them because there's much less daylight between me and Eric on any interesting
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  question and there is between me and several of the other people we might definitely let's talk
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  about the generic phenomenon and light up we can talk about big people if you feel comfortable but
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  yeah let's just talk about the phenomenon of this co of a certain cohort of people becoming
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  increasingly conspiratorial yeah well I think Twitter had a lot to do with that I mean you know it's
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  obviously a larger internet phenomenon here's this is algorithm that everyone is running to do
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  just quote do their own research is producing very mixed results and in some cases
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  obviously pathological ones I'm not sure if Maja is still looking for Ukrainian Nazis but
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  you know that's where I left him he was he was all about Ukrainian Nazis so it's not to say there
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  aren't any Ukrainian Nazis I'm sure there are but it's just to have grabbed that side of the problem
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  of Russia's invasion of Ukraine it's peculiar and I don't I mean wouldn't he say Sam that
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  precisely that framing is what's wrong with the world the idea that there's a side that he has
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  now grabbed onto and that we have to think of it as being you know pointing out the flaws in
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  in Ukraine or pointing out the weird hypocrisy of a mainstream media that prior to the invasion
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  was concerned about corruption in Ukraine and far the far right in Ukraine and now all of a sudden
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  doesn't talk about it at all that that that that binary thinking is the problem like I heard
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  who was it on rogue or I think it was Kurt might have been but you know there's whether it's
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  Greenwald or Taibi or you know there's there's this case that says you don't have to be pro-Russia
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  invasion to nonetheless not want to be hopping on a bandwagon and thinking that they're that you
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  have to pick a side right yeah I mean they they might say something like that I think it's you know
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  being against Putin was always a pretty clear bright line I mean it's seen the problem with Putin
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  seeing the pathology of thinking we could collaborate with him when he's poisoning people with
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  neurotoxins in London and you know disappearing journalists and all the rest it's just not that
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  was never tenable and I'm not quite sure why so many people on the right I guess some people
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  on the left too lost sight of that anyway I just think that the generic problem is trust in
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  institutions the media especially but you know institutions being really everything of substance
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  the government and any official organ of here to four real information the scientific establishment
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  universities pharmaceutical companies but it's just trust in all of these institutions has eroded
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  so quickly obviously COVID policy had a lot to do with that Trump had a lot to do with that
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  but the net result has been we now have this you know what I'm considering a kind of new religion
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  of contrarianism and conspiracy thinking which again it has everyone doing their own research
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  and almost no one is qualified to do the research they're doing and it's obvious
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  you've got Brett Weinstein doing a hundred episodes of his podcast in a row or thereabouts
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  on the terrors of the mRNA vaccines and the sinister shadowy cabal of people who have suppressed
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  information about the life saving power of ivermectin it's completely crazy right and yet
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  you know I'm not sure what in each case I'm not sure what explains it I mean there are people
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  who came into this with more than the average taste for conspiracy theories in the first place
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  and Brett was certainly a person like that so you know you see the conspiracist in full flower
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  in the right conditions but still it I don't know what explains it and it's really
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  has been a perfect storm of loss of credibility and understandably so it's not that I haven't
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  criticized these institutions myself I mean they're you know the the woke mind virus really
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  has spread in in many of them and you have science getting politicized in ways that
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  is truly dysfunctional but what we're left with is the assumption on the parts of
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  so many erstwhile smart people that the vast majority of the most qualified experts on
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  on many many questions whether you're talking about what wars to fight or what medicines to give
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  your kids have been captured by sinister influences of power or just such comprehensively bad
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  incentives that basically everyone who you should have been able to trust yesterday is now wrong
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  about very important topics and the outlier voices shrieking in the wilderness are right about
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  all of them no matter how much they may seem like crackpots I mean you just if you poke you know
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  half of these guys and they'll start telling you how they were denied a Nobel Prize uh you know
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  I mean it's just I mean part of the problem though is also I am so frustrated with my colleagues
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  in the media with the way that journalists frame this stuff with the level of kind of smug certainty
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  that they have and I wonder I mean I'm trying to run the experiment in in my own small way of
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  seeing whether or not you can turn down the volume on all that bullshit by turning up the volume
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  on the mainstream media addressing some of the things that these people feel that the mainstream
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  media is not addressing like the other day a former head of the Australian Medical Association
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  came out that she wrote a submission to parliament which is looking into long COVID about
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  the vaccine injury that she'd had it was her and her wife had both had side effects from an
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  mRNA vaccine now this is a former this she's a physician she's a former parliamentarian she's
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  the former head of the Australian Medical Association and I had her on my mainstream like public
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  broadcast radio show for half an hour at prime time at 8 a.m. with the 8 30 rather with the
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  with a cardiologist one of Australia's leading cardiologists who also is moderately concerned
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  about the level of parricarditis that he's seeing he's still very keen to point out that the risk
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  from getting fully blown COVID is 10 your 10 times likely to get hard inflammation and when
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  you do get it it's likely to be severe hard inflammation from COVID from catching COVID
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  than you are from getting an mRNA vaccine but if you're a young male in particular he's like well
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  just get AstraZeneca or Novavax instead of Pfizer or Moderna and that solves the problem now the fact
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  that I did that I think I was the only person as far as I'm aware in all of Australian mainstream
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  media to devote a proper amount of prime time air time to the question of vaccine side effects
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  and how we should start thinking about balancing the pros and cons of vaccination rather than
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  simply saying insisting that vaccines are always a good idea for everyone and you know similarly
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  with trans stuff I don't think there's a single other person who's talking about who's you know
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  I simply interviewed the head of the psychiatrist association about his concerns about affirmative
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  care for juveniles and the inability of therapists to ask young people who are gender dysphoria
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  about other things that are going on in their lives because to do so would be to be perceived as
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  being transphobic and trying to steer them away from their true gender identity again there's this
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  gripe thing and I hope that if we can get out of our own answers as journalists there'll just be
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  less of a swamp in which all of this nonsense can happen I don't know how confident you are that
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  that is a solution or not it's hard to know I really I see the problem I see the thing that
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  all of the conferians are reacting to and you just described part of it and you know that when
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  you see information being politicized and when you hear that truly reputable people are being
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  silenced or ignored or shadow banned on Twitter or whatever it is catnip for anyone who wants to
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  connect all of the dots in a way that seems sinister the crazy interpretation is that this is
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  all being orchestrated from some star chamber somewhere at the you know the Davos and this is all
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  about you know a comprehensive effort to get people to then the knee to increasingly
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  stringent misuses of power state power right so I mean I think that's where Majid went at one point
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  on this right so all the COVID policies were really just softening us up for the the Orwellian
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  boot that would never stop stomping on our faces I mean I just I just think that's bonkers right
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  that it's not that that everyone is being controlled from the top what you have are
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  social dynamics in you know largely and it be getting leveraged algorithmically in social media
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  and everyone's desperate efforts to you know monetize what they can monetize and maintain the
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  reputations then you have the changing winds of political opinion that everyone is reacting to
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  on the right and the left right so you have you know on the right you have the people who will never
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  say a bad word about Trump until it becomes politically expedient to admit that he's a dangerous
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  moron and then they will begin doing that right but for years they wouldn't say anything in public
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  because it was synonymous with the end of their their hopes as you know as Republican in the US
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  so it's just it's not mysterious as to why people hold the line on obviously dishonest
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  points of you know policy or or or or fain opinion and yeah we'd so we do see that to a
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  remarkable degree in in the centers of cultural power you know the media and academia and
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  hollywood I mean it's just so yeah it's and I get why the right has gone berserk in the face of
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  all that and then and obviously the the right it's going berserk seems to justify the excesses of
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  of wokeness you have woken theory on the left so as again they've been mutually amplifying but
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  they're really there are two things you had to keep in view all this time and so few people
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  manage it and it's really like a needle that needed to be threaded here and on the on the one hand
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  again this is a this may be somewhat provincial because this is the American view of things but it's
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  certainly one of my head has been at for at least five or six years on the one hand you had to
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  recognize how appalling Trump and Trumpism was and and is an R I mean it's just it's just
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  yes there were moments that there are pieces of information that were spun unfairly to his
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  disadvantage and and misinformation right so yes there apparently there were no p tapes right
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  I mean the the steel dossier right there's a long list of things that were trumped up and he
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  wasn't literally installed by the Kremlin right excellent inclusion with the Russians in the 1980s
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  to try to be a manchurian candidate yeah can you just can you just explain to people when you say
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  it's obvious that Donald Trump was so objectionable why in can you do one can you do a one sentence
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  well the the worst thing he did I mean this this came at the end but this is really the thing that
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  if you if you couldn't if you couldn't figure out who Trump was for four years the 2020 election
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  should have removed the the the blinders from your eyes right I mean we had a president a sitting
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  president who would not simply would not commit to a peaceful transfer of power he was given multiple
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  chances to do this it was obvious he was going to try to steal the election even before the election
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  was run right he was calling it fraudulent as a way of preparing the ground to claim victory no
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  matter what happened and we did not have a peaceful transfer of power and he did everything he
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  could including you know putting his vice president's life and jeopardy to try to pressure the system
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  to hold on to power totally illegitimately he knew he didn't win the election right so this is
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  being told all day he was yes and he and so he was happy to try to convince half of America that
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  their democracy had been stolen from them while trying to do that very thing right I mean it's a
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  most cynical moment perhaps in American history as far as I know there's no American president
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  whoever tried to hold on to power in that way no what did you hear Liz Cheney at the end of the
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  January 6th Commission yeah you know talking about Reagan quoting Reagan in 1981 about the
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  transition to power that basically saying Trump is the first president in the history of America to
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  not do that yeah I mean I think that's where I'm just trying to and I'm just trying to figure out
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  how we avoid his the charge of Trump to arrangements in Rome and by making a succinct case I mean I
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  think for me that fundamentally it comes down to the man didn't know anything about anything
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  that was relevant to leading a big country he's not interested in politics he wasn't interested
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  in finding out anything about anything about the world or geopolitics or how countries are run he
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  wasn't interested in reading his briefings he wasn't actually interested in being ahead of
• 25:19
  government he was interested in being ahead of state because he likes the bling but he wasn't he's
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  not he's basically uninterested and then you layer on top of that he doesn't give a fuck about
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  democracy or anything any of the institutions that have sustained America for the past couple a
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  hundred years so you combine those two things together you've got a person who's who doesn't know
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  anything about the job he's applying for isn't interested in finding out anything about the job
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  that he's applying for and doesn't respect any of the institutions that have sustained
• 25:46
  like civilization for the past couple of hundred years for me that's that's like well yeah but
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  that the the added piece which really we can't lose sight of is that all of that all of those
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  disqualifying characteristics are anchored to perhaps the most morbidly selfish and narcissistic
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  personality we've ever we held yeah right I mean like literally I don't believe I've ever seen
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  another human being like him and this goes back long before he his campaign for the presidency I
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  mean he's just this is a guy who would show up at a ribbon cutting to a charity that he didn't
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  give any money to pretending to have given money to it to lie about his association with the charity
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  right I mean this is the guy this is a guy who's or whom golf maybe you know if you know anything
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  about golf if you know anything about the moral norms of golf how people have
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  forfeited tournaments that they've won because they forgot to sign their card at the end or I mean
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  golf is the most insanely honor-based sport you've ever heard of and golf is the center of
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  this man's life this is a man who has lied about winning golf tournaments he never entered
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  right I mean it's unbelievable like that that is the equivalent of murdering children if you
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  golf at the center of your life you are morally insane to behave that way so anyway the real
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  trumped arrangement syndrome it's yes it's cute that they have a phrase for this which is
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  inoculated them against acknowledging any of these problems but the real trumped arrangement
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  was not to have seen how appalling and dangerous and and deranging it was to have a person like
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  this get anywhere near the oval office okay we're not going to be more fun now I'm going to
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  promise to listen to that with a word that the syllable trump is not going to come out of
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  our list I'm not going to ask for the rest of this okay anyway that's that I was in mid sentence
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  when you derailed me with my you provoked me with my trumped arrangement I shouldn't have done it
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  I shouldn't have done it so that was the first thing you had to keep in view if you wanted to
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  be politically sane and honest in the last half decade the other thing you had to keep in view
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  was how deranged the left got with its identitarian politics
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  wokeism for lack of a better word because that was a that was the second biggest political story
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  of the last five years and it again it was amplified as a reaction to trumpism and it seemed
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  in its craziness on the left it seemed to justify much of trumpism right now the crucial piece
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  is that an awareness of one of these problems however keen did not cover for your for your blindness
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  of the other right like if you if you could only I mean so many people only had half the story
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  here so many people only focused on what was wrong with trump and so many people only focused on
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  what was wrong with that wokeism and in banging on about half the story they were essentially
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  carrying water for the lunatics on the other side of the divide right so you had to thread this needle
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  you had to be able to keep both in view and very few people manage that and I'm not quite sure why
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  it seemed pretty simple to manage that but that explains how you know so many of the people we
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  we know we have begun to name or your could name became unreachable I mean they're just
• 29:22
  this is not a group of people who are connected by I mean we are connected to that group of people
• 29:28
  you are connected to that group of people and I wonder what the there's there's got to be a lesson
• 29:33
  here like if you knew back then what you know now about margin bread and you know you can throw
• 29:39
  in Dave Rubin or whoever else might be would you have welcomed them as conversational companions as you
• 29:46
  did well there you know they're different again their gradations of the horror here but I can't pretend
• 29:57
  to understand what's happened with bread I just don't I don't understand how you do 100
• 30:04
  podcasts on COVID and vaccines I mean I gotta think I just I just don't know I mean I actually
• 30:11
  don't have a theory of mind there I mean I'm pure speculation but it's something along the lines
• 30:19
  of the media has failed hopelessly in its job at properly interrogating what's happened here
• 30:27
  and so I probably need to start providing the other side in the interests of open debate so that
• 30:33
  people at least hear one small voice from the fringe to counter the deluge of unthinking
• 30:40
  parroting that's going on from public health bureaucrats and Fauci in the mainstream press
• 30:46
  and then once you open that door a crack and you start playing in that space you start to become
• 30:50
  more convinced by the things that you hear and then you get a combination of audience capture and
• 30:56
  an ideological trajectory that gets hard to get off and then you're like you know what I'm doing
• 31:00
  I'm kind of doing God's work here in the sense that nobody else gives a shit about this and you know
• 31:04
  what now I notice this other thing that it was also weird that my genius brain needs to start nibbling
• 31:09
  on and so like a rat with a piece of cheese you know you're off to the to the races I mean that's
• 31:13
  the best that I can do well audience capture does explain a lot of this you know across the board
• 31:19
  I mean it certainly explains Ruben and it's a hard question I mean you know Ruben became far
• 31:29
  more cynical than I would have thought possible and it's very depressing you know I mean he
• 31:38
  definitely he he was a friend he's not a friend anymore and it's what it's entirely the result of
• 31:44
  what I got to think Twitter's at the bottom of so much of this Twitter is where people are getting
• 31:50
  their information spreading their information noticing the the dense in their reputation trying to
• 31:56
  maintain their reputations it's a fun house mirror in which everyone is seeing everyone else as
• 32:03
  this kind of grotesque and reacting on that basis and it's some it is deranging and so yeah I
• 32:11
  mean I I know that I know that none of these guys are as bad as they have seemed to me on Twitter
• 32:17
  and they're not really as bad as they have become as a result of reacting to what has been you
• 32:24
  know promulgated about them and buy them on Twitter I do I really do think Twitter runs through a lot
• 32:32
  of this but I mean your analysis is interesting there but it's also not as self-reflective as I
• 32:38
  like it to be in the sense that so many friends who you've had or who you publicly defended as
• 32:44
  intellectuals have turned out to be either bad people or you know that you can either well look
• 32:52
  let's not ascribe motives to it but have have turned out to hold ridiculous beliefs
• 32:59
  and many voices who you once enthusiastically engaged with are now diametrically opposed to
• 33:04
  what you stand for like a you a bad judge of character well in truth it's not that many people
• 33:11
  I mean and some people were are people who were were often included in a same sentence with these
• 33:19
  people but they're these are people who I either have never met or just say you know have had
• 33:24
  dinner with once right I mean I don't you know I never knew who well I'm sad what yeah so people talk
• 33:29
  about that one Ruben Marjard Brett Eric maybe Peter Begotian maybe Jordan Peterson I guess
• 33:38
  that's probably it it's still a I mean you know it's still the intellectual dark web which you
• 33:44
  always don't know sort of ridiculed none the less was like Candice Nolan's you know somebody
• 33:49
  I never had and and it was it was never never should have been not allied with you know and she's
• 33:56
  somebody who I've kind of gone to war with on Twitter but no but pointing out that there are
• 34:01
  fringe cases that you know don't fit the the rule doesn't mean that the rule doesn't exist
• 34:08
  yeah no but there's just a couple of people really and it's in Ruben's case it's it's a hundred
• 34:12
  percent what Trump did to our politics and to his career right he he just noticed that his
• 34:21
  audience was squarely in Trumpistan and that I mean it's he's he's the the quintessential
• 34:28
  case of audience capture yeah I went on his podcast you know I helped him I literally launched
• 34:34
  his podcast I think it was his first yeah interview yeah and you know it was you know you not
• 34:40
  only launched his podcast you launched his career as a quote unquote intellectual in the sense that
• 34:45
  I mean I knew the guy very very vaguely back in New York when he was a gay television host and I
• 34:51
  just moved to New York in 0405 06 I guess he was friends with my roommate in Chelsea and you
• 34:57
  know I had him on half post live before he was anybody and then when he got his like Larry King
• 35:02
  gig and stuff like that and he is quite clear that it was seeing you on Bill Ma with Ben Affleck
• 35:10
  that inspired him to transition from being like I don't know what he was a comedian television
• 35:16
  presenter to you know pursuing a life of the arts and letters and ideas and philosophy and everything
• 35:24
  which I'm quite upfront about saying and I don't think he would disagree he's not very good at
• 35:29
  like that's not it's above his pay grade it's not that is not his station in life and so I don't
• 35:33
  think it's that surprising that he has been proven to not be terribly clever nonetheless yes not
• 35:39
  to ascribe too much godlike power but in his case like you are you are you are you are a god
• 35:45
  I mean I don't know what to say about it I feel like I mean I'm just I was surprised at every stage
• 35:52
  along the way that he was it was like invasion of the body snatchers right like a certain point
• 35:59
  you're just not getting anything recognizable out of someone on some very important topics
• 36:07
  he literally never would admit that there was anything wrong anything wrong with Trump
• 36:15
  anything right it was it was just a cultic level of denialism you know again the true trump
• 36:25
  arrangement syndrome yes I mean the like the closest he ever got was you know yes I understand
• 36:31
  that he's a craft business man and that he you know he offends people right okay but maybe
• 36:36
  we need a craft business man who offends people to shake things up right maybe that's how we
• 36:41
  are that that was like the closest you know which is not even getting your your toe in the water of
• 36:46
  an honest appraisal of this man and the consequences of all his line and and yet I could admit and I
• 36:54
  could check every box he could or any of the any of these other people could against
• 37:01
  the wokeness right like I get what James Lindsay and Gad and Rubin and everyone else and Candice
• 37:10
  and Ben Shapiro are all up and arms about around the crazy level of dishonesty and overreach
• 37:16
  and hypocrisy on the far left right and the way that's vitiated our our mainstream institution so
• 37:22
  that the far what the far left has done has actually compromised the Washington Post in the New
• 37:29
  York Times and nature and the Lancet and all of it right and I and I I've devoted I've devoted
• 37:35
  even more time on my podcast to criticizing all of that and worrying about all of that then I
• 37:41
  have to bashing trump right because it's because it's it's more intellectually interesting it's
• 37:46
  as harder to figure out what's wrong with black lives matter than it is to figure out what's
• 37:52
  wrong with the tiki torch guys and charlesville well it's harder to figure out in a way that is
• 37:57
  that makes sense yeah and that is that does justice to the history of of like white oppression of
• 38:02
  black people exactly yeah and doesn't just very good people they're very good people who are confused
• 38:08
  sincerely confused about black lives matter and talking about all of that and unwinding all of that
• 38:14
  is is a genuine public service that requires some use of intelligence and some kind of ethical
• 38:22
  compass yeah there's almost nothing that you need to say about the problem of white supremacy
• 38:27
  or neo-Nazis I mean it's just it's it's what's wrong with it is right is it's right on its surface
• 38:34
  I mean just the the words I'm using to describe it you know announce what's wrong with it just
• 38:39
  it's absolutely mystifying to me that the people we've named and I gotta again it's it's
• 38:46
  injustice to all of them to to not be precise in including them and or excluding them in each
• 38:52
  specific sentence no exactly let's just capture Brett what I'm saying no and it certainly doesn't
• 38:57
  capture Eric and I want him and I feel bad about having in a de facto way included him in
• 39:02
  any way in this in this group actually because when I said earlier that he was like drop in bombs
• 39:06
  that were kind of so hard for me to pick up that I couldn't keep up with the pace of sort of
• 39:11
  modifications that I had to make that that's simply a way of recognizing that he he is looking at
• 39:18
  a world that is much more full of threats than the world that I perceive it's not to say that he
• 39:23
  is off down some conspiratorial rabbit hole the way that I think a Lindsey or a margin have become
• 39:29
  so let me just think and he's all he's always been allergic to Trump and he's always had
• 39:34
  as always understood the woke problem is so Eric may Eric is a is a friend and we disagree
• 39:40
  about a few things but he's and in this space we just have very different factory settings around
• 39:47
  perceiving conspiracy yes he has a taste for conspiracy thinking that I certainly don't have
• 39:54
  but it's not to say that he's always wrong obviously and that people do conspire and given his
• 40:00
  settings he will detect a conspiracy before I will and and you know I'll have to admit I was
• 40:05
  wrong about that when it when it proves to be true so you know there's that but it's you know
• 40:12
  that's that's the difference between us but he's yeah I mean I don't include him in any
• 40:17
  no I mean I'm interested I'm quite interested to hear you talk like this in quite in what seems
• 40:22
  to be a fairly relaxed and sort of self-conscious way because I've felt in the past maybe one
• 40:29
  we've spoken you have a very admirable instinct towards decorum and civility and
• 40:36
  privateness I think you're quite a private person and I have struggled with the extent to which
• 40:44
  it's appropriate to just talk openly and in a bullshit freeway about friends of minds transgressions
• 40:52
  like on the one hand dystopia for me is an East German state where everything true has to be
• 40:59
  said behind closed doors and the only thing that you can say in public is nice platitudes
• 41:05
  um on the other hand it's also dystopian to live in a world of public shaming and call out culture
• 41:12
  where everyone is throwing everybody throwing their friends under a bus because of some transgression
• 41:18
  so I'm loathe to smack down people publicly yeah but when I was contacted by a journalist a
• 41:25
  credible journalist who was writing a piece on Rubin for Quillette and has just published like a
• 41:30
  4,000 word piece I was happy to be quoted a couple of times expressing about Dave things that
• 41:38
  I would be happy to say to Dave um and I think I should be able to say about people in public what I
• 41:45
  would say to them in private and yeah yeah I wonder how you think about that that balance
• 41:52
  well the ethics of this and I've said something about this before I think on my own podcast
• 42:00
  um I'm still confused about the ethics of this I mean just as you said like to what degree
• 42:06
  does loyalty to a friend or a past friend obstruct and to what degree should it obstruct your
• 42:14
  candor when you see that friend doing something in a public phasing way that is that you consider
• 42:21
  reprehensible right it's like to what degree should you treat friends and strangers differently
• 42:27
  when you're talking about the behavior of public people and I'm just not sure what the right
• 42:34
  balance is there and I mean I did obviously the fact that somebody was a friend or is a friend
• 42:40
  matters and uh but maybe maybe we're too quick to dunk on strangers right yeah right maybe
• 42:49
  being a friend gives you more standing in fact I mean maybe it's more appropriate for me to
• 42:53
  to talk about Dave Rubin and Marget know I was publicly precisely because I would feel liberated
• 43:00
  to to say Dave you're so full of shit these days what are you doing you know you've become a pack dude
• 43:06
  you are a hack you're just a trumpy partisan hack if we'd had four beers you know then that's
• 43:11
  is what I would say so maybe I can say that and like Marget I get it that you know you were traumatized
• 43:16
  and thrown into an Egyptian prison by a can by you know a conspiratorial takeover of government
• 43:21
  that doesn't mean that every government in the world is trying to conduct a conspiratorial
• 43:25
  threat and takeover of you like calm the fuck down and so I don't know I think that's I think
• 43:31
  for me that's okay I'm comfortable with that yeah again these are all different cases but I
• 43:37
  mean I think what I spoke about this before and this is kind of a bright line for me you know I
• 43:43
  I've never met Candace Owens right and it's clear and you know I've said some fairly
• 43:48
  derogatory things about her I mean I think I said something like she's an and Ignoramus and
• 43:54
  a and a blowhard of mythological proportions or something like that she threw that back to
• 43:59
  you really thinks yeah I mean it's just it's incredible when you see her you know messaging to
• 44:04
  millions of people about covid and who is she like I don't even know I mean why does it even need
• 44:09
  what it why does it even need talking about what authority does she have like what is she done
• 44:14
  what she achieved what yeah but I raise I raise it raise her here not to disparage period
• 44:20
  again but just to point out that I'm sure that if I had had dinner with her several times
• 44:27
  and got the best of Candace I mean just the face-to-face charismatic woman who I'm sure she's
• 44:34
  fun to hang out with then what would I have said about her in public when I saw her messaging
• 44:40
  in that way on on Twitter well what do you think I think I would have been forced to recalibrate
• 44:46
  what I said I think I would have decided okay maybe it's not worth going after her for this or
• 44:51
  maybe she would have to do it ten times rather than five times before I finally blew a fuse
• 44:56
  but that's not very credible is it I mean that almost sounds corrupt well well no I mean I
• 45:01
  think it is corrupting I mean if you're a journalist I you know I think there's a norm around not
• 45:05
  becoming friends with the the people you report on right I mean you tell me if that's the case
• 45:11
  and if you have friends then you know when you do throw them under the bus because of your
• 45:14
  duty to the truth and to the public you know then you go like sorry dude this is the way it goes you
• 45:19
  know you knew this coming in it's almost like a gladiator fight like I'm gonna stab you in the hot
• 45:22
  then that was the game many of these people are people who I really to have called them friends
• 45:28
  was in exaggeration because I you know in the case of some of these people you know I haven't
• 45:33
  even met them or I've met them once in Rubens case he just in my experience he got inducted into a
• 45:41
  political cult right and I couldn't get him out and it was very depressing and he was not
• 45:47
  somebody who I saw all that much but he was he was definitely somebody who I would occasionally
• 45:52
  have dinner with and it was just a bummer he decided what his business model required so I got
• 46:00
  derailed when I was in the process of telling you this so the second time I went on his show I saw
• 46:05
  what was coming back to me in the comments and that was the first time I discovered okay his
• 46:10
  audience is just a hundred percent Trump right and as he may he made that discovery at some point
• 46:16
  and it's the very essence of audience capture I mean he just he would he has no career outside
• 46:23
  of Trumpistan I would argue that is a a fate of his own making but he has made that he's got both
• 46:31
  feet in pizza gate adjacent crazy town and it's you know I'm sure he and Candice and everyone
• 46:39
  are going to try to move into some respectable conservative orbit now that Trump's political
• 46:47
  fortunes seem to be unraveling if in fact they are unraveling and you know he'll be on the
• 46:52
  DeSantis train and all that but it's just to not have been able to acknowledge that there was
• 47:00
  anything at all problematic about you know a sitting president not committing to a peaceful
• 47:04
  transfer of power I mean I just I don't know how to have a conversation after that no I mean I
• 47:09
  think you're I think you're being generous in a scribing more strategy to it than maybe there
• 47:15
  even was I mean when people it's like a bit like people I when people ask me do I think that Trump
• 47:20
  believed the things that he said I almost like go into Jordan Peterson meta truth like mode where
• 47:26
  I'm like I'm not even sure he has a relationship to what is true and what is false that maps on
• 47:31
  to like physics and ontology and the universe I think it's just like that what is true is kind of
• 47:37
  what works and what functions and so I think I think of Dave a bit like that I just think Dave was
• 47:42
  a an enthusiastic puppy dog and he saw you and he was like I want to I want a bit of that and then
• 47:47
  when he grew you know he grew up he just started doing the tricks that he liked and I don't even
• 47:53
  think that he thinks that he's captured by his audience I just think that he's a lightweight and
• 47:56
  so he just says you know things that that work and they function anyway enough about him
• 48:03
  because there's so much that I want to get to about like artificial intelligence and stuff like
• 48:07
  that and I want to keep you all day but just before we get off this question of like who we're
• 48:12
  surrounding ourselves with and everything I one thing that I kind of think as well as this whole
• 48:16
  question of platforming people and you know I saw Lex Friedman and Kanye and then the whole
• 48:24
  the whole era of Joe Rogan being tried to be deep platform from Spotify and you know I was on
• 48:30
  Joe's show at the time that that was all blowing up back in January and then I think about well
• 48:36
  okay I go back like through my past podcasts and your past podcasts and I think about people
• 48:43
  like Charles Murray who you had on the show who now I saw tweeting about something positive about
• 48:49
  what do I don't even know what this outfit is but it's some anti-Semitic like pro-Western showvonist
• 48:57
  propiterianism have you heard of this the propiterianism institute this bloke Kurt Doolittle
• 49:04
  allegedly has Asperger's and an IQ of 165 and he spent the past 30 years building this
• 49:10
  sort of slightly fascist eugenic Darwinist thing about restoring western civilizations tradition
• 49:16
  of excellence truth duty beauty sovereignty nationalism and the natural law of reciprocity
• 49:22
  and it's basically saying that's Semitic cultures are parasiting western hosts it's a very
• 49:27
  social Darwinist outfit I didn't know anything about it until I saw Charles Murray you know
• 49:35
  retweeting this guy saying oh I think I I clearly need to listen more to you and this is very
• 49:40
  wise and and they're all chummy and then I'm like we're hang on so we're getting stuck into Lex
• 49:46
  for platforming Kanye how do you feel about having spoken of Charles
• 49:52
  well this guilt by association game is just gonna I mean no one will survive it right I mean
• 49:58
  this is something that well some will I mean people who don't tweet favorably about eugenicists will
• 50:04
  well yeah but this is another symptom of what's wrong with Twitter I mean no one apparently
• 50:09
  or it can take the time to figure out who anyone is and everyone seems to have the same stature
• 50:16
  you know especially in the post valid blue check mark days ever it's just you you can't
• 50:23
  figure out who anyone is and you can see well let's pause it as a hypothetical that Charles knows
• 50:28
  who this guy is and is and plays footsie with his ideas right but I mean I even Elon is signal
• 50:34
  boosting people who are like pizza gate lunatics yeah he's also obviously signal boosted Kanye
• 50:40
  significantly right but then isn't then do we just have to accept that Lex okay Lex talks to Kanye
• 50:46
  and that's fine but again we do everyone disservice by not going case by case I mean what Lex is a
• 50:54
  very specific case and I and I told Lex what I thought about his podcast with Kanye and just
• 51:00
  to wind back to one thing you said which I think is worth articulating you know I'm not I'm not
• 51:07
  saying anything in public about anybody that I wouldn't say to their face yes and then I haven't
• 51:14
  many of them yeah I mean I mean I've told I've told Dave exactly what I thought about him yeah
• 51:22
  we're not talking shit behind anyone's backs I've also tweeted about Lex's podcast and I've
• 51:25
  got a lot of shit for criticizing Lex yeah and I've tried to and I've tried to perform private
• 51:31
  interventions with people before things have spilled out in public and you know that happened
• 51:35
  with Candace and that and so I'm sure GAD knows what I think about him and you know I my fear all
• 51:42
  of this is is boring but to be airing this kind of dirty laundry I mean I just think it's kind
• 51:48
  of necessary because it's at the forefront of everybody's minds like it's what I get most on
• 51:52
  Twitter whenever I whenever your name comes up and so I think it's worth I'm not going to spend more
• 51:57
  than more than one hour on this like guarantee so you got six and a half minutes to finish off
• 52:01
  this question about platforming yeah I mean that the platforming thing is a little harder to
• 52:08
  decide in in the abstract because it really matters what you do in the conversation right so like
• 52:14
  Lex could have spoken with Kanye in such a way as to have produced a useful document
• 52:22
  he didn't do that because he has a fairly naive philosophy about the power of love he seemed to
• 52:33
  think that if he just got through that minefield to the end of the conversation where the two of
• 52:39
  them still were feeling good about one another and they could hug it out that would be by definition
• 52:46
  a success and I love it when he was like really offended about not being trusted by Kanye but Sam
• 52:51
  you're all of this is I take all of this but the criticism that people will come back at me on
• 52:55
  Twitter with about you and me is do you are you were you holding yourself to the same standard of
• 53:00
  calling out Charles Murray about any potential eugenic related ideas as you're insisting of
• 53:06
  that Lex do with Kanye because that was on the interview too I have no but I have so if you're
• 53:12
  going to say that Charles Charles has since done something now some years after I spoke with him
• 53:17
  that is objectionable well like you know I would need a time machine to have
• 53:23
  wow wouldn't the claim be that he's always that dabbled in a kind of you know
• 53:28
  a an unseemly interest in the differences between that was the one that was the one point I raised
• 53:37
  with him where I I said publicly I felt like I didn't get a satisfying answer right like what
• 53:42
  why spend time on any of this stuff right but if you remember the reason why I had him on the show
• 53:48
  was not because I had this this ambient interest in IQ and you know much less racial differences in
• 53:55
  IQ it was that he had just been spectacularly de-platformed at middlebury right we don't violently
• 54:03
  so and with that was the you know the moment where this was becoming kind of an epidemic and this
• 54:12
  was just the most salient instance of of that epidemic and so I just I decided I needed to talk
• 54:18
  to him and then I realized well I had believed everything that had been said and written about
• 54:22
  the bell curve without ever having read it and I read it and realized okay the the most objectionable
• 54:28
  paragraph in this book isn't even objectionable right so what the hell's going on here let me talk
• 54:35
  to the guy and there's some and so that you know I had the conversation I had and it was not without
• 54:41
  reputational cost I can assure you but yeah I don't I don't see what I would have I mean I still
• 54:48
  think the facts are as they were when we had that conversation the stuff that people pretend
• 54:54
  is controversial isn't in fact controversial you know the differences in IQ across various groups
• 55:02
  and the explanation there is no explanation for that that anyone has offered and Charles certainly
• 55:07
  doesn't offer one at least he didn't then and it's a my my basic position on all of that is that
• 55:15
  it's not worth paying attention to I mean I mean so just to avoid the charge of hypocrisy what's
• 55:20
  the general rule here the general rule is I mean because obviously Charles Murray did not say we
• 55:25
  need to go deathcon 3 on black people right so there's obviously a difference of degree
• 55:32
  and then there's a difference of conduct during the interview itself although I think you
• 55:37
  would you still cop criticism for your interviewing style and you know oh why won't you more
• 55:42
  as recline on Charles Murray or something you know why didn't you get stuck into him about the
• 55:45
  social or political or cultural context in which he's making these arguments which are obviously
• 55:50
  going to have inflammatory racial overtones or whatever that case may be so is the is the general
• 55:55
  rule you can have the the the the the warm softball interview but only with people who are
• 56:03
  intellectually serious and you don't feel like is that the rule well it's unfair to put Charles
• 56:12
  the same sentence with Kanye because we you have to understand with Charles Charles Murray
• 56:16
  when you talk to notable scientists anywhere in this field or adjacent to it no one had any bad
• 56:25
  things to say about Charles Murray right I mean he was he would truly was a true case of a canary
• 56:30
  in a coal mine where he had been basically a human sacrifice to the it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't
• 56:38
  walkeness at that point I guess it was political correctness he to he touched a topic that was so
• 56:44
  taboo that it you know his reputation was annihilated on the spot now you might wonder why he has
• 56:54
  kept touching that topic or similar topics and that's it you know that's something that I
• 57:01
  I asked him I don't quite understand it I mean I guess I under like once they once something
• 57:05
  like that is blown up on you I guess there is a it may be a perverse
• 57:10
  interest in just continuing to deal with it maybe there's also a Brett Weinstein analogy to be
• 57:16
  drawn here you know in the sense that yeah you you open the box you start looking inside you rummage
• 57:21
  around things look interesting they lead you to other things you you get a lot of pushback from
• 57:26
  other people about even opening the box you're you know you get your hackles up and you say fuck
• 57:30
  you I'm allowed to look in this box you know what are you to tell me not to yeah I mean but the
• 57:35
  difference with Murray is that I'm unaware of legitimate criticism of the kind of the general
• 57:43
  shape of what he's produced right it's just like it's his points are being treated as utterly
• 57:50
  fringe I mean just beyond the pale and the truth is they're absolutely mainstream when you're
• 57:57
  talking about the what people agree on in the field you know it's like you it's it's everything
• 58:04
  is upside down for political reasons and because people are drawing the wrong political and moral
• 58:09
  lesson from his findings and it's a lesson he doesn't draw right I mean I've never like I never
• 58:16
  got anything from him that suggested a a racist political agenda I didn't get anything like
• 58:24
  that and if I had I would have felt very differently about speaking with him that's true I mean
• 58:28
  that yeah the the critic the the critic would say you're being overly you know you're being a bit
• 58:34
  asberg as he or something to assume that people just say openly the things that are actually going
• 58:39
  on and so there's a little bit like this comes back to you know how much do you want to read people's
• 58:43
  minds so to speak and maybe maybe the lesson of the intellectual dark web and the trajectories
• 58:49
  of all of these people who you were friends with was maybe you do need more mind reading
• 58:54
  yeah I mean it's again I can't anyway let's get observed that I could there are a few people who
• 58:59
  I I've been surprised by but it's yeah I mean I don't I don't know what let's talk about interesting
• 59:05
  things we've done an hour talking about colleagues and free speech and I don't want to listen to
• 59:09
  well I guess or the one point that we should close a loop on which yeah I don't never really
• 59:13
  answered it's just this this question of platforming oh yes really is is is a hard one to to judge
• 59:20
  because and this is something that I believe I've said before there isn't there's an uncanny
• 59:25
  valley problem here which is if the person is sufficiently awful then there's really no problem
• 59:32
  platforming them because it just becomes a you know a pure point of journalistic or anthropological
• 59:38
  interest to talk to the guy right so like I could easily do a podcast with Ted Kaczynski right or
• 59:45
  that or or Jeffrey Dahmer or some you know complete you know if Hitler were alive you know it
• 59:50
  would be fine to interview him because of course you want to hear what Hitler's going to say about
• 59:54
  his whole project I mean it's just like this is the most evil person who ever lived let's let's
• 59:59
  find out what's going on but when you make someone more and more you know normal you sort of bring
• 1:00:05
  them back you know closer to the fold then you get into this this territory where
• 1:00:12
  you seem culpable for raising their their profile in whatever you whatever you say to them
• 1:00:20
  in the conversation and you also you have to burn a fair amount of fuel reminding your audience
• 1:00:27
  that you don't agree with them right and it's um so yeah I mean I've decided there are people
• 1:00:33
  who I wouldn't speak to who people wanted me to talk to them and I just decided there's no
• 1:00:38
  website for having this conversation yeah I mean there are people who can fall newly into that
• 1:00:44
  category based on something they do and I mean you know Kanye is a person like that I mean I think
• 1:00:49
  he's fairly untouchable now I mean it's it's pretty it's pretty obvious he doesn't have anything
• 1:00:53
  interesting to say about anything apart from I mean it's I guess some people find it interesting
• 1:00:59
  to see himself destruct in real time if put in front of a microphone but you know there's some
• 1:01:06
  level of psychopathology there and there's just in some obvious antisemitism and I mean the most
• 1:01:12
  the most obnoxious thing about him is his trumpian level of self delusion right I mean the fact
• 1:01:18
  that he thinks he's you know a genius to rival Shakespeare and then can't then can go an hour
• 1:01:24
  without saying anything interesting I mean it's like that's the part that is truly nauseating
• 1:01:31
  but it's it's just to close the loop on Lex you know I think Lex is a really good person
• 1:01:37
  who is wearing everything on his sleeve and hoping to navigate every possible controversy by just
• 1:01:47
  being nice and compassionate and loving and vulnerable that does not give you every tool and the
• 1:01:57
  toolkit you need right I mean it's there there are people who are colossal assholes and need to
• 1:02:03
  be described as such there are people who for whom it's it's appropriate to run out of patience
• 1:02:09
  you know there's I mean there's a concept of of idiot compassion within Buddhism I think this
• 1:02:15
  came courtesy of Chogam Trunkba Rinpoche who himself had massive character flaws that that needed
• 1:02:22
  to be criticized earlier than they were but he gave us a very useful concept here which is
• 1:02:27
  we people think that compassion always needs to have as it's leading edge some
• 1:02:36
  a soft and and kind of nurturing tone right or angle of approach to everyone in every circumstance
• 1:02:44
  and it's it's just not true I mean sometimes someone is so obviously malicious and dishonest
• 1:02:52
  and destructive of everything that you you value and are right to value that is appropriate that
• 1:02:59
  the only compassionate response is to sign line them in whatever way that you can yeah right and
• 1:03:06
  and that's so you know whether that's rhetorically or in reality I mean there are people we need to
• 1:03:12
  drop bombs on I mean it's just that's just a fact what how do you just now you now you're picking
• 1:03:18
  my curiosity about the content of Kanye's ideas and about where anti-Semitism is and like I was
• 1:03:25
  fascinated by Dave Chappelle's Saturday Night Live monologue where he's kind of you know an idea to
• 1:03:32
  podcast about this like acknowledging the elephant in the room that like I do think yet again in
• 1:03:38
  the interests of preventing bullshit from getting traction online we have to do a better job in
• 1:03:44
  the mainstream conversation about acknowledging the kernel of truth that exists in that gives
• 1:03:49
  that starts the fire of these conspiracy theories like there is a disproportionately large number of
• 1:03:56
  Jews in positions of power in finance and the media and we can't just keep saying no there aren't
• 1:04:03
  no there aren't no there aren't because then we sound like we're phonies which I suppose we are
• 1:04:08
  what do you what do you have a theory of the case well I only saw Dave Chappelle's
• 1:04:16
  monologue once right so I can't say that I I have done all the the moral math on it and I mean
• 1:04:23
  I think it was fine and hilarious but I mean I was definitely laughing throughout and then at the end
• 1:04:32
  I thought huh I'm not quite sure you landed that the way it needed to get needed to be landed
• 1:04:38
  well at the end because just the people haven't said at the end at the end he's talking about
• 1:04:42
  they the people in power and then he says something like but who are the they and that's the end
• 1:04:47
  of his monologue meaning what so there are Jews in power there actually actually was a prime and
• 1:04:53
  but also his bit about you know you can't blame black people for the Holocaust and but
• 1:04:58
  and nobody is blaming black people for the Holocaust so yeah there were missteps in it but generally
• 1:05:05
  I thought it was very funny and brave but there were there were missteps in his his special the
• 1:05:12
  closer where he was hammering the trans issue I mean I thought I think I think I think I got this
• 1:05:17
  from Coleman Hughes I'm not I believe Coleman was the first to put this meme into my head and I
• 1:05:24
  think he's right the main problem with what happened with on on the closer was that
• 1:05:31
  Chappelle landed on a very woke punchline his argument in the closer was that the whole trans issue
• 1:05:40
  was an invention of essentially white people to get the moral high ground over black people right
• 1:05:49
  like like you're punching down it stopped punching down on my people that being the black people
• 1:05:54
  from this new height of white trans victimology so it was a strangely woke position he was was
• 1:06:03
  endorsing at the end and he basically he was saying black identity politics is totally valid
• 1:06:09
  trans identity politics is just white bullshit right Ron I say yeah that was a weird place to have
• 1:06:17
  landed given that he's he's capable of threading the needle and landing in a place that recognizes
• 1:06:25
  that all identitarian politics is a dead end I mean I didn't yeah I didn't quite take it that way
• 1:06:32
  I mean I took it as being uh wokeness is a way for you people to feel good about the fact that
• 1:06:39
  you're doing things about minorities but it just so happens that the minorities that you always
• 1:06:44
  seem to give a shit about are the ones that are convenient to you instead of the ones that
• 1:06:48
  actually require you to get your hands dirty in any way and fix you know public schools or whatever
• 1:06:52
  it might be so I didn't but I I take that I take your criticism I'd have to see it again
• 1:06:57
  yeah yeah but I know it but generally why do we control everything as Jews
• 1:07:02
  like and then what do we do about that fact without fermenting anti-semitism I don't think it should
• 1:07:09
  be taboo to recognize the the representation of any population in any specific area of culture
• 1:07:17
  right you know for for better or worse or you know there's greater representation in all kinds of
• 1:07:22
  places for all kinds of different people and there are historical reasons for that I mean I think
• 1:07:28
  I think some crazy percentage of people who run nail salons are from Vietnam in there
• 1:07:36
  how the hell did that happen Korean grocery stores or you know whatever it might be
• 1:07:41
  like wine nail salons you know it's like it's just it's most people know this history but yeah Jews
• 1:07:50
  for for literally centuries were systematically excluded from certain parts of culture
• 1:07:55
  and you know given a an open lane in areas like finance and so that explains their
• 1:08:03
  right historically their representation there right they couldn't become you needed a license
• 1:08:08
  to be a doctor or a lawyer so instead you became a money changer yeah yeah yeah or a traitor
• 1:08:13
  but there's the the more general point that you know that the Jewish community has
• 1:08:19
  always been you know highly literate and education focused and so this you know there's a
• 1:08:28
  crazy over representation in in science and in you know the you look at Nobel prizes for
• 1:08:34
  pretty much anything right it's just it's an order of magnitude higher than it should be
• 1:08:39
  and you don't see them represented in in professional sports as much as you might right I'm not
• 1:08:44
  yeah wait for your Jewish Olympians I've got their macabena games that's the only thing they win
• 1:08:50
  I'm sure there are cultural and genetic explanations for all of these population level differences
• 1:08:57
  you know and maybe we will try to figure them out or inadvertently figure them out my concern is
• 1:09:03
  that we will this goes back to Charles Murray for brief moment hopefully but my concern has always
• 1:09:09
  been that we will forget about focusing on these issues we'll just stumble upon them right we'll
• 1:09:15
  we'll begin to understand the genetics of of intelligence say and the more we understand it the more
• 1:09:24
  we we will be able to look at the representation of the all of those genes across specific populations
• 1:09:30
  and then we'll just we'll see we look at once we have a genetic recipe for intelligence we'll be
• 1:09:35
  able to ask the question well do the French have more of this than the Norwegians or vice versa
• 1:09:40
  and statistically there will be an answer and the answer will seem politically
• 1:09:46
  and videos right if it's something that that we care about and it's true it'll be true for everything
• 1:09:51
  it'll be true for the genetics of violence or compassion or maternal love I mean all of it
• 1:09:58
  right all of it is susceptible to analysis and again we'll we'll stumble in on to it by looking
• 1:10:05
  into these things generically and my the punchline for me politically is that we can't care about
• 1:10:11
  any of this we know in advance that it would be an absolute miracle if every group whether you
• 1:10:18
  know it's a valid group or or just a pseudo group right and literally you could take the group of
• 1:10:24
  all uh New York Knicks fans yeah right well I mean a country like a country like Australia is a
• 1:10:29
  completely random group anyway because most of the population has arrived since World War II so it's
• 1:10:34
  come from everywhere and yeah you might as well if there was some difference in Australia and IQ
• 1:10:38
  than everybody else then that would be completely arbitrary yeah but it but you would you would expect
• 1:10:43
  to find some difference if you just ran the comparison every which way it again it would be an
• 1:10:49
  absolute miracle if and it's important to recognize that these groups can be validly drawn or
• 1:10:56
  spuriously drawn you're still going to find the same thing and when we're talking about race we
• 1:11:03
  are talking about a kind of a hybrid of of what's valid and what's spurious right but
• 1:11:08
  I mean largely in in the literature I think we're talking about just people how people self identify
• 1:11:14
  right so you can imagine the amount of noise in the system there right and there's a there's an
• 1:11:19
  interesting conversation to be had about whether the cons what what the concept of race means and
• 1:11:24
  should mean and you know whether it's their case is where it's it's useful or completely useless
• 1:11:32
  and misleading right but forget about all that just let people identify however they want
• 1:11:38
  you're going to find differences for everything you care about and so far as it's measurable right and
• 1:11:45
  so we know that's the case and so what the ethical goodness of our politics is completely uncoupled
• 1:11:54
  from an expectation of equality of that sort right that is not the kind of equality
• 1:12:02
  that we need to care about because that kind of equality is a total fiction it's never existed
• 1:12:07
  yeah but the I mean the anti-Semite is not necessarily hung up on such questions in fact races
• 1:12:13
  don't have to be it can just be there's a cabal of you know of people who will look after
• 1:12:19
  themselves and look after each other and I'm trying to subvert the you know I'm trying to keep
• 1:12:23
  everybody else down yeah it's just not well it's just not true so to come back to the anti-Semitic
• 1:12:30
  issue of Kanye's view of it I mean so Kanye is is what what's objectionable about what he's
• 1:12:35
  doing is not that he has noticed a disproportionate number of people in Hollywood and in music
• 1:12:42
  management are Jewish you know disproportionate when you compare them to whatever it is 3%
• 1:12:48
  of the the American population probably less now I forget what it is what's objectionable is
• 1:12:54
  that he's extrapolating from his experiences with specific individuals to a group level condemnation
• 1:13:02
  of that entire class of people you know because I've had a couple of bad experiences with people
• 1:13:07
  who happen to be Jewish I'm now going to say that all Jews are terrible and that seems to have been
• 1:13:14
  the move he's made he also hasn't noticed that many of the people who helped him and made him
• 1:13:19
  money were also Jewish right they didn't just steal his money they also made his career and also
• 1:13:25
  many of the people who did the same sorts of mercenary things in Hollywood no doubt weren't Jewish
• 1:13:32
  right I mean so it's not 100% Jewish it's not even 50% Jewish right so it's he's not even doing the
• 1:13:37
  right arithmetic on his own experience surely but the thing he really can't do is extrapolate to
• 1:13:46
  a whole class of people based on the behavior of specific individuals it just yeah that's
• 1:13:52
  the morally crazy thing and I mean I think we also need to be more upfront about what you were
• 1:13:56
  just touching on with like Jews having been excluded from professions like we need some theory
• 1:14:02
  of the case I think about why Jews disproportionately represented in certain industries I mean I
• 1:14:08
  think culture has a huge amount to do with it and the love of learning and the you know the
• 1:14:15
  the discipline of hard work I mean there are all kinds of things I think it was Coleman actually
• 1:14:19
  who was saying like you know why were why were Russians really good at chess and like Chinese
• 1:14:25
  really good at violin or something like this is not nobody thinks these are genetic things but
• 1:14:29
  there is like a the soup that you're swimming in will guide you towards certain things why are
• 1:14:33
  Aussies great at swimming yes it's warm and we have lots of beaches but you know there is also
• 1:14:39
  an expectation when you're young that swimming and football or the thing and cricket or the things
• 1:14:44
  that you do and as yet soccer is not the thing that you do if we were in Argentina it would be
• 1:14:48
  different so again like growing up in a Jewish household you're just much likelier to be encouraged
• 1:14:54
  into pursuits and habits of behavior that are going to end you up in the positions that Kanye
• 1:15:00
  resents you're holding nonetheless yeah let's uh yeah we just just add the the most um provocative
• 1:15:07
  point here which it should just shouldn't be provocative it doesn't matter that there is a genetic
• 1:15:13
  part of the story if indeed there is one right it's just right it's politically it can't matter
• 1:15:19
  we know we know the political answer which is we are committed to political equality across the
• 1:15:28
  board we want people to have all the opportunities they can use we want people to be treated as
• 1:15:33
  political equals whatever their gender whatever their sexuality whatever their color their skin whatever
• 1:15:38
  their religion and population differences matter not at all to any of that and that's how we're
• 1:15:44
  going to build a just society you know locally and globally and so we figure that out right like
• 1:15:52
  so that so there is nothing at stake really here when you find out that the Chinese actually do have
• 1:16:00
  a gene that gives them an advantage or whatever they go violin yeah right and so what right it's not
• 1:16:08
  and no there's there's no individual whose ability to play the violin is affected by that
• 1:16:17
  finding not not a Chinese one and not a non-Chinese one right you have whatever ability you have
• 1:16:22
  whatever promise as a violinist you have genetically and you can build upon that promise culturally
• 1:16:30
  and you know behaviorally and you're going to get as far as you're going to get in your case
• 1:16:36
  and the population facts never affect that picture at all right so we know we need to
• 1:16:41
  treat people as individuals if you found out that the Chinese really do have an advantage for violin
• 1:16:48
  and then you were looking to hire a violinist and the only thing you knew about them was that
• 1:16:54
  they were Chinese you still have very little information about them as a violinist right you
• 1:17:00
  you actually need to see them play the violin if you if you if you care about the the competence
• 1:17:05
  of your violinist like the idea that we're ever going to be truly hostage to population level
• 1:17:11
  differences in a way that's going to confound our politics and cause good people to not be able to
• 1:17:18
  hire people anymore with a clear conscience because it's just so it's just all too hard because
• 1:17:25
  these differences between populations are so extreme I just think it's it's ridiculous there's no
• 1:17:30
  reason to expect that and you know so it's something like a meritocracy is what we can fight for
• 1:17:36
  but even on even beneath meritocracy we can fight for political equality because we know that
• 1:17:42
  that supersedes even our concerns about meritocracy but most people are not especially great at anything
• 1:17:51
  by definition we we care about these people having very good
• 1:17:56
  life big grandmother's lied to them when they said everybody has a special ability that makes them
• 1:18:02
  unique yeah most people shouldn't be present that's true you know they she lied Nana lied
• 1:18:08
  yeah no that's uh that's a sad fact I think who you should put that on your Sam Harris like
• 1:18:12
  bumper sticker most people are not very good at anything but the truth is but the truth is it's
• 1:18:17
  not even that sad right it's like that's when you when you're trying to figure out what it means to
• 1:18:22
  live a good life getting into the Olympics you know much less winning your event at the Olympics
• 1:18:29
  is not on the menu for right practically anybody and won't probably make your life any happier than
• 1:18:35
  just being like what am I least bad at I should do that yeah yeah yeah I mean look at look at
• 1:18:41
  someone I mean that you know we now have the spectacle of Elon completely misusing his
• 1:18:48
  opportunity to to live a fulfilling life oh god we already we already talked about Trump now we
• 1:18:53
  know we got Elon we got the other way Elon's come out of your lips here's another friend who I
• 1:18:58
  have been low to talk about but um it's just like here's somebody who is just the poster boy
• 1:19:05
  for having better things to do and yet he's just tweeting himself into a proper fugue state
• 1:19:12
  why is he doing it I have no idea but he's he appears to be unstoppable well we know why it's
• 1:19:18
  his Twitter I mean it's because of Twitter isn't it like I mean yes he is a this is a one man
• 1:19:22
  advertisement it's addictive yeah I heard someone say like does anybody you know just look at this
• 1:19:30
  trajectory as a microcosm of what Twitter is doing to all of us in a way and social media
• 1:19:35
  what does anybody think that Elon is paying more attention to the things that matter and it has a
• 1:19:41
  you know a bigger and broader and wiser and deeper grasp of what's really going on than he did
• 1:19:48
  10 years ago well I mean that was you know frankly one of the approximate causes of my getting off
• 1:19:54
  just seeing how dysfunctional it was for Elon to be as addicted as he is to Twitter I mean if
• 1:20:02
  leave it leave it aside entirely his buying of the platform and the kind of the changes he was
• 1:20:07
  making to it I mean all of that I really view is just a further adembration of his of his addiction
• 1:20:15
  to tweeting right I mean it's just that that's how he got himself into that situation of having to
• 1:20:20
  pay $44 billion for the privilege of tweeting even crazier things it's so obviously dysfunctional
• 1:20:27
  so obviously subverting of his every chance of having a less stressful happier healthier life
• 1:20:36
  that I had to look I just extrapolated back from his colossal use of the platform to my own
• 1:20:44
  far more calibrated use of it but still you know even even by that light you know my own use of it
• 1:20:51
  looked completely dysfunctional and so I just yeah I just pulled the break on it now that Elon
• 1:20:58
  is like doing whatever banning of journalists he's doing I can't just let his name come up without
• 1:21:03
  pursuing this just like a fucking rabbit hole for my brain but like do you still land on the
• 1:21:09
  it's a private enterprise free speech argument yeah I mean the only people who think
• 1:21:16
  Twitter is the public square are the people who are addicted to Twitter and that is pretty much
• 1:21:22
  every journalist on earth and every person in politics right so so it's it's a special
• 1:21:28
  cohort of addicts but I mean I'm not sure about that I'm not sure that that's fair I don't
• 1:21:34
  think I'm addicted to Twitter but I always found something a little bit too about the well it's
• 1:21:41
  private platform I mean I like I get I sort of get it like constitutionally speaking I get it
• 1:21:47
  free speech doesn't apply to a private platform but long before even when it was my enemies who
• 1:21:52
  were being hounded from the platform pre-ealon I was always uncomfortable with my allies saying well
• 1:22:00
  Twitter can get rid of you know whoever they want to they can they can ban James Lindsay and
• 1:22:04
  they can ban margin now as if they want to because it's a private platform and there's no free
• 1:22:07
  speech consensus like hang on if people are functionally using it as a place to gain prominence
• 1:22:13
  and exchange ideas then I don't think we should just be handing over the keys to all of that to
• 1:22:19
  whoever happens to be in charge of it so I and then now that Elon's in I'm like we'll see
• 1:22:25
  but you could also easily just consistently take your position of like just let whoever do whatever
• 1:22:29
  the fuck but I do think there's something it just feels like a dodge to me to treat Twitter and
• 1:22:35
  Facebook as if they were I don't know candy companies or like the Mars Corporation or Coca-Cola
• 1:22:40
  or something. Well I know I would acknowledge that it's it's not good to have these platforms
• 1:22:46
  be biased and and more importantly engines of misinformation and disinformation right there
• 1:22:53
  there are many parts to this this puzzle so it would sort of have to kind of track through this
• 1:22:59
  systematically but one piece is that algorithmically boosted speech is not normal speech right right
• 1:23:06
  so so you so whatever your freedom of speech rights are in America or anywhere else
• 1:23:12
  no one has a constitutional right to algorithmically boosted speech right I mean and to make it
• 1:23:19
  clear what I'm saying it's just you know you you tweet something in the current system
• 1:23:26
  that is not just you freely publishing your opinion for the world to read that is an opinion
• 1:23:33
  that is getting fed into an outrage machine and amplified or not based on a choice a business
• 1:23:42
  choice to promulgate the most outrage inducing and in many cases misleading pieces of information
• 1:23:54
  because it has been discovered algorithmically that those things spread more reliably and faster
• 1:24:00
  than anything else right so an anti-vax conspiracy theory will always spread it seems by some
• 1:24:07
  perverse informational physics faster and better than a patient debunking of that anti-vax conspiracy
• 1:24:16
  theory yes and so we have people who are making billions of dollars on those those physics
• 1:24:23
  and this is the businesses we we haven't had right so and then these people are are tasked
• 1:24:31
  with the the additional question that's going to you're getting bolted on to this whole enterprise
• 1:24:35
  as an afterthought the trust and safety question what do we do about this machine that we really can't
• 1:24:43
  let fly freely because if we do if we take our hands completely off the controls it's just going
• 1:24:50
  to just spiral around decapitating everyone and damage our society but we find that when we do put
• 1:24:58
  our hands on the wheel we can't drive it all that well either and we do keep crashing into people
• 1:25:06
  and embarrassing ourselves and we're reliably convicted of bias you know a lot of the time
• 1:25:12
  because we are biased and occasionally some of this some of what we're calling this information
• 1:25:18
  turns out to be true and oh yeah there was Jay Bottacari over there at Stanford who is a real
• 1:25:24
  MD and we throttled his account and that's a little hard to justify in retrospect because of school
• 1:25:29
  closures for covid don't look all that good and that's what he was banging on about so it may be that
• 1:25:35
  there's actually no way to fly this plane safely right or optimally or what's going to be what's
• 1:25:42
  going to look optimal for more than 15 minutes at a stretch so that's that's the technology we've
• 1:25:47
  built right but this is not to come back to the to the claim of that we all we need to do is look
• 1:25:52
  at this with the lens of free speech this isn't just free speech with this is a new technology
• 1:25:59
  that's incredibly powerful that's doing obvious harm to society and we haven't figured out
• 1:26:06
  how to use it productively right but the I mean the free speech can be I don't even like using
• 1:26:12
  the term free speech because it means it has this whole meaning in terms of like you know
• 1:26:16
  constitutionally protected free speech and traditions of common law and governments and so on
• 1:26:20
  but let's talk about just access like the the the I guess the conditions under which a citizen
• 1:26:28
  is permitted to use this technology like those conditions are the things that people are worried
• 1:26:36
  about and so then the question is do you have maximally capacious conditions in which the largest
• 1:26:42
  possible number of people are able to use it or are you throttling it for some types of speech and
• 1:26:46
  not others in which I mean certainly if you're talking about if you're just inventing rule if one
• 1:26:52
  day you're saying I so believe in free speech that I'm even going to allow people who are posting
• 1:26:56
  the locations of my private jet to post them on Twitter and then the next day when you own you know
• 1:27:02
  then you just change your mind and you say actually this is endangering my family to know where my
• 1:27:06
  jet is and these journalists who also or by the way happen to be critical of me and now booted
• 1:27:12
  off the platform and then the conservative people who were up in arms about the fact that some
• 1:27:17
  conservatives had been throttled under the old Twitter regime are now cheering on the fact that
• 1:27:22
  lib tards at the New York Times are being throttled under the new regime like the I don't know
• 1:27:29
  what to make of the whole thing I'm like I'd rather just yeah either shut it down or let everyone
• 1:27:34
  on it's important to notice that all of Elon's pratfalls since taking the reins at Twitter
• 1:27:45
  only prove the the underlying point that there may be no good way of doing this right like he's
• 1:27:51
  you know he's he's having to make all the same decisions that every other social media moderators
• 1:27:55
  had to make and he's making them badly because he's because he's making them impulsively and
• 1:28:01
  in ways that that are kind of narrowly focused on his case and then he's coming up with post-hoc
• 1:28:06
  rationalizations for what he did and you know I mean just to take the the Elon jet piece I completely
• 1:28:12
  agree with him that having the GPS coordinates of his private plane tracked in real time by all the
• 1:28:19
  world raises his security concerns just horrifically right I mean it's it's it's not good I don't know
• 1:28:27
  why those coordinates are publicly available I mean I don't know what the government's case is for
• 1:28:33
  publishing all of that but I probably think that none of that should be published but there's no
• 1:28:38
  question that he has a valid security concern around that given his public profile especially
• 1:28:45
  but I guess every other celebrity would as well so I get what he's concerned with there but the thing
• 1:28:51
  that was you know truly ridiculous that blew up in his face was that he's single this guy out as
• 1:28:56
  the clearest evidence of his commitment to so-called you know free speech absolutism he's going to
• 1:29:02
  keep this guy on even though he's he's publishing his his whereabouts and raising his security concerns
• 1:29:08
  and then only to then kick him off in an obvious show of hypocrisy and to not acknowledge any of
• 1:29:16
  that right I mean that the problem with what Elon does on Twitter is that he does these incredibly
• 1:29:21
  ill-considered and destructive things which is to say he's incredibly reckless all the time
• 1:29:27
  and when he does something wrong and and thinks better of it and has to delete the tweet
• 1:29:31
  he never acknowledges what he's done he never apologizes he never corrects the record I mean
• 1:29:36
  you know the first thing he did when he took over Twitter was he he's he's spread that at linked to
• 1:29:42
  the article about you know Nancy Pelosi's husband the hammer attack on him was not what it seemed
• 1:29:49
  it seemed like it was just a gay trist gone awry right and he tweeted that and then when it became
• 1:29:57
  clear that the source he was relying on there was I think it was a source that had published
• 1:30:04
  some an opinion that you know Hillary Clinton was dead and that a body double was campaigning in her
• 1:30:09
  place or something insane like that in 2016 right so once it became embarrassing to be linked to
• 1:30:15
  that source he just deleted it but he didn't acknowledge what he he didn't clean up his mess right he
• 1:30:22
  just disassociated himself from it and meanwhile he had lent his credibility to a conspiracy theory
• 1:30:32
  that really was taking off and probably still is in good standing over there in Trumpistan
• 1:30:39
  which thinks you know nothing is as it seems and yes Paul Pelosi really was part of some gay
• 1:30:44
  probably pedophile cabal you know I'm sure QAnon did something you know spectacular with this
• 1:30:50
  piece of information Elon is directly messaging into that fever dream of misinformation all the time
• 1:30:58
  in ways that that he probably doesn't even understand I mean you know his when he tweets you know
• 1:31:04
  my pronouns are prosecute Fauci he's interacting with a topic that one could talk about responsibly
• 1:31:11
  right like I don't know what happened in at the Wuhan Institute of Virology I don't know what the
• 1:31:15
  actual origins of covid are it was never racist to speculate that that this could have come out
• 1:31:22
  of a lab should should we investigate all of that sure that would be great you're our Fauci's
• 1:31:27
  hands entirely clean or is he culpable for some gain a function stuff that he doesn't now want to
• 1:31:33
  talk about now I have no idea that's all legitimate to talk about but when you're just tweeting
• 1:31:39
  in front of 120 million people my pronouns are prosecute Fauci forget about what you're saying to
• 1:31:46
  the trans community let's leave that aside but that's obviously something that could be criticized
• 1:31:52
  what you are saying to all of the the conspiracists over in trumpistan around Fauci and and
• 1:31:59
  covid origins is you seem to be saying as the owner of twitter who's in the process of looking at
• 1:32:04
  all the files and leaking many of them you seem to be saying that you have inside information
• 1:32:11
  you're this brilliant technologist who has inside information about the origins of covid and you
• 1:32:16
  know that Fauci's hands are not clean and were still you are turning some number of completely
• 1:32:24
  crazy people in your audience again you've got 120 million people following you some number of
• 1:32:30
  them are completely crazy and not merely crazy they're focused on this issue especially
• 1:32:35
  these are the people who are focused on covid origins and it's all a conspiracy and it's all
• 1:32:40
  you know one world government coming to infringe our freedoms and you're telling those people
• 1:32:47
  that their hatred is appropriately focused on this 80 year old public servant who already
• 1:32:56
  has more security concerns than practically anyone we could name I mean I don't know what
• 1:33:01
  Fauci's life is like these days but I guarantee you he is inundated by death threats
• 1:33:07
  fucking inundated and it is completely irresponsible for Elon who understands all this stuff
• 1:33:17
  to be directing a deranged cult at Fauci and you know he did the same thing with his former head
• 1:33:24
  of trust and safety at twitter you well Roth right you know he called him pedophile and linked to
• 1:33:31
  something some misleading part of the the guy's doctoral thesis again totally irresponsible
• 1:33:37
  because he's doing that in front of 120 million people some subset of which are totally focused
• 1:33:46
  on this issue right I'm a QAnon is all about the world is being ruled by a pedophile cult
• 1:33:54
  and Elon is has a direct line to the brains of these people so it's you're making me a lot more
• 1:34:02
  seen behavior I mean you're making me a lot more worried than I have been because I haven't
• 1:34:07
  really paid much attention to his shitposting I've just thought he's out of his depth but you're
• 1:34:11
  saying he's more than out of his depth well I don't know where the line is between out of his depth
• 1:34:17
  and and truly aware of the harm he is causing or could be causing I mean the what's tragic about
• 1:34:23
  this is I think Elon is a truly brilliant person who is truly committed to making the world a
• 1:34:31
  better place I think he really does want good things for the world I don't think he's a he's a
• 1:34:37
  malevolent person but what twitter has done to his brain is not at all good and there's a lack of
• 1:34:48
  intellectual and moral seriousness to how he treats issues of real societal importance on twitter
• 1:34:56
  honestly it's it's fairly Trumpian right it's just it's so it's so cavalier it's so
• 1:35:03
  bull in a china shop and who cares what breaks yeah so it's totally reckless I mean you know for
• 1:35:09
  him to be tweeting that you know Taiwan should be a protectorate of China right when when he's
• 1:35:14
  obviously conflicted with with China right he's got immense business interests in China and he
• 1:35:20
  just casually tweets something about the fate of Taiwan when you're the richest or one of the richest
• 1:35:26
  people on earth and one of and also one of the most famous that does come with certain
• 1:35:33
  responsibilities right he's not just any old person tweeting and now he owns the platform it's
• 1:35:39
  like they don't know how how fragile like what none of us knows how fragile the system is
• 1:35:49
  by the system I mean like the whole like the sort of democracy yeah the status quo of the globe
• 1:35:57
  like the geopolitical balances the relationship between our institutions now branches of government
• 1:36:03
  the the sort of quorum that you have of buy-in for democracy among the demos like the the fragile
• 1:36:11
  negotiations I mean it's like they've lost sight of the fact that for most people in most places
• 1:36:18
  at most times life has been shitty and tribal and violent and like we've managed to erect this
• 1:36:27
  edifice of conciliation over the past couple hundred years thanks to the enlightenment and
• 1:36:33
  democratic and democracy and they just don't think that anything that their little life is going
• 1:36:39
  to do is going to undermine that so they keep playing these games and yeah you're right is it a
• 1:36:46
  bull in a china shop or is it a mouse in you know a huge glass temple that the mouse couldn't
• 1:36:51
  possibly affect I think they think they're just leaving little mouse droppings all over the place
• 1:36:57
  but we don't know well yeah part of it is the problem of Twitter itself and the people
• 1:37:06
  feel like they can just bullshit and talk and and promulgate their opinions and yes most people
• 1:37:16
  can most of the time but I mean this is you know this comes back to why I thought Trump and Alex
• 1:37:22
  Jones should have been kicked off the platform in the first place right I mean it wasn't because
• 1:37:27
  maybe I'm sure they've violated Twitter's terms of service in many ways as well but the thing
• 1:37:34
  that I've found most destructive about their use of the platform was they're singling out private
• 1:37:41
  citizens for abuse and lying about them at scale in such a way that was guaranteed to destroy
• 1:37:48
  these people's lives Trump did it again and again and Alex Jones was doing it with the sandy hook
• 1:37:54
  parents and it was just it was so foreseeable it was so it was it was playing out you know in the case
• 1:38:01
  of Alex Jones was playing out for years and we just there was no mystery as to what what the
• 1:38:07
  consequences were in the real world I mean he had a a crazy cult of conspiracy-addled maniacs
• 1:38:15
  that he was aiming at families who would suffer the worst possible loss in their lives right
• 1:38:23
  and and and the consequences were exactly as we've seen them and their sandy hook families that
• 1:38:29
  have had to move 10 times since their kids were murdered yeah it reminds me a little bit of
• 1:38:35
  there's an anecdote from a New York Times who was it at the Times who interviewed Trump like a
• 1:38:40
  number of times I can't remember what was but basically had a meeting with him after Trump had been
• 1:38:44
  tweeting about journalists being the enemies of the people I think I think the editor of the
• 1:38:48
  Times and maybe the Washington Post or Wall Street Journal like all came together and they were like
• 1:38:53
  Mr. President I know this is your stick but you have to understand that in parts of the world where
• 1:38:58
  authoritarian regimes are constantly cracking down on journalists this kind of stuff will get people
• 1:39:02
  killed this will get journalists killed this will get them hounded this will get them like all
• 1:39:07
  over the world you tweeting something like this has a real impact on free speech and the freedom of
• 1:39:11
  people everywhere it doesn't just endanger reporters here in America when they go to you know rallies
• 1:39:17
  this is a global phenomenon and he's and the reporter who I heard being interviewed I come over
• 1:39:22
  where it was said like it seemed like he really got it for a moment and he was like yeah yeah okay
• 1:39:26
  I can see that and then you know they left and three hours later he's tweeting about how
• 1:39:30
  journalists are the enemies of the of the people and it's like it's like I don't think that Trump
• 1:39:37
  wants people wants journalists in Namibia to be to have to be beheaded but I just don't think he
• 1:39:45
  thinks it's I don't think he really believes that anything matters or that anything is going to
• 1:39:48
  happen I just don't I think they think that the world's going to go on and they're just going to
• 1:39:51
  do their shit and then things will continue and at some point enough if enough people think that
• 1:39:56
  then things won't go on as they were and things won't continue the whole thing will fall apart
• 1:40:02
  yeah well again this comes back to this contrarianism and the loss of trust in institutions I
• 1:40:10
  mean they're people who are in the mode of just tearing it all down and imagining that it's
• 1:40:18
  we can just have a great party in the rubble of of of everything it's there is there is the rubble
• 1:40:25
  of a shared epistemology where we we used to be able to converge on a fact-based discussion
• 1:40:32
  about terrestrial reality it's the rubble of specific institutions that no longer have any
• 1:40:40
  authority or perceived authority it's the rubble of just the very concept that anyone
• 1:40:47
  is or can be an expert in anything I mean the you know the expertise is now a undignified
• 1:40:54
  concept right and yet we know there's a difference between someone who knows nothing and a true
• 1:41:02
  expert and we we certainly you know Elon obviously knows this about engineering and he should know
• 1:41:09
  this about history and epidemiology and you know any other area where where facts can be
• 1:41:17
  ascertained and and where they matter or might matter someday there's something very adolescent
• 1:41:23
  about this moment politically psychologically and the teenager has got control of the car of
• 1:41:29
  yeah and mum and dash wrong about everything I mean it's like it's almost Bolshevik you know when
• 1:41:33
  you talk about the rubble it's like you know burn it all down and we'll figure out what we're
• 1:41:37
  going to do next and then it'll be better there'll be a glorious future you know there'll be a
• 1:41:40
  thousand year rife and everyone's going to be happy um Sam can I pepper you with some questions
• 1:41:45
  that that my followers have have treated in for like a raw shark I guess you know I'll challenge
• 1:41:51
  you to to answer briefly on these questions one of the first of which a very important question
• 1:41:56
  what is your favorite cookie I actually am a big fan of Oreos as long as there's milk involved
• 1:42:04
  yeah okay uh what advice would you give to your 25 year old self um well it's I think I would have
• 1:42:17
  gone to graduate school sooner than I did I I had more time in the wilderness than was optimal
• 1:42:24
  I mean I sometimes was necessary but I was spinning my wheels for longer than I needed to and
• 1:42:32
  so I would have forced the epiphany that I needed to go back and and finish my education
• 1:42:39
  that was just a little taste of our first day questions which you'll be able to hear all of
• 1:42:43
  if you subscribe to uncomfortable conversations not just the questions but of course all of our
• 1:42:47
  banter around them which become a subsequent little episode of themselves if you do subscribe you
• 1:42:53
  will not only hear that but you'll also hear no ads on any episode ever and you'll get additional
• 1:42:58
  content including opportunities to connect directly with me you can subscribe at uncomfortable
• 1:43:04
  conversations.substac.com or follow the links in the the podcast description otherwise I'll see you
• 1:43:11
  next time on the conversation.