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Donald Robertson - How To Think Like Socrates · Mahon McCann

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SPEAKER_01: Donald Robertson, thank you for joining me again.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
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SPEAKER_01: as I was saying to you beforehand,
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SPEAKER_01: I mean,
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SPEAKER_01: I just finished How to Think Like Socrates,
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SPEAKER_01: listened to it for a few weeks,
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SPEAKER_01: including On the Back of a Camel in Morocco,
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SPEAKER_01: which was pretty cool.
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SPEAKER_01: And it's made a really, really brilliant.
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SPEAKER_01: I was really struck.
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I always love all your books,
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but this one just hit me like a punch in the jaw for some reason.
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SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
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SPEAKER_01: I was thinking about Socrates a lot.
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SPEAKER_01: I've been doing like a series on Plato's Republic.
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think we're in a very socratic moment as well like he has a lot
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to say to it so it
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was just like uh really perfect and the best biography i've
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ever read as well as
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the kind of practical stuff so yeah i mean maybe like yeah why
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did what inspired
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you really to go for this now and what was it like why do you
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think it's relevant
0:46
SPEAKER_00: Well,
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SPEAKER_00: like you said,
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SPEAKER_00: I wanted to,
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I was hoping people would enjoy reading it as a biography
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because I wanted to write,
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I just wanted to write the kind of book that I think I would
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have liked to have
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SPEAKER_00: read when I was younger,
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SPEAKER_00: but that's usually what guides me in these things.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I'm happy that I did that.
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SPEAKER_00: Like, I feel like probably more than any of the other books I've written.
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If I could,
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if I,
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I've written about like seven or eight books or something now.
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SPEAKER_00: And, um,
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SPEAKER_00: I guess I'd never thought about this before, actually.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking live here.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm ad-libbing here.
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If I was to go back in time with all the books that I've
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written and give them to
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SPEAKER_00: my 17-year-old self,
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SPEAKER_00: I actually think this is the main one that I'd want to show him and go,
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SPEAKER_00: you're going to think this is really cool.
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SPEAKER_00: That's my benchmark in a way.
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I've always found it easier to engage with philosophy when I
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know more about the
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SPEAKER_00: life of the thinker,
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SPEAKER_00: the philosopher.
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SPEAKER_00: Like when I studied philosophy at university,
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I used to read biographies of Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell
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and these guys
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because that made it easier for me to kind of relate to the
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abstract stuff that
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SPEAKER_00: they were saying about philosophy.
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SPEAKER_00: And actually only quite recently it's occurred to me,
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my first degree is in philosophy and my master's degree is in
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interdisciplinary philosophy.
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philosophy and psychotherapy so I've always been working and
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writing about the
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intersection between philosophy and psychology basically and it
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occurred to me just
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recently that one of the reasons that I like the Socratic
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dialogues is that because
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they're not lectures and they're not essays they're
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conversations between people
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SPEAKER_00: they come across as more psychological
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in a way because it seems like there are real people not just
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like saying stuff but
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you see them reasoning and how they arrive at certain
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conclusions and how they kind
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of avoid admitting certain things and so there's a
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psychological drama that unfolds
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that I guess when you're studying it from the point of view of
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academic philosophy
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SPEAKER_00: almost seems like
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SPEAKER_00: it's kind of irrelevant or it gets in the way a little bit.
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SPEAKER_00: A lot of academic philosophers are kind of inclined to just say,
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SPEAKER_00: well,
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SPEAKER_00: what's Plato trying to say?
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SPEAKER_00: Let's get rid of all the dialogue.
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SPEAKER_00: So what's the point he's trying to make here?
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And I thought,
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well,
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the psychological drama of the conversation is kind of important.
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SPEAKER_00: You know,
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it makes it thinking of these individuals as flesh and blood
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human beings with life
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SPEAKER_00: outside the conversation and opinions and character traits,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: makes it more relatable as us.
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SPEAKER_00: The Socratic method more relatable as a sort of psychotherapy,
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SPEAKER_00: a psychological process,
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SPEAKER_00: it seemed to me.
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SPEAKER_00: And that's partly why I wanted to present it more as a biography.
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SPEAKER_00: And also, I think people have limited attention spans now.
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SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people would find it hard to read Plato's Republic now.
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I actually did a course with my undergraduates last semester on
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Plato's Republican,
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SPEAKER_01: can testify to that.
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SPEAKER_01: I think they got some of it,
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SPEAKER_01: but yeah,
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SPEAKER_00: it does take,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: I think in the past people had longer attention spans and,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: sadly,
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SPEAKER_00: now people find it harder to get through stuff like that.
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SPEAKER_00: But talking more about the drama,
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SPEAKER_00: that surrounds it, I think makes it a little bit more engaging.
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SPEAKER_00: I guess I wanted to write it in a way that was cinematic.
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It was like you're watching a movie about Socrates or reading a
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graphic novel.
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SPEAKER_01: Man, it should be like a HBO TV show of like the life of Socrates.
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SPEAKER_01: It was like episodes of like, yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: You're right.
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SPEAKER_00: I think so.
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SPEAKER_01: I can imagine it as that.
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So somebody said to us,
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people say a lot of really strange things about it.
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philosophers I think you know I mean I think people have very
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strongly held
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opinions about history and philosophy on social media for
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example and sometimes
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they say things that really surprise me so somebody said to me
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they thought
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SPEAKER_00: Socrates was a kind of boring
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SPEAKER_00: He had a sort of boring life or something like that.
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SPEAKER_00: And I thought, be joking.
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SPEAKER_00: That's the opposite of how I see it.
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SPEAKER_00: Socrates,
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SPEAKER_00: to me,
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seems like one of the most colorful and dramatic figures in the
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history of philosophy.
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Most philosophers just kind of sit in a library and write books
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about philosophy.
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SPEAKER_00: Socrates lived through the Peloponnesian War.
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The rise and fall of Athenian democracy collapsed into a
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dictatorship during his life.
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He was surrounded by really powerful,
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influential,
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really colorful characters.
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SPEAKER_00: I guess it's the ensemble matters as well.
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SPEAKER_00: His whole life is about interacting with people like Alcibiades or famous
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SPEAKER_00: intellectuals like Protagoras.
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SPEAKER_00: It makes him a much more colorful... You get to know more about people.
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You humanize people more in some ways by understanding who
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their friends are.
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SPEAKER_00: Or who the people are that they interact with.
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And Socrates is surrounded by even his wife and his kids become
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part of his story.
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SPEAKER_00: And they're kind of interesting and colorful characters.
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SPEAKER_00: He's a more three-dimensional,
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SPEAKER_00: dramatic and colorful individual than almost any other,
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SPEAKER_00: I think,
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SPEAKER_00: perhaps any other philosopher that I can think of.
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SPEAKER_01: That totally is part of his philosophy as well.
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I think that's such a point that it illustrates his character
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and his military
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experience and seeing the rise and fall of emperors and
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standing up to the 30
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SPEAKER_01: tyrants and all this stuff that if you just read a Platonic dialogue,
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SPEAKER_01: you're like,
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SPEAKER_01: oh,
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SPEAKER_01: this guy's making weird arguments.
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SPEAKER_01: You don't really understand Socrates, I think.
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absolutely i think the only kind of exception to the or the
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main exception to that
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perhaps is the apology where it's more like a monologue there's
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a little bit of
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dialogue in it but it's more like a monologue it's the dramatic
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setting is more
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understandable and more you know it's like a courtroom drama in
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a way and there's
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more kind of action in a sense taking place and it's a bit more
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concise and
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SPEAKER_00: And there's an element of that.
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SPEAKER_00: The dialogues are dialogues.
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SPEAKER_00: There's scene setting, there's characters in them, they're like plays.
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SPEAKER_00: But some of them,
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SPEAKER_00: particularly the first book of The Republic,
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SPEAKER_00: is more like a real three-dimensional conversation.
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And then the other nine books of The Republic become a little
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bit more abstract,
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like you kind of forget and just get lost in the abstract side
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of the argument a
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SPEAKER_00: little bit.
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SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, I think there's something...
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SPEAKER_00: There's something odd about that.
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SPEAKER_00: On the one hand, Plato, to some extent, makes it seem...
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SPEAKER_00: Socrates is a little bit divorced from external.
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Everything about Socrates is kind of complex and ironic and multi-layered.
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SPEAKER_00: So does Plato place Socrates within a historical context?
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SPEAKER_00: Yes and no.
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SPEAKER_00: In some ways he does.
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SPEAKER_00: He's talking to these characters and he hints at things about their life.
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SPEAKER_00: Even Marcus Aurelius, who's like 500 years after the death of Socrates,
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would have understood who Alcibiades and Protagoras and Crito
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and these people were.
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SPEAKER_00: So the dialogues would have been more dramatic.
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SPEAKER_00: Modern philosophy students,
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SPEAKER_00: when they're reading it,
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if they don't really have the context and understand who some
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of the other
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SPEAKER_00: individuals are,
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SPEAKER_00: then it becomes a bit more like a weird lecture.
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SPEAKER_00: It's just a couple of guys saying stuff.
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They don't think Alcibiades is talking to Socrates about the
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nature of justice and this dude.
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SPEAKER_00: that went on and did the things that he did.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is psychologically quite significant.
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SPEAKER_00: It's interesting.
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SPEAKER_00: So there's that.
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SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, Plato says very little about the context.
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SPEAKER_00: He tends to hint at things without making it very obvious.
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SPEAKER_00: And so for sure, in some of the dialogues, I'll give you a good example.
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SPEAKER_00: There's the one...
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SPEAKER_00: which,
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SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to remember which dialogue it is now,
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SPEAKER_00: I think it's the Carmides,
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SPEAKER_00: if I remember rightly.
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SPEAKER_00: At the beginning, Socrates has just returned from the Battle of Potidaea,
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SPEAKER_00: and there's a little dialogue where he meets his friends,
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SPEAKER_00: and they're saying,
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SPEAKER_00: hey,
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SPEAKER_00: how did the war go?
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SPEAKER_00: And he kind of talks about it briefly,
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SPEAKER_00: like he doesn't really want to go into much detail,
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and then he gets drawn into this conversation about the nature
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of temperance,
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SPEAKER_00: right?
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SPEAKER_00: So Plato kind of like just vaguely acknowledges the historical context.
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SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't even know that that was happening.
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SPEAKER_00: And then it gets in a philosophical discussion.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but as readers of it, like Plato's students,
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And even people centuries later would have thought that this
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conversation is taking
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SPEAKER_00: place in the middle of the Peloponnesian War,
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SPEAKER_00: right?
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And the people that are discussing it are sometimes politicians
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or people that
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SPEAKER_00: maybe died under subsequent political regimes or in the war or whatever.
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SPEAKER_00: There's all the drama surrounding it.
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SPEAKER_00: And Plato definitely wanted his readers to understand that.
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SPEAKER_00: How could they not have?
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I think the thing is that he took it for granted that his
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readers would have
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SPEAKER_00: understood the historical context,
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SPEAKER_00: whereas now so much time has passed that we don't really...
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SPEAKER_00: We need it to be spelled out a little bit more to his...
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SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter to the philosophy, in a sense.
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SPEAKER_00: But I think it has implications for the psychology.
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SPEAKER_00: And if we view what's going on as a sort of therapy,
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SPEAKER_00: it makes us think,
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SPEAKER_00: this is a real person that holds these opinions.
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SPEAKER_00: How would it shape their emotions and shape their behavior, for example?
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SPEAKER_00: As a therapist, I naturally am more interested in it.
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SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you something.
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SPEAKER_00: There are many odd things that I notice.
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SPEAKER_00: But the other thing, I think reading...
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SPEAKER_00: The Socratic Dialogues as a therapist,
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there are things that kind of stand out to me that philosophers
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and classicists
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SPEAKER_00: usually don't mention or kind of gloss over a bit.
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SPEAKER_00: And,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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there are things that Socrates says that seem to me more like
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something a coach or
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SPEAKER_00: counselor or therapist would say.
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SPEAKER_00: So it struck me eventually.
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SPEAKER_00: I thought,
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why does Socrates seem to make these observations that are more
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like something a
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SPEAKER_00: therapist would say than a philosopher,
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SPEAKER_00: you know?
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and it's because he spends all day talking to people using the
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Socratic method.
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SPEAKER_00: Modern philosophers give lectures,
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SPEAKER_00: and they read books,
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SPEAKER_00: and they write essays,
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SPEAKER_00: and sometimes they do seminars and tutorials and stuff,
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but they don't spend anything like the amount of time that
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Socrates did engaging in
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SPEAKER_00: really in-depth,
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SPEAKER_00: one-to-one philosophical conversation.
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SPEAKER_00: In that regard, what he actually did all day
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is a bit more like what a counsellor or a life coach or a
12:00
therapist would do.
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So he makes these psychological observations that I think stem
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from his extensive
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SPEAKER_00: use of philosophical dialogue.
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So he sees things from a slightly different perspective than a
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lecturer on philosophy might.
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SPEAKER_01: Really hits on the kind of divide between ancient philosophy,
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SPEAKER_01: like philosophy as a way of life,
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SPEAKER_01: and modern philosophy,
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SPEAKER_01: to be honest,
12:23
SPEAKER_01: because that's like,
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a lot of that first wave Platonism where it was like Plato's
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just making arguments
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and we're just going to take out the arguments and we'll
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analyze the logical
12:30
predicates and turns out it doesn't make sense and you know you
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end up this very
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weird but I'm a big fan of like third wave Platonism now which
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is like integrating
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the literary and the philosophical it's like you can't actually
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take out the
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SPEAKER_01: stories you can't take out the characters
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SPEAKER_01: you can't take out the context.
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Like the fact that Thrasymachus blushes is just as important as
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the arguments that
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SPEAKER_01: are being made,
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SPEAKER_01: you know?
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SPEAKER_00: And also the fact that it's also by these weeps is quite important.
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SPEAKER_00: Like psychologically, you know, um,
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SPEAKER_00: One of the biggest puzzles that struck me is,
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SPEAKER_00: and I think it strikes most people at some level,
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SPEAKER_00: is why was Socrates so drawn to Alcibiades?
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And some people explain that just by saying he was sexually
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attracted to him and he
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SPEAKER_00: was a really attractive guy and it was a romantic or sexual relationship.
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SPEAKER_00: But I just didn't really ever buy that.
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I thought there's got to be something more going on in the
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relationship between them.
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SPEAKER_00: They seem like such an unlikely...
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pair basically and yet they seem completely devoted to each
13:34
other and i think
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partly it's their military experience that socrates saved
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probably yeah and
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alcibiades kind of possibly saved socrates life as well um in
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the battle of delium
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and so they they have this kind of bond i think but there's
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also more to it than
13:53
SPEAKER_00: that i think
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SPEAKER_00: And again,
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SPEAKER_00: everything about Socrates is paradoxical,
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SPEAKER_00: so I'm going to say something that even I find hard to believe,
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SPEAKER_00: but I see it this way anyway.
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SPEAKER_00: It seems to me that Socrates saw Alcibiades, saw something of himself.
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SPEAKER_00: You know,
14:10
and also by these that he saw him as a kind of mirror for his
14:14
own soul in some way,
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SPEAKER_00: which seems really puzzling.
14:19
Because he said there's such opposites in the sense of like
14:22
Socrates is this quite
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SPEAKER_01: like raw,
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SPEAKER_01: like working class,
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SPEAKER_01: middle class kind of guy and Alcibiades is like a prince to be.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: They seem like complete opposite characters.
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SPEAKER_00: But then there is this thing about Socrates that he said,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: he did have weaknesses and vices that he was,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: he'd learned to overcome through philosophy.
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SPEAKER_00: And I,
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SPEAKER_00: so maybe,
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SPEAKER_00: I think we often misjudge people because we cannot,
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SPEAKER_00: like with Marcus Aurelius,
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SPEAKER_00: we see in the Roman people saw Marcus Aurelius as a very,
14:57
temperate like even tempered self-possessed kind of guy but
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Marcus really sees
15:03
himself as somebody who's hot tempered right but that's because
15:07
this is a character
15:08
flaw that he seems to have conquered right but he still sees it
15:12
as a flaw within
15:13
SPEAKER_00: himself
15:14
Other people don't see it because he's mastered it through
15:17
decades of training in philosophy.
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SPEAKER_00: I think Socrates is like that.
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SPEAKER_00: That's why it seems puzzling to us.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: But I think when he looks at Alcibiades,
15:25
he sees kind of his younger self and some of the flaws that
15:28
he's personally
15:29
SPEAKER_00: struggled to overcome over the years,
15:32
SPEAKER_00: perhaps.
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SPEAKER_00: I think the other reason that he was drawn to him,
15:36
SPEAKER_00: you know,
15:36
SPEAKER_00: there's,
15:37
SPEAKER_00: in a way,
15:38
SPEAKER_00: I think Socrates wasn't so concerned
15:41
SPEAKER_00: how intellectually accomplished somebody was.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: I think what concerned him a little bit more,
15:49
SPEAKER_00: and that did matter to him,
15:51
SPEAKER_00: but in an interlocutor and a partner,
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SPEAKER_00: what he really wants is honesty.
15:55
openness and i feel like the message that plato's tried to get
15:59
to us is that
16:01
initially socrates went to speak to people like protagoras um
16:06
who are professional
16:07
intellectuals public intellectuals like wise men and he thought
16:12
paradoxically that
16:13
they were kind of useless um in terms of the socratic method
16:17
because somebody who's
16:20
SPEAKER_00: makes a living makes a fortune
16:22
from giving lectures and has a kind of established viewpoint is
16:27
going to be super
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SPEAKER_00: defensive and unable to question and change the position ironically.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: And Socrates thinks of wisdom,
16:35
SPEAKER_00: it seems to me,
16:35
SPEAKER_00: more as a dynamic process as a sort of cognitive skill.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: Doing the Socratic method really well is what wisdom looks like.
16:43
And yet someone like Protagoras and the other sophists cannot
16:47
engage properly with
16:48
SPEAKER_00: the Socratic method because they're so wedded
16:51
to the opinions for which they're famous and for which they
16:55
charge lots of money.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: It's difficult for them to be seen to back down or question that.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: Whereas the youth of Athens,
17:04
Socrates seems over time to become more interested in talking
17:09
to everyday people
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SPEAKER_00: and young men in Athens in particular.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: But he talks to everyone.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: He speaks to slaves,
17:19
SPEAKER_00: foreigners,
17:20
SPEAKER_00: rich,
17:21
SPEAKER_00: poor,
17:21
SPEAKER_00: and maybe most controversially of all,
17:23
SPEAKER_00: he does philosophy with women,
17:26
SPEAKER_00: which was kind of a big deal.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: That wasn't the done thing in Athens.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: But Soprates is so open-minded.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: He's doing philosophy with everyone he meets, basically.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: And he seems drawn to people who have no reputation for wisdom.
17:43
Because they're the ones that are most likely to be honest with
17:46
them and admit when
17:47
SPEAKER_00: they're contradicting themselves.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: That's so interesting that he prefers like an honest,
17:52
SPEAKER_01: normal person to a super intelligent kind of...
17:56
He says that in the apology that he thought people with no
17:59
status who were unknown
18:03
in Athenian society often exhibited more wisdom than famous men
18:08
who were renowned
18:09
SPEAKER_00: for their wisdom when he actually put them to the test.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: I love the fact that he says that.
18:16
I think most people instinctively are like,
18:18
we get what you're driving out there,
18:19
right?
18:20
SPEAKER_00: You've probably got a point.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: But it's a beautifully kind of subversive observation to make.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting, there are obvious reasons for it.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: It's like you can't teach an old dog new tricks kind of thing.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: Protagoras was an older man, a venerable intellectual.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: He's not going to...
18:43
SPEAKER_00: admit that he's wrong about something.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: He's not going to acknowledge his contradictions.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: Socrates kind of forces him to a bit,
18:52
SPEAKER_00: but in the Protagoras,
18:53
SPEAKER_00: there's this uneasy tension that runs through it.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: He's obviously uncomfortable with being questioned.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: He tries to avoid it a number of times.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: Whereas I think some of the young guys that Socrates talked to,
19:02
SPEAKER_00: perhaps also by these,
19:04
SPEAKER_00: quite possibly was like this,
19:06
SPEAKER_00: actually found it kind of addictive.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: And even though
19:10
SPEAKER_00: you know, it requires a certain amount of intellectual humility.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: They were drawn to that and wanted to keep coming back for more.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: And it seems to me it's such a conflict anyway for Plato.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure it is for Socrates as well.
19:22
SPEAKER_01: Like the conflict between power and truth, like status and truth.
19:25
Like the more people are powerful in it,
19:28
the less they are willing to seek the truth.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: And how do you get like the two of them to be the same in a sense?
19:33
SPEAKER_01: Because like Socrates,
19:34
obviously the guy who knows the truth ends up getting put to
19:37
death by the people
19:38
SPEAKER_01: with power.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: So he's like,
19:40
There's a constant tension I see that was really well done in
19:43
the book in terms of
19:45
how Socrates is almost an outsider because he's so committed to
19:48
the truth and to
19:49
SPEAKER_01: his mission in a sense,
19:50
SPEAKER_01: but also beloved by those who know him.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: Everything,
19:54
SPEAKER_00: I kind of hesitate to say this because it sounds maybe a bit corny,
20:00
but really everything about Socrates ends up being ironic and paradoxical,
20:05
SPEAKER_00: more than any other philosopher I can think of.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: You know,
20:08
SPEAKER_00: Socrates to me is the quintessential Athenian philosopher,
20:12
SPEAKER_00: but the Athenians saw him as a topos,
20:14
SPEAKER_00: as like a misfit,
20:16
SPEAKER_00: you know,
20:16
SPEAKER_00: an outsider.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: They saw him as a kind of weird dude,
20:20
SPEAKER_00: but they also seem to have recognized that there was something...
20:25
SPEAKER_00: essentially Athenian about him is he the essential fundamental Athenian
20:31
intellectual yes and no he's also a kind of misfit that swims
20:37
against the tide of
20:39
the prevailing values but he's also a kind of product of very
20:44
much of Athens and
20:45
the democracy and the intellectual climate existed there the
20:50
freedom of speech that
20:51
SPEAKER_00: they valued under Pericles
20:54
SPEAKER_00: You mentioned at the beginning as well,
20:56
one of the reasons that I was drawn to writing this story is I
21:02
think it has obvious
21:04
SPEAKER_00: resonance with modern society.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a timeless message.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: But it seems really relevant at the moment.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
21:14
SPEAKER_00: with each day that passes,
21:16
SPEAKER_00: since I wrote that book,
21:17
I think there is stuff going on in world politics that looks
21:21
more and more like
21:23
SPEAKER_00: some of the things that happened during the lifetime of Socrates.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: The Athenian democracy...
21:30
SPEAKER_00: was only founded about a generation or so before Socrates was born.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: And it was still relatively new.
21:37
And he saw it reach its height under Pericles and then kind of
21:41
how it degenerated
21:42
SPEAKER_00: into a sort of civil war and then into the dictatorship,
21:45
SPEAKER_00: if you like,
21:46
SPEAKER_00: or the junta of the 30 tyrants.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: And,
21:50
SPEAKER_00: you know,
21:51
I guess what happens with Socrates is he's trying to respond to
21:56
the flaws in the
21:57
SPEAKER_00: democratic system.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
22:00
SPEAKER_00: the obvious flaw is if you hand power to the people,
22:05
then you're going to get demagogues that come along and try to
22:10
manipulate public
22:11
SPEAKER_00: opinion and...
22:13
they're going to get better at doing that over time through
22:17
kind of political
22:18
populism sort of bribing the electorate by offering easy
22:23
solutions to complex
22:24
problems and stuff like that but also then using rhetoric and
22:28
trying to manipulate
22:29
them emotionally choking fear and anger and greed in the
22:35
assembly of the voters if
22:38
SPEAKER_00: you like Athenian citizens and then you get professional
22:44
SPEAKER_00: rhetoricians that come along and say,
22:46
we can train you guys to be even better at manipulating the
22:51
voters in the assembly.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: And that's really,
22:54
Socrates is obviously responding to the sophists and
22:58
rhetoricians because he's concerned.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: This is the opposite of logic and philosophical reasoning.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: It's the subversion of reason.
23:09
yeah i think i mean i because obviously i do my phds on social
23:12
media so i've been
23:13
doing tons of stuff on like the attention economy and the
23:15
internet um and i
23:17
remember you said before about sophism in it and i kind of come
23:20
to the conclusion
23:21
that a lot of it's set up for a kind of sophism it's like if
23:24
you think about like
23:24
influencers and this you know having power over people and
23:28
certain people getting
23:30
all of the attention and other people not it really rewards
23:33
drama rewards conflict
23:35
SPEAKER_01: reward it doesn't
23:36
reward like careful thinking reasoning analysis like and we've
23:40
kind of set up this
23:42
huge simulation to run and put everybody through it and yeah
23:46
comparing that with
23:46
like how does democracy work when you have this pandering
23:49
machine that you can
23:50
hijack to take advantage of people's you know lower natures
23:55
essentially democracy
23:56
SPEAKER_00: is great if everybody that's involved is behaving as a rational agent
24:02
you know but then the problem is the pandering and uh political
24:08
rhetoric start
24:09
manipulating it's a bit you know democracy is the best system
24:12
that we have but it's
24:13
flawed and i guess you know socrates offers us in some ways a
24:18
defense against that
24:19
just trying to understand when we're being manipulated and you
24:23
know trying to find
24:24
SPEAKER_00: ways to spot contradictions and
24:26
thinking see through um the the ways in which persuasion is
24:32
being used to exploit
24:33
us and mislead us um but you for sure like i mean modern day
24:37
influencers are like
24:39
sophists basically and you know the number of likes or the
24:44
amount of engagement
24:45
SPEAKER_00: that you get on social media is kind of like
24:48
how many applause that an ancient sophist would get from the
24:53
crowd that he's giving
24:55
SPEAKER_00: a speech to.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: Socrates said,
24:57
you end up pandering because this sophist that gets the biggest
25:02
round of applause
25:02
SPEAKER_00: is the one that panders most to the audience,
25:04
SPEAKER_00: obviously.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: And the ones that are trying to be reasonable,
25:09
SPEAKER_00: like Pericles,
25:10
are at risk of just being drowned out eventually by the ones
25:14
like Leon that are
25:16
more dramatic and more emotive and doing kind of
25:21
attention-grabbing stuff,
25:23
SPEAKER_00: putting on a performance basically for the crowd.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: That's what happens on social media today.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: In some ways, it's technology that massively amplifies that problem.
25:34
yeah that literally yeah optimizes for it in a sense and
25:37
rewards people that are
25:39
doing that so it's interesting yeah this looking at socrates
25:41
because i was looking
25:42
at plato's republic socrates obviously sees that problem and
25:45
then kind of goes in
25:47
and the republic to like why we have that problem of
25:49
foolishness like why do we do
25:50
things that are so against our best interest and his kind of
25:54
tripartite psyche that
25:55
he comes up with that we're not actually like one thing we're a
25:58
couple of different
25:59
SPEAKER_01: like motivational structures or different psyches and
26:02
It seems like that pandering is all going down to the lower level,
26:06
essentially.
26:06
SPEAKER_01: It's not engaging people on a rational or reasonable level.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: It's working on subconscious biases.
26:12
SPEAKER_01: I know you mentioned hyperbolic discounting or temporal discounting.
26:17
It's aiming at manipulating those things,
26:20
basically,
26:20
that we're not aware of.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: I think Socrates says,
26:25
SPEAKER_00: one of the things he says about this,
26:27
SPEAKER_00: it seems quite interesting to me,
26:28
SPEAKER_00: and again,
26:28
SPEAKER_00: sounds like something a therapist would say,
26:31
SPEAKER_00: is that he appears to recognize that we are victims,
26:36
SPEAKER_00: we have blind spots intellectually,
26:38
SPEAKER_00: and we're victims of our own biased thinking.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: So in the first House of Idies,
26:42
he really talks about this idea that wisdom consists in a type
26:47
of self-knowledge or self-awareness.
26:51
He compares it to the slogan that's inscribed outside the
26:55
Temple of Delphi that says,
26:56
SPEAKER_00: Know thyself.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: And he has this amazing analogy for it.
27:01
He says,
27:03
saying that you should know yourself is like saying that the
27:06
eye should see itself.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: So wisdom is like an eye that sees itself.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: The eye has a blind spot.
27:12
The eye can't see itself unless it looks in the mirror or
27:14
something like that.
27:16
And so he says to El Spidey,
27:17
what would be the best mirror for the human soul?
27:21
SPEAKER_00: And that,
27:22
SPEAKER_00: I think,
27:23
really is one of the most interesting questions that he raises
27:26
because I think the answer,
27:27
SPEAKER_00: in a sense...
27:28
Often the answer for Socrates is obvious because you can cheat
27:32
and get the answer
27:33
SPEAKER_00: that he's aiming at by going,
27:34
SPEAKER_00: what does he actually do all day long?
27:37
So obviously he thinks it's really important to find some kind
27:40
of mirror for the human soul.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: By any chance, is it the thing that you spend all your time doing?
27:44
So I think he thinks the Socratic method and engaging in a
27:48
dialogue with another,
27:51
SPEAKER_00: an interlocutor who's really sincere,
27:53
SPEAKER_00: provides us with the best mirror for the human soul.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: And because we can...
27:57
SPEAKER_00: spot other people's biases a lot more easily than we spot our own.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: But the thing is,
28:02
and this is where I think he resembles a therapist more than a
28:06
philosophy lecturer,
28:07
SPEAKER_00: that I think over time,
28:09
SPEAKER_00: if you question another living,
28:11
breathing human being very deeply and help them to see through
28:15
their own biases and contradictions,
28:19
SPEAKER_00: after a while you start to think,
28:22
SPEAKER_00: you learn indirectly to perceive yourself because you think,
28:25
SPEAKER_00: maybe I do this too.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: You know,
28:28
maybe the mistakes that this guy's making are mistakes that
28:31
sometimes I fall into
28:33
SPEAKER_00: as well.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: But it's easier for me to spot it when somebody else is doing them.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: And in therapy,
28:38
SPEAKER_00: you find that you can,
28:39
SPEAKER_00: you know,
28:39
SPEAKER_00: you're working with clients who have anger and pathological worrying,
28:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
28:44
SPEAKER_00: and it's obvious that what they're doing is irrational.
28:47
You can see,
28:48
you know,
28:48
the reasons why they're doing it and what maintains it and so on.
28:52
But over time,
28:53
gradually,
28:54
if you reflect on it,
28:55
you start to gain self-awareness from it.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: You think, maybe I do this too sometimes.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: But if you were just sitting on your own,
29:04
SPEAKER_00: reflecting on it,
29:05
SPEAKER_00: it's hard to get that objectivity,
29:08
SPEAKER_00: that perspective.
29:10
And I guess the other thing,
29:11
the way you get it is if you're in the position of the client.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: And someone else is questioning you.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that happens to Socrates.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: You know,
29:18
SPEAKER_00: the tables are turned on him a little bit,
29:20
SPEAKER_00: and the people he's talking to question him.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: So engaging in this back and forth,
29:25
he gets self-knowledge by observing the thinking errors that
29:29
other people are making.
29:30
but also allowing other people to engage with him and question
29:33
him allows him to
29:34
SPEAKER_00: gain self-knowledge.
29:36
I guess he's saying in a way that's the only way you can get
29:38
past this blind spot
29:40
SPEAKER_00: and spot your own biases.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: You can't really do it very easily if you're just sitting in an armchair,
29:48
SPEAKER_00: smoking a pipe with your slippers,
29:50
SPEAKER_00: thinking,
29:50
SPEAKER_00: I wonder what my biases are.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: It emerges more easily.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: which is a lot of the technology you use yourself as well.
29:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
29:58
SPEAKER_01: it's individualized,
29:59
SPEAKER_01: personalized,
30:00
SPEAKER_01: and it looks like it's connecting to other people,
30:02
SPEAKER_01: but it's mediated through like the structure of the platforms.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: Like it's not... And social media.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:08
The comments you have,
30:10
like,
30:10
you know,
30:11
it's not the same necessarily as a conversation.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: There's definitely something weird about it.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: It's definitely not like a conversation for some reason.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, maybe it's because you don't,
30:19
see a flesh and blood human beings you don't kind of experience
30:23
uh what they're
30:24
saying in a more rounded way and a more kind of psychological
30:27
way it's a little bit
30:28
abstract their context as well and you can see clear as day
30:32
that people hardly ever
30:34
change their mind about anything on social media you know
30:37
they'll argue about i
30:38
mean even often people people love nothing more than arguing
30:42
about history and
30:44
and philosophy on social media i had some guy tell me socrates
30:48
didn't exist the
30:48
other day that's like that yeah and they're like really sure of
30:52
it and even if you
30:53
go and or they'll argue with you about the meaning of word and
30:57
you're like dude you
30:59
could just go and look this up in a dictionary you know there's
31:01
no pointless
31:02
arguing with somebody about what a word means right you just
31:05
look up in a book or
31:06
SPEAKER_00: something but
31:08
If you correct somebody,
31:10
even if you go,
31:10
hey,
31:11
here's the dictionary definition of a word.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: It's not what you thought it was.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: They still rarely back down.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: Even if you present them with clear counter evidence,
31:21
SPEAKER_00: they'll just kind of shift,
31:23
SPEAKER_00: move the goalposts.
31:25
right and shift to another argument to kind of like dig in and
31:28
defend the the same
31:29
position although kind of like just ignore what you've said or
31:32
something like that
31:33
i think it maybe happens sometimes but very rarely have i seen
31:37
people go that's a
31:39
really good point you know i guess i was wrong there you know
31:43
yeah i've never seen
31:44
that ever on social media to be honest now in any comment
31:48
string as well thank you
31:49
SPEAKER_01: for that information um
31:52
SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
31:52
SPEAKER_01: if it is,
31:53
SPEAKER_01: it's such a,
31:53
SPEAKER_01: cause it does seem like to me anyway,
31:55
SPEAKER_01: that they've developed it for those biases for,
31:57
SPEAKER_01: for engagement essentially,
31:59
because they've realized like Facebook did that thing with that
32:02
meaningful social interactions.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: So they optimized for comments over likes,
32:07
but really what that did was optimized for people fighting in
32:10
the comment section.
32:10
SPEAKER_01: Cause that's what most of the comments were.
32:12
SPEAKER_01: So it was like,
32:14
SPEAKER_01: they started promoting more of that rather than other things.
32:16
SPEAKER_01: So it's a kind of messed up incentive.
32:18
SPEAKER_01: But I do think you're right.
32:19
SPEAKER_01: The solution is somehow in Socrates in a sense of like it's cultivating
32:25
SPEAKER_01: self-knowledge and how we can do that and how,
32:29
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:29
It seems like we need it on a bigger scale than has ever
32:32
existed before as well.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
32:35
Socrates is typically associated with a kind of intellectual
32:40
humility because he
32:41
SPEAKER_00: questions his own knowledge.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: And he's open to... He says things like that he'd rather be proven wrong
32:51
in a debate than be proven right and so on so he he has this
32:56
kind of characteristic
32:56
of intellectual humility which is kind of the opposite of the
32:59
dunning-kruger effect
33:01
you know like it's the opposite of what you tend to find i i
33:04
mean one of the things
33:05
i notice now is that the socrates thought his socratic method
33:11
was a remedy he like
33:12
he views it as a psychotherapy quite explicitly describes it as
33:16
a sort of therapy
33:17
SPEAKER_00: He has a medical model for understanding philosophy.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: And he says, you know, what's it a cure for?
33:24
He's pretty clear and he's pretty consistent in saying the
33:27
Socratic method cures a
33:28
SPEAKER_00: sort of intellectual conceit,
33:30
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:31
SPEAKER_00: which is sometimes called double ignorance.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: It's believing that you know something which you do not in fact know.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: Again, a bit like the kind of Dunning-Kruger phenomenon.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: You know,
33:41
so questioning bogus expertise basically is one of the main
33:45
things that he tends to do.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: In the first Alcibiades,
33:49
SPEAKER_00: just to pick out a random example,
33:51
SPEAKER_00: Alcibiades,
33:53
SPEAKER_00: he's just about to address the assembly for the first time,
33:56
SPEAKER_00: and he thinks that he's an expert on the nature of justice,
34:01
SPEAKER_00: the well-being of the Athenian state.
34:04
Socrates demonstrates to him pretty easily that he doesn't know
34:06
anything about this.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: It's a vacuous conceit in his part.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't really know anything about justice.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: He hasn't got the fame to... He's never studied the subject.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: He's never put any effort into exploring it.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: He couldn't really define it.
34:21
And yet he kind of assumes he should be able to address the
34:24
assembly about it.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: So he's curing this kind of intellectual conceit.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: One of the things I noticed...
34:32
SPEAKER_00: Now,
34:32
I guess one of the benefits of being in your 50s is that you
34:37
could potentially...
34:39
SPEAKER_00: I remember when everything was made of wood.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: It was different back in the day.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: But I think it was different.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: One of the things I've noticed that seems different to me is,
34:49
SPEAKER_00: on social media at least,
34:51
SPEAKER_00: everyone seems to think they're an expert on everything now,
34:54
SPEAKER_00: particularly during the pandemic.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: Everyone was an expert in epidemiology.
35:00
And these influencers would be going on about medical studies
35:04
that they clearly had no idea
35:08
SPEAKER_00: how to interpret.
35:09
They didn't know anything about medical research methods or how
35:11
to interpret the statistics.
35:13
It used to be people had the intellectual humility or they had
35:16
more trust in experts.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: I think part of it is this kind of erosion of our trust in experts.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: We assume that all experts are corrupt.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: This idea that you get mainly on the right that
35:33
universities are just dominated by cultural Marxists or whatever,
35:37
is really pernicious.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: The idea that the most educated people in our society are all inherently
35:44
SPEAKER_00: untrustworthy is,
35:46
SPEAKER_00: I think,
35:47
SPEAKER_00: quite a dangerous idea.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
35:49
SPEAKER_00: we should definitely question intellectuals,
35:51
SPEAKER_00: but what it leads to is just completely discounting
35:55
SPEAKER_00: you know, people will hear.
35:56
SPEAKER_01: And you can't just plug into all research in some sense.
35:59
That's just like,
35:59
oh yeah,
36:00
I just,
36:00
I read this paper so I can conclude this.
36:02
And it's like,
36:02
well,
36:03
it turns out they're oftentimes a lot more complicated than,
36:06
you
36:07
SPEAKER_01: Just jumping straight into it.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: People go to university for a reason to study these subjects.
36:11
It takes years to really in-depth study,
36:16
to really understand a lot of these subjects.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it's baffling.
36:22
SPEAKER_00: And so how is that possible?
36:25
SPEAKER_00: I think it's erosion of trust in academia,
36:27
SPEAKER_00: erosion of trust in science,
36:29
SPEAKER_00: erosion of trust in experts.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: And also, like, a kind of lack of pushback.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: So people can say things on social media.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: I guess if someone was saying some of these things,
36:37
SPEAKER_00: like,
36:37
SPEAKER_00: pseudoscientific things in person,
36:40
SPEAKER_00: it might be that other people,
36:42
SPEAKER_00: you know,
36:42
SPEAKER_00: would challenge them more.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: And they'd find that more embarrassing.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like, they, you know, they'd be more, like, kind of forced to.
36:53
Again,
36:54
to be honest,
36:54
I think there's an element of social shame and humiliation.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: Like, if you're in the pub,
36:59
SPEAKER_00: and you start lecturing everybody on viruses or whatever,
37:05
SPEAKER_00: and actually you haven't got the faintest idea what you're talking about,
37:07
and maybe there's a nurse there or somebody that's got a bit of
37:10
medical knowledge
37:11
SPEAKER_00: could just easily expose the contradictions of what you're saying,
37:16
SPEAKER_00: maybe you're going to be embarrassed and think,
37:18
SPEAKER_00: oh yeah,
37:19
SPEAKER_00: maybe I'm looking like an idiot here.
37:21
SPEAKER_00: But on social media, people never feel like they look like idiots.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: I guess it's a form of experiential avoidance that it permits in a way.
37:33
They don't have the kind of shame or anxiety that would
37:35
normally come from saying
37:37
SPEAKER_00: stupid stuff or being exposed as contradicting yourself.
37:41
SPEAKER_00: So they just carry on doing it.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: And I think that reinforces this kind of Dunning-Kruger problem.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: But there are many other problems.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
37:48
one that I would mention that seems obvious to me is that
37:53
there's a kind of
37:54
SPEAKER_00: selective thinking bias that social media inherently encourages.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: And this has always been the case in the media.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: So, for example...
38:03
politicians decide that Scottish people are a kind of group
38:08
they want to scapegoat,
38:09
right?
38:10
SPEAKER_00: So they'll dig out,
38:11
get some videos of Scottish people robbing banks or behaving
38:16
badly in some other way,
38:18
SPEAKER_00: right?
38:18
SPEAKER_00: And they'll show you a bunch of videos.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
38:20
SPEAKER_00: obviously,
38:21
it'll take us five minutes to go and find some videos that make
38:25
Scottish people
38:25
SPEAKER_00: look terrible,
38:27
SPEAKER_00: you know?
38:27
SPEAKER_00: And then you just present those on the media or on social media and go,
38:31
SPEAKER_00: look at the,
38:31
SPEAKER_00: like,
38:32
SPEAKER_00: this is what Scottish people in general are like.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: So encouraging people to draw a generalization from a limited sample.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: But it's arbitrary.
38:40
They do that all the time with immigrants,
38:42
with Muslims,
38:44
or with whichever group.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: I think the trans community as well get victimized in that way.
38:53
The social media accounts that want to demonize certain groups
38:56
or scapegoat them
38:57
SPEAKER_00: will just find a couple of examples.
39:01
SPEAKER_00: They'll go, look at this guy.
39:02
SPEAKER_00: He's an immigrant.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: He murdered somebody.
39:05
SPEAKER_00: All immigrants are scary and dangerous.
39:07
this guy's a Muslim and he's a terrorist,
39:09
therefore all Muslims are terrorists.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: It's like,
39:14
SPEAKER_00: I say to people,
39:15
SPEAKER_00: when I was a kid growing up in the west of Scotland,
39:19
the stuff that I hear my American friends saying now about
39:21
Muslims seems exactly
39:24
the same as the stuff that I heard people saying about
39:28
Catholics when I was a kid
39:29
SPEAKER_00: in Scotland.
39:33
People in Scotland and people in the UK used to say things like,
39:35
all Catholics are terrorists.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: right?
39:38
SPEAKER_00: And then they justify that by pointing to the IRA and then they'd say,
39:41
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
39:42
SPEAKER_00: but all Catholics really support this,
39:44
SPEAKER_00: like,
39:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
39:45
and it's the same kind of reasoning that people then use to tar
39:49
all Muslims with
39:51
SPEAKER_00: the same brush,
39:52
SPEAKER_00: like,
39:52
SPEAKER_00: and,
39:53
SPEAKER_00: you know,
39:54
SPEAKER_00: all Muslims are sheriffs,
39:55
SPEAKER_00: just like,
39:57
SPEAKER_00: Because their whole ideology supports this.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: Here's yet another example of an act of terrorism.
40:05
SPEAKER_00: So they present information selectively.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: And they'll use salience as well.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: So they'll show, here's some footage of some guy doing a terrible thing.
40:15
SPEAKER_00: So this now represents the entire class of people.
40:17
SPEAKER_00: All Scottish people are like this.
40:19
SPEAKER_00: All Catholics are like this.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: All Muslims are like this, basically.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: And the only reason...
40:24
I think Socrates thinks the basic problem is the age-old
40:30
dynamic between appearance
40:31
SPEAKER_00: and reality.
40:33
simple as that over and over again so you can create the
40:36
appearance the you know
40:40
Muslims are terrorists or you know all trans people are rumors
40:46
is another thing you
40:47
SPEAKER_00: see in social media a lot
40:49
SPEAKER_00: and this kind of thing.
40:51
SPEAKER_00: So you create that appearance, presenting information selectively.
40:54
And maybe there are some genuine cases,
40:59
or they're making stuff up and distorting it.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: Now AI can be used.
41:05
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people just cut and paste headlines and change them and stuff.
41:08
But let's say you can find one or two cases and then use that
41:12
to represent the whole group.
41:14
So the reality is obviously different from the appearance that
41:18
could be created by
41:21
SPEAKER_00: presenting information very selectively.
41:23
SPEAKER_00: And that happened in ancient Athens.
41:27
It's weird and it's surprising in a way that we haven't gotten
41:30
wise to it and
41:31
SPEAKER_00: learned to protect ourselves against that kind of rhetoric.
41:34
SPEAKER_01: Kind of enhancing it with more powerful technologies,
41:36
SPEAKER_01: to be honest,
41:37
SPEAKER_01: to give more appearance and less reality.
41:41
SPEAKER_01: More appearance and less reality.
41:43
SPEAKER_01: Generate AI is a good example of appearance generating technology.
41:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, completely fabricating appearances.
41:53
Things like Twitter,
41:54
I think,
41:55
are really good at presenting information selectively.
41:58
SPEAKER_00: Part of it is,
41:59
SPEAKER_00: because it has to be so concise,
42:01
you go on your feed and it'll just be images of specific things
42:05
taken out of
42:05
SPEAKER_00: context and stuff.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: Like I say,
42:08
SPEAKER_00: the easiest way to think about it,
42:10
maybe the easiest way to address it is just to imagine the
42:12
argument was different.
42:13
Suppose they were just arbitrarily saying ginger people are all
42:19
bank robbers or something.
42:20
SPEAKER_00: Here's examples of red-headed people robbing banks.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: There's another one that just happened yesterday.
42:27
SPEAKER_00: A reddited guy in Norway robbed a bank.
42:32
SPEAKER_00: We should be concerned about these redheads running a wild.
42:36
SPEAKER_00: Scottish people.
42:37
SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, that seems ridiculous.
42:41
SPEAKER_00: But that's exactly what social media does.
42:43
If I go on Twitter right now,
42:47
probably the news feed is just jam-packed with stuff like that.
42:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
42:53
SPEAKER_01: and when you're living in that world,
42:55
SPEAKER_01: I suppose it confirms the biases in a sense of feedback.
43:00
SPEAKER_01: But I guess,
43:01
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
43:01
SPEAKER_01: the way out of it,
43:02
SPEAKER_01: because I'm interested,
43:03
I went to Media Literacy Ireland event to do all the media
43:07
literacy stuff in terms
43:09
of educating young people on the internet and this kind of new
43:13
space that they're
43:14
SPEAKER_01: in and things like that.
43:15
The word that just kept coming up all the time was just
43:18
critical thinking.
43:18
SPEAKER_01: We need to teach critical thinking.
43:20
SPEAKER_01: We need to teach critical thinking.
43:21
SPEAKER_01: How do we teach critical thinking?
43:23
SPEAKER_01: Nobody mentioned Socrates, to be fair.
43:24
SPEAKER_01: I was like,
43:25
SPEAKER_01: if you're going to talk about critical thinking,
43:26
SPEAKER_01: you should be talking about Socrates.
43:27
SPEAKER_00: You're talking about Socrates and the Socratic method.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
43:31
I mean,
43:32
you hear that over and over again,
43:33
that we should be teaching critical thinking.
43:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, why is it?
43:38
SPEAKER_00: It takes effort to do that, though.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
43:40
SPEAKER_00: Socrates and the Stoics would point out it's uncomfortable to be refuted,
43:47
SPEAKER_00: you know,
43:47
SPEAKER_00: especially if it's about opinions that you hold.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: And we see this all the time in psychotherapy.
43:57
SPEAKER_00: In cognitive therapy,
43:59
what we have to do is identify problematic beliefs that people
44:03
have that are
44:04
SPEAKER_00: contributing to their behavioral,
44:06
SPEAKER_00: emotional problems and then help the client to question them,
44:09
SPEAKER_00: challenge them.
44:10
SPEAKER_00: And some people can kind of do that relatively easily.
44:12
SPEAKER_00: And then for other people, it's quite hard.
44:16
It's quite uncomfortable for them to start questioning things
44:19
that they've taken
44:20
SPEAKER_00: for granted their whole life long.
44:23
SPEAKER_00: And that's in quite a controlled environment.
44:26
SPEAKER_00: Somebody's literally turning up and paying the therapist to do it.
44:29
SPEAKER_00: In other situations, if you're just down the pub,
44:32
And you start questioning some of these deeply held beliefs
44:35
about their moral
44:36
SPEAKER_00: values and things like that.
44:38
SPEAKER_00: Cognitive distortions.
44:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:39
You'll get a pint of beer emptied over your head or a punch in
44:44
the nose or
44:44
SPEAKER_00: something like that,
44:45
SPEAKER_00: maybe.
44:45
SPEAKER_00: Or they'll just leave, perhaps.
44:48
SPEAKER_00: But I think that's what Socrates was saying, in a way.
44:50
What his story is about,
44:52
in a sense,
44:52
is that some people got really angry with him.
44:56
SPEAKER_00: And then other people were more, by nature...
45:01
SPEAKER_00: amenable to this kind of elenchus, the refutation of their beliefs.
45:09
I don't know exactly how we can change society so that more
45:13
people are amenable.
45:14
SPEAKER_00: There's two problems, really.
45:15
SPEAKER_00: One is that a lot of people are kind of inaccessible to it.
45:20
SPEAKER_00: They're deeply resistant.
45:22
They'll run a mile from anything that would involve getting
45:25
them to engage in critical thinking.
45:27
And then the other problem is that we're not really doing any
45:29
critical thinking or
45:30
SPEAKER_00: teaching it anyway.
45:32
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing would be helping people,
45:35
SPEAKER_00: preparing people to be more open to it in the first place.
45:38
SPEAKER_00: And then secondly, actually engaging with it.
45:42
SPEAKER_00: It takes time and effort and patience, and it can be uncomfortable.
45:47
And so,
45:47
of course,
45:49
that's something that many people are naturally going to avoid.
45:52
SPEAKER_00: The only way that people... I mean, you have to provide a carrot.
45:58
SPEAKER_00: You have to dangle some kind of carrot
46:01
SPEAKER_00: in order to get people to walk through the ring of fire,
46:04
SPEAKER_00: right,
46:05
SPEAKER_00: of engaging in critical thinking.
46:07
SPEAKER_00: I think that's partly what's missing.
46:08
We need to kind of make people more aware of the potential
46:13
benefits of engaging in
46:16
SPEAKER_00: critical thinking or maybe the dangers of not doing it in order to,
46:21
SPEAKER_00: otherwise their instinct is just going to be to avoid it like plague.
46:27
SPEAKER_00: Sadly.
46:27
SPEAKER_00: How crazy is that?
46:28
SPEAKER_00: I know.
46:29
SPEAKER_00: It's human nature.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: We're a strange bunch, all right?
46:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
46:35
It's human nature to avoid thinking too hard and changing our beliefs,
46:41
except in rare cases.
46:43
SPEAKER_00: Some people are much more open to it.
46:44
SPEAKER_00: And social media,
46:46
SPEAKER_00: I guess,
46:46
SPEAKER_00: gives us this kind of...
46:48
SPEAKER_00: One way it compounds the problem is it gives us this bogus interaction.
46:53
where it allows us to talk to people but avoid the risk of
46:57
being refuted.
46:58
SPEAKER_00: So you could say it's a sort of distraction technique.
47:02
It diverts us from having normal conversations where we would
47:07
potentially get the
47:08
SPEAKER_00: rough edges knocked off some of our more extreme opinions.
47:14
SPEAKER_01: Yes, totally.
47:15
And I think the carrot that you were talking about kind of
47:17
stroked me there as
47:18
SPEAKER_01: being the therapeutic benefit because Socrates is almost...
47:21
SPEAKER_01: you'd say he's almost enlightened in a way.
47:23
SPEAKER_01: Like he's, he's definitely like in the way he dies.
47:26
SPEAKER_01: I think he's like a, he's a pure, I mean, what could you ask for more?
47:31
SPEAKER_01: I suppose to be so calm and collected and peaceful in the face of death.
47:37
SPEAKER_01: You know, it really indicates he, in some sense, his method worked.
47:41
Like he seemed to really grasp,
47:42
you know,
47:43
the value of life and be able to move on.
47:46
SPEAKER_01: See,
47:47
it's definitely true that in the ancient world that the way he
47:50
faced his death was
47:52
SPEAKER_00: one of the things that particularly attracted people to his story.
47:57
SPEAKER_00: That's for sure.
47:59
SPEAKER_00: Even the Stoics,
48:00
SPEAKER_00: when they talk about Socrates,
48:03
SPEAKER_00: at least from the limited evidence that we have,
48:05
SPEAKER_00: and by the way,
48:05
SPEAKER_00: it's hard,
48:07
I have to qualify that by saying we have less than 1% of the
48:12
Stoic literature.
48:12
So I'm always a bit wary when people say the Stoics thought this,
48:15
the Stoics thought that.
48:16
SPEAKER_00: Because we don't know what they wrote in 99% of the book, right?
48:21
SPEAKER_00: So they may have said a bunch of other stuff.
48:24
SPEAKER_00: But generally,
48:26
SPEAKER_00: on the evidence that we have,
48:27
SPEAKER_00: when they talk about Socrates,
48:28
SPEAKER_00: a lot of the time,
48:30
SPEAKER_00: a kind of disproportionate amount of time,
48:32
SPEAKER_00: they're concerned more with his behavior rather than his philosophy.
48:36
SPEAKER_00: And it is particularly the way that he faced...
48:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
48:38
SPEAKER_00: for example,
48:39
SPEAKER_00: Epictetus,
48:40
SPEAKER_00: the most famous quote of all Stoicism,
48:44
SPEAKER_00: is,
48:44
SPEAKER_00: I think,
48:45
SPEAKER_00: probably,
48:46
SPEAKER_00: passage 5 in the Enchiridion of Epictetus,
48:49
SPEAKER_00: where he says people are not distressed by events,
48:51
SPEAKER_00: but rather by their opinions about them.
48:54
At least it's the most quoted passage in the sense that every
48:59
book in CBT pretty
49:00
SPEAKER_00: much contains that quote.
49:04
SPEAKER_00: And yet in the next sentence,
49:06
SPEAKER_00: Epictetus in the same passage goes on to say for example death cannot be
49:13
intrinsically terrible otherwise Socrates would have been
49:16
terrified of dying and he
49:18
wasn't so he refers to Socrates as a kind of a role model an
49:23
exemplar of somebody
49:24
who's able to be fearless in the face of death and that's kind
49:29
of more powerful for
49:31
SPEAKER_00: the Stoics than the content
49:34
SPEAKER_00: of Plato's dialogues, I think.
49:36
SPEAKER_00: It's more Socrates' character,
49:40
SPEAKER_00: his attitude towards philosophy,
49:42
SPEAKER_00: and the way that he behaved at court.
49:46
SPEAKER_00: Yes, totally.
49:48
SPEAKER_01: And yeah,
49:49
SPEAKER_01: that was something I really got from your book as well,
49:50
SPEAKER_01: in a sense that you could see him in different circumstances.
49:53
SPEAKER_01: I felt like you were writing dialogues as well,
49:55
SPEAKER_01: that you were writing updated Socratic dialogues,
49:58
SPEAKER_01: essentially,
49:59
SPEAKER_01: of him
50:00
in action as things would be I didn't I couldn't tell exactly
50:03
what was stuff I
50:04
could tell you were using some stuff from the other dialogues
50:07
but then I could see
50:07
that you were adding stuff onto it as well in a sense of like
50:10
extending his
50:11
character for like a more living and breathing Socrates because
50:15
I do think that's
50:16
what's powerful about Socrates is his reality like that's what
50:20
inspired the Plato
50:21
SPEAKER_01: to write him from
50:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
50:22
SPEAKER_00: sometimes,
50:23
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
50:24
SPEAKER_00: talking about Plato's dialogues is,
50:26
SPEAKER_00: again,
50:26
a controversial thing because there's a lot of people that get
50:29
really opinionated
50:29
SPEAKER_00: about history and philosophy.
50:31
SPEAKER_00: And so some of them are like,
50:32
SPEAKER_00: Socrates would never have said that,
50:33
SPEAKER_00: Plato would never have said that.
50:35
SPEAKER_00: But actually,
50:36
SPEAKER_00: the things that I have Socrates saying in that book are,
50:40
SPEAKER_00: like,
50:41
SPEAKER_00: the vast majority of it is,
50:43
SPEAKER_00: taken directly from Plato or Xenophon.
50:47
And so sometimes it's simplified or it's paraphrased,
50:50
but the argument is the same,
50:52
essentially.
50:53
SPEAKER_00: Usually,
50:53
SPEAKER_00: mainly I had to abbreviate stuff and clarify things a little bit,
50:58
SPEAKER_00: you know,
50:59
SPEAKER_00: that are maybe a little bit more opaque in Plato or Xenophon.
51:04
SPEAKER_00: And then there's also, I draw on a pseudo-Platonic dialogue
51:10
SPEAKER_00: called the Axiocos, which I think is very important.
51:14
But there's very little in the book that I attribute to
51:17
Socrates that I just made up.
51:19
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I can only really think of one shot.
51:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
51:24
SPEAKER_01: no,
51:24
SPEAKER_01: sorry,
51:24
SPEAKER_01: I didn't mean made up,
51:25
SPEAKER_01: but in terms of that you're using,
51:27
you were kind of pulling things together in a way that felt
51:31
like a new synthesis.
51:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I had to, you know, I mean, the funny thing is,
51:38
seems to me that I guess like what I was doing on paper was
51:42
just what I was
51:42
naturally doing in my own head you know when I think about
51:45
Socrates I think of him
51:46
as a three-dimensional dramatic character and you know these
51:49
dialogues I guess I
51:50
think of a kind of summary version of like what's the gist of
51:52
this dialogue and you
51:53
know what are the key arguments that he's trying to make and
51:58
the highlights as it
51:59
SPEAKER_00: were and so I guess I told the story of his life and
52:08
describe those dialogues in the way that I would kind of
52:11
process them you know the
52:12
SPEAKER_00: way that I understand them um and yeah like often it's uh
52:22
It took quite a lot of work to condense the dialogues,
52:27
to figure out which bits to leave out.
52:31
SPEAKER_00: I was going to say, was that difficult?
52:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's really hard.
52:35
SPEAKER_00: It's a huge task.
52:37
SPEAKER_00: At first I thought it was a ridiculous thing to do.
52:40
SPEAKER_00: Actually,
52:41
I didn't want to write this book initially because I thought
52:43
what I said to myself
52:44
SPEAKER_00: would be it's absurd to think of editing Plato.
52:52
which is essentially what I was doing in producing a sort of
52:55
abridged version of
52:57
SPEAKER_00: Plato's dialogues and a simplified version of it.
52:59
That's a kind of presumptuous...
53:02
No one,
53:05
in a sense,
53:06
is entitled to do that.
53:08
SPEAKER_00: These are masterpieces.
53:09
SPEAKER_00: We shouldn't do that.
53:10
SPEAKER_00: And then what kind of swayed me in the end...
53:13
was I started to think from a different perspective of what
53:20
kind of book do I want
53:21
SPEAKER_00: to give to my kids?
53:23
And what sort of book do I think would actually help ordinary
53:29
people the most?
53:31
SPEAKER_00: And it suddenly seemed to me the other way around.
53:33
It seemed to me like a great injustice that future generations
53:41
don't have a more accessible...
53:44
SPEAKER_00: version of the life and thought of Socrates.
53:46
SPEAKER_00: Again,
53:47
SPEAKER_00: I thought if I could go back in time to my 17-year-old self,
53:51
SPEAKER_00: I thought,
53:51
SPEAKER_00: well,
53:51
SPEAKER_00: would I risk editing and paraphrasing Plato to give it to my...
53:57
SPEAKER_00: And I thought,
53:58
SPEAKER_00: 100%,
53:58
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
53:59
I don't care if it offends a couple of scholars because I've
54:02
left certain things
54:02
SPEAKER_00: out or they don't agree with my interpretation.
54:05
SPEAKER_00: Suddenly that seemed trivial.
54:06
SPEAKER_00: I thought, no, it's much more important that I am able to give
54:12
like this young guy a version of the life and thought of
54:17
socrates that he finds
54:19
interesting and it gets him thinking you can go and read
54:22
plato's republic for
54:24
himself afterwards anyway and he might say oh i read this in a
54:27
slightly different
54:28
way from the you know the way bits of it were presented in this
54:31
book that's fine
54:32
you know but it seems to me like a lot of people that read how
54:35
to think like
54:36
SPEAKER_00: socrates would may otherwise never have
54:40
have read any of the socratic dialogues you know i wanted to
54:43
give them a kind of
54:44
on-ramp um so that and already some of the people who read it
54:49
have said to me i
54:50
read that and then i went off and i read the apology and i read
54:53
the symposium and
54:54
you know like you kind of gave me the confidence to be able to
54:57
do that and as soon
54:59
as i saw people saying that i thought that's exactly what i was
55:01
hoping to achieve
55:02
SPEAKER_00: and it would have been a kind of
55:05
I feel it would have been unjust and it would have been wrong
55:07
to deprive people of
55:11
SPEAKER_00: that on-ramp.
55:12
SPEAKER_00: So I thought, I don't care if people dispute some of the deets.
55:19
SPEAKER_00: That shouldn't stop me from creating something that helps people.
55:24
hmm yeah like it could some one of my students actually said to
55:27
me when we're doing
55:28
Plato's Republic like is there any like modern versions that
55:32
are like you know and
55:33
this will be a book to be fair that I'd recommend them to be
55:36
like look this is
55:37
going to get you into it like this is going to get you into
55:39
Socrates you're going
55:40
to learn about the characters and meet them and then have a
55:43
connection to the
55:44
dialogues more I think because that person because they're hard
55:46
to read like they
55:47
SPEAKER_01: are they do require work and if you don't have that personal connection
55:51
SPEAKER_01: you're probably going to, you know, give up on them.
55:52
SPEAKER_00: I tried to read,
55:53
SPEAKER_00: when I was about 17,
55:54
I tried to read Plato's Republic and I got halfway through it
55:57
or something,
55:58
SPEAKER_00: you know,
55:59
SPEAKER_00: or less,
56:00
SPEAKER_00: probably less than that.
56:01
SPEAKER_00: And then I, you know, I probably just got kind of lost.
56:07
SPEAKER_00: Some of Plato's dialogues are much easier to read.
56:09
SPEAKER_00: Like the Apology is really easy to read.
56:11
SPEAKER_00: And actually the first book of Plato's Republic is pretty easy to read.
56:14
SPEAKER_00: And then there's other platonic dialogues that are really hard.
56:17
SPEAKER_00: We also have about 40 or 50 dialogues from Xenophon.
56:22
SPEAKER_00: People often don't know about, right?
56:25
SPEAKER_00: But that's our other
56:28
SPEAKER_00: significant body of Socratic literature.
56:31
SPEAKER_00: And those dialogues are much easier to read.
56:33
SPEAKER_00: They're also a lot shorter and kind of simpler.
56:38
SPEAKER_00: I actually like Xenophon in some ways.
56:42
SPEAKER_00: Can I say that?
56:43
SPEAKER_00: I was going to say I like him.
56:45
SPEAKER_00: I think he's underrated would be a good way of putting it.
56:48
SPEAKER_00: I think the Stoics,
56:50
SPEAKER_00: again from the very limited evidence that we have,
56:53
SPEAKER_00: seem to be as interested in Xenophon's Socrates or possibly slightly more
56:59
SPEAKER_00: interested in him than they are in Plato's Socrates.
57:04
And some of the stuff that you find in Xenophon really jumps
57:07
out to me as a
57:08
SPEAKER_00: therapist rather than a philosopher because he's,
57:13
SPEAKER_00: like,
57:13
there's at least two of those dialogues where he shows Socrates
57:19
very simply using
57:21
SPEAKER_00: the Socratic method to help one of his friends and Socrates,
57:27
SPEAKER_00: in another case,
57:28
SPEAKER_00: his own son,
57:29
SPEAKER_00: Lumprocles,
57:29
SPEAKER_00: to deal with her anger.
57:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I remember his saying, actually.
57:32
SPEAKER_00: And there he really looks like he's,
57:35
SPEAKER_00: because sometimes if I say,
57:36
SPEAKER_00: well,
57:36
SPEAKER_00: the Socratic method is kind,
57:38
SPEAKER_00: in a sense,
57:39
SPEAKER_00: a psychotherapeutic method.
57:41
SPEAKER_00: So sometimes if people are looking at certain Plato's dialogues,
57:43
SPEAKER_00: they might think,
57:44
SPEAKER_00: well,
57:44
SPEAKER_00: I don't really see it that way.
57:45
SPEAKER_00: It seems like an abstract philosophical method.
57:47
SPEAKER_00: But I think if you then look at Zenithon's dialogues,
57:51
SPEAKER_00: particularly those two,
57:52
SPEAKER_00: some of the other ones,
57:53
it's really obvious that what he's doing is very similar to
57:57
cognitive therapy.
57:58
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's a much less controversial claim.
58:01
SPEAKER_00: So what about these examples?
58:02
SPEAKER_00: At least in some cases,
58:04
he's literally using it to help them overcome their anger
58:09
towards other people.
58:11
SPEAKER_00: and to question the beliefs that are causing them to feel angry.
58:15
There are bits of it that are really similar to what we would
58:19
do in cognitive therapy.
58:21
The other thing I wanted to mention while we're on the subject
58:25
is no one ever...
58:27
I've read entire books about Socratic method that fail to
58:31
mention that in one of
58:33
SPEAKER_00: Xenophon's dialogues,
58:34
SPEAKER_00: he uses a teaching aid,
58:36
SPEAKER_00: and he literally...
58:38
explains to a young guy how he would do the Socratic method by
58:42
drawing him a diagram.
58:43
And that jumped out of the page to me because he does a
58:48
two-column diagram.
58:49
SPEAKER_00: I guarantee you,
58:51
SPEAKER_00: as we're speaking,
58:52
SPEAKER_00: somewhere in the world,
58:54
there are multiple cognitive behavioral therapists drawing two
58:58
columns on a flip
58:59
SPEAKER_00: chart right now.
59:01
So that is one of the most common techniques that you use in
59:04
cognitive therapy.
59:05
SPEAKER_00: So when I read that, it immediately jumped off the page to me.
59:08
And then I thought,
59:10
you know,
59:10
not only is this kind of overlooked a bit,
59:12
but
59:13
SPEAKER_00: it's not even mentioned in anywhere else.
59:17
SPEAKER_00: And I thought, am I imagining this?
59:19
SPEAKER_00: You know,
59:20
I went back and I looked at the original Greek to make sure it
59:22
wasn't just some
59:24
SPEAKER_00: quirk of the translation.
59:25
SPEAKER_00: I thought, no, he's clearly describes drawing two columns.
59:29
SPEAKER_00: And he explains that this is a,
59:32
SPEAKER_00: how,
59:33
SPEAKER_00: um,
59:33
SPEAKER_00: a method for teaching like the basic steps of the,
59:38
SPEAKER_00: the Socratic method.
59:39
SPEAKER_00: Um,
59:41
SPEAKER_00: So I thought that was really, you know, that was really striking.
59:45
Sometimes people are a little bit vague about what the method
59:47
consists in,
59:48
SPEAKER_00: but I think,
59:49
SPEAKER_00: so I think a lot of people think Socratic questioning,
59:52
SPEAKER_00: people will say,
59:52
SPEAKER_00: what sort of questions did Socrates ask?
59:55
SPEAKER_00: So they think it's going to be formulate questions,
59:58
SPEAKER_00: which actually in cognitive therapy,
1:00:00
SPEAKER_00: we ask formulate questions.
1:00:02
SPEAKER_00: So we'll say, where's the evidence for that?
1:00:04
SPEAKER_00: How's that working out for you?
1:00:05
SPEAKER_00: And I'll, uh,
1:00:07
SPEAKER_00: How would you advise other people to think about the situation?
1:00:13
How do you think other people might advise you to think about
1:00:15
it differently and
1:00:15
SPEAKER_00: stuff like that,
1:00:16
SPEAKER_00: right?
1:00:17
SPEAKER_00: So you can make a list of questions.
1:00:19
SPEAKER_00: With Socrates,
1:00:22
SPEAKER_00: what he's doing is more like creative brainstorming of exceptions to the
1:00:29
SPEAKER_00: interlocutor's definitions and the generalizations that they're making.
1:00:34
SPEAKER_00: He'll draw their attention to contradictions in their thinking.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_00: But usually Socrates comes up with examples.
1:00:40
SPEAKER_00: That's probably why people think he's sometimes being quite leading.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_00: But really, he's just identifying counter-evidence.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_00: It's not a formula.
1:00:50
SPEAKER_00: I guess in a way it's something that an algorithm couldn't do as easily.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_00: He's being creative.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_00: So for example,
1:01:00
SPEAKER_00: the famous example is he's talking to Lackeyes and Nicaeus,
1:01:05
SPEAKER_00: to Athenian generals,
1:01:07
SPEAKER_00: about how to define bravery.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_00: And one of them,
1:01:11
SPEAKER_00: I can't remember which way around it is,
1:01:13
but one of the generals says it's standing your ground in the
1:01:15
face of the enemy.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_00: is how I would define courage.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_00: And that's a cliché definition,
1:01:21
because it's what you have to do if you're a hoplite fighting
1:01:23
in a phalanx formation.
1:01:25
It's like the main thing that he has to drum into his troops,
1:01:27
so he mustn't break formation.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_00: And so Socrates says, well, what if you're fighting in the cavalry?
1:01:33
SPEAKER_00: Then the cavalry don't stand their ground, they charge into the enemy.
1:01:36
SPEAKER_00: He says also the Spartans don't always fight in phalanx formation,
1:01:39
SPEAKER_00: sometimes they charge among the enemy like cavalry do,
1:01:42
SPEAKER_00: but everyone thinks that they're courageous.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_00: And what if you're fighting a tactical retreat?
1:01:46
then surely,
1:01:47
you know,
1:01:48
I mean,
1:01:48
if you dropped your weapons and run,
1:01:51
that would be cowardly.
1:01:52
But if you fight in a more temperate way as you're retreating,
1:01:55
then that's courageous,
1:01:56
right?
1:01:57
SPEAKER_00: And what about civilian life if you're not talking about warfare at all?
1:02:01
SPEAKER_00: And surely that definition doesn't really hold true.
1:02:04
But what he's doing is listing a bunch of different situations
1:02:08
that contradict...
1:02:09
SPEAKER_00: definition.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_00: That's not formulaic.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_00: That's creative thinking.
1:02:13
SPEAKER_00: He's having to think on his feet in order to do that.
1:02:17
SPEAKER_00: It's not quite how people imagine the method.
1:02:22
SPEAKER_00: How do you learn how to do that?
1:02:23
SPEAKER_00: It takes practice.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_00: I think people can learn that skill,
1:02:27
SPEAKER_00: but it requires a kind of...
1:02:28
SPEAKER_00: I think Socrates,
1:02:30
SPEAKER_00: it's fairly safe to say exhibits,
1:02:34
clearly exhibits a high level of what psychologists today call
1:02:37
cognitive flexibility.
1:02:39
SPEAKER_00: He's really good at viewing things,
1:02:42
SPEAKER_00: at thinking outside the box,
1:02:44
SPEAKER_00: at viewing things from alternative perspectives,
1:02:48
SPEAKER_00: at spotting contradictions,
1:02:50
SPEAKER_00: at changing his assumptions.
1:02:53
SPEAKER_00: He's very flexible in his thinking.
1:02:56
And that's gold dust because we know that cognitive flexibility
1:03:00
tends to make
1:03:01
SPEAKER_00: people better at problem solving.
1:03:03
SPEAKER_00: It's associated with emotional resilience and well-being.
1:03:07
SPEAKER_00: So it's quite psychologically significant that he excels in that regard.
1:03:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:03:16
unlike the sophists who you know are wedded to quite rigid sort
1:03:20
of dogmatic ways of
1:03:22
understanding things they have a script that they're following
1:03:24
they have a yeah a
1:03:25
party line softies isn't following a script no and yeah and
1:03:29
cognitive flexibility
1:03:30
as well seems to be pretty close to wisdom like that that seems
1:03:33
to be part of the
1:03:34
love of wisdom at least that it's and mental health i'm sure a
1:03:38
cognitive cognitive
1:03:39
SPEAKER_01: rigidity is a
1:03:41
symptom really of mental health problems a lot of yeah I mean
1:03:44
that's a simple
1:03:44
observation which is kind of there are many converging studies
1:03:47
that support support
1:03:49
SPEAKER_00: it you know there's a lot of complicated convoluted things that
1:03:52
SPEAKER_00: we find in research in psychopathology and psychotherapy,
1:03:55
SPEAKER_00: but sometimes the simple things you can point to,
1:03:58
SPEAKER_00: you go,
1:03:58
SPEAKER_00: look,
1:03:59
any psychotherapist is going to tell you clearly that overly
1:04:04
rigid thinking tends
1:04:06
SPEAKER_00: to come up again and again and again.
1:04:09
SPEAKER_00: Virtually all clients have some kind of tunnel vision, rigidity.
1:04:15
SPEAKER_00: Albert Ellis, who was the original sort of pioneer,
1:04:18
SPEAKER_00: of cognitive behavioral therapy,
1:04:20
his way of framing it was to say most psychological problems
1:04:24
are caused by rigid
1:04:26
SPEAKER_00: artistic demands that we impose on ourselves or other people.
1:04:32
SPEAKER_00: Therapists have long called it the tyranny of the shoulds.
1:04:37
SPEAKER_00: People should respect me.
1:04:38
SPEAKER_00: They have to respect me.
1:04:39
SPEAKER_00: And if they don't, I'm going to get really angry.
1:04:42
SPEAKER_00: It's almost like a little algorithm.
1:04:44
SPEAKER_00: When you impose a rigid demand,
1:04:46
It's almost like in brackets after it,
1:04:47
you're saying,
1:04:48
or I'm going to get upset.
1:04:51
I have to succeed at everything I do,
1:04:53
otherwise I'm going to get really depressed.
1:04:54
SPEAKER_00: Other people have to love and respect me, otherwise I'm going to
1:05:03
get angry with them yeah it's a recipe for neurosis to have
1:05:08
these kind of and the
1:05:10
alternative is Ellis describes as flexible preferences so I'd
1:05:16
really like it it'd
1:05:17
be awesome if I succeeded at everything I do but if I don't
1:05:20
it's not the end of the
1:05:21
world or it'd be great if everybody loved and respected me I'd
1:05:25
definitely prefer
1:05:26
that but sometimes if they don't I can handle that we'd be a
1:05:31
more like normal
1:05:34
SPEAKER_00: resilient, adaptive way of thinking about things.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_00: When we get into this kind of rigid,
1:05:38
SPEAKER_00: simplistic,
1:05:39
SPEAKER_00: dogmatic way of thinking about things,
1:05:45
SPEAKER_00: we're about to step,
1:05:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to warn you,
1:05:49
SPEAKER_00: we're on the verge of stepping into controversial territory here.
1:05:53
SPEAKER_00: Because given that rigid shoulds and roles, demands are
1:06:04
generally widely perceived as being one of the most obvious
1:06:08
problems that people
1:06:09
exhibit in psychotherapy isn't it ironic that a great deal of
1:06:16
self-help and
1:06:17
self-improvement literature consists of rules for living that
1:06:22
are presented in a
1:06:23
simplistic kind of dogmatic manner here's like five rules for
1:06:27
life you know that uh
1:06:30
SPEAKER_00: here's like uh
1:06:31
SPEAKER_00: you know, like a bunch of bullet points.
1:06:35
SPEAKER_00: And if you follow this, you know, you'll be happy.
1:06:40
SPEAKER_00: So the risk is that people,
1:06:42
SPEAKER_00: when they're given these kind of simplistic rules,
1:06:45
SPEAKER_00: they'll apply them,
1:06:46
SPEAKER_00: like tidy your room,
1:06:47
SPEAKER_00: right?
1:06:48
SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, always speak your mind or whatever.
1:06:52
SPEAKER_00: You know,
1:06:52
SPEAKER_00: we get from self-improvement gurus,
1:06:55
SPEAKER_00: these kind of generalizations,
1:06:57
SPEAKER_00: sort of one size fits all.
1:06:58
SPEAKER_00: People want easily digestible bullet points.
1:07:02
coping strategies and maybe speaking your mind is a good idea
1:07:09
sometimes but not all
1:07:11
the time there may be some situations where you should keep
1:07:15
your mouth shut or you
1:07:18
should listen to people first or where it would be better to
1:07:23
phrase things more
1:07:23
SPEAKER_00: indirectly or more tactfully and
1:07:27
But I think it's human nature that we want simple solutions to
1:07:31
complex problems.
1:07:32
And self-improvement influencers give us simple solutions to
1:07:35
complex psychological
1:07:37
SPEAKER_00: and interpersonal problems.
1:07:38
SPEAKER_00: And they're particularly risky because often they seem to work initially.
1:07:44
SPEAKER_00: And so we get kind of addicted to doing them,
1:07:46
SPEAKER_00: start doing them more habitually,
1:07:48
SPEAKER_00: to follow these rules.
1:07:50
SPEAKER_00: The rule works until it doesn't.
1:07:52
SPEAKER_00: It's a good idea until it's not.
1:07:55
SPEAKER_00: And then we find ourselves in a situation where we think,
1:07:57
SPEAKER_00: this doesn't really seem to be working for me anymore.
1:07:59
SPEAKER_00: And if we're not careful,
1:08:00
SPEAKER_00: we'll carry on kind of stubbornly,
1:08:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:08:04
SPEAKER_00: trying to follow the same rule,
1:08:05
SPEAKER_00: apply the same strategy,
1:08:07
SPEAKER_00: even though it's not working anymore.
1:08:08
But he saw this problem with the sophists and the maxims that
1:08:13
they gave out.
1:08:14
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you a little example.
1:08:15
SPEAKER_00: In that dialogue where he's talking to a guy called Euthydemus,
1:08:20
SPEAKER_00: there are two Euthydemuses,
1:08:22
SPEAKER_00: one in Plato and one in Zenfel,
1:08:23
SPEAKER_00: they're two different dudes.
1:08:25
SPEAKER_00: So there's a young guy called Euthydemus, who's a self-help junkie.
1:08:29
He says he has the best collection in Athens of books
1:08:34
containing the maxims of the wise,
1:08:36
SPEAKER_00: as he calls it.
1:08:37
And so he's been studying the young guy,
1:08:40
trying to improve himself by reading this stuff.
1:08:43
SPEAKER_00: And he says that he wants to be a great statesman,
1:08:46
SPEAKER_00: so he's learned a lot about the concept of justice and injustice,
1:08:50
SPEAKER_00: and that's how he's going about proving his character.
1:08:53
SPEAKER_00: And Socrates says,
1:08:54
SPEAKER_00: well,
1:08:55
SPEAKER_00: in that case,
1:08:56
SPEAKER_00: let's do a test and see what you've taken from the books,
1:09:00
SPEAKER_00: and can you define the concept of justice for him?
1:09:05
SPEAKER_00: And Euthydemus says,
1:09:05
SPEAKER_00: well,
1:09:05
it would be easier to give examples of injustice because those
1:09:08
are more obvious.
1:09:08
SPEAKER_00: That itself is an interesting observation.
1:09:10
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, we'll pass over that.
1:09:13
SPEAKER_00: And Socrates says, okay, what are some examples?
1:09:15
SPEAKER_00: Do you mean stuff like lying and stealing?
1:09:18
SPEAKER_00: And Euthydemus says, yeah, obviously that would be examples of injustice.
1:09:22
SPEAKER_00: So you shouldn't lie.
1:09:23
SPEAKER_00: That's what I've learned from these books.
1:09:27
SPEAKER_00: That's a characteristic type of injustice.
1:09:30
SPEAKER_00: And Socrates says, what if you're an elected general, though?
1:09:33
in a war and you deceive the enemy,
1:09:36
is that unjust or would that be acceptable?
1:09:39
Euthydemus is like,
1:09:40
well,
1:09:40
okay,
1:09:40
that's different,
1:09:41
Socrates,
1:09:42
that's an exception.
1:09:43
SPEAKER_00: Socrates says,
1:09:44
what if you're a parent and the only way you can get your child
1:09:46
to take medicine is
1:09:48
SPEAKER_00: to conceal it in their food?
1:09:50
SPEAKER_00: Would that be unjust or do you think that would be different?
1:09:53
SPEAKER_00: He's like, well, that's different, that's different.
1:09:55
And then he uses an example that's kind of cliche in the
1:09:58
history of philosophy,
1:09:58
SPEAKER_00: which is,
1:09:59
what if your friend is suicidal and he asks you where you've
1:10:02
hidden his dagger?
1:10:04
SPEAKER_00: Would it be,
1:10:05
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:10:05
SPEAKER_00: unjust to tell him,
1:10:07
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:10:08
SPEAKER_00: you can't remember where it is,
1:10:10
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:10:10
SPEAKER_00: to lie to him and deceive him in that regard?
1:10:13
SPEAKER_00: Euthydemus says, okay, I see what you mean, right?
1:10:14
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's an overgeneralization to say that all lying is unjust.
1:10:21
SPEAKER_00: So this seems like, in a sense, it's a simple example.
1:10:23
SPEAKER_00: It's an obvious example.
1:10:24
SPEAKER_00: Euthydemus now has more cognitive flexibility, right?
1:10:28
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:10:28
SPEAKER_00: he thinks,
1:10:28
SPEAKER_00: okay,
1:10:29
SPEAKER_00: maybe,
1:10:29
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:10:30
SPEAKER_00: to some extent,
1:10:31
SPEAKER_00: lying is a good example of injustice,
1:10:33
SPEAKER_00: but there's some exceptions to that.
1:10:36
SPEAKER_00: You know,
1:10:36
SPEAKER_00: maybe it's understanding these exceptions and being able to think through
1:10:39
SPEAKER_00: individual scenarios that constitutes understanding and wisdom.
1:10:43
SPEAKER_00: You know,
1:10:43
SPEAKER_00: perhaps it's this flexibility,
1:10:45
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:10:47
that being able to think around the subject and question or
1:10:50
assumptions that
1:10:51
SPEAKER_00: constitutes real wisdom.
1:10:54
SPEAKER_00: But in modern self-help, I mean, funnily enough,
1:10:57
SPEAKER_00: Probably the best-selling self-improvement book of the 21st century,
1:11:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm guessing,
1:11:03
SPEAKER_00: is Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life.
1:11:06
SPEAKER_00: And one of those rules is always tell the truth or at least never lie.
1:11:13
SPEAKER_00: That's, I think, verbatim, right?
1:11:15
SPEAKER_00: Which happens to be exactly...
1:11:15
SPEAKER_00: I think in his defense,
1:11:16
SPEAKER_01: he argues there are more principles than rules,
1:11:19
SPEAKER_01: but I think that was a marketing thing.
1:11:22
SPEAKER_01: He says... I agree with you in that you can't apply things rigidly.
1:11:26
SPEAKER_00: Well,
1:11:27
I'll pitch back against that a little bit because in the
1:11:31
preface to that book,
1:11:32
SPEAKER_00: which is,
1:11:33
SPEAKER_00: to be fair,
1:11:33
SPEAKER_00: written by someone else,
1:11:35
SPEAKER_00: But it's at the beginning of the book.
1:11:36
SPEAKER_00: The guy who writes the preface to Twelve Rules for Life,
1:11:40
SPEAKER_00: to my surprise,
1:11:42
SPEAKER_00: really leans in to the whole idea that they're meant to be rigid rules.
1:11:48
SPEAKER_00: He compares them to the Ten Commandments.
1:11:50
SPEAKER_00: And he actually says, it's called the Ten Commandments for a reason.
1:11:53
SPEAKER_00: It's not the Ten Suggestions.
1:11:56
SPEAKER_00: And what people need are quite strict rules.
1:11:58
SPEAKER_00: To my surprise,
1:11:59
SPEAKER_00: the preface...
1:12:00
SPEAKER_00: Even the Ten Commandments,
1:12:00
SPEAKER_01: I don't think,
1:12:01
SPEAKER_01: even work that way in terms of later Christian things.
1:12:05
They're more like...
1:12:06
It aims at a particular kind of character that you should have.
1:12:09
SPEAKER_01: Rough guidelines.
1:12:10
SPEAKER_01: Rough, yeah.
1:12:11
SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, I guess they're guidelines.
1:12:13
SPEAKER_01: But then Moses kills a guy.
1:12:14
SPEAKER_01: I think that's... And he's the guy that gets the Ten Commandments.
1:12:19
SPEAKER_00: I think that's true.
1:12:20
SPEAKER_00: So the problem is...
1:12:22
SPEAKER_00: Let me put it this way.
1:12:23
There was a stoic called Aristote of Chaios who talked about
1:12:27
exactly this problem.
1:12:30
SPEAKER_00: We call it in modern psychology the problem of rule-governed behavior.
1:12:34
SPEAKER_00: So if people are given a rule,
1:12:36
SPEAKER_00: like always tell the truth or at least never lie,
1:12:39
are they going to interpret it flexibly or are they going to
1:12:42
interpret it rigidly?
1:12:44
SPEAKER_00: Aristo said the problem with moral precepts,
1:12:48
SPEAKER_00: which are basically a similar kind of thing,
1:12:50
SPEAKER_00: the little maxims that follow in different situations in life.
1:12:54
He said the problem with precepts is that wise people apply
1:12:57
them wisely and foolish
1:12:59
SPEAKER_00: people apply them foolishly.
1:13:01
So the way that people respond to them is going to depend to
1:13:04
some extent on their
1:13:05
SPEAKER_00: personality and their attitude towards governed behavior.
1:13:09
SPEAKER_00: So even if you write a book that summarizes,
1:13:12
SPEAKER_00: kind of presents rules in the kind of bullet point list,
1:13:15
I guess you could say the risk is that some people are going to
1:13:18
apply them in an
1:13:19
SPEAKER_00: overly rigid way.
1:13:21
SPEAKER_00: Actually,
1:13:21
SPEAKER_00: even if you warn them against doing that,
1:13:24
SPEAKER_00: you're going to find that some people do that.
1:13:26
SPEAKER_00: Now,
1:13:26
SPEAKER_00: there's a couple of interesting things about this,
1:13:28
SPEAKER_00: but one of them is,
1:13:29
under what circumstances are people more likely to apply verbal
1:13:35
rules in an overly
1:13:37
SPEAKER_00: rigid manner?
1:13:38
SPEAKER_00: Well, one of the circumstances is when they're under stress, right?
1:13:42
So people tend to sacrifice cognitive flexibility when they
1:13:46
experience themselves
1:13:47
SPEAKER_00: as being in a stressful situation.
1:13:49
But that's exactly what self-improvement,
1:13:52
self-help rules are supposed to help with,
1:13:54
right?
1:13:55
SPEAKER_00: So the problem, I think, is more serious than it seems at first.
1:13:59
SPEAKER_00: So you might read a bunch of self-help rules and think,
1:14:01
I'm not stupid to take that to mean that you always have to
1:14:06
tell the truth to
1:14:06
SPEAKER_00: everybody in every situation.
1:14:08
SPEAKER_00: Obviously not.
1:14:10
SPEAKER_00: But that's when you're thinking...
1:14:12
rationally and flexibly in your normal mode of functioning when
1:14:17
you're highly
1:14:17
anxious or when someone's just come up to you in the street
1:14:20
punch you in the face
1:14:21
you know when you're under uh stress and under time pressure
1:14:25
you're more likely to
1:14:27
SPEAKER_00: revert back or many most people
1:14:29
are more likely to revert back to a kind of rigid version of
1:14:33
role-governed behavior
1:14:34
where they doggedly continue doing something in the face of
1:14:38
feedback that tells
1:14:38
SPEAKER_00: them that it's not really working anymore.
1:14:41
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we see in therapy on a daily basis, basically.
1:14:45
And you're getting rid of those rules a lot of the time in
1:14:48
terms of getting people
1:14:49
to question them and overcome them so they're not just caught
1:14:53
in this feedback loop.
1:14:55
SPEAKER_00: I gave some examples earlier of, and some of them are rules,
1:15:00
Often they're rules that they've just inherited from their
1:15:01
parents or they've
1:15:02
SPEAKER_00: formulated over time,
1:15:04
SPEAKER_00: maybe unconsciously.
1:15:06
But often they're rules that they've got from self-improvement
1:15:08
or self-help
1:15:09
SPEAKER_00: literature that they're applying in a way that's clearly self-defeating.
1:15:14
SPEAKER_00: I can give you countless examples,
1:15:17
SPEAKER_00: but for example,
1:15:19
SPEAKER_00: this isn't so common now,
1:15:20
SPEAKER_00: because self-help literature goes through cycles.
1:15:24
SPEAKER_00: It has fashions, fads that it goes through.
1:15:29
um so one of them is positive thinking has gone through various
1:15:33
cycles right it's
1:15:34
not a positive thing is not really that popular at the moment
1:15:36
even in popular
1:15:38
culture used to be really big yeah in the 80s and stuff i
1:15:41
remember it being it's
1:15:42
still big in some areas you know um people like there's this
1:15:46
thing called the law
1:15:47
of attraction where a lot of people still believe the secret
1:15:50
yeah stuff like that
1:15:51
SPEAKER_00: it's
1:15:53
SPEAKER_00: So you'll get people who say, I mustn't think negatively.
1:15:57
SPEAKER_00: I have to focus on positive thoughts.
1:16:01
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that's helpful.
1:16:03
You can see of any of these rules,
1:16:04
sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
1:16:06
SPEAKER_00: And it kind of depends how you're doing it.
1:16:08
SPEAKER_00: If you're doing that really rigidly, it's kind of crazy.
1:16:11
SPEAKER_00: It might become a bit delusional.
1:16:14
It causes psychological problems if you try and suppress
1:16:17
negative thoughts and just focus.
1:16:20
SPEAKER_00: So especially if the positive thoughts aren't realistic.
1:16:22
ones you know that can obviously become problematic but also
1:16:26
the avoidance of
1:16:27
negative thoughts is well known to become quite toxic over time
1:16:32
but someone else
1:16:33
might say well I don't do it in this kind of rigid way I'm
1:16:35
quite flexible about it
1:16:36
I don't think there's anything wrong with just focusing on
1:16:38
positive ideas as long
1:16:39
SPEAKER_00: as they're kind of reasonably realistic ones and
1:16:43
SPEAKER_00: Again,
1:16:44
SPEAKER_00: that's fine,
1:16:44
SPEAKER_00: but when people are under a lot of pressure,
1:16:47
SPEAKER_00: they'll tend to revert to a more panicky,
1:16:49
rigid form of positive thinking that really can become quite
1:16:54
toxic if they're not careful.
1:16:57
Just to show,
1:16:58
the thing that's on the Ascendant at the moment is mindfulness,
1:17:01
right?
1:17:02
SPEAKER_00: I could say the same thing about mindfulness training.
1:17:05
Mindfulness is a pretty solid self-help,
1:17:09
psychological technique,
1:17:11
until it isn't.
1:17:14
SPEAKER_00: In some situations,
1:17:14
SPEAKER_00: so for example,
1:17:17
if you're giving a wedding speech and you practice mindfulness
1:17:23
of breathing,
1:17:25
you'd have to be quite careful that it doesn't exacerbate
1:17:29
self-focused attention,
1:17:30
SPEAKER_00: which contributes to social anxiety,
1:17:32
SPEAKER_00: performance anxiety.
1:17:35
SPEAKER_00: So again, maybe there's different ways of doing it.
1:17:38
SPEAKER_00: But you could easily think,
1:17:40
I'm doing my mindfulness of breathing right now and be using it
1:17:43
in a way that
1:17:43
SPEAKER_00: actually contributes to social anxiety.
1:17:46
Someone with hypochondria or health anxiety,
1:17:49
mindfulness in some forms might help them.
1:17:52
But it can also just easily get turned into scanning their body
1:17:57
for symptoms and
1:18:00
kind of obsessing about slight pains or maybe noticing their
1:18:05
heart skips a beat or
1:18:06
SPEAKER_00: something like that.
1:18:08
So overly threat monitoring and scanning your body for possible
1:18:13
symptoms is a
1:18:14
SPEAKER_00: symptom of health anxiety.
1:18:18
Someone might think that they're doing mindfulness practice
1:18:21
when actually what
1:18:21
SPEAKER_00: they're really doing is symptomatic of the problem.
1:18:25
So any self-help technique can be used wisely or foolishly or
1:18:29
in a healthy or
1:18:29
SPEAKER_00: unhealthy way,
1:18:30
SPEAKER_00: basically.
1:18:31
And again,
1:18:32
I think it comes back to Socrates having the kind of
1:18:35
self-awareness
1:18:37
in being reflective enough to take Jordan Peterson's 12 rules
1:18:41
or mindfulness or
1:18:43
relaxation techniques or positive thinking and weigh up like
1:18:47
what the pros and cons
1:18:48
of this advice or the strategy are and you know which
1:18:51
situations it would be useful
1:18:53
and in which situations it might not be useful in again you
1:18:56
know it comes down to
1:18:58
being adaptive and being flexible and being reflective which
1:19:01
people are encouraged
1:19:02
to do in therapy but left to their own devices when they're
1:19:05
consuming self-help
1:19:06
online for example often they just take the bullet point and
1:19:09
apply it in a kind of
1:19:10
rigid formulaic way which potentially can lead to some of these
1:19:14
these problems yeah
1:19:17
i think that that people interpret philosophy that way
1:19:19
sometimes as well and some
1:19:21
SPEAKER_01: says that it's just like you want to get these
1:19:24
algorithms for life rather than what Socrates is doing,
1:19:27
which is a way of life.
1:19:29
SPEAKER_01: Like he's, everything's context dependent for him.
1:19:32
SPEAKER_01: It's like, okay, in this situation, you know, how do I figure things out?
1:19:35
SPEAKER_01: How do I learn?
1:19:36
SPEAKER_01: How do I kind of ask the right questions?
1:19:38
SPEAKER_01: It's not just like, oh, I can just do the same thing all the time.
1:19:41
SPEAKER_01: I have this perfect algorithm or something.
1:19:43
So it's almost like,
1:19:45
yeah,
1:19:45
in the therapy,
1:19:46
it has to integrate into your day-to-day life.
1:19:49
You have to be committed to seeking the truth and wisdom and
1:19:52
those other things.
1:19:54
I hate to break it to your kids,
1:19:57
but you're going to have to learn to think for yourselves.
1:20:01
SPEAKER_01: How to think like Socrates?
1:20:03
SPEAKER_00: No.
1:20:04
SPEAKER_00: Again,
1:20:04
SPEAKER_00: the irony is that if you were to think like Socrates,
1:20:08
you'd learn how to think like yourself by learning how to
1:20:12
question your assumptions.
1:20:14
SPEAKER_00: Socrates wants to teach you how to think for yourself, basically.
1:20:18
SPEAKER_00: Whereas the sophists...
1:20:20
I guess you could say very simply wanted to teach people how to
1:20:24
think like them.
1:20:25
They literally would say here's a speech about the nature of
1:20:28
justice and people
1:20:30
SPEAKER_00: would memorize what the sophists said.
1:20:34
SPEAKER_00: They had maxims that people would memorize.
1:20:35
They'd also memorize their speeches verbatim and then just kind
1:20:39
of regurgitate them.
1:20:42
I think in some ways we get this in modern society as well
1:20:45
where people consume
1:20:45
SPEAKER_00: YouTube videos and then just kind of eat what they've heard from a
1:20:50
TEDx talk or whatever but they haven't really studied the
1:20:55
subject or questioned or
1:20:57
chewed things over to have a genuine understanding of it in
1:21:03
terms of philosophy
1:21:05
I notice a big difference between people who are just consuming
1:21:09
videos and stuff
1:21:10
online about philosophy and people who have done a degree in
1:21:13
philosophy and have
1:21:14
written essays and got them marked and maybe had mistakes
1:21:19
pointed out to them in
1:21:20
their understanding or they've engaged in tutorials where
1:21:23
they've been talking to
1:21:24
SPEAKER_00: some tutor and flaws in their reasoning have been pointed out.
1:21:30
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, you don't get
1:21:32
SPEAKER_00: you don't do exams,
1:21:33
SPEAKER_00: you don't get corrected,
1:21:35
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:21:35
SPEAKER_00: and challenged if you're just doing philosophy by watching videos,
1:21:40
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:21:40
SPEAKER_00: so it's harder to kind of
1:21:42
quite a genuine understanding the subject the risk is that what
1:21:45
you're going to
1:21:46
learn to do is just repeat stuff that you've had someone else
1:21:49
say which is going to
1:21:51
be useless to you pretty much um i'm concerned there we've gone
1:21:55
a bit over time
1:21:56
there donald but um yeah thank you so much and i encourage
1:22:00
everybody to read the
1:22:01
book i've been already recommending it to people like i've
1:22:04
bought a few copies um
1:22:06
Because it's,
1:22:07
yeah,
1:22:07
it's the perfect,
1:22:08
as you said,
1:22:08
to get people into it.
1:22:10
And also for me,
1:22:11
who is very experienced,
1:22:12
I've done a degree in philosophy,
1:22:14
PhD.
1:22:14
I learned so much from it and so much on Socrates that it's the
1:22:18
best telling of his
1:22:20
SPEAKER_01: life and his philosophy that I've come across.
1:22:22
SPEAKER_01: So I really appreciate that you did it.
1:22:23
SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
1:22:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you found it.
1:22:25
helpful you know it's i just i got excited writing actually
1:22:30
again like i thought if
1:22:31
i could go back to time i really think my younger self be like
1:22:34
this is awesome so
1:22:36
you know i'm glad that like and i don't think it's everyone's
1:22:38
cup of tea but i'm
1:22:38
glad that like that some people have got excited about it and
1:22:41
thought this is the
1:22:41
kind of book i was looking for yeah i know i really did and the
1:22:46
hbo series i don't
1:22:47
SPEAKER_01: know if you know anybody but i mean it will be an ideal candidate for
1:22:52
SPEAKER_01: one of those Socrates movie, Swords and Sandals, maybe.
1:22:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that'd be awesome.
1:22:57
I think there's a TV play called Barefoot in Athens where Peter
1:23:02
Ustinov plays Socrates.
1:23:04
SPEAKER_00: And since I've watched that several times,
1:23:06
SPEAKER_00: now in my mind,
1:23:07
SPEAKER_00: I find it hard not to imagine Peter Ustinov as Socrates.
1:23:12
SPEAKER_00: You know, I kind of think, who could play Socrates?
1:23:15
SPEAKER_00: I think of Socrates now as being a bit like Socrates.
1:23:18
SPEAKER_00: I think he did really a pretty good job of portraying him.
1:23:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:23:22
SPEAKER_00: I need to look that up.
1:23:23
SPEAKER_00: I'll have to watch it barefoot in Athens.
1:23:25
SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
1:23:26
SPEAKER_00: Thanks again, Donald.