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Premium: Ask Me Anything · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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G'day, this is an abridged version of the episode that you can hear in full by signing up
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at uncomfortableconversations.substac.com slash subscribe. Enjoy the freebie.
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G'day, humans, welcome to SafeSpace for Dangerous Ideas.
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One of my favorite things to do is to have a little chinwag with you about the things
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that you're interested in hearing my take on.
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And I can only assume that the people who actually respond to call-outs for ask me
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anything episodes are somewhat representative of the great bulk, the great
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seething, math, mass of human beings, yearning to breathe-free, whom I welcome to these
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blessed shores of uncomfortable conversations, because the questions are generally really good.
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And I'm interested in wrestling with them. Sometimes I don't know what I even think about them
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until someone asks. So thank you for all of your asking me anything questions.
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And I hope you love them today. We have a doozy to start with.
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What is something that you know and believe? This is from algorithms R Us on Twitter.
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What is something that you know and believe a contrarian take to what everyone else believes
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right now that you know 10 years from now, everyone will share and agree with you
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and that it will actually just be conventional boring wisdom by then. That's good, isn't it?
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I mean, I'm tempted to just say what I think is the most obvious thing, but I don't know if this
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is, if this satisfies the criterion of being contrarian to what everyone else believes right now.
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But the idea that we would all be fairly unruffled by going to a supermarket and selecting the
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flesh of other mammals purely on the basis of how cheap we can get a pound of their flesh.
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Without really having any any consideration for the experience that animal went through,
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not just as it was being killed, but through the entirety of its life being fattened up as
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fast as possible fed hormones to get fatter quicker to build more muscle more quickly.
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In the case of chickens to put on so much muscle mass that their bones buckle and break and
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a significant proportion of them are waddling around on semi broken legs in confined in spaces
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that deranged them and make them peck their beaks off and peck each other's eyes out.
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Like total torture, like concentration camp holocaust style conditions for billions upon
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billions, hundreds of billions of animals that we know are roughly as capable of
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feeling pain and affection for their loved ones and their children and having aspirations in
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their lives as say a pet that you might have a cat or something.
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Like the idea that we've erected this institution of concentrated animal feeding operations
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where really the only priority is just getting the chicken breast as cheap as possible
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and having it not not harm you when you eat it. So you can chlorinate it, they can chlorinate it
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and put you know and put antiseptics on it and put it in antiseptic baths before they give it to
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and then you just go to a supermarket, shiny lights, plastic cling wrap over it,
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a radiated white styrofoam and you take it home and then we just eat it and we just feed it to our
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children and that's not that isn't really problematic. Like I guess we've reached a tipping point
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where I think that most people who think about it understand the calamity of the moral wrong
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that's being done but I guess it's not salient enough for us to actually change our behaviour.
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I mean I have changed my behaviour but only in the most piddling and piffling and cowardly way
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in the sense that I don't buy, I don't buy concentrated animal feeding operation meat, I don't buy
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a cheap meat, I only get meat if the meat is endorsed by animal rights groups and is three times
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the price of the normal meat and becomes from a special fancy farm but I mean I still, I don't
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really know how nice the lives were of the animals, I don't have a huge problem with killing animals,
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I mean like here's my thinking every time I talk to very articulate vegans who sound persuasive
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about why I shouldn't be consuming animal products at all, I momentarily persuaded
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and then I think about the value that I place on the richness of the world's cultures
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and the different ways that human beings have used animal products and continue to use animal
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products to enrich their lives and the lives of their communities and their families
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and I think of the austerity of a world in which there was no use of animals and I think about
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the circle of life and the natural process of animals eating animals and animals dying and
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those bodies then feeding other plants that then go to feed other animals that in turn also die
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and it just strikes me as something a little bit cold and scientific about removing
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homo sapiens altogether from the circle of life and saying like we're only gonna eat tofu
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and lab-grown meat like so I don't know I saw I'm not sold I'm not sold on the proposition that
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eating anything that caused an animal to die is wrong but I think it's obvious it's obvious in
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the way that slavery would have been an obvious wrong 200 years ago and yet people persisted
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in going along with it even in the knowledge that it was macabre it's obvious that treating
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other living breathing feeling mammals and creatures and birds that are capable of having
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experiences subjective experiences of treating them as if they're not capable of having experiences
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as if their experiences count for literally nothing other than trying to get their flesh
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as cheap as possible that's so obviously wrong that I'm sure that it may not be 10 years
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from now but I'm certain that in 30 years from now or in 50 years from now people will look back
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on the cavalier attitude that we had towards the well-being of factory-found animals with absolute
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horror I mean if anything is going to is going to be akin to the way that we look back on the
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behavior of people in the past with just head-shaking bafflement it's going to be that isn't it
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I mean in the 21 hundreds surely people are going to look back on our enormous edifice of hundreds
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of billions of sentient creatures all crammed in with no consideration for what their lives are like
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simply so that we can have slightly cheaper slightly tastier food that's just going to be
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people will be saying like how did they how did they not think about that like how did they
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participate in that so at least I don't I try not to participate in that I said I was good
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of outside I don't participate in that but of course when I eat out I will occasionally be
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presented with animal flesh and I don't know its provenance and the fact that I don't know
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its provenance of course means that I do in fact know its provenance because if unless it's being
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proactively sold as being free range you can bet your bottom dollar it's not so I'm still
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complicit but that would be one thing that I know and believe that I think will become
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conventional boring wisdom and I think the whole world is going to become vegan but I do think
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that everyone in polite society who now thinks that for example racism is a bad thing will in
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subsequent decades think that paying no heed to the concerns of animals of sentient creatures
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that don't belong to our species is a moral role. Next question,
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do journalists who want to foster a more open discussion have more impact in substack land
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or within traditional media roles such as the ABC asks Zach Gross on Twitter.
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Another great question, one that I absolutely definitively can say I do not have a definitive
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answer for and I don't know the answer to, do journalists who want to foster a more open
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discussion have more impact in substack land or within traditional media roles such as the ABC.
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My hunch still is that you have more impact inside the tent pissing out than standing outside
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the tent pissing in that being in the tent carries cache and has value there is just simply nothing
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like the reach of a national public broadcaster like the ABC in Australia or the BBC in the UK.
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There's for all of their faults for all their group think for all of their frustrating
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persnicketyness in requiring so many facts to be checked and so many eyes to be dotted and teased
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to be crossed that sometimes they miss the big picture or they are unwilling to talk about things
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that might be speculative. I'm wrestling at the moment with how to deal with the lab leak theory
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of COVID which I have gradually become more and more convinced of just listening to really,
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really, really smart credible people talking about this people who I trust and knowing the
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disincentives within the conventional media to broaching sort of big controversial messy ugly
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difficult to back up things unless you've got proof, journalism requires proof that's just
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the way it goes. You can't just go around reporting that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was
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probably responsible for COVID-19 without sounding like a crackpot unless you can bring your
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receipts and back it up and bringing the receipts and backing it up is really, really tricky in an
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environment where the Chinese don't let you know anything and the organs of power and the organs
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of the state and the public health bureaucracies in the West are allowed to create enemies needlessly by
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alienating the Chinese and the World Health Organization needs China on board and in the absence
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of hard evidence, what have you got? You've got a bunch of really smart people with a hunch.
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How do you deal with a bunch of really smart people with a hunch?
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The Western media, you know, the mainstream organs of journalism have not figured out what to do
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with that. So then you go to sub-stackland and podcastland and you get some people who exude charm
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and charisma and authenticity and who are willing to have those conversations with people who have a
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hunch. But then there's no way of filtering the people who are really informed people with a
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hunch who are sane and measured and doing the Bayesian work of balancing probabilities well
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enough to put together a coherent worldview that is not, you know, tumbling off down the rabbit hole
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to conspiracy land. It's very difficult to separate them from bad actors who've always had a chip
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on their shoulder about the establishment who've always had a chip on their shoulder about not
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being listened to and finally find an opportunity for line light and fame by being the brave dissenters
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who stand up to institutional corruption by telling you the real truth, the secret truth,
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the elites don't want you to know. Like it's a fine line between those things sometimes and there
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are some issues on which you go back and forth. Six, eight months ago, I would have said that people
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who believe that the that COVID came from a lab were in the latter camp. Now I believe they're in
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the former camp, but that's just because I've just heard enough of them speak enough sense.
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You know, so I think we have to find a way for mainstream institutions to incorporate a little bit
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of the tap dancing pizazz that think that people like me and the other people in this alternative media
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sphere have. We need to, and that's what, I mean, that is the job of my career, right?
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But the job of my career is to make mainstream media make more sense and be a little bit more
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courageous and a little bit more less group thinking and a little bit more willing to touch things
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that it doesn't like touching and to get its hands dirty and to talk with people from a wider
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range of points of view and to not be afraid of triggering trip-wise that it thinks might cause
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cancel culture conundrums, like just basically have the mainstream media man up a bit and grow
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up here and start to talk about shit the way that human beings around the dinner table or at the
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barbie actually talk about them instead of in this very pontificating proper manner. And then on
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the other hand, I also want to create a minor media empire here on a comfortable conversation
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where we can really go one step further consider things that would not be legitimate to consider
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in the strictures of mainstream journalism at the public broadcaster and have conversations in
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completely bullshit ways that are definitely going to piss people off in a way that you can't
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when you're holding the mantle of the most prized broadcasting institution in the nation.
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So I think you need both of the things probably. It's much riskier
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dabbling in sub-stack land and dabbling in, I mean, for the full society, for culture, not for
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me as a producer, but for the consumer because it's harder to figure out what's true.
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For all of the faults of the mainstream media, the reality is that the newsrooms at the New
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York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post and BBC and the ABC and 60 minutes
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and so on, these are places with an enormous amount of institutional know-how about how to figure
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out what is factually true and factually untrue. You'll need your three sources. You know,
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the editors will constantly be coming back to journalists and saying, you haven't got it,
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you don't have the story yet. You have to go here. Are there big blind spots about the stories?
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They choose to cover, yes, is there a political sort of group thing about judging some people
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at higher standards than others and, you know, making, giving a pass to a Joe Biden that they might
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not have given to a Donald Trump, yes, humans are human beings. But that's why you erect institutions
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like newsrooms and journalistic protocols and editorial processes and self-correcting mechanisms
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and internal ombuds people and so on to try to fight against that. Substacle land has no such
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restrictions. Substacle land is a free for all. So you've got to be careful about who you're listening
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to in those environments. And I still think that traditional media roles like the ABC are the best
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place for a journalist to try to foster more open discussions. I don't get much pushback.
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I really don't. I talk about the things that I want to on the ABC. I have to talk about them
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very, very carefully. And in some instances, I know that I'm then going to have to devote a half
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day to responding to frivolous complaints that come from activists who want to shut down the
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conversation. But if I'm willing to pay that price, I've never had a senior person at the ABC
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come up and to me and directly say, don't cover this. There might be squeamishness. There might
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be pushback from producers who think, oh, there goes Josh banging on about his hobby horses again. Why
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do we have to talk about royal dial being updated and having the word ugly taken out of all
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of royal dials books? Why is he banging on about cancel culture? That's fine. They're allowed to
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do their shows and I'm allowed to do my show. And as long as I have the privilege of doing a show
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on the ABC, I'll be basically talking about whatever I want to. And as long as that's the case,
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I think traditional media trumps the alternative media. That doesn't mean that I'll still think
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the same way in 12 months time. Question number three, what daily mundane task are you looking
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forward to automating in the future from Bert on Twitter? That's a goody. Also, as an aside,
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I should mention, I don't know if you saw my newsletter this week, but we got news from Substank
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that the number of you who are converting to paid memberships is like off the charts. So thank
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you enormously. Like most, almost most people are paying and you do, we're still in an environment
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which you don't even need to pay to get all of the good stuff. You do need to subscribe to sub to
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the Substank to get everything, but you don't need to pay yet. So I'm actually frankly baffled
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why so many people are willing to do so. But thanks. Literally, our contact at Substank said that
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of the 75 shows that he handles only one has a higher conversion rate than this show than you
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people. And that is a Christian show whose audience he pointed out are very familiar with voluntarily
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donating money to things that they like because they're Christians and they do it all the time with
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their church. So you people are basically in the church of zeps and I love you for it. The other
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thing that it does point to though, if we have an enormously high conversion rate of people of
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Substank subscribers who are paying is that by implication, the flip side of that is a lot of
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you are not bothering to sign up for the free sub stack, right? If a an overwhelming
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proportion of the people who have subscribed are paying, you would expect there to be a larger
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in between group of you who are like, you know what? I don't want to pay, but I still want to
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get some more stuff. So I just want to clarify for you some of the things that you get on the free
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tier, you still get, are you aware of this? If you haven't actually entered your email address and
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all you have to do is just Google Uncomfortable Conversation Substank and literally just
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subscribe, you enter your email address and you go, okay, and then you click free and that's it.
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That's all you do. This is not a long drawn out process. You don't have to go into your podcast app
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and how do I get to the premium feed or anything like that. That's all you have to do and you will
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get the, you create your own premium feed and that happens at Uncomfortable Conversations.substank.com
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slash listen. After you've subscribed, it's slash subscribe, but let me just explain to you.
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As of listening to this, if you're listening to this within like a week of it coming out,
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you're still entitled on the free tier to get all of the bonus episodes and all of the premium
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content and all of the additional content that I do on all of these episodes. And I mean, I don't
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to tell you how to rip me off, but you could just go back to all of the episodes that we've
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released since the substack launched in like, when was that November? And you can go through
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in your, in your new podcast premium podcast app and just download all of the premium
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podcasts from the fast few months. And then you will be able to hear all of the, I mean,
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quite apart from anything else, forget about the bonus episodes that you get. You get an additional
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sort of 10% of the entire episode of me interviewing some of the most interesting people
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who you want to hear from in the, at the end of the episode that you haven't previously been
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able to hear if you're not a subscriber. So like with the last episode Tim Urban, who I absolutely
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love. And I, if you haven't heard that, please listen to Tim Urban and please listen to the first
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time Tim Urban was on the show, which was arguably even more fascinating. He's a genius. But like,
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at the end of the last episode of Tim Urban, I asked him these first date questions, right? And
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it's not directly related to the things that we've been talking about. But it is things like
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if you could have the answer to any one question, what question would you want the answer to?
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Like when a mind like Tim Urban has to wrestle with that question,
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if you could have the answer to any one question, what question would he want the answer to?
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And when you have the opportunity to hear Tim Urban's answer to that,
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and the only cost to you of doing that is googling uncomfortable conversations,
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substack, and entering your email address and subscribing to the free tier. And then yes, press
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clicking on, set up my podcast feed. And then it gives you a, it gives you a list of all of the
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podcast apps and you just click on your podcast app and it'll open up the, your personalised
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free feed in the podcast app. I've covered all conversations on substakes.com slash listen.
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When you have the ability to hear him answering that question or when you have him to,
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when you have the ability to hear Tim Urban answer the question, what is happening now that in 20
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years people will look back on and laugh about? Or when you get the opportunity to hear him answer
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the question, what is the worst movie that he's ever seen? Or what appliance in his house
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aggravates him the most? Or what's the best meal that he's ever had? Or what ability has he always
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wanted to learn? And you hear his supercharged brain speculate about all this stuff.
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The fact that, I mean, God bless so many of you for paying for the whole thing in which you get,
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you know, you're going to get web chats with me and live cocktail chatters and the zooms and you
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get all of the premium content. I mean, that's great. But the fact that more of you haven't
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subscribed to the free version while tons of you are subscribed to the paid version,
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there's obviously some mismatch in communication here. There's something that you think is harder
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about subscribing to the free substack than it is. Or I just have really rich followers or really
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devoted followers in the religion of zeps. But anyway, this is just my pitch. Before the paywall
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goes up on the free subscriptions, get in on the free subscription. If you just, if you haven't subscribed,
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get in on the free subscription now, go back and download to your device before you lose the right
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to do so. All of the premium stuff, you can listen to it at your own leisure. You're not going to be
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kicked out of it if it's already downloaded onto your own device. But like I say, changes are a
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common, my friend. And if you've never bothered to sign up to the substack yet, then do so.
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Uncomfortable conversations or substack.com slash subscribe. But the main point of that was just to say
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thank you so much for having this ridiculously high conversion rate. Insanely absurdly unprecedented
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the high conversion rate of people who are subscribing and paying. So if you're one who's
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subscribing and not paying, then you're missing the boat. And you're not on the same page as your
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colleagues. And if you haven't subscribed at all, even more so. What daily mundane task you're
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looking forward to automating in the future asks, but this reminds me of Oliver Birkman,
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who if you haven't listened to that episode, listen to that one. 4,000,
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what is it? 4,000 weeks? Is that the number of weeks we've got alive? I think that's the name of
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his, now I have to Google myself to just just a fact check. I think it's 4,000 weeks is the,
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yes, that's right, the number of weeks that in a human's life. And I could answer with the daily
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mundane task of, I don't know, doing the dishes or something. I mean, I know we have a dishwasher,
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but it's annoying having to put things in the dishwasher and then having to clean the things that
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don't go in the dishwasher and having to online the dishwasher. Like there are all of those things,
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but you know what, really?