Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "What Happened To The IDW?" with Ross Anderson

Transcript

"What Happened To The IDW?" with Ross Anderson · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Do you have any friends who have become a little too obsessed with certain dangerous
• 0:12
  ideas and have had their brains Twitter fired or online fired who are starting to do their
• 0:18
  own research about secret things like vaccine side effects or how the climate hoax is being
• 0:25
  perpetrated by the left or lockdowns were actually a way of getting us all used to the barbarity
• 0:32
  of authoritarianism so that the United Nations can swoop in and enslave us all. It may not be
• 0:37
  that extreme. It may just be people who've me and a little off the path of what you might regard
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  as being insanity. I have many such people mainly in my professional life, not my personal life,
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  thankfully. And I wanted to understand more about this phenomenon, about what's going on.
• 0:55
  When I spoke with Sam Harris a few weeks ago, the vast bulk of the reaction that that podcast got
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  online was arguments about the intellectual dark web and whether or not people like
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  Majid Narwas and Eric Weinstein and Brett Weinstein and Dave Rubin and Sam Harris and Douglas Murray
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  and a bunch of other names whether these cultural commentators who are regarded as being part of
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  these sort of alternative media ecosystem, a combination of scientists, critics, commentators,
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  podgasters, whether these people were always doomed to be tinfoil hat wearing conspiracists or
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  to varying degrees one or another, they sort of just meandered in different ways off the path
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  and why a disproportionate number of them had done so. And some people are very angry at Sam
• 1:54
  for ever having quite a quote platform with these people as if like platforming is the thing.
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  I get frustrated by that term. You know, it's possible for me to platform or not platform people
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  on my radio show on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation because that's the public broadcaster
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  and it has a certain imprimature on it. But on my own podcast, on my own gig, I mean,
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  I can talk to whoever I want to. It's not really like platforming them, it just depends on whether
• 2:19
  or not you ask them the right questions. I could talk to, you know, I don't know, Vladimir Putin
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  wouldn't mean that I'm endorsing everything that he does or that he says. So any who, there's this
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  big debate about like was it ever appropriate to be in cohort with these people and in conversation
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  with these people in the first place where they always doomed to be crazies. And during that
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  process, today's guests hit me up and said, would I be willing to talk about Dave Rubin for an article
• 2:46
  that he was writing. Now Ross Anderson's a journalist who's better respected amongst important
• 2:53
  people than he is known amongst the lay. And I'm hoping that that can change because he's done
• 3:00
  a huge and magnificent piece about the online right wing gay commentator Dave Rubin in
• 3:10
  Quillette. It's called all about Dave, the tragic rise of former comedian, liberal, and Angelino
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  Dave Rubin. He's also written interesting pieces about Stephen Crowder. I mean, basically this whole
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  sphere is his beat. He writes about American culture and politics. He's written for LA magazine,
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  the dispatch, the American conservative, arc, digital, spiked, downspoken, tablet, the whole
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  bunch of places. In fact, he was a he was a fellow at tablet magazine. And David from has been
• 3:40
  tweeting favorably about his his article on Dave Rubin, Eli Lake's been tweeting favorably
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  about his article on the collapse of Kanye West, entitled Black Skinhead. Basically, I wanted to
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  pick Ross's brain about what's happened, but what's great about Ross is he's a smart enough guy
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  that our conversation naturally meanders into other areas such as is the criminal justice system
• 4:04
  racist and is chat GPT really conscious? And if it is, is it racist? And will we all ever get along?
• 4:12
  Anyway, I had a great time. I hope you enjoy this one as well. A conversation with the one
• 4:16
  that only, Ross Anderson.
• 4:28
  David says maybe I look at people like complaining on that, like Google search quality. And it
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  always strikes me as very odd, because I haven't used Google in like four or so years,
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  because I use I use Fivaldi as my main browser. And then if you used like Neva's, my search engine,
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  I tried brave for a while. And it's it's an odd thing where it's I think it's one of these
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  situations where I find this with like YouTube too, that people think that their subscription,
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  their subscriptions box, whatever analysis and that their Twitter experience is whatever analysis
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  is. So you judge it against that. And you kind of forget that no, this is tailored to you.
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  What's Neva? So Neva is, it's actually supposed to be premium, but frankly, they haven't really,
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  like it's supposed to be a paid service that you pay $5 a month for, but they haven't really
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  not sort of set up the model well, because there's a free tier that gives you basically everything
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  you need. And it's a private search engine that it allows you to integrate as well your own file.
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  So like thank you Google Drive and office. So you can search within terms. So if I'm searching
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  something about Josh's apps, for instance, it will search the net just as any other search engine
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  will do, but it will also show any of my emails with you or the sort of thing it'll show up your
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  Twitter. And it allows really great integration. It's it's just I found it a really great search
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  engine. Is the selling point that it's not stealing your data or is that yes. So it's it's it's
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  highly it uses a lot of data, but the whole point is there's no there's no advertising whatsoever.
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  So it uses the data for a really tailored experience. And so for instance, as well, if you search
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  like best TVs, right, there's in Google it's useless because it's just stacks of Amazon ads,
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  right? And neither it's actually curated based on sort of, you know, if a wire cutter has an
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  article on best TVs and they recommend for your budget option, you can spend $7,000 on TV.
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  And they'll sort of tailor that for you. And I just find it just and then it also does the
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  brave search does this as well. They do conversation snippets I think they're called and it's basically
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  so it shows you within Reddit or within, you know, different sort of web, you know, code
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  code snippets and the sort of things. So if you want to search out how to add some widget on your
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  HTML, you can just type it in. How do I do this? And it'll show you up the code snippet from
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  some other forum where someone's disgusted or, you know what I mean, this sort of thing.
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  It's, I mean, ends up being really handy. I like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't move back to saying
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  with like Vivaldi, my browser, just the same sort of things where there's these tools that you get
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  used to. I jump on a relative's computer to help them something and I'm like, right, yeah,
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  this is what Google's like. I forgot that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny because I've tried a
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  bunch of, well, not a bunch. I've tried like duck duck go and the usual goes and nothing is nearly
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  as good as Google search. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the way the reason I flow with the flow with duck duck
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  to go is that they largely, basically, you have a couple of search APIs that everyone sort of
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  jumps off. So a lot of private search engines, they are basically just using Google's or things.
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  So duck duck goes reliant on things internal search. So you're essentially searching Bing with lots
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  of stuff stripped down and some of that's why that's why it's magic source. Yeah, they have more
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  stuff in it now. They had I wrote a piece for tablet on search engines a while ago and at that
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  point, they were more Bing reliant. They're less so now and Bing has improved too. But that is
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  the main problem. Whereas Niva and Brave both use their own unique search, which is why you tend
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  to get better results. Brave's pretty good too. If you use like Brave browser, it integrates well.
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  So yeah, I think it's one of these things that we're going to get premium software of this kind
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  as people are more conscious that they don't want their data leaking everywhere. But also we don't
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  want these fully private no data solutions A or they're not practical and B, they strip you
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  of a lot of features you want. That integration, that really customization, that's great. That's
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  what we want. We just don't want it that, you know, I can buy access to a million people's
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  information for five bucks. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, I'll try it. I'll check out the Vivaldi.
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  Yeah, what got you interested in the international, the international dark web makes it some
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  international. I'm going to try purchasing things in that. Yeah, the international dark web.
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  The wine scene gives you pirated movies. That's right. I'm sure he probably does at some stage.
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  So what got you interested in the intellectual dark web or are you just interested in Dave Rubin?
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  So sort of a bit of both. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't write an article on other figures of the
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  international, I'm getting your stuff now. In the dark web, the IDW, I wouldn't, I probably wouldn't
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  write a piece on another IDW figure. I wouldn't write a piece on Brett Weinstein or something like that
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  because I don't find them sort of personally interesting enough from a story perspective. I
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  found their ideas interesting at point. So, you know, some of them I still do. But their story
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  isn't necessarily interesting as people in a way that makes for a compelling article.
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  That was different for Dave because I found his story to be genuinely quite interesting and
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  unusual. But I really, well, I think that there's this A he's very archetypical in terms of
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  this disaffected liberal. I mean, I sort of fall in that vein. I think you and I both do sort of
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  annoyed by, you know, I pay for the New York Times and I, you know, I like a lot of the New York
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  Times and I'm glad that David French is in John McWaters on the op-ed page and I, you know,
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  and I read great stuff and they did a great piece on bird flu. And then I read some piece about how
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  we need a recon, you know, everything written about the new weight loss pills are basically how,
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  you know, exercise doesn't matter. And, you know, and there's so many things on there that are
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  just absolutely maddening. So, I fit into that and so many just the, you sort of breaks it to a
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  complete denial on much of the political left that that immigration could at all be of any
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  interest to anyone and that could be of any concern or any reason. Exactly. Yeah. And same with,
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  you know, you only, you know, globalization with manufacturing, they're kind of only the only
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  reason to be concerned about that is because of some xenophobia and there's not like legitimate
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  reasons that people may be aggrieved about it. And so I, so I would sympathize with a lot of the
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  tenants of disaffected journalism if you use the phrase. And, and David is the, is the
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  archetypical example of that. He is cited in every article where the term is mentioned.
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  So, to add at it, because he did, because which is what's interesting. Yeah. Well,
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  I mean, just so what's interesting about, I feel like the first 10% of, what are we
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  explaining to people who Dave Rubin is? Should we start there? Who one is in the side out bubble?
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  I'm, first of those people, I kind of feel sorry for them for what I'm about to do.
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  But so Dave Rubin is, Dave Rubin, there's many things, but depending on when you stop in and
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  Dave Rubin's life, Dave Rubin is either a up and coming stand-up comic in New York, who comes
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  out as a gay and does more work in that space. He is a young Turks host of a sort of variety show
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  on there once a week. Young Turks was an independent YouTube leftling, YouTube now, but still the
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  most viewed YouTube channel all the time, I believe. Sorry, new YouTube news channel all the time.
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  And, and then at another point you stop in, he is a sort of independent interviewer in the
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  model of Larry King, who was a sort of who hosted him in his network and was a mentor to Rubin.
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  But if you check it on him now, he's going to be telling you that the war in a crane in Ukraine is a lie
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  and the vaccines don't work and sort of bootlicking of the most vigorous variety for
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  Ronda Santos. And, and, and he framed, actually just announced, I think, today a series of videos
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  he's going to be doing compilating his journey of leaving the left. And, yeah, and how much and he
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  milked out of this story of leaving the leftling at one point and you're a constitutionally conservative
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  hack, we get it. You thought you were left wing before you started thinking about things and
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  then when you started thinking as carefully as your brain is capable of thinking about anything,
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  you decided that you were conservative. That's fine. I think he is like, I think people, like I have
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  a line in the piece that that he isn't stupid, which I think is one of the most debated contentious
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  lines of the picture. But I genuinely don't think he is. I think it's an example of sort of
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  that old relative that relative you sort of vaguely know, who for all of his life just like
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  works on boats or something and then randomly out of nowhere one year starts going on about politics
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  and you're like, where did this come from? This is someone who's never cared about politics in
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  that life, but is then vigorously this just intense passion about politics. And I, I think
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  Dave is akin to that that he just he wasn't, he wasn't particular, he wasn't political in this
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  comedy much. He wasn't particularly politically interested in much of things that he wrote. The
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  only things that were interest were sort of gay cultural issues and tangential things about gay
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  marriage. But, you know, he was no Andrew Sullivan. No, never an intense thinking of the
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  philosophy behind it or anything. My goodness, there are so many respects in which he
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  is relevant. It's just one. It's just one. Yeah, yeah, literary style,
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  the ability, clarity of thought, independence of mind, shall I go on? I would even say wet.
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  Absolutely. His, his post about the, the balloon. And he, he requested somebody, Dave, not Andrew,
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  Dave asked somebody could somebody stand up a picture of Eric Swalwell's face on the balloon,
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  so the balloon is moving along by his farts or something like that. And then somebody
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  mocked this up and sent it to him, they re-tweeted it. And I kind of like,
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  somebody who has lessons to hours at the point of his early comment. So he was a congressman
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  who became quite notable because he was on, I forget which, I believe, a security committee,
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  but was notable because he slapped or knew with the Chinese spy, which was on his stuff,
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  and his sort of one of these, one of these, one of these people who I think is probably if an
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  okay average member of Congress, among the hundreds that are there that otherwise would be
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  unremarkable, except unfortunately, he locked onto Twitter and therefore spends much of his time
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  you know, being energized there in a way that is personally unflattering, but probably
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  increases his donations. And there was some incidents where he, on Mike, there was a noise
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  and people just got ginned up among various people. Because it was a fart. Yes. And maybe it was,
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  I don't care. I mean, to be right, it took a deriving all of your kind of, like, your
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  lulls from so far inside the bubble. Yeah. The amount of, the amount of two online things that
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  you need to know to even get the joke about the balloon and Eric swallwell is like, I'm
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  climbing fucking mountain. It's like a levels of complexity, not complexity, but you don't,
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  I mean, levels you have to get for a new job. You need to know about this, you need to be upset at
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  this obscure congressperson. Anyway, we can go into the, I mean, it's again, it's not the worst joke
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  about the balloon that's been out there, but it's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. Yeah. Okay, so he's
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  a, he's an apolitical stand-up comic who gets essentially becomes political when and why.
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  So in his, the exact, it's a gradient. It's not like, you know, the term somebody was radicalized
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  is used a lot by glossy magazines and it's nice to pen a specific point at which something
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  does it. Dave is not quite that. It's sort of, you know, that's that quite about like bankruptcy
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  about it very slowly and then all of a sudden. Yeah, it's really slowly and then. Exactly.
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  You know, so we had a polyside degree he would make jokes about Bush occasionally about how he
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  was a retard and stuff like this. So very light engagement with it through his stand-up. Then he
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  goes into radio. This is after coming out and he sort of talks about gay issues more. His radio
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  show is a sort of quite a very light take on gay culture and affairs, interviews people from like
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  Don Jr. to some of the people in the view who he was a big fan of and this sort of thing. And so
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  again, none of this is very political at all. And then he gets this opportunity somehow links
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  through Kelly Carlin, George Carlin's daughter to work at the Young Turks and the Young Turks
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  is the, as we say, sort of a left-wing YouTube network that they do a menu show,
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  hosted by Anna Kasparin and Chek Yuger. But they also did at the time a range, and this is 2013,
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  2014, they did a wider range of offerings. So they did sports programming and they did TV and film
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  stuff. And in the case of Dave, they were bringing him on to do a sort of a panel show where he'd
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  bring in some comedian friends that he hadn't known like Melissa Roush who ended up on the big
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  bank theory who he had met doing stand comedy. And he would sort of bring them on to talk about
• 19:00
  the sort of light topics of the day. There was, you know, one of his still, his most popular clips
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  on his YouTube channels from this period of like, of meically for the porn star stands up to her
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  haters and tell condoms have got more fun and quite a lot of coverage of like sex robots.
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  Hard political stuff. So in his mind, it was at this point that he became that he was, you know,
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  very left-wing and this was, you know, he was a hard lefty, you know, blah blah blah.
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  But really that isn't really evidenced in his material. It seems to me very likely that he picked
• 19:37
  up some things through Osmosis that if you're just working at a place and people all around you
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  have a particular worldview in your political environment and you see yourself as hosting a show
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  that's on a political network. Then I think it's not surprising that one would accrue certain
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  views by being there. If you work at a restaurant, you'll have more views on food. You know, like it's
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  it's simple as that. I think you can pick some things up. But it's only when he starts doing
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  what once he leaves there and then leaves the network he goes to and goes to Larking.
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  It's only there when he starts doing interviews and more interviews that he starts
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  changing. He starts becoming persuaded by various arguments or made by his guests and
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  maybe you can argue the validity of them but the reason many of these arguments were so persuasive
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  is not necessarily because they were particularly interesting or persuasive arguments. It's more
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  that he hadn't been a very politically engaged person beforehand. So it's not as though he could
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  steal man the existing argument that they were rebutting. But what's that? This doesn't make
• 20:46
  much sense because the first people, the first politically aware people who he's surrounding himself
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  with are on the extreme left. Why doesn't he go down that rabbit hole? I mean if the explanation
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  is he's just he's just absorbing through Osmosis whatever's around him and sort of regurgitating it
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  and doesn't have the the breadth of political understanding to strengthen the opposing ideas
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  that his cohort are attacking. Why doesn't he just like a little duckling go along with that?
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  It just keeps swimming in that pond. I think the reasons would be two front. One you could
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  simply say is a matter of time which is that when he's doing his show he is trying to build out his
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  own independent thing. He's doing quite a lot of these conversations and it's happening quite a lot
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  and bringing in guests. He's wanting to be friendly with them and that's his whole atmosphere.
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  So you're more inclined to that. Whereas though he did work there he was doing it. It's a once a
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  week show. It wasn't though he was doing eight hours a day at the news desk and in the
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  writers room and this sort of thing. So that's one argument. I find that somewhat persuasive
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  to a degree. The other issue is that he has been a very strong Zionist. That's the one belief that
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  he sort of kept from college all the way through and the young Turks, I'm not sure if this
• 22:19
  shocks you. It doesn't necessarily have as favorable view of Israel. So I think that sort of
• 22:29
  always put out of the way you just say Zionist in the context of the American right.
• 22:34
  It does not mean strictly what the term Zionist means, meaning just a person who believes that
• 22:39
  Israel should be a home for the Jews but it means a person who is gives a lot less weight
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  than the moral center of gravity of the planet does to the concerns of people who've been
• 22:52
  dispossessed, the Palestinians who've been dispossessed by the creation of the Israeli state and
• 22:56
  who've subsequently shatter upon and dispossessed. So he has sympathy for the Israeli hard right.
• 23:09
  To be fair I would say that I'm not sure how popular even the lighter form of Zionist
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  and simply the dictionary sense. I'm not sure how popular that is in the among sort of the
• 23:22
  on-tarts camp. I'm sure there are many. This is pure speculation. I'm sure there are people
• 23:27
  who hold a to the reverence of the sea view of sort of it shouldn't exist in the state.
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  So I think it just reinforces the polarization of American politics.
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  Yes, you have on the one hand people who say there are mad views everywhere.
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  Israel has a right to exist and therefore there's nothing wrong with forcing an entire people
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  to live in squalid open air refugee camps in perpetuity or the choice B is that the Jews should
• 23:59
  be driven from that part of the world altogether. You have no other option.
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  Yeah, there is no middle. There is no middle.
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  Yes, so I think that would probably be the other thing is simply that
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  I mentioned this in the piece that he had wanted more money for the show when he was there
• 24:31
  and he didn't receive that and started viewing their network in a far more negative light after that.
• 24:44
  And whereas when he started doing his own show, people on the American right were
• 24:51
  sort of very keen to talk with him. They were very happy to have someone who
• 24:56
  sort of did a show like Larry King that was willing to talk about, you know, air
• 25:01
  pro-Trump views, which I do think is a genuinely beneficial thing and the long form conversations
• 25:07
  are good and that, you know, you will not find a fan of cable news in me.
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  So whereas left wing guests the time that he had early on and the few that he did
• 25:23
  and other notable left wing people just became more critical of a very soft-handed approach that he
• 25:30
  took where, you know, Lauren Southern said that the Jewish party was founded by the American
• 25:38
  Nazi party or something like this. And, you know, Stefan Mollanyu hit a very soft interview with
• 25:44
  Mollanyu where Mollanyu talks about where Rubenos, like why is it that different races have,
• 25:49
  there's different violence rates between blacks and black and whites and he says like brain
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  size and stuff like this is, this stuff that is, if you're going to handle stuff like that,
• 26:03
  you need to be prepared to treat it in the right way and sort of quietly affirmative tone where
• 26:12
  sort of this is an anti-work guest, they're hate, you know, Katie Hopkins is hated by someone
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  left, you know, and you seem perfectly nice and then you sort of ignore the column where she says
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  that migrants or like cockroaches and she wants to see bodies in the sea and stuff like this is
• 26:26
  like purely like the term fascist is thrown around far too readily but it's hard to, you know,
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  it's hard to find something that could have been ghost-written by Muslim way more than that.
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  You know, and so the point is that the fact of the left trying to silence people and
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  canceling them and de-platforming them and just generally getting its tits in a tangle in an
• 26:53
  unseemly way becomes a pretext for them saying well now I'm going to elevate the voices of the
• 26:58
  people you're trying to silence because I'm a believer in free speech and look these are old
• 27:02
  fashion small, they're liberal values of like tolerance and free speech. So now let's listen to
• 27:07
  the content of what the cancelled person was trying to say. I mean, I have the, I run to the same
• 27:12
  problem all the time like to have a conversation about the unjust silencing of an issue, take,
• 27:20
  you know, the most glaring one at the moment which is trans issues, have a conversation about how
• 27:27
  to deal with pediatric transgender questions, you know, one would ideally want to all be speaking
• 27:36
  as with as much generosity and empathy and care as possible. And then someone will say something
• 27:46
  which is a bit offensive, that person will get a hounded and pill-read and hung drawn and
• 27:52
  quartered. And then one's instinct to object to the to that overreaction motivates me to want to
• 28:00
  talk to that person about the experience being excluded from public life. But in so doing, you're
• 28:07
  also somewhat giving voice to the nasty thing that they said in the first place. So how do you talk
• 28:14
  about the meta question of what we should be allowed to say without also exacerbating the
• 28:21
  very parochial non-meta question of the thing that caused the offense in the first place. And
• 28:26
  you know, if you're a responsible journalist, then you wrestle with that question. And Dave Rubin
• 28:30
  has never even come close to thinking it's an important question to wrestle with. He'll just go,
• 28:35
  well, you've been sidelined by cancel culture. Therefore, let's give you a massive platform
• 28:42
  to just view whatever it is that got you canceled in the first place.
• 28:45
  Right. It's also there's a there I mean his intuition on this is instincts to sort of jump
• 28:52
  for it has served him well. And I think served the sort of dialogue, if you will, well.
• 28:59
  In terms of the notable two examples being Brett Weinstein and Jordan Peterson at the time when
• 29:05
  they were being sort of lambasted. I mean, particularly with Brett, like that was
• 29:12
  I think people it's easy to dismiss Brett Weinstein now because of what he says and does. But
• 29:19
  it is worth remembering how truly insane his situation was with this sort of
• 29:27
  enraged students chasing him around and over nothing. You might need to remind
• 29:34
  people and only know Brett Weinstein as a vaccine skeptic now what he originally did.
• 29:40
  Yeah, so he was a biology professor at Evergreen College, which is sort of a quite elite small
• 29:46
  college where he and I believe his wife also worked their head they're hiring. And he would
• 29:52
  be there for a while. He'd been you know notable sort of among the milieu of left leaning professors.
• 30:00
  And there had been this thing a sort of an annual walk out thing where black students would
• 30:08
  spend the day off campus and I think gather off campus to some effects. And one year they decided to
• 30:19
  inverse this where they were saying, I believe this is correct, correct me if I'm wrong Josh.
• 30:25
  And they basically said, no, we want to do it where white people leave campus. And Weinstein sort of
• 30:32
  went, well, no, I'm a professor. I'm going to be here. Thanks. I don't really agree with your
• 30:38
  movement. And that sparked a complete fire up where the dean was sort of chased into his office
• 30:47
  and surrounded by people. And he's sort of like, can I go to the bathroom and they're like screaming
• 30:51
  at him and send this sort of thing? Yeah, it was a truth. Yeah, truly mad. The fact that he was
• 31:00
  there was video of this. The fact that he was gesticulating with his hands as he was talking
• 31:04
  it was a white supremacist like gesture of power over them. And could he please keep his hands
• 31:10
  down by his side? And instead of saying, I'm the fucking dean. I will talk to you how I want to
• 31:18
  respectfully. And I will use my fucking hands. He was like, oh, you saw? Because he didn't want to
• 31:22
  be accused of being racist. So it was during this. It was, I mean, this was back in like 2017, right?
• 31:28
  I mean, this is, yeah, I mean, it was they supposed they sounded very good. Like this before
• 31:33
  I wanted heard of Black Lives Matter. But this was the canary and the coal mine to many people
• 31:38
  and certainly to Brett of something that was happening where he a Bernie Sanders supporting,
• 31:44
  you know, civil rights loving lefty was literally had to have police security at protection
• 31:51
  for his life because white college educated students, mostly white, were getting so upset
• 31:58
  that he was making an egalitarian argument for anti-racism rather than what they wanted him to do,
• 32:03
  which was to stick his white ass at home. Well, you know, only Black students were able to come
• 32:10
  to campus. And he was like, I don't think that's the best way to pursue equality. Like that was
• 32:15
  deranged. So really mad. Yeah. So that was that was Brett. And then how did Brett, where do we get
• 32:22
  to Brett as we wander down the path into into Dave's transition? So being that those his intuition
• 32:31
  to sort of chance to cancel to people pretty quickly, like in the bread case, that was quite valuable
• 32:36
  where he had very quickly, I believe sort of the weekend after this whole thing went down that he
• 32:42
  had a call with Brett and you know, they discussed the whole thing for about an hour, but also just
• 32:47
  other topics generally. Same with Jordan Peterson. It was one of the first venues that Peterson was
• 32:54
  speaking with was was too ribbon about the whole kerfuffle that happened with him. And again,
• 33:01
  like that that launched Peterson's journey to international stardom, which is quickly fizzled out.
• 33:10
  But but I think in both cases, there was nothing there's nothing indicative in in those two cases
• 33:18
  where you would think these people are going to change in a way that is very unpleasant. It's not
• 33:25
  surprising in either case necessarily. I mean like very left-leaning people being anti-vax is not
• 33:34
  exactly a new thing. Any Aussie listeners will be familiar with Mullen Bimby as not being
• 33:41
  a haven of right wing sort of, you know, the track center of Australia. Yeah, as traditionally
• 33:48
  you know, on the left. So it's not that surprising. And somebody who in in Jordan's case, I think
• 33:56
  it's not surprising. I think he has went to his expression. I think he said to Rogan about Sam Harris.
• 34:06
  I think he has gone off the rails in a variety of ways and a variety of topics driven by personal
• 34:13
  difficulties with a drug issue and consequently horrific medical journey to resolve that. But also
• 34:21
  that it's not surprising particularly that his sort of focus of of his arrangement on trans
• 34:27
  issues. It's the same issue that sort of sparked off his whole rise to fame. Imagine it is probably
• 34:36
  the one that's the most tragic for me out of all of these people. Because I I found
• 34:42
  and imagine that was was this is a person who was a sort of ex-Islamist who sort of reformed
• 34:50
  this wonderful book with Sam Harris a sort of conversation about between a Muslim and an atheist
• 34:57
  prominent people and it was sort of exchanging the differences and it was about tolerance and
• 35:01
  stuff. And he is now just a you know a conspiracy theorist of the most Alex Jonesian variety.
• 35:10
  I had not known this and I have actually something inside me has declined to go do too much
• 35:19
  research about where Marjit is now for that reason. But he was such a he's so smart.
• 35:25
  There's another thing he has to do that really separates a lot of these the rest of the IDW from
• 35:31
  Dave. You know some of these people are galaxy-brained people. I got a long
• 35:36
  shit for claiming and I think my episode with Sam Harris that James Lindsay and Eric Weinstein
• 35:43
  are geniuses. But I don't I stand by that. I mean they I don't I don't know and Lindsay particularly
• 35:49
  but but that may simply be that I've only seen people get broken by Twitter and I've only seen
• 35:55
  Twitter side of James Lindsay and as possible there's other sides of him I don't know I will
• 35:59
  be clear. I'm not saying I'm not saying they have a you know quite often very much not.
• 36:10
  But that is one of the characteristics of brilliant people. I mean sometimes they can be completely
• 36:15
  you know I'm just talking about strictly on an IQ level. I reckon if you have the new tests they
• 36:20
  would be in the in the genius band. That's just my hunch. Like I think like Eric Weinstein's
• 36:25
  the portal podcast that he did for a while was just like fantastic. I think his I would highly
• 36:31
  recommend to anyone listening to listen to his interview with Riley Reid the porn star. It is
• 36:35
  genuinely probably my favorite podcast episode ever. It's just such a great conversation. It's so
• 36:41
  thoughtful. He treats her seriously like a person. It's not. He even acknowledges that whenever
• 36:48
  people talk about sex in any context it sort of makes you giggly in a way which is just every
• 36:54
  podcast that talks about porn is like that. So no one ever talks about it in a meaningful way.
• 36:58
  And he pushes past that. He acknowledges it and then it doesn't color the conversation at all.
• 37:04
  And I like I just I can't give it enough praise as it's such a good conversation and you can only
• 37:11
  do that sort of thing when you are very open-minded you're very brilliant. And to be clear too I would
• 37:17
  separate the change of Jordan Peterson and Brett and Najid. I don't think Eric has changed in
• 37:25
  the same anywhere near the same ways. I think Eric's taste for conspiracism is slightly
• 37:33
  too keen certainly for myself. Yeah and I think he's understood I think that he has a big
• 37:39
  a blind spot about how the media functions I think. Oh yes that is enormous. Yeah he's
• 37:45
  he's extremely critical of like why isn't the media talking about this and why isn't the media
• 37:49
  talking about that. I think if he spent a couple of weeks in a newsroom he'd be he'd probably be
• 37:54
  disabused of much of that because he'd realize we actually are behind the scenes looking at a lot
• 37:58
  of stuff and then if it doesn't have you know a couple of sources and good corroboration then we
• 38:04
  don't report on it as news because it's not yet news like you're allowed to speculate on it but
• 38:08
  we're not going to publish something as news that is not you know that is just a hunch. And it's also
• 38:14
  there's no like a mentor of mine Mark Oppenheimer at Tablet like he talked about this with me where
• 38:21
  that there's there are rarely grand narratives that we that we want to string stories together
• 38:26
  you want to string the story of how X and Y is failed but usually it's not like evil
• 38:33
  conspiracy is rarely the explanation more often it's just sort of bundling incompetence and people
• 38:38
  with various different interests and you know when I see that a great example of this I would say
• 38:45
  is regarding the the confidential papers various paper scandals I think we probably both also have
• 38:52
  presidential confidential records because there seem to be bloody everywhere but like when it
• 38:57
  happened with Trump there was all these articles in all these in Washington Posts and your times
• 39:02
  opinion sections talking about how if any normal person was caught with these things they would be
• 39:07
  hung drawn in quarters which is true and then when Biden was found with them there were a bunch
• 39:12
  of articles about how there's no classification problem and tracking these things is really difficult
• 39:18
  and there isn't really a great system in place and that's also true but there's no way in hell
• 39:24
  those two stories are reversed as you know it's not surprising that one didn't come at one time you
• 39:29
  know but that's not that's not because there was some narrative it's not where you know the head of
• 39:35
  the you know the New York Times opinion board are going right we need to get we need to get Trump
• 39:40
  for that's right we need to defend the line for this it's more just that people have a blind spot
• 39:46
  about when the Trump thing happened a lot of left wing journalists are not thinking about yeah but
• 39:51
  there is no over classification problem because it was obvious that isn't why he did it and then with
• 39:55
  Biden because our intuition is to think he probably didn't leave this stuff malignly there then
• 40:00
  the next logical step is oh there's well this definitely comes because there's a classification
• 40:05
  over classification problem I mean I do think that you need to you do need to fight against that
• 40:09
  instinct yes so it's it's correct of a person like Weinstein to point out the hypocrisy and you know
• 40:15
  this is a right maybe you know you can you can expand this into the realm of the ever more
• 40:20
  reasonable person you know that's progressed to Matt Taibe and then eventually to to Josh and Ross
• 40:26
  obviously we are we are a perfect examples of journalistic impartiality and protection
• 40:32
  yeah of course I do everything flawlessly don't you know in the in the sense that we are
• 40:36
  interested in these things but we're also not you know we don't we're not deranged by by them
• 40:43
  but the so with the exception of and I would say that Eric has a has a as a very good point about
• 40:49
  the the group think of newsrooms and the fact that it's not worth the hassle to most journalists to
• 40:55
  cop the flak of trying to touch issues that are radioactive in or you know the contravene
• 41:01
  the agree wisdom of their peers and so they don't so there is a very you know exhausting sort of
• 41:07
  sameness about about the conventional media nonetheless that you know I also do think though that like
• 41:15
  you know to your point out earlier about you can only report things if evidence on when the
• 41:19
  Hunter Biden laptop story came out it had all the indications that this had been solstice that
• 41:26
  this had been even if it's even if some of this is real the story behind it is so ridiculous
• 41:34
  and the sourcing is so poor on how it got to there that the chance that this was sort of
• 41:40
  meddled with information seemed extremely likely also I'm wrestle with the time I wrestle with
• 41:47
  the reactivity of the media like do we always have to be reporting on the the jangling keys in
• 41:52
  front of our face like a toddler or like we are just a cat with a laser pointer and whoever is in
• 41:57
  in control of the laser pointer gets to dictate where we jump there was there was something just
• 42:02
  fundamentally fishy about about that drop in the sense that and there was in the sense that it
• 42:08
  had come into the possession of Rudy Giuliani just before an election and like why is it beholden
• 42:16
  me as an independent media journalist to dance to the tune of Rudy Giuliani when he wants to
• 42:22
  live a some salacious information like let me look at it I mean yeah I'm really conflicted by it
• 42:28
  like how long does that just mean that anyone who wants to with hold information from the public
• 42:34
  sphere for maximum partisan political gain can do so and there's nothing the independent media has
• 42:41
  no right to push back against that by choosing a timeline of its own on how it publishes and deals
• 42:47
  with that information I don't know my worry too is yeah my worry too is is that that intuition of sort
• 42:56
  of like let's not jump to Rudy Giuliani my worry is that I wouldn't trust my own intuitions about
• 43:03
  which is worth jumping for and that it wouldn't come out in some biased way it you know I wouldn't
• 43:12
  you know it's not surprising that the New York Post you know jumps very excited for it right
• 43:21
  and there are other news organizations that may have got it sort of and you know held because they
• 43:26
  didn't and I think it's the partisan leaning evolved there is relevant I do think too though
• 43:33
  that I do think there's an over coverage problem often where there are huge organizations like the
• 43:40
  New York Times CNNAP that have just enormous washing posts that have just huge stuff they're enormous
• 43:47
  they can cover you know national issues with you know thousands and thousands of journalists on
• 43:53
  stuff and it is good that they can sort of cover every story but I don't really see the value in
• 44:03
  every regional magazine sort of rewriting the story and sort of publishing it I don't see what
• 44:09
  yeah some you know some small newspaper you know some small magazine sort of if they're not adding
• 44:17
  something new like this is actually I just did a piece on the daily wire versus sort of Stephen
• 44:22
  Crowder Kufufl that's been happening the moment and it didn't make the thing but one of my chief
• 44:26
  issues with the daily wire is that they have a sort of news science that they pretend is sort of
• 44:34
  reporting and they say that what they're doing is sort of in you know providing something the New York
• 44:39
  Times CNN can't and more often than not they are rewriting stories from those publications
• 44:47
  where they air in those publications first and then are likely rewritten from those publications
• 44:53
  but are just adding in their own science essentially yeah yeah and I don't really see the value
• 44:59
  in that at all and I think that's that's harmful so I think you can I think I think the question
• 45:06
  often is like it depends on the publication depends on like who's remit you know like I don't
• 45:13
  you know one of the reasons I was a fellow at Tablet magazine and one of the reasons I love Tablet
• 45:17
  is that they do do longer pieces and they do sort of just what I they're the good judgment about
• 45:23
  what is an important thing to cover and they don't necessarily jump on a story simply because it's
• 45:29
  the trending thing on Twitter I think smaller publications should do that more often that you don't
• 45:35
  you know and also because it stops people from looking like edits um there was this thing with
• 45:41
  like chat GPT where people tried to get it to swear or say racial epithets or um or make you know
• 45:52
  it was the most famous example was somebody asking for it to write like a poem about Trump or
• 45:56
  something and it's refused on heated topics and then they also say about Biden uh
• 46:02
  yeah sorry I put something praising Trump and I said we don't I don't deal in heated topics and
• 46:06
  this is same for Biden that happily splurge or something up and the explanation that was given
• 46:13
  by many in the commentary it is this is the coded in bias by the people who are making this
• 46:21
  and not that no AI chat boats really are a bit of a black box and most of the people who are
• 46:26
  involved in this really have no clue and are basically as equally concerned as
• 46:31
  anyone else's and and also that chat GPT is not a is not an information providing vessel
• 46:37
  this is a comm you this is a conversation simulator it is doing what we do in text
• 46:43
  after just using to inform its conversations is all of the data on the web basically
• 46:49
  or or stuff that doesn't even exist like you ask it um this in semifora there was an example
• 46:54
  I forget who wrote the piece um but the great tech newsletter there and and they asked it's like
• 46:59
  who is who ran the English channel fastest on foot and it gives like three people in the times
• 47:05
  they did it yes obviously why this is failing the Turing Test still I had a comment on my radio show
• 47:11
  with a uh neuroscientist who who was under the impression that we'd already crashed through the
• 47:16
  Turing Test with things like chat GPT and I was like I don't think we have like because if you ask
• 47:21
  nonsensical questions it gives you straight-faced answers right um yeah so and it doesn't seem to
• 47:27
  have any curiosities of its own it doesn't it doesn't interrupt you halfway through and go but hang
• 47:31
  on I have a few questions about care bears what what what with care bears you know like it doesn't
• 47:37
  it doesn't exhibit any of the curiosity that you would expect from even an eight-year-old child
• 47:41
  but what I mean by it being an aggregator of all the information on the web is that if there are a lot
• 47:46
  more conversations on the web about Trump being a divisive topic and there are about Biden being
• 47:51
  a divisive topic and if all of the conversations on the web uh about Biden are generally overwhelmed
• 47:58
  by you know the Biden's policy on China or what he's doing about is or what he's doing about that
• 48:03
  then of course a mindless chat pot is going to identify Biden conversations as not being toxic
• 48:10
  but Trump conversations as being toxic and I mean even just a rudimentary understanding of the
• 48:15
  kinds of people who inhabit the White House would you know lead you to the conclusion that there is
• 48:20
  nothing uniquely provocative about the Biden presidency in the way that there was about the Trump
• 48:26
  presidency so right it's it's harder to get railed up about railed up I should say sorry it's hard
• 48:30
  to get railed up about Ron Claim then yeah that's China figures you know I'm really Giuliani yeah
• 48:36
  right I mean part of the thing too is like these biases within a AI systems are really concerning
• 48:42
  like they are um you know particularly there's a quite famous example of one that was used
• 48:48
  in a prison system to basically surf the data of inmates and make parole recommendations based on
• 48:55
  that and what it was seeing was it was going ah so black inmates are have longer senses and are
• 49:02
  more of violence therefore they should have shorter parole and you know it's not intending to
• 49:07
  do a causal connection there and the recent one it's just looking at a statistic and it doesn't
• 49:12
  know what we go no that's not real and that's awful it's just looking at a data set you know if
• 49:20
  bold people in the prison had a we're there for more violent and considering skinheads
• 49:24
  that this they may well be it probably would do the same biases and that's like that's really harmful
• 49:29
  like what it probably does doesn't it probably it's since since bold people can contain the cohort
• 49:36
  of skinheads they probably isn't just genetically there's something wrong with them John let's
• 49:40
  speak the truth here I mean they but they probably is it's just that we're not keenly attuned
• 49:45
  enough to notice no exactly I mean that whole thing I still feel weird about I need to talk to
• 49:50
  someone who knows more about that than I do because is the is it that the AI is developing biases
• 49:58
  or is it that the AI is and this is a very politically incorrect thing to say is noticing realities
• 50:04
  that we hate and so we try to because it noticed that there is a higher incidence of criminality
• 50:12
  among the African-American population in the United States than there is among the white population
• 50:17
  I'm not sure if that's true but if that is true then is that the thing that it's noticing and then
• 50:21
  we go this is horrendous how race it's it's turning racist and is it I mean the problem there is
• 50:27
  yeah the problem there though is it's not necessarily that it's observational which you know
• 50:31
  if it were just during these trend patterns it would just be lots of patterns and lots of them you'd
• 50:36
  go that's nontensical yeah that's real but who cares like that's sort of my whole thinking on the
• 50:43
  sort of race and violence correlations of its demographics I just sort of fall in the sort
• 50:48
  Thomas Chatterson Williams Camille Foster sort of view of like why do we care about these
• 50:54
  demographic sort of separations so I sort of just like yeah that may be true but yeah but I'm
• 51:01
  just saying but just the issue for sorry go ahead well I was just gonna say as just as a cultural
• 51:05
  conversation rather than so I mean I think it was Glenn Larry who said you're not gonna have a
• 51:12
  conversation in America that makes sense to everybody about the over incarceration of African
• 51:17
  Americans until you can also have a conversation about the over representation of blacks committing
• 51:24
  crimes in America and because you can't have the latter conversation because it's politically
• 51:29
  toxic and considered racist you're never gonna have an honest conversation that actually resolves
• 51:34
  anything about the over incarceration of blacks because people will think people will smell a rat
• 51:39
  yeah I just I just don't even know if I mean my own particular bias is I don't know if even the
• 51:45
  over incarceration thing is there's there's there's an argument that America is heavily incarcerated
• 51:51
  but that doesn't necessarily mean it's over incarcerated the question is what kinds of crimes are
• 51:55
  people being present for I would I mean I'm I'm for full legalization of all drugs and all sex work
• 52:00
  so for me there are various crimes that I don't think should be criminal which sure that applies
• 52:06
  there but I have no idea how that fits into or you know no but I'm talking about the disproportionate
• 52:10
  incarceration racist and I understand that you and I and Thomas and Camille would say well that's
• 52:16
  not the that's not a metric that we should be getting hung up about we should be seeking justice for
• 52:21
  all individuals but the reality is that the the way that the conversation around racism in the West
• 52:26
  over the past five years is is such that the number one glaring thing is question is questions of
• 52:33
  racial identity like that's the that's the thing that we're all getting agitated about so
• 52:37
  that even when it comes when it comes back to the the AI recommendation there that's the the
• 52:42
  key there is recommendation that's the problem it's that it's making it's taking an observable
• 52:46
  thing which we can argue the value of and then it's inherently saying that it's valuable by making
• 52:52
  a recommendation based upon it like that's I like as I say like it if it's observing that bold people
• 52:59
  are have a higher statistical rate of violence within prisons which may well be true
• 53:04
  then it shouldn't matter if just your uncle Bob who got caught with a joint is in there overnight
• 53:10
  that it should say he gets no parole because he's probably in a you know a mass murderer and that's
• 53:16
  where the problem is it's a problem with with using these tools in an normative way in the same way
• 53:20
  that I think like chat GPT is super interesting and really fun and and just a revolutionary piece of
• 53:27
  tech but it's not a search engine just to cover it's it's unjust that my my ball uncle gets
• 53:35
  incarcerated for longer because bald people are more violent in prison but it's not biased
• 53:41
  is it well it's it's biased in a result that it produced I it's just not that I'm not saying that
• 53:46
  it has a inherent antipoles bias it just it has a pro causal bias or pro correlation bias I should
• 53:52
  say sorry it's just seeing any status and the same way that maybe I imagine there are fewer
• 53:58
  agendas in prison and I don't know what is a legitimate you know if if we know that alcoholics
• 54:06
  are more prone to recidivism then should you consider that an alcoholic who's going in is likely
• 54:13
  a to like are there categories where we go all right well here's a plausible causal connection
• 54:18
  between the fact that between the factor and the outcome so you know in which case I don't
• 54:24
  know maybe people who are on the autism spectrum are less likely to re reoffend therefore should
• 54:31
  they have lighter sentences would that be anti non-autistic bigotry you know like if Australians are
• 54:40
  known in the United States to be people who who are particularly pernicious in prison very true
• 54:47
  very true I you know should I have a longer sentence or be should precautions be taken against my
• 54:53
  wild Australian temperament when I'm put into prison or should I should each of us be treated
• 54:58
  as a completely brand new flower we are all the snowflake and there's no conclusions and correlations
• 55:04
  that can be drawn you could you could take that even broader I mean in terms of one of the prison
• 55:11
  reform sort of efforts that we that people would like is that all sentences are sort of you know
• 55:18
  that if you steal something from a shop that you know part of the reason part of the reason that
• 55:26
  crime reduces is based not necessarily on the severity of punishment but the sort of certainty of
• 55:32
  and the idea that you know shop you know shoplifting goes down when shoplifting is consistently
• 55:40
  prosecuted and it goes up a lot when the governor of California says that you can do it in the middle
• 55:44
  of COVID and so to the you know related to that there's an argument among prison reform people
• 55:55
  who go like it shouldn't matter what the situation is if you beat your wife that's just the standard
• 56:02
  sort of like a prescription almost in terms of you have x you get y you do x you get y which would
• 56:08
  suggest that we should punish people based on a set of things in that case it's a it's a behavior
• 56:16
  set that you're criminalizing for but we also recognize that you know that there are situations
• 56:23
  with people do things that are that are very different if if somebody steals something somebody
• 56:29
  robs the supermarket and then you arrive at the tent where they and they're starving children are
• 56:34
  we have a lot more empathy than if it's just a if it's a supermodel who just has a thing for
• 56:39
  a stealing crap um right and and and I so so I think there's a bigger question there of sort of how
• 56:49
  how we penalize my my thinking is that the my status quo bias if you will is thinking that the
• 56:56
  current blends that we probably that we have is probably the best um and to the same degree
• 57:03
  if somebody is an alcoholic and they go into prison for wife beating um then depending on
• 57:11
  the severity of their alcoholism and I guess their abuse we and how repetitive it is you judge it
• 57:18
  on on sort of as an individual as it relates to trends um so again if somebody is a not as a
• 57:26
  member of the cohort of our yeah yeah so in the same way of like if a bald guy comes to prison
• 57:32
  and it's for stealing it for being caught with a joint probably nothing to be worried about
• 57:38
  regarding his baldness right oh yeah yeah exactly that's my point if they shaved his head
• 57:45
  and had a swastik attitude on his scalp or exactly as alopecia if he's changed into his prison
• 57:50
  uniform and there's just enormous equals tattooed on his chest and he's going I really missed my
• 57:56
  bike and that leather jacket you know like if he's saying that and you're just sort of knives
• 58:01
  or falling out of his pockets um probably not an unwise decision we're showing our rampant
• 58:07
  bigotry which is which like isn't just right which meaning that if a neo-nazi who lives perfectly
• 58:19
  civilly in his town steal something there's a decent probability that he's going to get charged
• 58:25
  harsher yeah then a non neo-nazi which is awful for two reasons one because it has very little
• 58:32
  relevancy to shoplifting I don't think the furrow was keen on just sort of steel bagels
• 58:39
  but but the second the second point is that we we want people in prison for the absolute minimum
• 58:46
  time necessary because if you send more Nazis into prison all it does is increase the radicalization
• 58:51
  among a prison population so like there are unhelpful sort of observations of trends there I
• 58:57
  I don't know if you've ever read Peter Moscos this is a wild tangent but I don't know if you've
• 59:02
  ever read Peter Moscos's book in defense of flogging no it's a short book kind of yeah it's
• 59:09
  it's very fun um it's a short book and it's sort of a Charles Dickens mold of of a thought experiment
• 59:15
  there were you know of other and I have to match it Dickens throughout the Dickens observations
• 59:20
  by prisons and it's it's based on a contradiction which is that if say we're you and I Joshua both
• 59:27
  caught for shoplifting again and we're being there and the judge is told you know you're up first
• 59:33
  and the judge says you know Josh can get a lashing get 10 lashings or six months in prison
• 59:40
  then for yourself you'll probably choose the lashing because you like that hurts but it's over
• 59:44
  quick and that's my life back right but if you see some random stranger who got caught with the
• 59:48
  loaf of bread you don't want to it seems in just that people you know if we said all prison sentences
• 59:54
  if if a politician came out today and said we will be replacing all six month prison sessions you
• 59:59
  know sessions with lashings instead there would be massive outcry yeah exactly as poor people
• 1:00:06
  um which which the jests that there's either two things at fault there either we are sort of
• 1:00:14
  poorly calibrating how bad lashings are which strikes me is probably wrong it's probably just
• 1:00:20
  that we haven't been lashed before um lashings i imagine hurt like an absolute bitch but
• 1:00:26
  we also are really understanding how bad prison is um it's sort of prisons are kind of like
• 1:00:32
  nursing homes in terms of their things that exist and we can as polite society meant that court
• 1:00:37
  in the mouth is not sort of existing sort of people go there they vanish yeah I mean not saying
• 1:00:43
  they're actually severe but I'm saying you send people to a place they vanish you're you're sending
• 1:00:47
  your grandparents too but but also or same thing actually with kids in schools often right which is
• 1:00:52
  that part of the reason that it's so great to get your kids started schools as far as I'm aware
• 1:00:56
  is part of it's like great you know my day I don't have to have dick babysitter I don't have to
• 1:01:01
  you know looking after you're sort of disappearing someone conveniently for a period of time
• 1:01:06
  not that you're concerned obviously the same thing so my my comparison with nursing homes is
• 1:01:10
  no negative statement on nursing times I just more mean that you're functionally disappearing
• 1:01:14
  someone for a period of time yes and in presence that's super super bad because I'm also for
• 1:01:20
  a nursing home abuse it is also bad for that too but it's really bad in presence because it means
• 1:01:24
  that we sort of we we acknowledge that it's bad in jokes about dropping soap and in prison dramas
• 1:01:33
  but we don't actually think like hang on like what is the actual utility of this person who
• 1:01:39
  saps someone a drunken fight what is the actual utility in sending them more years story yeah
• 1:01:45
  my intuition Ross about the the choice of a vlogging over prison is also one of the
• 1:01:51
  unknowability of what's going to happen like there's a certain there's a company we like
• 1:01:55
  predictability and we like sort of knowing what we're going to get and for me if you could guarantee
• 1:02:00
  me that that prison was going to be the best version of prison Swedish prison yeah or you know
• 1:02:06
  there are a few in Newtath Wales here in Australia as well which are which are a model of you know
• 1:02:10
  you get to do crafts and you get you know you're everyone's happy supposedly if I knew if I
• 1:02:14
  knew it was beyond making ships yeah that's right if I should make it plus that no harm was going
• 1:02:22
  to come to me then I might choose six months in prison but the worst case scenario in prison is
• 1:02:28
  so much worse than a vlogging right that that you know I choose the better the devil you know
• 1:02:34
  so anyway let's pivot let's loop back from mental justice to the the galaxy brain human beings
• 1:02:40
  who are who are making these these determinations so I think we got there because of Eric Weinstein's
• 1:02:47
  concerns about the media and about the conversations that we're not having and these people being
• 1:02:52
  sort of geniuses in a technical term but you know when I use the term I would also say that
• 1:02:58
  you know a conspiracy theorist serial killer who has a big wall full of strings with pins in them
• 1:03:05
  that are connecting things that are completely random might also be yeah yeah it may also be stupid
• 1:03:11
  yeah they might just be finding patterns in in tea leaves where the patterns don't really exist
• 1:03:16
  so actually very much chat gpt to realize that it's finding patterns and things that it nobody
• 1:03:22
  doubts and AI is intelligent that's kind of the point yeah and it doesn't mean that what it's
• 1:03:27
  producing is not highly intelligent garbage that's right madaglisius has a good piece by the way
• 1:03:33
  about about this and about the poo pooing of the people poo pooing the the consciousness of the
• 1:03:41
  self awareness I suppose of artificial systems he's not saying they are conscious he's just saying
• 1:03:48
  the conversation that we have around determining whether they are conscious is going to rapidly
• 1:03:53
  disintegrate because we're holding them to a standard but even human beings are not really able
• 1:03:58
  to meet where it fuzzy in thinking about this like he gives a few thought experiments and then sort
• 1:04:03
  of concludes like to what extent am I not meaning making chatbot that is taking in things around me
• 1:04:11
  like how much of what we do is genuinely original thought like how much of us how much of what we do
• 1:04:18
  is day course on sub stack sort of how much of what we do is actually you know producing
• 1:04:25
  chikofsky or Shakespeare and how much of it is regurgitating things that we've collected
• 1:04:31
  like little bower birds yeah it's interesting I think the to the question of the consciousness
• 1:04:42
  argument there's there's that google engineer who claimed that google systems were
• 1:04:47
  conscious and this sort of thing and he was promptly fired and largely ridiculed from people that
• 1:04:52
  in the space and and I do think that it is kind of a question that we find appealing because it
• 1:05:00
  has so many like existential things it's sort of like are there is their life out there it's one
• 1:05:04
  of these questions that speaks to who we are and what mean what you know what we what our
• 1:05:10
  lies mean and the sort of thing are we alone you know if this thing is is alive and sentient
• 1:05:15
  and meaningful way is that you know what does that say about us and in that question of are we
• 1:05:19
  just a chatbot but I also do think in ai it is completely the wrong question the questions are
• 1:05:25
  about alignment and some house mixes point about sort of an ai targeted missile drone it doesn't
• 1:05:33
  really matter if it has thoughts about killing you or just just going to kill you it doesn't
• 1:05:39
  really change the outcome and I think there are more there there are far greater risks that are
• 1:05:45
  present that that are less being focused on because of these questions yeah but it's a small
• 1:05:51
  point and they don't change whether the machines are alive sure sure that's true that's my
• 1:05:56
  philosophical question but yes I do think in the same in the same case I think that often actually
• 1:06:01
  in a very Eric Weinsteinian point often the under discussed topics are become more dangerous
• 1:06:07
  precisely because they're under discussed where ai is novel and interesting and I think could be
• 1:06:12
  of extreme risk and threat in the future but nuclear apocalypse is by far a higher risk largely
• 1:06:21
  because there is a track record of insane levels of incompetence and near misses but we don't
• 1:06:27
  really give much focus and also because institutions like the sort of the clock of how many seconds
• 1:06:33
  to midnight is completely irrelevant and garbage so there's a few institutions that mention it
• 1:06:38
  are irrelevant and wrong done and then nobody else actually mentions that so we have a kind of
• 1:06:45
  inevitability bias if that's a term that I'm just calling and making a term that the way that
• 1:06:50
  things have the way that things did unfold in the Cold War was the way that they were going to
• 1:06:54
  unfold in the Cold War and so therefore the risk kind of been as bad as we thought that it was
• 1:06:59
  just because we happened to inhabit the future which is not a small rolling ruin of the past about
• 1:07:05
  looked at wasteland and that's even sort of an ignorance sort of result there again that returning
• 1:07:10
  to are we just a chatbot of its drawing causation from bad data where we see that and we're not
• 1:07:15
  acknowledging like the number of there was an atomic bomb that was dropped it fell out of a plane
• 1:07:20
  yeah that was being transported and it was because a door mechanism didn't work so it just fell out
• 1:07:25
  all the firing mechanisms failed and it was just one tiny little pin mechanism that stopped a
• 1:07:30
  giant hole being blown in the middle of America yeah and like a tiny pin separated us from that
• 1:07:38
  future and that happened repeatedly there's a famous example of the the Russian who saw like a
• 1:07:44
  there's a sonar radar detection and and and so the signal was instructed fire it's that's the
• 1:07:51
  new just being headed to us from the Americans fire immediately and it wasn't and he refused
• 1:08:00
  and probably saved us all yeah exactly ended up the chain where it would have been where he's
• 1:08:08
  suspected that that I think Chris chef would have right who it was British neighborhood
• 1:08:13
  Chris chef would have probably probably pulled the trigger yeah turned out to be a flock of birds
• 1:08:18
  and now we have the intellectual dark web because of that you know ups and downs you know we've
• 1:08:23
  got Eric Weinstein's galaxy brain and I say that in not as ironic the way as I as it sounds so
• 1:08:30
  not as to me anyway as it sounds because I think he does have a galaxy brain and that is probably
• 1:08:34
  the and so Eric and you know Sam Harris and I would even put Joe Rogan and like Douglas Murray
• 1:08:41
  in this group of people who are I think have remained fairly consistently credible intellectuals
• 1:08:49
  where I'm I'm always open to listening to what they think about something I think my only my
• 1:08:56
  problems with like Murray is my my two problems that I would say one is a I loved his book near
• 1:09:01
  near conservatism and I want him to write more stuff like that I sort of I'm annoyed that he
• 1:09:06
  this is just this is sort of like a fan like when Dylan plugged in the electric guitar and these
• 1:09:11
  like come on you know so I kind of you know it's made him a great living writing about culture war
• 1:09:15
  stuff and he does it extremely well so I can't bitch too much but I do wish he wrote some more
• 1:09:19
  you know you wrote a you know wrote more cultural stuff wrote some Oscar Wilde because he's
• 1:09:24
  he's extremely interesting I think he I think he is a sort of very it's easy to compare him to a
• 1:09:30
  sort of right leading Hitchens and I think he is worthy of that comparison but the thing that
• 1:09:36
  made Hitchens so great is that an essay collection can go between talking about foreign policy and
• 1:09:41
  about the Kurds and that it can also be an incredible piece about someone rushed it and we need
• 1:09:47
  more of the rushed aside from from I mean I wonder whether or not Hitch would have been
• 1:09:52
  deranged by the the incentives that our social media landscape produce to the day I mean it's
• 1:10:01
  arguable that Hitch was able to do that because the media that we consumed was not algorithmically
• 1:10:09
  selected for and so he was able to bounce around from New Yorker articles to you know wherever
• 1:10:16
  you know the London reveal books or whatever that would ping in his brain and then he'd you know
• 1:10:20
  follow a little rabbit hole and then clamber back up and then you know his vast brain would sort
• 1:10:25
  of find so many different interesting things was so much stuff is now curated through I guess the
• 1:10:32
  narrowing prisms of algorithms and audience capture and I would yeah yeah I wouldn't necessarily
• 1:10:39
  pen it on I wouldn't actually necessarily pen the difference on the algorithms as much I mean
• 1:10:46
  you can tangentially in terms of like Facebook at a Craigslist and then Facebook at all of the
• 1:10:51
  advertising money out of media so the reason why like the reason why you don't see my favorite
• 1:10:58
  essay by Hitch was a big sort of two of them are one is attribute to blow jobs and sort of talking
• 1:11:04
  about it as the American handshake and it's just a hilarious wonderful piece of writing and the second
• 1:11:09
  that was in that same spirit was him going away to I think Green Carter asked him to go away to
• 1:11:14
  like a health spa and the images alone are as good as the words which is rare particularly with
• 1:11:20
  words of the caliber of Hitch and it's him on a with sort of the facial smoking a cigarette with
• 1:11:25
  a glass of red wine sitting on a jimball and it's incredible right but part of the reason that he
• 1:11:31
  could do this is because the publications that time had an enormous amount of money where they could
• 1:11:36
  pay huge amounts for freelance articles and you go to these big pieces like you know I would love
• 1:11:43
  to do more pieces like that yeah to do pieces like that that is that is this is his work specifically
• 1:11:50
  is why I feel and and David Foster Wallace is too is is the reason I fell in love with writing
• 1:11:55
  and it's really really hard if you don't have a trust fund yeah and which is why so many in this
• 1:12:00
  industry have a trust fund yeah but um so I think that's actually a bigger thing I also think that
• 1:12:07
  he had such an interest because he covered so many things he had so many
• 1:12:12
  interests which I think is a really I think actually is a key distinction between someone like
• 1:12:17
  someone like Weinstein actually and and Rogan and Ruben where I think Rogan and Weinstein are
• 1:12:22
  and yourself are interested in a wide range of topics as well as culture war stuff whereas
• 1:12:28
  whereas Ruben's and Tyler Cowan I think is also a brilliant example to someone who's just a genius
• 1:12:34
  of the highest caliber on an infinite number of subjects where I'm curious in them like he
• 1:12:41
  knows so much about them because he is interested in all of them and I think one of the great
• 1:12:44
  issues for Ruben is he's not particularly interested in very many things whatsoever
• 1:12:50
  so I think because Hitchens was so interested in so many things it may meant he had a great
• 1:12:55
  social life connected to so many interesting people and also he was in infamous for being very
• 1:13:01
  financially improper not not very good he published new essay collections in books like this
• 1:13:07
  again essay collections think of the past but he published new ones because he would spend all
• 1:13:11
  the money between them and that would have to get a new book deal and like and so because of that
• 1:13:16
  I think that he had his material distractions in a way that I don't think Twitter would necessarily
• 1:13:22
  replicate so I would maybe this is my bias towards Hitchens love I tend not to think he would be
• 1:13:28
  deranged for the internet in a way that's nice maybe he would be Tyler Tyler's a good example of
• 1:13:33
  a person who's not yeah yeah but then maybe it was 20 years younger he would be I don't know
• 1:13:40
  but yes I'm not sure I assume as much as the internet as we do like or arguably more considering
• 1:13:46
  the speed that he can read so I don't yeah also part of that's you're the way that you manage your
• 1:13:52
  information consumption I think people just have a I think people don't think I think people swipe
• 1:13:58
  left on their phone and they get a Google feed and then they go on Twitter and they think that
• 1:14:02
  they're just sort of getting news conveniently delivered for them and they sort of assume that the
• 1:14:05
  way that a phone default gives them information is necessarily the best one for them and it's
• 1:14:12
  very convenient but it's sort of like teenagers if you give them a hundred dollars and tell them
• 1:14:19
  to do the shopping you're going to come back with many bags of crisps and lots of Coca-Cola and
• 1:14:24
  not much vegetables and you know and I think if people just need to get more in a habit of the
• 1:14:30
  free internet is over you need to pay for good stuff otherwise you won't get it and and you need
• 1:14:37
  to be more I think disciplined and curious where you need to if something isn't meeting a requirement
• 1:14:42
  you go I this is just showing me one thing you need to cut it more quickly or reduce it more quickly
• 1:14:47
  I need to look for new things more readily like I think Samaphore is the best thing to happen and
• 1:14:52
  use in about five years it's just so good that it's interesting I mean yeah it's interesting to
• 1:14:59
  imagine a Douglas Murray a Douglas Murray who remains less I mean I disagree with Douglas on
• 1:15:05
  a number of political issues he's much more conservative than I am but I should quickly say to my
• 1:15:09
  big issue with Murray my second one that I meant to say was his sort of his going issue that you
• 1:15:15
  mentioned to him you talk to him about on your podcast with him about sort of visiting Hungary
• 1:15:21
  and the sort of thing and his engagement with various things and I understand like if I was invited
• 1:15:26
  to to Victor Orban my guess is the sort of piece I would write it would probably happen once
• 1:15:33
  but I've always often wondered this if I did a piece in Tucker Carlson ever invited me on
• 1:15:37
  my guess is I would probably say yes but I would probably do so in a very Jamie Kershik on
• 1:15:42
  RT way where it is the one and only appearance and it was up in flames so I disagree with him there
• 1:15:48
  but I understand his explanation and I think he I think he says it in good faith too but I would
• 1:15:54
  maybe maybe I mean there's a there's a worrying footsie with authoritarianism on the right
• 1:16:00
  yeah there's also probably getting paid a shitload of money for these appearances so it's very hard
• 1:16:06
  you know it's very hard when somebody offers you 50 grand a nice hotel room to come speak for a day
• 1:16:12
  if you go oh no my dear old principals I really can't you know yeah um you since you mentioned
• 1:16:17
  David Foster Wallace I must mention I went on a cruise in December Ross and the entire time all I
• 1:16:23
  could think of was a supposedly fun thing I'll never do again.
• 1:16:27
  Foster Wallace's amazing essay about going on a cruise it was he was decades ahead of me on it
• 1:16:34
  but remains the seminal ear text of all cruising it's incredible if people haven't read it they
• 1:16:40
  must go and seek it out along with consider the lobster his consider the lobster is his his
• 1:16:45
  boss oh yeah actually the really interesting one was I had so I I'm a big film buff I used to
• 1:16:52
  say about 500 films a year I sort of turned it down to about 300 a year and and I I never liked
• 1:17:01
  Terminator 2 I always found it the the the genius of Terminator 1 is that you have you are it's a
• 1:17:08
  political parable of you have this Austrian voiced tyrant you know vicious presence that's hunting
• 1:17:14
  down people right it's like a clear parallel to Nazism and it's brilliant it works so well because
• 1:17:20
  it makes a genre film out of this political thing and then Terminator 2 is essentially saying but
• 1:17:25
  what if we used it for our benefit and I always found that really icky in a way that really was
• 1:17:30
  unpleasant I know you know people want to say like let's get politics out of film stop thinking
• 1:17:35
  about a political way and there are people great critics who now think about things films not
• 1:17:39
  overly political way but we also have to acknowledge there are politics and films and that's
• 1:17:43
  important you know why did you put politics in in starship troopers and it's like what are you
• 1:17:49
  talking about so so so I always like to do it so this is where it goes back to David false
• 1:17:55
  walls is he wrote a essay where he talks about where he says Terminator 2 is like this very
• 1:17:59
  fiscistic thing and I was like thankfully someone someone here is and Richard Spencer did a film
• 1:18:05
  podcast once the white supremacist and he did two episodes and I stumbled upon it somewhere in my
• 1:18:11
  deranged internet wanderings and the second episode was in Terminator 2 and I searched on to it
• 1:18:16
  and they're like yeah it's clearly true he is a Nazi and they're hunting down Jews and I'm like
• 1:18:20
  okay great there you go I'm not wrong they're just viewing it as great they're like yeah it's
• 1:18:26
  fantastic and I'm like hey so and then on the I can't believe when we're talking about like
• 1:18:34
  Hitchens and like Eric Weinstein and even Joe Rogan and Sam Harris I'm looping his back to
• 1:18:43
  imagine here because it just pains me that the name Dave Rubin is even in any of these conversations
• 1:18:50
  I remember I remember Miloianopoulos was on the film show and I've never seen Bill Marbe so
• 1:18:58
  stupid and foolish than in his forning over Milo at this moment of cultural of the culture wars
• 1:19:06
  where Miloianopoulos was putting on a big show about being this fabulous gay bread who would
• 1:19:12
  walk through the streets of Muslim ghettos in Swedish cities a top a throne a throwing
• 1:19:19
  prosthetic dildos out of you know conservative Muslims on a lark great prank you know I
• 1:19:29
  like I like how your criticism you're like really hate that that was great that was a good
• 1:19:34
  moment let's face it nonetheless you know a one trick pony with nothing nothing behind him and
• 1:19:41
  when Milo was on Bill Marbe show Bill was like you know who you remind me off yeah that annoyed
• 1:19:47
  the crap I don't know and I thought this is nothing could be Hitchwood think Hitchwood call out this
• 1:19:52
  frivolous like you know provocateur for the shallow attention seeking horror that he is I mean
• 1:20:00
  it could no one could be for the only commonality is that they're both brits in Bill's mind that
• 1:20:05
  was enough and for the actual sorry go ahead well I was just say for me Dave Rubin is Miloianopoulos
• 1:20:12
  but done with more strategy so he doesn't play him out so soon I mean they were friends
• 1:20:21
  right okay that's unsurprising but yeah and then there's so there's there's Dave and Milo mindless
• 1:20:30
  sheep who who essentially absorbed the reactionary ideas of the anti-work right and then become
• 1:20:39
  conventional right wingers fundamentally but you know I have just enough of an edgy provocateur
• 1:20:45
  about them to to still seem like they're not a stuffy Republican congressperson then you've got
• 1:20:53
  people who are brilliant and who've been derailed by conspiracy thinking like Marjard and Brett
• 1:21:03
  and then you've got the cohort of people we were just talking about the Eric's and Joe's and Sam
• 1:21:09
  would you I would I would bundle Peterson and with the deranged people would you
• 1:21:14
  yeah haven't focused on anything that he's done in the past 12 months the main criticism that I
• 1:21:18
  seem to see people throwing at him is that he's become very mean on Twitter which is not the same
• 1:21:24
  as becoming delusionally conspiratorial about facts of science I guess not nice to retweet
• 1:21:32
  a sports illustrated cover photo of a class size American woman and say sorry not beautiful
• 1:21:38
  but that's different to me than thinking that from persistently arguing that the world is being
• 1:21:43
  taken over by a cabal of United Nations right I do to be fair like that isn't the example I would
• 1:21:49
  cite I find that sort of more sort of boomer cringey sort of like I'm not sure if you saw the other
• 1:21:56
  day when a bunch of people on the online right said you know setting one's profile on Twitter to
• 1:22:02
  private would increase engagement or something and banded this and then Jordan commented underneath
• 1:22:09
  ban I can't retweet you anymore it's like oh no that's white that's what the private
• 1:22:14
  function does at Ben Shapiro tweeted you know did this set it to private and tweeted out I'm doing
• 1:22:20
  this and then underneath that Jordan was like it was true thought that yeah this private and look
• 1:22:25
  it may well be I don't I don't know my suspicion my suspicion is on it is that you it became a meme
• 1:22:32
  that doing this worked therefore when you did it and had seen other people doing it and had liked
• 1:22:36
  people doing it therefore they got it further recommend it recommended and they were comparing it
• 1:22:41
  with just general you know you know what I'm saying Ben I can't retweet you yeah which is the
• 1:22:48
  entire function of the private that's just what it that you know so I think that example is just
• 1:22:53
  people somebody not quite understand you know that's beautiful but yeah I find more like the the
• 1:23:00
  Elliott page thing and and where it's not it's you know I I couldn't really care about somebody
• 1:23:08
  dead naming an actor person I don't care that doesn't bother me but no I mean like I wouldn't do
• 1:23:15
  it I'm just saying like that doesn't that doesn't that doesn't think just arranges people on
• 1:23:20
  on both sides but it's calling people like calling them like you know barbaric you know the words
• 1:23:27
  that he uses to describe them goes beyond in the same way of like the ribbon uh the way that
• 1:23:32
  ribbon talks about vaccines or the war in Ukraine where you go there's a difference between somebody
• 1:23:37
  saying listen we need to be a lot more scrupulous about the money that's going to war in a country
• 1:23:42
  that has been infamous for corruption I actually don't agree with that I think that basically any
• 1:23:47
  sense you send there is a worthy investment for democracy and I would be happy to send endless
• 1:23:51
  amounts of weapons and money frankly but there's a legitimate argument against that like that's
• 1:23:55
  a healthy argument that's a very different thing of going this greedy welfare queen Zelensky
• 1:24:02
  parades in here showing off his tidy what you know like and stuff like that which is just you know
• 1:24:06
  and then Fauci is demonic and you know this satanic you know that Gavin Newsom's a psychopath who
• 1:24:13
  you know blah blah blah blah blah and there's a difference where it's not simply where somebody is
• 1:24:17
  being nasty on Twitter and that somebody's online persona is sort of a far more deranged sort of
• 1:24:24
  oversourced version of themselves it's where the focus is so solely in this very intense way
• 1:24:33
  that it is reflecting a set of beliefs that are attached to that do you know what I mean it's not
• 1:24:38
  you know it's not me going you know if I see you know a new jacket that came out from the new
• 1:24:46
  Chanel show and I think it looks fantastic I might go that's amazing and actually
• 1:24:49
  mark and I didn't literally out loud said when I looked at it go oh my god that's amazing on my laptop
• 1:24:54
  probably not but I'm saying you know I mean they're quieter but still one way in which this comes out
• 1:25:01
  again with trans issues is that you know there seems to be a desire on the right to portray
• 1:25:07
  all trans surgery as quote unquote mutilation especially if it's um you know on people I don't
• 1:25:13
  know whether the age of 18 or something this aligns the fact that there is a small cohort of people
• 1:25:19
  and it always has been everywhere as far as we can tell who really do truly feel like they're
• 1:25:26
  in the wrong body who really do genuinely feel like they cannot live with themselves in the sex
• 1:25:32
  that they were assigned at birth and this is a genuine phenomenon and this uh to say that
• 1:25:38
  treating those people is always and everywhere evidence of mutilation by criminal like physicians
• 1:25:46
  is just is hysterical you know you can you can have concerns about the the inadequacy of our
• 1:25:52
  mental health provisions for people who might be wavering or for people who aren't in that cohort
• 1:25:58
  but might all of a sudden exhibit you know claims of gender dysphoria or even simply that people
• 1:26:04
  are like medical or mutatine right or simply that medical institutions were too um enthusiastic
• 1:26:10
  if and that is not even you can say that like somebody needs antidepressants but if you go into a
• 1:26:14
  doctor and you're saying feel a bit down and they go okay here is x number of pills you go okay
• 1:26:19
  that's probably not necessarily the best response to be so eager right but it doesn't you can be
• 1:26:25
  yeah it doesn't matter that that doctor is uh you know is a criminal no they're misguided they
• 1:26:30
  might be too swept up in a particular medical fan um right anyway i want to let you go eventually
• 1:26:37
  Ross what what what how where does all this play out in your view i mean you spent more time than
• 1:26:40
  anybody else thinking about the this confluence of people and the forces that are motivating them
• 1:26:46
  and the ways in which they're being deranged um what's the what's the five-year or ten-year prognosis
• 1:26:56
  um
• 1:27:01
  i think it it depends on the person um i think i think margit is more likely to follow the milo route
• 1:27:10
  in terms of someone who gets so severe and in their views and associations that
• 1:27:19
  it's just become sort of impossible um for them to make their way back in a in a reasonable way
• 1:27:27
  where people would understand them like i think kanya is a more salvageable person given
• 1:27:32
  his clear like in kanya's case that if someone who is clearly a genius of the highest caliber
• 1:27:38
  also is clearly mentally on well at the highest level i wouldn't call kanya a genius in the strict
• 1:27:43
  intellectual total of genius no no no not but a creative genius list um you know
• 1:27:49
  whereas it's harder to it's harder to just separate out margit's turn from just who he is um
• 1:27:58
  in a way you know what i mean even if even if that's not true uh in a way that like i'm you know
• 1:28:03
  that kanya is anti-semitism like his bipolar is also him um so but but simply we we like to separate
• 1:28:11
  these things out because if something is unwell we like to think that people can get healed
• 1:28:15
  so simply socially he has a easier path back even though the conduct is more extreme um for
• 1:28:23
  someone like Jordan Peterson i think i don't see Jordan becoming more moderate or anything i think
• 1:28:29
  that um i think that the money is too good i think he he earns if you think like Stephen Crowder
• 1:28:36
  was getting offered 50 million over four years to be on the daily wire one imagines that
• 1:28:42
  joy yeah one imagines that Jordan Peterson is probably that we're higher um likely higher
• 1:28:47
  and this is such a shame in such a case of squandered opportunity it reminds me of what you were
• 1:28:51
  saying about Douglas Murray Douglas Murray could be Christopher Hitchens if he just
• 1:28:55
  banded his worldview um and talked about more things than just the culture wars i mean
• 1:29:00
  Jordan Peterson has had an invaluable impact on millions of young men who are just craving some
• 1:29:07
  sense of uh someone to to speak to the highest version of themselves rather than denigrating them
• 1:29:14
  as the as the most worthless version of themselves like you know stand tall with your backup straight
• 1:29:18
  clean up your room like these old fashioned as the kind of patriarchal figure of like get your
• 1:29:23
  shit in order stop blaming other people uh for for what's wrong in your life take responsibility for
• 1:29:29
  yourself dust yourself off and keep on trying like these are invaluable messages and if they end
• 1:29:34
  up getting subsumed in a miasma of kind of culture war hysteria and bitterness it's gonna be a real
• 1:29:40
  shame i do think i do think for those aspects of Peterson because the advice is sort of ever present
• 1:29:49
  is both ancient and and and timeless and these sort of things um that much of that is not simply
• 1:29:57
  Peterson's intelligence and wisdom there it is also charisma um and charisma is more easy to
• 1:30:02
  find new versions of so i wouldn't i wouldn't be surprised i would be hopeful to think that you could
• 1:30:07
  find people who are you know similarly thoughtful who come to prominence in some way and i think
• 1:30:15
  do in different communities they tend to be sort of attached to other things you know you're either
• 1:30:23
  yoga instructor who also has this stuff or a meditation and structure you know sam has some of
• 1:30:27
  the stuff with his meditation um and so i think this and that it can be charismatic figures in other
• 1:30:33
  ways that also carry these truths and because um because that was the main appeal in these
• 1:30:40
  ways for Jordan i think that that may just be picked the battle and maybe picked up by another
• 1:30:47
  the but i i don't see him like i pause i positively reviewed his second book in the american
• 1:30:53
  conservative and you know like he's a one of i think chapter 10 and it's this thing about suicide
• 1:30:58
  and it's one of the like i think it's just one of the most beautiful um sort of like important
• 1:31:04
  things i've read in a long time um it's just really a really thoughtful and honest engagement with it
• 1:31:11
  but also like that book sort of is six chapters of sort of trudgery through sort of where the first
• 1:31:19
  book is really clearly written um you could see that he was different by the second book
• 1:31:23
  where there's a couple of like three chapters of real greatness and then a couple of chapters of
• 1:31:29
  just some oddity in there and then sex of just like why this is sludge going into my brain
• 1:31:36
  so um with Eric i think Eric uh because of the the teal coupling um you know like he recorded a
• 1:31:44
  full season of the portal a season three he did a full conversation with Michael Malas he did a
• 1:31:48
  full conversation with Dave Rubin um for like three hours uh where they get into it apparently um
• 1:31:56
  that's not necessarily one i'm really eagerly wanting to listen to it but yeah um but there's
• 1:32:01
  a full season of the portal out there that's been recorded apparently and hasn't been released
• 1:32:05
  yeah yeah a season three um and he's you know and and he he drifted he seemed to drift away from
• 1:32:11
  Twitter and get used us for a bit less so now he seems to used a bit more again um but i mean i guess
• 1:32:18
  my broader question Ross is is less like where does this rag tag team of yeah of people find themselves
• 1:32:25
  and more like do the factors that have given rise to the derangement of this cohort of people
• 1:32:31
  or some of them are disproportionately worryingly large number of them do those factors keep getting
• 1:32:37
  worse in the future and do we see more and more promising dissenters derail or do we find a way to
• 1:32:48
  push back against or disincentivise audience capture and conspiratorial thinking
• 1:32:54
  like can the mainstream media can we in the mainstream media create a big enough
• 1:32:59
  space for diverse ideas that we sort of crowd out the appeal of
• 1:33:06
  these more alternative conspiratorial voices or is that is that the trend now and we just have
• 1:33:11
  to live with it no i i tend you know as earlier i mentioned AI you know at risk and nuclear war
• 1:33:21
  and how it's all seconds away but i tend to remain relatively optimistic about the future
• 1:33:27
  the exception of the nuclear apocalypse is going to be like listen apart from that like we're all
• 1:33:32
  blowing into smethering no um no i i do tend to be optimistic about these things and i think the media is
• 1:33:39
  in some senses the media is a really bad place and it's actually got worse at the last sort of
• 1:33:44
  year and a half in terms of um the money is just less about with the ads price decline
• 1:33:51
  within a bunch of different sectors it just means that that affects media and that affects the
• 1:33:55
  people writing and the kinds of things that get written um and there are areas that really
• 1:34:00
  genuinely suck and i don't see improving very soon um things like in entertainment video game
• 1:34:06
  coverage is terrible will remain terrible like i gen had a thing where they were asking for
• 1:34:12
  freelancers and they would pay like ten dollars and it's like you kidding me um how how do you expect
• 1:34:17
  to have good quality for that when something working in alde for an hour can earn more
• 1:34:20
  like yeah what do you what do you want about um and and that sucks because it's like a huge industry
• 1:34:24
  and it's under covered um they're uh ice but but i also i sound so negative for someone who was
• 1:34:34
  saying that i'm optimistic um and so to spend the second negative point which is that the money
• 1:34:39
  does suck and i don't really see it improving that soon and it means that people do have to venture
• 1:34:46
  into alternative ways to make income if they don't have a trust fund um now that could be good in some
• 1:34:51
  ways because it means more young authors it's easier to get a book deal than ever before as far as
• 1:34:55
  i'm aware and you know you're people like Coleman who make a good living from their podcast and their
• 1:34:59
  book deal um which is Coleman Hughes and that's great um and you know i i i will hope i'm hoping to be
• 1:35:07
  able to make a living doing this um so i obviously i obviously don't believe it's the doom and
• 1:35:14
  gloom to a level that i'm betting against it um that i'm betting that way i mean this is like when
• 1:35:19
  people ask about um i forget who said it but it was somebody over at dinner table was talking with
• 1:35:24
  this person about um whether they thought china was gonna invade Taiwan next year and they just
• 1:35:29
  asked like have you bought war bonds then for Taiwan sorry but you're a you're a wealthy person
• 1:35:35
  if you really believe this why aren't you buying war bonds so did it agree i have to buy war bonds
• 1:35:40
  right there listen i bought i bought shares in lockied martin um earlier a while ago right and i bought
• 1:35:47
  them because michael burry i noticed i bought a huge possession on it and i saw that the price
• 1:35:51
  it tanks of like 2021 or 2020 it really tanks and i was like fuck it uh why not i'll put a hundred
• 1:35:57
  pound into this and about a month later the war in ukraine was declared and it like tripled
• 1:36:03
  value i'm the i'm the i'm the world's poorest war profiteer um that's but um but no so for that
• 1:36:11
  sense like i wouldn't be speaking to if i really thought it was doom and gloom because i would go
• 1:36:15
  to do something more valuable with my time i do think that there's a lot of hope in this area i
• 1:36:19
  think it's a lot of young people who are really talented and interested and curious and i think
• 1:36:23
  that that curiosity is paying off more like i think in that one of the reasons why
• 1:36:29
  um one of the big failures in social media stars is that people who lost for a long time lost
• 1:36:35
  because they're authentic so if you try to chase the nearest dollar this you know quite quickly
• 1:36:40
  and try to exploit your influence um i think it'll temporarily earn you decent amount of money
• 1:36:47
  but it makes you seem very inauthentic in a way that some of the case in i stats who continues to
• 1:36:51
  have huge influences by putting out relatively little content it's because he's remained authentic
• 1:36:55
  and you know you don't sell out in a way um so i think people who have that sort of um
• 1:37:01
  gut instinct to stay curious and stay authentic i think that can pay off in an alternative economy
• 1:37:08
  i also think that the rise of newsletters is a really really helpful change within the news media
• 1:37:14
  as i pray semaphore earlier axios does a similar thing i think barry with the free press they're
• 1:37:19
  doing amazing work and they're doing it because part of what i said earlier that this is over
• 1:37:24
  reporting problem with publications that are just chasing SEO and that that places like barry
• 1:37:32
  place like semaphore that isn't relevant you know it's not it's not simply that it isn't relevant
• 1:37:37
  it's like you can't even it's not newsletters are bad for SEO like it's hard for you to measure in
• 1:37:44
  the same way um so there should be shooting yourself on the foot and yet no it's actually
• 1:37:49
  something really valuable that is really helpful and i like i love the way that the Atlantic
• 1:37:53
  pivoted more towards newsletters i think it is to benefit there too so i see more um
• 1:37:59
  curiosity with different mediums i think people are becoming more comfortable paying for content
• 1:38:06
  like i pay for the dispatch airmail um new york times the Atlantic and vogue i think i think i
• 1:38:16
  may pay some more and oh in the times of london um and it's like that's like a that's a pretty
• 1:38:20
  broad right i need to pay for barries as well um but um but like and i think that's just like
• 1:38:26
  yeah that it sucks to spend money nobody likes it um but in the same way that i'm happy to
• 1:38:35
  you know i i think you should think about it in the way of a mechanic like if you in terms of
• 1:38:41
  your car is valuable to you to get you places your mind should also be valuable to get you places
• 1:38:46
  since form you and teach you how to live and the question is if i'm getting all this for free
• 1:38:51
  if you go to a mechanic and he seems a bit dodgy he says yeah i'll do it for a fiverr and it's like
• 1:38:56
  this is a gearbox repair like how would you possibly like you you wouldn't trust it you wouldn't
• 1:39:02
  take the five dollar risk like why would you bother and then people see this endless flood of
• 1:39:06
  free content online and you think you know you know that's just the norm um so i think that's healthy
• 1:39:12
  um and i think because more money will go to alternative institutions i think places like the
• 1:39:17
  New York Times and the Washington Post are gonna have to up their game like uh Michael Pobaro of
• 1:39:21
  the New York Times put out this tweet um after the whole um George Santos scandal where he basically
• 1:39:29
  said um if more people subscribe to the Times then we would have caught this before the election
• 1:39:35
  and i kind of intuitively want to say fuck off like you're the biggest news organization on the planet
• 1:39:41
  yeah don't bribe people subscribe to you because you do that fuck off people don't owe you
• 1:39:46
  money to do your job like you know and i'm not specifically targeting but like i that sounds
• 1:39:52
  very aggressive and i'm sure it's a lovely man i listen to the daily often but my point my point
• 1:39:56
  being is that was a bad tweet man and that was a very bad intuition and i think people are i think
• 1:40:02
  the sort of tightening of wastes at some of these other publications um can be helpful because i
• 1:40:10
  think it'll get them sharper and and also from a freelance perspective i can tell you new publications
• 1:40:17
  pay way better for freelancers yeah like there there are publications i just i you know i won't
• 1:40:23
  bother with because it's just like my like it just doesn't make sense economically you kind of go
• 1:40:29
  come on and and you know there are great places out there and they do you know one of my favorite is
• 1:40:35
  i'm doing work for them works in progress which are an independent publication that they go
• 1:40:41
  bought by to stripe the finance company earlier i think earlier this year last year and they release
• 1:40:46
  an issue they release an addition once a month with like 20 articles and these big in-depth articles
• 1:40:52
  and they're fantastic and there's a model that works for them and it's partly because
• 1:40:58
  they don't flood the zone with shit to use the banan expression they just do a select
• 1:41:05
  drop of quality stuff and because they do a limited amount scarcity works and people pay attention
• 1:41:11
  to it you know there's so many great articles i see in publications and i go you know even in
• 1:41:16
  like New York Times where you know i see something it's great and it comes out in one vertical
• 1:41:20
  and it should be it should be the one thing people read that day yeah yeah and and they don't i mean
• 1:41:26
  airmail similar concept works really well because they just do like a Saturday edition
• 1:41:29
  essentially where it comes together and that's why like Jamie Kershik's big piece he did the other
• 1:41:34
  week on army hammer was like yeah that deserves to be the front of the page that reserved
• 1:41:38
  the front of paper and it was fantastic and it was because they paid him the time to do his job well
• 1:41:44
  and be able to take that time and he's incredible which helps but you know what i'm saying so i
• 1:41:48
  think there are i think there are really there are really optimistic signs and if i have dropped
• 1:41:55
  out of this and i'm selling crypto courses by the end of the year then you know you'll know i don't
• 1:41:59
  believe that anymore but so long as i'm still working and of course the other the other subscription
• 1:42:03
  that you'll have in addition to Barry Weiss is to uncomfortable conversations which is absolutely
• 1:42:08
  uh use of your use of your funds Ross it's uh fantastic to talk to you thank you for your time
• 1:42:13
  thank you Josh i really appreciate it's been where should people follow you well that'll all be in
• 1:42:17
  the stuff but tell them anyway probably get off social media no i'm kidding um follow me you can
• 1:42:22
  follow me at that Rosschamp on twitter or instagram and then my substack is rossandersonrights.com
• 1:42:29
  and that way it's uh it's you could pay him on if you want it doesn't give you anything extra
• 1:42:33
  it's just a way that if you want my articles sent to it in a newsletter um you'll get that
• 1:42:38
  you can get a bit of a thanks Ross thank you Josh