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Having Impossible Conversations · UK Column Radio

0:38
One of my favourite people in the world, Peter Boghossian.
0:41
Thank you for joining me in the trenches again.
0:44
My absolute, absolute pleasure. However, so I keep hearing all
0:48
this stuff about South Africa, like is it as bad as everybody
0:51
says it is? No, I don't believe everything
0:54
you see in the media. OK, so let's say that I were
0:58
just dropped in in Joburg. Could I just, could I just walk
1:03
around by myself at night? Depends where you are in
1:06
Johannesburg. Also it's a big city but I
1:08
wouldn't really recommend walking alone at night in
1:11
Johannesburg like. What would happen?
1:14
Like you're laughing, What would happen to me?
1:16
Would someone beat me up? Would they shoot me?
1:18
Would they? All right.
1:20
So the answer is if you're local, you would probably be
1:24
streetwise and you would know what to do.
1:26
You'd know, you would know the signs and you would know where
1:29
to be and all that kind of thing.
1:31
But that's only if you're really in the city centre.
1:33
If you aren't in the suburbs, you're probably OK.
1:37
So if I were in the city centre and I wanted a place to practise
1:42
my combat training, Joe Bird would be.
1:44
The place at night, yes, that's a that's a good place to be.
1:50
Negative to a positive. I've never, I've never been
1:56
asked those questions, but but I think you'll, you'll agree that
2:04
crime is generally distributed across the world in sort of city
2:08
centres anyway. Yeah.
2:11
Is there a racial element to those crimes?
2:13
Like would it would I be at an increased risk because I was
2:16
white? Race relations in South Africa
2:19
actually are generally quite good.
2:20
What you think is pretty bad is generally on the fringe.
2:24
You, for example, will know all about it.
2:26
You're from Portland? Yes, says cesspool, if there
2:29
ever was one. I can't.
2:30
I'm so happy I escaped that, that lunatic asylum, and I'm
2:36
really delighted. And you know, I find myself
2:39
being a lot less anxious and stressful and so I'll just give
2:43
you 2 quick examples. So the president of Portland
2:48
State University allowed people to destroy the university at no
2:52
contact at no consequence of the people who did the burning, the
2:55
pillaging, the looting, the destruction.
2:59
And she literally just let them go and had the police.
3:03
I mean, it's, it's a terrible situation now.
3:05
They did over vandals, did over $1,000,000 damage to the library
3:09
with again, with no consequences and the taxpayers paid that.
3:14
But I don't give a shit. I don't live there.
3:16
They can just burn the whole thing down and build it up 100
3:18
times over. I could couldn't care less.
3:20
It's there. That's the people they've
3:22
elected certain people and you're in a democracy and you
3:25
take responsibility. If that's how the way you know,
3:27
we have states rights here and and if that's the way that the
3:32
governor of Oregon and the mayor of Portland want to deal with
3:35
things, that's great. I moved out.
3:36
You can burn that fucking whole city to the ground.
3:39
Give a shit. You know, I mean that that you
3:42
had. So I don't know how it is in
3:45
South Africa, but if you don't like something, you just move to
3:47
another state. Yeah, yeah, you can do that too.
3:51
That's why people have fled blue cities in in blue states to
3:56
California. They fled California, they're
3:59
leaving Portland, they're go, they're going to Florida and
4:02
Texas. But I mean, Peter, the point
4:06
that I was making is that the whole BLM thing was fringe.
4:10
It wasn't in the main. What do you mean?
4:17
You mean the number of people who believed it?
4:19
Yes. Yeah, I just, I just read a
4:23
Andrew Doyle new book and I can't remember the name.
4:26
I sent me the manuscript. I can't remember the name of the
4:30
group, but it was estimated that only 8.
4:32
And I've seen this figure bandied about quite a bit.
4:35
Only 8% of the people were true believers or true adherence to
4:38
the ideology. The the problem is, I mean, that
4:42
could very well be true, but the problem is when you create a
4:44
culture of fear, you have no idea what anybody believes
4:47
because it's just falsification. They're going to tell you what
4:49
they want you to think and you're going to walk around and
4:51
see BLM signs and people's. I mean, that movement was what a
4:55
disgrace. What a disgrace.
4:58
And I had spoken out about it and and people went crazy on me.
5:01
The the leaders were corrupt. They brought bought mansions and
5:05
they the you know, what nobody talks about is how the murder
5:09
rate of young black men skyrocketed after that.
5:11
And I wrote, I think it was on Twitter or subset something that
5:14
that was an inevitable consequence to kind of, you
5:16
know, what the Ferguson effect is.
5:18
You know, when you stop policing areas, oversimplify, but when
5:22
you stop policing areas, crime rates go up in those areas,
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particularly black areas, Tough guys like middle class white men
5:29
like me. I'm I'm largely unaffected.
5:34
OK, so you and I have spoken plenty over the last few years
5:37
Peter, but for my UK column audience who might not know who
5:41
you are quickly what is your what is your background?
5:50
What is my background? Education and philosophy and I
5:57
yeah, that's pretty much it. I you know how to answer that
6:02
question. I don't even know what to say.
6:05
When I like education, I say. Well, you've got 22 great
6:12
moments, all right. You, you, you, you published a
6:15
book that dramatically influenced my life for all the
6:18
right reasons, and you involved in a fantastic, fantastic peer
6:24
review. Basic prank.
6:26
Yeah, yeah, we did the grievance studies affair, which is take
6:29
off a Sokol and I was in the new atheist movement.
6:33
My first book was a manual for creating Atheist.
6:35
Second book. I've written a tonne of popular
6:37
pieces and peer review pieces and I, I give lectures, I do
6:41
this thing called spectrum St epistemology, where we go around
6:43
the world. We, we do it in schools, We're
6:46
going to be doing it in prisons and we're going to be doing it
6:48
in, you know, with the Maori in New Zealand and, and hopefully
6:52
in prisons all around the world. So we help people speak across
6:55
divides and then clean up the way they think about things.
6:59
And dad and I published a letter like crazy letter of
7:02
recommendation that I went viral beyond anything I ever expected.
7:07
And I, you know, I just do scientific scepticism, critical
7:10
thinking. I fight irrationality in all of
7:12
its forms. At least I do my best to do
7:14
that. And I have a small non profit.
7:16
I'm affiliated with the University of Austin and as a
7:19
founding faculty fellow. So I'm, and I'm busy, busy.
7:23
I'm in Budapest right now, Hungary.
7:24
I love it here. Yeah, so you and I met of, well,
7:29
we quote unquote, met in 2019 and that was because of your
7:35
book How to Have Impossible Conversations, which is in my, I
7:38
consider that one of my Bibles. I've got like maybe two or three
7:42
books that I will always keep with me in the year 2025.
7:47
Why do we need a book like that? Boy, it seems more pertinent now
7:51
than ever. You know, the authoritarian and
7:56
illiberal forces are on the decline and so we need a certain
8:03
type of criticism. Don't get me wrong, I'm deeply
8:06
involved in all kinds of critics.
8:07
I think criticism is necessary, but you can't just criticise.
8:11
You have to build, you have to make, you have to offer people
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and that's what we do it. We're just at Vertex Partnership
8:16
Academies in the Bronx and it's a predominantly after African
8:20
American school. And we did Spectrum St
8:23
Epistemology, which is basically a way to help people speak
8:27
across divides and make their ideas clear.
8:30
So again, I'm not criticising criticism.
8:33
We need criticism. But there has to be a point
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where you build and you make and you contribute.
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And so How to have Impossible Conversations is a contribution
8:44
to that effort of how to teach people to speak across divides
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or on their deep, deep chasms, deep gulfs and belief,
8:51
political, religious, ideological.
8:55
But why though? Well, if you don't do that, you
9:00
end up like Iraq. If you don't do that, you end up
9:03
like a kind of war torn country or a place where people go to
9:07
violence. So either settle your
9:09
differences through dialogue or you settle them through
9:13
bloodshed. And so people have to be given
9:16
that opportunity. The problem is that they have
9:18
all the wrong things modelled for them right now.
9:21
They don't have the right way to have those conversations.
9:24
And you know, you just said you are, you're a father before and
9:28
that's an amazing thing. And I, I subjected my kids and I
9:32
say subjected on purpose to really, I mean, countless days
9:38
and nights of Socratic examination over the dinner
9:41
table where I'd invite people in the house.
9:44
Don't bring the, don't bring Muhammad to the mountain, bring
9:48
the mountain to Muhammad. So I'd bring my friends, I would
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bring public intellectuals, I'd bring professors, etcetera, and
9:55
make my kids sit through those meals and turn those into kind
9:59
of some lovely Socratic evenings.
10:00
And I think that's the recipe for how to live a better life,
10:05
how to think more thoughtfully about what you believe and
10:08
engage other people. It lends to a rich life too, and
10:11
rich friendships. Well, that's exactly what I
10:14
experienced from from your work. One of the things that I
10:19
remember the most is why do you believe what you believe?
10:24
Yeah, yeah. And it it's ancient question and
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most people don't know how to ask it.
10:30
They don't know how to listen. They don't know how to ask the
10:33
right follow up questions. The older I get, the more I'm
10:36
convinced that. And people have written whole
10:38
entire books about this. The problem comes from
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listening. And people think that they're
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listening, but they're not listening.
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And it's very, very difficult to convince.
10:49
I call it a reflexive problem. It's it's a problem that that
10:53
the very nature of the problem prevents it from being solved.
10:56
For example, if someone is defensive and you say to them
10:58
while you're being defensive, well, their defensiveness will
11:02
prevent them from solving the problem of their defensiveness.
11:05
You don't get anywhere. Yeah, you don't you don't get
11:08
anywhere. And so we have to we you know,
11:13
if if you ever. I went to a relationship
11:16
counsellor once, I think it was a complete catastrophe.
11:18
But she, she's one of the things that one of the things that she
11:24
didn't like me very much. I asked a lot of too many
11:26
questions for her, I think. But one of the things that she
11:29
she said that that she kind of parroted back a lot of this just
11:32
these banal talking points is that, but but it's, it's also
11:36
100% correct is that you have to, you can't expect someone
11:42
else to change. You have to change, right?
11:44
So you, you just can't expect that the other person is going
11:50
to do something or be something. You have to model the behaviour
11:53
you want to see. And when I go to prisons again,
11:56
we're going to be going to prisons again pretty soon.
11:58
That's one of the the key ideas. It's a modelling behaviour.
12:03
What do you hope to achieve though, by going to prisons?
12:09
That's a great question. In a sense, the same thing I
12:13
hope to achieve by going to schools with vulnerable
12:16
populations in that there are these low to no costs.
12:20
And again, I incur all the costs.
12:21
I just want to be crystal clear. I don't, not only do I not make
12:25
money from this, this actually costs me money.
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So we buy them the mats, the Spectrum St Epistemology mats.
12:31
I pay for my own hotel, I pay for my own airfare, I pay for
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everybody's stuff. So this is not, this is the
12:39
opposite of a get rich quick scheme.
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This is a get poor fast scheme. But I do it because I believe in
12:48
it and what I believe in it, that there are low to no cost
12:51
ways to help people think more clearly, to help people engage
12:55
ideas, to help people desist from violence and crime, to help
12:58
people civilly communicate with each other.
13:01
And it doesn't take much. It takes actually very, very
13:04
little to nudge people toward. Everybody has the possibility of
13:07
leading a better life. They just need the tools.
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And they're having the exact opposite things modelled for
13:12
them. I almost never see any, you
13:15
know, TV shows where people have these really thoughtful
13:18
dialogues or the universities have been an abject, unmitigated
13:22
catastrophe for that. They're making people more
13:25
fragile and more vulnerable, telling them they're victims.
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And any colouring books and cookies and balloons and stuffed
13:32
dolls and all of the exaggerated caricatures that you have heard,
13:37
most of most of which are true at major universities.
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So the universities have failed us.
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They're not modelling it. They're not so, so who's going
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to do it? I mean, how, how we do it?
13:47
So that's the other thing that most people don't understand.
13:49
They think, oh, well, who cares about prison inmates?
13:51
Well, you should because they get released into the community.
13:55
Now, maybe you can make that argument that we shouldn't put
13:58
in financial investments into prisoners who won't be released
14:03
into the community like lifers or something.
14:04
OK, well, we can have that conversation, but most people
14:07
are not in prison for life. The statistics, it depends on
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where you go and what they've incarcerated for.
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But they'll be your neighbours, they'll be employees where you
14:17
you live and work. So.
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So it doesn't take much to help these guys.
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And I say guys, because I mostly work with violent men to live
14:25
better lives. You alluded to the Socratic
14:29
method earlier, and Socrates lived thousands of years ago.
14:35
I'm getting the impression that this is an ongoing battle.
14:42
Yeah, it's a, it's a never ending battle.
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Once you you grind down some irrationality, another one pops
14:47
up. Once you grind down some fad,
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you know it. But it's really interesting.
14:53
It's really interesting. If I may, you know, if you look
14:56
at Mensa in the 70's, the high IQ society, I can't remember the
15:01
statistics, but the majority of people believe in things like
15:04
Tele telepathy and telecommunicate, remote viewing
15:08
and a clear audience and clairvoyance.
15:13
Those statistics have been been published every every decade or
15:18
so. We have fads for what people
15:20
believe. I had an interesting
15:21
conversation with Mia Hughes, the Canadian, I think she's
15:25
based in Ottawa, a researcher about gender issues.
15:28
And she, she was telling me that, you know, bulimia was a
15:34
trend among young girls, then cutting was a trend, and now
15:38
trans is a trend. And so these things are all,
15:42
they're just social contagions. We're just, of course, this most
15:48
recent social contagion is orders of magnets.
15:52
I mean, almost infinitely worse. That's a misuse of the word.
15:55
But so, you know, once you stomp one out, some other derangement
16:00
syndrome comes back. So we have to kind of look at
16:03
like a prophylactic. How do we give people the tools
16:06
to protect against dangerous, harmful pseudoscience and
16:09
nonsense? I mean trans is probably
16:11
deranged idea of them all. Yes, but Peter, what the point
16:15
that I was making is that if if this was being spoken about, you
16:19
know, thousands of years ago with the Greeks and you and I
16:23
speaking about them now. I mean, this is a forever war.
16:28
Correct. That's that's the substitution
16:32
hypothesis. The substitution hypothesis.
16:34
I don't know if I coined that or who coined that, but see the ME
16:37
or Peterson. I can't, I can never remember.
16:39
But your substitution hypothesis is the basically the idea that
16:42
once you stomp out one irrationality, another one takes
16:46
its place. So there's a kind of homeostasis
16:48
among irrationalities. And so the norm is that people
16:52
believe crazy shit, you know, just weird, bizarre.
16:57
Now, there are different schools of thought on this.
16:59
One school is that we need to accept that this is human nature
17:03
and nudge them into benign delusions, benign forms of
17:07
Christianity, for example. Another belief is, no, we have
17:11
to kind of extirpate it from the soil of belief entirely and just
17:15
uproot all of it. I tend, I tend to toward that
17:20
camp. But it would be naive to say
17:23
that. I mean, you're correct, We've
17:28
been labouring under various delusions for a long time.
17:31
I will say that I will concede that certain delusions are far
17:36
more pernicious than others. And Western Europe is seeing the
17:38
effect of some of those delusions of citizens now.
17:42
But I mean, I think it's Nassim Taleb who made the argument that
17:47
if you just remove, for example, religion from society, society
17:50
will just collapse. That's clearly that's
17:55
historically demon. That's just demonstrably false.
17:57
They've done that in Scandinavia.
17:58
Scandinavia hasn't collapsed. If anything, it's the injection
18:04
of of Islam into those societies that's causing the community to
18:09
go on shaky ground. So I mean, it's historically
18:11
that just seems completely false, unless you want to argue
18:15
that there's some kind of a history historicity, it's a
18:18
historical. No, I think that is yeah, sorry.
18:22
I think what Taleb is, is arguing that it's human nature
18:25
to form a belief in something. It's that Lord of the Flies
18:28
scenario where you will always create meaning and purpose.
18:34
Yeah, so that's the question. Do we nudge people to more
18:37
benign delusions, you know, more benign forms of Christianity?
18:42
Love everybody. Some guy walked on water,
18:45
therefore he had these metaphysical truths, so
18:47
therefore his ethical truth must be the case.
18:50
Turn the other cheek, etcetera. Or because if we don't do that,
18:55
people go to crazy town. I mean, I think, you know,
18:58
that's the question with the New Atheist movement.
19:01
And I think why a lot of people are one of the main many reasons
19:04
many people are upset with me because New Atheists were so
19:07
successful. I think you know, Melissa Chan
19:10
tweeted out something I told her at a party once and that was
19:14
it's better to believe that a man walked on water once than it
19:18
is to believe that all men can get pregnant.
19:24
How do you arrive at that point, Peter, where you think that a
19:27
man can have a baby? What happened?
19:29
I mean, what must happen? Yeah, well, that's it's actually
19:33
an easy question to answer. Your moral mind overrode your
19:37
rational mind. So you think good people, I
19:39
believe I'm a good person. Good people believe this,
19:42
Therefore I should believe this, right?
19:45
There's no, no sane person could ever believe that There's a
19:49
great meme. Just if you can put it in in
19:52
post production would be great of like, you know, the the meme
19:55
of the bus going down and then it hits another bus and it's
19:58
something like, you know, new atheism or Christianity,
20:02
Everyone's going to be rational and sane.
20:04
And then the bus that hits it like pregnant men and the whole
20:08
bus derail the train derails. Yeah.
20:12
So, so that's the problem. The problem is that.
20:15
Is a rationality just a default because it's a tremendous amount
20:19
of work to, to stay sane. And it just especially with
20:22
social media, you know, I had a, I've made that mistake before of
20:27
not listening. I mean a lot before, but I had a
20:32
conversation, I don't know, like a less than a year ago maybe, I
20:35
don't know. But with Jonathan Prejue, he's
20:37
the Super Christian dude. I, I really like him.
20:40
I met him in London, hung out, we had a great time, a few
20:42
drinks together. Good dude, but I could not
20:45
possibly give you an example of someone who has beliefs,
20:49
particularly metaphysical beliefs, that I find.
20:52
I'm not going to be pejorative about it, but suffice is to say
20:56
considerably different from my own.
20:59
But I, he was very kind and he invited me on the show, which is
21:03
infinitely more than I can say for the people I've been trying
21:06
to have a conversation with, which I want to talk to you on a
21:08
second. And it was a really interesting
21:10
conversation. I got more emails about that
21:13
conversation than I did from almost anything except my second
21:18
Rogan and my hard talk interview.
21:21
I was stunned at how many people interviewed emailed me about
21:24
that interview. But I wanted to, you know, throw
21:27
something out I've been really trying to have.
21:30
And I'm going to admit pretty soon on Twitter that I was wrong
21:33
about something. I think it's important when you
21:35
move in the public space and you make a mistake to say you're
21:37
wrong. And I was wrong about this.
21:38
I thought it'd be far easy to get an easier to get an Islamist
21:42
on the show than a leftist. I've been reaching out to tonnes
21:45
of Islamists. I can't get anybody to talk to
21:46
me. They have to have somewhat of a
21:49
platform and they can't be just a random dude off the street,
21:53
you know, preferably they have an academic position or
21:55
something. I date.
21:56
I can't get anybody to talk to me.
21:59
That's weird. Yeah, I'm very surprised by
22:02
that. And and and I was wrong to think
22:04
that that would be the case. Why though?
22:10
Well, that's the question. I don't know.
22:11
I mean, in terms of, you know, I got a tremendous amount of shit
22:15
for having Destiny. I did I think 3 or 4I.
22:19
Have to go and listen to that. Tremendous amount of shit.
22:23
I mean, I like the guy, I get along great with the guy, but I
22:26
could that people like lost their minds about that.
22:29
Whatever you want to say about him or his beliefs, let me tell
22:32
you something in no uncertain terms.
22:34
He will talk to anybody, he will talk to people.
22:38
Do that alone. Just that one quality makes him
22:42
light years, legions above his. I don't even know what you want
22:47
to say. His his fellow leftist, although
22:49
he is not an identitarian and that could be that could be why.
22:53
But that's an important thing though, the the ability to talk
22:57
to anybody. This is a trend that I've
22:59
noticed in the last, well, at least since I've been doing this
23:03
sort of thing, that there are people who simply do not want to
23:08
be associated with you because they don't like some of your
23:10
views. And they, they use terms like,
23:13
well, we're not going to platform that person or, or
23:15
whatever. But I mean that in itself falls
23:18
into wokeness. Yeah, it's interesting.
23:21
I've also been thinking about this.
23:23
There's a lot of criticism about this quote unquote.
23:25
I was just asking, I can't see my own fingers.
23:28
I was just asking questions thing I I understand how some
23:34
people that could rub people the wrong way, but I also think that
23:37
something it's really important to ask questions.
23:44
I mean, it's and I understand that some people ask questions
23:48
when an agenda I public published a piece about that,
23:52
but that's. And I'll try and assist you up.
23:56
Yeah. And I actually have no, no
23:59
problem with that. I mean, you remember that guy
24:01
who? Peter Hotez?
24:03
Who? Yes, I remember him.
24:05
Yeah. And so I think, wasn't he?
24:08
Yeah, and he refused to have a debate with somebody.
24:11
OK. So if he did not move in the
24:13
public space, that's totally reasonable, 100% reasonable.
24:17
It's totally reasonable to not expect a scientist will go on a
24:21
major podcast if they've never done it before and if they just
24:25
want to do science. But he didn't.
24:27
He moved. He already moved in the public
24:29
space. And he made some claims that
24:31
affected public policy and public health.
24:34
And he absolutely he was wrong not to do so.
24:36
Yeah. So.
24:38
Yeah. And, and I do think it there is.
24:40
That's why I told you about the Islamists.
24:42
Like I don't or like some say, well, I'm a leftist, have me on.
24:45
No, no. So you have to have look, if you
24:49
just have a random person on the street, right and there is some
24:54
legitimacy to like why you platforming this guy?
24:57
But if somebody is, you know, they're a professor, they have,
25:00
you know, high h-index, they've published multiple books on the
25:03
subject, they have peer review, they have popular pieces, maybe
25:06
they have a semi successful podcast, etc.
25:10
I think that's fine. You know, that that's the kind
25:13
of person you want to hear from because they have some
25:14
expertise. They've demonstrable expertise
25:17
in a subject area. So, you know, I got a tremendous
25:21
amount of shit because I had Mark Sargent come speak to my
25:26
class. He's the guy.
25:29
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got a tremendous amount of
25:32
shit for that. But I stand by that decision
25:34
100%. I read his book.
25:35
I stand by that because it was a science and pseudoscience class.
25:40
You know, if it were like, you know, the history of Aristotle
25:43
or something, that would have been inappropriate.
25:44
But what? I mean, at the end of the day,
25:47
Peter, So what? The guys got a different
25:49
opinion? So what?
25:51
Yeah. So don't you want to teach kids
25:53
how to ask better questions? Yes.
25:55
Don't, don't. Don't you want to teach kids
25:57
that they're you live in a world in which people have beliefs,
26:00
some of which are very bizarre, and you will encounter those and
26:04
you, you're going to have to need to know how to navigate
26:07
that reality. I mean, of course you do.
26:10
I mean, and and it's people say, well, the science is settled.
26:13
Well, no shit, the fucking science is settled, Sherlock.
26:15
I mean, but that's not the point that the science is settled.
26:19
So there's that other. It's just that general.
26:22
Anyway, go ahead. No.
26:23
No, no, no, no. I was just going to, I was just
26:24
going to say that, you know, over the last two years, I mean,
26:28
I've done what, over 1000 interviews and I found that some
26:33
of the best conversations I ever had were with people that I had
26:38
diametrically. 100% views. Like a communist, I never
26:43
thought in my life that I would have so many agreements with a
26:46
self declared communist 100. Percent, yeah.
26:51
And the other thing is the, the audience, you, you know, it will
26:56
get you clicks and views, etcetera.
26:57
And, and there's nothing wrong with that.
26:59
You people have said to me like, well, why don't you have, you
27:02
know what? So I go around, I used to go to
27:04
parks all the time. I try not to do that anymore.
27:06
Now we try to have experts. The the thing I can't control, I
27:10
speak to people all over the world, literally Taiwan, just
27:13
all over the world on Budapest. I'm doing here.
27:15
I can't control the people who volunteer like I don't the
27:20
nobody I do this with. Nobody's acting.
27:22
Nobody's. I mean, they may be.
27:24
And one guy said that once and he's like, well, I'm an actor.
27:26
Yeah, but I mean, I'm not paying you to act here.
27:28
You're telling me what you believe.
27:30
So there are no actors in what I do.
27:32
So the thing that you only you, you only know the the beliefs of
27:37
the people who come up, you don't know the beliefs of the
27:40
people who don't. And the problem with that is you
27:42
don't. The people who will come up by
27:45
and large are not older. Older people are camera shy.
27:49
So you can't really, it's very difficult to get those people to
27:54
have conversations on camera. Off camera is pretty easy.
27:57
You also learn a lot about yourself.
28:00
Yeah, totally what you believe. You know, I made a I made a
28:04
mistake. I it, it takes a lot to be
28:06
neutral, especially when people say stupid shit.
28:09
But you have to be neutral when you do this or else if you're
28:13
not neutral, it doesn't work. Right?
28:14
This the street epistemology stuff doesn't work.
28:18
The people are extraordinarily good at sniffing on an agenda.
28:22
And once they sniff on an agenda, it invokes A defensive
28:25
posture. Once the defensive posture is
28:27
invoked, it compromises the whole project.
28:30
But so I had been doing four or five of these and then I was the
28:34
subject in one of them and I was a Dick, you know, and I was just
28:37
really, I mean, I, I apologise and I said I wouldn't release
28:40
the video. But you do what you can do, but
28:43
you do learn about yourself. And everybody has their own, I
28:46
have my own breaking point. I can only listen to nonsense
28:49
for so long hours of listening to total nonsense.
28:55
But that's the other one. It's hard.
28:57
So it's like when you're in a conversation with one person, if
29:00
someone says something ridiculous, you can kind of junk
29:03
it. But if you're doing spectrum St
29:05
epistemology and there are, you know, six or seven people or
29:09
even 3 people and they're each giving different reasons with
29:12
different objections, you have to hold all of those in your
29:15
head. I notice how I do that when I
29:18
come home at night, I sleep like a rock.
29:20
It's incredible amount of intellectual exercise to keep
29:24
bad ideas resident in your head. But you said it's difficult to
29:28
be neutral. So my question to you is, why do
29:31
you want to be neutral? Why is it important to be
29:33
neutral? The the you You can't moderate
29:38
or mediate or facilitate A discourse among people who
29:41
disagree if you take a side. OK, you seem.
29:45
To be yeah, I mean, I obviously have my own beliefs about lots
29:51
of stuff that I've formulated over the years, but that you
29:55
have to do your best not to come to, you know, re nice one to
29:59
travel out with him. He did one of the best ones
30:02
we've ever done. He facilitated, it was on
30:04
surrogacy and it was in Budapest.
30:06
And it was just an just a masterful example of how to have
30:10
conversations across dialogues across divides.
30:14
One thing we've noticed from the comments that we've listened to
30:17
people is people like it not when you have random people off
30:20
the streets, but when you have experts.
30:23
So when we have experts who disagree, those conversations
30:25
are super interesting. So did you see the the debate
30:29
between Sean Carroll and Eric Weinstein?
30:33
No. Piers Morgan No, it was really
30:36
interesting. It was.
30:38
And I know I am. I don't know if you get the
30:41
reference. You might be too young.
30:42
I'm the Sergeant Schultz of like, physics.
30:44
Like I know nothing about physics.
30:46
Like just not. And these guys are just like way
30:50
hyper educated about math and math PhDs from Harvard.
30:54
And not that Harvard anything means anything anymore.
30:56
It used to, but well, if you haven't seen it, the reference
31:01
will be lost. But I do think that that there's
31:04
a way to engage with people to increase the likelihood of
31:07
certain outcomes. And so one thing is that I
31:12
always advocate is Rappaport's rules, listening, repeating back
31:16
to somebody to make sure you know what they mean.
31:18
That's probably one of the most important things in all
31:20
conversation. You know, not attacking somebody
31:24
personally is, is vital. You saw that with the Dave
31:28
Murray and Douglas Murray and Dave Smith.
31:31
Yeah. And, you know, Smith was kind of
31:35
making some personal attacks there.
31:37
But you know, you've seen lots of examples.
31:42
It's, you know, I think it was Toynbee who said there are many
31:45
ways for a family to be dysfunctional, few to be
31:48
functional. There are many ways for a
31:50
conversation to go wrong, very few for a conversation to go
31:53
right. And and you have to be the one
31:56
who's who's unfazed in that conversation.
31:58
And usually people expose themselves more than you ever
32:01
could. Yeah.
32:02
I mean, in your book you talk about the importance of rapport
32:06
and it's it's something that seems to be lost in the social
32:10
media generation. I think Jordan Peterson,
32:12
actually, I mean, he's he's he's gone off the rails in many ways,
32:16
but he did say some pertinent things a few years ago.
32:20
And one of them being he thinks that social media has increased,
32:24
you know, the sort of sociopathic tendency of people.
32:27
I think he's right. What do you think?
32:29
Yeah, I mean, Peterson has made indelible contributions,
32:33
particularly to young men and others.
32:35
And, and I, I do think he's right.
32:38
Did you, did you see the trigonometry episode with the my
32:42
my buddies Constantine and Francis work with the feminist,
32:45
The crazy feminist. I I've seen a few of them, they
32:48
were on my show also, but I I I'm not quite sure which one you
32:51
talk you're referring to. Yeah, they're super good guys.
32:54
And again, you know, hats off to her because almost no one who
32:57
has her beliefs will go on any podcast and speak to people.
33:01
I don't think I saw it you. Know it's really interesting
33:03
because it gets to rapport and it gets to it just yet another
33:08
example of two smart, sincere people dealing with somebody who
33:13
is not used to having somebody ask them difficult questions.
33:16
So that's the thing that people really about and that's what you
33:18
should do with your kid, you know, set these demarcated times
33:23
where like we're going to have people over and we're going to
33:25
ask tough questions and we're going to model that.
33:27
It's not something that's explicit, but if you go long
33:30
enough, I don't know if you saw the Jubilee recently with
33:34
Peterson and they changed the title from was it 25 people or
33:39
something versus 1 Christian or something, whatever it is.
33:42
It's a disaster. Yeah, it wasn't it, It wasn't
33:46
particularly good, but but the IT, it is an indispensable
33:51
intellectual virtue to know how to feel very complex, very
33:58
difficult ideas and scale up. A buddy, a buddy of mine was
34:02
telling me a few years ago, somebody said to me, this has
34:07
haunted me germ. So I hope it's false.
34:10
But I'm I'm I'm just an example of something I'm trying to
34:13
convince myself that's false and I'm almost sure it's true.
34:16
The less intelligent you are, the less possible it is that you
34:19
can entertain a hypothetical. And a buddy of mine was telling
34:24
me that's one of the things that he asks a woman when he's on a
34:27
date. He just told me this like 2
34:29
nights ago. He said he he'll ask the
34:32
questions what would happen if you didn't have breakfast today?
34:36
And if she says, well I did have breakfast today, he said well
34:39
what would happen if you didn't Then if she can't entertain a
34:42
hypothetical about that, it's kind of a litmus test.
34:45
Somebody was recently telling me that his boyfriend, he didn't
34:50
know his boyfriend didn't give him what he needed
34:53
intellectually, and he's trying to navigate that because his
34:59
boyfriend was incredibly kind to him when he got sick.
35:03
And I, I told him that when I was younger.
35:06
I think it's I do. I don't profess by any stretch
35:11
of the imagination to be an expert in gay relationships.
35:14
I could have made a joke about me being an expert in lesbian
35:17
relationships, but I won't make that joke.
35:26
But, you know, when you're younger, you know, and you're
35:29
heterosexual, at least you're, you're looking for, you know,
35:32
someone to be the mother of your children.
35:34
You're looking for a kind of different set of, of the
35:38
different suite of attributes. A buddy of mine only dated women
35:41
who didn't wear eyeglasses because he believed it was kind
35:44
of good genetic stock. But I think as, as you get
35:46
older, I, I just, that means like very little to me, you
35:52
know, and maybe because that my whole life is surrounded by, you
35:57
know, I'm here, I'm here at the Danube Institute.
35:59
I'm just surrounded by think tank people.
36:01
I'm constantly talking to literally some of the world's
36:05
smartest people in the Anglesphere.
36:06
So it doesn't, doesn't mean it just I, I guess it's, you know,
36:10
how do you balance kindness and compassion in a relationship
36:14
with somebody who is, you know, thoughtful?
36:19
Or maybe I don't really like the term intellectual, but you know,
36:22
an intellectual or has, you know, reads and, and thinks
36:25
about things. I don't, I don't necessarily
36:27
think there's a, there's a right answer to that question.
36:29
But as I get older, I I I value kindness more and more.
36:33
Yeah, but you brought up wearing glasses.
36:37
Yeah, the idea is if you wear glasses.
36:40
I'm not saying this is true. I'm saying this is what he said.
36:42
The idea is if you wear glasses. When he was dating he was
36:45
looking for a woman to have kids with and he thought she'd be
36:49
better genetic stock if she didn't wear glasses.
36:52
That's so interesting. Yeah.
36:56
So I was, I think I, I think the hypothetical of what would
36:59
happen if you didn't have breakfast.
37:01
And if she says I would, I had breakfast, he just gets rid of
37:03
her immediately. I think that's fascinating.
37:05
But that is. Very fascinating.
37:07
I was in China last year and every third person wears glasses
37:10
and I have no idea why. Yeah, I don't know, an artefact
37:14
of insane pollution or the dismantling of the regulatory
37:18
apparatus. I I have no idea.
37:20
Or maybe, maybe more people wear glasses here, but you don't know
37:23
because they wear contact lenses.
37:24
Or I've actually met people who wear glasses with no, with fake
37:30
lenses because I think it makes them look intelligent.
37:32
So who? Or maybe they maybe they study
37:34
so much by the dim light or something.
37:36
I knew I met. I was a buddy of mine who
37:39
recruited people from Intel. And he had.
37:42
He was telling me about a guy in China who had this indelible
37:46
mark in his forehead because he fell asleep on the candle over
37:50
and over because they didn't have enough money for
37:51
electricity. Yeah, but.
37:55
I mean. How we went.
37:57
The the moral of the story here is that what you're actually
38:01
alluding to is that this is about the art of asking
38:05
questions, the art of listening, the art of creating rapport,
38:09
ultimately, isn't it? Yeah.
38:13
And it's about it. It's it is about figuring out
38:17
what you want, but it's about figuring out if what you want is
38:21
what you should want. Because we want things that are
38:27
often not in our best interests are not what we should want.
38:31
Why? We have different starting
38:36
information. We're imperfect beings.
38:41
Lots of reasons. Also, I mean the title of your
38:45
book is How to Have Impossible Conversations.
38:47
Why impossible? Because many people think those
38:53
conversations are impossible. You know, I just another guy who
38:56
will have a conversation with you if he disagrees with you.
39:00
And there again, there are not many of these people on the left
39:02
at all. I think there's like a maybe 2,
39:05
maybe 3. I should say I'm thinking of
39:06
someone else, but it's David Pack.
39:08
Oh yeah, and destiny. And yeah, that's about it.
39:12
And maybe a couple of other people.
39:13
PS Morgan Who? PS Morgan.
39:17
Oh, yeah, he will. I haven't, I haven't spoken to
39:20
him, but I had, I had David Pak man on.
39:24
It was it was a perfectly fine conversation.
39:26
We agreed and we disagreed. And you know, a lot of people
39:31
said, oh, he moderated or he mediated what he said.
39:33
I don't know. Maybe I don't know, but but, but
39:36
there is those people think those conversations are
39:39
impossible. They're not.
39:42
I mean, they're really not, you know, That's why it's so
39:46
disturbing to me. If anybody watches the stuff I
39:48
do, I never really attack anybody.
39:50
I never go for anybody's jugular.
39:52
I never really. I just ask hard questions and
39:56
they aren't even that hard really, but they're just
39:59
questions to help me. I only ask.
40:01
My golden rule is I only ask a question if I genuinely want to
40:04
know the answer. And so I'll ask questions, help
40:06
me figure something out. And so you would think if you
40:09
are an Islamist, and then I'll say one more thing.
40:13
You would think if you're an Islamist, this would be an
40:16
incredible opportunity to, to share your message with the
40:19
world. And if you really believe that
40:22
you are correct, then it should be effortless for you to feel
40:25
difficult conversations. The, the reason I think many
40:28
leftists initially didn't have conversations, it's because they
40:33
controlled the main institutions and they basically won already.
40:37
So if you won already, you don't want to take any risks like
40:39
presidential debates if you're losing and if you think you're
40:42
going to, if you're down in the polls, you want to ask for as
40:45
many debates as you can. If you're winning, you don't
40:47
want to have any. And if you're really far ahead,
40:48
you definitely don't want to have any because you don't want
40:50
to risk your chance. Now that woke is going into
40:53
Hospice, I think I for a while I thought, well, geez, maybe these
40:58
people have conversations, but I think it's too late.
41:01
They've already been damaged. Their thinking is damaged.
41:03
They've lived in these echo chambers where they've made a
41:06
virtue of not having conversations with people.
41:08
And now I think they're incapable of even basic
41:11
rudimentary thought. I think they have like simian
41:13
recognition of things like, you know, Ugg food or what have you
41:15
or but I don't I don't think that they're capable of
41:18
entertaining. Not only do I not think that
41:21
they're incapable, not only do I not think that they're capable
41:24
of defending their beliefs, but I think that if you live that
41:27
way long enough, all of your belief apparatus becomes damaged
41:32
and you start to not think clearly about other things, even
41:34
if you attempted to mean a dialectic in those other arenas.
41:39
Well, what matters more, changing your own views or
41:42
changing the views of somebody else?
41:45
In the Gorgias, Plato says it's better to to be refuted than it
41:48
is to to refute. That's clearly true.
41:54
It's it's clearly true to correct a mistaken perception
41:57
that you have about the world. I mean, I don't know why I think
42:00
the reason people don't want to do that is because they have
42:03
this idea of saving face. You know, the hostage
42:05
negotiation literature, they talk a lot about that.
42:08
They, the hostage negotiators always give and the best guys
42:12
and the best people are the best at this.
42:13
Give people an opportunity to save face, to not look bad.
42:18
But I think it actually makes you look good if you say, hey,
42:21
you know, I thought this before I had this piece of information.
42:24
But no, I don't. I think that's just part of the
42:26
human condition. You know, our, our ego is, is
42:29
overriding certain considerations.
42:33
So we, we think, you know, we, we think we're going to gain
42:36
status in our tribe. But if that's your tribe, man,
42:39
your tribe is fucked up. I'd say escape that tribe.
42:44
But why do we find it so important then, Peter, to change
42:48
the minds of other people? I think it's a kind of way to
42:53
reinforce what we already believe.
42:55
Like, oh, I'm maybe I'm having a little doubt.
42:58
I'm unsure. So if this, these people would,
43:00
they'll agree with me, they'll make me feel better about
43:02
myself. I think ultimately it comes down
43:04
to morality. People want to be viewed and
43:07
seen as good people and they want to think of themselves as
43:10
good people. And so, I mean, Pinker talks
43:13
about that people. Don't do.
43:15
Best, Yeah, yeah. Among among other places, people
43:20
don't do bad things because they're bad people, whatever
43:25
that means. They they do it because they're,
43:27
they kind of want to be good people.
43:29
You don't start throwing juice in ovens because you say I'm
43:31
going to wake up and be a bad person today.
43:34
You do that because you think that's a good thing to do.
43:36
So you think you're acting morally.
43:37
I mean, you're grossly mistaken, obviously, but that's it's not
43:40
no one wakes up and be, I should say virtually no one's like,
43:43
yes, I'm going to be a horrible human being today.
43:46
It inflicts, you know, the maximum amount of suffering.
43:49
They they think they either other people and look at them as
43:52
not humans like, you know, Jews is not humans or what have you,
43:57
or they have other kind of accoutrements of belief.
44:00
People look for these adversary relationships.
44:02
Some people even thrive off of them.
44:04
And I will admit I'm I'm personally incredibly
44:07
comfortable and adversarial situation when people are
44:10
threatening me physically or verbally, I just find my it's my
44:13
happy place. I go to a place of great
44:15
comfort. I don't know why it is I can't
44:17
really answer that, but the idea is as a general rule, it's
44:22
pretty easy to defuse those situations.
44:24
And I have, I don't know, 10 or 8 or 10 videos online showing of
44:27
people freaking out at me and keeping my cool.
44:30
That that's the one thing people always ask me is like, how do
44:33
you just just, I was in New York last week and two, two people on
44:37
the same day ran into me in the street and said, you know, how
44:40
do you, how do you keep your cool in those situations?
44:43
It's actually super easy to keep your cool.
44:45
It's just, you just have to ask yourself, like you have to ask
44:48
yourself and sincerely want. And if you sincerely want to
44:51
know the answer to this question, you should never be.
44:54
You should. You won't lose your cool.
44:56
Why does somebody believe that? Like what causes someone to
45:01
believe that? And once you centre that
45:03
question in your mind, then every subsequent question is
45:07
oriented to figuring out why someone believes that.
45:10
And once you figure out why they believe, you can figure out why
45:14
they're upset. And once you figure out why
45:16
they're upset, it's very easy to diffuse.
45:19
Not universally, but almost universally, whatever it is they
45:23
believe. So then, Peter, why do you you
45:27
Peter Boghossian belief? What do you believe?
45:31
Well, I mean, I could certainly be mistaken.
45:33
I believe what I believe because I think I have sufficient
45:36
evidence. I think I've thought about many,
45:40
but certainly not most of my beliefs.
45:43
But I think I have AI, think I have AI.
45:48
Don't want to say a safety valve, but I have, I, I always
45:51
say to myself, OK, so I'm willing to change my mind about
45:54
something. And the moment that you have
45:56
that undergirding all of your thoughts, it's like a safety
46:00
mechanism that prevents you from lapsing into, you know,
46:06
basically becoming an ideologue. I had a guy in my class many
46:09
years ago, he said, I'm I'm willing to question anything
46:12
except my religion. And I was just, I found that to
46:15
be fascinating. It's like, or I often find
46:18
people to be fascinating after finding it to be fascinating
46:21
when religious people say, oh, you know, this, they're, they're
46:25
it's a religion. So they can see that somebody
46:28
else's belief is a religion and that's bad, but they can't take
46:31
the same tool and turn it on their religious belief.
46:35
So I think as long as you're willing to reconsider what it
46:38
is, you believe you, it's kind of a safety mechanism to
46:42
prevent, prevent you from becoming an ideologue.
46:44
But then again, we don't, we don't teach that in schools.
46:47
Like that's not valuing our educational process, you know,
46:50
Oh, revise your belief. Won't find me someone who who
46:53
who, you know, heard I was in Dartmouth recently starting
46:56
trip. And then I asked this kid how he
47:00
could be wrong about something who's a junior, and he said,
47:03
wow, no one's ever asked me that.
47:04
And I was like, really? You're at an Ivy League school?
47:08
Nobody is. And I shouldn't, you know,
47:10
Dartmouth is probably the best of the Ivy's.
47:12
I realise that's not saying much.
47:13
I don't mean that to be an underhanded compliment, but
47:15
Dartmouth is a grade school, unlike the other Ivs, and I
47:19
couldn't believe that no one said to this kid in three years
47:24
of education, oh, how could that belief be wrong?
47:27
I mean, the whole system should be this geared up to this kind
47:30
of Paparian falsification of merciless falsification of every
47:34
fucking thing you believe, but this kid didn't even get the
47:36
question once. But compartmentalization of
47:39
ideas doesn't make you necessarily a stupid person.
47:42
I mean, you can be the best dentist in the world and you
47:45
might believe something that seems ludicrous.
47:50
Sure. And, and ideally what we should
47:52
do is, you know, you asked the question before about belief.
47:57
But if someone asks me a question and I don't know the
47:59
answer to the question, I say I don't know.
48:02
I don't pretend to know something I don't know.
48:04
And so we've created these cultures and what particularly
48:07
in universities, James Randi used to say when someone gets a
48:10
PhD, they they never say who's the, the famous sceptic who died
48:14
few years ago. They never say I don't know
48:17
anymore. And so that should always be a
48:19
virtue to say I don't know. It's never a bad thing.
48:24
I mean, you never see that in, in, in, in high competency or
48:28
skill based things. You never see people in jiu
48:31
jitsu. For example, when you, I was at
48:33
a jiu jitsu seminar and I asked this guy something, he said, I
48:36
don't know, he's a fourth degree of black belt.
48:38
This guy was not a man to be trifled, an extraordinarily
48:41
dangerous human being. And I so respected him for
48:44
saying that. Usually in in high competence
48:47
areas that's what you'll find. I live on the African continent
48:50
and the people around me, by and large, without being degrading,
48:55
are fairly simple people and are very, very spiritual people,
49:02
very tribal, thousands of years of belief and and all that sort
49:06
of thing. Yet they are very happy and
49:10
fulfilled. Now, if I go to Europe, which I
49:13
was recently in, I see a lot of empty people, but supposedly
49:18
intelligent, deeply thoughtful people.
49:23
What's going on there? Oh boy, that, that that's a,
49:30
that's a huge question. That is a massive question.
49:35
So I'm not necessarily buying the explanation.
49:41
I said not necessarily. I could buy it to a certain
49:43
extent that certain cultures are just more thoughtful as a
49:47
general rule than others. I know people are going to
49:49
cringe when they hear that. I could give data on that, but
49:56
this type of person who would cringe at that is not interested
49:59
in data. They're interested in being
50:00
right and attacking someone for a belief because they think it
50:03
makes them moral. So there's no point in giving
50:05
data. So, so I'm, I'm not look, if if
50:11
you live, if you had an idea in an ideal world and you could
50:14
wave a wand, what would you make it?
50:16
Would you make people thoughtful and happy?
50:19
Part of the response to that would be if you're genuinely
50:24
thoughtful, it's difficult to believe you could be truly happy
50:28
to the the ancient question better be a Socrates
50:31
dissatisfied or a pig satisfied. And so there is a certain degree
50:38
of leading a thoughtful and examined life that makes someone
50:41
unhappy. Let me jump in there and ask it.
50:43
I've just, I've just come up with a better way of asking it.
50:47
Is a Bushman poor? Depends.
50:51
Depends what you mean by a poor look.
50:56
So, so again, that's why the conversation is complicated.
50:58
So in the United States, I'm completely convinced that we're
51:01
heading to bankruptcy right now. We, we passed this bill.
51:06
I've been tweeting about it incessantly.
51:07
No one gives a fuck. People don't care.
51:09
We're we're, we're literally the, the end of the empire,
51:12
which is I've just, I usually don't talk about this, but I'm
51:16
now a Bitcoin. I'm super bullish on Bitcoin
51:19
because I don't think we can save ourselves.
51:21
Our empire is over and I think this was, I think Doge offers us
51:24
a glimmer of hope. But when you ask most Americans,
51:27
they don't give a fuck. They couldn't care less.
51:29
They truly don't care less. Even if they're just laying on a
51:32
beach, they still don't care. Business people don't care.
51:35
They will care pretty soon, don't care big time.
51:38
And then they'll be pissed off because no one ever warned them.
51:41
But they don't. They don't.
51:43
So, so, so there's a kind of, there is a kind of cultivated
51:48
apathy and and happiness. There's a kind of being happy at
51:51
not knowing. It's the whole Adam and Eve
51:53
problem. I don't think it's possible.
51:57
I could be completely wrong about this.
52:00
And the way to know if I'm wrong, it's just an empirical
52:02
question. Can you find society that's like
52:05
super simple and super happy where everybody's like, you
52:08
know, the one you live in, They're just dancing around and
52:10
everything and they've developed technologies to ameliorate
52:14
suffering. Have they developed dental
52:17
technologies? Probably not.
52:19
OK, so, but they have no problem taking dental technologies from
52:24
the people who you perceive as miserable.
52:28
OK, so maybe they're the smarter ones after all.
52:30
I mean, that's your thing. You what?
52:37
Western Europe is completely fucked.
52:39
I mean, it's over. It's over.
52:41
The empire, their empire is over.
52:44
I mean, I was in Amsterdam, Peter.
52:46
I was in Amsterdam not too long ago and I just saw individuals
52:49
walking around with headphones on, looking at their cell
52:52
phones, completely disconnected from reality.
52:55
It doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I, I, I would argue
52:58
it's better than that, than causing mayhem and pandemonium.
53:03
It's, it's, it's, it's better to be neutral and indifferent in a
53:06
society than to be lecherous. Yeah.
53:10
Western Europe is toast. England's UK is toast and all
53:14
these places are toast of their own making.
53:16
You need to come to my continent.
53:19
Particularly to the South and come experience some some
53:22
Africanization. I don't know if.
53:27
I'm a fan of that. I'm really a fan of the first
53:29
world. You know you need you need hair
53:35
on your arms. Yeah, I, I, I don't know, I
53:39
mean. I2 people offered me to some guy
53:42
want him to send me on his boat in in South Africa but I I
53:45
politely declined. I have no desire to go to South
53:50
Africa whatsoever in spite of wanting to see you and and your
53:53
wife and your son because we've never met in person.
53:55
But you know, I don't know, maybe.
53:57
I mean I can't imagine it. My buddy has a jiu jitsu studio
54:00
out there so who knows ultimately.
54:04
Your argument, fundamentally is that to solve things around us,
54:11
you need to start by talking and by talking, not talking at but,
54:18
but talking with. Yeah, I wouldn't even say.
54:21
Talking. I'd say just listening, trying
54:24
to figure. Out trying to figure things.
54:26
Out, you know, so the, the people who seem miserable, just
54:30
you know, hey, this whole I would just say I and I and I,
54:34
I'm a big fan of being forthright.
54:35
You have to be forthright in the right way.
54:37
But hey, I'm from South Africa and people around.
54:41
Me are singing and. Dancing.
54:43
And they're all happy and they're not the sharpest tools
54:47
in the drawing. They're a simple bunch, but they
54:49
seem super happy and they're living their best lives.
54:51
And I come up here and people seem thoughtful but fucking
54:55
miserable. What's up with that?
54:57
Most people. Say it exactly like that.
55:00
In the right context, will will think about it and they'll give
55:03
you an honest answer. Very few people, you know, it
55:06
always amazes me. I ask people all around the
55:08
world. The most intimate, crazy,
55:11
intense. Questions like about.
55:13
Eating their friends if they were stranded on an island.
55:15
I mean, just, you know, cannibal, the craziest shit.
55:18
And almost never, almost never do I have someone say once I had
55:23
one time I had someone say, what kind of question is that?
55:25
And then even she answered it, like almost always when you ask
55:29
someone a question and you're sincere, people will answer the
55:32
question. Almost always, even if it's a
55:36
stupid, some people would say God, that's a stupid question,
55:39
but that's on them. And almost always they still
55:42
answer the question. So what's the moral?
55:46
Yeah, what's the mortal of the? Story.
55:48
Well, I think there's like an Achilles.
55:50
Heel In our cognitive architecture, when you're asked
55:53
a question, people answer it. It's just really.
55:57
Weird and I think now even more so I'm amazed the kind of things
56:02
that people tell me like totally me guys tell me he's like and
56:05
have had sex with his brother. And I mean I'm just amazed the
56:08
kind of shit that people tell me like literally on a regular
56:11
basis, the things they and it's not even a confession.
56:13
It's just that, you know, we do the street epistemology and this
56:16
guy's telling me he gets off to this kind of porn and all this
56:19
stuff and this other guy's telling about his erections.
56:21
Like so they're like all of the taboos that we used to be in
56:25
place, particularly about sexual things or they don't seem to
56:28
hold anymore. So you know I.
56:33
I think that the. The, the deliverable is when
56:36
you're in doubt, if like you're having a difficult conversation
56:38
and you're in doubt, assuming you have some kind of rapport,
56:42
just revert to asking questions. If you're ever stressed or stuck
56:45
or just ask questions. It's just, and if you watch the
56:49
confrontation video at PSU, that's what I did.
56:52
And if you're surrounded by people, I always do this.
56:56
I, I try to single one person out and then ask them questions.
56:59
That's a technique from the literature as well.
57:01
But impossible conversations are really, they're almost never.
57:06
I mean, I haven't, I have never. I don't think I've had a single
57:08
one. That's been impossible.
57:10
There's just a. There's also a way.
57:12
I don't really. Worry about write about this
57:14
because it's a difficult thing to write about.
57:16
I wrote about a little bit in the book, but of just a way to
57:19
pause after you ask a question. So don't fill in the lacuna, you
57:23
know, don't fill in that little gap.
57:25
Just wait. And that's a period where people
57:27
can think about ideas. And if you, you get good, some
57:31
people, comedians, good comedians in particular, are
57:34
really good at pauses. You know, when to pause and then
57:36
when to resume. And it's a it's a key art.
57:40
And and one more thing is so if you're thinking like, Oh my God,
57:42
like, I don't know if I could ever do this or well, just go to
57:45
a bar and start talking to random people or wherever you go
57:48
where it doesn't mean anything. You won't see them again.
57:50
Just start. And you'll be amazed when you
57:52
ask people a question that they'll answer.
57:54
They'll answer it like, oh, hey, how's it going?
57:56
You know, you know, Hey, my name's my name's Jerome.
57:58
I'm from, you know, wherever the fuck you're from, you know, Hey,
58:01
what, what is there dude around here?
58:03
And then I you know, I always a good a good thing is if you ever
58:06
you ever too, you can find commonalities.
58:10
In music and. Movies and TV, and that will
58:13
break you in to have more difficult conversations.
58:15
And it's a way to build rapport with people.
58:17
Again, this stuff is not particularly complicated.
58:20
You know, it's not like your physics equation, one of the
58:23
things that bugs. Me a lot these days is that when
58:27
I see a YouTube video that says so and so destroys so and so,
58:31
and I'm thinking I don't get it. Why are you?
58:35
Do you get excited by humiliating somebody?
58:40
Yeah, it's interesting. You know when.
58:42
When we do these videos in the prisons, if if.
58:47
If you really wanted to do. Something you just throw these
58:50
guys in there and just see what happens.
58:52
But the goal, that's not the goal.
58:55
The the goal isn't to see bloodshed.
58:58
The the goal is to teach people how to have better
59:00
conversations, right? The, the goal is to move the
59:03
needle. And you know, I'm always amazed.
59:05
There's this guy in a few people do this, these quote unquote
59:09
influencers. I hate that term.
59:11
But there's this one guy, he's a black guy and he goes around in
59:14
Korea and Japan to another guy and they harass people in
59:18
streets and in supermarkets and shopping malls.
59:22
And it's just I, I just it is. Just insanely.
59:27
Disrespectful and maybe I live in a bubble, I don't know, like
59:30
maybe I really do live in a in a weird world.
59:33
I just assume everybody knows how to fight.
59:35
But I'm always amazed that like he doesn't run into some guy
59:39
who's like really good at MMA and the guy just kicks the shit
59:42
out of his bodyguard 1st and dispenses with him in like a
59:46
second and just breaks few of his bones.
59:47
Like I'm just amazed by that. But but I do think that we have
59:51
a lot of pernicious, just bad actors and they're doing it for
59:57
clicks. They're doing it for views.
59:59
Almost universally. They're young men.
1:00:01
Young women do a different kind of thing that that are not
1:00:04
provocative in the same way or do an attempt to demean or
1:00:08
humiliate, but attempt to draw attention to themselves.
1:00:11
Give me a nugget of wisdom. About what I have.
1:00:18
Someone to give at $58 about what?
1:00:21
Gardening. Gardening.
1:00:24
OK, that's one thing. I have nothing.
1:00:25
To nothing reminds me of that of that movie in the 70s with Peter
1:00:31
Sellers. Well, I'll give you nugget
1:00:34
nugget wisdom I gave you about parenting, I think is really
1:00:37
important. I think teaching your kids a
1:00:39
second language and making it so they they don't think about it,
1:00:43
teaching them how to defend themselves.
1:00:45
You know, Matt Thornton, I wrote the foreword to the gift of
1:00:47
violence. He says this is such an
1:00:50
important nugget of wisdom, a goal.
1:00:54
Should be to make good people. Dangerous to bad people?
1:00:59
Cannot hope. That the government is.
1:01:02
Going to put I don't have to. Convince you of this from South
1:01:04
Africa. But you cannot just hope that
1:01:06
the government is going to step in and protect you.
1:01:10
You cannot hope that so. So teach your kid some self
1:01:14
defence. Ask your kid difficult questions
1:01:17
but in a way that you don't take personally.
1:01:19
Have them see you. Revise your beliefs, have them
1:01:22
see you in these conversations with other people that are that
1:01:28
are engaging. And when people, people can have
1:01:30
genuine differences of opinion and they don't lose their mind.
1:01:34
So that that's what I would say as a as a parent, like you need
1:01:38
to make certain things normative.
1:01:40
It's just normal that we do jiu Jitsu and and keep your kids out
1:01:44
of the striking arts. They're very good for functional
1:01:47
martial arts. They they work.
1:01:49
There's no question. No, nobody's denying that.
1:01:51
But they also give head trauma and head damage.
1:01:53
So and if they're they're hell bent on doing it, tell them they
1:01:58
need to get a black belt in jiu jitsu before they do any
1:02:00
striking arts. That will that will delay that
1:02:02
will delay that problem for for at least 9:50 to 12 years.
1:02:06
Yeah. But I think, you know, I think
1:02:08
one of the things we're not talking about, you know, I'm
1:02:11
going to do an event. When I go back to New York.
1:02:13
In a couple of months about young men and masculinity and
1:02:18
we're also not talking about what does it mean to be a young
1:02:23
man in society. That's probably probably a
1:02:25
second talk. But along with that, I think
1:02:27
we're not talking about what does it mean to be a father.
1:02:29
What does it mean to be a parent?
1:02:31
What skills can you give to you know, we know that when there's
1:02:35
an adult male in the home. Matt also writes, Matt Thornton
1:02:38
also writes about this in his book, When there's an adult male
1:02:41
in the home, that that's one of the main criminogenic factors.
1:02:47
Sex men are more likely males are more likely age, certain
1:02:51
ages. I think it's 16 and 26.
1:02:53
I could be off on that and whether or not there's an adult
1:02:56
male in the home. So if you have issues with your
1:02:58
girl, try to work them out until they're, they're grown.
1:03:01
The kids are grown. So that would be another little
1:03:04
tidbit. Marriage is increasingly
1:03:06
becoming a class based thing as well.
1:03:08
Oh, and if you want your kids to to have a behaviour, don't tell
1:03:12
them to do the behaviour. Have them watch you do the
1:03:14
behaviour. So if you want your kids to
1:03:16
learn how to defend themselves, it's insufficient to put them in
1:03:19
jiu jitsu. It's good, but it's not
1:03:20
sufficient. Even better would be for you to
1:03:22
do jiu jitsu and then they watch and then they so it's normative
1:03:26
for them. OK, Peter, how can?
1:03:28
I follow you and your work. I'm on X at.
1:03:33
Peter Boghossian PETERBOGHOSSIN I'm on YouTube, I have a sub
1:03:39
stack. I'm all over the place, so I
1:03:41
have no plans to go to Salt Lake.
1:03:42
If I would though, if I would, it'd be I'd go to see you, we'd
1:03:45
have a good time. Peter Boghossian, Thank you for
1:03:47
joining. Me in the trenches.
1:03:50
Pleasure. Thanks, Jim.