#27 — Ask Me Anything 3
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Summary
In this episode, I answer a question from a reader about whether I think Douglas Murray is a bigot, and how we should treat far-right bigots in the context of Islamism. I also discuss the term "racist" and "bigotry" in relation to Islamism, and the role of women in that context, and why they should be treated with the same care as men in such matters. And I answer some more questions from you, the listeners. Links From This Episode: Making Sense All Previous Podcast Episodes Free Training From The Nation Leave Us a Review On Apple Podcasts Subscribe To Our YouTube Channel Learn more about our sponsorships and become a supporter of Making Sense by becoming a patron of the podcast. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. Please consider becoming a supporter by becoming one! You'll get access to our premium memberships, unlimited ad-free listening, unlimited access to all our premium features, and access to the podcast's most popular shows, including "Making Sense". and "The Making Sense Podcasts". Thanks to our sponsor, VaynerMedia, for sponsoring the podcast and supporting the podcast with a discount code: MINDING MESINGLES. I'll be happy to hear the first part of this conversation on the next full-length episode of the Making Sense podcast, coming soon! I'm looking forward to the second part of the full episode on the full of this podcast, which will be available on the making sense podcast! I hope you enjoy what you're listening to it! of the show! . - Sam Harris, Sam Harris Make Sense? -- I'm making sense of it all! -- Thank you, Sam, I'll talk to you, too, Sarah, Sarah Sarah, and I'll see you soon. -- Thank you! -- Sarah, Amy, Sarah's Answer Me Anything? -- Please write in the next one, by: Sarah, -- My thoughts on what you think of it? , and I'm listening to this podcast? Sarah's answer to this, and Sarah's thoughts on it, and you'll be helping me decide what you like it, too? -- I'll let me know what you would like to hear it out in the comments section?
Transcript
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Okay, well this is going to be an Ask Me Anything podcast.
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I had an interview with Mariam Namazi that got postponed.
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And so I've got your questions here coming in from Twitter and email.
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Actually, the first one is on something related to Mariam Namazi.
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I'll just deal with that only to postpone it, really.
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But many of you asked what I thought about the, quote, open letter to Sam Harris that
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Ina at Nice Mangoes wrote, alleging that Douglas Murray is a bigot.
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And Mariam actually circulated that on Twitter.
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So Ina, who's this blogger who many of you probably know, wrote an open letter to Ben
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She's an ex-Muslim who has made some very nice noises on this topic.
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But she attacks Douglas in this letter as a bigot and claims that his views about immigration
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I don't know if there's anything else she believes that constitutes a sign of his bigotry.
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And a few other people like Atticus Amber, another person I notice on Twitter, have raised a more
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general concern about taking care not to provide far-right bigots cover in how we talk about
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And this was also the subject of Ina's letter to me.
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I definitely share the general concern that we not provide cover for bigots.
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I don't think anything he said in my discussion with him on my podcast suggests that he is.
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I really think his heart and mind are in the right place.
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That doesn't mean you necessarily agree with his views about immigration.
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But I think I'll, let me just table this now because I will get into this in depth when
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I speak with Mariam Namazi because she substantially shares Ina's views, as far as I can tell.
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In that case, a retweet, I think, did equal an endorsement.
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And there's a lot to talk about with Mariam, specifically on the topic of immigration in
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Europe, because she is for open borders, which is not a position I share.
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And in that context, I'll be happy to defend Douglas, who I think is just genuinely afraid
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And one doesn't need to be a bigot in order to worry about that.
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Question number two, how should we differentiate labels used for clarity and labels used in
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This comes from Maggie, whose Twitter handle is a simple hedonist.
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And this is related to another question I got about the term regressive leftist.
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Actually, several people worried that this is being applied almost at random to people who
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You know, I think labels have to be used carefully and accurately.
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And I do think people are using regressive leftist in a way that doesn't totally track its intended
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I would reserve it for any so-called liberal who is either explicitly or tacitly taking the
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side of highly illiberal people, very likely in the Muslim community, based on political
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correctness or a misplaced concern about racism.
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So the classic case of this, you see with people like Glenn Greenwald, who just reflexively,
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it seems, aligns with theocrats, protecting them from criticism and labeling anyone who
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would criticize their worldview as a bigot or a racist.
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So it's on that specific point where you have people who should be committed and in fact
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are committed in every other mode of life to free speech and gay rights and the rights
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of women, but who can't follow those commitments to their logical conclusion in the presence of
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There's this underlying software routine they're running on their brains, which one, privileges
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a concern about bigotry and racism over everything else.
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And two, in the foreign policy domain, they more or less blame everything that's wrong with
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the world on the West and on colonialism and on US foreign policy in particular.
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And so you have those two commitments aligning to make any moral clarity on the question
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of, let's say, how women are treated in Muslim societies really difficult to attain.
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So that's where I would say we should reserve the use of regressive left or regressive leftist.
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The person who is, in fact, a liberal, except where liberalism really is needed at this moment,
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to protect the most vulnerable people in the most intolerant communities on earth.
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What about the idea of free won't as opposed to free will?
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Free won't is this idea that I believe Michael Shermer used in his recent book, The Moral Arc,
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but it comes from Benjamin Labet, and I'm sorry, I never know whether he pronounced his name
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He's no longer alive to consult, and I only ever see it written.
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Benjamin Labet, who famously gave us some early neurophysiological results on the topic of free
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will using EEG, and who showed that you could predict a person's motor response some hundreds
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of milliseconds, you know, up to half a second before they were consciously aware of having
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He then came forward with this idea of free won't, that though free will was difficult
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He thought that we have veto power and could cancel an action at the last minute, and that
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And I believe he published this first in the Journal of Consciousness Studies.
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I would have to look, but I recall reading a paper from him on this topic.
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This never made any sense at all to me, because whatever the neurological precursors are of the
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veto, those too are being kindled and made effective by processes which no one is conscious of.
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Now, I don't think Labet ever did an experiment looking for the timing difference there between
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when one is conscious of one's veto and when it's actually kindled, but surely there's a time
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And again, even if there weren't, this is often a misunderstanding about my argument against
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free will, it's not just that there's a time difference.
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It's not just that there is a period where neurophysiologically we can detect an intention
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or a motor plan, and then this only becomes conscious some hundreds of milliseconds later.
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Even if we were conscious at the first instant of this plan arising in the brain, or of the veto
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arising in the brain, its mirror rising in that moment is also inscrutable.
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It's also compatible with a total lack of free will.
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The time lag is slightly more inconvenient for anyone who wants to argue for free will,
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because what it demonstrates is that there is a period where you still think you're free
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to make up your mind, where you still think you are making up your mind, where you still
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think you have not decided what you will do, and yet what you will do is, in a very real
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sense, determined by the state of your brain at that moment.
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And this must be true, to some degree, with any veto of a motor plan.
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But again, I think in a deep sense, the illusoriness of free will is not dependent on any gap there
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between the arising of the intention and its conscious execution.
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I don't think free won't gives you any more freedom than the more common notion of free will.
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But of course, it's also a fact about the human mind.
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But again, the moments where you do that, just pay attention.
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You can't actually account for why you do it in that moment or why it's effective in
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that moment, why you do it precisely at the moment you do do it.
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I mean, it's all being pushed forward into consciousness by processes of which you are not
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conscious and which you did not bring into being.
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I think there's another question about free will coming up, and perhaps I'll go over that
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Many of you are asking me, why on earth am I voting or planning to vote for Hillary Clinton
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Well, it's not for any deep conviction about Clinton's integrity or honesty.
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I share the common perception of her as a political opportunist.
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I don't doubt that she also wants to live in a nice world and help people.
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But if you get one thing from the Clintons, it is their desire to be in power and on the
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There's an endless appetite for political calculation in place of obvious candor.
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If you ever heard her trying not to admit that she had changed her mind about gay marriage
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in an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, I think this happened about two years ago,
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you'll see everything that's wrong with her approach to communicating the workings of her
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It is the most excruciating five minutes of radio I can remember hearing, where she's
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becoming more and more defensive, more and more irate that Terry would suggest that she
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had changed her mind on this topic, whereas she had actually changed her mind on the topic.
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But she's changed her mind to the right position on that topic.
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And I think she's, you know, despite the fact that she will say that ISIS has nothing to
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do with Islam and that Islam is a religion of peace, and she will sound like a fairly delusional
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person when talking about the conflict in the Middle East, I'm reasonably confident that
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she understands what is actually going on there and that she's one of the grownups who will
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be able to respond to crises there in an intelligent way.
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I imagine she will continue Obama's policies to some significant degree.
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I can't claim to know that about Bernie Sanders.
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I don't think he has thought about foreign policy very much.
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The little he has said makes me worry that he's been somewhat infected by Noam Chomsky's
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worldview, which I think is the moral black hole swallowing everything on the left side
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So I don't actually know whether we can trust Sanders to be wise on what I consider the most
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crucial question of foreign policy, which is our fight against global jihadism.
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And there are many other questions where I would expect Hillary to be far more seasoned
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and smarter, frankly, on foreign policy, whether it's with Russia or China or any other hard
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I agree that the influence of money in politics and wealth inequality, these are huge issues
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I suspect that the difference between Clinton and Sanders on those topics is not so much a
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But I think Sanders is making promises he can't possibly keep there.
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I mean, he's clearly an idealist, and his idealism will be smashed if he was ever in office having
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So I think these are empty promises, albeit revolutionary ones, that he's making on those
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But most important, far more important than anything I have just said, is the fact that
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I think Sanders cannot get elected in the general election.
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Now, I know this will raise the ire of all of his fans who are aware of national polls,
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where he's beating Ted Cruz, for instance, and Hillary isn't.
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But Sanders has not been hammered for the better part of a year by the Republicans, because he's
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If he were the Democratic nominee, a billion-dollar apparatus on the Republican side would do nothing
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but emphasize his identity as a socialist, right?
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There is no way this country is electing somebody who has to nuance the term socialism in a general
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It's worse than being an atheist at this moment.
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It's not the only strike against him, but I think it's a devastating one.
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So I think nominating Sanders would be to virtually guarantee a Republican victory in a year where
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the Republican candidates are both less sane and less competent than usual.
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There's just no reason for the Democrats to lose this election.
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I think the prospect of having Cruz or Trump as president is an extraordinarily scary one for
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But I think the only grown-up in sight here is Clinton.
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And that doesn't mean I don't have great reservations about her.
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But I think she's smart and competent and knows how to compromise so as to get some things done
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And I certainly can't say that about Sanders across the board.
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So take that as a tepid endorsement of necessity for Clinton.
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But that's why I've said what I've said about Hillary versus Bernie.
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There were several questions about Noam Chomsky's interview with Mehdi Hassan on Al Jazeera,
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where Chomsky actually greenwalled me to some degree, which is amusing.
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He claimed that I'm someone who specializes in hysterical, slanderous charges against people
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If I've ever said anything inaccurate that is slanderous against the people I don't like,
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In our email exchange, he hurled this charge at me.
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But the substance of his charge amounted to a pedantic and evasive distinction without a
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I had said that he never had considered the intentions of the United States versus those
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And it was a baseless slander for me to suggest otherwise.
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But he totally disregarded the significance of intention, discounted it, said you can't possibly
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And at one point even inverted their significance, suggesting that non-intending harm made one somehow
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It struck me as a fairly crazy view, but I was eager to talk about it.
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And in the end, I couldn't figure out what his specific view was, apart from the fact that
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it was absolutely clear that it was different from mine in precisely the way that I said it
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He believes that considering intentions in cases like this is a sign of moral confusion.
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Whereas I believe, in certain cases, it is the only difference between good and evil, because
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good people can create immense harm by accident.
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And evil people can sometimes do conventionally good things, seemingly good things, in an effort
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Or they can also just do good things by accident, right?
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If a man kicks a puppy in the street, and unbeknownst to him, he actually kicks it out of
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the way of a passing car and saves its life inadvertently, the effects of that isolated
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And in this interview with Mehdi Hassan, when asked to rank the respective evils in the
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world, he comes right out and says that the U.S. and Britain are off the charts and the
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most evil regimes in how they've behaved on the world stage.
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Now, I think that is a frankly crazy point of view.
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It's a point of view you can only arrive at by totally disregarding the intentions of our
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governments, the kind of world we want to build, what we would do if we had even more
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In this case, it was the Islamic State that was being talked about.
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I think you guys know how I think intention functions here.
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Intention is the only guide to what someone's going to do next, right?
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It's the only guide to what they will do if they have the power to do it.
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That's why there's a huge difference between the person who injures you by accident and
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feels sorry over it, and the person who injured you intentionally and wants to do you further
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The only difference, and it's an enormous one, is the intention behind the action.
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So Chomsky seems to simply count the bodies, and this is just a crazy thing to do.
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Someone might have suggested this analogy to me on Twitter or by email, and I think it's
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Well, more Germans died than Americans in World War II, right?
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So you look at what we did, and you look at what the Germans did, and with respect to the
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conflict between the U.S. and the Third Reich, well, the U.S. looks worse.
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I guess we're morally worse than the Nazis there.
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The importance of intention is obvious because our intentions were revealed once we won that
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It would have been fairly different if we had conquered Germany only to then go in and
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rape all the women, enslave all the children, and kill all the men, right?
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That's a rather big difference, and you would have seen that difference had we intended to
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Chomsky ignores all this, and it's just mind-boggling to me that anyone considers his views on this
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topic, morally sane, much less important to consider.
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I listened to the whole interview with Mehdi Hassan.
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He said many other things that were less crazy than that, and he said a fair amount that was
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He claims to be even more concerned about jihadism than I am, but he purports to be drilling down
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to its root cause, which, as was obvious from the context, he believes is U.S. foreign policy.
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We created global jihadism, according to Chomsky.
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My analysis of the roots of jihadism can fully absorb the reality of blowback, the fact that
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Have we created a belief in martyrdom and paradise?
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Are we responsible for the fact that tomorrow morning, some bright guy in London or Antwerp
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or Paris or Brooklyn is going to wake up and decide to fight for ISIS?
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The real answer to the riddle of jihadism is both simpler and more complicated than what
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Chomsky is alleging, and his emphasis is just all wrong and reliably wrong on this topic,
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as is the emphasis of everyone influenced by him.
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It seems to me no question that Chomsky is the godfather of the regressive left.
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If responsibility for this moral confusion and political masochism can be laid on anyone's
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And that's why I would have loved to have had a real conversation with him on this topic,
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because if he's misunderstood, well, then I would like to cease to misunderstand him.
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But unfortunately, I think he's understood all too well, and it's time people stopped listening
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What was the most unexpected and or remarkable audience reaction during your recent tour of
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And this came from someone named GoodLifeDecoder on Twitter.
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Most unexpected or remarkable audience reaction?
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Well, first let me say I loved meeting you all in Australia, those of you I met.
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I feel like I need to apologize for a couple of things.
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And though I attempted to rally, I don't think I was fooling anyone.
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But I was pretty tired at each of those events.
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And some of you noticed that Majid and I had a good laugh in the one of the book signing
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I think no less than five people came up to me and Majid was sitting right next to me.
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No less than five people came up and said, man, you look exhausted.
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And one person came up and said, just don't die, right?
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So Majid, for the rest of the trip, Majid kept turning to me and saying, man, you look
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So that and my having said that I'm not a fan of hip hop got me trolled endlessly by Majid
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Anyway, just despite jet lag, we had a great time.
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One is that every single Muslim group invited to those events declined.
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And quite memorably, the Australian Muslim Students Association, I don't know how big
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But some Islamic student group in Australia declared that Majid was not welcome in Australia.
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And to see Majid's shunning by the Muslim community there was fairly sobering, given how reasonable
00:24:23.380
But the most surprising audience reaction, actually, one person came up at the book signing
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from Pakistan and said to me, not to Majid, which was surprising, that I really should never
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doubt that my message is being heard, even among religious conservatives in Pakistan.
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And my YouTube videos, apparently, really got through to him.
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And he was now a non-believer and quite happy to be out of the closet.
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That seems like an especially heavy lift for me.
00:25:04.480
And I must say that when I put out books and videos and podcasts, I'm rarely thinking that
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someone in a truly conservative context in a place like Pakistan is being successfully
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I know there are atheists and closeted secularists in countries like Pakistan who listen to this
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podcast and watch YouTube videos because I hear from these people.
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But I rarely picture actually reaching someone who is devout and changing their mind in that
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And I don't recall your name, but it was great to meet you.
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So yeah, I think that was the moment of most gratifying surprise from the trip.
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But it was great to travel with Majid, and I really enjoyed Australia and hope to go back
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One other thing I should say about Australia is that while many people seem to love the
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events, I did hear some complaints about the format, that these were on-stage interviews.
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I just came on stage and was interviewed by different people in the different cities.
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And there's a strength to that format, but there's also an obvious weakness.
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The weakness is I don't prepare anything beforehand.
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I don't know what questions I'm going to be asked.
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And so I am at the mercy of whatever I get asked.
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And I can wind up saying many things that you have all heard before, depending on what
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And so that's a—I think some of you are not a fan of that format.
00:26:44.580
I didn't dictate that format for the Australia tour.
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In fact, Think Inc. only does events in that format.
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They want conversations between some interviewer and the person they're touring.
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And Neil deGrasse Tyson and Cornel West and other people who preceded me in that speaker
00:27:10.960
But it's a—I acknowledge there is a difference there.
00:27:13.620
And you are not getting my most polished treatments of specific topics that are foremost on my
00:27:22.700
You're getting my answer to whatever gets asked in the moment, which is precisely what
00:27:31.560
Next question, which misrepresentation of your views are you most tired of defending?
00:27:39.660
I think it would have to be the nuclear first strike that I allegedly want to execute on
00:27:47.700
Yeah, that's the most depressing because I saw it spread and I was aware of doing nothing
00:27:54.200
I just didn't see the point of answering this charge.
00:28:02.800
Chris Hedges just went on his book tour and shouted this from the rooftops and it stuck.
00:28:09.580
So yeah, that's the most boring one, I believe.
00:28:12.540
What does agency mean in the context of free will?
00:28:17.320
Is the difference between involuntary and voluntary action only an indication of future
00:28:28.600
My disavowal of free will is not a denial of there being a difference between voluntary and
00:28:37.180
Clearly there's a difference between what you intentionally do and what you do by reflex
00:28:45.880
And there are many different ways to see this difference.
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One is that voluntary action is something you can cease to do voluntarily or in response
00:28:56.540
If someone says, listen, I'm going to fine you $100 if you park in that space again, well
00:29:01.780
then you can decide not to park in that space again if you helplessly park your car there
00:29:07.180
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