Based Camp - June 25, 2023


Based Camp： The Evils of Truth and Love


Episode Stats

Length

28 minutes

Words per Minute

184.55011

Word Count

5,306

Sentence Count

320

Misogynist Sentences

4

Hate Speech Sentences

16


Summary

In this episode, we discuss how we see truth, and the diversity of perspectives on the concept of truth within our society, and how that affects the way we see it. We also discuss the role of religion in shaping our understanding of truth.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Different cultural groups see truth differently and it influences the way those cultures work.
00:00:05.120 So if you look at immigrant groups that come from cultural groups which see truth as something that should be determined by people who spent their entire lives studying it and then are certified by a central bureaucracy, like the Catholic cultural groups, those cultural groups throughout U.S. history have created the dominant immigrant criminal syndicates within the U.S.
00:00:30.000 Whether you're talking about the Irish mafia or the Italian mob or the current Hispanic criminal groups.
00:00:37.220 If you're talking about immigrant criminal groups.
00:00:38.960 Now, I'm not talking about native-born American criminal groups.
00:00:42.400 If you look at other criminal groups that have come into the United States but weren't from countries that strongly felt that way, they had a bit of presence, like the Yakuza, for example, or the Triad, but they never really got that big.
00:00:54.800 And then you can be like, oh, but here's something that counters you.
00:00:57.800 What about the Russian mob?
00:00:58.740 But the Russian mob came from an Orthodox Church country and all Orthodox religions also, like the Catholic cultural groups, believe that truth should be determined by people who spent their entire life studying it and then have been certified by a central bureaucracy.
00:01:13.700 Would you like to know more?
00:01:14.860 Prepare for trouble.
00:01:16.360 And make it double.
00:01:18.040 To protect the world from devastation.
00:01:20.480 To unite all peoples within our nation.
00:01:23.020 To denounce the evils of truth and love.
00:01:25.300 To extend our reach to the stars above.
00:01:28.100 Jesse.
00:01:29.600 James.
00:01:30.960 Team Rocket blasts off at the speed of light.
00:01:33.880 Surrender now or prepare to fight.
00:01:37.180 Meow.
00:01:37.660 That's right.
00:01:38.380 So we had done that at another one of our things is like our personal motto, because all of the parts of the song really extend to aspects of our philosophy, whether it's extending our reach to the stars above or seeing love as an intrinsically evil thing, which we have talked about in other episodes and which we'll certainly do a longer episode on at some point.
00:02:04.620 I mean, is there anything more perverse than a marriage based on love?
00:02:07.300 The only reason we feel it is because our ancestors who felt it had more surviving offspring.
00:02:12.780 And even if you take a religious perspective on this, the devil can use love to manipulate you.
00:02:18.280 Like, what a better emotion to manipulate people, right?
00:02:21.720 Especially love for a human over love of God or Christ, right?
00:02:27.400 That's an evil thing.
00:02:29.380 So the idea that even from a secular or theological perspective, from our cultural perspective at least, maybe not all cultural perspectives, but from ours, love is typically at the very least something to be suspicious of.
00:02:41.600 But the one point we haven't really gotten over here is the evils of truth.
00:02:45.560 And so I want to talk and take this episode to talk about how we see truth, how the diversity of perspectives on truth.
00:02:55.620 And yeah, I think right now we're at a turning point civilizationally for the concept of truth.
00:03:01.640 And it's a turning point that is very similar to what we've gone through in the past.
00:03:06.280 And I think we can learn from the last time we went through this.
00:03:08.640 So if you look at society right now, you look at all these conspiracy theories that people have that keep coming up true.
00:03:15.480 Like, people are like, oh, no, conspiracy theories don't come up true.
00:03:18.640 Yeah.
00:03:18.860 Now, do you remember how insane it was that the idea that there's these, like, cabals of pedophile among, like, the wealthy elite in our society?
00:03:24.800 And now it's like, after Epstein, it's like, oh, oh, there was actually at least one major.
00:03:31.560 I mean, it was just one, Malcolm.
00:03:33.660 It's fine.
00:03:34.840 It's fine.
00:03:35.880 You think we would catch a lot of them?
00:03:37.960 I mean, he messed up.
00:03:39.660 I don't know.
00:03:40.760 When I look at all of them, do you think that, like, all of these people had developed, like, these pedophilic habits and, like, this was their only source?
00:03:48.380 Like, you, it's like a cop's like, oh, well, we arrested a meth dealer in town.
00:03:52.460 There's no more meth here.
00:03:53.820 It's over.
00:03:54.800 Congratulations, but we're on drug is this over.
00:03:57.600 Yeah, people clearly only could buy meth from one person.
00:04:00.980 This is Johnny the meth dealer.
00:04:02.760 There is, it's in his name.
00:04:04.680 They can't be buying meth from other people.
00:04:07.300 But, I mean, like, what I'm saying is we're, and then with COVID and the whole vaccine rollout, there was this thing in our society where two groups were forming, right?
00:04:16.120 And we talk about this in this academic cult that runs our culture right now, which is to say when people are trying to determine what's true in our society,
00:04:23.820 like the elite was in our society, they go, well, look at, look at this priest guest.
00:04:27.100 Look at the consensus.
00:04:27.900 What did they say?
00:04:28.360 The academics, right?
00:04:29.040 Like, that is what is true within our society.
00:04:31.520 And we've done episodes before on all the problems with academic research these days, replicability crisis, everything like that, where things keep showing up wrong.
00:04:39.020 But anyway, they say, look at that, right?
00:04:41.020 So the first group says, look, truth should be determined by people who have spent their entire lives studying a subject, because, like, everyone can't study everything these days, right?
00:04:52.500 And that these people should be certified by a central bureaucracy, because obviously we need some way to know which of them have, like, been studying longer.
00:04:59.840 You can't just have somebody come out of nowhere and say, like, I'm an expert in why, right?
00:05:03.700 And then the other group in our society says, excuse me, that central bureaucracy is highly prone to corruption, and from all of this data, it looks like it's already pretty corrupt, and is now just trying to serve an ideology rather than an objective truth about reality.
00:05:20.200 And therefore, truth should always be best determined by an individual.
00:05:23.440 And a lot of people look at this, and they're like, well, this looks like it's headed for a disaster.
00:05:28.380 Like, society has never been through this before.
00:05:30.020 And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.
00:05:32.540 Like, we as a world have gone through this before.
00:05:35.440 This world where one organization says truth should best be determined by people who spent their entire life studying it and have been certified by a central bureaucracy, and then a second group says, well, that central bureaucracy is prone to corruption.
00:05:51.220 That's what the Reformation was.
00:05:52.700 Like, we've gone through this before, but we haven't just gone through it once.
00:05:57.220 And this is where it gets really interesting, is both of these perspectives on truth have merit to them.
00:06:04.580 Both of these perspectives have an element of utility to them.
00:06:08.780 And I think that societies that have both of them actually work better than societies that lean to just one or just the other.
00:06:15.480 An example of a society that left just to trust the experts was China, and that's where you ended up getting zero COVID,
00:06:20.600 was, like, people being welded in their apartments and, like, starving to death.
00:06:24.060 Like, horrible scenarios came out of saying, well, we need to trust the experts, because then when reality doesn't align with what the experts are saying,
00:06:33.760 you begin to get this doubling down and doubling down.
00:06:36.700 Because, well, then you've overturned your priesthood caste, right?
00:06:39.800 And to a lot of people who have obtained that level of power, the very last thing they want to do is to lose that level of power.
00:06:45.360 But if you have this constant questioning of authority, well, then you have the other problem,
00:06:49.080 which is spiraling into conspiracy theories and flat-eartherness and, like, the most extremes of wacky conspiracy theories,
00:06:56.740 because everything needs to be questioned.
00:06:58.540 But these aren't the only two frameworks for understanding truth.
00:07:02.920 Well, and actually, yeah, so let's back up and let's give some context.
00:07:06.240 And I think actually something that foundationally influenced the way that both of us came to view truth,
00:07:11.840 and it, believe it or not, has to do with Jesus.
00:07:17.580 That was really what changed the way that I look at truth,
00:07:20.520 and I think it influenced you, too, whether or not you want to admit it.
00:07:23.260 So the teaching company, a.k.a. Wondrium, a.k.a. The Great Courses,
00:07:27.760 has a really great lecture series on the historical Jesus.
00:07:32.680 It is done by a professor who attempts to go through Jesus as, the life of Jesus as a historical figure.
00:07:42.240 So setting aside faith, belief, anything else, you know,
00:07:46.620 what can we know from a historical perspective only about the apocalyptic Jew known as Jesus?
00:07:54.140 Well, whether he is an apocalyptic Jew would be up for debate,
00:07:56.920 but this theory typically argues he is. Continue.
00:07:59.120 Right. And what I think was very foundational in that lecture series for both you and for me,
00:08:05.120 though, much later, because I think you listened to it as much younger youth,
00:08:08.280 and so it, like, shaped your perception, and you don't realize, like,
00:08:10.820 it's, like, incepted your perception of what truth should be,
00:08:13.900 how truth can be discerned, is the lecturer goes through all these criteria for truth
00:08:21.240 that can be used to determine what is more likely to be historically accurate about the life of Jesus
00:08:27.740 and what is less likely to be historically accurate about the life of Jesus.
00:08:31.740 And these criteria can easily be transferred to pretty much any domain,
00:08:36.280 and they're criteria that we absolutely use outside biblical scholarship,
00:08:40.920 at least, like, Malcolm and Simone, that is to say.
00:08:43.980 I wouldn't say everyone necessarily uses these criteria,
00:08:46.660 but actually, I really wish that they did,
00:08:48.220 because they're very good for determining truth.
00:08:50.660 And I think that a lot of the, even earlier in our relationship,
00:08:53.560 before you had me listen to the Historical Jesus Lecture series, actually,
00:08:57.760 we had a much more rudimentary breakdown of how truth was discerned.
00:09:02.260 It was more like, well, do we believe scientific consensus?
00:09:04.480 Do we believe our own personal feelings?
00:09:06.140 Do we believe, like, some other criteria?
00:09:09.500 But now we have a much more sophisticated sort of listing,
00:09:13.100 and that I think is broadly inspired by this course.
00:09:15.460 Like, what are some of the criteria?
00:09:18.380 Like, the one for a dissimilar?
00:09:19.900 We actually have a whole list of these within the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion,
00:09:22.980 but essentially, we have created our own metric for determining truth
00:09:28.160 within the culture that we're building for ourselves and our kids
00:09:30.580 that we think works within this modern era,
00:09:32.540 which is to say, to draw information from both personal experience
00:09:37.740 and the expert consensus,
00:09:39.440 but filter any information that's coming from the expert consensus
00:09:42.900 through certain rules to determine how high quality that information is.
00:09:48.720 with an example of, like, a really obvious one being, like,
00:09:52.700 does this support or does it go against an agenda
00:09:56.280 that would advance the careers of the individual saying it?
00:09:59.240 So if a scientist is saying something that could get them fired,
00:10:02.260 it's more likely to be true than something that supports the ideological agenda
00:10:05.800 which is dominant within academia.
00:10:07.520 In the same way that if an oil company said,
00:10:10.040 yes, global warming is real and we need to do something about it,
00:10:13.480 that would be very, like, oh, shoot.
00:10:15.520 But if it says, oh, no, don't worry about global warming
00:10:19.260 or about cigarettes, somebody said, oh, no, don't,
00:10:21.360 the cigarettes don't cause cancer, like, I could largely ignore that, right?
00:10:24.700 Another is to look for largely unrelated sources
00:10:28.020 which are showing the same thing.
00:10:30.140 So one would be something like,
00:10:32.580 are insurance rates going up around, like,
00:10:35.820 women driving cars versus men?
00:10:37.380 And then, like, a scientific paper says women are worse drivers than men?
00:10:40.400 Then I could be like, okay, so women are probably worse drivers than men, right?
00:10:43.000 Or you can look at the criteria of genuine care.
00:10:46.980 So insurance companies are very good selectors of this
00:10:50.160 and that an insurance company, when it's pricing things, genuinely cares.
00:10:55.260 Like, if an insurance company says do this to be healthier,
00:10:57.480 they likely care a lot more than, like, a generally random person.
00:11:02.140 An example of a weird one you might see was, like, historical Jesus,
00:11:06.180 which I really liked and was really meaningful to me,
00:11:09.360 is a piece of information that seems sus when you first hear it.
00:11:16.360 And it seems a little weird when you first hear it.
00:11:18.660 But as you get more information on it,
00:11:21.640 begins to make a lot more sense in a way that the people
00:11:25.680 who were conveying that to you clearly didn't understand.
00:11:29.300 So here's an example.
00:11:30.720 Jesus born in a manger, right?
00:11:32.700 Like, in his, why would you send them to the barn to have kids?
00:11:36.280 Why wouldn't they have kids in the house?
00:11:38.180 Like, if the house is there, like, at some ladies having you,
00:11:42.040 you literally, like, go put her with the animals,
00:11:44.300 why would you do that, right?
00:11:45.700 And this seemed very weird to me.
00:11:48.240 Then I went to Israel and I looked at houses
00:11:50.840 that were common from around that period,
00:11:52.760 and all of a sudden I was like, this makes perfect sense.
00:11:57.080 So the way that the houses were designed during that period
00:11:59.560 was sort of like a often one-one style of it
00:12:02.440 was to build them into, like, the sides of hills or something.
00:12:05.380 And so they'd be semicircular like this,
00:12:08.120 or just, like, huts that were semicircular like this.
00:12:10.820 And then down the middle, there would be a division.
00:12:13.320 And on this side of the house is where all of the people would sleep.
00:12:16.660 Like, there was no need for individual rooms or anything.
00:12:19.220 I mean, this was very, very primitive.
00:12:21.080 So everyone would basically sleep in a pile.
00:12:23.240 And then on the other side of the divide
00:12:25.500 is where the animals would stay, right?
00:12:28.640 And of course, oh, all of the family sleeps
00:12:31.400 on this side of the divide.
00:12:32.520 Anything that's not family sleeps on this side of the divide.
00:12:35.860 So that would translate into modern tongue in the manger.
00:12:40.500 But historically, it was where the animals stay,
00:12:43.440 which makes a lot of sense when you see it.
00:12:45.160 And you're like, okay, so this is probably accurate
00:12:47.260 to where this would have happened.
00:12:48.800 Another example here would be the criteria of, like, embarrassment,
00:12:51.600 or you would say, like, something you probably wouldn't want.
00:12:53.940 So these are people talking about, okay,
00:12:55.480 this is the son of God being born.
00:12:57.460 Well, you're probably not going to say he was born in a manger,
00:12:59.840 like, where animals are, right?
00:13:01.540 Like, he's the king of kings in their interpretation.
00:13:05.120 Like, that seems like it doesn't fit the agenda.
00:13:07.960 You would probably say he was,
00:13:09.080 if you were just making up a story from nowhere,
00:13:11.120 you would say, oh, he was born to a king
00:13:13.620 or to a secret king or something like that, right?
00:13:16.100 Like, born to poor people in a manger?
00:13:19.840 Like, no, that's not what you would come up with.
00:13:22.160 Especially, you know, today,
00:13:23.600 because Christianity has influenced the world so much
00:13:25.840 and victim narratives are really important
00:13:27.940 and, like, oh, this person came from nothing to be something.
00:13:30.300 That was not a common story motif of that time period.
00:13:33.440 It was a common story motif that somebody was secretly born of a king
00:13:36.700 and then grew up with nothing, right?
00:13:38.520 Like, that was a common story motif.
00:13:40.060 But born of, like, actual, like, not that important people
00:13:43.220 and then grow up to be something?
00:13:44.980 That was not a common story motif at the time.
00:13:47.040 So that's what we're talking about there.
00:13:48.920 But anyway.
00:13:49.380 Yeah, I just, I think that it's really interesting.
00:13:52.060 Like, I think multiple attestation is there, too.
00:13:53.960 Like, is this story told?
00:13:56.660 And also, how is it told similarly in different Gospels?
00:14:00.960 Like, I can't remember exactly how it went,
00:14:03.480 but, like, different Gospels have, like,
00:14:06.100 Jesus riding in on one donkey, on two donkeys.
00:14:09.560 Like, there's, like, different donkey scenarios.
00:14:12.060 And sort of, like...
00:14:12.600 Well, probably a better way to word what you're saying is
00:14:14.580 if across Gospels it looks like whenever you see similarities,
00:14:19.540 you see almost in the exact same words.
00:14:21.880 Well, yeah, then it's less credible
00:14:23.900 because they're just copy-pasting.
00:14:25.600 Yeah, they were copy-pasting.
00:14:26.520 When it's copy-pasta, it doesn't get as much credibility.
00:14:29.300 But when you do have the story told in slightly different ways
00:14:32.240 that don't seem as copied or that sound pretty unique,
00:14:35.560 but they have many, like, core similarities,
00:14:37.760 then it's like, oh, well, something around this might have happened.
00:14:40.520 Well, and that's true today when you're looking at press releases.
00:14:43.520 Like, where you'll see a bunch of sources.
00:14:45.480 Like, if ever I see almost the exact same set of words used across news stories,
00:14:51.080 I assume that they're pulling from the same source,
00:14:53.900 which could be something that, like, the Republican Party
00:14:56.200 or the Democratic Party is pushing out there.
00:14:57.920 Some kind of press release.
00:14:59.320 Yeah, some kind of basically press release or organized press campaign,
00:15:02.760 and then I basically disregard everything that's said there.
00:15:06.100 And then there's other weird things we use,
00:15:07.420 like the criteria of shotcalling.
00:15:08.840 Like, if somebody says,
00:15:09.720 this unlikely thing is going to happen,
00:15:12.200 like, I stake my career on it,
00:15:13.600 and then that unlikely thing happens,
00:15:15.100 I can basically trust almost everything they say after that a lot more.
00:15:18.160 Exactly.
00:15:18.780 So anyway, we've gone over that,
00:15:20.840 but here's where it gets interesting,
00:15:22.520 is different cultural groups see truth differently,
00:15:24.960 and it influences the way those cultures work.
00:15:28.200 So a really interesting thing is,
00:15:29.440 if you look at cultural groups,
00:15:31.620 so, like, let's look at the U.S. right now, right?
00:15:34.060 So if you look at immigrant groups
00:15:37.000 that come from cultural groups
00:15:38.960 which see truth as something that should be determined
00:15:42.680 by people who have spent their entire lives studying it
00:15:45.060 and then are certified by a central bureaucracy,
00:15:47.440 those cultural groups throughout U.S. history
00:15:50.840 have created the dominant immigrant criminal syndicates within the U.S.,
00:15:56.740 whether you're talking about the Irish mafia
00:15:58.960 or the Italian mob
00:16:00.920 or the current Hispanic criminal groups.
00:16:03.960 If you're talking about immigrant criminal groups.
00:16:05.620 Now, I'm not talking about pre-existing
00:16:08.060 native-born American criminal groups.
00:16:10.440 If you look at other criminal groups
00:16:12.280 that have come into the United States
00:16:14.000 but weren't from countries that strongly felt that way,
00:16:16.440 they had a bit of presence,
00:16:18.460 like the Yakuza, for example, or the Triad,
00:16:20.820 but they never really got that bit.
00:16:22.700 And then you could be like,
00:16:23.620 oh, but here's something that counters you.
00:16:25.700 What about the Russian mob?
00:16:27.240 But the Russian mob came from an Orthodox church country
00:16:31.400 and all Orthodox religions also,
00:16:34.060 like the Catholic cultural groups,
00:16:36.040 believe that truth should be determined
00:16:37.640 by people who spent their entire life studying it
00:16:39.220 and then have been certified by a central bureaucracy.
00:16:41.480 Why does this happen?
00:16:43.040 I suspect the criminal aspect is largely ancillary
00:16:46.960 or irrelevant to the phenomenon.
00:16:49.280 What you're actually seeing
00:16:50.540 is just the groups organizing themselves
00:16:52.740 into a structured hierarchy organically.
00:16:55.860 And because they are often on the outs with society,
00:16:59.700 given that they are recent immigrant groups,
00:17:01.920 that structured hierarchy
00:17:03.280 ends up becoming a criminal hierarchy.
00:17:06.460 That's the phenomenon that we're seeing here.
00:17:08.200 And again, I'm saying both of these.
00:17:10.180 The Protestant extreme also has its craziness.
00:17:12.180 Again, they often go up on crazy conspiracy theories.
00:17:14.760 That's what happens when you question everything.
00:17:17.640 It's also not stable to base an entire country
00:17:20.160 just around that.
00:17:21.700 But what's really interesting
00:17:22.720 is you can also see different country outcomes.
00:17:24.380 So if you look at countries
00:17:25.800 where the dominant cultural group is,
00:17:28.020 we trust authority,
00:17:29.440 like we trust the people
00:17:30.940 that spent their entire life studying something,
00:17:32.940 those cultural groups
00:17:34.160 were the longest holdout monarchies in Europe,
00:17:38.060 largely speaking.
00:17:39.040 And the quickest conversion to democracies
00:17:41.820 within Europe or democracy-like structures
00:17:43.600 were the cultural groups
00:17:45.360 that were predominantly Protestant.
00:17:48.260 And dictatorships seem to happen
00:17:51.080 in countries that this dominant cultural group
00:17:53.680 believes in,
00:17:55.000 let's have truths determined
00:17:56.820 by the people who spent their entire life
00:17:58.380 studying a subject.
00:17:59.580 In fact, if you look at Protestant majority countries
00:18:01.800 outside of Africa,
00:18:03.380 only one has ever stayed a dictatorship
00:18:05.680 for over seven years.
00:18:07.140 And that is somewhere in East Asia.
00:18:09.420 I don't remember where it is.
00:18:10.640 But it's very interesting
00:18:12.460 where when you look at Catholic majority countries
00:18:14.320 around the world
00:18:15.100 or Orthodox majority countries around the world,
00:18:17.220 they seem much more likely
00:18:18.840 to form dictatorships.
00:18:20.340 And so what we would argue
00:18:21.540 is actually the idea of country,
00:18:23.220 and this is why we're so pro-pluralism,
00:18:25.120 is you want a pluralistic understanding
00:18:27.820 of what truth is.
00:18:29.360 But again,
00:18:29.860 these aren't the only two systems for truth.
00:18:32.040 So Jews have a completely different system
00:18:34.440 for truth,
00:18:35.100 which is really, really fascinating.
00:18:37.700 We could do a whole different session on this.
00:18:40.440 But again,
00:18:41.120 I believe it's really well illustrated
00:18:43.540 by the snake oven story,
00:18:45.100 which I've gone over in another video
00:18:46.680 just really quickly.
00:18:47.500 Three rabbis are having a disagreement.
00:18:49.760 One rabbi said,
00:18:50.720 this oven is not kosher.
00:18:52.460 The other two say it is kosher.
00:18:53.680 One or the other,
00:18:54.160 I don't remember which way.
00:18:55.200 The one who disagrees with the other two,
00:18:56.520 he's like,
00:18:56.780 look, I can prove to you that God's on my side.
00:18:58.240 And he points out,
00:18:58.860 he does a bunch of miracles.
00:19:00.160 Like the rain will flow upwards.
00:19:01.600 They're like,
00:19:01.900 yeah,
00:19:02.300 I get that God agrees with you,
00:19:04.680 but it's not what the letter of the law says.
00:19:09.080 Therefore,
00:19:10.420 it is,
00:19:11.040 and then God basically comes down.
00:19:12.580 He's like,
00:19:12.900 ah,
00:19:13.040 my own children have bested me.
00:19:14.040 And what he's saying is basically,
00:19:15.500 this is not my jurisdiction.
00:19:16.660 Thank you for calling me out on that.
00:19:18.660 And that this is an ultra legalistic understanding of truth,
00:19:22.220 which is to say,
00:19:23.420 and here's where you can see this in terms of identity,
00:19:25.780 right?
00:19:26.040 So our kids,
00:19:27.760 Simone is matrilineally Jewish.
00:19:30.940 Like your grandmother is Jewish basically.
00:19:33.500 But from our perspective,
00:19:35.360 your culture is,
00:19:37.120 is a mix of the different people who make you up.
00:19:39.600 Yet when I talk to Orthodox Jewish people about my kids,
00:19:43.980 they're like,
00:19:44.300 no,
00:19:44.420 your kids are Jewish.
00:19:45.560 I'm like,
00:19:45.860 well,
00:19:46.140 I mean,
00:19:46.440 they're barely Jewish.
00:19:47.440 And they're like,
00:19:47.660 no,
00:19:48.680 technically they're Jewish.
00:19:50.140 They're Jewish.
00:19:51.600 Especially if you raise them Jewish,
00:19:53.240 like we've talked about sending them to,
00:19:54.640 to Jewish schools or whatever,
00:19:56.120 because good schools in our areas,
00:19:57.880 they're,
00:19:58.420 they're definitely Jewish then.
00:20:00.040 And I think that that really shows this different understanding of truth.
00:20:03.820 Now,
00:20:04.400 the Jewish understanding of truth is actually a lot more nuanced than just
00:20:06.960 legalism,
00:20:06.980 legalism because to say it's legalism also really misstates it.
00:20:11.480 It's more,
00:20:13.180 I describe it more like in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
00:20:16.940 earth is this giant computer where if everyone does their roles,
00:20:20.360 then it will come out to a correct answer.
00:20:23.960 And so it's more like truth is a cultural machine than truth is any,
00:20:30.320 any,
00:20:30.600 the legalism itself.
00:20:32.160 Truth is the cultural conversation.
00:20:36.420 And that is why sort of the rabbinic debate is so important within Jewish
00:20:41.840 culture's understanding of truth.
00:20:43.820 And then another example of truth is Quaker understanding of truth.
00:20:46.520 So Quaker understanding of truth is truth is this fire that burns within
00:20:50.500 every individual.
00:20:51.720 And truth is what moves you or the little voice inside your head.
00:20:56.180 Like it is your emotion speaking to you.
00:20:59.660 That is truth.
00:21:00.420 Yes.
00:21:01.100 Truth is best determined at the personal level,
00:21:03.580 but truth isn't best determined by an objective investigation of reality.
00:21:07.780 Truth is best determined by how you feel.
00:21:10.360 Whereas if you look at Calvinist understanding of truth,
00:21:12.460 truth is,
00:21:12.860 and that's my cultural tradition and it's Simone's predominant cultural
00:21:16.360 tradition.
00:21:17.360 Truth is best determined by personal research,
00:21:21.120 but personal like scientific research of reality.
00:21:24.860 And this is where,
00:21:25.880 again,
00:21:26.100 like you see the Catholic perception of truth actually being much better.
00:21:29.560 So if you look during the witch trials or the inquisition,
00:21:32.760 the Catholic inquisition was actually pretty kind in that,
00:21:36.360 yes,
00:21:36.640 they did some harsh stuff,
00:21:37.820 but they very much still believed in interviewing lots of witnesses.
00:21:42.840 They believed in discounting witness testimony.
00:21:44.900 If those witnesses seemed like they had quarrels with the community,
00:21:48.520 but then you had the Calvinist communities,
00:21:50.680 which were the Puritan communities in the U S and these communities almost
00:21:54.180 didn't really believe that people could lie.
00:21:56.100 Like they didn't believe that anyone from their culture would lie.
00:21:58.580 So if anyone was saying anything,
00:22:00.380 well,
00:22:00.500 it must be true.
00:22:01.820 Like one,
00:22:02.440 that was where they just like spiraled into psychoness really quickly.
00:22:06.760 But then the second was,
00:22:08.360 is that they believed that they could investigate reality through like natural
00:22:13.240 experiments.
00:22:14.280 They're like,
00:22:14.960 ah,
00:22:15.480 the world is very ordered.
00:22:16.740 So what we're going to do is,
00:22:19.340 well,
00:22:19.520 witches must resist the baptism,
00:22:21.560 right?
00:22:21.820 Like,
00:22:22.460 because they can't be accepted to Christ.
00:22:25.540 So like,
00:22:26.080 if we throw them in water,
00:22:27.300 they're going to flow,
00:22:28.140 right?
00:22:28.620 Because they resist water.
00:22:30.720 And so let's try that.
00:22:32.080 That would be a good way to test if someone's a witch.
00:22:34.400 And you didn't,
00:22:35.260 you saw this a little bit within,
00:22:36.400 but this didn't really happen that much within,
00:22:37.860 within the Catholic inquisition.
00:22:40.340 One,
00:22:40.480 they didn't even really believe in witches at all.
00:22:42.960 It was more like,
00:22:43.760 let's find heretics.
00:22:44.880 So much more like a moderated and learned.
00:22:48.560 And that's the thing with expert consensus.
00:22:52.240 It is really prone to corruption,
00:22:53.800 but the answers it comes to for reality are always going to be much more
00:22:59.420 moderated and less insane than the answers that can come to predominate
00:23:04.440 within cultural groups with like my own,
00:23:06.480 the thing that you should always investigate everything independently.
00:23:09.300 And this is why I think that pluralistic cultural groups like the U S where
00:23:13.820 you have both of these cultural groups to a large extent living in harmony and
00:23:17.920 working together.
00:23:19.340 That's where you're going to get the best answers.
00:23:20.980 That's where you have the least chance of either a dictatorship forming or a
00:23:26.560 mob that goes off and does crazy things for me.
00:23:31.740 Yeah.
00:23:32.860 Yeah.
00:23:33.620 Well,
00:23:33.960 also don't forget about the,
00:23:35.920 the criteria of truth that you like the least,
00:23:38.900 which is that most associated with like modern woke progressivism,
00:23:43.180 which you like to call in the pragmatist's guide to crafting religion,
00:23:46.820 justicalism.
00:23:46.980 Right.
00:23:48.700 Can you walk us through that?
00:23:50.460 Yeah.
00:23:50.860 So many times within this community,
00:23:54.100 you will see them like when they're trying to decide what's true about the
00:23:57.900 world.
00:23:58.480 And there's a few possible paths of what could be true.
00:24:01.820 They choose what would make the world most fair,
00:24:05.880 what a fair reality would create as truth.
00:24:09.220 So if you're asking,
00:24:10.620 are there systemic differences between like the way men and women process reality,
00:24:14.540 they'll be like,
00:24:14.940 well,
00:24:15.040 it wouldn't be fair if there were systemic differences.
00:24:18.220 Therefore there aren't systemic differences.
00:24:19.980 Even if it like clashes with other aspects of their worldview,
00:24:24.040 you see this over and over again within the woke community.
00:24:26.520 And it's not everyone was in the woke community,
00:24:27.740 but there's definitely a portion of the woke community that does practice
00:24:30.200 justicalism.
00:24:30.880 And it's terrifying to me because it can lead to a lot worse outcomes for
00:24:38.120 everyone,
00:24:38.840 but outcomes really don't matter in how they're determining truth.
00:24:42.780 So I look at the way that Protestants try to determine truth.
00:24:45.840 And I'm like,
00:24:46.880 I get that.
00:24:47.820 I may,
00:24:48.160 I may think that it could use some tweaks,
00:24:49.920 but I get why they do it that way.
00:24:51.100 I look at the way Catholics determine truth.
00:24:52.980 I'm like,
00:24:53.240 yeah,
00:24:53.400 that seems like logically consistent.
00:24:55.100 I can see how it can lead to abuse,
00:24:56.620 but like,
00:24:57.560 yeah,
00:24:57.740 that makes sense to me.
00:24:58.640 Like they're genuinely trying to get to a good answer for the world.
00:25:01.740 I look at the way it's choose to turn and truth.
00:25:03.260 And I'm like,
00:25:03.520 like this is one of the oldest,
00:25:04.840 most successful cultural traditions in human history.
00:25:07.560 Like they're,
00:25:08.660 they're clearly onto something.
00:25:10.560 Then I look at the way that Jessica's it's like,
00:25:12.140 this doesn't even seem to be like,
00:25:13.840 honestly trying to help people.
00:25:15.880 It just seems to be trying to protect their self identity as good people.
00:25:21.040 And this is where,
00:25:22.060 when I look at the world and I'm like,
00:25:23.480 there's a diversity,
00:25:24.180 I think that we do well within a diverse world.
00:25:26.540 And a lot of people are like,
00:25:27.300 how dare you say these different groups see truth differently.
00:25:29.860 Right.
00:25:30.040 It's like,
00:25:30.400 what's the point of diversity of everyone secretly sees the world the same
00:25:33.400 way.
00:25:34.140 Like the point of diversity is that we see things differently.
00:25:37.400 That is where strength and diversity comes from.
00:25:39.500 Yeah.
00:25:39.920 One second though.
00:25:41.260 I'm just going to push back.
00:25:42.300 I think the,
00:25:43.100 the core of justicalism is maybe that if you choose to see truth that way,
00:25:51.700 that you can make it that way.
00:25:52.980 I think it's a sort of manifesting.
00:25:54.780 I mean,
00:25:55.460 and this is a more spiritual group,
00:25:57.000 right?
00:25:57.260 Like my good faith interpretation of that criteria for truth is I'm going to
00:26:02.380 believe,
00:26:03.180 for example,
00:26:03.800 that there are no differences between men and women.
00:26:06.340 And then that belief will indeed shape whether or not there are differences.
00:26:11.120 And some of that's based in science,
00:26:12.660 like understanding of the placebo effect and understanding of the power of
00:26:15.640 narratives and examples.
00:26:16.500 But I think that,
00:26:17.380 that there's also this manifestity,
00:26:19.880 like I said,
00:26:20.460 element of it.
00:26:21.080 So I think that a lot of it's like,
00:26:22.500 I just want,
00:26:23.100 I want there to be a world in which that's true.
00:26:25.380 And so I'm going to believe it's true until it becomes true.
00:26:27.940 I disagree with you.
00:26:29.100 I think it's all about protecting their ego and protecting their image as
00:26:32.200 virtuous people,
00:26:32.900 no matter what they do.
00:26:33.900 I don't think so.
00:26:34.460 And I want people in the comments to,
00:26:35.940 to weigh in on this.
00:26:37.240 Which side of this.
00:26:41.760 And then again,
00:26:42.520 I want to,
00:26:43.140 I want to point out before we leave,
00:26:44.380 like these are all like,
00:26:46.220 obviously not everyone from these cultural groups sees truth this way.
00:26:49.760 We're just talking about the way these cultural groups differ from each
00:26:53.620 other.
00:26:54.060 Because I think that through looking at the way they differ from each other,
00:26:56.940 we can learn things that are especially pertinent to our current time with
00:27:00.580 this current debate over the system of truths our society is using.
00:27:05.340 If we can look to historic parallels,
00:27:07.460 there's a lot we can use,
00:27:08.700 especially in building new and potentially better systems or in coming to
00:27:14.280 appreciate why,
00:27:15.760 even if I don't understand different people's understanding of truth,
00:27:19.480 I can appreciate that our society is stronger for having that diversity
00:27:23.020 because I can look historically and sees what happens when we lack that
00:27:26.900 diversity,
00:27:27.540 whether it's the Puritan colonies or the historic Catholic church.
00:27:32.740 Well,
00:27:34.080 all I can say,
00:27:34.860 Malcolm,
00:27:35.380 as I know one thing is true and that that is,
00:27:38.140 you are a sexy beast and I know it because of your face.
00:27:42.360 That is my criterion of truth.
00:27:44.380 I love you.
00:27:45.200 I think that's subjective.
00:27:46.840 That's subjective.
00:27:47.920 No,
00:27:48.620 it's not subjective that you are a sexy beast.
00:27:51.220 It is subjective that I am because my perspective on reality is the ruler
00:27:58.660 from which truth is measured.
00:28:00.680 And all truth is determined by how far it differentiates from my perspective of
00:28:06.300 reality.
00:28:06.940 And within my perspective of reality,
00:28:08.980 you're a sexy beast.
00:28:09.760 So that's.
00:28:11.080 How convenient.
00:28:13.280 I love you.
00:28:14.040 Gorgeous.
00:28:14.480 Looking forward to our next conversation.
00:28:16.320 Thank you.
00:28:34.420 Thanks.
00:28:39.020 Bye.
00:28:39.560 Bye.
00:28:40.000 Bye.
00:28:40.540 Bye.
00:28:40.820 Bye.
00:28:41.040 Bye.
00:28:41.720 Bye.
00:28:42.080 Bye.
00:28:42.180 Bye.
00:28:42.640 Bye.
00:28:43.180 Bye.
00:28:44.120 Bye.
00:28:44.320 Bye.
00:28:44.480 Bye.
00:28:44.580 Bye.