Making Sense - Sam Harris - #115 — Sam Harris, Lawrence Krauss, and Matt Dillahunty (1)

00:00:00.000 you've heard me with Lawrence Krauss before on the podcast. Lawrence is a physicist who

00:00:20.640 will be familiar to most of you. And Matt Dillahunty has moderated a couple of discussions

00:00:25.980 I had with Richard Dawkins, and you've heard him here as well. So, without more introduction,

00:00:32.160 I'll just say we get into several interesting topics here. We talk about nuclear war and

00:00:38.800 Christian support for Trump. Trump does not come up much. Many of you will be happy to know. We talk

00:00:45.020 about science and a universal conception of morality. We talk about the role of intuition

00:00:51.620 in science, the primacy of consciousness as a fact, the nature of time, free will,

00:00:59.840 the illusion of the self. Lawrence does not agree that it's an illusion. We may have to cover that

00:01:05.960 topic again. And there's a few more topics here. In any case, it was a fun event. It was great to

00:01:12.240 meet so many of you afterwards. These particular events are always followed by book signings, so

00:01:17.060 the event itself was just an hour and a half, but the book signing winds up going for two hours or so.

00:01:25.320 And that really is the chance to say hi. So, if you enjoy this conversation, there will be two others

00:01:31.380 with the same participants in Chicago and Phoenix coming up. So, if you live close to either of those

00:01:37.860 cities, feel free to come on out. Otherwise, I will try to get the audio and release it here.

00:01:43.860 And now I bring you the event I did in New York with Lawrence Krauss and Matt Dillahunty.

00:01:54.220 Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great privilege and honor to introduce the gentlemen who will be

00:01:59.340 joining me on stage. Please welcome Sam Harris and Lawrence Krauss.

00:02:04.020 Thank you.

00:02:05.400 Thank you. Thank you.

00:02:10.380 They're standing. You just can't sit in the room.

00:02:14.380 Thank you. Thank you.

00:02:17.380 They're standing. You just can't see them.

00:02:35.540 We really can't see you.

00:02:36.820 There are people in there. It's not a sound.

00:02:38.000 Don't take lack of eye contact, personally.

00:02:40.200 Yeah.

00:02:41.080 We'll bring the lights up before we get to the Q&A. How are you, gentlemen?

00:02:43.860 Good, good.

00:02:44.600 I have a disclaimer.

00:02:46.740 A disclaimer.

00:02:47.500 Yes. As you know, but they don't. I came down with food poisoning two nights ago. So,

00:02:52.960 if I either vomit or have to run off stage, it's not because of anything these two gentlemen

00:02:58.500 have said.

00:03:00.960 Maybe if he liked you better, he'd feel better.

00:03:04.660 It's all right. 0.88

00:03:05.360 We'll see who runs off stage faster if you vomit.

00:03:07.680 Yes.

00:03:07.940 I promise not to run off stage, mostly because I'm in boots that won't allow me to run anywhere.

00:03:15.400 So, today, you know, we're going to be doing three of these. New York is the first time

00:03:19.740 for the three of us together. And something happened today that was all over the news.

00:03:25.360 And I thought it might be an interesting spot to start. Hawaii had an incredible false alarm

00:03:32.240 today where an emergency alert system sent out a text message essentially saying that

00:03:38.840 a ballistic missile had been detected heading towards Hawaii and to seek cover. And this is

00:03:42.860 not a drill. And 39 minutes later, they announced that it was a false alarm. And it both intrigued

00:03:53.220 me and terrified me about the new world that we live in compared to, you know, when I was a kid.

00:04:00.240 The technology that's there to save our lives. And yet, things can go wrong because we're fallible.

00:04:06.140 Are we better off if we're terrifying people with false alarms? And how do we go about dealing

00:04:13.720 with a new world where technology is in everybody's hands and can be used and abused?

00:04:21.760 Well, maybe...

00:04:22.420 We are in a context where it's plausible to worry that missiles could be headed toward Hawaii.

00:04:27.420 So, that's the underlying problem. But you should say something about the Tuesday clock.

00:04:30.860 People aren't worried about it enough. I think in just a little under two weeks, I'll be going

00:04:38.180 to Washington to announce the new value of the doomsday clock. I'm the chairman of the

00:04:42.880 board of the Bolton Atomic Scientists, as you know. And one of the things that worries me

00:04:47.900 is that I think people become very complacent about nuclear weapons. Because they haven't

00:04:55.440 been used in over 70 years, people tend to think they'll never be used. And the real problem

00:05:02.520 is that this kind of thing became public. But there's a great book called Command and Control,

00:05:08.260 which is terrifying. And you realize how many close calls we've had. It's kind of amazing

00:05:15.040 that there hasn't been either an accident or panic.

00:05:18.540 If you haven't read it, that's Eric Schlosser, his book. And there was a PBS documentary done

00:05:24.860 on it. And you should either read it or watch that documentary.

00:05:28.100 Read it, but have a bottle of scotch or something when you're reading it. Because it is really

00:05:35.280 terrifying, as it should be. And so, part of the problem, in fact, of this, there's a lot

00:05:41.400 of problems that people don't realize, that in fact, because intercontinental ballistic missiles

00:05:46.220 act relatively quickly, you know, in 25 or 30 minutes that they can do their work and do most

00:05:53.680 of the way around the earth. We still live in a world where the United States and Russia both have 0.98

00:06:01.500 about a thousand weapons on a status where they're prepared to respond immediately. And as a lot of

00:06:11.380 people, I didn't want to mention this word, but until a guy whose name I won't mention came in

00:06:18.240 the White House, people didn't realize this. And I actually didn't realize it either until I was

00:06:23.580 writing a piece. But people now know, and if you don't, you should know this, that there is no

00:06:28.140 there is no safeguard against the president launching nuclear weapons. There's no one he or she

00:06:34.360 would have to ask. There's no one who can say no. And there's no, there's no constitutional check on

00:06:42.280 that. And, and recently, some Congress people did discuss producing such check. During the Cold War,

00:06:48.560 there was perhaps the height of the Cold War, there was some reason for that, because there were 20,000

00:06:53.360 nuclear weapons that Russia and then the Soviet Union and the United States were shooting, were aiming at

00:06:57.380 each other. And, and the idea was you have to launch them quickly. But now there isn't that reason. And

00:07:03.380 yet we still have that. And that's, that itself is terrifying, because if that warning had not got,

00:07:08.880 and by the way, the warning I understood was due to a shift change, and someone pressed the wrong button

00:07:13.680 when they went off the shift. This is true. That raises a problem. When I'm a, when I have to check

00:07:20.300 out at the grocery store and swipe my credit card, I have to click yes, like 18 times just to pay for my

00:07:25.320 book. How is it, how could you possibly hit the wrong button in a shift change and not get a,

00:07:29.240 hey, are you sure you want to send this message? But, but imagine that went not to the sensible,

00:07:36.560 but scared people in Hawaii, but imagine that went right to the White House. Right. Okay. Well,

00:07:41.400 and to read command and control is to witness how by sheer dumb luck, we have avoided nuking ourselves,

00:07:48.180 one another, and even ourselves. I mean, just literally dropped live nukes on like North Carolina and two

00:07:55.160 of three safeties failed. And the final safety was like a manual toggle switch that was just in the

00:08:01.020 right position. And it's just, it's with, and in silos, this book begins with a, with a, with a,

00:08:06.720 with a potential nuclear weapon exploding in a silo. It is truly amazing. And it really

00:08:12.940 argues for something that we've been arguing at the, at the Bulletin, and certainly I try to write

00:08:17.980 about, which is that, that we are safer with fewer nuclear weapons and not more nuclear weapons,

00:08:22.340 because the more you have, the more likely there will be an accident or a, or a, a false alarm.

00:08:28.680 And, and yet we're in a situation right now where there are no arms control treaties. And what I was

00:08:34.160 going to say at the beginning, which I think we were talking about beforehand is when I, what

00:08:37.600 discourages me when I write about nuclear weapons compared to almost anything else I write about

00:08:42.340 in the popular media, there's less interest. I don't know whether people don't want to think

00:08:47.400 about it or are they just so complacent? Armageddon is boring. Yeah. Armageddon,

00:08:51.500 I guess, is boring or you don't want to, you want to think about it. Can you say what you said

00:08:54.740 about William Perry's opinion? Is that for public consumption? I don't know. Um, it's just us.

00:09:00.420 But well, well, uh, thanks, Sam. I'll think of something back, but, um, uh, William Perry,

00:09:08.560 I actually, I will, I'll use this as an opportunity. We'll be at my origins project in Arizona. We'll be

00:09:12.980 having a, an event on, uh, a workshop on, on autonomous weapons, autonomous weapons, nuclear

00:09:18.500 weapons, and, and, and defense. And, and I'll be doing a dialogue with William Perry in a month.

00:09:24.000 Um, maybe give a two line bio of... William Perry was the secretary of defense and,

00:09:28.440 and, oh, for Clinton, I guess. And, and, uh, and has been, and is an amazing man in many,

00:09:33.500 many ways and has a long view. He's not a youngster like you. And, um, and, but he, he said in

00:09:40.960 conversation that he thinks we are now living in a, the time that is, is, uh, more dangerous

00:09:48.000 than any time, even during the height of the Cold War, which is really kind of, uh, sobering.

00:09:54.640 With respect to this issue. With respect to nuclear weapons, yeah. And, uh, uh, it's, it's,

00:10:00.500 it's an issue that people should be concerned about. So it's awful that that happened. But

00:10:04.120 if it raises public awareness of the kind of ridiculous accidents that the ridiculous false

00:10:10.120 alarms, um, uh, there's a man who actually, we nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He never,

00:10:15.640 he's now dead, but a Russian, in my opinion, the only, one of the few people who probably

00:10:19.620 really deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, uh, a Russian, uh, who was working in a missile silo. 0.95

00:10:24.860 And there was a computer glitch and it showed a nuclear weapon being launched in the United

00:10:28.320 States. And he got the order to fire. And another was, showed another weapon five minutes

00:10:32.380 later and another weapon. And he personally reasoned that if there was going to be an attack

00:10:36.780 from the U.S., they wouldn't wait, you know, four or five minutes between each other, what,

00:10:40.500 two minutes or whatever it was. So he disobeyed the command and probably personally saved the world.

00:10:46.360 Yeah.

00:10:46.500 It's nice to take that warning that went out today, even though, you know, it's a mistake.

00:10:50.840 It lets us know about human error. It also may raise awareness. There, there is a potentially

00:10:55.600 huge downside in, in that this could be, end up looking a little more like a crying wolf situation

00:10:59.900 where the next time, if it's real and you don't get, you get that warning that you,

00:11:02.900 you don't take shelter. Uh, but I think I, something you said is terrifying to me and

00:11:07.560 not because specifically because of who's in the white house, this, this is true, no matter

00:11:11.720 who's there, the very idea that Congress has to declare war, but they don't have to declare

00:11:17.460 that it's okay to nuke people. Uh, there need, you know, in a, in a, in a nation and a system

00:11:22.860 that's built on checks and balances, this one thing doesn't appear to have sufficient.

00:11:27.780 The most consequential thing has no check and balance. Yeah. And I worry.

00:11:31.900 It shocked me. I don't know if you knew about that earlier. I mean, literally I thought

00:11:35.180 that there had to be approval of the NTC staff or, or at least a majority of cabinet members

00:11:39.400 or something. Um, but in fact, there is no check on that.

00:11:43.320 I would like to think that if somebody decided to go rogue and do it, that there would be somebody

00:11:48.980 sensible nearby, some secret service person who would do what that Russian missile agent did.

00:11:55.240 Well, one hopes that, yeah, I mean, the people actually have to press the button and their button

00:12:00.400 is bigger than, than his. Um, they, they, they would, it's a sober, I mean, you actually have

00:12:06.300 to do it. I think those people think very carefully, but you know, they're trained to realize that

00:12:10.020 they may have to do that. And so it's, it's, um, yeah. And they drill it all the time.

00:12:15.320 All the time. Yeah. Yeah.

00:12:16.460 So I wonder how this ties in to, I try not to paint with too broad of a brush when I talk about

00:12:22.680 any specific religion, including Christianity, but there are a number of Christians, including

00:12:26.480 some of my family members who are eagerly awaiting Armageddon. Uh, we all deal with people who

00:12:36.020 construct conspiracy theories on occasion. I don't think it'd be that hard to put together a conspiracy

00:12:40.720 theory that the reason we have Trump is because there were people who are okay with the idea of

00:12:47.220 Armageddon, uh, because I know tons of evangelicals, evangelicals who were supportive of him when

00:12:52.840 there's nothing about this man that fits like the churches I went to, even though I know those

00:12:56.840 churches are waiting for an apocalypse. The, the most benign interpretation of the Christian 1.00

00:13:02.420 support is just their calculated assumption, which has borne out that he will give them what

00:13:09.000 they want because they're a voting bloc that he needs. Uh, I remember I ran into Ralph Reed,

00:13:15.600 the former head of the Christian coalition at a conference, and this was still during the campaign,

00:13:20.620 but when, when Trump was the nominee and was professing to be a Christian of some flavor.

00:13:27.240 And I had, I had no, I had debated Reed once on television, but we actually had never met.

00:13:32.760 And I, I said to him, there's no way you think he's actually a person of faith, right?

00:13:38.500 I mean, what, how do you explain the Christian support? And he immediately fell back on this

00:13:44.380 trope, you know, who am I to judge what's in another man's heart? Insofar as I could tell

00:13:49.740 that he was bullshitting, he was really bullshitting. He's happy to judge what's in other 0.97

00:13:53.540 people's hearts. Yeah, right. But the worst possible interpretation is the one you just gave,

00:14:00.060 which is there, there's a, at least some millions of people and maybe tens of millions of people in this

00:14:04.860 country for whom biblical prophecy is real. It's a real roadmap to the future. And they're expecting

00:14:12.800 the wheels to completely come off this car before the end. And that will be the best thing that

00:14:19.140 happens. That's necessary for the best thing that will ever happen to happen.

00:14:22.980 I have to say that since Trump got elected, I've been sort of hoping for Armageddon too, but in a way,

00:14:28.120 it just seems better than listening to tweets every day. But, but I actually don't think it's

00:14:34.980 the Armageddon thing. I was actually just thinking about writing a piece about this and I'll say it,

00:14:38.900 although it'll get a bingo angry, some people. It, to me, it represents one of the real problems 1.00

00:14:44.900 of what, of professed Christianity. Because when you said, when you said, they, they, they don't think

00:14:51.120 Trump is a Christian, but they'll get what they want. What do they want? Do they want the things 0.98

00:14:55.640 that they're supposed to be abonding, like love and all the things? No, what they want is hate.

00:15:01.060 What they want is laws that restrict freedom of others. And that means to me that operationally

00:15:06.040 in this country, when it comes to the politics, professed Christianity is equivalent with hate. 0.95

00:15:11.820 Well, to bend over backwards, no, before I want to see if there's anyone who would, I can't tell.

00:15:17.680 The most charitable interpretation is not that it's synonymous with hate all the way down the line,

00:15:23.860 because just imagine if you're someone who really thinks that abortion is akin to murder, right?

00:15:30.560 That there is no difference between killing a fetus at the eight week stage and killing a fully

00:15:36.560 developed human being. If you think that, then you think our society is just spectating on a

00:15:42.460 Holocaust that has been going on for your entire life. And it's easy to see how someone would not 1.00

00:15:48.840 be moved by hate and would be, would in their own mind, be moved by compassion and love and a concern

00:15:53.580 for divine retribution if they believe that God is watching all the while.

00:15:57.820 Yeah. I mean, you're right. It's extreme to say that. You could say the same thing about

00:16:01.720 restricting the rights of gay people. That it's really love because that's a sin in a lot of 0.88

00:16:07.540 people's hearts. And, and therefore, you can say the same thing about members of ISIS who were

00:16:12.860 throwing gay people off of rooftops. Some of you, you must have seen this footage of ISIS members

00:16:19.340 hugging with apparent sincerity, the people they were about to hurl off of rooftops.

00:16:24.740 I mean, this was not, this was not a naked declaration of hate. This was, sorry, this is how the game is

00:16:31.520 played. We, you know, we have to do this. Well, you know, that represents to me that, I mean, that's the,

00:16:36.300 that's the paradox. So, and, and I don't know if I've said it before on stage with you, but Steve Weinberg

00:16:41.460 was a physicist, a friend, a Nobel laureate, and also an atheist, has, has said that there are good

00:16:49.520 people and there are bad people. Good people do good things, bad people do bad things. When good

00:16:54.400 people do bad things, it's religion. Yeah. And I think, I mean, there's a lot of truth that,

00:16:59.000 so the people are, and, and it's not just religion, it's ideology. Whenever people move away from

00:17:04.920 reason, and, and justify, and we all do it, but justify bad actions, and as if, no one, I think

00:17:13.240 very few people do bad things thinking they want to do a bad thing. Right. They're doing it for some

00:17:17.220 reason that they think is a good reason. Well, we can go right back to Voltaire to address all this,

00:17:21.560 which is, you can get people, if you can get people to believe absurdities, you can get them

00:17:25.160 to commit atrocities. Yeah. Yeah. And once you've poisoned the foundation, which I think is hallmark

00:17:31.520 of what many religions do, of right and wrong, of about how we should go about determining what is

00:17:37.260 a moral good, if you poison that sufficiently, that's how you get people to do that. That's how

00:17:42.040 you get them to bomb abortion clinics. That's how you get them to throw homosexuals off roofs, 1.00

00:17:46.300 which kind of brings us to one of the questions, and we polled a little bit. I asked for 0.98

00:17:51.480 suggestions on Facebook, and Sam had asked on Twitter, and there's a couple things that keep

00:17:56.400 coming up, but I think, given what we're talking about, this issue of morality terrifies believers.

00:18:05.220 I've been told that, you know, atheists can't be moral, and then the people who have put like 1.00

00:18:10.360 another half second of thought into it will say, well, of course you can be moral, but you can only be

00:18:13.880 moral because you were raised in a Christian environment that taught you about morals.

00:18:18.360 And I gave a talk for a number of years, but you wrote The Moral Landscape, and I want you to just

00:18:25.820 take a couple of minutes and give a summation of objective reality, science-based assessments,

00:18:32.360 and why people don't have to be terrified, and why it may in fact be more terrifying,

00:18:37.260 if morals are just the dictates of some individual or being.

00:18:41.980 Well, it's clearly more terrifying if the Bible is true or the Koran is true, because then the 1.00

00:18:48.800 universe has been created and is now governed by an omniscient sadist. He's created a universe

00:18:56.300 with hell to be populated by people who he didn't give enough evidence to to convince them of the

00:19:03.780 truth of his doctrine. So he could have just given enough evidence and we'd all be fundamentalist

00:19:09.460 Christians or Salafi Muslims. But he gave, he, the miracles are always thousands of years old, 0.98

00:19:15.280 or they're in India or somewhere. And strangely, they're in places where...

00:19:19.280 Same place UFO sightings are.

00:19:20.460 Or upstate New York.

00:19:22.120 If what, okay.

00:19:23.280 But they're not sort of like the UFO abductions and the cattle molestations.

00:19:28.400 It could happen right here, right now in front of 2,000 educated people,

00:19:32.400 and we would all be convinced. But that's, that's not going to happen for some perverse reason.

00:19:41.340 I'd still be skeptical.

00:19:43.220 Yes.

00:19:43.720 I'd still be skeptical.

00:19:44.360 We would still be, we would demand...

00:19:45.400 But you can imagine if you're in actual, in dialogue with an omniscient being who's bent

00:19:49.300 upon convincing you for your own good, that can happen very quickly.

00:19:52.720 I'm talking to you right now.

00:19:53.240 Well, apparently I'm dumbing it down a lot.

00:19:58.500 So, but to tie into what he's saying, I've had Christians tell me that God wouldn't reveal

00:20:02.600 himself to me because I would continue to question and deny. And I'm like, what kind of weak-ass 0.99

00:20:07.720 God do you believe in who is incapable of convincing me? Oh, you're just too damn obstinate. 1.00

00:20:14.180 So let's leave that, so we can leave that aside. There's something strange about believing 0.66

00:20:19.640 that these books as written give you a truly moral worldview that you would endorse. If any

00:20:26.640 person behaved the way the God of the Bible behaves, that is our definition of a psychopath 0.95

00:20:31.200 and a sadist.

00:20:32.780 But the reason why you can have objective morality, or you, I think that you can have a few short

00:20:37.800 steps to objective morality. What I mean by objective is not that it's all just a matter

00:20:42.920 of atoms. The universe includes subjective experience, includes a consciousness as a natural

00:20:49.340 phenomenon. Consciousness is a property of the universe. We don't know exactly at what

00:20:53.920 stage it emerges in information processing in complex systems, or maybe it goes even deeper

00:20:59.600 than that. I mean, it's totally possible that there's some spooky view of consciousness going

00:21:04.640 further down than vast numbers of neurons or information processing units doing their thing.

00:21:11.440 There's no especially good reason to believe that, I would say.

00:21:13.980 A lot of good reasons not to believe that.

00:21:15.280 Yes, but still, the jury is arguably still out on that. What it's not still out on is

00:21:21.460 a few fundamental questions. One, clearly consciousness exists. Even if we're living in a

00:21:26.700 simulation on some alien hard drive, something seems to be happening, right? And that seeming

00:21:32.660 is what I'm calling consciousness. So even if you're a brain in a vat right now, or you're

00:21:37.860 in the matrix, or this is all just a dream, and you're going to wake up in a few minutes and find

00:21:42.480 yourself in bed, no matter how confused you might be about your circumstance, there is still

00:21:47.500 consciousness and its contents in each moment. And there is a vast difference between excruciating

00:21:54.540 and pointless misery and sublime happiness and creativity and joy and love and all of the good

00:22:01.280 things in life. And we have no idea how far that continuum actually goes in both directions,

00:22:06.900 but we really know, really, that we like one side of it much better than the other side

00:22:12.260 of it. And we don't have to justify that preference. You don't have to justify preferring the happiest

00:22:19.120 possible life to being tortured for eternity, right? And the idea that you would need some

00:22:24.120 philosophical argument to justify that is just a specious claim that has confused a lot of

00:22:29.860 people. And the idea that you would need to be able to draw your preference there, again, for avoiding

00:22:36.820 the worst possible misery for everyone, that you'd have to draw that from some book that has been

00:22:41.660 dictated by an omniscient being, that also is a specious claim. So I view morality as a kind of

00:22:47.640 navigation problem. And the reason why this is of a piece with ultimately a scientific understanding

00:22:55.760 of the mind and a scientific understanding of human well-being and of conscious systems generally

00:22:59.920 is that navigating between these two ends of the continuum of experience, avoiding the worst

00:23:05.900 possible misery and finding the true bliss and creativity and connection and love, there are

00:23:13.680 right answers about how to do that for properly constituted minds. And for us, there are biochemical

00:23:20.440 answers, there are psychological answers, there are sociological answers, there's economic answers,

00:23:24.880 political answers. Every piece of human knowledge that's legitimate knowledge has to be brought to

00:23:30.000 bear on the question of how to live a fulfilling life. And it is possible to be wrong. And it's

00:23:35.520 possible to not know what you're missing. And it's possible to be right for the wrong reasons. And so

00:23:40.640 every permutation of ignorance and confusion is there to be suffered and endured. And we have to break

00:23:47.360 the spell of thinking that we need to live forever shattered by tribal dogmatisms in order to talk about

00:23:54.460 there being right answers to moral questions.

00:24:01.820 As Sam knows, we had another word event where Sam was at talking about exactly this and had a bunch of

00:24:06.620 We got a lot of pushback.

00:24:07.740 Yeah, we got a lot of pushback.

00:24:08.780 Yeah, but

00:24:11.420 so I think that, you know, I've had a lot of discussions about this since then. And and it may be

00:24:17.100 It is probably true that reason is a slave of passion for most people. We make we we are we are we we

00:24:24.460 have we possess reason, but reason doesn't necessarily drive our actions. Yeah, and we

00:24:29.340 justify things after the fact on the basis of what we want it to be. And then we come up with a rational

00:24:34.620 argument for it. I think that's true.

00:24:35.900 We understanding that is another exercise of reason.

00:24:38.460 Exactly. And for clarity, there's flawed reasoning, but that doesn't mean that reason itself is flawed.

00:24:45.900 No, but I think we're capable and you and I and everyone in this audience does it. We we all rationalize

00:24:52.460 our lives every day. We, you know, wake up. We rationalize we like our work or a spouse or whatever

00:24:57.660 else it is in order to get through the day.

00:24:59.820 And and and let it be known that I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

00:25:08.220 Let it be noted, but um, only audio, but but but you know, and and so I'm not a hundred percent

00:25:13.820 convinced that you can always get off from is as as some famous philosopher once said.

00:25:18.300 Um, but I do think I agree with you completely that it's that it's a process

00:25:22.940 that you without is you can't get off. I think that's the point without is you can't get off.

00:25:27.500 If you don't know the consequences of your actions in any way and that's what science is

00:25:32.780 science tells you the content or reason and reason but I view science as a reason based on empirical evidence

00:25:39.660 then you can't possibly make decisions that

00:25:43.340 you can't determine what's right or wrong. You need to know what the goal is and what the outcome is going to be

00:25:48.060 What the outcome is going to be so without a careful

00:25:50.860 understanding of of and then some people call this utilitarianism, I guess, but I

00:25:54.860 I I I just see it as without without science there can be no morality in my opinion or no

00:26:00.540 sensible morality and I think what we've seen and

00:26:03.660 Pinker and others have argued I think pretty effectively that in some ways

00:26:09.180 the enlightenment and rational thinking has led to a a world where where where some things that were once

00:26:16.380 thinkable are not thinkable now and so I there's no doubt I don't know whether

00:26:19.820 I would argue that we can well certainly I would argue that we might not be able to understand morality now

00:26:25.180 But that doesn't that's irrelevant because we agree that not understanding something is not evidence of anything, but not understanding

00:26:32.540 The more we learn the more we will understand. So I do think ultimately we'll have a

00:26:37.660 a neural understanding of almost all our decision-making

00:26:41.020 capabilities, but but certainly without that without that reason, I don't think you could even discuss the question

00:26:47.100 Well, let me just take one minute to say why I think this is ought business is totally confused

00:26:52.700 This comes from a paragraph in in Hume's work where he was actually

00:26:57.820 trying to to hold religious conceptions of morality at bay

00:27:01.980 And I think it's been misinterpreted

00:27:03.900 It's certainly been overused as one of these exports from philosophy that has just gotten into the heads of everybody and and is

00:27:09.820 Influential totally out of proportion to its its actual validity

00:27:13.180 One thing I would point out is that Hume said he found many seeming paradoxes and one was with respect to causation

00:27:19.740 Yeah

00:27:20.140 And if you took him seriously about causation

00:27:22.140 You couldn't really take science very seriously because apparently there's no evidence of causation in the world

00:27:27.820 We just see the contiguity of various events, but that we never see causes between you know a and b

00:27:33.900 so

00:27:35.100 This is odd business. Let's let's say there is no ought there is no should there is there is no

00:27:41.580 Obligation to do anything in this universe there is just what is there's just the totality of facts that are

00:27:48.460 Actual and perhaps possible perhaps that you know also impossible whether that's whether there's such a real real thing as possibility or

00:27:57.260 Everything is in fact actual it's just happening in a parallel universe right or trillions upon trillions of such universes

00:28:03.660 There's only there are only facts

00:28:05.100 And the first thing I would ask you is if you can't get your

00:28:09.260 Sense of how you should live from the totality of facts all of reality

00:28:14.300 Where do you think you can get this sense of how you should live?

00:28:17.020 So there's you're not impoverished having all the facts of the universe at your disposal

00:28:23.740 But and you still have even if there's no such thing as morality

00:28:26.620 We still have this navigation problem

00:28:29.420 You know put your hand into a wood chipper and see how much you like it, right?

00:28:33.020 You you you will very quickly get the message that you don't want to do that again

00:28:37.180 You will want to avoid that and there there are an infinite number of ways in which

00:28:42.220 We can experience

00:28:43.820 Pointless misery from which no good comes and we

00:28:48.460 We will find ourselves navigating and all i'm arguing is that we call

00:28:53.020 Morality those subset of behaviors and commitments

00:28:58.220 That relate in social space to this this navigation problem of finding better lives together

00:29:03.180 And if you were alone on a desert island, you wouldn't call it morality, but you would still talk about

00:29:07.180 Well-being and happiness and I agree completely

00:29:10.140 I guess the question is one of what would call subjective morality if what if you want to use those terms in the sense that

00:29:16.380 Everything you said I think is clearly true

00:29:19.020 The question I would have is that at the same time because that now I think because that navigation

00:29:27.180 Effort is is sort of has an evolutionary basis as well as a cultural basis

00:29:31.580 I think what you know evolution is wrong on most of these questions, yeah, but I think that are

00:29:37.100 What that our thinking has of an evolutionary basis and I don't think that I think it's clear that that's the case

00:29:43.100 Yeah, um then

00:29:44.700 It means to me that morality is a moving target to I'm the question is so so that humans are hardwired

00:29:51.980 I think to find some things moral and and

00:29:54.220 And and and and not and that's an interesting question to find out how they are and you as you know

00:29:58.940 Psychologists some psychologists do test the famous trolley car experiment and so

00:30:04.780 um

00:30:05.420 When one talks about objective reality, I think it's it's based on a totality of experience

00:30:09.500 But that totality of experience evolves and therefore I'm a little more hesitant talking about absolute morality

00:30:14.780 Yes, I I don't I don't have absolute yeah, it's but it's it's a but it's evolving into a space of

00:30:21.500 Right and wrong answers and real facts about con the conscious experience of actual and possible being so there's a right answer to the question of

00:30:29.180 If you were going to ask, you know

00:30:31.020 If I add this compound to my neurochemistry, is it going to make me

00:30:35.820 happier or not right in so far as we could we could come to some kind of completed

00:30:40.700 Neuroscience of happiness well, then there'd be we would understand more and more about the likelihood of you know

00:30:45.340 You helping or hurting yourself that way and but so too with any

00:30:48.940 Use of your attention if you you know if I'm if I'm in this relationship

00:30:51.980 Am I going to be happier or not?

00:30:53.900 There are right and wrong answers there whether or not you discover them

00:30:59.100 You discover them after the fact

00:31:00.460 Yeah, right

00:31:01.020 Yeah, but like there's that you don't know what you're missing, right?

00:31:03.260 Like you don't know what in a counterfactual situation

00:31:06.780 You could have done something yesterday that would have made today much better than it was for you and you may never know what you missed and

00:31:13.740 again, so it's

00:31:15.020 Realism for me so whether it's scientific realism or moral realism

00:31:18.540 Just amounts to the claim that it's pot. It's possible to be wrong

00:31:22.220 It's possible not to know what you're missing. It's possible for everyone to be wrong

00:31:25.660 Like every physicist alive we get you can ask some pressing question about physics

00:31:30.700 And where I don't know how many physicists there are 30,000 all 30,000 could be wrong

00:31:35.420 And then tomorrow someone could be right and I get letters every day from those people who say they are

00:31:40.780 but

00:31:42.780 But that's the whole but that's I I it's interesting brought up the example because that's the whole point of science

00:31:49.260 The whole point of science if if you couldn't be wrong

00:31:52.060 There would be no science the whole point of science

00:31:55.100 I mean

00:31:56.220 Is to go in and try and prove?

00:31:59.340 Your colleagues wrong in some sense

00:32:01.900 That's how science perceives because it doesn't prove things right

00:32:05.340 It only proves things wrong and then you narrow down what's left over and and so

00:32:10.140 You're absolutely right and that's what makes empirical evidence so useful

00:32:13.740 That's why it should be the basis of public policy because you can find out what doesn't work

00:32:18.620 That's an essential part of of living

00:32:20.940 But also what's what makes science

00:32:23.340 Powerful and worth worth

00:32:25.340 Utilizing in every aspect of our experience in my opinion. Yeah

00:32:28.700 There's a there's a couple things about the moral issue and

00:32:37.020 I'm glad you guys made the points people confuse objective morality with absolute morality

00:32:42.540 Neither of us none of us I assume I know sam and I are advocating for absolute morality actually situational ethics is

00:32:48.860 Probably the term that I use most often when I talk about objective morality

00:32:52.140 I just mean that it's not just subject to your whim or any subjective experience

00:32:56.380 Because one of the objections we get when you say you don't want to put your hand in a wood chipper

00:33:00.300 Somebody will come along and say well somebody might want to do that. Who are you to decide what's right for them?

00:33:04.700 We're speaking in general rules

00:33:06.940 We are physical beings in a physical universe with rules that dictate what the consequences of our actions

00:33:12.460 And if there really were a masochist who wanted to do that there there would be a complete scientific understanding of

00:33:19.260 Masochism that's possible sure and it's possible that there's a way of being a masochist

00:33:23.820 That that admits of equivalent well-being say

00:33:27.260 I

00:33:27.740 I highly doubt this is the case, but let's say that was the case

00:33:32.380 So it's so having right and wrong answers to questions of morality. This is why I use this analogy of a moral landscape

00:33:38.780 It doesn't mean there's just one right answer right for everybody there's there could be many many

00:33:43.980 functionally infinite number of peaks on this landscape

00:33:46.700 But there are even more wrong answers there's a larger

00:33:49.980 Infinite set of wrong answers, and you know when you're not on a peak and because your hand is in the wood chipper and it turns out

00:33:56.700 You're not one of those masochists who likes it 1.00

00:33:59.980 So the one question that keeps that you've been hammered with that I've been hammered with

00:34:04.780 Is oh you're talking about objective morality, but your foundation of morality is well-being now when it comes to the is-aught problem

00:34:11.660 I jokingly and

00:34:13.660 Fallaciously pointed out that I you may not be able to get from an is to a not

00:34:17.420 But I can get from two is is to a not because if I know what the goal is

00:34:21.420 And I know what the consequences of my action is or the consequence of action is

00:34:25.500 Then I can tell what I ought to do to achieve that goal, which was a good way to sum it up

00:34:29.580 There's a problem in there that I'm not going to get into but I liked I believe I understand

00:34:35.980 What you assessed in moral landscape, which is kind of my view of this is

00:34:41.020 What under what basis what objective basis have you decided that well-being is the standard?

00:34:46.780 And I think you said what other standard could there be?

00:34:50.140 That's the thing about secular moral systems is they have at their foundation the goal of getting better getting better

00:34:55.500 And even if I pick three premises that are going to serve I can pick them arbitrarily death is preferable to life

00:35:01.420 And you can work through and do thought experiments to see does that get you towards a better world

00:35:07.260 But all this little bickering about better world who defines better what's better well-being

00:35:12.300 Has anybody in all from your detractors suggested another non

00:35:18.940 God's dictate divine command

00:35:21.340 Foundation that would be better than well-being and if they did how would you respond?

00:35:25.340 Well, there's there's two ironies here one is that

00:35:29.180 The religious answer is also predicated on well-being

00:35:33.020 I mean when you ask religious people why what's wrong with going to hell for eternity? 1.00

00:35:38.620 It's because it's too hot there

00:35:41.740 You don't want to be there heaven is much better

00:35:44.460 It's a story about some eternal circumstance

00:35:48.060 Of well-being or its antithesis that awaits us after death now if that were true

00:35:52.060 If there was a good reason to believe in the christian heaven or the or the the muslim paradise 0.99

00:35:56.780 I would be first the first to say that it's really important to live so as to

00:36:02.140 To place the right bet on eternity. I mean it's because you know

00:36:04.620 What's 70 years compared to eternity of suffering or happiness?

00:36:08.300 But it just so happens that there's no good reason to believe in in those after death states

00:36:13.100 But they're still talking about

00:36:14.460 consciousness and its contents and and well and the difference between misery and and well-being

00:36:19.740 And for me that the the definition of well-being is truly open-ended

00:36:23.740 It's there to be refined and and further discovered and I think there's there

00:36:28.860 There are possibilities of well-being that we can't imagine the other irony here is that people are at when people say that you

00:36:35.900 You have this assumption that well-being is is good or worth finding

00:36:40.940 As though we could do otherwise as though having an axiom at the bottom here

00:36:45.180 makes this unscientific

00:36:47.900 Every science is based on similar axioms that can't justify themselves. So

00:36:53.820 take for example

00:36:55.580 Assuming that the universe is intelligible

00:36:58.140 Right assuming that two plus two makes four for every two and two

00:37:03.100 You know if it works for apples it works for oranges. It's also going to work for cantaloupes

00:37:07.100 How do you know it's going to work for ravens and chickens and how does it generalize that's an into it?

00:37:11.820 That that's an intuition, right? That's a foundation

00:37:14.220 It's still an assumption that you need to test though in physics. I mean think you

00:37:17.580 But you don't test it by continuing to count apples and oranges and cantaloupes. Well, we do things like that

00:37:22.380 We you know, there's we do

00:37:23.980 We do check to see if the rules continue to work in places. We haven't looked before the idea that events have causes

00:37:30.220 Yeah, yeah

00:37:31.260 Unless unless time begins and then there was no cause because there was no before

00:37:36.220 Right, but that's proffered as a violation of our intuition that works everywhere else in science

00:37:41.660 Well, yeah, but I mean i'm just

00:37:44.380 In some sense playing the devil's advocate in this regard, but but violation of intuition

00:37:48.780 In my field violation of intuition is everything

00:37:51.740 What was that? In my field violation of intuition is everything except the least trusty

00:37:55.500 Where you think you have is intuition. Yeah, no, but you're using other intuitions to get behind the bad ones

00:38:00.940 You're using in this case in most cases

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - January 29, 2018

#115 — Sam Harris, Lawrence Krauss, and Matt Dillahunty (1)

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