Making Sense - Sam Harris - #188 — A Conversation with Paul Bloom

In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, I try to get my friend Prof. Paul Bloom to say nice things about Donald Trump. It's a difficult task, and a heavy lift emotionally and ethically spiritually, but it's a good one politically and politically, and it's one that's not going to get any easier once you know what to say about the man in charge of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump. And it's not that he's a decent person, or that he has any positive moral qualities, it's that he s a moron who happens to be the most powerful man in the world, and that he won the presidential election by playing 4d chess with the electorate. But is that a brilliant act of political persuasion? Or did he just happen to work given the political attitudes and moral attitudes of 40% of the electorate? And did he happen given the attitudes and attitudes of the ugliest, most authoritarian, sexist, and sexist part of the Ugliest part of my male imagination? And I'm just gonna say that he could have said ugly and authoritarian and sexist things that could have been the most ugly and sexist he could possibly have said, and yet he did it anyway. And I don't think I've ever heard of a better way to do it than that, and I'm not even remotely close to the best I've heard of it. -- -- at least not by anyone who could do it, at least in my humble opinion -- is it possible to be a good thing? -- and that's the kind of thing, right? -- I think so. -- I'm making sense of it! -- make sense? -- by -- making sense -- by my friend, Prof. -- by me, Dr. Paul Blakeney -- let me know what you think of it? -- and I'll let you know if you agree or disagree with me -- or don't? -- or do you agree with me? -- make sense, please tell me what you would like to know more about it? I'll be listening to it, making sense? I mean, do you think so? -- can you have any thoughts on it, or would you agree? -- do you have an opinion on it? or not? -- are you interested in it, and would you want to help me know more? -- please let me help me out? -- if you're interested?

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris and i'm once again with my friend paul

00:00:22.440 bloom paul thank you for joining me hey sam good to talk to you we've been making a habit of this

00:00:28.280 this is fun this is a lot of fun and and i just want to i'm paul bloom everybody knows who you are

00:00:34.020 but i'm paul bloom professor of psychology at yale university and i want to sort of start by

00:00:39.060 continuing a conversation we were having you know just just now and we've been having over the last

00:00:43.220 little while where i'm going to try to get you to say something nice about trump

00:00:46.760 and i figured out the way to do it put it this way are you ready for it yeah well i'm bracing myself

00:00:53.620 because this is a heavy lift emotionally and ethically spiritually i'm not i'll reassure you

00:00:59.680 i'm not going to ask you to say anything like he's a decent person or he has any positive moral

00:01:04.660 qualities it's a different line so here's how it goes imagine a competition that starts off with a

00:01:10.820 lot of people a thousand a hundred gradually whittles down to a dozen and these aren't extremely

00:01:16.140 motivated people they're accomplished some of them have extremely strong records of success

00:01:21.480 and they're seeking after probably the most sought after prize in the world and they have a

00:01:27.160 competition that lasts a year at least many many months this is seeming vaguely familiar and it's

00:01:33.140 vaguely familiar that's right hypothetical not a hypothetical sometimes they they battle independently

00:01:38.720 but there's a lot of face-to-face confrontations where they're in a room and a million people are

00:01:43.260 watching them yeah and it's a zero-sum game can only be one winner yeah and after a long savage

00:01:49.340 battle this guy who actually had never competed before who had no no no reasonable qualifications

00:01:57.460 for it wins so as you've twigged on i'm talking about the republican primaries and i'm talking about

00:02:03.800 trump winning now i'm less impressed that he won the election once you get to an election in this

00:02:09.260 country it's a coin toss you know half the people are going to vote for the republican half for the

00:02:13.360 democrat and you're fighting for the smidgen of undecideds but doesn't it say something extraordinary

00:02:19.840 about him that he won i can give you some of what you're asking for i think yes he he clearly has

00:02:27.700 an understanding of television that his opponents didn't have even though they're all they were all

00:02:34.300 professional politicians and some of them are just anti-charismatic i mean he was up against ted

00:02:40.760 cruz and jeb bush people who didn't have a stage presence and couldn't be trained to have one

00:02:47.740 apparently and you add to that his experience as a showman really you know as a reality tv

00:02:55.660 impresario mostly again i go back to my evil chauncey gardner thesis which is the responsibility

00:03:04.980 for his success really isn't in him it's more in the environment it's in the electorate's

00:03:12.540 relationship to fame and having seen someone on television so much he was in fact one of the most

00:03:19.760 famous people on earth even though he was kind of a rodney dangerfield character in the business

00:03:24.400 community but he's one of the most recognizable people more so than his opponents but that's the

00:03:31.640 environment i mean i guess i should remind people not everyone knows the reference because i'm old

00:03:36.460 but chauncey gardner was this character in the jersey kosinski novel being there which became that film

00:03:42.960 starring peter sellers and he was a gardener who happened to be a moron but he was overheard

00:03:51.020 saying aphoristic things like in the spring new flowers always bloom or something like that and this

00:03:57.600 was mistaken for political wisdom and then through the course of events he winds up being an advisor

00:04:03.660 to the president but so in that case it's totally clear that the audience is in on the joke they 0.99

00:04:08.840 realize he's a moron albeit a wholly well-intentioned one and it's all of the projection 0.99

00:04:15.480 and misapprehension and confusion in the environment that winds up promoting him to a position of power 1.00

00:04:21.840 and when i look at trump when i look at the things that he's done that have been so successful like

00:04:27.160 you know chanting locker up at his rallies right now was that a brilliant act of political persuasion

00:04:34.760 was he playing 4d chess with the electorate or did it just happen to work given the political

00:04:42.240 attitudes and moral attitudes of 40 percent of america and i think it's the latter i mean i think

00:04:48.100 he literally could have said almost anything ugly and authoritarian and sexist he could have said 0.59

00:04:57.020 and i'm just gonna now spitball from the ugliest part of my male imagination he could have said 0.94

00:05:04.100 i wouldn't want to see her naked i'll tell you that you know keep your clothes on hillary then people 1.00

00:05:09.220 would be chanting keep your clothes on right i think he actually did say he was talking about her

00:05:14.580 i think going to the bathroom at some point and one of the debates and and you know the crowd went

00:05:20.180 wild at the very thought of it maybe i've repressed that moment yeah i don't see locker up as a brilliant

00:05:28.580 political move i don't even see it as a move it's more of him that allows him to show up as a kind of

00:05:37.680 super stimulus to 40 of america i mean there's something so cartoonish about him and it and he has

00:05:45.560 the power of a cartoon and now you've got me on another anti-trump rant here this is but so i once

00:05:53.860 said he was like a golem that had been conjured by every bad thing that had ever been said about

00:05:59.740 america it's like the physical manifestation of everyone's external judgments of just what the

00:06:04.980 ugly american is like but it is something like that i mean if you took professional wrestling and

00:06:12.020 mcdonald's french fries and the nra and infomercials about bogus products that don't work and you just 0.93

00:06:21.440 mix them all together and you stick them in the back of a tacky white limousine and you drive it around

00:06:27.240 central park 500 times you open the door out would step donald trump he's the confection of all of that 0.99

00:06:34.340 american crap and for whatever reason that apotheosis of all that is wrong with us all that is 1.00

00:06:44.340 just self-regarding and obtuse that works for 40 of america at this moment in american history 0.99

00:06:51.380 so it's a kind of perverse power he's got the whatever you know that uh what was the i don't really

00:06:58.780 follow the avengers movies but the um what was that glove with all the stones that josh brolin was 0.98

00:07:04.000 trying to get yeah thanos yeah thanos up with his glove i mean he's got the stones of fucking 0.97

00:07:09.320 hypocrisy and narcissism and you know he's working on the banality of evil and eventually he will have 0.98

00:07:16.400 all the power in the universe when everything goes wrong so i have really failed in my quest to get

00:07:22.860 is that what you were hoping for it has backfired horrendously so here's your counter analysis as i

00:07:29.780 see it my analysis is he has some skills in that he knows what to say to enrage many people including

00:07:37.760 you and me and to delight so many others face to face in a debate ho go he'll be savage and cruel 0.93

00:07:44.720 and comic and funny in a way that other people can't and in the whole places other people won't go

00:07:51.140 and these abilities these these dark abilities are a large part of why he's president now i think your

00:07:57.700 analysis is more like i can't i can't reiterate your your beautiful description but somehow he spawned

00:08:05.080 somehow he was born and he developed and now you have this creature with this this disgusting

00:08:11.560 degrading manner which bizarrely is strangely appealing and he gets no credit for it it's just the way he is

00:08:19.020 maybe i'll give you a little more than you have any right to expect i can imagine in fact i'd be

00:08:24.780 surprised if this weren't true i can imagine that behind closed doors i would be surprised at how he

00:08:32.340 shows up i bet he's got some level of of emotional intelligence and charisma that if only given now that

00:08:41.000 he's ruler of the free world because i've never met him i've never seen him in person i would imagine that

00:08:46.060 the person i see on television and on stage is not the whole person something has to explain

00:08:53.240 the fact that behind closed doors he manages to keep anyone on his team for more than a day and a half

00:09:00.720 though often not much longer than yes that's true but but yeah i i i think i agree i don't think

00:09:07.840 you know i don't think when he's sitting by himself you know he's he's reading dickens and and

00:09:12.420 writing poetry wouldn't that be amazing that would be something but but i imagine that a lot of what

00:09:18.920 we see is a show and and it's a very very good show and it's it's quite entertaining and and i think

00:09:25.380 that that he might in his personal life actually just kind of tone it down and become more of a

00:09:30.220 recognizable human being but there's something else which is a very backhanded compliment i think he's

00:09:36.400 very good at being cruel i think he's a very effective sadist i feel that a lot of his vicious

00:09:42.020 attacks on people of which they number in the hundreds if not the thousands by now have really

00:09:47.140 hurt people have really damaged people and i think he he has the the bullet the bully's understanding of

00:09:53.380 where of of what will make their victim cry he's definitely a bully but again the effectiveness of his

00:10:00.220 attacks on people the fact that it deranges their lives and you know often causes them to have to

00:10:07.920 get security or move from where they're living i mean really they're effective in really screwing

00:10:14.040 people over massively again that's not a sign of how cutting his or clever his names are for people or

00:10:22.840 anything else he's actually tweeting it's just the fact that he's the leader of a a mob he's got a

00:10:28.860 dangerous personality cult behind him and we live in an environment where if you have anything like

00:10:35.240 that kind of social presence you can just direct your mob to dox people and otherwise screw them

00:10:42.860 over online and he does that i mean he does it totally recklessly you know eventually someone's

00:10:47.720 going to get killed because of one of his tweets and there'll be no recourse he's got to know that what 0.51

00:10:52.800 he does is dangerous on twitter i guess part of what's driving me is is almost a version of the

00:10:58.240 argument from design where if you see something complicated and in this case successful you say

00:11:04.360 it's unlikely to be random so you know if if we were theists we might say i guess god decided that

00:11:11.360 trump was his man and and and gave him this great fortune but we're not theists so i think what we

00:11:17.220 should look for is some abilities something something going on that has caused him to do these extremely

00:11:22.840 low probability things but he i mean he's the distillation of the american grotesque in a way

00:11:30.620 that is you know we have not seen before and we saw its manifestation on reality tv for yeah more than

00:11:37.320 a decade his theme song was i think it was money money money money right and it's just the crassness 0.98

00:11:44.440 of american bullshit if you played it with gold that's trump and yet through amazing happenstance 0.95

00:11:53.780 he managed to move it all the way into the oval office and now it's there and the juxtaposition 0.99

00:11:58.820 between who he is really and the moral and political seriousness of trying to steer human history

00:12:07.020 at this moment is an insane juxtaposition and you know half of the country wants to see every

00:12:13.180 institution destabilized anyway i mean the other thing is the lack of regard the lack of respect the

00:12:18.640 lack of trust in institutions now is an all-time low and that is i mean he is the personification of

00:12:26.080 that change of attitude i mean he's ushered it in to some degree it also was the explanation for the

00:12:31.920 fact that he was able to take the stage in the first place i would say yeah i'll just say i i i i agree

00:12:37.860 with a lot of that i'll just say one thing which is that i'm sure you've had friends i have friends too

00:12:42.160 who said they predicted this and some of them did predict it i sure as hell didn't and and i i bet

00:12:48.920 you didn't so whatever happened it wasn't obvious it was going to happen look so question you and i

00:12:56.340 were talking before about the democratic debate and so can i get you to say something nice about

00:13:02.160 sanders what do you think of sanders i should remind people our last podcast was recorded just

00:13:08.760 before the democratic debate in las vegas where bloomberg made his first appearance and i believe

00:13:15.760 i was appropriately cautious in my um my expectations for bloomberg we were both cautious neither one of

00:13:22.620 us said bloomberg's gonna really rip it up up there and do very well no so i was certainly worried about

00:13:27.800 that i am i don't know that i thought his performance was as bad as it has been said since

00:13:33.620 it was definitely bad but you know it's being viewed as just catastrophic it could it could have

00:13:39.240 been worse yeah no imagine ways which it could have but he but he did very very poorly he could

00:13:43.720 have burst into tears he could have cried he could have you know shat himself there's a whole list of

00:13:48.760 options which could have been worse yeah but but once you get beyond the sort of he did very poorly and

00:13:54.420 and he did poorly in a way that i think unfortunately matched up with the negative view many people have of

00:13:59.980 the truth is there just may not be good answers to some of those challenges right so that could

00:14:06.320 explain it but he did seem kind of blindsided by much of what warren would imagine he would have

00:14:12.100 practiced and practiced and practiced and worked with people and do the thing that these politicians

00:14:16.040 do which is come up with a joke or a way to distract it or a way to honestly apologize and he seemed as

00:14:22.180 if he these challenges about the sexual harassment issues about stop and friskly was hearing them for the

00:14:28.220 first time right right there was a new yorker article that gave some color to what those ndas

00:14:34.380 probably conceal it sounds like he's going to release a few of them but i don't know whether

00:14:39.460 there's more but it just sounds like he clearly is from the madmen era of you know sexual impropriety

00:14:47.980 and so the kinds of things he said again there's no allegation for anything he's done in the me too

00:14:54.720 sense which is certainly good and compares favorably with the president who's trailing i think 19

00:15:01.660 allegations of sexual assault this is utterly asymmetric warfare here the fact that we have to

00:15:07.840 concern ourselves with bloomberg's bad jokes where the president is managed to get off scot-free i mean

00:15:15.020 we're now recording this on the day that harvey weinstein was just found guilty of some degree of

00:15:21.580 rape and it wasn't the highest charge on which he was indicted but he's still facing it seems a lot

00:15:27.960 of jail time for what happened today and trump is a character like weinstein if these allegations about

00:15:34.300 him are true or at least damn close we're not talking about bad jokes so it's crazy that the democrats are

00:15:42.600 the debate was as many of us tweeted like a circular firing squad i mean basically everyone

00:15:48.900 was quickly rendering everyone else unelectable and that's what i'm worried about on our side that we

00:15:56.220 could just get to the general election with whoever the candidate is this is somebody who has to function

00:16:02.640 by ethics and political norms that don't translate at all across the aisle and yet there's no way of 0.97

00:16:10.760 transcending this basic asymmetry so so let's take this one step up isn't this the stupidest way to 0.90

00:16:17.320 choose a leader yeah have a debate i mean you know it's it's what people do people like seeing fighting 0.68

00:16:22.920 but debates demonstrate the ability to memorize good lines to be good at interrupting to be very fast on

00:16:28.620 your feet you know to be to be savage in a certain way i've heard people say we really want a good

00:16:34.240 debater to come out from this this sequence of democratic debates so they could be a good debater

00:16:38.700 against trump and it seems ridiculous what a terrible way to choose a leader you know i i i tend i tend to

00:16:46.660 have a libertarian streak but i gotta say if if i was in charge i would i would you know ban debates

00:16:52.920 at the political stage no more debates people should be should speak should get interviewed they should

00:16:57.580 be discussed discuss their policies and everything but this mano a mano you know demonstration of your

00:17:04.500 of your basically combat ability is so grossly unrelated to what you'd want in a president

00:17:11.000 no i agree we don't do that for anything else we value you're looking for a swim coach you don't have

00:17:16.100 them debate other swim coaches you don't have university presidents debated out only for this

00:17:20.760 the problem with debates which i've long worried about is that the way to win a debate is to get a big

00:17:28.160 laugh at your opponent's expense if you can do that you have won no matter what else happens in the debate

00:17:34.500 it does reward any kind of comic timing or you know a semblance of comic timing given the lackluster

00:17:42.300 performances of the kinds of people who tend to find themselves on those stages but yeah if you can

00:17:47.820 get off a good line you win so it has no relationship to your qualifications for the office i think there's

00:17:55.860 one thing so you asked me about sanders and i think there's something i should clarify because i noticed

00:18:00.000 some comments in response to the last podcast so i believe i said last time around that i thought

00:18:06.140 sanders is unelectable which i noticed provoked some howls of displeasure and i think i also wondered

00:18:14.180 whether or not it might be preferable to have a billionaire self-fund his campaign you know i.e.

00:18:18.900 Bloomberg and then be beholden to no one and that that might be better than the normal situation

00:18:24.640 where politicians perpetually have their hands out and get entangled with special interests and i

00:18:29.480 remember you countered that in the case of bernie we're talking about small donations not special

00:18:34.040 interests and then i further said that i wondered whether this just made him beholden to the leftist

00:18:40.940 mob and so some people interpreted this as my expressing a preference for aristocracy or oligarchy

00:18:48.600 over democracy so i think i should clarify that my paramount concern here is that we get trump out

00:18:55.320 of office for reasons that i have not been shy about stating and so my concern with bernie being

00:19:02.460 captured by his audience is that he may be unable i think he's frankly unable to tack to the middle

00:19:11.480 in a credible way in the general election and therefore i think he's just bound to lose to trump

00:19:17.700 i mean i know we have polls that show him beating trump in some key states but in the last few days

00:19:23.580 this has changed a little bit but you know up until a few days ago he has not experienced the

00:19:29.840 extremely uncharitable vetting that he's going to get hour by hour in the general election and so

00:19:36.460 i mean we're now seeing videos of him his recent trip to the soviet union where you know their

00:19:42.160 cultural institutions and their subways seem so much better than our own is at the height of the cold war 0.99

00:19:47.460 we're seeing articles where you know he's blaming us for the hostage crisis in iran and blaming

00:19:53.580 carter as a warmonger you can find him looking completely out to lunch with respect to our foreign

00:20:00.520 enemies and he also can't say how he's going to pay for anything and as the price tag for his promises

00:20:07.460 goes up into the tens of trillions of dollars i mean literally he the 60 minutes interview last night

00:20:13.760 suggested that he was you know about to cut a check for a minimum of 30 trillion dollars over

00:20:19.640 the next 10 years but it was probably more like 50 trillion dollars and could give absolutely no

00:20:24.800 account no credible account of how he could pay for this and this is just the beginning it's like the

00:20:30.080 first 48 hours of him looking like he's going to be the candidate i'm just worried that he's actually

00:20:35.440 unelectable that's saying nothing about my attitude toward democracy or even you know sanders 0.99

00:20:40.880 himself it's just i'm just worried that promoting him is guaranteeing four more years of trump

00:20:45.880 i think some of that might might be true i mean one thing to realize is if we choose any other name

00:20:51.960 warren biden mayor pete we could play the same game right we could you could easily list all sorts of

00:20:58.260 problems this person has not to the same degree no i don't i don't see it well bloomberg i think

00:21:03.140 functions by a different physics because he whatever his flaws are trump's much worse on exactly

00:21:10.220 those points and then you just have to sort of pick your billionaire yeah but a lot of democrats

00:21:15.180 might refuse to play right pick your billionaire and just stay yeah that's the real liability with

00:21:19.220 bloomberg with mayor pete or um klobuchar i think you oh god i don't don't get me i mean i don't know 0.98

00:21:26.380 if you know this but mayor pete is gay i don't know if you've been following the news oh he's gay

00:21:30.420 let me rethink this and my whole political calculus actually and i actually think that that is going to be

00:21:36.260 a pretty serious liability more more than sanders judaism which i think will actually cut into him

00:21:41.660 a bit yeah i think the judaism is a non-issue or close to i think we touched that last time i think

00:21:47.380 it's yeah that wouldn't be a fatal issue and i i don't know about the homophobia variable but the

00:21:55.000 branding issue i mean just the word socialism whatever he may mean by it i think it's fatal it's

00:22:02.080 literally like running as a pedophile where you have to then say no no no it's not pedophile as you

00:22:08.540 know you say i know you've seen pedophiles in the movies but the moment you're having to explain

00:22:13.320 this word you're losing maybe millennials and uh gen z are kind of out of touch with

00:22:21.440 actually awful associations with the concept of socialism but they they are when they think

00:22:27.080 socialism they think denmark and and and bernie's honest he says when i say socialism i mean denmark

00:22:32.100 and you know denmark there are arguments as to whether this could extend to the american model but

00:22:36.200 but that's what he's talking about but the truth is when you look at his history it's not so clear

00:22:40.780 if you go back far enough he's looking pretty red right i think that's fair enough but you got it so

00:22:47.820 one of the things you mentioned was this comment on the iran crisis with the hostage and everything

00:22:52.240 and you got it exactly right but what is this 40 years ago right it's a long time but he would need

00:22:59.440 some credible account for how he's changed and take him on the issue of israel right it's like he has

00:23:06.300 the sort of self-hating masochistic moral confusion around the politics there he's got genuine anti-semites

00:23:16.400 and theocrats in his inner circle i mean like someone like linda sarsour right who are advising

00:23:22.560 him on these issues and literally functioning as his surrogates in certain cases he celebrates these

00:23:29.220 people on social media i mean linda sarsour this is like having you know farrakhan as one of your

00:23:35.600 advisors i mean it's just completely clueless about the the moral and political asymmetries here so so

00:23:42.540 you're making you're making a moral case let me shift it to political case do you think this is

00:23:46.760 going to hurt him well it certainly should hurt him and i think it would hurt him yeah oh yeah i mean

00:23:51.520 i think in the general election i mean people will be completely freaked out by the idea that someone

00:23:56.760 like linda sarsour could have conceivably wind up in somebody's cabinet this is every bit as bad as

00:24:04.140 anything trump is capable of right it's just it's nuts let me offer a different perspective on something

00:24:10.540 you said you said you know it doesn't seem like he's going to be able to adequately move towards

00:24:14.980 the center and i think you're right but i think the advantage of sanders that say mayor pete doesn't

00:24:21.480 have and biden well biden might have but the advantage of sanders is he might actually take away trump

00:24:26.640 voters he may take away people who voted for trump because they feel that they they hate the system

00:24:32.560 they feel screwed they they feel capitalism has has left them you know they've been left out of of

00:24:40.060 everything good about america and i think i think sanders could could take trump voters away in a way

00:24:46.000 that a lot of other people on the stage would not be able to yeah i don't i don't really i mean i guess

00:24:52.220 i guess it's conceivable but then those are some pretty confused voters and i don't know how many of

00:24:57.040 them there could conceivably be i mean i think warren i mean just the amount of daylight there is

00:25:01.340 between warren and sanders around the just the word socialism and the fact that she can just say

00:25:07.780 she's a capitalist and you know she's not tempted to brand herself as a socialist even though her

00:25:13.060 economic policies are in many cases indistinguishable from his i think that's a crucial difference and

00:25:18.540 you know she's not going to get it but you know something i i agree with it i with you i'm not

00:25:23.160 i i can't explain what happened i don't think anybody can but i always thought warren in some

00:25:27.840 way strictly dominated sanders like everything sanders did she did better she she had you know 1.00

00:25:33.780 a lot of his good ideas but she didn't brand herself as a socialist she's incredibly wonky and 0.98

00:25:39.120 smart i mean you may disagree with her but she's but she's she's very into weeds she's very personable 0.96

00:25:45.680 face to face and then for some reason some combination of sexism or bad luck or or 0.99

00:25:52.600 i don't know well she did one stupid thing which i don't think sanders has done i mean she 0.99

00:25:59.080 got pulled into the wokeness to a degree that sanders hasn't i mean sanders is just still just 0.98

00:26:04.860 hitting the point of class warfare yeah relentlessly and which you know warren hits as well but warren

00:26:11.280 got pulled into the intersectional mishigas i mean she's literally tweeted at one point i think the tweet

00:26:18.720 was like black cis and trans women are the backbone of our democracy i believe that's verbatim right so

00:26:26.940 there's some charitable gloss you can put on that but the fact that that gets summarized in everyone's

00:26:32.100 brain as black trans women are the backbone of our democracy all 17 of them there's just no reason for 1.00

00:26:40.240 her to do that right she's pandering to a constituency so small it's so short-sighted and 0.99

00:26:47.360 seems calculated to alienate half of america but but that's not i i remember the tweet you're talking

00:26:52.900 about but that's not what happened to her i mean well no but i do think that's a fatal flaw in her 0.58

00:26:59.480 campaign i don't know i don't actually know what happened to her in terms of what caused her to lose

00:27:04.380 her momentum this time in this last round if she were ahead right now and we were talking about her

00:27:10.400 as the front runner i'd be worried that she's also unelectable for reasons that are slightly different 1.00

00:27:16.320 than sanders but you know just as concerning so who is electable i think if bloomberg could complete

00:27:24.680 a string of sane and seemingly honest sentences in defense of his record i think you think all those

00:27:32.700 elizabeth warren voters would and bernie sanders voters move to bloomberg everyone who doesn't want

00:27:38.360 trump will eventually have to move to whoever is in the general election for the democrats and i just

00:27:44.560 think once there's a single candidate you know any of them stands a chance of solidifying everyone's

00:27:52.180 understandable concern about trump i think if you can't energize half of america around just that

00:27:59.540 single variable just getting this guy out of office then it's hopeless but i think things change

00:28:06.060 once there's just one of them the moderates are split between biden and klobuchar and yeah and

00:28:12.180 buddhich and bloomberg and if it could magically be klobuchar i think yeah you know that she stands a

00:28:19.300 chance it's just like everyone would just reset she does stand a chance you know the person i miss

00:28:23.820 i miss cory booker i i've i've never met him i've heard great things about him and he seems like

00:28:29.340 yeah a gracious intelligent broad-minded person he's uh yeah he seems you know genuinely likable in a way

00:28:36.260 i don't find any of these people and and also what he says makes sense and he seems rational and

00:28:42.460 pragmatic and all good things yeah and i could never figure out why he didn't translate better on

00:28:49.000 stage or on i mean yeah so much of this is just the way people speak and and now we're back to the

00:28:54.460 debates and and how crappy they are yeah it's a performance but i really do think it's got to be

00:29:00.860 possible to back foot trump in a debate it's not too much to hope that in the general election he could

00:29:08.140 be consequentially embarrassed i think the best person to do that again it's just awful that bloomberg

00:29:15.220 doesn't have more natural gifts in this regard because if he had a great stage presence he has

00:29:22.500 the perfect biography to go after trump from yeah and and and i've been kind of ragging on him the

00:29:29.240 last episode in this one too but you know what i think about bloomberg is he actually does a lot of

00:29:33.340 good he gives a lot of money to charity he gives you know over i think a billion dollars to johns

00:29:38.380 hopkins money for regarding uh working on climate change and gun control and helping other democrats

00:29:45.220 he's he's you know a mass unlike trump uh he's a massively generous person no i know i mean that

00:29:51.380 that's why the juxtaposition is so um invidious but sam speak speaking of juxtapositions do parents

00:29:58.460 matter oh yeah so we we got a question about this yeah we agree we agree to do sudden transitions so

00:30:04.420 this is this is by the way from proxima ratio and that's the name of on twitter yes my name of one of

00:30:11.100 sam's 30 million twitter followers and and he raised the question and there's been a bit of

00:30:16.080 discussion online about the idea of whether or not parenting matters yes and this could have been

00:30:22.480 seeded by our friend steve pinker circulating a boston globe article about a meta-analysis of all of

00:30:30.500 the studies that have interrogated this question whether parental influence really determines anything

00:30:37.600 in the space of how kids grow into adulthood this thesis was brought to the world's attention i think

00:30:44.660 mostly by judith rich harris did you know her i did she's she's passed away uh yeah unfortunately

00:30:51.300 i actually um i edit a journal behavioral brain sciences where we we publish controversial and

00:30:58.000 theoretically interesting things and then dozens and dozens of people write commentaries on it and i

00:31:03.220 i contacted her after her book and asked whether she would contribute to our journal which we usually

00:31:08.760 don't make invitations but this was an exception and she was very nice but she said her health would

00:31:13.080 not would not allow it yeah so her thesis was that for virtually everything we care about the human

00:31:19.900 mind the human personality human ability is basically 50 genetic more or less and then 50 environment but

00:31:28.880 that environment crucially from the point of view of mom and dad doesn't seem to be anything they're

00:31:35.620 doing it seems to be the influence of peer group and other if you'd like to continue listening to this

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - February 28, 2020

#188 — A Conversation with Paul Bloom

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