Making Sense - Sam Harris - #31 — Evolving Minds

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

00:00:08.820 This is Sam Harris.

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00:00:46.420 And so here I reached out to Jonathan Haidt, who is a professor of ethical leadership at

00:00:51.020 NYU's Stern School of Business.

00:00:53.100 He's a very well-known psychologist.

00:00:55.140 Many of you know his work, and taught at UVA for many years.

00:01:00.860 And he's the author of The Happiness Hypothesis and The Righteous Mind.

00:01:04.880 He and I have collided with one another on a number of occasions, and this conversation

00:01:10.180 could have gone either way.

00:01:11.980 I was not surprised that it was as successful as it was.

00:01:16.520 But it was a risk, like many of these things are, and this one paid off.

00:01:20.780 We come out of a history of strong and even ad hominem criticism of one another, and we

00:01:29.460 make progress.

00:01:30.660 I now give you John Haidt.

00:01:38.540 Well, I'm here with Jonathan Haidt.

00:01:40.440 John, thanks for coming on the podcast.

00:01:42.280 My pleasure, Sam.

00:01:43.000 Looking forward to it.

00:01:43.760 Well, listen, before we get into topics about which we agree, and there are a lot of them,

00:01:48.480 let's start with areas of disagreement, because we've had a few past controversies, which I

00:01:53.320 think our listeners should know about.

00:01:54.860 So many of our listeners will know who you are, because you've done extremely influential

00:01:57.980 work in psychology and have covered many topics that are really just of enormous importance

00:02:02.440 outside psychology.

00:02:03.740 But many might not know the history of our bickering in public.

00:02:07.020 Right.

00:02:07.320 So you've been among the prominent critics of the so-called new atheists who have gone

00:02:12.260 after Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and Dan Dennett and me for what we've said

00:02:17.660 about religion, principally.

00:02:19.140 And you spent less time on Hitch because he didn't claim to be representing science.

00:02:22.920 So you've criticized me in the past and in ways that I thought were pretty wrongheaded.

00:02:28.040 And I push back fairly hard against this in ways that may have bordered on incivility at

00:02:33.580 times.

00:02:34.320 And so the way things were left, I don't think either of us would have tended to see

00:02:38.360 the other as a natural collaborator.

00:02:40.460 That's right.

00:02:40.760 So I mean, I find this interesting just as a social phenomenon.

00:02:44.040 I find it intellectually quite consequential that people stop talking to one another after

00:02:48.960 they have certain collisions in public.

00:02:51.000 And more and more, I've been attempting to engage people with whom I've had a strong disagreement

00:02:55.500 on important topics just to see if conversation is possible.

00:02:59.720 And I should just point out to you and to our listeners who will know that this doesn't

00:03:03.940 always work out.

00:03:04.740 I had one podcast that I didn't even release because it went so badly.

00:03:08.360 And I had one that I released recently and probably shouldn't have because it just seemed

00:03:12.360 to do nothing more than increase the sum total of frustration in the universe.

00:03:16.300 It was just people found it excruciating to listen to.

00:03:18.760 And I've had very mixed success doing this in writing.

00:03:21.520 The most memorable failure being that I attempted to engage Noam Chomsky and that project just

00:03:26.260 fell apart as fast as I could type.

00:03:28.340 That does not sound promising.

00:03:29.880 So, but I suspect you and I are up to this.

00:03:32.680 So, you know, we don't need to spend a lot of time rehearsing our past skirmishes, but

00:03:36.440 I just want to, and we can just discover what we disagree about now as the topics come up.

00:03:41.360 But I just want our listeners to know that this history exists and it was fairly acrimonious.

00:03:46.480 And they should just appreciate that you and I are doing a bit of a high wire act just having

00:03:50.820 this conversation because most people with our history just actually don't willingly talk to each

00:03:55.780 other in these ways. And so, again, my underlying aim is to demonstrate that two people can

00:04:00.520 have a fairly inauspicious beginning and then successfully communicate and make intellectual

00:04:05.420 progress.

00:04:05.880 Great. I want that too.

00:04:07.740 Cool.

00:04:07.960 And actually, you know, in preparing for this call, I was looking back over our past conflicts

00:04:11.120 and, you know, looking at it as a psychologist who studies morality and moral disagreement,

00:04:15.220 I actually think it's kind of revealing the way this all worked.

00:04:18.760 So, you know, initially, as far as I can tell, the first salvo was when I wrote that essay

00:04:25.080 on edge, very critical of the new atheists.

00:04:28.840 And, you know, I don't think that I was uncivil there, although it was within the bounds of

00:04:32.440 normal edge conversation.

00:04:33.760 It's, you know, edge is not a safe zone.

00:04:35.540 I think you and I both agree that intellectual discourse should not be a safe zone.

00:04:40.860 Um, and then you, uh, you wrote back and, and from my point of view, um, it was when

00:04:46.560 you, you were comparing, you were, uh, saying my ideas would basically, you know, justify

00:04:51.200 or lead to Aztec human sacrifice and, and all these other horrible things.

00:04:54.980 And okay, you know, that too is within, within the bounds.

00:04:57.820 Um, all right.

00:04:58.620 So, so we're sort of up against the edge there, but that's sort of normal.

00:05:01.400 Then if I remember the timing, it was like right after that, that we first met face to

00:05:05.360 face at the Beyond Belief conference.

00:05:07.240 Um, and there too, um, if I remember there, I think you said like my beliefs would lead

00:05:13.360 to either North Korea or something like that.

00:05:16.480 So again, well, not so, I don't, I don't think I would have ever said that it would lead to,

00:05:19.920 but just that you would be hard pressed to say what was wrong with those systems by your

00:05:24.760 lights.

00:05:25.460 Okay.

00:05:26.060 Okay.

00:05:26.620 I mean, so it may be a distinction without a difference in your mind, but it's, it's a

00:05:30.800 pretty important one.

00:05:31.560 That is, that is.

00:05:32.100 But the point is just that from, you know, the way it felt to me was no matter what I say,

00:05:36.060 you will, you will link me somehow to, uh, you know, North Korea or something like that.

00:05:42.300 I don't think you ever did the Nazis.

00:05:43.560 And I thank you for that.

00:05:44.840 Um, but the point is that I felt that you had a particular rhetorical style, which was

00:05:49.480 well suited for what you were doing.

00:05:51.260 You were writing for a popular audience about a very hot topic, but I felt like, Hey, Sam's

00:05:56.760 rhetoric.

00:05:57.080 This is like not academic rhetoric.

00:05:58.960 This is very different and I don't like it.

00:06:01.500 All right.

00:06:01.860 So that's the backstory.

00:06:03.140 So, but you know, I never really responded.

00:06:04.760 I didn't do anything in writing after that.

00:06:06.100 And then when you wrote a book on morality, um, in which again, you were critical of me

00:06:11.140 in the same way.

00:06:11.620 And again, that's fine.

00:06:12.880 Um, and, but it was like, uh, okay, you had another provocation.

00:06:16.580 I didn't do anything.

00:06:17.080 And then when you came out with the moral landscape challenge and you were saying, if anyone can

00:06:22.540 pay me, if anyone can convince me to change my mind, I'll pay him $10,000.

00:06:26.840 And that was like too much.

00:06:27.860 It was like, Oh my God, this is too much.

00:06:29.620 I've got to respond to this.

00:06:31.080 Um, and so then I wrote that, the essay, why Sam Harris is unlikely to change his mind.

00:06:35.260 And for the most part, as I was just reading that over, I think it's, you know, it's a

00:06:38.760 perfectly legitimate statement of my research and how my research leads me to believe that

00:06:43.780 you won't change your mind.

00:06:45.040 So all that's fine. 0.94

00:06:45.600 The thing though, is that clearly was a kind of a jerk move on my part, um, was I think 0.56

00:06:50.700 throwing, you know, I analyze, so for listeners who don't know this, uh, this story, this debate, 0.68

00:06:55.260 um, I analyzed Sam's, uh, your books, I analyzed your books and a bunch of other books.

00:07:00.000 And I found that according to this program, Luke, that counts words like always and never

00:07:04.660 in a category of certainty, uh, that you came out as the most certain person, uh, even more

00:07:10.720 so than Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and all those guys. 0.98

00:07:13.580 So that was a very jerk thing of me to do. 0.70

00:07:16.120 And Sam, I do apologize to you for that. 0.91

00:07:17.900 That was inappropriate.

00:07:18.660 Well, but it did give me a chance to respond to that, which I still am to, uh, pat my own

00:07:23.640 back.

00:07:24.000 I still am amused by my response to that, where I used every one of your keywords in a paragraph,

00:07:28.980 which was a, on its face, a statement of total intellectual humility and openness to

00:07:34.660 being wrong.

00:07:35.300 But it in fact used all your certainty terms in the same paragraph.

00:07:38.340 That's right.

00:07:38.780 And so look, Sam, so in fact, that kind of points to a similarity between us, which is that

00:07:42.420 we're both, we both really enjoy being clever.

00:07:45.880 That was a, you know, my thing was a very clever thing.

00:07:48.700 Your response where you used all those, all those words, you know, was, you know, we were

00:07:53.000 sort of smart Alex.

00:07:54.600 Um, and you know, when smart Alex come up against each other, uh, the audience is in for a treat,

00:07:59.060 I suppose.

00:07:59.420 Well, but not to trivialize what we're doing here, because I think these issues are hugely

00:08:04.580 important.

00:08:05.200 And I think our, our disagreements are important.

00:08:08.200 And I think our misunderstanding one another is important.

00:08:10.480 And just to talk a little bit more about the genesis of this thing, which it occurs to

00:08:14.380 me now, I never really thought about this as we were sparring about these issues, but

00:08:19.820 I think this may be part of the problem.

00:08:21.700 And, and, you know, correct me if this seems crazy, but so your field is social psychology,

00:08:26.340 where you've said that upwards of 95% of people are liberal and usually strongly liberal.

00:08:32.020 So you've been surrounded by people who consider political conservatism to be a form of mental 0.91

00:08:37.480 illness, essentially.

00:08:38.660 And you've pushed back against this in ways that have been extremely important and really

00:08:43.140 ingenious.

00:08:44.300 And you and I are going to agree about many of the points you've raised against liberals.

00:08:47.920 Oh yeah, the political correctness part.

00:08:48.520 We both have really come up against political correctness.

00:08:50.480 Yeah, yeah.

00:08:51.380 So you've been, so you've been fighting from that trench for a while.

00:08:54.380 And then when you saw the so-called new atheists, which are just a gang of liberal intellectuals,

00:08:59.460 initiate this frontal assault on religion and arguing that it's not only false, but dangerous.

00:09:04.820 And in my case, hearing me say that science will eventually replace religion on questions

00:09:08.820 of morality and human wellbeing.

00:09:10.580 I think you viewed this as yet another example of left-leaning secularists who are totally out

00:09:16.600 of touch with the lived experience of religious people doing what left-leaning academics often

00:09:21.360 do to social conservatives, which is dismiss them as morally and intellectually defective.

00:09:25.420 I think that's right.

00:09:26.300 Oh, good.

00:09:26.840 Well, that's not crazy.

00:09:27.980 So, I mean, so forgive me for psychoanalyzing you, but it's just, it seems to me that this,

00:09:32.340 from my point of view, has caused you to be too hostile to our criticism of religion

00:09:37.140 and to actually misunderstand it in important ways.

00:09:39.760 And I'm sure we'll touch those points.

00:09:41.500 And it's also made you too soft on religion in ways that can't be scientifically justified.

00:09:48.020 And because you believe you're correcting for a harmful bias in the scientific community,

00:09:52.540 and you have been with respect to the political divide between liberals and conservatives.

00:09:57.040 But I would argue that viewing the new atheist attack on religion through that lens has caused

00:10:02.040 you to misread us.

00:10:03.120 And at the very least, I feel like you've misread me.

00:10:05.240 I see.

00:10:05.440 Yeah, I don't think that I perceive you guys as a bunch of far-left people.

00:10:11.140 So, while there is some truth to what you say, I think it's not so much left-right as

00:10:15.640 sort of rationalist intuitionist.

00:10:18.120 That really, I think, is the heart, that sort of the scientific nub of the difference between

00:10:23.600 us is what do we each believe is the nature of human rationality and the reliability of human

00:10:31.000 reason?

00:10:31.440 And you have a much stronger belief that individual reason can lead to reliable conclusions than

00:10:40.960 I do.

00:10:41.540 So, would you agree with me that that is a fundamental, factual difference between us?

00:10:45.640 Yeah.

00:10:46.240 And I want to get into morality second.

00:10:49.480 I think we should deal with religion first. 1.00

00:10:51.340 But yes, I think that is a difference between us to some degree, although you'll find me taking

00:10:55.820 most of your points about what people descriptively do under the aegis of reasoning morally or

00:11:03.340 attempting to justify or argue for their moral positions.

00:11:07.840 But let's just focus on religion for a second, and we'll get to the foundations of morality

00:11:11.200 after that.

00:11:12.400 So, religion, as you've pointed out, is more than just a set of beliefs.

00:11:16.560 And you've argued against me as though I have disputed that, which I actually haven't.

00:11:21.940 But you're not alone in this.

00:11:22.980 Many people do that.

00:11:24.200 So, I just wanted to track through a few of the things you say in your book and then talk

00:11:27.980 about them.

00:11:28.860 So, you say in your book, The Righteous Mind, that trying to, this is a quote, trying to

00:11:34.480 understand the persistence and passion of religion by studying beliefs about God is

00:11:39.120 like trying to understand the persistence and passion of college football by studying the

00:11:43.180 movements of the ball.

00:11:44.060 You've got to broaden the inquiry, end quote.

00:11:46.900 So, now, I think that analogy isn't quite right, but I actually agree with your general

00:11:52.320 point.

00:11:52.760 Religion is obviously more than what people believe.

00:11:55.780 And yet, I think it's totally coherent and, in fact, necessary to worry about the specific

00:12:01.580 consequences of specific beliefs.

00:12:03.960 Yes.

00:12:04.580 And so, let me just reform your analogy a little bit and get you to react to it.

00:12:08.740 So, because I think it's somewhat, to stick with your analogy, it's a little bit more like

00:12:12.780 asking the question, why are people on each team always tending to run in one direction?

00:12:18.660 I mean, so, if you see them running sideways or even backwards for a few moments, it's always

00:12:23.080 with the purpose to get the ball to the other end of the field.

00:12:25.760 So, what is so special about the ends of the field that everyone wants to get there?

00:12:30.540 And to explain that, you have to understand the rules of the game.

00:12:34.380 In particular, you have to understand what a touchdown is.

00:12:36.660 But once you know that, more or less everything these people are doing is easy to understand.

00:12:42.640 And again, there's more to, I mean, there's all the people out, you know, having tailgate

00:12:46.920 parties outside the stadium, right?

00:12:48.480 So, that's part of the spectacle.

00:12:50.220 But to understand what the most energized participants are doing in this situation, all you really need

00:12:56.540 to know is what they want and what they believe will get them what they want.

00:13:01.020 And so, I would argue that this is true for the most destructive behavior and moral attitudes

00:13:06.440 we see inspired by religion. 0.76

00:13:08.180 So, when you ask yourself, you know, why is ISIS throwing gay people off of rooftops? 0.93

00:13:12.220 It's because their scripture tells them to. 0.87

00:13:14.360 It's actually written in the rulebook.

00:13:16.580 Now, in this case, the specific injunctions in the Hadith is not in the Quran, but it's part

00:13:21.640 of the larger rulebook of Salafi Islam.

00:13:24.360 And, I mean, you can say anything you want about religion being more than just beliefs and

00:13:28.500 doctrines, and you can talk about doing and belonging, which you do, in addition to belief

00:13:33.000 as being central to religion.

00:13:34.340 And you can talk about the power of ritual and strong communities and the importance

00:13:38.540 of transcendence, which is something that interests me.

00:13:40.940 And I agree about all these things being interesting.

00:13:43.400 But if you want to explain the behavior of ISIS, all you really have to know are the rules

00:13:47.740 of the game as they understand them.

00:13:49.380 And if their rulebook changed slightly, let's say their rulebook on this point said, don't

00:13:54.580 harm homosexuals under any circumstances. 0.93

00:13:56.840 Simply force them to recite the Quran for 12 hours a day and actually create a special 1.00

00:14:01.880 cast of priests that there's homosexuals who just chant from the Quran and who are otherwise 0.92

00:14:08.280 venerated, right? 0.96

00:14:09.540 I think we can be absolutely sure that this is what they would be doing.

00:14:13.460 In fact, there are analogous behaviors in other religions in human history.

00:14:16.880 So this is why I think specific doctrines matter.

00:14:19.860 And that no one, I mean, so you're going to talk about the intuitive roots of many of these

00:14:23.080 things, but no one has an intuition that they should throw gays off of rooftops specifically,

00:14:27.820 or eat a cracker every Sunday and call it the body of Jesus, or oppose embryonic stem cell 0.64

00:14:32.740 research.

00:14:33.340 And in fact, ISIS wouldn't even oppose embryonic stem cell research, and the Catholic Church 0.60

00:14:37.960 would.

00:14:38.420 And this is why the specific doctrines matter so much.

00:14:41.560 Okay, so I will certainly grant that specific doctrines matter, and that I think your thought

00:14:47.140 experiment is correct.

00:14:48.000 If there was a specific verse, and especially if it appeared in multiple places, that said,

00:14:52.320 here's how you treat homosexuals, you know, then they would treat them differently.

00:14:55.600 So I don't deny that the scripture matters.

00:14:58.360 But first, to understand your analogy, you tell me, what is the end zone?

00:15:02.440 What do you think they're all up to?

00:15:04.480 What is the thing they're all striving for to get when you use this end zone analogy?

00:15:08.000 Well, if you're talking about the real players, the real believers who are devoting their lives 0.99

00:15:13.480 fully to this, the end zone is paradise and avoiding hell.

00:15:17.360 So it's what happens after death.

00:15:19.020 It's living by the, playing by this rule book, playing this game, advancing the ball down the

00:15:24.880 field is ensuring that after death, you will spend eternity in paradise and escape hell.

00:15:31.240 Okay, so I think this is one of the differences between us, is that I am opposed to the pursuit

00:15:37.000 of parsimony.

00:15:38.360 I think that the social science, human nature and the social science are so complex, and

00:15:43.440 especially if you look at morality or religion.

00:15:45.520 So anytime someone says, the goal of religion ultimately is to attain paradise, or the goal

00:15:50.520 of religion ultimately is to have a sense of meaning, or even closer to what I say, if

00:15:55.440 you were to say the goal of religion is ultimately social bonding and connection, well, those are

00:15:59.680 all goals.

00:16:00.060 There are lots of different goals.

00:16:01.420 In this case, I was talking about ISIS.

00:16:02.740 I was talking about the, what we would call the extreme committed, you know, death cult 0.68

00:16:07.160 of Islam.

00:16:08.400 Now there's analogous cults in, in other traditions, but I'm not saying that all religious people

00:16:14.640 in every denomination of every level of commitment, that their main goal is paradise.

00:16:19.440 Some, you know, some, you know, Unitarians don't necessarily even believe in heaven, right?

00:16:23.400 So I was speaking about ISIS in this case.

00:16:25.580 Okay, yeah, so I can certainly grant your point that beliefs do matter, and I hope I

00:16:29.660 never said that they don't, but I think I would still claim that your analysis here

00:16:37.780 is too focused on the explicit.

00:16:41.560 And so, and this was, you know, my main criticism, my main concern about your writings on religion

00:16:45.420 was I felt like, sometimes felt like you were writing, you know, your two religion books.

00:16:49.460 I felt like you were writing those mostly with the Bible and the Quran and the New York Times

00:16:54.340 on your desk.

00:16:55.560 And you were sort of saying, okay, well, look at this verse, or look at this event that

00:16:58.960 happened, and then just trying to make sense of it yourself.

00:17:02.140 And I was thinking of it much more both from a kind of a Durkheimian point of view, or a,

00:17:07.460 you know, unconscious modus point of view.

00:17:08.860 I mean, there's just so much going on here.

00:17:10.640 And I have not studied ISIS.

00:17:12.040 I don't know what's going on with them.

00:17:13.200 But I don't believe you could understand them by just by reading the Quran and saying,

00:17:17.580 oh, the Quran says this, that this is why ISIS is doing it. 0.98

00:17:20.460 Well, the thing is...

00:17:21.060 The motives of humiliation, geopolitical, I mean, I don't know what's going on, but

00:17:24.980 there's a lot going on.

00:17:26.800 But this is, I mean, the issue is that this is how they understand themselves.

00:17:30.860 And now here, I'm not just speaking about ISIS, I'm just speaking about religious fundamentalists

00:17:34.900 in general.

00:17:35.380 When you ask them how they understand what they're doing, if you ask them why homosexuality is an 1.00

00:17:41.240 anathema, for instance, they have a scriptural justification for it.

00:17:46.140 And it does explain the belief and subsequent behavior, and where in certain cases, nothing

00:17:54.420 else does.

00:17:55.320 I mean, so we might, it might be relatively easy to come up with other non-scriptural reasons

00:18:01.080 to be uncomfortable around the phenomenon of homosexuality.

00:18:05.360 And we can talk about that.

00:18:06.720 I mean, it gets into your kind of moral intuitions, the moral foundations theory.

00:18:09.960 But for many of these things, the only way this idea could ever get into someone's head

00:18:15.440 is based on the tradition and the explicit teaching on a specific point.

00:18:20.960 Agreed.

00:18:21.420 I agree with you on that point.

00:18:22.700 And so let's make a distinction that I think will be very helpful here, which is between

00:18:25.540 fundamentalism and religion more generally.

00:18:28.260 So if we're talking about fundamentalist movements, then you and I are going to agree much more,

00:18:32.080 including in the moral evaluation of them.

00:18:34.020 And so if we live in a diverse society, if we live in a society, or if we value progress

00:18:43.340 and open debate of ideas and challenging each other and the things we need for the sciences,

00:18:49.280 then fundamentalism is incompatible with all of those things.

00:18:52.340 Christian fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism, I would say politically correct fundamentalism 0.64

00:18:56.280 or social justice fundamentalism.

00:18:57.600 I think you and I both personally dislike fundamentalists, the fundamentalist mindset,

00:19:03.260 I should say.

00:19:03.620 I don't mean the people.

00:19:04.400 I mean, the fundamentalist mindset is opposed to values that you and I both hold as individuals

00:19:09.820 and for science.

00:19:11.620 So there, I think there's not as much disagreement between us.

00:19:14.520 But then if you say, what about non-fundamentalist?

00:19:17.060 That's where I think you're much more negative than I am about people who are religious but not

00:19:21.500 fundamentalist.

00:19:22.100 Is that true?

00:19:22.500 Well, yeah, I'm more negative in the sense that I feel like they make, one, honest talk

00:19:28.160 about the problem of fundamentalism much more difficult because they don't want anything

00:19:32.160 too critical said about their holy books or about a tradition of venerating the concept

00:19:37.120 of revelation, right?

00:19:38.340 I think we're, I think revelation is a problem here.

00:19:40.720 The idea that one of our books was not the product of the human mind but the product of

00:19:45.640 omniscience, that already just deranges our intellectual and moral discourse really beyond

00:19:51.780 saving and we have to get out of that part of the religion business.

00:19:56.980 And so that insofar as moderates and liberals do, well, then my only real concern is that,

00:20:02.860 well, I guess there are two more concerns.

00:20:04.240 One is they tend to not be intellectually honest about the process whereby they have become

00:20:09.360 moderate or liberal.

00:20:10.380 So they pretend that there's something in the tradition, in the books, that has been

00:20:15.760 self-purifying.

00:20:16.900 But no, when you go back to the books, they're every bit as theocratic as they always were.

00:20:20.840 What's happened is that they have collided with a wider set of values, secular values and

00:20:26.760 scientific insights and progress, and they have found being doctrinaire and dogmatic is

00:20:32.840 no longer how they want to live.

00:20:34.900 They can no longer justify it, but they're not really honest about just how that winnowing

00:20:39.440 has taken place.

00:20:40.540 And they tend to give credit to the resources of the tradition, whereas really it's the resources

00:20:45.500 of a much larger conversation that human beings have had.

00:20:48.040 Sure. So if you want to say that people are adopting positions and then searching for a

00:20:52.120 justification and looking for some sort of textual justification of what they've decided

00:20:56.000 to do intuitively, yep, I'm down with that.

00:20:58.260 That's the core of my research is that that's what a lot of our moral argument and justification

00:21:03.600 is all about.

00:21:04.700 Yeah. Yeah.

00:21:05.460 And so you do one, I just want to go back to your book briefly. You do one thing in your

00:21:09.700 book, which I, it's pretty clearly an area where we disagree. I don't think we need to

00:21:13.560 go into it any real depth because it may be a little too hard to parse here in a podcast,

00:21:18.340 but I think we should just flag it because it is one, I think it's also one reason why

00:21:23.460 you think I and Richard Dawkins and others have been too hard on religion. And it's this notion

00:21:29.480 that religion has provided an evolutionary benefit to us.

00:21:34.200 Is it an adaptation or a byproduct? You're right. That is the other core factual or scientific

00:21:39.460 issue that we disagree on.

00:21:40.820 Right. So I just want to introduce this, this concept of group selection to those who don't

00:21:45.440 know anything about it, and then we can table it probably. But so you defend this notion of,

00:21:49.500 of group selection and specifically the idea that, that religion has helped certain groups

00:21:55.440 survive and perhaps a lack of religion has caused others to fail. And you think that this mechanism

00:22:00.820 hasn't just been cultural, but that it's also been biological. And so this, this idea of group

00:22:06.640 selection, which obviously relates to much more than just religion, this is very controversial in

00:22:11.240 biology. And, and, you know, its main champion who you do side with here is someone named David Sloan

00:22:16.500 Wilson, who interestingly, he's also attacked the new atheists with a level of energy that I never

00:22:20.740 quite understood. So I should just point out that there are many biologists, and I would think

00:22:24.880 still most, as far as I can take the temperature on the whole field, disagree with, with this idea

00:22:31.020 of group selection. And so if our listeners are interested in it, I think the best summary of

00:22:35.660 the reasons to doubt that group selection occurs was written by, by our mutual friend, Steven Pinker,

00:22:41.600 and the title is The False Allure of Group Selection. And that can be found on edge.org.

00:22:46.140 I know you must be aware of that paper.

00:22:48.260 Oh yeah, no, I responded to it.

00:22:49.720 So, so you weren't persuaded by it.

00:22:51.100 So yeah, so that is what the debate comes down to, is if, you know, is religion a product of

00:22:57.500 evolution? Is it an adaptation? In which case, that doesn't mean it's still adaptive today,

00:23:01.660 but it would mean that it conferred some benefit. The really exciting idea that so captivated me when

00:23:08.080 I first read Dawkins in college was, wow, what if it's like a virus? What if there, it's just,

00:23:14.820 it's taken advantage of the hardware up there and it's exploiting it for its purposes. And of course,

00:23:20.360 Dawkins and Dennett are, you know, are really explicit about that. It's a really cool idea.

00:23:24.800 And I used to believe it. And that was the prevailing wisdom. You know, Dawkins' book,

00:23:29.020 The Selfish Gene, was an incredibly powerful book and a testament to the power of good writing,

00:23:34.160 to be persuasive. So the state of the art in the 70s and 80s was, as you say, that most biologists

00:23:39.220 doubted it. In fact, almost all did. Group selection was dismissed because there wasn't

00:23:43.940 any way to solve the free rider problem. If groups were to cooperate for the benefit of the

00:23:48.040 group, any free rider within the group would get extra benefit and the genes for free riding would

00:23:52.600 spread. And so the topic was put aside and David Sloan Wilson was seen as alone crazy. But a lot has

00:23:58.480 changed since then. So right around that time, the whole idea of major transitions in evolution was

00:24:03.440 being formulated. And there are many other examples of agents that were functioning at an individual

00:24:10.520 level, competing with each other, coming together to be more effective as a group. And even the cells

00:24:16.280 in our body are an example of that. The mitochondria have their own DNA because it was an example of a

00:24:21.140 major transition where multiple entities got together to act as a group. Let's see, what else was there?

00:24:27.220 I go through in my book, I go through as though there were four new exhibits, four reasons to

00:24:33.380 re-examine the case since the 1970s, gene culture co-evolution, things like that. And while it is

00:24:40.140 still true that their biologists mostly seem to side against this, this is actually because I think

00:24:47.300 E.O. Wilson made a big mistake in writing a paper. I love him. I think he's mostly right about things.

00:24:52.720 But I think he made a big mistake in writing a paper saying that kin selection doesn't matter.

00:24:58.780 And I don't understand. I don't think that makes any sense. Kin selection is really powerful.

00:25:02.460 So he took a lot of flack and people are conflating his rejection of kin selection with his endorsement

00:25:08.700 of groups or I should say multi-level selection. So just the final point on this is the whole debate

00:25:14.420 since the 60s with Williams and then Dawkins was always looking at altruism. Can we explain

00:25:20.060 altruism as a product of group selection? We are nice to each other because the benefits then to

00:25:27.120 the group outweigh the cost to me as an individual. And so my response to Steve Pinker was, well, if you

00:25:34.580 just focus on being nice or altruistic, well then, yeah, it's kind of hard to argue that this is from

00:25:39.980 group selection. But if you look at the tribalism, that's what really got me. That's why I'm on this

00:25:44.880 side of the debate. If you look at tribalism, how similar it is, how initiation rights all over the

00:25:50.340 world are actually mimicked in fraternity brothers' initiations. I don't think it's because they

00:25:55.340 studied anthropology. It's because there's something in the human mind that makes people, especially

00:26:00.900 young men, want to do things that involve painting their faces or changing their appearance, exposing 0.98

00:26:06.860 each other to extreme risk, doing all sorts of things that bond them together as a group, make them

00:26:11.660 quite dangerous, quite able to be predators of other groups. So I think you and I agree on those

00:26:16.460 external costs. So anyway, that's why I'm saying that if you focus on tribalism, you try to understand

00:26:20.640 that. I don't see how you can explain that from individual selection. And this is why I think that

00:26:26.760 the arguments for limited group selection were overwhelmed. That's why I say we're 90% chimp. 0.72

00:26:31.400 We're overwhelmingly evolved by individual level selection in the way that Dawkins describes it.

00:26:35.940 But we have this interesting tribal overlay. And I think that's essential for understanding not just

00:26:40.740 morality and religion, but politics, as we're going to talk about very soon.

00:26:45.040 Right, right. Well, I'd be remiss if I didn't say just a couple of words about why group selection

00:26:49.620 seems spooky from a more traditional evolutionary point of view. And then I'll just get off it because

00:26:55.660 I don't think we'll resolve it here. But I just think, you know, from the point of the criticism,

00:27:00.160 it seems to be a metaphor that gets taken too literally and that blurs the lines between genes

00:27:05.920 and individuals and groups as units of selection. So, you know, as you said, group selection is

00:27:10.840 often called multi-level selection.

00:27:12.500 Yeah, that's the way to think about it.

00:27:13.400 Right. But, you know, as Steve and others have pointed out, there are many problems with saying

00:27:18.280 that selection acts on groups in the same way that it acts on individuals to maximize their

00:27:23.500 inclusive fitness, or that it acts on them in the same way that it acts on genes, increasing

00:27:27.580 numbers of copies that appear in the next generation. So if there's a...these things are operating

00:27:33.040 differently, and I just...again, I'm dogged by the fact that I feel like this is a little

00:27:38.480 too hard to parse in a podcast for people to listen, so...

00:27:41.560 Right. We can skip it. We can just point people. Actually, I think, you know what, chapter nine

00:27:45.800 of my book...so let's do this. I have made chapter nine of The Righteous Mind available for free

00:27:51.780 on my webpage. So if people go to righteousmind.com, they can find my argument for group selection.

00:27:57.640 And if they Google...well, I guess you can direct them to...but if they basically just Google

00:28:01.180 edge, pinker, what, false allure of group selection?

00:28:04.640 Yeah, yeah. That's Steve's article.

00:28:05.840 They can find that. So that's Steve's...Steve makes a strong argument against it. So I think

00:28:08.680 we can just pass it off in that way.

00:28:10.440 Yeah. I mean, so just to crib Steve briefly, the issue is that there's a lot of causality

00:28:16.760 in the world that you don't need natural selection to explain. And so merely having one tribe outcompete 0.94

00:28:23.660 another doesn't require natural selection. So like, for instance, if the Nazis had won the war,

00:28:29.900 right, and we were now living in the first century of the thousand-year Reich, this wouldn't be an 0.96

00:28:34.460 example of group selection. I mean, and the difference that would make a difference here

00:28:38.340 is almost certainly cultural and not genetic. So if the Germans had won the war, sequencing

00:28:43.360 Hitler's genome wouldn't tell us why. And yet we would still be living in a world where everyone 0.80

00:28:48.940 would now be a Nazi and the Nazis have succeeded. But here again, so when in talking about success, 0.79

00:28:55.140 the success of a group, in this case, the Nazis, we're using a metaphor here, because this is not

00:28:59.740 analogous to the success we talk about when we talk about genes spreading in a population. Because

00:29:04.600 in here, in this case, the success itself applies to the group, the Nazi party, enduring for

00:29:11.100 centuries, not to some entity at the end of generations of replicators that have been copying

00:29:16.500 themselves with some rate of mutation and then out-competing all others. So Steve argues,

00:29:21.100 I think, very strongly that it's a confusion over a metaphor. The interesting thing for me,

00:29:25.520 though, is with group selection, I think it's actually a red herring for me, because I'm happy

00:29:33.220 to assume it's true for the sake of argument, right? And it won't actually change any of the

00:29:37.060 things you and I disagree about in this space. Because it seems to me that you draw normative

00:29:41.560 claims from the fact that group selection is a fact.

00:29:45.560 And very indirectly, yes.

00:29:47.760 You seem to be saying that even if the tenets of religion are false,

00:29:51.480 right, group selection proves that religion has still been a kind of necessary social glue.

00:29:57.720 Well, hold on. Wait, wait, let me reword that. So I think, look, you and I are both atheists.

00:30:01.560 We're both naturalists. We both believe that religion is out there in the world. It's part of

00:30:08.100 human nature in some way, shape, or form, and that evolution has to do with the explanation for why

00:30:12.120 it's out there. So we're both naturalists. The question at hand is whether it does something

00:30:17.000 or confers some benefit, such that if we could rip it out, we would lose nothing or something.

00:30:22.620 And on Dawkins' view, and I think your view, if we could just get rid of it entirely,

00:30:27.180 we'd be better off. And that might be true. I don't know. But if religion is an adaptation,

00:30:33.520 as I believe it is, then it could still be true that it was necessary for getting us to where we are.

00:30:38.820 And I do believe that religion and the psychology of religion helps explain how we and only we made

00:30:44.580 the transition to living in large-scale societies of non-kin. It could still be the case that it was 1.00

00:30:50.660 useful back in tribal days, and now we've supplanted it with law and other things. So I would never say

00:30:55.780 that religion being an adaptation or the truth of multilevel selection would prove anything about how we

00:31:00.980 ought to live today. But what I do draw from it is that seeing it as an adaptation for group

00:31:07.160 solidarity and group coherence makes it easier to see some of the psychological benefits and

00:31:12.720 socio-structural benefits that might be there that are hard to see if you're a secular person on the

00:31:19.400 left. Because that is what I see, is it's really hard to understand what's good about the other side

00:31:24.940 once you're in an argument or debate with them. And from reading scholarship on religion, from reading

00:31:30.920 books, especially the book James Ault has this wonderful book, Spirit and Flesh, that really helps you

00:31:36.240 see the sociology of a small evangelical community. So that's my only point. I wouldn't say I draw

00:31:41.800 normative implications directly, but I do draw implications for what kinds of lives are happy

00:31:47.860 and satisfying, what kinds of social patterns and structures make people less selfish and more

00:31:53.520 inclined to think about others. And there, I think you just have to think twice if you're going to say

00:31:59.180 religion's just bad and it makes people do bad things, get rid of it. 1.00

00:32:01.900 Yeah. Well, so obviously I share your concern for human flourishing and us getting in a position

00:32:08.340 to tune all the dials to maximize it. I guess I was detecting in you some version of the naturalistic

00:32:15.760 fallacy, some version of saying that because this thing is natural to us and in fact selected for and

00:32:21.260 did our ancestors good, that is some argument, some weight on the balance to argue that it is in fact

00:32:27.560 good morally speaking. Oh, no, no. I'm only making the argument actually in a way that very much the

00:32:32.480 way you make in the moral landscape. If we're going to talk about human flourishing, we need a full

00:32:37.540 picture of human psychology just straight descriptively. So I think you and I differ a

00:32:42.340 little in our descriptive picture of human psychology. But beyond that, it's pretty much a

00:32:46.600 straight flourishing happiness explanation. So I see what you're saying, but I'm pretty sure I'm not

00:32:52.120 making the naturalistic fallacy by saying if it's evolved, therefore it's right or good. I'm not saying that.

00:32:56.260 Right. So it's just, if it's evolved, you would suggest that it could be harder to get rid of,

00:33:02.180 if bad, because we've all evolved to think in these ways. But one distinction I still think in

00:33:07.720 this area that divides us, at least it changes the way we tend to talk about this, is there is a

00:33:12.300 distinction in thinking about how science can touch this subject and the distinction between how we got

00:33:18.300 here, the evolutionary story of just how we came to have the brains and mental capacities we have,

00:33:24.300 and then there's a question of just what is possible given what we are. And that's, for me,

00:33:30.080 that is a, those are two distinct and totally interesting and justifiable projects, but they're

00:33:35.940 distinct and science has a very different role to play in each. And so if you're just going to do

00:33:41.340 descriptive science and talk about how we got here, yes, that has no necessary normative implications.

00:33:46.840 And many people stop there and say, well, so science can't tell you how to live. Science can just tell

00:33:50.760 you why it is you find certain things disgusting, why we've, you know, evolved to have very strong

00:33:55.800 in-group, out-group thinking. But, you know, we did not evolve to successfully build a global civil

00:34:01.700 society that's committed to human rights and the free exchange of ideas and racial and gender equality,

00:34:06.680 right? So the question is, can we accomplish this? And, you know, I think we can. But the further

00:34:11.520 question is, you know, would it be moral to accomplish it? And would it be a bad thing if we failed?

00:34:16.180 And I think, yes, we can answer yes on both of those questions. And the crucial point, though,

00:34:21.680 is that success on this front will entail overcoming a fair amount of what we've evolved to care about.

00:34:27.800 So you cite a bunch of work, I remember Putnam and Campbell being some of it, that seems to show

00:34:33.520 that religion is good for people. So in this case, it makes them more generous.

00:34:37.440 Yes. In the United States, that's right. It doesn't say globally, but yes, in the United States,

00:34:41.380 there's a lot of evidence that religion makes people happier and better citizens, according to Putnam

00:34:46.520 and Campbell. That's right. And this is the result of their belongingness to a religious community,

00:34:51.800 not their beliefs and doctrines. That's exactly right. And this increased generosity isn't just

00:34:57.460 lavished on their in-group, it actually extends to the rest of society, which would surprise many

00:35:02.240 atheists. Now, I don't actually know whether or not this is true. Let's just assume it is all true. 1.00

00:35:07.240 It seems to me that even if we accept that as true, it obviously isn't the whole story. I mean,

00:35:12.920 I think we could design a dozen invidious experiments where we show that religious people 1.00

00:35:16.960 are more homophobic, say, or sexist than secular people on average, or have a lesser understanding

00:35:22.900 of science or less respect for science. And this would help complete the picture. But I think 0.62

00:35:28.700 the problem I have with this line of thinking is that there seems to be a tacit assumption that if we

00:35:34.960 can show that religion is doing something good for people, there is no better way to get those goods

00:35:41.800 that's compatible with a truly rational worldview. That's a fine point. I agree with that. I agree

00:35:46.260 with that. But let's see. I think you raised a question that I think would be great for us to

00:35:51.300 try to work out here. I think we might come to different views. So you said, I think we both agree

00:35:56.400 that our evolved human nature did not prepare us to live in a giant, global, peaceful, egalitarian

00:36:02.560 society under rule of law, whereas in a sense, we're living above our design constraints. And

00:36:07.200 clearly, to some extent, it's possible because despite the imperfections, we're sort of doing

00:36:11.200 it nowadays. So our evolutionary past, while it makes it puts on some constraints, they're kind

00:36:16.780 of loose constraints, and we can live in all kinds of ways that we weren't designed for. But here's

00:36:20.480 where here's where I think our different views of religion would lead to different prescriptions for

00:36:25.260 how to do that. So I take part in a lot of discussions, I'm invited to all sorts of,

00:36:29.900 of sort of, you know, lefty meetings about a global society. And, and, you know, the left

00:36:36.300 usually wants, they want a global, that global governance, they want more power vest in the UN,

00:36:43.400 they, I hear a lot of talk on the left about how countries or national borders are bad things,

00:36:49.100 they're arbitrary. So the left tends to want more of a universal, I'm just think about the John

00:36:54.280 Lenin song, this is, you know, what I always go back to, just think about imagine, imagine,

00:36:57.580 there's no religion, no countries, no private property, nothing to kill or die for, then it

00:37:02.300 would all be peace and harmony. So that is a sort of a far leftist view of what the end state of human

00:37:08.040 evolution, the social evolution could be. Now, is that, is that possible? Or is it, is it consistent

00:37:14.620 with our evolved nature? Now, here's the other side. The other side, the conservative view,

00:37:19.060 is that we are fundamentally groupish, more parochial creatures, and to have global governance,

00:37:27.380 and a, a bit, one giant country, or one giant community of the, of all earth, would be a nightmare,

00:37:34.100 it would be chaos, it just wouldn't work. Far better to have authority at the lowest level possible

00:37:40.960 at all times, and, and build up with nested structures. So a country ends up, for conservatives,

00:37:47.940 a country ends up being a very reasonable, basic building block, and they would not want as much

00:37:53.960 of a global society. They certainly would want international law, they would want treaties,

00:37:58.160 they'd want all sorts of things. So I think this is a case where, if you, if you have a kind of a blank

00:38:02.780 slate view, or a very positive view that our basic nature is love and cooperation, and it's only

00:38:08.280 capitalism that screwed it up, you're going to want a kind of a John Lennon vision of the future,

00:38:13.340 and I don't think that that could really work. Whereas, if you start with Edmund Burke,

00:38:18.620 who talks about the little platoons of society, we start, we, we develop in the family. So

00:38:23.900 conservatives are really, really focused on the family and lower level institutions. And if you

00:38:28.200 focus on making those strong, and then you think about some sort of a legal and social architecture

00:38:33.360 that allows multiple families and communities and states and countries to work together with

00:38:39.960 a minimum of friction, I think that's much more workable. So getting a getting a correct view of

00:38:45.760 our evolutionary heritage and the psychology that resulted from it, I think is very helpful. It

00:38:51.320 doesn't tell us what's right or wrong, but I think it does tell us which way is more likely to work.

00:38:55.440 And if you see us as products of multi-level selection, with a deep, deep tribalism, that

00:39:03.360 suggests that you're probably better off going for more the Burke way, and having groups that are

00:39:09.180 composed of groups and finding ways for them to work together, rather than the John Lennon way,

00:39:13.300 which is let's erase all group boundaries. Let's erase divisions of nation and everything else and

00:39:19.920 just have one giant planet. You know, I just don't think that's likely to work. I think that is,

00:39:26.360 like as with the communist societies, it's making assumptions about human nature that end up, you

00:39:31.780 know, people just refuse to live that way, and it's a disaster. One thing about what you said that

00:39:35.760 I want to pull back to the focus on religion is just that you're essentially exposing some of the

00:39:41.280 holes in secular thinking. And I agree those holes are there. In fact, I've written two books that

00:39:46.460 attempt to shore up some of the weaknesses I see in secularism. And what you just said relates to

00:39:52.860 this very topical example of the recent migrant crisis in Europe, where you have, you know, secular

00:39:58.620 liberals for the most part, and, you know, atheists who really can't find a rationale, morally speaking,

00:40:06.320 for anything less than an open borders policy. And in fact, so there's two reasons here, there's two

00:40:11.880 connections here, because there's this low birth rate in Europe, and many people attribute that to

00:40:17.360 secularism. The loss of religion is really leading to a loss of babies. And that becomes a justification 1.00

00:40:25.000 for bringing in immigrants, because they need people to work in these societies. So one could argue 1.00

00:40:31.340 that for two reasons, both economically and morally, secularists are now in a position, you know,

00:40:38.360 someone like Angela Merkel, where they're unable to find a reason to keep the borders closed. And 0.99

00:40:44.180 let's just say that this happens where you have millions upon millions of Muslims who on balance

00:40:48.960 are deeply religious and disposed to have large families, they flood into Europe over the next few 1.00

00:40:53.640 decades. And in 100 years, Europe is predominantly Muslim and deeply religious, right? This is a possible 0.94

00:40:59.320 counterfactual or actual history. So what lesson should we draw from this? Many people would conclude

00:41:05.380 that what Europeans needed in the year 2016 is more Christianity, right? That only a belief in Jesus 0.98

00:41:13.400 and the associated behavior and belongingness that that confers, and the fertility rates that get

00:41:19.280 associated with a taboo around contraception, that only that could have protected them from the sweeping

00:41:25.480 changes in their society. And I would just argue is that there must be a truly rational way for secular

00:41:31.780 people just to figure out what sort of world they want to live in and simply build it.

00:41:36.560 Yep, I totally agree, Sam. And I think this is a nice example for us to talk about because I think

00:41:41.260 you and I both are wary of...

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - March 09, 2016

#31 — Evolving Minds

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