Making Sense - Sam Harris - #315 — The Great Derangement

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing

00:00:12.520 this you are not currently on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing the first part

00:00:16.900 of this conversation in order to access full episodes of the making sense podcast you'll

00:00:21.800 need to subscribe at sam harris.org there you'll find our private rss feed to add to your favorite

00:00:27.020 podcatcher along with other subscriber only content we don't run ads on the podcast and

00:00:32.500 therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers so if you enjoy

00:00:36.540 what we're doing here please consider becoming one today i'm speaking with tim urban tim is a writer

00:00:50.340 and illustrator and co-founder of wait but why which is a fascinating blog it has over 600 000

00:00:58.180 subscribers and has covered a wide range of topics from artificial intelligence to social anxiety to

00:01:06.420 humans becoming a multi-planetary species tim also had a ted talk which i believe was the first ted

00:01:13.280 video to reach over 10 million views in its first year and it now ranks in the top 10 of most watched

00:01:19.700 ted talks and in this conversation tim and i cover his new book which is what's our problem a self-help

00:01:27.460 book for societies we discuss tim's unusual career the finitude of life existential risk exponential

00:01:38.020 technological change political tribalism the corruption of the media how we think versus

00:01:45.380 what we think the breakdown of trust and institutions the firing of james bennett at the new york times

00:01:52.100 the role of social media and creating digital mobs the mechanics of cancellation election integrity

00:01:59.540 and other topics and i bring you tim urban

00:02:04.260 i am here with tim urban tim thanks for joining me thanks for having me so um you are a an

00:02:17.220 extraordinarily interesting person i don't know if you think of yourself that way but either for those

00:02:21.220 who just have the evidence of your um blog and uh your new book you really have a unique voice i i will

00:02:29.380 have introduced you properly in my um my housekeeping but how do you describe what you do and how you do

00:02:37.940 it and the kinds of topics you focus on yeah i would say i'm kind of um i you know we're all in really

00:02:45.860 interesting conversations at different times and we're all sometimes going really interesting internet

00:02:50.100 rabbit hole spirals and learn something fascinating we get addicted to some new topic and we all also are

00:02:58.180 always observing things and we have you know everyone has kind of without maybe even consciously

00:03:03.060 realizing it you know little pet theories on the world on what makes a marriage work on why people

00:03:08.020 procrastinate on why you know what government should be like and whatever and so what i do is i just take

00:03:14.180 all those things and when i when something's particularly interesting you know an observation or something i

00:03:20.260 learned or some conversation i had i'll i i'll take on the challenge to try to package that so what's

00:03:27.220 you know if that if that rabbit hole was seven hours of reading and learning okay how can i package

00:03:34.500 it in a way where someone can read something in 20 minutes and basically get the most important stuff

00:03:40.740 there and so it's it's yeah so then i'll i'll create like a package usually it's a blog post in this case

00:03:45.860 more recently a much longer book but yeah and then i just take you know pride and kind of it fits well with a kind of my

00:03:52.580 perfectionist sensibilities to like be able to sit there in the incubator and work on it and work on

00:03:57.460 it and work on it and then finally when it's ready to ship it out into the world what did you think you

00:04:03.460 were going to do when you were in college did you have a clear sense of where you were hoping to go

00:04:08.580 i i was it's hard you know it's it's hard to really remember i i like i was pretty sure i knew i didn't want

00:04:14.820 like a normal job i just didn't like school i didn't like having to be somewhere at a certain

00:04:21.140 time and i didn't like homework and whatever and so i thought um you know something creative something

00:04:26.740 in music something in writing was always very interesting to me you know maybe something in

00:04:30.420 business um and i was doing all of those things in my 20s for a while kind of all of them not that

00:04:35.060 well because i was doing everything you know trying to do too many things it's hard to you know you

00:04:41.060 pick something you're already it's scary because you're you're kind of unpicking the other things

00:04:45.700 and um and so uh it took me till i was like you know 31 to basically pick something to go full-time

00:04:53.380 with and i had been blogging on the side for about seven years at that point just very casual but i i

00:05:01.540 but i you know it added up i wrote 300 little blog posts on that site which kind of helped me i think

00:05:07.460 get confidence in like a certain writer voice and realize that this this could be fun because

00:05:11.780 writing to me was always the worst thing ever because i associate it with school and papers and

00:05:15.700 so blogging you know as a side activity i was like i don't know this is this is a totally different kind

00:05:20.500 of thing and um yeah 31 decided you know full-time with with one of the things full-time with the

00:05:27.780 blog wait but why yeah so i had the wait but why hadn't started yet um i actually was um business

00:05:33.300 partners with my friend andrew and we're running this business and then i'm on the side doing this

00:05:36.820 musical with my friend ryan and then i'm solo blogging and i you know i just remember talking

00:05:42.420 to andrew in the summer of 2012 and being like i'm going crazy here i need to pick something full-time

00:05:46.500 and uh yeah so you know we just decided you know why don't i go off and uh go full-time with blogging

00:05:52.740 and see how see what happens and i didn't know what that meant you know was it what was i gonna start a

00:05:57.540 media site and hire a bunch of writers i mean this was a different time on the internet 2012 2013 it was

00:06:03.540 there were lots of listicles you know the buzzfeed had just blown up and it was um it i felt like

00:06:08.500 there was a shortage of just like really good fun interesting articles and and so the idea was

00:06:13.300 start that and it's like i can start it as the only employee writing and maybe we'll hire people and

00:06:19.700 ended up turning into um just you know the the blog caught on really quickly and which was awesome

00:06:26.020 um you know it's like i don't know whether i would have stuck with it for that long if it hadn't

00:06:29.940 but once it did catch on i was like all right okay this is my thing i'm gonna like go full full

00:06:34.420 steam into this and um just got you know i had endless energy for that it was like such a fun

00:06:39.540 exciting new thing to be able to just put all my energy into yeah so so wait but why was new you

00:06:44.020 know i basically um in the it was the it was like a december of 2012 i went to easter island alone

00:06:50.100 for a month and was basically because i was procrastinating on this new idea and i wasn't actually

00:06:55.140 starting it and i said okay i'm gonna go to easter island for 30 days and i'm going to come

00:06:59.860 back with a a blog name a blog design i'm gonna have set it up on you know wordpress i'm gonna have

00:07:06.100 written the first like five posts you know and and that's so that's what i did and um that that that

00:07:11.940 was kind of the birth of way but why well it's hard to uh capture what is so strikingly unique about

00:07:19.540 it until i mean i just recommend people seek it out online in addition to uh getting the new book

00:07:25.780 we're going to talk about but i mean one thing that jumps out is that you have a remarkable talent

00:07:30.500 for visually representing information and in particular in a way that makes it emotionally

00:07:37.540 arresting i mean the thing that is truly burned into my brain from one of your blog posts is the poster

00:07:43.300 you made of the uh the 90 year lifespan doled out in weeks where each line is a year so each line has

00:07:50.100 got you know 52 squares on it or circles i can't remember what you actually graphically represented

00:07:55.940 there but you can just see you know you literally can put your finger on the week that is currently

00:08:03.460 elapsing in your life whatever your age presumably you're younger than 90 and then you see where you are in

00:08:11.700 in relation to you know what is in in actuarial terms for virtually anyone a very generous you

00:08:18.500 know lifespan that you really can't safely assume you're you're going to enjoy or certainly enjoying

00:08:24.820 good health so it's such a strong way of getting across the the knowledge and the wisdom that everyone

00:08:32.820 knows in the abstract but it just you you manage to make it concrete and i mean there are many other

00:08:38.260 examples of this kind of thing the other one that jumps to mind which it wasn't so much a

00:08:42.900 a visual representation although perhaps you did actually draw it too but you at one point did the math

00:08:49.380 and calculated that forgive me if i get the the actual numbers wrong here but it's something like you

00:08:56.900 know 97 of your time with your parents is over by the time you're 18 or something i mean i

00:09:04.820 viewed from the side of being a the the child it lands one way but viewed from the side of being

00:09:10.740 a parent it's quite an arresting realization that as much as you may visit after you first leave home

00:09:19.940 over the course of even a very long life it just doesn't add up to that much time compared to the

00:09:24.900 time of living in the same house together year after year until 18 or so yeah you're like you have

00:09:31.700 you know i spent like most people 300 plus days 350 probably plus days with my parents a year from

00:09:38.900 the age of you know being birth to 18 you know it's and then yeah i just started doing the math i mean

00:09:45.460 if you live in some people live in the same city as their parents and they see their parents a lot

00:09:49.780 multiple days a week okay that's great and and and that that's a different story but i think a lot of

00:09:54.420 us you know we see our parents 10 20 days a year something like that and if you think about you know again

00:09:59.700 if you're lucky when you graduate college you know you have i don't know three four or five decades

00:10:05.140 left of time when you and your parents are both around and if you add up that 10 to 20 days a year

00:10:11.460 i mean it's it you realize it's a it's like around a year total of actual days um and so you know it's

00:10:17.700 like you graduate high school and you're 18 and it's like oh you actually you know you feel like you

00:10:21.860 you know you're in year 18 of you know 60 of parent kid time it's actually no you're in year 18 of 19.

00:10:29.700 and you can and the reason that i mean i find that it's incredibly sad but it's also true and

00:10:35.380 so it's like what we don't want to avoid sad thoughts and then make worse decisions because

00:10:41.220 of it and so one of the things that you can the reason i like this one is because it's like if you

00:10:47.220 get sad now about it you can do something about it you can double that time by doubling the amount

00:10:52.420 of days you visit your parents and also you can improve the time you do hang out with them by

00:10:56.580 realizing like this is not this is not like this endless thing that this you know it's it's actually

00:11:03.140 finite and precious and when you start treating it like that then you make better decisions and you're

00:11:11.380 less sad later than you would be hmm yeah well so your new book is very much in the spirit of your

00:11:16.660 blog i mean in addition to just visually representing things well you you have a a very

00:11:22.580 funny cartooning style which is uh one of the pleasures that will be familiar to anyone who is

00:11:28.980 who has looked at your blog but the new book is what's our problem a self-help book for societies

00:11:34.420 and again it's very much in the spirit of wait but why but yeah you i can't remember how you got

00:11:40.180 tangled up in this project maybe my memory is tangled with respect to what you were working on but

00:11:45.300 i remember at one point you put the blog on hold to work on a book and or to work on some very long

00:11:50.500 blog posts and this book was taking a very long time but this book took you six years to write what

00:11:56.900 give me the story of this the painful birth of this book yeah you you know well because i feel like

00:12:01.540 every time i've seen you i i just come back and i say you know you're complaining about something yeah

00:12:06.580 right and i actually partially blame you for this because one of the very first i i try to always

00:12:11.860 think back you know what because i didn't like write i don't want to write about politics i

00:12:15.380 actually you know dave roberts at vox wrote an article about you know praising wait but why and

00:12:20.260 saying that you know my articles on spacex and tesla were these meaty great articles so he you know he's

00:12:24.900 very nice but then he basically turned it into one point of criticism which is that i like so many you

00:12:30.180 know tech bro type people who like to think about tech and whatever silicon valley types they don't

00:12:35.140 they're not they they have this attitude that like that politics is so annoying and they just want

00:12:39.620 to check out and that's actually kind of a lame cop-out and you know people like tim should

00:12:44.500 actually dig in and i remember reading that and thinking no thanks like i just why would i want to

00:12:48.980 write about something where you're going to have it read so uncharitably and you're going to be it's

00:12:53.780 going to be straw manned and it's also just kind of a you know it's kind of i don't know it's just

00:12:58.500 it's not the kind of concrete topic i like to get into it's it's hazy it's it's changing every year

00:13:04.260 so i wasn't even really into this topic and and then i remember watching your the legendary clip

00:13:11.700 now of you on bill maher with ben affleck and i remember it was one of these first moments when

00:13:18.100 i had it was it was kind of like broke my head a little because i was like okay you know i had always

00:13:23.620 been you know true blue like a lot of people who grew up in a progressive suburb and who go to a

00:13:29.060 progressive college and then live in la like i did and then move to new york like i did and like a lot

00:13:34.980 of people in 2012 2013 2014 there were a lot of people who were just you know very clearly the blue

00:13:41.700 team is the good team and and that's obvious and maybe there's there's faults there and maybe not

00:13:46.100 everything the red team does bad but basically it's just clearly blue good red bad and watching

00:13:51.780 that clip i was like i very very much want to be like sam harris in this clip not like

00:13:59.060 ben affleck like i i didn't you know not not even because of the specific topic but because

00:14:04.020 there was like this you know kind of independent fearless reasoned opinion and then there was this

00:14:10.820 like you know knee-jerk dogmatic response of someone who wasn't even listening and was

00:14:17.140 and i and i it was kind of a it was like one of those moments when you subconsciously absorb probably

00:14:21.540 a lot of that happening and then there's one final straw that kind of makes it all crash down into

00:14:26.100 your you know bubble up into your actual consciousness and so you know it was like

00:14:30.900 kind of a bunch of these things had been subtly bothering me and i think that was one of these

00:14:35.220 moments and you know another one was the next year when there was this fiasco at yale about halloween

00:14:39.380 costumes and you know greg lugliano takes this video of nick christakis getting abused in the in the

00:14:45.140 you know the quad by a bunch of students and and again i was like okay this is that you know it just

00:14:50.340 once there's that crack in some kind of very basic conviction like blue good red bad and there's

00:14:56.020 just some like crack that like then it's it can quickly start to fester and it can like and so

00:15:02.340 for me that was one element here there was just like this this interesting fact that i felt like

00:15:08.740 things were more complicated than i thought they were and things were changing and i wanted to and

00:15:14.340 that became much more of an interesting blog post than writing about like here's why you know here's

00:15:19.300 what i think about these 10 political issues and and then then there was a whole other thing going

00:15:23.700 on which is that i write about stuff like ai and brain machine interfaces and i you know genetic

00:15:29.220 engineering and you know all these amazing technologies that are coming in the future and

00:15:34.500 things that are you know that give us immense power as a species you know for better or worse because

00:15:39.940 you know tech technology you know is a double-edged sword and so going into this future where tech is

00:15:46.020 exploding you know to me that doesn't say that that's not a good or a bad thing it's it just says

00:15:50.260 the stakes are getting higher and higher and higher like the the good is going to be even better in the

00:15:54.900 next century than it ever has been before and the bad could be even worse and with that in one side

00:16:00.900 of my mind and then on the other side i'm looking at society and it's like at the time when the

00:16:06.420 stakes are getting high you want us to be our most grown-up wise selves and i looked out and i see a

00:16:11.780 society that seems to be going in the complete opposite direction it just seems to be growing

00:16:17.860 you know if society is an organism that organism is like you know it's like benjamin buttoning it's

00:16:22.580 like it's getting younger and less wise and all those ominous quotes about forgetting history i mean

00:16:28.980 it's like this seems to be what we're doing and it felt like suddenly like the all these other topics

00:16:35.620 that i write about it's like they were secondary to this topic because it's like if i i can't like get

00:16:40.900 excited about the future right now if i think we're gonna blow it we're not gonna even be able to get

00:16:45.140 to a good future or we're gonna you know we have such an opportunity for what would seem like a

00:16:49.620 utopia to people living today to actually get to a world like that and it felt like we were we were

00:16:55.940 we were like you know we're not doing the things we need to do to get there going in the wrong

00:17:00.180 direction so it's like a combo of those things you know and as a blogger again back to the first topic

00:17:05.300 as a blogger i realized i'm like i write about anything right i wrote about religion you know once in my

00:17:10.740 my my dad was like you're gonna this is the end of of way but why you know you can't write about

00:17:14.980 religion and i said i don't think that's true and i had the right instinct and that you know

00:17:18.500 nothing bad happened and i've written i've written about a lot of things that i thought you know that

00:17:22.980 that people would say not to write about and i just i just felt very unafraid but with this topic

00:17:28.580 i felt like this is going to be a nightmare and i felt this this incredible external pressure to

00:17:32.740 not write it and that was not coming from you know the people who i thought of as the political

00:17:36.660 bad guys to write because they had no power over me i was really scared of kind of the

00:17:40.340 political left so again this is what's going on there like what these are supposed to be my people

00:17:44.900 so what's going on so it's kind of those things got me beginning thinking i'm writing a blog post

00:17:50.180 about this i'm going to write a blog post about about this concept that we're going in the wrong

00:17:54.020 direction and that this doesn't seem to be like a simple you know right wing is bad problem it seems

00:17:59.700 like it's a bigger deeper problem going on and what often happens is i'll try i'll think i'm writing a

00:18:05.860 three thousand word blog post and i'll write a seven thousand word blog post or i'll think i'm

00:18:09.540 writing an eight and i'll write a thirty this happened a few times in this case it just it just

00:18:14.900 got to it just became a caricature of myself it just kept growing and it got bigger and bigger and i

00:18:19.780 needed to take on it my everything seemed relevant to it you know everything i would read about on

00:18:25.460 every current event story needed to come in and this topic just kind of subsumed me yeah and you

00:18:30.580 not only have to write about these things you have to draw hundreds of illustrations so yeah you

00:18:35.780 know it's uh for for someone who's not a very natural artist so i'm doing my my other hand is

00:18:40.340 constantly on the command z where i'm just you know try to draw the head circle undo head circle

00:18:45.700 undo i'll do it 40 times until it looks right well but you you have made a virtue of your limitations

00:18:50.740 as an artist i mean your style is comedic based on how basic it is and it's uh it works perfectly

00:18:57.540 all right so let's start where you more or less where you start in the book because i i notice

00:19:04.420 whenever i speak as though this moment in history was um uniquely important compared to previous moments

00:19:13.380 in in history my own bullshit detector begins to go off but then i notice that i override it because i 0.80

00:19:21.620 i mean i do think just you know generically it's it seems ridiculous for any present generation to 0.91

00:19:28.660 think that it really is occupies some sort of privileged and you know uniquely perilous moment

00:19:35.300 in the career of the species where like you know everything that that is you know turned up to 11

00:19:40.820 with respect to their daily concerns it really is as important as it seems it just seems like the

00:19:46.340 the perpetual vanity of the present to think that and yet i can't quite convince myself that that's

00:19:52.740 true in the current environment the way technology is showing on a you know practically an hourly basis

00:20:00.100 now that it has exponential implications for us so perhaps you know we can just get a sort of sanity check

00:20:08.500 on on on this point i mean it just seems that and you know many of the things you've listed contribute

00:20:14.420 to this picture for me i mean when you talk about technologies like genetic engineering or ai and you

00:20:21.780 stack those on top of these long-standing concerns around things like nuclear proliferation or the ongoing

00:20:29.460 threat of nuclear war you know inadvertent or otherwise it just seems like the prospect of our

00:20:37.380 ruining things is always increasing and it's getting easier and easier for one person or a small number

00:20:44.340 of people deranged by mental illness or some terrible ideology to ruin everything for millions and even

00:20:53.220 billions i mean it's just what we have just lived through with covid and the prospect that this could

00:20:59.060 have been a lab leak whether or not it was in some senses immaterial but it just reminds us of

00:21:06.180 of the fact that we are virtually on the cusp of democratizing the type of technology that would

00:21:12.820 allow one person or ten to consciously decide to release some heinous pathogen on all of humanity

00:21:22.020 and we were never there before so you know perhaps you can just reflect on how you view this this moment

00:21:28.180 in history and i mean when you hold it up against all previous moments i mean for the last 200 years

00:21:34.580 or so this hasn't been true but when you go back many thousands as you point out at the beginning of

00:21:39.540 your book human history was just a theater of utter boredom right i mean basically nothing changed for

00:21:46.980 generation after generation and now we've hit some kind of asymptote with respect to cultural and

00:21:53.620 technological change i don't know am i uh am i just getting paranoid no i mean there's a couple

00:21:59.460 things going on so there is the tendency to think that your time is the end of days your time is this

00:22:05.780 is the the chosen time you know that whatever i mean i'm sure that people throughout history have 0.94

00:22:09.940 always felt that way and i see a lot of that in the way that i think is kind of classic bullshit today

00:22:15.140 you know just just the the the you know the media narratives and that people on twitter talking 0.87

00:22:20.820 about you know just just catastrophizing and and not having any perspective so there's a lack of

00:22:26.900 perspective that that makes can make you feel more special than you are about you know they make your time

00:22:33.300 feel more special there's also um but if you zoom out on even you know if you actually do zoom out and get

00:22:39.220 that perspective i think you at ironically in this case do land in the same place not necessarily for the

00:22:44.980 same reasons the visual i use and just kind of the that i think is a way to emphasize this point and

00:22:51.380 and i think in a way that's pretty undeniable is that if humanity and you just say we go you know

00:22:56.180 some people say it's 200 000 years or 300 000 it's a hazy line let's say 250 250 000 years and so let's

00:23:02.020 make a thousand page book with each page is 250 years like you said the first 950 pages of the thousand

00:23:10.180 page book almost nothing happens it's just hunter gatherers and there's some migrations and maybe

00:23:16.500 there's some technology developments every you know 100 pages with a better arrowhead and you know

00:23:22.340 things like this but almost nothing happens and then the last 50 pages all of civilization is in the

00:23:28.500 last 50 pages which of course also just reminds you that we are primates programmed for the first 950

00:23:34.660 pages our brains have not had time to adjust yet to the last you know civilization happening in

00:23:40.340 the basically the epilogue of the book um it's kind of like epilogue civilization is kind of the last

00:23:45.060 chapter um and an ad you know is a is is page 992 so but the the the crazier thing about it is if you

00:23:54.020 compare the very last page so page 1000 which goes from like the early 1770s to today to all the pages

00:23:59.620 before it's just an anomaly in every way it can possibly be i mean every single part of our current

00:24:04.820 crazy modern world electricity all the ways we you know use have transportation the incredible

00:24:10.180 communication abilities we have you know space travel air travel you know car travel i mean and

00:24:16.020 then you know the fossil fuels era modern liberal democracies every single thing i every single thing i

00:24:21.380 just said is an entire entirely a page 1000 phenomenon and so there's no way you can zoom out on that

00:24:29.300 and say well you know people everyone always thinks that about their time and it's just if

00:24:35.060 if you're an alien reading this book you are you are riveted suddenly on page 1000 you're saying oh 0.76

00:24:40.820 okay you know shit's going down what's going to happen now to this species we're about to find out

00:24:44.500 like what's where this is the climax so i don't think it is uh naive to say that we're in some kind of 0.96

00:24:51.380 you know the climax of the story or at least one of the climaxes of the story and then i think even

00:24:56.900 within page 1000 i think things are moving really quickly now the environmental changes that have

00:25:01.940 happened to you know like the us you have you know you have tribal media from the broadcast era you

00:25:08.260 know turning into kind of the narrow cast tribal era and you have social media just drops into the

00:25:13.140 world and that's a massive environmental change and you've got ai right now is advancing so quickly and

00:25:19.940 it's just i just um you know we're not our society it can be very strong but when things start moving

00:25:26.340 too quickly i think you can the society can lose its grip and when that's a that should scare everyone i

00:25:31.380 mean we're like you know when you grow up in this artificial environment like a modern liberal democracy

00:25:36.660 you think this is just the way things are but it's not this is an artificial very new artificial

00:25:41.620 invention that gives us all an incredible life that people before us never got to have and that

00:25:48.580 artificial invention is not is not you know there's not um a totalitarian dictator that's enforcing it

00:25:55.620 it is a set of laws and rules that are basically only as good as the people who are willing to like

00:26:01.140 uphold them and then then there's a bunch of norms and customs and there's a common you know shared

00:26:08.820 set of values and that's the other half of the puzzle and if you if either of those goes away then the

00:26:14.180 the thing stops working and so when things are moving really quickly it can get chaotic people

00:26:18.820 start thinking desperate times call for desperate measures and desperate measures is often you know

00:26:23.380 a euphemism for breaking those norms that that that have held things together for a long time and

00:26:28.580 and so yeah i know i i think it's i think people should be very concerned i think there's also a reason

00:26:32.980 for optimism and hope but i think that anyone who's cocky who's who's kind of snickering and anyone who's

00:26:38.340 feeling this way and saying you know it's oh things have always you know people have always thought you

00:26:42.420 know it'll be fine the us is is robust and it's like well you know this is a lot of unprecedented

00:26:48.100 things happening yeah it's interesting to consider those points of no return or apparent no return

00:26:54.420 where things changed based on the introduction of new technology or a a new business model a new set

00:27:02.580 of incentives that locked everything in and i was just reflecting the other day i was talking to my

00:27:08.580 oldest daughter about uh the deep past the uh the 1990s or so and uh yeah i realized i i thought about

00:27:16.420 this at the time but i hadn't thought about it for many years that the birth of cnn and the the

00:27:22.740 introduction of the 24-hour news channel that was a very significant change where we suddenly they had

00:27:29.620 they had to fill the air right and they were incentivized to basically just train the eye of

00:27:36.100 the media on on each new catastrophe or pseudo catastrophe and we just began advertising to

00:27:44.820 ourselves the worst of what could be found on planet earth in any given 24-hour cycle or we would expand

00:27:53.540 the the the significance of anything just drawing it out for extracting as many possible hours from

00:28:00.660 it and it just became this you know what i mean whether it was the oj trial or or anything else it

00:28:06.100 just there was this turn toward and and then the necessity of it all of knowing everything as it happened

00:28:13.380 right the you know the it is so anachronistic to think that of the possibility of having a weekly

00:28:20.260 news magazine where you would wait a week you know like a news week or time where you would wait a week

00:28:24.900 to find out what it what had happened in world events anyway that that seemed like a crucial pre-internet

00:28:31.540 change and the internet with its ad-based business model basically locked in a certain kind of

00:28:37.860 incentives and now we're living in many respects with the implications of a a machine we've built that

00:28:45.140 that is just designed to gain people's attention based on outrage and partisan division and it's

00:28:54.660 just i mean for apart from the fact that you know so many people see this and want to resist the

00:29:00.340 incentives are just so strong for clickbait of a very specific type and you know the the social media

00:29:07.860 layer here is perhaps the worst offender i'd love to get your take on how you view media and social

00:29:14.740 media at this moment and the prospects of our course correcting yeah i mean one of the things

00:29:20.980 that um one of my covid activities turned out to be watching the real housewives of atlanta and i

00:29:27.700 didn't plan on that this is my you know my wife goes this is your confession yeah it's not it's not

00:29:34.020 something i'm proud of it's um my wife goes in phases and she you know she's she's had you know she

00:29:38.900 has the true crime phase and she'll have other phases um she so she also had a real housewives phase 1.00

00:29:43.380 and i thought it was this inane background thing and you know at some point i'm sitting there and i

00:29:47.780 and i just find myself looking over and i start to and then you know three episodes later i'm like

00:29:51.780 wait wait wait sorry what happened with phaedra's you know new company and so now i'm i'm watching it and

00:29:55.940 and it got me thinking because so reality is boring it's mostly boring but a reality show is always

00:30:05.460 interesting right it's entertainment how do you turn boring reality into interesting entertainment

00:30:10.900 is you edit out all the boring stuff and you and you you you hype up the conflict in the drama and

00:30:17.620 it's just an endless string of conflict and drama which gets it our ancient our very ancient brains

00:30:22.900 love that you know i mean that's where gossip is one of the earliest kind of you know human ways to

00:30:27.540 you know humans to bond and form bonds together and a tribe and you know in group out group bashing and

00:30:33.380 all of this so it's getting at a very it's basically you know it's it's tickling a very

00:30:39.620 ancient thing in us and i and and and i to me it's not that different than than junk food right it's like

00:30:45.860 when i if if you give me a candy bar one part of my brain is like this is not good for you this is not

00:30:51.620 this doesn't make sense to eat for any reason let's be sparing with it maybe a little treat but not 0.94

00:30:56.580 but another the dumb part of my brain wants to devour it and eat it another one and keep going

00:31:03.060 because are they in the again there's this this first 950 pages of the book it was always a good 0.96

00:31:10.420 idea to eat a really dense sweet thing if you could get your hands on it because calories are hard to

00:31:15.460 come by and you don't know when you're gonna come across any kind of calories again so just binge so we

00:31:21.300 kind of misfire and now we want to eat the candy bar and i think this is the same thing that that

00:31:25.940 that makes us really like watching um the real housewives so this got me thinking about our media

00:31:31.060 and politics is extremely boring you know i asked my grandmother when you were you know 20

00:31:38.980 because all the 20 year olds today you know they're super political right i said we know were you super

00:31:42.820 into like the hoover um you know fdr election and she's and she said no we thought politics was

00:31:49.460 boring and i and i you know i thought it's so weird today that kids don't think that because

00:31:53.860 politics is so boring and again it started to hit me that politics like reality is boring and just like

00:32:00.580 you can turn reality interesting by editing it into a kind of a fictional narrative of endless conflict

00:32:06.900 and drama you can do the same exact thing with politics so you have now the real politicians of

00:32:12.980 washington dc which is basically this trashy reality show that a huge part portions of america are

00:32:19.540 addicted to and there are good guys and bad guys there are heroes and villains there's always there's

00:32:25.860 main characters you know you know these again this 20 year old or a lot of 50 year olds who say they're

00:32:31.220 super into politics they're passionate about it actually what they you know ask them to name the

00:32:36.660 congress people in their state they probably can't how about their state representatives how about

00:32:40.740 any bills that have been passed in the last month they're not actually interested in politics they're

00:32:44.820 addicted to a trashy reality show called the real politicians of washington and it's the same

00:32:49.860 kind of it's it's political junk food so it's again it's it's like the candy bar it's mars inc makes a

00:32:55.860 ton of money selling to our primitive minds and cnn and msnbc and fox news also make a ton of money

00:33:02.500 selling junk food to our primitive minds and it it both preys on and enhances this rising

00:33:10.420 phenomenon of political tribalism political bigotry so it's you know you know what you said

00:33:16.420 about how you know it yeah 24 hours you had to fill it with something but i think that if you watched

00:33:21.460 if you looked at how this evolved they started to you know realize the fact these these brands that

00:33:27.300 they were entertainment channels and they had a they had a bunch of people hooked on there on this show

00:33:32.180 and so they need main characters you know i i talked to a congressman named derrick kilmer recently

00:33:37.620 who's super nuanced and measured and he's not bombastic and no one's heard of him all right but

00:33:42.580 you've heard of you know matt gates and uh marjorie taylor green and aoc and because these are the main

00:33:49.300 characters they've been cast on the show derrick kilmer is not cast on the show and so that's a that's a

00:33:56.260 massive environmental shift which is going to have massive effects on our psyche on our behavior and how

00:34:01.860 people act yeah well let's talk about the structures of thought here and i mean this really cuts against

00:34:09.460 both extremes of the political spectrum i mean this is the your kind of lens through which you

00:34:14.980 criticize political extremism and and ideological capture in your book uh and so one of these

00:34:22.900 structures you introduce is the concept of the ladder versus the the idea spectrum this is a

00:34:28.900 distinguishing you know how one thinks from what one thinks perhaps you can introduce that here

00:34:34.500 right so we you know our conversations and then our and then in turn our thoughts are going to be

00:34:40.580 constrained by kind of the language we have when you have a word for something then it becomes a

00:34:44.580 concept in people's minds and then we can discuss it and then develop new nuanced ideas around that word

00:34:49.540 but if you don't have the word in the first place you often just don't even think about it and

00:34:54.100 i think our political discussions are massively constrained by this super simplistic one-dimensional

00:35:00.180 horizontal axis that goes from the far left to the moderate left the center the moderate right the

00:35:05.540 far right whatever and i i hear people saying stuff like you know at least people that i think feel the

00:35:10.740 way i do they say things like you know we need more you know we we need more centrists and then you

00:35:14.820 have a lot of people who hate centrists right and that a lot of people and it seems like it's this

00:35:18.820 battle between the people who like the center and the people who want the far ends and to me that's

00:35:23.060 just that's a very like a nuanced conversation because first of all i know lots of centrists that

00:35:29.460 are pretty dogmatic about their centrism and they're not actually thinking that hard and they're

00:35:33.060 kind of knee-jerk taking a centrist position on things and i also know people who are i would

00:35:38.340 you know consider pretty far right or or pretty radical left who are extremely thoughtful and like

00:35:43.220 to argue and might change their minds so there's something wrong with this so i i basically said

00:35:47.620 let's just make it a square let's let's build a vertical axis here and i call it the ladder

00:35:51.380 and now we can have like the upper left and the upper right and the lower center and the upper

00:35:56.180 center and it just it just gives us the second dimension where at the bottom you know on the

00:36:01.380 low rungs of the ladder when it comes to you can apply this ladder to how you think in general you

00:36:05.940 know at the top you're concerned with truth and we're independent you're independent thinking and

00:36:10.900 you're looking for truth and you don't identify with your ideas and you're fine to change your mind

00:36:15.700 and you like to argue because when you're when all you're concerned about is truth uh and you're

00:36:20.500 not identifying with your ideas all you know i consider argument like it's like uh you're throwing

00:36:25.060 your idea into the boxing ring let someone else box against it and see how it does if you're proud

00:36:30.100 of your idea and you think it's good you're you love to have someone go at it let's see yeah let's

00:36:33.940 i think i have a champion heavyweight boxer here let's see what you got and if you don't think you have

00:36:37.940 a good idea it's like cool like kick my idea let some parts break off show me where it's weak i can

00:36:42.740 get smarter i can get better so that's this one kind of general way of thinking and when you go

00:36:48.580 down the rungs this i think the same part of your brain that i've been referencing that i call the

00:36:52.980 primitive mind that this this kind of unconscious software in our brain that thinks it's living in

00:36:57.460 50 000 bc that likes to eat candy bars and that is addicted to reality tv that part of the brain gets

00:37:04.980 involved and that part of the brain does not care about truth it identifies with its ideas the ones

00:37:11.620 that it holds sacred and that means that when you that it becomes like preserving your body

00:37:17.460 and to preserve those ideas it becomes this this you're you're that you're that part of your brain

00:37:22.260 can get very confused and by the way you you're you've done one of the studies that i like to

00:37:26.260 reference here where you know the default default mode network of your brain that this part of your

00:37:30.820 brain that is associated with internal reflection and identity actually lights up and fmris when certain

00:37:38.580 political beliefs are challenged as opposed to when non kind of sacred topics are challenged

00:37:43.940 i think it's yeah yeah you're referencing a paper i did with uh jonas kaplan and um yeah we compared

00:37:52.820 political beliefs to just ordinary beliefs that that wouldn't wouldn't invoke a person's

00:37:58.500 self-identity presumably the beliefs about you know what city they happen to be in or

00:38:02.580 you know just just basic facts and um yeah we yeah we also found that when you challenge people's

00:38:08.500 political beliefs you're getting more amygdala and insular activation and which you would expect and

00:38:16.260 yeah that kind of activation was correlated with a resistance to belief change because what we did in

00:38:22.180 these experiments we presented people with with evidence against their beliefs whatever they are and and

00:38:28.500 basically there were increments of trying to argue them out of any specific belief whether

00:38:32.580 you know one was like you know secondhand smoke causes cancer or and in this case created

00:38:38.260 spurious evidence that argued them out of that widely held belief so yeah i mean on some level not

00:38:43.940 a surprise but it is it's interesting to see the brain report that and and and and it's just so

00:38:50.180 interesting that literally a different part of your brain and a very a very old part of your brain

00:38:54.820 right that like kind of limbic system that is not really part of your consciousness it gets involved

00:39:00.180 actually gets involved in when it comes to and i'm sure this would go for a sacred you know a very

00:39:04.660 religious person's religious beliefs and i'm sure it would go for it for some people it's about their

00:39:08.260 nutrition opinions or their way about they raise their kids you see a whole different kind of part of

00:39:15.380 their mind takes over so basically when i'm talking about that high-rung thinking where again is this is

00:39:21.140 the ideal thinking right and it's hard to do where you just you're not attached to your ideas you just

00:39:26.100 care about truth you love to argue you're or you're okay to argue and you like hearing people

00:39:30.100 that disagree with you and all of that as soon as this primitive mind enters the scene that becomes

00:39:35.220 much harder to do it affects your motivation so your motivation at the top is just truth why wouldn't

00:39:39.460 it be that's just rational i just want to i want i don't want to be wrong i don't want to be delusional

00:39:44.180 but when this other part of your brain enters it starts to it starts to root for certain ideas to be

00:39:49.620 correct it starts to it's it starts to feel an existential crisis when introduced to strong

00:39:55.860 evidence against a sacred belief it must protect the belief like you protect your body and so for a

00:40:01.780 while in the middle of this ladder we're conflicted you know we we are going for the truth and we do

00:40:07.700 care about the scientific method but we're really rooting for one idea and we have a lot of confirmation

00:40:12.020 bias you know just kind of this invisible hand of this primitive mind that's pushing your investigation

00:40:17.940 towards confirming towards ending at the right conclusion and so we'll do things like you know

00:40:23.460 we'll we'll we'll instead of being skeptical of things that seem untrustworthy or things that seem

00:40:28.880 inaccurate we'll start to become skeptical of things that disagree with us and we'll become gullible

00:40:33.180 towards things that seem to confirm our beliefs even if that evidence doesn't seem particularly accurate

00:40:37.960 and then um and so we're conflicted there and you have both minds kind of almost fighting for the

00:40:42.900 process the thought process and then when you get to the bottom you we're you're in one of those zones

00:40:47.900 where you're you're this belief is so sacred to you that uh you're you're really doing your

00:40:52.520 thinking but you're not doing much thinking at all you are you're in the business at that moment of

00:40:57.160 belief preservation and so you become this brick wall to argue with and there's nothing that can

00:41:03.180 change your mind about it and so that was like the that's like the the the way you can use this

00:41:09.380 axis for thinking you also can use it for i think this goes along i think people who are when you're

00:41:14.360 when you are at the bottom in your thinking i think you're also likely to be at the bottom in a whole

00:41:20.960 other area which is you're going to be morally hypocritical you're going to you're going to get

00:41:25.720 into this kind of tribal zone where there's a good good people with the good ideas and the bad people

00:41:30.820 with the bad ideas and you're going to have a different moral standards for your people and their

00:41:36.260 people while at the top of the ladder you're not going to think that way right you're going to be

00:41:39.780 very consistent you're going to stay true to your principles no matter who's the the subject

00:41:44.300 and and likewise i think you can have a third way that this ladder can apply which is at the top if

00:41:50.740 you're a movement and and that movement is kind of a high-rung movement they're going to try to

00:41:54.800 get what they want via persuasion again they care about the truth they believe they have the truth on

00:41:59.180 their side and they're going to try to play by the kind of in the u.s they would try to play by the

00:42:05.520 liberal rules and use persuasion but as you go down this ladder you find that that that again

00:42:10.000 they're not really in the business of truth even though they think they are which means they're not

00:42:14.180 really good at debating or arguing they're not morally consistent they're very easy to pick apart

00:42:18.540 in debate so instead of persuasion which they're not very good at they'll use coercion so i started

00:42:23.460 to realize that like both individuals and groups i saw you know you hit their they're doing all three

00:42:29.400 of these things usually together so they're they're they're doing low-rung thinking they're

00:42:34.440 full of confirmation bias and and no way no way they would ever say okay you know what good point

00:42:40.540 i think i'm wrong about this they're also totally morally hypocritical and they're all about the

00:42:46.760 coercion you know coercion and you know authoritarianism to get what they want and so i call you know if you

00:42:54.760 combine those that's low-rung politics versus high-rung politics and so again i think that at

00:43:00.080 the top of the ladder it spans the horizontal spectrum i think you're going to have radical

00:43:04.380 leftists all the way to hardline conservatives who you know again maybe not as many because being

00:43:09.780 really hardline and something is often going to correlate with being kind of down on the low rungs

00:43:14.980 but not always there again there's there's some of the you know really thoughtful and nuanced

00:43:19.820 marxists and and and and far-right conservatives i have friends that are both of these things and

00:43:26.180 they're great to talk to and they're they're fun to talk to and they're fun to argue with and they

00:43:30.060 actually will say okay good point you know i need to think about that again but if you go down to

00:43:34.320 the low rungs again it spans the political spectrum and now you have a totally different

00:43:38.140 game being played you have um and these are the people of course who who uh the fox news msnbc um

00:43:44.820 you know reality show appeals to because it's going to confirm the worldview down there which is that

00:43:50.360 there's good guys and there's bad guys on good team and the bad team with the good ideas and the bad

00:43:54.720 ideas and by the way at the you know at the top maybe your opponents are wrong but as you move down 0.99

00:43:59.560 they become you know impossibly stupid and the very bottom they're evil they're they're they're these 1.00

00:44:03.780 are these are the bad evil people and they're the only reason that this country isn't you know this 1.00

00:44:10.080 utopia is because of the bad evil people and that's not how grown-ups think in other areas and

00:44:15.740 that got me back to your study here because it's like this is it's very it's a i call it political

00:44:20.480 disney world at the bottom because it's like these simple narratives of good versus evil why are a bunch

00:44:25.020 of grown-ups down there what are we doing like and if you go to other areas of thought you don't see

00:44:29.680 grown-ups acting this way acting super tribal acting like they're in middle school and and then when i look

00:44:35.560 at something like your study i see well because literally politics is one of those topics that

00:44:40.480 completely makes us go crazy it fills our mind with this primitive fog and we this this other part of

00:44:45.640 our brain takes over and that part of our brain is not going to be very grown up and we're not going

00:44:50.860 to be our best selves there and um and the environmental change we talked about with these 24-hour news

00:44:56.120 networks they completely stokes that it's like a magnet that pulls that's pulling the country downwards on

00:45:01.760 this ladder yeah i think that the the titles you've put on on the rungs of this ladder are also

00:45:08.340 instructive so the the top is thinking like a scientist then one one rung down is thinking like

00:45:15.120 a sports fan then thinking like an attorney and thinking like a zealot which is the the bottom of

00:45:21.100 the ladder and there's another structure you introduce here the concept of an idea lab versus

00:45:26.640 an echo chamber maybe you can flesh that out so basically it's the same concept applied to groups

00:45:32.500 so what i what i just talked about is individuals right so when i say scientist i don't mean career

00:45:37.980 scientists a lot of career scientists are very attached to their ideas and very unwilling to

00:45:42.320 change their mind or very you know politically tribal or whatever i mean thinking you know the

00:45:47.360 way carl sagan says that science is a way of thinking more than like um any kind of body of

00:45:52.020 knowledge it's a way of thinking so that it's it's it's you're you're you're thinking like a

00:45:56.160 scientist and then as i call it sports fan people get confused why sports fan is higher than attorney

00:46:00.500 but when i say sports fan i use that because i'm thinking that sports fans you know they care about

00:46:05.120 the integrity of the game even though they're rooting for their team to win so you know if i'm

00:46:10.540 you know i you know nothing could have convinced me basically that tom brady you know because i'm a

00:46:15.420 patriots fan that tom brady deflated those footballs my confirmation bias was so like just

00:46:21.000 hilariously in the picture there you know i and and i'm seeking out articles that confirm that and

00:46:26.080 i'm already scoffing at a headline that doesn't before i even open the article and yet if someone

00:46:30.120 said to me okay but here look if you press this button we're gonna have a corrupt ref rig that rig 1.00

00:46:34.300 the game the next game in favor of the patriots i would definitely not press that i don't think any

00:46:37.760 sports or very few sports fans would so there's this there's this kind of you have a you have a

00:46:43.200 respect for the process deep down that is bigger than anything but you get very lost in this

00:46:49.320 confirmation bias and you have to you know and and so there's a lot of confirmation bias there but the

00:46:53.440 the kind of the the other side has the edge the attorney the reason i use that is as the third

00:46:59.380 rung out of four is so it's still a conflict right the second and third rungs is when both of these

00:47:04.460 minds are kind of competing the attorney rung is when you've got the where the primitive mind has the

00:47:09.740 edge and so now the difference between the sports fan is you know the sports fan might say that you

00:47:15.040 know always see the call going there on their side but when they see the replay and it's undeniable

00:47:19.060 they say okay i was wrong the attorneys their job is to stay on the side of their client and to

00:47:24.780 continue to to you know you don't have an attorney who switches their side because the prosecutor made

00:47:30.160 a good point so in a real courtroom you've got two attorneys and so each attorney knows that they're

00:47:36.620 one side of a truth finding machine and that their job is to represent one side as well as possible

00:47:43.560 because they know the other attorneys they're doing the same and the clash of the two allows the jury to

00:47:48.040 see the truth so this you know this isn't even this isn't a criticism of real world attorneys who

00:47:52.200 are doing this on purpose because it's part of a bigger system when you're thinking like an attorney

00:47:56.280 you only have one side in your head and so you're just building a case that's going to lead right to

00:48:00.380 where you want to and you're going to never change your mind you know you'll you'll you'll seem like

00:48:04.260 you have all this evidence and all these ways of thinking but you won't change your mind and then at

00:48:07.960 the very bottom rung you're a zealot and what i mean by that is just that there's nothing forget change forget

00:48:12.960 arguing you don't even think you think anyone who would argue this is an awful person it's so obvious that

00:48:17.560 you're correct like the sky is blue you don't why would you need to argue that the sky is blue

00:48:21.100 um and so you're just completely you know in a delusional zone down there and of course conviction

00:48:28.120 ironically you know because the people at the top here end up with way more knowledge but the people

00:48:32.780 at the bottom have the most conviction they have pure conviction they're 100 sure they're correct

00:48:36.840 so anyway then i said i said okay but this is about individuals what why do we act this way

00:48:41.700 again just asking why would we ever be down on these low rungs it makes no sense

00:48:45.440 and a big part of it is that we are social creatures and and tribes a long time ago you

00:48:51.680 know our we were our our you know our well-being and our survival totally dependent on being kind

00:48:58.360 of successfully integrated with a larger group and so what i find is that you can kind of boil group

00:49:06.660 intellectual culture down into two piles and one is kind of playing by high-rung thinking rules

00:49:13.320 and the other is playing by the low-rung thinking rule so we have we know the term echo chamber but

00:49:18.860 i said what's the opposite of an echo chamber it's an idea lab right it's an idea lab where

00:49:23.960 the culture of the group is to not treat ideas as sacred and that every idea can be completely

00:49:30.660 obliterated but people should be respected so people don't they don't take it personally when

00:49:35.740 someone disagrees with their idea and they also don't throw ad hominem attacks or if they do the

00:49:40.280 group calls them out on it because that's not cool here and likewise i said you know conviction

00:49:43.980 is you know there's an appropriate level of humility for a high wrong thinker well in the group

00:49:49.000 where that's the culture and an idea lab humility is cool like it's cool to say i don't know and it's 0.98

00:49:54.660 not cool to express unearned conviction you look like an idiot and arguing arguing is great you know 0.77

00:49:59.580 arguing is fun in an idea lab now when you go because because and so what happens is that that's 0.99

00:50:04.540 kind of this culture that is put like a magnet pulling everyone in it upwards on the ladder

00:50:10.280 it is actually um it's good for us it makes us more robust tougher thinkers and it helps us stay

00:50:15.980 up on the high rungs as individuals and it has the the emergent property of kind of group intelligence

00:50:20.520 our brains can link together like a larger like neurons in a larger brain because we're all saying

00:50:24.640 what we think and we're you know searching out for falsehoods together and we're updating the whole

00:50:29.600 group can update now when you go down to the echo chamber which is the other kind of group culture

00:50:34.380 that is basically when a bunch of people the primitive minds and a bunch of people's heads team up

00:50:39.400 together to collaboratively protect a certain set of sacred ideas the way that an individual low

00:50:44.900 wrong thinker would do that in their own head now a group is working on it together and so they'll do

00:50:49.560 that by imposing strict social penalties on anyone who expresses doubt in the sacred ideas or or even

00:50:57.360 worse expresses compelling dissent and conviction down there is super cool as long as it's conviction on

00:51:03.100 the right side talking about how you know if you're in one of these environments and we all have been

00:51:07.660 there you'll notice that one of the main activities is just talking about how right and good we are

00:51:12.220 and how wrong and bad the people who disagree with us are that'll just take up a whole dinner a whole

00:51:17.840 three-hour dinner will just be that and that's a bunch of people basically in a ritual together

00:51:22.100 doing this ancient thing where they are their their entire you know the entire you know all the

00:51:28.860 friendship here is based on we are all the good people who have this good idea and so all of the

00:51:33.380 social behavior happens because there's so much social incentive now not to not to be independent

00:51:38.600 thinking but to to conform and arguing you know in an idea lab arguing is is thought of as fun it's a

00:51:45.460 it's a way to play it's a way to get smarter down in an echo chamber arguing is a fight if you disagree 1.00

00:51:50.000 with someone you're an asshole right you know it's that the being an asshole and be and disagreeing 1.00

00:51:55.180 are two separate axes in the idea lab you can be an asshole who agrees with me or an asshole who 1.00

00:51:59.300 disagrees or a good person who agrees or a good person who disagrees down below it's you're either 0.99

00:52:03.820 a good person who agrees or you're an asshole who disagrees and so we again i'm saying why do we 0.98

00:52:09.420 do this right like this is what it's it's so much worse to be in an echo chamber like it's less fun 0.99

00:52:15.680 it's less interesting we all end up less intelligent it pulls our you know it's it's like pheromones you

00:52:20.880 know when once you're around that environment there is this urge to agree and to conform it becomes kind

00:52:25.520 of this primitive instinct kicks in that kept us alive in the tribes a long time ago it becomes you

00:52:31.200 kind of want to please the group and we i've felt this before and i have to catch myself and say why

00:52:35.640 i'm not proud of how i'm being right now and i think it's partially because if the emergent property of

00:52:41.200 the idea lab is really strong intelligence the emergent property of the echo chamber is if you really 0.96

00:52:48.040 scale it up is just power is just a big scary giant i call it a golem it's like a big dumb 0.98

00:52:55.240 you know tramp monster that can tramp through society that can overthrow a dictator you know or 1.00

00:52:59.500 that can you know that can defeat another country i mean or back in the old days that can just be the

00:53:04.900 meaner badder tribe the one that survives and kills the other and so we're actually we're in kind of

00:53:10.000 like golem mode when we're acting like this we're in this mode where you know we're doing this thing

00:53:15.420 that is a very important ancient survival thing that makes no sense in 2023 why are we wasting our time

00:53:22.620 doing this in 2023 yeah well all of this is um very interesting and quite consequential i think it

00:53:30.140 gets confusing uh let's just take the schema as as given i i really like it and um needless to say i

00:53:38.860 try to think like a scientist and and live in an idea lab as much as i can but it's interesting to see

00:53:48.460 what happens and and how you're perceived when endeavoring to think like a scientist and maintain

00:53:56.760 the norms of an idea lab you have to react to the products and and misbehavior of zealots and attorneys

00:54:07.640 and sports fans it's not obvious how to do that i mean so there's a few things here that are i think

00:54:14.880 confusing to almost everyone one is you know when you're thinking like a scientist in an idea lab

00:54:20.900 there's this perpetual tension between accepting authority and scientific consensus and being

00:54:30.040 skeptical of authority and consensus at you know every step along the way right so it's you know it's

00:54:36.620 often said that in science we don't respect scientific authority but that's not quite true i mean as a

00:54:44.260 labor saving and time saving and and opportunity cost sparing device we accept scientific authority

00:54:50.960 all the time but at the slightest sign of error we become alert to the brute fact that the truth of

00:54:59.080 any proposition doesn't even slightly depend on the on the authority or the the reputation or the you

00:55:06.440 know the career accolades of the person making that proposition right so we everyone knows that the most

00:55:12.220 celebrated scientist of his or her age can be wrong in their very next utterance and so you know when 0.95

00:55:20.960 your bullshit detector goes off it goes off in the presence of anyone as a scientist but short of that 0.90

00:55:26.580 it's only reasonable to assume that the best chemists know you know more about chemistry than 0.99

00:55:33.180 anyone else most of the time and so it is with every other scientific discipline so we we do you can

00:55:40.760 revert to asking our authorities what they think and then we're continually trying to push into areas

00:55:48.920 where we actually where no one is an authority right and then and then when anomalies are found we

00:55:54.980 we try to clean up the mess as we go but we're living in an environment now where there's a there's a

00:56:03.240 and this is largely what what i would say trump and covid did to our collective minds in over the last

00:56:11.340 few years something like what i've referred to as a new religion of contrarianism right where the

00:56:18.600 difference between expertise and and just pure amateurish speculation has been to a large degree

00:56:27.580 nullified and the institutions that used to safeguard our you know most reliable streams of information and you know

00:56:37.100 knowledge gathering and knowledge knowledge gathering and knowledge dissemination are now derided almost

00:56:45.100 universally right so that you know virtually no one respects the media you know really or not without severe

00:56:51.920 caveats uh and that disrespect has now spread to you know any governmental organization that would give us

00:57:00.000 information about more or less anything of consequence it's spread to science you know both universities

00:57:06.000 and academic journals there's just been a a raising of the establishment on both the left and the right

00:57:15.040 probably you know to a greater degree on the right and it's um it's introduced this this expectation that

00:57:21.700 everything it all that basically all claims to knowledge are on all fours with all others

00:57:27.780 everything has to be entertained with the same open-mindedness or doubt right i mean just it's like there's

00:57:35.260 just no there are no standards anymore and so you know the kinds of i mean just to speak personally i mean

00:57:41.520 the kinds of things that people want me to debate on this podcast you know i view is fairly incredible

00:57:48.100 you know the range of things that people think should be given a the most patient hearing at this

00:57:54.860 point and of course whenever you find evidence of a real conspiracy theory or you know a real moment

00:58:00.900 of deception on the part of a major institution it seems to justify this very picture of the just the

00:58:07.700 nullification of all distinctions right like okay here we got this risible editorial published by

00:58:13.600 you know the most esteemed scientific journal you know something like science or nature where they just

00:58:18.340 go all in on woke identitarian nonsense and that is just the smoking gun of of the decade right like

00:58:25.940 okay now scientists can't be believed about anything you know it's i'm wondering how you are just

00:58:33.260 approaching this what seems to me to be a kind of epistemological and social emergency where we're

00:58:39.640 getting where the the tools to manufacture misinformation and public doubt have never been

00:58:46.040 more available and they're getting stronger by the hour again we've you know we're having this

00:58:50.000 conversation a couple of weeks after the unveiling of chat gpt and and no sooner did that happen

00:58:56.840 we now have gpt4 this is uh while it may one day help us detect and correct misinformation in the

00:59:05.180 meantime it's going to proliferate it to an extraordinary degree how do you think we should

00:59:09.780 personally and collectively try to navigate this moment well i mean i i think that this is this is

00:59:16.500 so that the it's the erosion is of trust right is is and i mean what is trust we can't you know

00:59:25.140 if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation you'll need to subscribe at sam

00:59:31.480 harris.org once you do you'll get access to all full-length episodes of the making sense podcast

00:59:36.460 along with other subscriber only content including bonus episodes and amas and the conversations i've

00:59:42.880 been having on the waking up app the making sense podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on

00:59:48.180 listener support and you can subscribe now at samharris.org

00:59:52.040 you

Making Sense - Sam Harris - April 07, 2023

#315 — The Great Derangement

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript