Making Sense - Sam Harris - #349 — Generosity, Cynicism, and the Future of Doing Good

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if

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00:00:45.140 Today I'm speaking with Chris Anderson. Chris has been the curator of the famous TED conference

00:00:51.600 since 2001. The tagline of TED is Ideas Worth Spreading, of which there have been many

00:01:00.000 first shared at TED. The title of his new book is Infectious Generosity, the Ultimate Idea Worth

00:01:06.800 Spreading. And that is in part the topic of today's conversation. We talk about the new

00:01:11.900 spirit of cynicism that seems to surround any notion of doing good in the world, in tech and

00:01:17.240 finance at the moment. The problems with diversity, equity, and inclusion, DEI. The

00:01:23.440 controversy that enveloped Coleman Hughes when he spoke at TED last year. And then we get into

00:01:29.640 the topic of Chris's book, Proper. We talk about the science of generosity, the leverage offered

00:01:34.900 by the internet, the false opposition between selfishness and selflessness, mixed motives in

00:01:41.340 giving, results versus reward, trying to see the good in people, digital business models, including

00:01:48.800 my own business model for this podcast, the economics of TED, TEDx, wealth inequality, the ethics of

00:01:56.900 billionaires, philanthropy at scale, the power of pledges, the arguments of Peter Singer, the Sam

00:02:05.400 Bankman-Fried scandal, and the problems with effective altruism, how to improve our digital lives,

00:02:11.920 and other topics. Is there a more important topic than trying to figure out how to inspire

00:02:18.080 the luckiest among us to do more good in the world? Given the implications, I'm not sure.

00:02:26.620 And now I bring you Chris Anderson.

00:02:34.760 I am here with Chris Anderson. Chris, thanks for joining me.

00:02:38.420 It's great to be here, Sam.

00:02:39.260 So you have a new book, Infectious Generosity, The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading, which I want to

00:02:45.580 talk about, which it seems like now is the moment for such a book. It's really, it's great that you've

00:02:50.740 written this. But most people will know you as the owner and curator and impresario of the TED

00:02:57.140 conference. What did you do professionally before TED?

00:03:01.140 I was a journalist out of university. I think I originally wanted to be a physics professor,

00:03:09.120 but I found physics very hard at Oxford and switched course partway through to politics and

00:03:14.740 philosophy and ended up as a journalist. And then fell in love with computers in the early 1980s and

00:03:21.940 started a magazine publishing company for, you know, hobbyist, nerdy computer mags, which turned out to be

00:03:28.500 very fortunate timing. And, you know, the company did well, came to America eventually, continued to

00:03:33.580 grow it, and then had a horrible tangle with the dot-com crash of 2000, 2001. Ended up leaving the

00:03:42.280 company, which had gone public by this stage, but left it and did the sideways move into TED, which was

00:03:47.360 a conference I'd first went to in 1998 and kind of fell in love with it and had a chance, surprisingly,

00:03:54.340 to buy it from the owner. I didn't have any money because of the dot-com bust, but I did have a

00:04:00.680 foundation. So it was the foundation that bought TED. And so it found itself in a nonprofit. And

00:04:06.140 I've been, that's been most of my time since then, really since 2001.

00:04:11.360 When you say you had a horrible tangle with the dot-com bust, were you one of these people who

00:04:17.560 had a billion dollars on paper and then watched it get halved every 15 minutes until it vanished

00:04:23.900 over the course of a day? I mean, was it that kind of experience or what exactly happened?

00:04:28.640 Pretty much. I'm not sure I quite, maybe for five minutes after one company went public,

00:04:33.920 hit the billion mark, but it very quickly fell away. And yeah, for 18 months, I basically lost on

00:04:39.540 average a million dollars a day. And it was, it's not just that it, I mean, it really eats at your,

00:04:45.880 your sort of self of sense of self-worth. I mean, like, because I'd told this fantasy to myself that

00:04:51.100 I was a, this, you know, successful entrepreneur, everything had always gone up into the right. And,

00:04:57.280 you know, the company for years, the company kind of doubled in size every year and it just felt,

00:05:00.880 you know, easy and great. And then this happened and I, and it was a real lesson really. Don't tie up

00:05:07.860 too much of your happiness and sense of self-worth into your business or what you do or you'll, you

00:05:14.300 know, it's a, it's a recipe for disappointment. So I went through a very difficult 18 months and,

00:05:19.040 and kind of got, survived it. I think by reading and getting, just entering, remembering how amazing

00:05:26.640 the world of ideas is and how much cool science was happening. I hadn't really discovered evolutionary

00:05:32.940 biology. I hadn't, there were so many things that I got into for the first time. And that,

00:05:37.480 that made the prospect of a move into Ted and sort of living in that world, incredibly appealing.

00:05:44.460 I mean, at the time it was, it was an annual conference, nothing else, but Hey, all these

00:05:48.200 interesting people. And it felt like a real respite from the ugliness of, of, um, you know,

00:05:54.420 the dot-com crash where, you know, I had 2000 people at one point, we had to let go half of them.

00:05:58.040 And it was just, it was so painful. It was very, it was a horrible time.

00:06:02.280 Well, I want to talk about wealth and, um, philanthropy and, and, uh, all these,

00:06:07.380 these intersecting issues. I mean, Ted has given you a front row seat to see the social phenomenon

00:06:13.040 I want to discuss. And many of which are the relate to the topic of your book, uh, which is

00:06:18.360 briefly, you've written a book about how we can do more good in the world through leveraging new norms

00:06:25.320 around generosity. And especially as becomes possible in the, the age of the internet, I mean,

00:06:30.600 it really, it's, it, it changes the possibility of being generous in interesting ways. But before

00:06:35.160 we jump into that, I want to acknowledge that there's this new spirit of cynicism in the air,

00:06:41.520 you know, wherein it seems that almost any conspicuous efforts to do good in the world

00:06:47.120 now seems suspect. And this relates to various degrees to things like ESG, you know, environmental,

00:06:54.260 social, and governance, investing, effective altruism, DEI, you know, diversity, equity,

00:07:00.100 and inclusion efforts. And there's this sense, especially among influential people in tech

00:07:06.280 and in finance, that all of this stuff amounts to a little more than a sanctimonious scam.

00:07:12.700 It's all just virtue signaling. It's just elites marketing to elites. And, you know, I've been

00:07:18.220 critical of many of these things, and I'm actually especially critical of DEI at the moment,

00:07:23.480 but I'm also worried that what we have here is a situation in which some of the luckiest and

00:07:29.240 smartest people in the world appear to have drawn the wrong lesson from some specific recent

00:07:35.860 embarrassments. And they, they appear to now think that altruism and generosity and compassion

00:07:41.440 are basically bogus. And we're all just condemned to live in a world where we play this game for

00:07:47.540 ourselves. And, you know, perhaps our family and a few friends make it into the lifeboat with us.

00:07:53.320 But otherwise, we should just be narrowly selfish without apology. And in fact, there's an attraction

00:07:59.460 to this. I mean, really, the apotheosis of this is someone like Trump, where, you know,

00:08:03.760 where you have half the country idolizing a man who makes no pretense of being other than

00:08:11.140 malignantly selfish, right? And if you can be just, you're just nakedly selfish and merely selfish,

00:08:19.060 one of the superpowers you acquire is that it's impossible to be a hypocrite. And it's the moments

00:08:25.020 of hypocrisy that many people have found so despicable in our efforts to do good. So you have

00:08:29.660 someone like Sam Bankman Freed, or you have the DEI bureaucrats who are apparently unable to condemn

00:08:36.440 calls for genocide against the Jews. It's just very easy to see what is wrong here. I mean,

00:08:42.120 I'm thinking of one with respect to ESG now, you have, I guess, you had the spectacle of, you know,

00:08:49.140 lots of right thinking people flying on their private jets to a climate conference, right? And so

00:08:56.200 it's just people see this, and now they've begun to default to a new norm of cynicism and selfishness.

00:09:03.480 And so I'm just, I want to talk about the problems such as they are with ESG and effective altruism

00:09:08.840 and DEI and these other issues. But I'm wondering if you share my concern that the pendulum is in

00:09:14.520 the process of swinging back into something like an Ayn Randian and fairly psychopathic ethic of

00:09:22.480 basically no social responsibility.

00:09:24.160 Yeah, I think you're right to be concerned. I'm certainly worried about it. I think different

00:09:29.820 people would probably tell the story in different ways. But there's no question that the techno

00:09:37.000 optimism of, say, the early 2000s, when it really seemed like you could frame the internet, for example,

00:09:43.600 as bringing the world together. Lots of people had the narrative that, wow, this is wonderful. We can

00:09:48.860 see people on the other side of the world. Maybe this exciting new technology can spread things like

00:09:55.760 freedom and democracy and some of the ideas that we care about. And the narrative of the last 10

00:10:01.580 years has been the opposite of that. It's been, and I've felt it, I felt it through my ringside seat

00:10:07.340 at TED, if you like, of this growing sort of sense of crushing disappointment that the internet was not

00:10:13.260 doing what we thought it would do. It was actually helping engender the opposite. And yeah, somewhere

00:10:19.640 around the rise of social media, the election of Donald Trump, the world became very, very, very

00:10:26.800 divided. And it was almost the only thing you could be was to pick a tribe and then fight and be really

00:10:35.120 annoyed at the other side. And those were the most sort of fervent conversations. I mean, I think,

00:10:46.660 I think, and I hope that a lot of people have got really sick at how mean the world has become.

00:10:54.460 And actually, you're right that there is a lot of cynicism and exhaustion at, the way I would frame it,

00:11:02.120 Sam, I think, is almost the language that each side has sort of fallen into. So the language of DEI

00:11:08.960 has become its own sort of sing-song thing that is almost invisible to the people who are in it.

00:11:15.400 And it just sounds so exhausting and mind-numbing and annoying to people who aren't. And it makes it

00:11:22.480 impossible to have actually a conversation about the real things that are underlying it. You know,

00:11:27.720 that the real, the reason why DEI happened originally was that there were injustices in the

00:11:33.680 world and that there were groups of people who hadn't been given a fair shot and there was a need and

00:11:37.700 a desire from good-thinking people to try to do something about that. But it, you know, it, it, it

00:11:44.160 warped into tribalistic language. That's the shocker. So that you couldn't even have a discussion about the

00:11:50.340 actual merits of the case. It was just, oh, you use that word. I know who you are. I can't talk to you.

00:11:55.020 You make me sick. And, um, it's, it's, it's sort of, I think, and I hope that there are a lot of

00:12:00.640 people who have got really weary of that world and that there's, there's a desire. And I certainly

00:12:07.200 in the next, in the generation coming through, but I think in our generation as well to that this,

00:12:12.980 this can't go on. And I, I, I, you know, part of my sense of urgency about this is if we can't

00:12:20.260 figure out how to start listening to each other, talking to each other, working together,

00:12:25.280 collaborating, we're not going to be able to solve any of the giant problems that, that, uh, the future

00:12:32.080 is, is sort of throwing up. And, and, uh, you know, whether, whether it's climate, uh, whether

00:12:36.880 it's wars around the world, you know, whether it's artificial intelligence and, and the challenges

00:12:41.480 that that poses, we're not going to be able to solve any of this stuff. And so we, we, I just,

00:12:47.120 I see that there is no, no way forward other than to, at least to try to tackle this. And, um,

00:12:55.200 and I guess the, the, um, the, you know, the framing that I've come up with and I'm excited by

00:12:59.700 is that just as nasty things have gone viral online in the last decade, especially fear,

00:13:07.800 resentment, disgust, anger, there, it is also possible for really good things to go viral.

00:13:13.800 There is no reason why they shouldn't. And with a bit of a nudge and a bit of a rethink and,

00:13:18.060 and, uh, uh, uh, an effort by people of goodwill, I think there just might be a chance to turn the

00:13:24.660 tide. At least that's the ambition. And if we, if we don't do this, I don't know what else we do

00:13:29.120 because the future is just going to be so ugly. Well, I had thought to save a discussion of DEI

00:13:35.320 to the end, but since we've touched on it on the fly, I think we, um, maybe we'll just take a brief

00:13:41.080 detour and talk about it because it's, it's not, it's, it is a bit of a sidebar discussion

00:13:45.060 with respect to the, the other topics that relate directly to generosity and, and philanthropy

00:13:50.840 and wealth, et cetera. You know, I've always viewed you before I came to know you at all

00:13:57.720 as a, as a kind of prisoner of sorts of Ted with respect to DEI. I mean, perhaps you had a bit of

00:14:03.740 Stockholm syndrome too. I don't know, but it just seemed like, it's actually the first moment I

00:14:09.400 noticed this was after I gave my first Ted talk where I took a pretty hard line against

00:14:13.700 traditional Islam, in particular, the compulsory veiling of women. And you came up on stage

00:14:19.260 afterwards and tried to perform a bit of an intervention. And I mean, people can watch that

00:14:24.460 on YouTube and draw their own conclusions. And you and I have since talked a fair amount about Islam

00:14:29.280 and my approach to criticizing it. And as well as my approach to criticizing religion in general.

00:14:33.820 And, you know, we've hashed that out on your podcast and, and in private. So we don't have

00:14:38.820 to rehash that here unless you, you know, you feel free to say anything you want and edify me in front

00:14:44.000 of my audience here, but it's been useful to talk to you about all that. But what I want to talk about

00:14:49.080 is a, a recent event that had somewhat the same character, but what was notable in that it revealed

00:14:56.720 how much had changed in the intervening years. So when I, when we first met, when I gave that first

00:15:01.920 TED talk, I think that was 2010. And so now, you know, a decade plus, hence, you have an event which

00:15:08.440 produces much more controversy. And yet the target of the blowback was, to my eye, far more anodyne

00:15:16.960 than I was giving that first TED talk. In fact, it made me think that there's no way I could have given

00:15:22.260 that TED talk now, or at least last year. And I'm so, needless to say, I'm talking about the case of

00:15:28.800 Coleman Hughes. What happened there? What was your perception of what happened there? I, I wasn't

00:15:33.660 actually at that conference. I wasn't in, you know, I wasn't there for the, the immediate, to see the

00:15:39.780 immediate dominoes fall, but I just heard about it after the fact. What was your experience of that?

00:15:45.940 So just two words on, on your own TED talk. I actually really liked your TED talk. What I was

00:15:50.460 there, I was the person who came up on stage there. It was nothing to do, I think, with DEI. This was a

00:15:56.220 person who had lived for years as a kid growing up in Afghanistan and Pakistan with a lot of Muslims.

00:16:02.080 And I, I do dislike huge aspects of, of actually lots of religions. And I, I think living for,

00:16:09.480 you know, paradise rather than the current world is incredibly, incredibly dangerous. I think the

00:16:15.700 whole, inshallah, you know, if it is, is, it can be a very disempowering way to live where people

00:16:22.000 give up trying because they just, well, you know, God will do whatever he will do. There's lots that

00:16:26.320 I don't like, but what I, what I do like is that there are some genuinely, that there, there, I just

00:16:31.840 got to know many super spiritual Muslims and, and many Muslim women who actually liked aspects of the

00:16:40.740 conservatism of, of Muslim culture and, and preferred it to the sort of, you know, the, the excesses of

00:16:47.440 the West, if you like, the excessive public sexuality of, of the West. So it was, it was a

00:16:51.880 kind of ex missionary kid, if you like, coming and speaking and, and, and challenging you. But,

00:16:57.540 but the, the core of what you said in that talk was incredible, Sam. I mean, the, the, the notion

00:17:01.300 of building morality from, from the ground up based on science, based on what we know about

00:17:08.160 human nature. I mean, I think that's, I, I, I actually believe that because it's, that's what opens

00:17:13.440 the door to moral progress, which I think is a real thing. I don't, I think cultural relativism

00:17:17.960 is a disastrous philosophy. And so we, we probably had more in, in line than, than you thought,

00:17:24.920 but I was probably aware of, you know, some Muslims in the audience just wanted to look

00:17:30.080 out for them. Okay. So Coleman Hughes, so the narrative online in some, you know, depending

00:17:36.200 on whether you look on the left or on the right, one, one narrative is that we, you know,

00:17:41.140 invited a controversial man to Ted to give a talk about, um, he made the case for colorblindness

00:17:46.240 on the left. This is seen as a super controversial and in fact, and also deeply upsetting to some

00:17:52.960 people because on the left, the view is that colorblind policies over decades have been proven

00:18:00.060 not to work. You know, we're still here with a lot of racial injustice and that you cannot make

00:18:04.860 enough progress without proactively making decisions based on race. In some cases, there's a,

00:18:10.080 there's a very good Ted talk, I think by Melody Hobson arguing exactly for this, be color bold,

00:18:14.860 not, not colorblind. And, um, and she, you know, actually persuaded me to be more conscious in,

00:18:20.900 in how we hide. It's not about tokenistic hiring. It's about just making extra effort to find great

00:18:27.700 people and that with a more diverse employee base, you actually get a lot more done and, uh, it's just

00:18:33.140 healthier or, or around. So, so I, I, I get that argument from the left and I also get why, you

00:18:40.020 know, what happened when Coleman gave his talk is that, um, some people were heard it as you no longer

00:18:48.240 care about my identity. And, uh, and so some people in the community were really upset by it. It's true

00:18:53.500 to say that meant that we had some people internally were troubled at the notion of pushing it out online

00:19:00.120 and, uh, wondered whether we showed whether it really was an idea was spreading. And they felt

00:19:04.880 that some of the issues sort of really needed further debate given how sensitive it was. So

00:19:09.000 Coleman kindly agreed to do a debate and he did, I thought he did very well in it and that was posted

00:19:14.720 and that was fine. And then we posted his talk and, um, all well and good so far. The talk was not

00:19:22.060 included in one of our super popular podcasts for a while. I think the team were uncomfortable

00:19:27.400 with it for whatever reason. I actually didn't, wasn't really aware of this, but it meant that

00:19:33.080 the view count on Coleman's talk was low compared with other talks. And, um, someone pointed this

00:19:39.160 out to him. And so he got, he got upset and posted this piece saying, why is Ted afraid of colorblindness?

00:19:44.220 Okay. And so, so the main pushback we got then was from people right of center who, who were

00:19:49.480 outraged that this, this brilliant person, and Coleman is a brilliant person, was, was being suppressed

00:19:56.080 by the woke, you know, Ted team. And, um, you know, I was told, you know, well, if you, if you believe

00:20:03.460 in Coleman and you, you want to champion him, fire your, your woke staff and so forth. And so there

00:20:09.460 was, you know, as, as is common in the current moment, you had incredibly different narratives on

00:20:14.500 left and on right. I, I think on the right, the narrative is, you know, this proves that Ted is,

00:20:20.420 is, is, is woke and, and, you know, is suppressing very smart centrist ideas, you know, articulately

00:20:28.660 espoused by a very good person. But an alternative framework framing of it is Ted fought to bring

00:20:35.580 to the stage someone who actually three or four years ago, five years ago, in the midst of the

00:20:39.940 political division that was there, we would never have invited to the stage. We brought him on. A lot

00:20:45.160 of people in the, in the community noticed and were excited that we were opening the tent wider than

00:20:49.640 has been typical in recent years. And, um, last time I checked, you know, that talk has now has

00:20:55.140 800,000 views. It has been on the podcast, you know, the, the, uh, so I, my own framing of it,

00:21:02.040 Sam, is that, is that Ted is on a, I think it's true that in the political, in the height of the

00:21:08.200 sort of political division, when we did stuff that was political, most of it came from the progressive

00:21:12.580 side of the equation. And, you know, we had talks with some of that language that I refer to that

00:21:17.340 ends up being very irritating to people on the other side. We are fighting to address that first

00:21:23.360 of all, just on the language. It is pointless having a talk about social justice. If the people

00:21:27.180 you want to persuade aren't, aren't going to hear it because of the language. And so we have to get

00:21:32.920 the language said, right. But more generally, Ted is nonpartisan. And I, I, I feel that I feel

00:21:39.280 strongly that there are people in the center and so forth who we need to listen to more and bring

00:21:44.980 to Ted. And I think when people see the lineup for Ted 24, they're going to realize that we are,

00:21:50.480 we are absolutely committed to a broader open tent. We're unafraid of, of, uh, controversy.

00:21:56.260 And, um, as well as ideas we're spreading, we're ideas worth debating. You often don't know whether

00:22:01.880 ideas we're spreading in the current environment. You have to really hammer it out. So that, that's

00:22:07.400 where I'm at right now. I'm, I'm, I'm, I, I've been a fan of Coleman for a, for a long time.

00:22:11.520 You know, I, I get why some people were upset by this talk. I think he's a, he's a, he's a,

00:22:17.540 a brilliant thinker on issues outside race. When I've heard him, I've always been wowed and I'm

00:22:24.340 very glad he came to Ted. And, um, and I think, I think ultimately the story is Ted after a lot of

00:22:31.540 internal debate offers its platform to a voice who, who, who never would have been offered it a few

00:22:37.180 years ago. Well, that's interesting. So yeah, I mean, my reaction to that is, I don't, I don't

00:22:44.000 think will surprise you. I mean, it may sound like a, a, a mere confession of my own bias here, but

00:22:49.420 when I look at, you know, Coleman, who he is and what he's said over the years and written, and, um,

00:22:55.980 as you say, he is, he's quite brilliant. He's, he's quite inspiring. He's, he was this prodigy that

00:23:01.240 many of us were very happy to discover. I don't know how many years ago it was, but, uh, as an

00:23:06.600 undergraduate at Columbia, he was writing really useful and, um, beautiful essays that just, they

00:23:13.480 were like arrows shot directly to the heart of our, uh, various social problems at that time. And,

00:23:19.320 you know, quite uncharacteristically of someone his age, he did not overwrite at all. I mean,

00:23:23.780 it was really, it was quite beautiful. And yet, of course, for me to spell out his eloquence, uh,

00:23:30.360 at length is considered a microaggression given the color of his skin among many people over there

00:23:35.700 at TED. And so to hear your description of this was to hear the description of largely a pathology.

00:23:42.680 I mean, for you to say that Coleman wouldn't have been invited a few short years ago because of how

00:23:47.600 controversial it would have been then. And, and, and his, his invitation this time around didn't

00:23:52.860 escape controversy as you just described. And when you look at what his talk was, his talk was just,

00:23:58.540 as I said, the truly anodyne. It was just this reboot of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that we

00:24:06.340 get past the superficial characteristics that, that seem to divide us based on this insane obsession

00:24:12.260 with race and get to caring about people on the basis of, of, of their actual contributions to

00:24:19.120 society and the content of their character, et cetera, et cetera. That was never controversial

00:24:24.440 until it suddenly became controversial. And if the only issue was that we have learned in the

00:24:30.160 intervening years that it simply doesn't work, you know, colorblindness, while it might sound

00:24:35.560 ethically wonderful, it's quixotic and it's ineffective and we need to make more muscular

00:24:42.400 efforts to promote people, uh, even past their point of competence, right? Even, you know, even just

00:24:48.360 the kind of affirmative action that many people deride now, even, let's say we want to make an

00:24:53.200 argument for that. The thing that it was so bizarre about the response Coleman received from, and again,

00:24:59.560 I don't know how many people at Ted was that his utterly straightforward and unemotional and again,

00:25:09.300 traditional civil rights talk was received as an attack, as an insult, as just pure opprobrium

00:25:19.160 heaped on a vulnerable constituency, right? And these people perceive themselves to be under threat

00:25:26.380 in the face of the least threatening guy and the least threatening message, you know,

00:25:31.640 I get, Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam, I get, I get, I get that response from you and I get why a lot of people

00:25:39.360 see it that way. It does seem anodyne, it does seem obvious, you know, so, so at the conference,

00:25:46.300 there was a, there was a standing ovation for the talk from some people. Some people were really

00:25:51.320 delighted, you know, Ted is a, is a lot of different things and some people were super delighted

00:25:55.720 at the talk. I think the piece that you may have missed and some of the people who think,

00:26:02.720 oh, this is just obvious, I think you may have missed how, just how deep and complex this debate

00:26:09.060 has, has become. There are people who have spent their whole lives, you know, fighting to address

00:26:14.980 issues of, of racial injustice and they have come to believe that straightforward colorblindness is,

00:26:22.340 it has not worked. It has not worked. And I don't think that the alternative to that

00:26:27.000 is just sort of tokenism of, of, you know, it's not necessarily affirmative action. It may well,

00:26:33.300 there, there are many reasons why people of color may not be in a position to, let's say,

00:26:40.220 apply for a job in the same numbers and in the same way as others. A color bold policy might well

00:26:48.540 be just to look that much harder to find the brilliant people. They, they may well be out

00:26:52.760 there. And Sam, with respect to you yourself, aren't always colorblind. I, I am, I will bet

00:26:57.060 anything that there are times when you look at your podcast lineup and say, I can't just have a lineup

00:27:03.180 of, of white guys. You know, you, you, you feel that I bet you feel that.

00:27:07.280 No, actually, actually, no. And, and that's, you know, it's been, no, no, no, I'll get, let me,

00:27:13.720 I'll just be completely transparent to you. I mean, it's been pointed out to me that, you know,

00:27:18.960 I don't have enough people of color. I don't have enough women or et cetera, et cetera. And

00:27:23.400 so I've heard that criticism, but the truth is I simply reach out for the next topic of interest

00:27:31.480 or the next person who has caught my attention. And obviously I can't say that I'm colorblind

00:27:37.860 because I mean, take the case of Coleman, what, what I hope for in our world and in my own life

00:27:43.880 and in, you know, and for Coleman is to get to a place where no one cares that he's black.

00:27:50.820 He doesn't have to care about it. I don't care about it. Of course, given our current situation,

00:27:56.740 given the topic of this conversation, it is highly relevant that he's black for a whole,

00:28:01.600 a host of reasons. First of all, had a white guy given that same talk, had I had the temerity to

00:28:06.400 come back and give a talk on colorblindness, you would have received much more controversy and I

00:28:12.320 would have received much less defense than Coleman did purely, but based on the color of our skins.

00:28:18.180 And that makes no sense because the argument stands or falls on its merits. But I just think

00:28:24.280 it's unfortunate and it will soon become a travesty if a man of Coleman's intelligence

00:28:31.780 has to spend all of his time, most of his time, even much of his time talking about race simply

00:28:39.640 because he's black. He has so much more to contribute on so many other topics. It's a massive

00:28:45.180 opportunity cost. And when I'm with Coleman, I very quickly forget that he's black because

00:28:52.240 it doesn't matter to me. It only matters to me when suddenly we're talking about this issue

00:28:57.180 and I have to turn to him and say, listen, you have a superpower based on how you look. You should

00:29:02.800 be doing something that I'm not doing over here. And that's a totally rational conversation to have

00:29:09.040 with him. But I view it as an opportunity cost and I view it as something that we have to outgrow.

00:29:14.680 I just think it's exactly, I mean, the heuristic here, and I'd be interested to know if you actually

00:29:20.960 don't share this vision, I hope that someday skin color is like hair color or eye color, right?

00:29:28.980 Where we get to a place where no one would even think to ask how many blondes got into Harvard last

00:29:36.120 year, right? Knowing how many green-eyed people are cardiologists and does it perfectly match

00:29:42.100 their representation in the rest of society? Who cares, right? We have to get to the who cares

00:29:47.860 moment. That's what success will look like. And the people who reacted so badly to Coleman's talk

00:29:53.220 are people who not only don't think we can get there fast enough by pretending to be colorblind,

00:30:00.500 they don't even want to get there, apparently. They want to enshrine these differences among people

00:30:06.960 as indelible, as true for all time, and as important for all time. And I just think that's

00:30:12.460 the only other people who want to do that in our society are white supremacists, right? They have

00:30:17.400 the same logic and it's toxic. So it may be true that some people want that permanently, but I don't

00:30:24.600 think that is the general picture. And I think this is actually where we can find common ground.

00:30:30.900 When I did a podcast interview with Melody Hobson, who'd made the argument against colorblindness,

00:30:37.380 and I actually asked her this very question. I said, in the long term, do you dream of a world

00:30:44.360 where race as an issue goes away and that we just relate to each other as individuals?

00:30:49.000 And, you know, there was a long pause. And she said, that's incredibly hard to articulate for,

00:30:55.940 just because I see so many issues in the immediate term of why that approach isn't working. But

00:31:03.120 long term, at least what I heard her say is that that is the dream. And I think most of the people

00:31:09.900 at TED who were upset by the talk, and I include a couple of close friends of mine,

00:31:15.700 would absolutely say that long term, we want a colorblind society. That is the dream.

00:31:23.640 And that in their view, the way to accelerate that is to look specifically at some of the issues

00:31:29.760 around race and try and tackle them directly. So look, to me, this is a really important debate,

00:31:36.460 and I'm very glad we had it at TED. And I think the way, you know, I think common was embraced by many,

00:31:43.160 many, many people at TED. And as a whole, you should know, the world should know that we are committed

00:31:50.940 to having an open stance to important, what are often controversial issues, and to not be owned by

00:31:59.340 one tribe. And I think the tribalism is the biggest problem, Sam. It's the fact that so few people are

00:32:08.380 willing to explore and live in the very uncomfortable space between the tribes. I think

00:32:15.700 that actually, most people in America, in Europe, in the world, are not at the extreme ends of the

00:32:25.080 spectrum here. I think most people actually would, if they could find a way, like to embrace a more

00:32:30.800 centrist position. The trouble is that if you put your head above the parapet, you get it blown off by

00:32:35.800 both sides. And that is difficult. It's actually, I speak about this a bit in the book, one of the forms

00:32:40.720 of generosity that I think is most important for the era that we're in is bridging. It's the ability

00:32:47.320 to, and willingness to listen to people from the other tribe with respect, and to try to understand

00:32:56.080 them, and to be willing to try to find language, you know, that can find common ground. If we don't find

00:33:04.520 people who are willing to do that, we're screwed. And so I think it's actually one of the most

00:33:09.240 important forms of generosity that there is. I tell the story in the book of this African-American

00:33:14.280 Daryl Davis, who was puzzled why people hated him because of his skin color, you know, invited the

00:33:20.600 local leader of the Ku Klux Klan to a meeting, ended up forming a relationship with him. He went to

00:33:27.760 KKK rallies, and they built a, they built, they somehow built a friendship. And this guy eventually

00:33:33.860 left the KKK and, and, but his, his, his story, you know, became widely reported and inspired many

00:33:41.920 others. I mean, people like him, I think are rare, modern heroes that we need so, so many more of.

00:33:49.420 And it's just a very hard space to be in. I'm doing a terrible job of trying to be in that space,

00:33:53.600 but I'm absolutely determined to try and be in that space for Ted. We're going to, we're going

00:33:57.480 to get it wrong. A lot of the time, we're going to be laughed at by people actually on both sides,

00:34:03.480 but that's, that's okay because we, we, we have to be there. Ideas are supposed to be able to leap

00:34:10.880 from one tribe to another. That's the whole reason they're powerful. And if we, if we give up

00:34:15.420 that connectivity, we're giving up one of humanity's most important superpowers.

00:34:20.080 Yeah. Well, I, I applaud your efforts to continue that conversation and, um, I encourage you to

00:34:26.740 keep at it despite the pain it may cause you because it's, this is a enormous problem,

00:34:32.540 which is making so many other political impasses in our society, just impossible to navigate. I just,

00:34:40.280 it's, it touches everything. I mean, as we just saw, it touches the immediate response to the war in

00:34:46.620 the Middle East and, uh, the repute or disrepute with which our, um, most important academic

00:34:53.980 institutions are, are held. I mean, it's just, it's a, um, it's touching everything. And it's,

00:34:59.760 you know, to my eye, many people are just very confused about the ethics and politics here. And

00:35:03.720 there are some, there's some low hanging fruit in terms of right answers that we can get our hands

00:35:08.160 around. And, you know, I happen to think Coleman is in possession of at least one there,

00:35:12.380 but we're not going to resolve it here. And I want to bend this conversation back to, um,

00:35:17.560 something that I know is closer to your, your heart at the moment, which is the topic of your

00:35:21.240 book, generosity. How do you think about generosity at this point? And how has the internet changed your

00:35:29.100 thinking? Yeah. So there's two pieces really that came together for this. One is just the science

00:35:35.580 of generosity. I think it's actually really, really interesting. You know, my background was

00:35:40.640 religious. And, um, as I, one thing that kept me in the church for a long time was the belief that

00:35:49.100 there was no basis for generosity or kindness or goodness or altruism outside a belief in God.

00:35:55.320 I thought that outside that, what you had was an evolved animal, you know, that was evolved to

00:36:01.680 survive and that there was no basis for conscience or for, for being kind to others. And, and it was,

00:36:09.100 it was the most thrilling discovery to realize that, um, actually it was possible for selfish genes

00:36:17.460 to evolve unselfish people, to build unselfish people. And that you could, that unselfishness

00:36:25.780 was actually a brilliant way of surviving if it could spread, you know, across a species. And, um,

00:36:34.100 and you know, there's scientific arguments about whether that was a group selection thing or

00:36:37.920 individuals, you know, how quite how that worked. But the fact is that humans, along with several

00:36:42.500 other species have developed this as a kind of superpower. And, and it's that that has enabled

00:36:49.240 basically everything that we've done by being the cooperating species that, that, that learned to,

00:36:56.020 for example, you know, share bounty of hunting or whatever back in the day and learned mechanisms for,

00:37:02.880 for trust and belief in each other. It's, it's that, that I think is at the heart of everything

00:37:08.000 that we have built. It's at the heart of civilization. Um, so that's, that's one piece

00:37:13.120 that's cool. A second piece that is, is again, you know, biological is new evidence around just how

00:37:21.260 wired we are to respond to generosity. You know, I got this ringside view of a crazy experiment,

00:37:28.360 called it mystery experiment, where 200 people on the internet were given $10,000 out of the blue,

00:37:35.900 told no strings attached. You just have to tell us what you spend it on. And they ended up spending

00:37:41.920 two thirds of that money generously. Like this is not, you know, what, what sort of the rational

00:37:48.760 agent theory of economics would, would predict, I think.

00:37:51.480 To be clear, this is 200 people getting $10,000 each.

00:37:54.040 So $2 million. Yeah, that's right. And, um, I had the chance to speak with them after this

00:38:00.160 experiment was done. So the, the, the, the experiment was done in partnership with Elizabeth

00:38:04.160 Dunn at the University of British Columbia. Um, they published on it, you know, it's, it's the

00:38:09.960 biggest experiment of, of this kind that, you know, past experiments been done, you know, where,

00:38:13.980 where like psychology students were given 20 bucks and yeah, they, they, they tended to be

00:38:18.500 generous with that. But, um, but the fact that this held across seven countries and different

00:38:23.480 income levels and so forth, really surprising and kind of wonderful. It, it, it shows that

00:38:29.380 there is this mechanism in there whereby ripple effects can happen from generosity. There's a

00:38:34.680 third biological piece that, um, is the, the, the, the feeling we get when we see other people

00:38:41.540 being generous. There's a sort of feeling of uplift that also increases levels of generosity.

00:38:46.420 So put those things together with the fact that we're in this connected age now, and it's

00:38:53.320 actually much easier to give away things that are hugely valuable to people at unlimited

00:39:00.620 scale. So those ingredients in principle create, create a sort of playbook whereby acts of generosity

00:39:08.260 could absolutely send ripples across the world in a, in a great way. You've discovered this

00:39:14.540 by the way, in your own work here on this podcast, like you used to write books and sell them and

00:39:19.200 so forth. And you, you took a risk at some point and put all your time and effort into,

00:39:23.400 you know, giving, or I mean, people can support your podcast, but you will also give it away.

00:39:28.600 And what you discovered was that your impact on the world increased by at least an order of

00:39:34.000 magnitude, I think. And I, I, I think, you know, okay, so that's, is that self-promotion or is

00:39:39.360 that generosity? Well, it's both. And I, I think both, both are there. And I think your

00:39:43.500 willingness to spend all this time, you know, offering reason and insight to so many people,

00:39:49.880 I, I view that as a fantastic gift to the world that was not possible a couple of decades ago.

00:39:57.360 And it's amazing that we're in a world where that, where that can happen, where from your mind,

00:40:02.220 we can get all this, all this stuff and I could, I can listen to you every week or whatever. I think

00:40:06.940 that's, that's incredible. There are so many examples of this under the radar that I think

00:40:12.600 it's worth putting a label on it and, and trying to imagine how we tweak it and dial it up. And so

00:40:19.640 the label I put on it is infectious generosity. And I, I think, I think there's a pathway where it

00:40:27.800 can allow us to reclaim the internet to being a force for, for good in the world and giving us at

00:40:34.300 least a shot at a more hopeful future. We could talk about the, the various digital business models

00:40:41.400 here and, and how they interact with, with this concept of generosity. Cause it's, you know, I have

00:40:47.440 had a fairly unique experience here and I'm happy to get into that if it's of interest, but to your

00:40:53.200 first point about the common misunderstanding of our biological selfishness, right? The phrase,

00:40:59.960 is the selfish gene, which, you know, almost was an, almost an afterthought for, you know, when,

00:41:05.400 I mean, Dawkins could have named it the immortal gene or the eternal gene. I forget which he,

00:41:09.880 I think the immortal gene was what he, which he had named it. But, um, it doesn't mean that we're not

00:41:16.040 capable of altruism obviously, or selflessness even, and, and, and self-sacrifice. And there, there,

00:41:22.040 there's a evolutionary rationale for why we would be from the genes eye view. I mean, there's,

00:41:26.680 you know, kin selection and, and other properties of biology there, but there's, on the psychological

00:41:32.460 side, there's just this fact, which you point to that generosity and, and even classic, you know,

00:41:40.440 selflessness just feels good, right? Which is to say that caring about others is a very good strategy

00:41:47.380 for caring about yourself, right? And so this opposition between selfishness and, and selflessness

00:41:53.280 is fairly spurious. I mean, certainly as you climb the hierarchy of needs towards something like

00:42:00.040 self-actualization, your actualization entails this capacity to genuinely care about other people

00:42:08.760 and to genuinely love them and feel rewarded by, by your moral concern for them. And so there's,

00:42:15.680 there's just this thing that we might call, you know, wise selfishness, which contains all of the

00:42:23.260 pro-social and even self-sacrificing attitudes and norms that we, we would want it to, and which are,

00:42:31.020 are traditionally celebrated and, and, and championed under the banner of one or another religion. I mean,

00:42:38.140 Buddhism is, is very articulate on this, but you know, as is Christianity. And yet this is not

00:42:44.140 biologically mysterious and it's not psychologically mysterious. And, and yet many people have drawn the

00:42:50.940 opposite lesson that not only is selflessness and altruism and, and self-sacrifice and not,

00:42:56.940 not only are those false norms, they're basically illusions, right? They're there. If you prick any

00:43:04.300 one of those balloons, what you find in the middle of it is just pretension, you know, as I said at the

00:43:11.100 top, just that people are, are virtue signaling, they don't really, they, you know, they're just,

00:43:15.580 this is another way of being self-regarding. And you, you touched this a little bit in your book

00:43:22.300 where you deal with the Kantian, uh, notion of, of the purity of one's motives with respect to

00:43:29.580 generosity and then the, the, the necessity that they not be mixed with any desire on one's own part

00:43:36.060 to feel better or to be better or to burnish one's reputation. How do you think about the

00:43:41.180 mixture of motives that can inspire giving? And this notion, this, this, what I think you

00:43:47.580 and I are going to agree is that this false ideal of a moral purity that comes from Kant and elsewhere.

00:43:53.420 I mean, there's also kind of the Christian notion here where, you know, you shouldn't be calling

00:43:58.140 attention to your acts of piety or your acts of generosity. Therefore the best form of giving,

00:44:05.020 I think many people, and at least in, in our society believe is not almost by definition,

00:44:10.300 anonymous. If you're giving anonymously, well, then we know it's pure, but if you're giving in

00:44:14.860 a way that calls attention to the giving, well, then there has to be a mixture of motive. But in my

00:44:20.380 view, you actually can do much more good when you are candid about how important philanthropy is to

00:44:27.820 you and how rewarding it is to you and, and how consequential it is in the world. And so just give me

00:44:33.980 your take on all that.

00:44:35.260 I think there's a simple mental shift that we all need to make, which is instead of looking for the

00:44:42.780 bad in each other's motives to look for the good, you know, as a, as a philosophy student,

00:44:48.380 I literally would lie on the floor of my room for hours at a time, trying to figure this one out,

00:44:54.780 because the notion of like, I wanted to be a good person, but to be good without external

00:45:02.460 motivation to be purely good. I couldn't see how that happened. Like, even if you were just trying

00:45:09.500 to obey the call of conscience, wasn't it true that obeying the call of conscience in a sense

00:45:14.620 felt good? And so wasn't that therefore in a way selfish? And so I, I, I think the truth,

00:45:20.380 the truth is that, that generosity has always been, people have always done it for a reason.

00:45:26.540 And, uh, there's, there's always been a little bit of selfishness in, in the mix. Now the amount

00:45:32.940 of selfishness may, may vary in different people, but is it really like if someone does something

00:45:39.500 knowing secretly that it is in their long-term self-interest that if they do this, they're going

00:45:45.420 to feel deeply happy at the end of the day, or that it may actually enhance their reputation in the

00:45:52.860 world? Is that a bad thing? No, it's not. We should, we should embrace it. And so I, I think that,

00:45:58.460 that the, that one of, one of the, the core things I argue for here is that we have to let go of this

00:46:04.060 idea of perfect generosity. It never was perfect. And in, in the modern era, there are actually more

00:46:10.140 reasons than ever to look at the effects of generosity. Generosity is actually an amazing

00:46:16.380 strategy for any person, any organization, any company. You give away stuff and you, you know,

00:46:23.540 incredible things can happen as a result. It can boost your reputation. I, I think rather than

00:46:28.620 criticizing people for that, we should celebrate it because we want more of that. We don't want less

00:46:33.420 of that. We want more of that. And so the simple shift of saying, stop, you know, just stop this

00:46:39.080 ridiculous cynicism about someone's motives or trying to double guess, you know, is someone gives

00:46:44.780 away money. Were they, were they really doing this actually to enhance their reputation? That's not

00:46:50.240 a bad thing. You know, it's good. It's, it's good that they gave away the money for a good course,

00:46:55.000 celebrate it and, and give other people permission to do it. Doing that, just, just that simple shift

00:47:02.560 would unlock so much extra kindness because I think a lot of people are fearful of doing it or

00:47:08.160 certainly fearful of saying anything for precisely the reason that they're going to get shot at. It's

00:47:13.200 crazy. It's really crazy. We've got, we've got to get past that and, uh, look, look at the world

00:47:18.560 more, more realistically. And, and then just connected to that. So, I mean, you said, you said

00:47:24.780 it was sort of kind of obvious in a way that, that, um, you know, giving, you know, can be good for

00:47:30.760 you, can make you happy and so forth. I actually think for a lot of people, it's actually not that

00:47:34.640 obvious. I think that the psychology around this is really quite confusing to me and quite

00:47:39.320 weird because it's true that there are, there are indelible, profound links between generosity

00:47:45.420 and happiness, but I think they're often hidden. And we, in the moment when we're thinking about

00:47:50.460 being generous, what we're actually also aware of is the fear of loss and a loss aversion is a,

00:47:55.960 is a really powerful thing. And it's, it's, it's entirely possible for someone to go through a month

00:48:00.900 without really thinking about opportunities to be kind because, you know, life is hard and that

00:48:06.900 you're focused on our work or we focused on, you know, how, how to get the, you know, the next

00:48:11.720 paycheck in or what, what, whatever it is. And, um, those, those feelings are much more

00:48:17.420 pressing, shall we say. And so part of, I think part of, part of the playbook here, part of the life

00:48:23.840 hack, if you like, is to remind ourselves that actually, if you take a gamble on being generous,

00:48:31.920 even you actually may not feel it with any certainty in the moment, but you can be pretty sure that

00:48:36.740 afterwards you'll get payback. It will, it will, there will be a feeling of fulfillment. And even

00:48:42.620 if, even if there's no payback, if you like, from the people you gave things to, which there may be

00:48:49.140 that as well, there will be payback and just, you know, the sort of feeling of, oh, I can be that

00:48:55.100 person. Everyone at some level wants to be their, their better self, I think. Yeah. Well, I think we

00:49:02.420 perhaps should linger on this point of, um, the difference between intentions and results.

00:49:08.300 I guess there's, there's a third factor here, which we've, we haven't named what we've already

00:49:13.540 mentioned, which is just the way we feel as a result of giving. So I think intentions and reward,

00:49:20.880 uh, from giving and results are all separable and they, they all matter, but they, they matter

00:49:27.800 differently. And I think it's, it's important to optimize for all of them and just to be aware of

00:49:34.740 the trade-offs here. And this is what, one of the things that I, really the main thing that I found

00:49:39.540 so valuable in effective altruism. I haven't, and we'll talk about the, um, bad odor that surrounds

00:49:46.900 this phrase now as a result of Sam Bankman-Fried, but, um, I've never formally considered myself an

00:49:54.460 effective altruist to you because I, there's, it's always seemed a little too online and a little

00:49:59.820 too cultic and a little too shot through with Asperger's or something. But I, you know, I've

00:50:05.380 talked to the principal founders of it, you know, Will McCaskill and, and Toby Ord and, and, and Peter

00:50:11.100 Singer as well, and admire those guys immensely. And the real contribution it's made to my own life

00:50:18.180 is, is, is, is to differentiate these factors so that I can recognize that the reward I get from

00:50:24.920 giving is separable from the results. And there are certain, there are certain things I can give to

00:50:30.040 where the results in the world are as good as they could possibly be, but it's just not that sexy a

00:50:37.420 cause. And it's, I don't find it that interesting or rewarding, frankly, it's just not, it's not the

00:50:42.920 thing that really tugs at my heartstrings. And so what I've decided to do is just optimize for results

00:50:49.920 insofar as that I can do that through people advising me and, and doing research and then

00:50:56.520 consider the good feels and the search for good feels to be an additional project that is, it's,

00:51:03.860 it's almost like a, a guilty pleasure. So I decided, I mean, I, you know, I took the,

00:51:08.060 there are 10% pledged to give, you know, 10% of all pre-tax dollars to the most effective charities.

00:51:14.120 And so I do that, but then I give more than that. And I consider that the, those gifts, you know,

00:51:20.520 to the one person with a GoFundMe who has some truly tragic story, you know, that wouldn't survive

00:51:27.440 an EA analysis, but it's something that I really want to do. And, and the, and the beautiful thing

00:51:32.620 is that it has made it even more rewarding to do those things. Like it's truly, it's almost

00:51:38.040 like a noble form of greed that gets satisfied by helping people in those specific ways that,

00:51:46.500 that fall outside of the, the optimized results analysis that come from an EA perspective.

00:51:53.640 And then, you know, and finally intentions matter, you know, simply apart from the way in which they

00:51:59.040 color our minds moment to moment and, and really dictate, you know, who we are in relation to other

00:52:05.220 people, they matter just because, you know, if someone's giving, you know, to a cause simply to

00:52:11.400 burnish the reputation, that's all they care about. And they don't really care about alleviating human

00:52:16.040 suffering or doing any other good in the world. Well, then if that's what they care about, you can

00:52:21.000 predict in the future that they are going to go, you know, they're going to be blown around by

00:52:25.480 whatever incentives aim at burnishing their reputation. Right. And they're not, they're not going to be

00:52:30.460 reliable partners in the, in the project of reducing human suffering because that's not what they care

00:52:35.400 about. So that's, that's why intention matters. But I just think we can keep all of those specific

00:52:41.780 dials in view and tune them as correctly as we can so as to have both the best possible personal

00:52:49.620 experience and also do the most good in the world. Yeah. So there's a lot there. I agree with you on the

00:52:57.880 intention side. If, if we, you, if you knew for certain short, that the only reason someone was

00:53:01.600 doing something that looks generous was to burnish their reputation, then that, that doesn't really

00:53:07.520 count as, as generosity, but we actually never know that. But it's still good. It achieves good.

00:53:12.900 If some sociopath is going to give you a hundred million dollars to build a hospital, it's still,

00:53:17.440 you still get a hospital, but I wouldn't, I don't think you have to describe that as, as generosity.

00:53:21.840 But I think the truth is that in almost every circumstance, we don't know. I think people's

00:53:26.760 intentions are almost always mixed. I think most people, their main focus is the giving away of

00:53:32.880 the money and the hope that it will do something. And, you know, that they're, they're happy that

00:53:38.100 it's, you know, their reputation may, may benefit as well, but it's not, it's may not be the main

00:53:43.680 driver. The point is from the outside, you don't know. And therefore, what business do we have to

00:53:47.720 take the cynical view? I, I think it's really important just to look for the good in the intention

00:53:54.020 rather than, than, than, than the bad. But in terms of, you know, what you were saying about

00:53:59.700 that, there's this really important dance, I think, between our generous instincts and our

00:54:05.380 reasoned response to those instincts. I think the reason part is really important. Traditionally,

00:54:13.140 people often, you know, when they give, it is, it is on impulse. You know, you see there's some

00:54:18.820 tragedy in the world and you think, oh, I must, you know, text in my, my contribution or

00:54:23.400 whatever. And, and that feels, that feels good. Or we just, you know, we feel great empathy for

00:54:30.260 someone close to us and they have a need and we'll support that. Paul Bloom, you know, wrote this book

00:54:35.480 Against Empathy, which was kind of trying to argue that too much of that is not, you know, doesn't get

00:54:42.040 us where we need to go because there are so many resources in the world. It actually really is

00:54:47.080 important that we spend them wisely. And so I think there's, there's a really important dance that each of

00:54:51.940 us has to do, which is to try to bring our, our, our reason to bear and to say, okay, I care about

00:54:58.400 this. I care about this. Stop. Don't write a check right away. Just think for a minute. What is the

00:55:03.240 most effective thing you can do? And that, you know, so, so to go to effective altruism, if you just ask

00:55:10.420 the question, do we want our altruism to be effective? Well, yes, I think we do. You know, we'd, we'd,

00:55:16.620 we'd like it to be smart. We'd like it to be reason-based with, you know, we'd like the money to be spent

00:55:22.120 wisely. And, uh, and that's why I'm with you on, you know, I, I, I've got huge respect for people like

00:55:28.340 Will McCaskill and the other founders of effective altruism. I think if you view it as a, as a journey,

00:55:35.940 and I think Will would say this now about it, it's not any, any individual recommendation they make at any

00:55:41.620 point in time is provisional. What they're anchored in is the desire to figure out what is a wise way

00:55:48.860 to give. And when you put it that way, that is absolutely the right question to ask. What is a

00:55:54.260 wise way? Because it's, it's not, it's not obvious. There are so many, you know, there's orders of

00:55:58.220 magnitude difference between spending money smartly and spending it stupidly. And, uh, and I think,

00:56:04.360 you know, I, I talk a lot in the book about trying to find the leverage point. You, you, when you spend

00:56:08.960 money, you're, you're, you're looking for what is it that makes this a good value for money? You know,

00:56:14.820 can you leverage technology? Can you leverage government policy? Can you leverage the internet?

00:56:19.640 Can you leverage education and knowledge? And I think when you find something that really, where you

00:56:27.420 get, wow, that organization is being really smart about how they're spending their money. It's, it's

00:56:32.640 very exciting to do it. And I agree with you that it doesn't have the immediate feels of, you know,

00:56:38.960 here's a family in need, you write them a check, they cry, you cry, lovely. But there is,

00:56:44.860 there is actually something satisfying deeply, I think about taking the time to have a plan and to,

00:56:52.140 to, to know, to think about what you can afford to spend, to commit to spending it and to getting it

00:56:58.700 to a point where you feel good about it. I think really makes, makes you feel different. I mean,

00:57:03.300 I know, you know, I, I had a foundation and for years I was, I couldn't figure out what to

00:57:07.460 spend the money on that, that got me excited coming to Ted. I suddenly found, wow, okay,

00:57:12.440 I get this. I'm leveraging the power of ideas. I love that. I love that. And it, it didn't give

00:57:17.820 me the kind of, here's a family crying and I'm, I can do something about it kind of feels, but it

00:57:21.560 gave me a different kind of satisfaction to have found what was for me the right way of, of spending

00:57:26.980 the foundation's money. So I, that's the dance I think is, is start with, start with the, in the

00:57:33.460 biological instinct and the sort of the, the realization that for you to feel good about

00:57:37.500 yourself, you know, generosity should be part of who you are, but then take the time to think it

00:57:43.400 through and, and figure it out. What is the wise way to go? Cause, cause there are just such

00:57:48.540 different answers to that. Well, let's talk about business models because I have a fairly unique

00:57:55.640 one and it, which you alluded and it's, it might be slightly different than you imagine. And, and

00:57:59.840 also you at Ted have a fairly unique one and there, there actually, there's some similarities

00:58:03.640 between the two and I just would love to get your take on this. So originally on the podcast, I had

00:58:08.860 the kind of the NPR PBS Patreon style business where it was, you know, it was free for everyone to

00:58:16.320 listen to it. People expect podcasts to be free. And I didn't, you know, for a variety of reasons,

00:58:21.960 I didn't want to take ads. So I just said, you know, you, if you enjoy what is happening over

00:58:26.980 here, you can support it and here's how. And I think I was, I was very successful in doing that.

00:58:33.080 And it was, it was a, you know, a real business and, and it was quite stable. And I had about

00:58:39.400 probably two years of running it that way where it was just, I mean, the, the income was perfectly

00:58:45.880 reliable. I mean, maybe it, it moved around by two or 3% on any given month, but it just,

00:58:51.140 it seemed completely, I had found what I had found the floor and the ceiling and it was just,

00:58:56.160 it was just humming along. And nothing seemed broken about it except for two things. One,

00:59:02.860 I released my meditation app alongside this podcast and that was structured differently.

00:59:09.780 That was an app in the app store and it was paywalled. I mean, it was, you, you could use

00:59:13.860 it for free for some time, but then you, then you had to subscribe. And if you couldn't afford it,

00:59:18.080 you could just send an email and we would give it to you for free. And that's still the case. And

00:59:21.640 it's still the case on this podcast. But I had these two experiments in business running side by

00:59:28.160 side. One had a paywall and one was sort of opt out and one was opt in, right? And it was really

00:59:34.120 just, you know, MP3 files on both platforms. And I noticed that by comparison with the app,

00:59:40.560 the podcast business was broken. And I didn't do anything about it until I stumbled upon a

00:59:48.140 conversation on Reddit, which truly bowled me over. And I think you might find this interesting

00:59:53.700 because this revealed to me that as a business model, there's something wrong with the spirit

01:00:01.240 of generosity and the spirit of philanthropy. Because I spectated upon this as the thread was

01:00:07.340 something around, you know, do you support Sam's podcast? And if so, why or why not? And someone

01:00:13.460 said, well, I would support the podcast if I knew what he was going to do with the money. And another

01:00:19.120 person said, well, I would support the podcast if I knew how much it costs to run a podcast.

01:00:25.080 And another person said, well, you know, I would support the podcast if I knew how much I thought a

01:00:30.640 person should earn from a podcast, right? And I looked at those three statements and my head

01:00:37.440 practically fell off my shoulders because I realized at a glance there was something deeply

01:00:42.720 wrong here because these are the kinds of considerations that would never have occurred

01:00:46.860 to a person when they were thinking about buying my next book, for instance. I mean,

01:00:50.800 there's literally no person on earth who's ever thought the thought, well, I would buy his next book

01:00:55.760 if I knew how much I thought an author should make from writing books, or I would buy his next book if

01:01:01.800 I knew what he was going to do with the money, right? I mean, these are just not the kinds of

01:01:05.220 thoughts people think. Either you want to read the book or you don't, and you buy it or not. And so

01:01:10.120 I decided to make the podcast emulate the app in that I made the paywall compulsory in that,

01:01:20.100 you know, it's now paywall, then if you're not behind the paywall, you're only hearing

01:01:24.060 the first part of every podcast. But if you can't afford it, you just have to send an email and we

01:01:29.760 give it to you for free, right? And I staff literally full-time something like 30 or 35 people

01:01:35.800 in the customer service and 95% of what they do is just minister to free accounts. And there were

01:01:41.520 days during COVID where a thousand people would send that email a day, right? And, you know, many

01:01:46.660 hundreds send that email on any given day for the app or the podcast or both, and that's fine. So I'm very

01:01:52.760 committed to money never being the reason why someone can't get access to what I'm doing because

01:01:58.260 it's important that that not be the reason. And it being a digital product, you know, allows for that.

01:02:04.060 But the crucial thing to realize here is that when I changed the paywall on the podcast,

01:02:10.860 first of all, when I announced that I was going to do this, many people predicted that it was going

01:02:14.120 to be a disaster, that I, you know, that my audience would shrink to nothing and that no one would pay

01:02:19.660 because everyone expects podcasts to be free. Unlike apps, everyone expects podcasts to be

01:02:24.400 free. And, you know, most of them are, most of them are ad-supported. And what happened was

01:02:29.060 if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - January 16, 2024

#349 — Generosity, Cynicism, and the Future of Doing Good

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